Archive for the ‘political satire’ Tag
Young folks in the future will have plenty of grit, like Katniss (Jennifer Laurence) in The Hunger Games.
By C. Michael Forsyth
Good news! The generation after the Millennials won’t be a bunch of weak, coddled snowflakes. The Omega Generation will be tough as nails from struggling to survive in a brutal dystopia.
“We Baby Boomers have been wringing our hands about how soft and pampered the Millennials are, with their dependence on technology and inability to cope with offensive speech,” says futurist Francine Cloutmer. “We should relax, because the following generation will be hardened by the harshest living conditions imaginable. Their idea of a ‘safe space’ will be a shelter where they can hide from killer robots sent to hunt them down.”
The problem of today’s young folks having it too easy is a frequent topic of discussion among irritated Boomers and Generation X-ers.
“There weren’t cellphones and all this other technology when we were growing up,” 59-year-old Michael N. posted on social media. “We only had seven television channels and many TVs didn’t even come with a remote. We had to face hardships like war, and I’m talking about the invasion of Grenada. Although I didn’t personally participate, I watched it on TV. Not the war footage, actually, but that movie Clint Eastwood was in.”
NO SNOWFLAKE: Clint Eastwood and his platoon conquer the resort island of Grenada in the movie Heartbreak Ridge.
The disturbing trend actually dates back centuries, according to the expert.
“Since caveman days, through the Middle Ages, the 1800s through the present, each generation has been raised in a safer environment with more creature comforts,” Cloutmer explains. “As a result, each generation seems weaker to the previous one. People who bought meat in stores seemed like ‘pansies’ to those who hunted game with guns, who in turn had it easy compared to those who had only bows and arrows.”
But the softening trend is about to be flip into reverse, according to many prognosticators.
“We are looking at a society in which wealth is increasingly concentrated in a few hands and automation is making human workers obsolete,” Cloutmer observes. “A baby born today will likely come of age in a world where obtaining basic necessities such as food and clean water will be a daily struggle, and the unwashed masses serve no use except perhaps as source of entertainment for the rich as in The Hunger Games.
Raids like this will be a common sight in America’s shanty towns.
“Almost certainly, the wealthy will have private security forces composed of armed, sentient robots to keep starving mobs from scaling the gates of their estates. They may even give these real-life terminators leave to hunt down bands of ordinary people who are seen as a nuisance, like coyotes.”
What’s more, climate change is expected to make the physical environment far more challenging than it is today. Rising sea levels will put many of America’s coastlines underwater, turning what are now high-priced beach communities into seascapes resembling the movie Waterworld.
THAT SINKING FEELING: Kevin Costner is up to his neck in trouble in Waterworld.
People who are in their 20s in 2038 will rely on animal cunning and physical stamina to survive.
“Much like the Neanderthals, who would break bones and just keep going, and used plants and herbs they came across for medicinal purposes, the Omega Generation will live in a time when healthcare as we know it is a thing of the past except for the very few,” Cloutmer points out. “Their medical needs will be met by old ‘medicine women’ and faith healers, and when those are unavailable, the self-sufficient young person of the future will know how to carry out emergency procedures such as pushing dislocated joints back into place, and bandaging stumps after routine amputations.”
After the collapse of society, most medical needs will be met by folk healers.
While life maybe tougher for our grandchildren, no one will complain about them being wusses.
Predicts the expert, “Instead of clucking your teeth when you see a young person lounge around with the latest new mobile device, you’ll glow with pride as you marvel at what they’re capable of.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you enjoyed this news satire by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of incredible stories, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton and Queen Elizabeth of England sit with ankles daintily crossed.
By C. Michael Forsyth
NEW YORK CITY — Anti-manspreading crusaders aren’t taking the problem sitting down. They’ve launched a nationwide campaign to snuff out the rude male behavior—by training guys to sit with their ankles primly crossed.
“In etiquette classes, properly raised young ladies are taught to sit with their ankles crossed—never with their knees spread wide, which is of course quite vulgar,” explained retired etiquette instructor Clarice Bowdlake, who spent her 30-year career at a girls’ school for manners. “It is time we teach men to do the same. There is no reason why even the most uneducated man cannot learn to sit with the grace and decorum of Queen Elizabeth.”
There is an epidemic of manspreading on public transportation, experts say.
NEW YORK CITY — Manspreading is when a man sits with his knees spread brazenly apart, particularly on a bus or subway seat when doing so takes up extra space. The inconsiderate conduct has become a bane of female commuters, who complain that they end up either having to stand or sit squeezed uncomfortably to one side.
The training program is the brainchild of activist Courtney Featherstein, who has pushed through numerous ordinances regulating manspreading across the country. Her organization Close Your Legs has hired dozens of expert instructors like Bowdlake to lead classes in 20 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and D.C.
“Manspreading is more than just an affront to basic civility, it’s a primary symbol of male privilege,” Featherstein declared. “Men use it as a way to project dominance.”
Manspreading is used to communicate power, as in this case where two leaders vie to out-manspread each other.
The two-hour training sessions, which cost $140, don’t just cover sitting. Male enrolees are also shown the proper way to hold a teacup—one pinky extended—curtsey, avoid burping and other basics.
Many of the students are progressive men hoping to learn more sensitive behavior and earn points with their girlfriends. Others have been sent to the classes by forward-looking businesses that cough up the fee and give employees time off to attend. For now, participation is voluntary, but Featherstein hopes that one day soon, high schools will make such classes mandatory for all young males.
“I’d like to see it become as routine as taking a driver’s ed course,” she said.
American men need to be educated on the important issue, the activist revealed. Stunningly, many still don’t even know what manspreading is.
Admits Nick R., 35, of Bangor, Maine, “When I saw a headline with the word ‘manspreading’ in it last year, I thought it was some kind of new gay bedroom move, and I skipped the article.”
But ignorance and homophobia aren’t the only obstacles to stamping out manspreading. So-called “men’s rights” organizations have been whining that the whole movement is anti-male.
“I’d love to sit with my knees pressed together on a bus or subway, but we men have something between our legs we call testicles,” insisted Jerry Nogland, president of the Male Liberation Brigade. “These women are trying to create a society in which all men are effete wusses, like in that movie Zardoz. It’s not right.”
In the bizarre 1974 sci-fi film Zardoz, Sean Connery plays the last remaining masculine human on the planet.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you enjoyed this news satire by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of incredible stories, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
By C. Michael Forsyth
WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to pass a bill easing restrictions on gun silencers, the International Society of Gentlemen Assassins is hailing the move–and is asking for equal treatment for other tools of the trade, such as cyanide capsules and poison darts!
“We’re pleased as punch that the government is taking action on silencers, which are so helpful in making it hard to tell where your shots are coming from,” said Dan Castlewick, a spokesperson for the prestigious 80-year-old organization. “Now is the time to make other essential weapons easier to obtain and reduce the hassle of using tried-and-true assassination techniques.”
The I.S.G.A. wants the law relaxed on the following items:
Razor-Edged Bowler Hats
Cyanide capsules
Poison Darts
Feeding to Piranhas
Cattle Stunners (Captive Bolt Pistols)
Car Bombs
Garottes
Tarantulas
If you enjoyed this news satire by fiction writer C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of bizarre news, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
By C. Michael Forsyth
Alternative facts are just as real as actual facts, most top theoretical physicists now agree.
“So-called ‘reality’ as most laymen understand it is an antiquated early 20th century concept,” explains Dr. Heath Couldwell of the Cambridge Institute for Complexity. “According to the laws of quantum mechanics, it is entirely possible for a particle to not exist and simultaneously exist. It’s easy to fall into the trap of relying on the evidence of our own eyes, but in the modern era, we mustn’t.”
As early as the 1920s, experts first began to theorize that reality is not what it seems and that there is no such thing as a “solid” fact.
“The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, introduced by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, holds that it is impossible to determine the precise position and momentum of a subatomic particle,” Dr. Couldwell says. “In other words, there’s a fundamental ‘fuzziness’ in nature.
“Rather than conceiving of a fact as a concrete thing, it is more helpful to picture a constellation of possible facts, some of which have a greater probability than others.”
The famous Schrödinger’s Cat Experiment demonstrated that a cat might be simultaneously dead and alive. In the bizarre thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, a cat, a flask of poison and a radioactive substance are placed in a sealed box. If a Geiger counter detects that an atom has decayed, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison and killing the cat. If not, the cat lives. Since such a random subatomic event may be occurring or not occurring and there is no way to tell, the fickle feline is, for that instant, both dead and alive.
“The fact that the cat is dead and the alternative fact that the cat is alive are equally true,” Dr. Couldwell observes. “And this principle applies to everything in the world around us.”
The notion that something can be both true and not true seems counterintuitive to most non-scientists, and even the world’s most brilliant physicists admit the paradox can make their heads spin.
“Schrödinger himself was convinced that his proof of the theory was incontrovertible, yet also believed he’d proven it to be absurd,” Dr. Couldwell notes. “One thing is crystal clear: If the fact that alternative facts are equally true as true facts is true, it follows logically that the alternative fact that alternative facts are not equally true as true facts is also true.”
Top presidential aide Kellyanne Conway was mocked in the media for her belief in the concept of alternative facts, but leading scientists say she’s got it right.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you enjoyed this article, check out C. Michael Forsyth’s collection of news satire, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats
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DOH! America is now one long Simpsons episode, experts agree.
By C. Michael Forsyth
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Americans may now be living inside a cartoon, but the fundamental laws of physics still apply, scientists warn.
“After the election of Donald Trump, political scientists declared that we’ve entered a new era much like an episode of The Simpsons or South Park, and the ‘old rules just don’t apply,’” explains theoretical physicist Dr. Jeremy Blinkley. “Many citizens have taken that to mean that the world now operates according to the logic of cartoons like the old Warner Brothers shorts.
“They think that if you walk off a cliff, you’re safe from falling unless you look down. But that’s a potentially fatal misconception.”
In Wile E. Coyote’s world, gravity works differently.
Principles such as Newton’s laws of motion, conservation of energy and the law of gravity remain fully in effect, university experts have confirmed.
Scientists point to other physics-defying cartoon tropes that will not work in our universe, no matter how cartoonish it may now seem:
If a plane runs out of gas just before hitting the ground, it will still crash.
If you paint a tunnel on a mountainside, a train cannot pass through it.
If a bomb explodes in an individual’s hands, he will not simply be singed. He is likely to incur fatal injuries.
No matter how aroused a male becomes, his entire body will not lie horizontally in midair.
If an individual’s torso is shot through with holes, he will suffer significant damage, whether or not he takes a drink and liquid pours out.
A human being’s shadow cannot walk around independently.
Even if you are deeply in love, your heart will not pound outside of your chest.
If an anvil falls from a great height on a person, flattening his head, this will inflict non-survivable injuries.
If an enemy saws off the diving board on which you are standing, you and that portion of the board will fall — not the platform and your enemy.
No matter how sharp an object it is that pokes an individual’s buttocks, he will not be propelled several feet in the air.
The experts say the laws of physics that govern our world are expected to remain constant until the next geomagnetic reversal, when the positions of Earth’s magnetic fields flip. The last reversal, known as the Laschamp Event, occurred about 41,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and the next one is due sometime soon.
“Until then, you can safely assume the world abides by the laws of physics you learned in high school,” Dr. Blinkley assured the public.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you enjoyed this article, check out C. Michael Forsyth’s collection of news satire, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
OWNING a pricey yacht like the $1 billion Streets of Monaco doesn’t make you one of the elite.
By C. Michael Forsyth
Following the lead of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, dozens of billionaires from around the globe are banding together to battle the elite.
While not all the names are known, the crusaders are believed to include Amancio Ortega of Spain, worth $75 billion, Bernard Arnault of France, worth $34 billion and Wang Jianglin of China, worth $28.7 billion.
“We’ve been inspired by Mr. Trump. We need to defeat the scourge of elitism once and for all,” declared shipping magnate Damik Kapur of India, in an interview aboard his $600 million, 82-room yacht, which boasts three swimming pools, a heliport, a solid gold toilet and its own mini-sub. “The world’s economy is rigged. We know because we rigged it to benefit ourselves. That is why only we are in a position to fix it.”
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The King of Saudi Arabia and other mega-rich aristocrats have vowed to bring down the elite.
In addition to the business tycoons, members of several royal families, including those of England, Denmark, Bahrain and Swaziland, have jumped on the bandwagon. King Salman bin Abdul’aziz, absolute monarch of Saudi Arabia, has voiced his support for the movement.
“We are united in our commitment to topple the elite,” said a spokesman for the ruler. “We owe it to the commoners.”
The combined wealth of the mansion-owning moguls is roughly $2 trillion. But being rich and powerful has nothing to do with being part of the elite.
“The elite are those people in the media, academia and elsewhere whose views have been guiding the course of nations for far too long,” explained business writer Terence Hilcord, who interviewed Kapur for a New Zealand magazine. “Think of them as the snooty kids who always sat at the front of the class in school. A member of the true elite may be a newspaper reporter or a college professor who doesn’t own a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. What makes him part of the elite is that oh-so-superior attitude.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you enjoyed this satirical article, check out the author’s collection of news parody, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
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Former allies who shoot at our troops will get a real “bang” out of the experience.
By C. Michael Forsyth
WASHINGTON — Next time a group that America has armed turns against us, their efforts will backfire — literally. That’s because the Department of Defense has quietly equipped them with guns rigged to fire backward after five years!
DARPA, the Pentagon’s hush-hush research and development agency, has designed scores of weapons ranging from assault rifles to surface-to-air missiles with a hidden chip that causes them to flip to “reverse mode” automatically five years after delivery, unless reset remotely from the U.S., an agency insider revealed.
“Yes, when America outfits foreign freedom fighters with arms, we’re giving them a license to kill. But now it’s a license that must be renewed regularly,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Defense planners initiated the program following a rash of cases in which forces to whom the United States gave military aid later stabbed us in the back.
“We armed the Taliban to fight the Russians in Afghanistan and they ended up using those same weapons against us,” the insider noted. “We gave Saddam Hussein military aid to fight Iran and before long our soldiers were ducking his bullets. During the surge we gave weapons to Sunni militias to beat back the insurgents. Now many of them are fighting for ISIS. Good guys keep surprising us by turning into bad guys. Well, guess who’s in for a surprise now?”
A spokesperson for DARPA, which stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, refused to either confirm nor deny the astonishing claim, nor would she address whether good-guy Syrian rebels or Kurdish fighters had received shipments of the new guns.
SYRIAN rebels like these brave freedom fighters are good guys … for now.
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