Month: July 2002

LVMH, Prada to Replace Luxury Goods with Warrants

April 6, 2014
MILAN–In a move extending last season’s alliance between design firms Prada and LVMH, the two announced Monday that significant portions of each of the major lines from the two houses would be replaced this season by warrants for the purchase of designer outfits and furnishings. “It has always been among our deepest convictions that good design should be more widely available,” explains LVMH Chief of Initiatives Basil Sprout. “Good design is for the People, for all of the people, and this warrant initiative ensures that great design is within the means of the masses.”

The warrants–special certificates entitling the bearer to purchase a specified product at a specified price during a specified season–will be sold at a fraction of the cost of the underlying product, typically between 3% and 7% of the retail price. “The public may not be able to afford to purchase outright a Bobois handbag or a Prada toe-sock,” notes Sprout. “But, with our new line of warrants, they can enjoy designer products without all the fuss and expense of owning the base material object.”

In addition to expanding the size of the market for high-end designer goods, the warrants are also predicted to cut production costs at both firms. “The Street is bound to recognize the profoundly greater opportunities for scalability in the warrants market,” opines SSBPWC analyst Trumpet Graine. “Scale efficiencies are much greater in the production of warrants. While, in general, costs per unit decrease the more handbags you produce, it literally costs almost nothing to produce a new warrant, especially when that warrant isn’t really designed to be exercised and hence never requires production of the underlying asset.”

Beyond anticipated savings in production costs, the two houses point to the space-saving convenience of owning warrants rather than storage-hogging pants suits and propylene couches. “Besides budget constraints, many of our clients, and potential clients, are space constrained,” explains LVMH’s Sprout. “You can only fit so many Diesel armchairs in that loft apartment. How many Sander suits can fit in that closet? Well, warrants don’t take up any space! They offer the leverage to fit 10, 20, even 30 DK armoires into your bedroom! Luxury!”

Experts point to the warrants as an ideal solution to two challenges facing the industry: “On the one hand increasing income disparities have been eroding the market for elite luxury goods for years, forcing houses to raise prices dramatically just to maintain brand exclusivity,” explains Graine. “On the other hand, lowering prices and expanding production dilutes the value of the brands. If you see every Tom, Dick, and Harry wearing that designer watch, it loses its cachet.”

Because sale of the proposed warrants does not involve increased production of the underlying goods, the firms expect to gain the revenue benefits of a broader, near mass-market without the deleterious effects of brand dilution. “That’s the genius of the warrants,” exclaims Graine. “Market-saturating sales without market saturation!”

Group Opposes Vouchers for Police, Fire Services

March 2, 2008
SACRAMENTO–The Institute of Public Services, a privately funded, California-based think tank, announced Wednesday the filing of a suit in California Federal District Court challenging that state’s recently implemented voucher program for police, ambulance, and fire and rescue services. “It is our belief that the [California measures] represent a gross derogation of the state’s duty to protect all of its citizens equally,” announced Geraldine Finwage, the Institute’s chief counsel. “The voucher program is essentially a wholesale privatization of these key government functions.”

The California program, in place since October, issues vouchers to each California resident on a monthly basis. The vouchers can in turn be used by residents to offset the cost of service subscriptions from a wide range of security and fire safety service providers. “Vouchers are about leveling the playing field,” explains California State Representative Ben Crinkle (L-Newport Beach). “They’re about giving people a choice about who polices their streets. Your local police department under-performing? Can’t keep your community safe from gangs and drugs? Well, now you can go elsewhere.”

The voucher system, administered through a centralized, web-accessible database, tracks residents’ service-provider choices and, through close integration with emergency calling systems, directs 911 and related calls to the appropriate provider.

“I’ve noticed a real jump in quality and performance since I switched to Wackenhut policing,” notes one Irvine, California resident. “I used to call all the time about those kids loitering around the Del Taco on Friday nights. Some threatening types with baggy pants and real pointy hair. The regular cops wouldn’t really do anything. Too busy I guess. The Wackenhut guys, though, they really follow through. Those kids haven’t been back in weeks.”

Critics of the system point to concerns about a potential gap in quality of service: high-quality, customer-centric private sector firms offering services to those who can afford to pay an amount greater than the average voucher value, while low-income residents receive inferior service from under-funded public providers, or from fly-by-night discount firms. “Where do you think the funding comes from?” asks Finwage. “The vouchers allow middle-class and upper-middle-class residents to siphon funds out of the public system, to just drain it dry.”

Private sector providers have been quick to respond to market demand for premium and luxury services such as guaranteed maximum response times and 24 hour Temporary Restraining Order enforcement. “We’re doing nothing more than offering the same high-quality services we offered before the [voucher program] went into effect,” notes a Wackenhut sales representative. “The only difference is that the vouchers put our white-glove services within reach of the average homeowner.”

The Institute’s suit, including its request for a preliminary injunction limiting state-wide deployment of the voucher system, is scheduled for hearing this Fall, Wednesdays at 11:30 on CSPAN3.

Spam Stalks Steve Case, Attacks

March 16, 2042
NEW YORK–AOLTW Chairman Emeritus Steve Case was rushed to a private New York hospital late Thursday following a reported assault by unsolicited commercial email. “We do not want to go into details at this time,” explains AOLTW Chief Security Officer Pamela Spoon. “But we can confirm that Mr. Case, for a number of months, has been stalked and harassed by a significant amount of spam, including messages soliciting mortgage business and offering to enlarge his penis.”

Spam, irritating but typically harmless commercial messages distributed arbitrarily to the public at large, has been known to seriously, and sometimes fatally, injure hosts when sent in large quantities to networked organs and prostheses. “It’s a serious, and clearly documented problem,” notes William Chappamattox, Vice Director of the CalTech Center for Electrohygenics. “I know of at least 23 cases in which spam has caused measurable damage to wireless livers and kidneys. The real shame is that most of the injuries could have been prevented through correct firewall configuration.”

Speaking at his company’s annual meeting, Case last year revealed to shareholders that he had received a number of life-sustaining transplants, including a wireless liver, pancreas, and colon. “I feel 100%,” announced the spry, khaki-panted Case. “My doctors can monitor my blood sugar and fine-tune my insulin levels from any thin client anywhere in the world. I’m feeling better than I have in years.”

Though unconfirmed by AOLTW spokespeople, sources inside Case’s medical team indicate that he recently underwent experimental installation of a Pore-to-Pore Dermal Network designed to increase information exchange among regions of the dermis and to firm and tone his skin. “Steve’s not a vain guy,” explains the inside source. “This wasn’t a vanity thing. It’s just that boyishness was his trademark look. He didn’t want people to think he was losing it.”

“I don’t personally know of any reported injuries resulting from spam sent to one of these pore-to-pore networks,” notes CalTech’s Chappamattox. “But I do know from experience that security is not always the highest priority in the first generation of some of these organs. Scripted pop-ups and pop-unders could conceivably wreak havoc with [Case’s] new skin.”

Though declining to comment on questions concerning the role of Case’s reported dermal installation in the spam assault, AOLTW spokespeople did indicate that the company “is taking appropriate legal action to enjoin continued harassment of Chairman Case.”

In papers filed this week in New York Federal District Court against “John Doe(s) and twelve other unidentified senders of unsolicited commercial email” an AOLTW legal team seeks “temporary and permanent orders enjoining Defendants from sending, relaying, or transmitting electronic messages to any IP address associated with Plaintiff or any of his organs or prostheses,” and further requests “compensatory damages for past, continuous, and ongoing trespass to his organs and person.”

Details concerning Case’s current medical condition are few, limited to a family spokesman’s indication that the situation is “grave” and that he is in “bad shape but good spirits.”

Mnemonic Plague Aerosoluable, Easily Weaponized

November 2, 2027
ATLANTA–Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday that Mnemonic Plague–a mysterious and debilitating disorder affecting the brain–can be readily transformed into a highly-infectious weapon that could be easily spread using a crop duster, lawn sprinkler, or even a simple, everyday atomizer. “On its own, [Mnemonic Plague] is contagious and characterized by a long, pre-symptomatic incubation period,” notes Dr. Hillary Jest, CDC Director of Emergent Disorders. “Recent research indicates that it can also quite easily be refined and deployed as an agent of bioterrorism.”

The Plague, known among researchers as Memory-Acquisitive Ego-Occlusion Disorder (“MAEOD”), is characterized by a sudden, rapid derangement of the ability to form ‘ego-related and ego-affective’ memories, coupled with an increasing proclivity to appropriate ‘ex-egoic’ narratives, memes, and vignettes. “The symptomology is fairly clear,” explains Professor Eugene Mash of the UCLA Medical Center. “Patients become incapable of remembering any of their own experience, or of retaining information about themselves. Instead, they transform tidbits of information about others–typically strangers, often celebrities and television personalities–into false memories about themselves.”

“I remember so clearly the time I broke my sister Marsha’s nose with a football,” recalls one MAEOD patient. “It was just an accident really. They tell me that it never happened to me, that I don’t even have a sister, but I just don’t see how they could be right.”

Though clinicians have yet to identify additional physical symptoms, specialists have recognized a number of disturbing collective or ‘hive’ symptoms: dysfunctional and afunctional social dynamics that develop in isolated populations of symptomatic patients.

“By far the most explosive of the group dynamics is the ‘No, I’m Spartacus’ syndrome,” explains Professor Mash. “Because patients build memories out of what they hear from their peers, the endgame in a relatively closed group of MAEOD patients is a convergence on a single memory set, typically followed by aggressive contests over ownership of the memories.”

Only recently linked to a little-understood viral agent affecting the brain’s production and use of acetylcholine and other neurotransmitters, MAEOD is spread by water cooler chitchat, inappropriate touching, and NBC’s Must See TV lineup, including first-run episodes, repeats, and syndicated reruns.

“The etiology is quite bizarre,” notes Professor Mash. “It turns out that the virus fairly rapidly populates tissues of the brain and central nervous system, but appears otherwise inactive in the absence of a signature catalyst that just happens to consist of ratios of neurotransmitters typically present in certain regions of the brain during certain activities. In the presence of the catalyst, copies of the virus in local tissue become active and then, zip! in a chain reaction they start activating the virus throughout the frontal lobes.”