Category Archives: Media

Entertainment, Health, Media, Science, United Kingdom

Television essential to mental well-being

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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.

Hypnotize, with any TV set!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.

Media, Technology, United Kingdom

Ask Jack

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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

Jack Schofield Bill Gates mugshotLinux-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!

Media, United States

High court conservatives favor “fucking strong” indecency rule

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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.

Corky in shock!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.”

“If you can’t say f—,” noted Lenny Bruce, “you can’t say f— the government … ahh … darn it all. To pieces.”

Entertainment, Media, United Kingdom

Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand collide with delayed journalistic August

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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.

BBC White City StocksThe 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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Media, United Kingdom

Creativity to be promoted on commercial TV

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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.

Sad toilet in snowThe 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.

Media, Technology, United States

Microsoft fires Jerry Seinfeld

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MORDOR, RedMonk, Thursday (NNGadget) — The Microsoft Vista advertisements starring Bill Gates as Colonel Sanders and Jerry Seinfeld as a washed-up 1990s sitcom star have been terminated.

The ads are nevertheless anticipated to win many advertising industry awards and look good on the creators’ resumés. Vista has sold over 140 million copies worldwide, with many of those actually being installed and activated rather than replaced with XP.

Bill Gates with pie“The idea of the ads was to get people talking,” said Waggener Edestrom marketing marketer Frank Shaw. “‘Vista: An operating system about nothing.’ The original plan was to work our way back through the comedic genius of history. Bob Hope, W.C. Fields, all the way back to Aristophanes. Ya rly.”

Shaw denied Microsoft was un-“hep” and not part of the “happening scene.” “I think the overwhelming computer press and blogosphere response demonstrates their total success. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, as we keep telling the client. Look at the huge successes of the antitrust trial and stacking ISO for OOXML. Everyone knows their name and what they’re about!”

Microsoft will be moving to “phase two” of the ads tomorrow. “They’ll be spectacular. Completely object-oriented, database file system, better security, no legacy stuff, WordPad, Paint.” The new commercials will use a comedic structure suggested by consultant Bill Hicks:

“Vista’s slow, it’s fat, my software doesn’t work, I can’t get drivers, the User Access Control’s a pain in the ass and my network grinds to a crawl when I play an mp3! What do you call that?”

“… The Aristocrats!”

Apple, Inc. shares were up 5% in early trading.

Media, United Kingdom

Phew! What a scorcher

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PHONING IT IN, The Beach, mid-afternoon (NNN) — An ambulance service has praised a five-year-old boy after he successfully called 999 to report that his mother had collapsed and was unconscious in their home.

Mosaik in der Villa del Casale in Piazza Armerina, SizilienIn other news, a pet wears a seatbelt, alleged scientists have yet again discovered a formula for the perfect attractive woman (it apparently involves being short with long legs and large breasts), there’s a piece on ancient Roman bikinis, how to make the perfect cup of tea and lots of pictures of sunburnt, drug-addled women in bikini tops at a summer rock festival, including ones that aren’t Amy Winehouse. And it’s hot.

Crop circles have fallen out of favour in recent years. How the A-levels these days aren’t as good as proper A-levels were back in my day, you mark my words, remains a perennial favourite. With pictures of students in bikini tops.

“We’re holding out hope of the first skateboarding duck of the season,” said one of the few reporters still left in the office. “In the meantime, I’m researching a story about a long, short-breasted, large-legged sunburnt woman in a Roman bikini top making me the perfect cup of tea.”

A Metro writer was nonplussed at this line of questioning and asked precisely what was supposed to be different to their usual content.

Health, Media, United Kingdom

New breast cancer hope for journalism

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PAGE 3, Wapping, Saturday (Norks News Network) — A new breast cancer treatment has led to new hope for newspaper proprietors being able to run more pictures of topless women with one hand over their breasts.

The story follows mere days after earlier stories concerning red meat, carbohydrates, drinking, high levels of daily stress and deodorant causing breast cancer, stories concerning bone cancer drugs, prostate cancer drugs, a “happy outlook” and high levels of daily stress preventing breast cancer and, of course, several close-ups of Kylie Minogue’s bottom.

Lucy Pinder

“It’s been a bumper season,” said Grub Street mogul Desmond Murdoch, “so to speak. We’ve actually had to find a third and fourth file photo of a topless woman with a hand over her breasts. Though we ran a fabulous two-page spread of a self-examination conducted by Luscious Lucy, 19, of Sheppey, who wants to grow up to work with cute puppies and children and be in Nuts next month.”

Additional opportunities were provided by the Portsmouth University breast biomechanics team, who actually managed to get paid money to find out that “breasts move up to 21cm during exercise and they move up and down, in and out and from side to side,” although further funding and DVD duplication equipment is apparently required before final results can be produced.

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Media, Politics, United States

Why Obama has to get mad for us to win

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PHONING IT IN, The Beach, mid-afternoon (NNN) — With the vice-presidential buzz and the Democratic convention just days away, what’s most important is what Barack Obama’s campaign does afterwards.

Quite simply, he needs to create a more compelling narrative on change and get angry about something. Our ratings depend on it. It’s August, dammit. How many stories about cute puppies can you run? Attack ads! Push polls! We need material!
Holy Obama

We need the argument that this is an election with two choices — not just one popular dynamic guy and one old past-it guy. That’s not a compelling media narrative!

Obama’s 2:1 advantage in the Electoral College is far too confusing for our viewers. We need to re-run polls until we get one with a 1% change, never mind the 3% error margin. It’s so close! Experts say it’s a wake-up call! Better keep your eyes glued to the screen! Oh my goodness!

If Obama can just pull ahead between now and November 4, he may become President Barack Obama … Or not! Who knows? You need to keep watching! Right here! Stay tuned!