News of the News

WELL I NEVER, Do-As-You-Please, Wednesday (NotScientist) — The minister for science and innovation, Lord Paul Drayson, has praised the high standards of science journalism at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in London yesterday. About 900 delegates attended the conference to congratulate each other on the remarkable quality of their press release transcription skills.

“The public relies on dependable science journalism to understand the forces shaping the modern world,” said Lord Drayson. “Your work covering the things that really matter, such as pseudo-evolutionary explanations of current fashion trends, what will give us cancer this week, scaring the crap out of people over the MMR vaccine so their kids die of birth defects from measles instead and why fellatio is required for female health helps people make important choices about their lives and builds a vital gap between scientists and the public. I mean bridge.”

He dismissed claims that typical science reporting primarily results in sensationalist and misleading headlines. “I wish more journalists would follow your example. The ones covering MPs’ expenses certainly should have been working the way you do.”

The speech was delivered to a backdrop of A-level students in lab coats. And bikinis.

Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro calculated that Lord Drayson’s speech could power all of Britain for six months purely from harnessing the steam coming out of Ben Goldacre’s ears.

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WIKICITIES, Helmand, Monday (NNN) — The kidnapping of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist David Rohde in Afghanistan was suppressed not only by almost all press syndicates but also by Wikipedia, on the direct command-and-control orders of Jimbo Wales, who is personally responsible for every word in the popular web-based encyclopedia.

Conservative commentators were appalled at the suppression. “Would they have protected HITLER like this?” thundered Michelle Malkin. Wales pointed out that the encyclopedia’s biography of Hitler had already been appropriately edited and cited per the Biographies of Living Persons policy:

Adolf Hitler is the Chancellor of Germany^{[citation needed]}. He is noted^{[citation needed]} for his work on the moral fibre of German society^{[citation needed]} and stimulating the economy^{[citation needed]}, notably through the Autobahn construction programme^{[citation needed]}. Some^[who?] have criticized aspects of his policies^{[citation needed]}.

The Wikipedia Review message board exploded in outrage at the revelations. “And they called us conspiracy theorists!” said ardent Wikipedia critic, businessman and banned editor Gregory Kohs. “It’s not clear yet how this will make money for Wales’ private company Wikia, but I know that’s why he did it.” The message board was further outraged at being scooped on the news. “This makes David Rohde part of the ‘hive mind,’ so the only way to remedy Wikipedia’s revelations of not revealing someone’s personal details in this particular case will be for me to put up David Rohde’s home address, names of his entire family and his bank account details on my website,” said public interest stalker Daniel Brandt. “I bet Google’s in on it too. They put a radio in my head, you know.”

“This raises many deep questions,” said free speech crusader Seth Finkelstein, “and it is important that many people keep at Wikimedia to get the truth, since they censoriously killfiled my email and viciously claimed to my editor at the Guardian that printing the stuff I write in blogs and letters to people’s employers in a mainstream British newspaper would constitute ‘deliberate malicious libel.’ I shall, of course, continue to pursue them to the end of time. Particularly that Godwin asshole.”

Many Wikipedia editors were also concerned. “Keeping details out of a Wikipedia article on a living person just because there aren’t any reliable sources because of a censorious conspiracy to keep him from getting killed is a slippery slope to the destruction of the trustworthiness and usefulness of every article in the encyclopedia,” said administrator WikiFiddler451. “People are seriously suggesting that our rules should be applied using common sense and a clue. I just don’t see how that could possibly work. Next they’ll suggest we ‘assume good faith’ or something.”

The Wikipedia Vandalism Patrol, who Wales ordered to suppress the information, deals with bad Wikipedia edits by determining if it is easier to fix the vandalism or adjust reality to the claimed facts. Wikipedia resets reality to match its contents using “wikiality,” discovered by conservative commentator Stephen Colbert. “Stephen’s one of our great successes,” said Wales. “We wrote that he was only parodying actual conservative commentators, and the liberals believed it! Of course, conservatives weren’t fooled by anything in Wikipedia.” Wikiality uses a “reality distortion field” similar to that used by Steve Jobs in his MacWorld keynote addresses, which is why all Wikimedia Foundation employees use MacBooks.

All information in Wikipedia must be verifiable in reliable sources. The “No Original Research” policy was first instituted to deal with “physics cranks. After the first few times the universe collapsed into a black hole when one of them squared the circle and we had to revert to the previous revision of reality. Way too much work. Brion was still a volunteer then, too.”

The death of Michael Jackson proved particularly problematic, with the article quickly becoming both the most read and most edited of the past week. “It took a while to decide what should have happened. ‘Heart failure’ covers a lot of stuff. The real story — the original real story, before we got in there and fixed things … no, you really don’t want to know. David Icke doesn’t want to know either, though he thinks he does. Really. No. Things are much better now. Trust us.”

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WAGGENER EDSTROM, Portland, Sunday (NNGadget) — Sergey Brin of Google is “deeply rattled” by the launch of Microsoft’s Bob Hope search engine, according to a scoop printed in the New York Post, courtesy Microsoft public relations.

“New search engines have come and gone in the past ten years, but Bob Hope really has Sergey just crapping himself,” said one anonymous insider, “Steve B.”

“It’s clear that Google is headed down, down, down,” said another anonymous source, “Rupert M.” “Particularly the news operation. Print that or I fire you.”

Bob Hope has been warmly greeted by analysts, critics, tech journalists and others on Microsoft and News Corporation’s payrolls. Early statistics show Bob Hope increasing Microsoft’s market share by two percentage points, to about 11 percent! Before dropping back to statistical noise a few hours after the launch was over.

Google’s credibility was shot to pieces by its blatant pro-Obama bias, noted by Fox News analysts when they couldn’t find evidence of Obama’s French citizenship and gay marriage on the search engine in the days before the 2008 Presidential election. “Their far-left liberal search algorithms will lead to their utter defeat by the business-friendly Microsoft Bob Hope,” said swivel_eyed_loon_643 in the New York Post comments section. In addition, a hilariously pathetic PR placement of a story in the New York Post to hype Bob Hope sealed Google’s fate, conclusively and utterly.

A spokesman for Google, asked about the threat of Microsoft Bob Hope, said “what??”, put the phone down and laughed for five minutes before the line cut out, obviously overcome with hysterical horror.

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GOSH, Well I never, Thursday (NNN) — English has now acquired its millionth word, “bollocks,” according to Global Language Monitor, a website monitoring the extraordinary emergence of new English throughout the world.

“The Million Word milestone brings to notice the coming of age of English as the first truly global language,” said Paul J.J. Payack. “We looked at slang, word-marriages with other languages and the thousands of new terms spawned by the internet. But really, most of them were such utter bollocks that it was the only reasonable candidate.”

“Bollocks” has a long and venerable history, first showing up in the 12th century. “But it keeps reviving itself. ‘Web 2.0,’ ‘n00b,’ ‘Jade Goody,’ ‘festering fucknugget’ … it’s all bollocks.”

Global Language Monitor uses a Predictive Quantities Indicator to assess whether a usage qualifies as a word: each contender is analysed according to depth (number of citations) and breadth (geographic extent of word usage), as well as the number of times a word has appeared in the global print and electronic media, the Internet, blogs, and social media. Then they throw away the numbers, get blind drunk on White Lightning while shouting the most appalling bits of the Daily Mail at each other and declare it all a load of “bollocks.”

“People moan about the degradation and decline of the English language,” said Mr Payack, “but the worst offenders are the media, who will print any old self-promoting rubbish that will fill space and save them working for a living. Global Language Monitoring is me and my invisible mate Charlie who lives on this bench with me. Bollocks to the lot of yer! Bollocks! They put a bollocks radio in my head! Bollocking bollocks!”

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ISENGARD, Wapping, Monday (NNN) — Rupert Murdoch, speaking out on the news business, stated today that “the Internet free access model is clearly malfunctioning, as I don’t make enough money from it.”

Media commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. “How can we hold governments’ feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?” Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls.

Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.

“We have to educate people that free doesn’t work, particularly for us,” said Vanessa Thorpe of the Guardian Media Group. “I tried an advertorial repeating several times that nothing will be free any more, to magic it into happening. I also subtly implied the Pirate Bay were Nazis — HITLER! HITLER! HITLER! — so we’ll see if we can make that one fly too.”

Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its “fair share” for so parasitically leading people to newspapers’ websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. “We feel this is completely unfair,” said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, “as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss.” Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.

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HOLD THE PRESSES, Daily Asteroid, After The News (NNN) — Hearst newspapers will be holding back content from their papers’ free websites, instead charging for some digital news and information. “We are fully confident that both readers and Google will come to the party and give us money,” said Hearst president Steven Swartz, “and not just laugh and ignore us henceforth.”

Newspapers plan to fight back against the avaricious parasitism of Google in telling people where to find content the newspapers had put up on the Web for free with a new e-book reader, a variant on the Amazon Kindle. “For only $300, readers can read DRM-locked down versions of our content that they’re paying a subscription for on top. We can’t see how this could possibly fail to work.”

Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has been notably successful in selling valuable original financial reporting that cannot be obtained anywhere else. “So there’s no reason people won’t pay for recycled Associated Press feeds, the latest on Britney and Paris, corporate-backed op-eds, funny cat stories and pretence at holding the government’s feet to the fire.”

Hearst also advocates new advertising and revenue models. “The technical press on the Web shows the way forward: blatant and obvious gutter-slut crack-whoredom. Subtlety doesn’t pay the bills any more — we must enthusiastically welcome the corporate cock into our throats and rectums. Also, I’d like to mention that everyone should use the Windows 7 beta. HLAGH HLAGH HLAGH,” added Mr Swartz, wiping off his chin.

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W 40th STREET, New York 10018, Tuesday (NNN) — Beleaguered Internet advertising phirm Phorm is hitting back at critics with StopPhoulPlay.com, in an attempt to lure Internet activists into herniating from laughter.

“It is clear that the campaign against Phorm originates in the sinister manipulations of Alex Hanff and Marcus Williamson,” said Kent Ertegun, CEO of Phorm, “who have used mind control lasers and the killer robot armies of the Open Rights Group and FIPR to deceive millions of Britons into a Communistic fervor of hatred against the engines of the free market and customer demand, the salesmen and marketers, the true creators and enablers of objective value.”

The website, designed in Microsoft Word, uses the infallible public relations format so successfully put into play by the ReligiousFreedomWatch.org site of the Church of Scientology, an upstanding community institution of similarly flawless repute. StopPhoulPlay.com reveals how:

• At the age of five, Hanff REFUSED to share his crayons with the little girl next to him, saying she was “poopy” and would only draw a picture to be used against him.

• At age twelve, Williamson accepted MONEY from his mother to buy sweets, but not to tell schoolmates in case they wanted some.
• Hanff and Williamson may have attempted to access POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL images blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation.
• Hanff and Williamson have used WIKIPEDIA at least once in their lives.
• Hanff and Williamson INVADED POLAND in 1939.

“Given the persistence with which they propagate incorrect information, we cannot rule out the possibility that a competitor is involved,” he said. “The competitor goes under the name ‘reality.’ Needless to say, we have no tolerance for an entity of such limited possibilities.

“These people are privacy pirates — people who steal privacy online, off the coast of Somalia. With Internet guns! And drugs! And child pornography!”

Mr Hanff and Mr Williamson said they were unsure whether to sue Phorm into atomic dust for gross defamation or just to let them continue with their infallible public relations work. Phorm shares have dropped from 405p to being rated a “serious infection risk” by the World Health Organization.

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MINISTRY OF BURLESQUE, Church of Satin, Saturday (NNN) — The Government today expressed its “outrage” that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand could not personally be forced to pay the £150,000 fine against the BBC for their prank calls to Andrew Sachs.

Thousands of complaints were filed with Ofcom after the Daily Mail figured it would be a handy front-page outrage for a couple of weeks.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said she thought the stars should be made to pay the penalty themselves. “Surely whatever will play well with the Daily Mail is what the good people of this country want. These ‘laws’ only get in the way of doing what is right … this week.”

“This is much more shocking than Fred Goodwin’s pension or ministerial expenses,” said Jacqui Smith. “Particularly mine. Pitchforks and torches that way! Not this way!”

“Hellooo, still mortified and stuff!” said Georgina Baillie. “Oy! Over here! Look, tits! God, I’m never going to be back in Nuts at this rate.”

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GRUB STREET RETIREMENT VILLAGE, Times Old Roman, back when this were all fields (Mediocre Grauniad) — The Guardian Media Group has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.

“The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they’d stop using our stuff!

“We need the Government to bring back balance, ‘balance’ defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You’d think the Internet wasn’t invented to give newspapers and record companies free money!”

The newspaper group argues that traffic from search engines doesn’t make up the cost of producing the content. “Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn’t bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google’s problem.”

The Guardian suggests the exploration of new models that “require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and ‘at the edges’ in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi’s it.”

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OMG, Onoez, every day (NNN) — Civilisation is facing imminent doom from dirty bomb attacks, a credit crisis, a cash crisis and morning-after pills for 11-year-old underclass children.

Further harbingers of the end of all things include your teeth being rotted out of your head by eating five pieces of fruit a day, NHS superbugs that mutter taunts into patients’ ears before dissolving their flesh, people downloading music and films and, of course, Google Street View.

“An explosion in London could destroy your presently fantastic and wonderful way of life,” said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. “Beautiful boss, lovely coworkers, marvellous housemates and all. However, our CCTV network will keep you safe at all times. Please present your papers to the nice policeman. Keep calm and carry on. Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory. Smile!”

In an attempt to stave off inevitable disaster, the Metro, the London Paper and London Lite are cooperating to help save the world by telling anyone not recycling their paper that they have personally doomed the planet, and never mind them printing ridiculous quantities of disposable rubbish without even a very good Sudoku and turning every Tube train into a rolling landfill site. The campaign will be illustrated with pictures of students in bikinis.

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GRUB STREET, Metro, eternally (NNN) — Britain has said farewell to ___ at the end of an unprecedented week of mourning.

It was an event made by the incredible upsurge of popular feeling in Britain and around the world. Before she died, some may have been hoping that she would grow old, her celebrity would dim and she would be quietly interred in relative obscurity. Even when she died, nobody anticipated the scale of this popular rising.

A ___ mile procession brought her coffin to ___, where politicians and celebrities joined the family in a subdued congregation. Amongst the congregation were such celebrities as ___ and ___. Over ___ people lined the route of her final journey. Some of the crowd wept, some applauded quietly, but most watched in silence.

On top of the coffin was a poignant reminder that this woman known to millions was also a mother — a card to “Mummy” from her sons, ___ and ___, who joined family walking behind the coffin.

Family members read tributes to her at the funeral service. “She was the very essence of compassion,” said ___. “

There is no question: she was truly the people’s ___.

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FIFTY-SEVEN CHANNELS, Neither Rare Nor Well-Done, forever (Mediocre Grauniad) — The heavily-promoted new series of Mad Men on BBC4 has failed to boost the channel’s ratings, with twenty-four viewers tuning in on Tuesday night, losing out to thirty-six viewers of ITV3’s Ladies of Letters and thirty-three for Sky Three’s reality TV hit I’m The Bottom Of A Barrel, Get Me Out Of Here.

All viewers turned out to be newspaper television critics, desperate for uncovered new areas to report on and anything at all to turn into copy.

The show was also beaten in the ratings by people’s dogs watching BBC Parliament, a YouTube video of a kitten jumping off a table and a nostalgic DVD of the little white dot fading into the distance you used to get on black-and-white televisions.

Advertisers are leaving in droves, turning down the opportunity to pay 50p for a half-hour infomercial on UKTV Home Shopping 7 and instead giving it to tramps to shout the product’s name at random commuters at bus stops.

TV executives blame BitTorrent downloads and the existence of computers in general for the decline in viewing figures and asked again for a chunk of the BBC license fee and a tax on all Internet connections, to be paid directly to them. And a pony. “Just keep giving us money, we’ll tell you when it’s enough.”

Blue Peter (fifty-eight viewers) will run tomorrow a special on how to make television ratings out of string, cheese, toilet rolls and cat litter. A grown-up will need to handle the scissors.

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THE TUBE, The Bloody Commute, seven bloody AM (NNN) — Phil Space, an expert in depression at the University of Metro, has discovered a mathematical formula to pinpoint today as Blue Monday, the day when six factors come together to leave journalists at their most miserable.

The factors are: the dank and gloomy weather; the lack of articles to fill the spaces between the ads; a feeling of monotony writing the seventh “the economy’s utterly sodomised” story; broken New Year’s resolutions to get a more socially worthwhile job, like picking maggots out of a corpse’s arse with your teeth; low levels of motivation; and it’s bloody Monday. Also, that you ran this story last year but that was on January 21st.

The mathematical formula for misery is:

— where P is the weather, O is Barack Obama’s inauguration while we’ve still got Gordon Brown, T is the probability of Abi Titmuss playing Doctor Who’s next companion, B is the lack of stories about students in bikinis in this weather, W is Amy Winehouse flashing her tits around in a smacked-out stupor, R is recycling stories on ever-shorter time scales and H is going past horror at the idea of your boss noticing to losing hope that he ever will.

Phil offers tips for overcoming gloom: “Focus on the good things you do have in your life. If being one of the lucky people who still has a job gives you not even a slight sneer of superiority over the unemployed masses, and instead you have this overwhelming urge to get out a machine gun and kill every fucker on the tube in the morning … well, it’s worth a try. Also, good cheer comes in pints and makes for a bloody happy Friday and Saturday.”

Alistair Darling has been asked to stop visiting investment firm offices in the City talking up optimism and a more positive outlook by City of London street cleaners, who are running low on body bags.

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TORCHWOOD THREE, Cardiff, Monday (NNN) — Actor John Barrowman has apologised for exposing himself on live radio on Sunday evening. Two complaints were received about the incident, from listeners J. Ross and R. Brand. “We are appalled and outraged,” they said. “We told the Daily Mail and they thought it was funny.”

Barrowman apologised for any offence caused. “I was joining in the light-hearted and fun banter of the show and went too far. I was wrong to do this and it will never happen again. Next time I’ll just say I am and not actually do so. This will make all the difference to our lovely Daily Mail-reading listeners, every one of whom I would have a romantic interlude with. Except I’m gay and married.”

Georgina Baillie was shocked. “I’m shocked, I am. Sure he doesn’t go for girls just a bit? Maybe after a few drinks when his friends aren’t there to see?”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “We do feel that the programme overstepped the mark. We are determined that lessons will be learned from this incident. All BBC radio shows going forward will contain only simulated willy exposures, with the willy exposure substituted with a Radiophonic Workshop sound effect. Probably some sort of ‘Ba-DOING!’ sound, a processed version of the sound of a wooden ruler vibrating on a desk. Everyone loves that one. In addition, we will talk about Y-fronts and boxer shorts rather than willies and balls.”

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PAGE 3, Financial Times, Friday (NNN) — Alistair Darling today admitted that the economy was disastrously seized up, with one in twelve London workers likely to lose their job.

Across town, Nigella Lawson wore a low-cut dress revealing quite spectacular quantities of well-nourished breastage, with photos in all papers.

In the United States, Wall Street is melting away like Belloq’s face after Indy told him not to look in the Ark and Henry Paulson said he would not use the second $350 billion of the stimulus package, leaving the economy unpushed at a critical time and the Detroit car manufacturers on the verge of collapse.

In Australia, Nicola McLean’s breasts, which had undergone hyperinflation, were marvelously decorative and pointy and set off nicely by the other I’m A Celebrity bikini babes, Dani Behr and Carly Zucker, despite the influx of Robert Kilroy-Silk and kangaroo testicles.

Back in the UK, the economy is deflating, the banks have seized up, no-one is buying or selling houses and next week you’ll have to eat your shoes. And John Sergeant is a huge tit.

“But at least we’re not short of massive boobs,” said Mr Darling. “And call and vote on Strictly Come Dancing! Before the telly’s repossessed.”

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CHANNEL 5, Wapping, Friday (NNN) — New findings printed today in all papers and broadcast on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 reveal that television is “virtually a mental vitamin” for intelligence and emotional well-being. In addition, it helps treat arrhythmia, psoriasis, tooth decay, distemper, dropsy, haemorrhoids and impotence, and lets you see through clothes.

The findings were revealed today by the study’s funders, a consortium of commercial television broadcasters and newspaper proprietors. They have recommended that watching television and reading printed newspapers be made mandatory as a public health measure, and that the Internet be renamed “The Paedophile Channel” as a warning to possible users.

“Regular television viewers have a deeper understanding of popular culture, are up-to-the-minute on artistic ideas of the moment and have something to talk to their co-workers about the next day,” said Dr Desmond Murdoch. “The quick-fix nature of televisual gratification accumulates and quickly becomes permanent. The tightly-scripted performance brilliance of thirty-second messages provides the viewer’s necessary daily dose of thoughtful mental stimulation and wit.

“I met a scientist once,” said Dr Murdoch. “Well, he said he was a scientist. He handed me a remarkably large cheque.”

Further results from the research group are expected to include revelations that jaffa cakes, crisps and Coca-Cola are “fruit” for the purposes of achieving one’s government-mandated five portions a day, and that snake oil liniment does all it is claimed to.

“It lets you see through clothes, man,” emphasised Dr Murdoch.

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I’m thinking of buying a netbook as a second machine for net access and mobile broadband. Should I get one with XP or can I run Linux and not worry about what’s “under the bonnet”?
M Shuttleworth

Linux-based netbooks have apparently friendly front ends, but are very demanding if you go any deeper. Linux is like the Mooncup: a nice idea, but messy and not for the squeamish. In fact, Linux can be likened to a Mooncup-using redhaired hippie girlfriend who lives in a house in the country she built herself from twigs and has very strong ideas on how everything should be and has all her original body hair. The sex is fantastic, but only if she thinks the astrological conditions are perfect. And the house has a hand-dug latrine, so she’s propped a toilet bowl on top and thinks that’s “user friendliness.”

No, no. You would far prefer Windows. That’s like a nice normal bottle-blonde girlfriend who has a proper office job and dresses cleanly from Primark and has a sweet smile and lives in a proper bedsit and knows everyone and how to act normally and is accepted in society. She gets headaches a lot and fits of rage where she smashes everything and there’s an odd smell of decaying human flesh coming from the drains and the toilet backs up every now and then filling the entire block with sewage and bits of bodies, but this is entirely normal and nothing to worry about.

My four-year-old PowerBook G4 is putting itself into sleep mode and refusing to wake up. It gives a very unfriendly beep and a black screen when it is turned on. Taking out and replacing the memory will eventually bring it to life.
S Jobs

This is a known fault in the Macintosh line, where the keyboards were dipped in vats of herpes virus before being shipped. Mac OS X is well known to induce symptoms similar to tertiary syphilis in long-term users — ask anyone with Mac-using friends. The G4 has an old PowerPC chip, and is obsolete because Apple has long since moved to Intel chips. So at least you can run a proper operating system like Vista on the new ones.

I have a PC bought from Dell, a proper computer company, and am running Microsoft™ Windows™ Vista™ Service Pack 1. It’s the best operating system ever in the entire universe and I can do anything those annoying Mac users and Linux nerds can. And Windows 7™ will be even better! I don’t have a problem, I just wanted to tell you this to piss off those annoying anti-Microsoft trolls who keep commenting on your Guardian column.
J Schofield

This is an excellent start to a perfect computing experience. Make sure you have only genuine Microsoft software on the system, and don’t ever use Firefox in case your penis shrinks — Internet Explorer 8 guarantees you will get many useful email offers for a greatly increased penis with incredible sperm production capability. Also, Google will invade your privacy and put pictures of you masturbating on Google StreetView, so only use Windows Live Search. Happy surfing!

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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED GODDAMNED STATES, Washington, Tuesday (NNN) — Conservative Supreme Court judges want to uphold an FCC crackdown on the use of salty language during daytime and early evening hours.

U.S. Solicitor General Gregory G. Goatse said the strict regulation of broadcast TV preserved it as a “safety zone” for families with children. “They’ll never hear the foul shit they’d hear on the Internet, on cable or, God fucking perish, the schoolyard.”

The Federal Communication Commission imposes heavy fines on broadcasters who broadcast any of “shit,” “piss”, “fuck,” “cunt,” “cocksucker,” “motherfucker” or “tits,” though saying them in sequence functions as a First Amendment “cheat code” and is allowed as artistic expression. Broadcasters can be fined more than $325,000 for a single utterance of the F-word, even some fuckhead blurting it out on a live broadcast.

Chief Justice John G. Lemonparty Jr. and Justice Antonin Stilea dominated Tuesday’s argument and strongly supported the FCC.

Stilea said he understood that foul words would be heard at a football or baseball game. “Those assholes ain’t fit for polite company. But TV’s a different fucking one cup of two girls. TV coarsens the public debate, not like that fucking Internet thing. I’m not persuaded by the argument that people are more accustomed to hearing this shit than they were in the past.”

During Tuesday’s argument, only Justice Ruth Bader Tubgirl, waving her naked hairy butt at the courtroom to emphasise her point, suggested the court delve into the First Amendment issues that underlay this dispute. It is “the fucking huge pile of elephant dung in the room,” she said. “I can’t believe this fucking retarded goddamn bullshit.”

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TELEVISION CENTRE, W12, Tuesday (NNN) — National outrage was sparked by a moment’s idiocy on the part of Jonathan Woss and Wussell Bwand a few weeks ago when the newspapers ran out of stories about Big Brother contestants, skateboarding ducks and what your breasts mean to fill the spaces between pronouncements of economic doom.

The incident occurred when, in a terrible lapse of judgement, a radio producer let Mr Ross and Mr Brand behave on-air in the manner they had been hired to. It is understood that Brand made the slanderous suggestion that he had in fact managed to get it up at least once whilst going out with Georgina Baillie.

“I am mortified,” said Ms Baillie, “at the number of half-page photos of my smile and cleavage in the papers and the many impending offers of work. Just mortified.”

The BBC has suspended the two presenters for embarrassing director general Mark Thompson.

“In these dark, Maddie-free days,” thundered all papers, “this sort of obscenity against a member of the Satanic Sluts cannot be countenanced. Suspension is hardly sufficient. The British sense of justice and fair play will not be satisfied until they are castrated by a baying crowd, pursued through the street on horseback with dogs, hanged by the neck outside White City until dead and their foul corpses left there to fester for at least a month. We pay our licence fees!”

“I denounce these despicable demagogues of dull-wittedness, whoever they are,” thundered Gordon Brown, with a Prime Minister’s sense of what it means when Luscious Lucy, 19, of Sheppey comments on a public issue from her editorial column on page three of The Sun. David Cameron blamed ten years’ financial ineptitude from Labour and vowed that the Tories would be tough on Brand and tough on the causes of Brand.

Chancellor Alistair Darling counseled caution, however, warning that the credit crunch would almost certainly lead to difficulty in securing sufficient teapots for a really good tempest.

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Monday (N! News) — Viewers will have the opportunity “to see more of our finest creative advertising minds at work” under proposals put forward by Ofcom to deal with the drop in television advertising revenue.

The report notes: “The advertising industry is powerfully adept at producing thirty-second immaculately-constructed visual masterpieces, perfect for the modern on-the-go citizen. We also hope to bring long-form works to the viewer, which they presently must seek out themselves on home shopping channels. We feel this will alleviate the monotony of shows such as The X Factor.”

Broadcasters are currently restricted to showing an average of eight minutes an hour of advertising during peak times, amounting to a maximum of 40 minutes across the five-hour period. The new plan involves eight minutes an hour of programming, amounting to a maximum of 40 minutes across an evening.

“We want to ensure that viewers continue to benefit from a wide range of advertising-funded television services. We feel there is no prospect of this backfiring, as it’s not as if there’s any alternative to television,” said the preliminary report, which is also available on YouTube and BitTorrent.

“Ofcom has taken on board our opinion that any suggestion of ‘regulatory capture’ by the bodies it is meant to set the rules for is piffle,” said Channel Four. “But we understand these moves are controversial, and strongly suggest people call in with their opinion on our 0900 line, at only 95p a minute.”

“Oh dear, what a pity, never mind,” said a BBC spokesman, opening champagne.

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