Month: April 2002

Exercising Athletes Undermine Drug Olympics

August 23, 2060
GENEVA–Hot on the heels of widespread charges that selected competitors’ doses at this year’s Olympic games had been ‘cut’ with various inactive ingredients, officials from the International Olympic Committee are responding to recent claims by both the U.S. and British teams that athletes from as many as 16 other countries have been engaging in illegal exercise regimens designed to increase their resistance to and ability to metabolize a number of competition-grade drugs. “We have been made aware of allegations of unapproved exercise,” notes IOC spokesman Kipper Pecka. “We take such allegations very seriously and will investigate them vigorously and in accordance with established IOC procedures.”

In recent weeks, a number of American and British athletes have made skeptical remarks to the press about opponents’ exercise regimens.

Alistair Griffet, a world-record-holder in three separate huffing events, has remarked of the Taiwanese athlete known simply as ‘Q’: “I mean look at that guy; look at the lungs on him. You can just tell that he’s been doing wind sprints for months to get ready for this.”

Though somewhat ambiguous, IOC regulations prohibit competitors from pursuing any “program, system, or regimen of physical exercise designed to affect performance in a sanctioned, licensed, franchised, or participating competition.” IOC guidelines based on the rule have developed what is known as the ‘Armchair Athlete’ standard, suggesting that competitors are not permitted to engage in any exercise beyond that typical of “the average resident of the 8 (eight) most industrialized countries.”

Under pressure from a coalition of National Olympic Committees to clarify the ‘Armchair’ standard, the IOC released last year a list of 1,203 banned exercises, including “jogging,” “sprinting,” “jumping jacks,” “deep knee-bends,” “heavy lifting,” “yoga,” “stair-climbing,” and “prolonged standing.”

Despite these steps, most Olympic athletes remain skeptical, but resigned.

“They try to stop it, but what can you do?” asks Canadian Jennifer Loleaf, a contender in both the 5 and 10 gram Kibbles-n-bits. “I personally know that I’m going to be going up against a number of athletes that have done a lot more than smoke crack to get ready for this competition. But there’s no room for excuses. It’s just something I can think about to challenge myself more.”

“Yeah,” explains Henry Wong, U.S. favorite in the 10-minute Woolah. “Yeah, heh heh. It’s all good.”

Speaking for the IOC, Pecka promises a “rapid and just resolution” to all complaints, but confides that reports of illegal exercise are most likely excessive. “As with the recent allegations that doses in the 3-line and 4-line sprints had been cut with chalk by bribed officials, I suspect that there’ll be nothing substantial behind these charges. People’s imaginations get overexcited. The competition, the pressure, it’s all very intense. People sometimes go more by what they want to believe of their opponents than by what they actually know about them.”

Olympic competition is scheduled to conclude next Tuesday, with closing ceremonies slated for the following weekend.

Actor’s Death Linked to Interactive Sitcom Sweatshop

February 8, 2016
ANAHEIM–In court filings Monday, Orange County District Attorney Bruno Chen alleges that the death last April of actor Matthew Perry was the result of months of “coerced labor and forced detention” in “sweatshop-style facilities dedicated to the production of interactive situation comedy programs.” Declining to comment on the ongoing investigation, DA Chen announced the formation of a specialized taskforce committed to investigating and prosecuting the owners of sweatshops who “[exploit] actors in pursuit of a quick buck.”

Discovered by a neighbor in an abandoned Anaheim condominium allegedly owned by the brother-in-law of Carrie Gloo, president of a production company specializing in interactive situation comedy, Perry’s body reportedly showed signs of dehydration, malnutrition, and advanced exhaustion. “It was terrible, really terrible,” recalls Able Carney, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 13 years. “The conditions, just appalling. Those ugly bars on all the doors and windows. People going in and out at all hours of the day and night. We all knew something was going on in there, but nobody seemed to know what.”

Interactive programming, like that on which Perry was reportedly working, permits members of the audience to fully immerse themselves in the show and to interact with the characters, shaping the plot and influencing the development of the characters. Typically achieved through a combination of high-end computer simulations and pre-recorded ‘cutscenes,’ interactive programming, though popular with advertisers, is prohibitively expensive. “Few people really understand the economics of the whole thing,” notes Variety reporter Dan Dime. “Because the ad revenue’s there, everybody wants to be in iProgramming, but, because there’re huge, pre-pilot development costs to build the simulations, coupled with the very real chance of a flop, there’s lots and lots of pressure to cut costs.”

A number of studios, including Warner Brothers, the owner of Perry’s contract, have begun to outsource ‘scenariation,’ the cycle-consuming development of the computer-based simulations upon which interactive programming depends. “It’s really pretty simple,” explains Dime. “The studio hires out development to a mom-and-pop shop that turns around and saves money by using antiquated motion-capture equipment and working the actors to the bone.”

To avoid the costs of deriving algorithms complex enough to adequately simulate the movements, poses, and gestures of actors, producers use digital equipment to record actors’ movements as they respond to hundreds, and sometimes thousands of possible contingencies. “iProgramming unfolds dynamically, in response to audience input,” explains Dime. “So the show has got to be ready for lots of possibilities. It’s almost like a chess game. At first, there are only so many possible moves, but, if you’re trying to anticipate even just three of four moves on down the line, it gets pretty out of control.”

Police reports filed with the court by District Attorney Chen indicate that Perry “suffered injuries consistent with prolonged and abusive motion capture,” including “bilaterally symmetric spot-bruising at key corporal vertices consistent with unsanitary affixation of motion capture reflectors.” Reports further describe ankle-bruising matching the “grip signature” of shackles found by investigators chained to a cot in an upstairs bedroom in the Anaheim condo.

“All evidence indicates that Mr. Perry was held for a number of weeks during which he was made to enact ‘scenarios’ for his situation comedy for between 16 and 19 hours a day,” notes an investigative memo. “Aggressive, exemplary prosecution of both the property-owner and the employer are recommended.”

Representatives of the Screen Actors Guild, applauding the District Attorney’s initiatives, noted that the Guild “has been actively drawing attention to the increasingly grave and abusive working conditions faced by many of our members. Our sincerest hope is that something good, in the form of better legal protections for actors, can come from this tragedy.”

Though promotional spots for ‘Friend,’ the comedy on which Perry was working at the time of his death, continue to be available in most areas, production of the show has been halted, pending outcome of the litigation.

Crack Team Hunts ‘Zombie’ Corporations

August 28, 2065
NEW YORK–A U. S. Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed Wednesday the existence of an elite team of economists, financial experts, and government prosecutors dedicated to hunting down and eliminating zombie corporations. “The threat posed by zombies is quite real,” explains the unidentified Treasury spokesperson. “Zombie companies have been terrorizing the Wilshire 5000 for long enough. We’ve assembled a dedicated search-and-destroy team. The days of the zombies are numbered.”

Zombie corporations, described by the team spokesperson as “soulless, capital-eating monsters,” arise, for little-understood reasons, during the bankruptcies of certain large, complex corporations. Characterized by an absence of shareholders, directors, and upper-management, zombies continue to function like real corporations but without recognizable assets or revenues. “It’s a rather bizarre phenomenon,” explains Jurgen Wentz, Chairman of the IRS Standing Committee on Undead Financial Entities. “Zombies are completely bankrupt, they have been completely dissolved, their assets liquidated and distributed, and yet, somehow, they continue prowling the Street, threatening the living.”

Because they lack management and traceable assets, zombies have proved particularly difficult to track down. “It’s quite common for zombies to have wholly-owned subsidiaries that are real, living, breathing companies,” explains Wentz. “The only way to ferret out the zombies is to keep tracing ownership as far back as you can. If it’s a zombie, you’ll find a vacuum at the top; everything will just seem to lead nowhere. Nobody will own it; nobody will be running it. Just nothing. That’s a zombie.”

Experts differ over explanations for the ability of zombies to continue functioning after bankruptcy and for their apparently insatiable appetite for shares in living corporations. “We do know that zombies prey on firms with depressed market prices,” opines Wentz. “Exactly how they launch their takeovers without assets, without management, and without shareholders of their own remains a mystery. Often the takeover happens and nobody even knows a zombie has been involved, it’s just munch, munch, munch, the prey is driven into bankruptcy by the zombie and becomes a zombie itself.”

In addition to hostile takeovers, zombies have reportedly attacked companies with deadly “brain drains”, hiring away upper-management with the promise of millions of options in the zombie. “Because they have no shareholders to answer to, zombies can just print as many options as they want,” notes Wentz. “No shareholders, no dilution. No dilution, no problem.”

Adam Bendleton, a sales engineer at Introtech, a mid-sized software and services company, witnessed such an attack first hand: “It was eerie. I came into work one day and management was gone, just gone, just a bunch of resignation letters and that was it. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

Citing strategic reasons for keeping the special team’s hunting techniques secret, Treasury spokespeople did confirm speculation that zombies originate offshore and are rooted in complex ownership relationships among bankrupt companies, offshore holding companies, and off-book partnerships and subsidiaries.

“We don’t want to say much more than that at this point,” notes an unidentified member of the zombie-hunting team. “But it is our belief that all existing zombies were ‘made’ by a master zombie, and that if we take out the master we’ll take out all the progeny.”

Asked about the identity of the mysterious ‘master zombie,’ Treasury spokespeople indicated that they were pursuing multiple leads and had reason to believe that, in life, it had been a powerful player in the energy sector.