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For the days of: 2/4 - 2/7
Found at www.satiresearch.com
New Anger-Powered Cars May Revolutionize The Way We Drive
DETROIT—With gas prices approaching $2 per gallon in some areas and gridlock on the rise, Detroit's three major automakers are stepping up development of their newest brainchild: the anger-powered car.
Above: The Chevrolet Tantrum, one of the new road-rage-fueled vehicles.
"By drawing a significant percentage of its motive power from the unbridled temper of the American motorist, the new anger-powered car will change, or at least take mechanical advantage of, the way Americans drive," General Motors vice-chairman Robert A. Lutz said. "We plan to have these furiously efficient machines careening down America's highways, byways, and sidewalks within two years."
Lutz said automakers have been researching fury fuels since the mid-1970s. As early as 1984, they began to look for ways to take advantage of the limitless supply of bad temper generated daily by American drivers—outrag
e currently vented wastefully into dashboards, steering wheels, and passengers.
An engine burning clean, white-hot hatred will release few harmful byproducts into the atmosphere—bad vibes and a small amount of water vapor will combine to be released in the form of human spittle. In addition, anger technology will turn the standard fuel-economy paradigm on its head: An anger-powered engine is actually more efficient in heavy urban traffic.
"The theory behind the anger-powered engine is actually quite simple," said Keith Cameron, chief engineer on General Motors' Project Instigator until January. "The average motorist traveling a clogged American highway produces hundreds of kilowatt-hours of negative energy per infuriating drive. The Instigator motor converts this emotional energy into kinetic energy by a process most drivers—people too goddamn stupid to use their goddamn blinkers when they change goddamn lanes—will never be able to understand. Just trust me, dumbasses, it works."
Cameron, who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter and high-efficiency battery, added, "In the white-knuckled hands of the average American driver, it's an extremely powerful tool."
GM is currently developing two anger-powered cars, the entry-level Chevrolet Tantrum coupe and the larger, pricier Buick Umbrage. Ford has announced a multi-tiered move toward anger power, with plans to introduce anger/gasoline hybrid engines in the popular Lincoln Frown Car in 2006, to offer a de Sade option for its classic Mercury Gran Marquis in 2007, and to unveil a line of Acrimony family-sized cars and wagons in 2008. Daimler-Chrysler will resurrect the defunct Plymouth brand name with the reintroduction of the Plymouth Fury.
Anger power was first explored by Daimler-Chrysler, whose concept car, the Plymouth Violent, caused an uproar upon its introduction at the 1989 Detroit Auto Show. The Violent, more a seething showcase of technology and rage than a workable production car, achieved a remarkable 89 miles per gallon and hospitalized 19 auto-show attendees.
The anger-powered car will be aimed solidly at the middle of the market. Options such as semi-tinted glower windows, auto-locking brakes, and a baffling array of randomly blinking warning lights will be standard on all models.
"Production models will have angry-punch-absorbing energy-conversion pads in the dashboards, steering wheels, and driver-side doors," Chrysler Group chief executive Dieter Zetsche said. "Sound-sensitive materials in the cars' interiors will convert livid outbursts into motive power. And, because an angry driver is, in this case, a better driver, literally hundreds of anger- and performance-enhancing options will be available, including loud, ineffective mufflers, talk-station-only radios, truly intermittent wipers, steering wheels which imperceptibly tilt forward over the course of an hour, and excruciatingly well-heated seats."
Early consumer tests of the cars indicate that they perform beyond designers' expectations. The automotive press has been particularly enthusiastic about anger power.
"This bitch's bastard's whore went like a goddamn raped ape with me at the wheel," said Car And Driver's Brock Yates, who test-drove Daimler-Chrysler's Dodge Rammit pickup. "The vitriolic-assist brakes barely worked, the rear-view mirror found my bald spot every time, and the voice-response OnStar system mocked me for writing the script for Cannonball Run. I was getting 107 miles to the gallon when I T-boned that bus."
Car manufacturers have yet to determine a price for the rage-fueled vehicles.
"We have a delicate balance to strike," Ford Motor Company president Nick Scheele said. "The middle-income customer should be able to afford the car, but in order to increase engine efficiency, the price should be high enough to eat away at him the entire time he's driving. We're considering wildly fluctuating interest rates or a monthly payment rate that's pegged to the basketball standings."
Added Scheele: "I can assure you that there will be a model priced so that middle-class Americans who spend hours each week commuting between mid-level office jobs in the city and noisy, demanding families in the suburbs can afford it."
Fully anger-powered cars are expected to begin hitting American showrooms and other cars in summer 2006. If successful, the venture may vindicate the auto engineers still smarting over their brief and disastrous flirtation with love-and-happiness power, a trend that failed commercially and eventually petered out during the positive-energy crisis of the 1970s.
Found at www.satiresearch.com
FCC CHIEF TO PERSONALLY HANDLE JACKSON'S BREAST ISSUE
HOUSTON – After Janet Jackson's Super Bowl halftime stunt where singer Justin Timberlake ripped off part of her costume to expose her breast on nationwide television, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chief Michael Powell said Jackson's conduct was “deplorable” and promised to “personally handle” the FCC's investigation of the incident.
“I've reviewed each frame of that video,” Powell told reporters, “and, if that was her real breast, which I intend to find out, I am convinced that she broke the law in baring her breast to the nation without running it by me first.”
Issuing a statement that it “deeply regrets the incident,” and hoping to avoid a large FCC fine, CBS said it “had no idea the halftime show would include such a display.” Privately, CBS officials explained that they would never have approved the halftime show if they had known only one of Jackson's breasts would be exposed.
The NFL likewise “condemned the action,” wink, wink, according to league officials, who noted that they were just glad no NFL players were arrested during the halftime intermission period.
For their part, Jackson and Timberlake both issued statements blaming a “wardrobe malfunction” for the incident, with Timberlake's publicist saying that, had the malfunction not occurred, Janet's entire costume would have torn away and Britney Spears would have jumped on the stage to continue the “performance” with Jackson in her traditional MTV style.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Jackson family said the incident proves once and for all that Janet and Michael Jackson are separate people, not one Jackson sibling masquerading as both. The spokesman admitted, however, that Janet Jackson's apparent desire to be touched by young boys like Timberlake did not bode well for her brother's defense against charges that he too has a predilection for young boys, albeit much younger than those preferred by his sister.
Found at www.satiresearch.com
Norwegian Nazi nominates George W. Bush and Tony Blair for Nobel Peace Prize.
Today's deadline for Nobel Peace Prize nominations have included some surprising inclusions, the most bizarre of which must be those put forward by far-right, neo Nazi, Norwegian MP, Jan Goebbels, for George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
The reasons he gave for putting their names forward were that although they invaded Iraq without UN sanction, they waged a war where mostly, only the guilty were killed and collateral damage was kept well below that of the two atom bombs dropped on Japan and those burned to a cinder in Dresden during WWII.
Mr Goebbels said that it was a difficult decision in that Colin Powell was also a contender, for his professional, well-crafted presentation, justifying an attack on Iraq to the UN, outlining that the country was bristling with weapons of mass destruction. He also said, Donald Rumsfeld was under consideration, for demonstrating his humanity by threatening that the war would be shortened considerably if the US were to employ tactical nuclear weapons against the Iraqis.
Mr Goebbel's previous nominees have included Adolf Hitler, who he nominated for a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize for his road building and ethnic cleansing work and Benito Mussolini, for his contribution to the modernisation of Ethiopia.
Messrs Bush and Blair, in a joint statement said, “We are humbled but flattered by Mr Goebbel's nominations and we are looking forward to receiving our well-deserved honours in Stockholm later in the year”.
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"Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales"
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
"The covers of this book are too far apart."
Ambrose Bierce
"The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid and stable business."
John Steinbeck
"I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974."
Jeffrey Bernard
"Dr Donne's verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding."
James I
"They told me that Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right."
Winston Churchill
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