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.”

Amphibious Whale Trailers Survive Tornadoes, Floods

February 8, 2047
GALVESTON–Texas-based Seastream Living Environments Inc. announced Monday the nationwide availability of its line of traditional and double-wide Whailers: portable, sea-worthy trailer homes built on specially-engineered whale chassis and outfitted with all the features and conveniences of conventional trailers. “We are outstandingly proud of our Whailers,” exclaims Seastream CEO Brad de Brad. “A triumph of engineering! We’re using Nature’s solutions to solve Human problems. A real triumph of harmony and elegance over brute-force design.”

The Whailers, initially available in two models–a spacious Gray and a sporty Orca–are custom grown in the company’s Galveston production facility and feature a living room, galley kitchen, master suite with master bath, guest room, wall-to-wall carpeting, and natural-grain vidoleum paneling throughout. “Even though the product is revolutionary in so many ways,” notes Brad. “We were very careful not to neglect any of the creature comforts of a conventional trailer home.”

Designed to endure the unpredictable and destructive weather affecting regions in which trailer homes and trailer parks are popular, Whailers are capable of swimming in both fresh and salt waters and weather rough seas through a series of dives, each lasting between 20 and 45 minutes. “The Whailers are really designed for the parks here along the Gulf Coast, and in the Florida panhandle, where hurricanes and torrential flooding are common,” explains Brad. “As long as you’re parked near water, though, no weather is going to destroy your Whailer. A tornado coming? Just dive into a nearby lake or river and wait it out.”

Additional features include a low-maintenance, all-temperature, natural-color, natural-texture hide requiring only “bi-weekly wetting with an ordinary garden hose” while “ground-parked” or on the included towable, flatbed trailer; two responsive, blinking eyes; a screened-in porch on baleen models; all-natural insulation; and soothing, ambient whale call “just a tickle away.”

Residents in prototype Whailers placed in parks throughout southern Texas over the past year report overall satisfaction with the Whailers: “Safe as houses! That’s all I can say,” recalls one Galveston-area beta resident. “Hurricanes Willard018, Barbara_Big, and HokeyPokemon came through last week. I think I slept through at least two of them.”

Among the few bugs reported were occasionally dangerous, involuntary “tail-flail” during mopping of the bathroom and kitchen, slightly stale air during some prolonged fresh-water dives, and faulty microwave ovens. Seastream reports that all three bugs have been addressed in the production models.

Seastream Gray and Orca Whailers are now available through your local RV and trailer-home dealer. A Humpback model, including a spacious sleeping loft, is scheduled for dealer delivery in the fall.