Cuba Buys Disney, Announces Redevelopment Plans

Dec. 18, 2071
ORLANDO–At a press conference held late Tuesday to formally announce Cuba’s acquisition of The Walt Disney Company, officials from the Cuban Bureau of Recreation unveiled plans to redevelop Disney properties worldwide. “Disney’s entertainment properties are an ideal fit for us,” noted Cuban Executive Director of Learning Environments Minerva Perez. “This acquisition supplies us with the infrastructure that will enable us to leverage our ideological advantages and get our message out globally.”

Asked about the acquisition, Disney Chairman and CEO Increase Matthews pointed to a “Cuban tradition of tourism and showmanship very familiar to all of us here at Disney,” and declared confidently that, “with the infusion of Cuba’s fresh blood and capital,” the “spirit of Disney will live on into the 22nd century.”

The once powerful entertainment giant’s stock hit an historic low of $.53 in April as attendance at its parks plummeted following public release of FBI crime statistics covering the Orlando and Anaheim properties. “It’s sad to say, but the Disney parks have actually become fairly dangerous,” explains FBI Crime Trends Division spokesman Jerome Hoyle. “Gangs of street kids and mid-life nostalgia vandals roam the grounds. Security is lax because of budget cuts, and they’re desperate enough for gate revenues that they’ve done little to discourage ‘wilding Wednesdays.’ The revenue-boosting liquor concession has only added to the problem.”

Many analysts attribute the decline in Disney’s fortunes to the company’s failure to secure immemorial intellectual property rights in its stock characters, including “Mickey Mouse,” “Donald Duck,” and “Goofy.” Accused of price gouging in merchandise-starved developing markets, Disney late last year lost its twelve-year battle with the WIPO and was forced to dedicate the characters to public use. “That was a huge blow,” notes Jupiter analyst Marie Cacke. “Disney’s character-branded merchandise revenues crashed as everybody and their uncle crowded into the market for Mickey t-shirts. From there, things at Disney spiraled out of control even quicker than most of us expected.”

Cuba’s plans for the Disney parks are extensive, and include the development of free, park-wide healthcare, co-operative ownership of individual rides and attractions, and emancipation of the bioengineered characters that roam the grounds. The country also plans extensive revision of the “theme” of the parks. Cuba’s Perez explains: “Traditionally, the Disney parks have been distorted monuments to industrial capitalism, its ‘Frontierland’ colonial past and its ‘Tommorrowland’ future. We’re planning a more well-rounded vision, including a newly designed ‘the people’s land,’ and a special new ride: ‘Indiana Jones and the Sweatshop of Doom.'”

In an irony lost on few, Cuba is funding the Disney acquisition with revenues generated by worldwide sales of its popular Fidel-branded merchandise. Iconic images of Cuba’s former president, including Fidel watches, t-shirts, and key chains, are expected to be available in Disney stores by month’s end. Cuban officials are reported to have contacted topiary experts throughout the world concerning the best shrubs to plant in the shape of the beloved Castro.

Ellen Greenzpan Crushed by Falling Market

Oct. 11, 2108
WASHINGTON DC–U.S. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Ellen Greenzpan was rushed to a gated Bethesda hospital this morning after collapsing in the wake of a week of bizarre turbulence in world financial markets. The interest-rate sensitive Chair had been under close medical supervision since suffering a series of unexplained spasms and bouts of glossalalia unofficially linked to recent market turmoil. “She had been relatively stable for the past couple of days,” notes Dr. Peter One, director of Greenzpan’s medical team. “At about 10 this morning she seized, said something in Middle French, and collapsed. We immediately determined that we needed equipment available at her hospital and she was airlifted directly to Bethesda.”

Sources inside the hospital report that Greenzpan suffered from a severe “diverse, punctuated vasoconstrictive fluid extrusion” during which blood vessels throughout her body constricted simultaneously, causing a spike in blood pressure severe enough to rupture capillaries, squeezing hemofluids out through the pores. Engorged epidermal tissues wrung fluids from sweat and oil glands throughout her skin, causing “omni-dermal tissue flaccidity occasioned by hyper-acute dehydration.” “She looked like she’d been squeezed dry by a giant hand,” exclaimed an anonymous member of the hospital staff. “I mean, just all squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Greenzpan experts link her collapse to the recent appearance and growth of “M8,” a controversial measure of the money supply designed to include the hypothetical “anti-capital” touted by research and financial services multinational Futurefeedforward. “Greenzpan was designed to be physically sensitive to the markets,” explains market analyst Gig Watson. “Her whole body is pretty much a wireless data hub. When markets move, she feels it. She can adjust interest rates literally by flexing her muscles. I watch her cheeks just before an FOMC meeting. If she looks a little flushed, it’s a good bet that the Fed will be changing policy. We watch her for symptoms that indicate the health of the economy. This collapse has got everybody spooked about what’s going on.”

Built on a transgendered clone chassis sired by legendary Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Greenzpan’s body receives realtime economic data through a sophisticated network of distributed, nanoscale wireless nodes tied to her nervous system through customized synapses. Economic data of different types is linked to different areas of the body, enabling Greenzpan to feel and respond to economic fluctuations through an “intuitive somatic interface.” Durable goods inventories and sales data affect the bowels and lower intestines, precipitous drops in unemployment cause constricted breathing, and interest rate and money supply data interact with her circulatory system. “Ellen was born to lead the Fed,” notes Watson. “Her pulse is the pulse of this new economy.”

Informally dubbed “deflation sickness” by pundits, Greenzpan’s symptoms over the past week are believed to be related to a phenomenon known as “time-money value inversion” discoverd by FeedBank, the banking subsidiary of Futurefeedforward. Futurefeedforward CFO Emily Efou explains: “Traditionally, present-day dollars are thought to be more valuable than future-side dollars. That’s why conventional banks pay interest. Our research shows that that is starting to change. Certain institutions, like FeedBank, are starting to operate on the principle that present-dollars should be discounted in relation to future-dollars, thus creating eddies controlled by negative interest rates. Greenzpan’s system wasn’t designed to cope with this sort of development. The spike in negative-rate trading this morning must have crushed her.”

Greenzpan’s condition is reportedly critical. Longtime friend and Objectivist Party running-mate Wayn Rand arrived in Bethesda this afternoon to join members of the Greenspan family at her bedside. The family asks that concerned members of the public keep prayers and charitable donations to themselves.

Scientists Discover Super-Dense Corporate Cluster

March 11, 2118
BOSTON–A team of scientists at the M.I.T. High-Velocity Monetary Object Observatory announced on tuesday the discovery of a “super-dense corporate cluster” localized in mid-town Manhattan. The first structure of its kind to be observed, the cluster raises profound questions about the relationship between the physical and the economic worlds, and lends credence to the controversial new discipline known colloquially as “quantum economics.” “Most great breakthroughs begin with great observations,” notes M.I.T. Assistant Professor Marguerite Fury, leader of the research team. “And this is a truly paradigm-shifting observation. Physics and economics both just got much more interesting.”

The cluster, dubbed AA-1, is a “binary system” consisting of two, interrelated, capital-dense companies and a surrounding cloud of smaller, lighter firms drawn to the two central giants. AA-1 differs from other large-scale corporate partnerships and joint ventures because the two giants involved are linked through a peculiar ownership relationship known as a “mobius control stitch.” Professor Fury explains: “The two giants in AA-1, AOL and Amalgamenture, each own majority stakes in the other. AOL owns 52% of Amalgamenture, and Amalgameture owns more than 60% of AOL. This sort of thing happens occasionally in the course of hostile takeover and defense maneuvers, but usually resolves itself relatively quickly. The AA-1 stitch, though, has persisted for more than 40 years, largely because of the unprecedented size of the two linked companies.”

The “stitch” linking the two companies creates a “control paradox.” “The cluster is characterized both by a management surplus and a management deficit,” explains Professor Fury. “There are too many managers for the interlocked firms, which should be one firm with one management team. At the same time, there are too few managers. The board of directors of each company leads the companies separately, but nobody leads them together. This paradox creates an oscillating control vacuum that sucks in, alternately, firms that are control weak and control strong. The cloud surrounding the stitched giants is thus saturated with merger and spin-off transactions.”

In addition to attracting the swarm of merging and spinning corporations that compose the cluster’s characteristic cloud, AA-1 is also responsible for “spontaneous transaction pair production” attributed to a “large magnitude debt/equity density differential” between the two giants at the focus of the cluster. According to the team, the two giants belong to different “classes.” AOL is a conventional multi-national, characterized by globally disbursed operations, large employee base, and significant current assets and free cashflow. Amalgamature, in contrast, is a “super-leveraged holding firm,” with significant free cashflow, but debt orders of magnitude greater than equity and with nominal staff and a single Manhattan office.

Professor Fury elaborates: “The density differential at the heart of AA-1 generates an asymmetric transaction space in which independent transaction processes form. This sort of formation happens all the time in regular clusters, but the two sides of the transaction collapse into a single process almost instantaneously. In AA-1, for the first time, we’ve been able to observe buyons and sellons before they collapse into a transaction, giving us new and invaluable insight into the way transactions form.”

According to the M.I.T. team, AA-1 is a unique system, at least for now. “We’re very lucky that our discipline is gaining steam at just about the same time that complex monetary objects like AA-1 are forming,” notes Professor Fury, “but AA-1 is just the beginning. We anticipate that the next hundred years will see capital formations that dwarf AA-1 and produce wondrous effects we can’t yet imagine.”

Mosquito-Repelling Genes Now Available Over-the-Counter

June 4, 2037
RACINE–Consumer chemical and health maintenance giant SC Johnson unveiled today a new gene-therapeutic version of its classic Off insect repellant. In place of the conventional topical or ingestible repellant, the new Off includes genes enabling the skin to produce a natural insect repellent of its own. “This is a real breakthrough,” notes company spokeswoman Linda Oat. “For all practical purposes this is a completely passive insect protection solution. Once you’ve had the Off treatment you’ll never have to worry about pests again; you’ll never have to remember to apply a topical again.”

Though many of the details concerning the new Off remain trade secrets, public filings by the company indicate that the treatment inserts proprietary ‘human-variant Bt’ genes based upon the venerable Bt anti-pest and anti-fungal genes widely incorporated in resistant crops. “The new Off is based on Bt,” explains Oat, “but the Off genes have been extensively evolved and adapted to produce a repellant very like traditional Off. This required not just modification of the skin, but also some tweaking of the renal and digestive systems in order to ensure that raw materials for the repellant were available in adequate supplies.”

The Off genes are delivered by a series of ingestible, color-coded tablets taken over a 72-hour period. Each tablet contains a mix of viro- and nano-mechanical delivery vehicles that bind to specialized receptor sites on target cells in order to spread the Off genes throughout the skin and other key systems. Within two weeks, the sweat and oil glands begin to produce repellant sufficient to ward off an array of pests, including mosquitoes, midges, gnats, ants, roaches, bees, flies, horseflies, and burrowing starlink weevils.

“Pests are no longer just annoyances,” notes Oat. “The increasing frequency of large-scale mosquito blooms, and a number of recent starlink weevil outbreaks, make it clear that pests are serious health risks. That’s why we’ve approached the redesign of Off with the best that medical technology has to offer.”

Though results of fast-track FDA approval are not yet available, environmental and consumer health groups are quick to point to disclaimers included with the new Off as an indicator of possible risks. “This is another example of chemical companies replacing public oversight with their own inadequate disclosure schemes,” exclaims ChemFree founder Donald Wrap. “The fine print on these disclaimers is very revealing, even though it often isn’t effective in protecting consumers. The label for the new Off, for instance, warns users not to ‘exercise near an open flame.’ What does that mean, really? What kind of risks are involved? We just don’t know.”

Critics also raise questions about the subscription price model announced for Off. Users will be able to purchase the initial treatment series for a nominal fee, but the Off genes include a special protein-based expiration lock that requires ingestion of special ‘subscription-renewing’ tablets sold separately in 7-day, 30-day, and year-long durations. “Is anywhere safe from IP licenses of this sort?” demands fair use activist Jill Terribly. “These companies won’t be happy until I have to pay a licensing fee for breathing and shitting!”

The new Off is scheduled for availability in drug and discount stores by the end of the month. Johnson plans to offer the repellant in three versions initially: unscented, CK One, and Lemon-Fresh Pledge.