SlashNOT

Matthew writes: They are usually titled something like “God’s Perfect Timing”, and the generally start something like this:
“On Thursday, October 16, 2003, I received a phone call from my sister in Hawaii. At the time, I was at work at the Hospital in Dallas, Texas. My sister sounded hysterical and said that my mom was at the hospital dying. My heart sank and I asked my sister to tell me what happened. My sister, who is a nurse, mentioned an ‘aortic dissection’ and that my mom had to be taken to the emergency room. As a physician, I knew aortic dissections were often fatal.” They go on for another 2500 words or so, and mom always winds up living in the end.

The mystery is why they get submitted to SlashNOT, considering that SlashNOT is a tech parody site that tries to avoid religion as a topic. But, fearing eternal damnation, I’ve also been loath to simply delete them. So they pile up in the administrative inbox, stuck in a digital limbo between submission and publication, damned to wait for armature-ageddon, when the server’s hard disk fails. But I always felt vaguely unsettled about the situation.

And so I said to myself, “What would Jesus Blog?“

And a still, small voice came to me and said “Seek and ye shall find. Ask, and it shall be given unto thee. Google, and ye shall be feeling lucky.” In a flash of inspiration, I realized that I could repost all these submissions on blogs appropriate to the topic.

A weight has been lifted from me for the first time since Michael and I started SlashNOT. I feel like I’ve been given a new chance–a new life. And now I’d like to invite all of you to post your testimonies there. And not here.

Matthew writes: Continuing in the grand tradition of posting “mail from people who don’t get satire”, consider the following submission from a man confused by our post on Google News .

Subject: “You are correct in your analysis of Google News”

“I sent the following email to Google News:

“Google News continues its propaganda march to the extreme left under the guise and excuse of the use of computer algorithms. People need to know that you are obviously and intentionally biased and that you continue to do as much damage as you can to this great country and its leaders during this time of peril. All one has to do is to examine your headlines each day and the truth leaps out. Your continued daily bashing of Bush and portrayal of the United States as the enemy of the world makes your organization one of the top internal threats to this country.”

“SlashNOT, please continue to get the truth out about these type of organizations.”

“Thanks”.

Mister, we at SlashNOT will continue to proudly do our part.

chris writes: Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson today announced that the government intends to put the entire nation on a diet. Non-eating zones (or NEZs) will be established in areas where obesity rates are above normal, such as near Wal-Mart stores and Winn Dixie supermarkets.

Non-eating zones means that the public will not be allowed to consume high calorie foods (HCF), or alcohol, tobacco or firearms (ATF). Violators will be required to take mandatory fitness classes or pay a fine.

The non-eating zones program will be implemented in phases:

1. Non-eating zones will be established in public buildings.
2. HCF related advertising will be banned from TV.
3. Areas that have an obesity rate above 50% will be designated non-eating zones.
4. Restaurants and shops in non-eating zones will be required to apply for a license which will be granted only on a case per case basis. Restaurants without licenses will be limited to serving water, coffee, and non-fat dairy creamer.

When asked about possible reactions from McDonald’s and Burger King, Secretary Thompson replied, “The health of our children has to come first. Man, children are a great excuse, aren’t they? I just love them.”

Christopher writes:

A McDonalds spokesperson today announced that, for a limited time, Happy Meals will contain a plush toy representing the Linux mascot, Tux. It was also stated that this decision in no way represented McDonalds choice of operating system and was made solely because of Tux’s appeal to young children.

Upon hearing the news, many OS developers began questioning McDonalds’ real agenda in providing the toys. “Who hasn’t bought their child a soft toy representing a small, cuddly animal?” Argued McDonalds’ legal representatives “The McDonalds’ marketing team firmly believe that a small penguin is the perfect toy for a young child … would you rather see a child playing with a window, or maybe a foot?”

In response, Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing a plush toy mascot of their own to compete with the appeal of Tux.

Matthew writes: Commissioner President of the European Union Romano Prodi has announced that rather than assessing fees to member states to fund its costs, it will be suing U.S. and Japanese multinational corporations and using the proceeds to finance its operations.

“At first, we were just suing Microsoft because everyone else was doing it,” said Msr. Prodi. “But when we realized that we could hit them with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines without them blinking, we were like ‘ka-ching!’ This frankly solves one of the EUs major growth hurdles and will allow us to exceed the governance limitations placed on us by the member states which they enforce through budgetary control. Having an independent war chest, so to speak, will make the expansion of the EU much simpler. We’re going after Sony next, as soon as our lawyers can figure out why.”

Christopher writes: Earlier today the FBI, along with local authorities, raided the residences of several Microsoft employees under the suspicion that they may be using open-source software. “The concern began when [while getting a stapler] I noticed a copy of Floppix in a an employee’s drawer,” stated disgruntled Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “I immediately contacted the relevant authorities.”

The results of these raids were quite unexpected. Out of the thirty-five homes that were raided, eleven of them contained open-source software. Most of all, when police raided the residence of Brad Abrams, a program manager on the .net CLR team and also a close friend of Bill Gates himself, they found one machine actually running Red Hat Linux and a cache of other open-source software. Upon further inspection of his machine, they found that he had bookmarked SourceForge and was an active member of its forum.

“I had no idea my employees were using such software,” appealed Microsoft Chairperson Bill Gates to the media. Gates also said that the culprits will be dealt with harshly, as such practices are not tolerated within the company. The matter is still undergoing inquiry with more raids planned early next month.

Matthew writes: Dr. Robert Weinberg of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Boston and his team have succeeded in growing human breasts on mice. “With this breakthrough, we have succeeded in increasing the supply of human breasts available for both public and private research.”

Dr. Weinberg, a medical prodigy just sixteen years old, says that mice are just the beginning. “We can basically recreate this process in any species for which significant demand exists.”

When asked whether mice were large enough to support human breasts of a useful size, Dr. Weinberg replied “Breast size is not particularly important to scientists. It’s really just the availability of Breasts that matters.”

Matthew writes: “We have a winner!” announced DARPA officials. “For the first time in a military project, the tax payers have not borne the cost for a failed weapons system development program. Rather, we’ve offloaded those massive losses onto civilian contestants whose ability to project costs and deliver projects appears to be about equal to major defense contractors. Except this time, we didn’t have to pay for it. We got a lot of research and development failures for free, and the American tax payer won big time.”

Flush with the financial success of the failed DARPA grand challenge, the U.S. Government is announcing changes to many of its procurement programs. First out of the gate is a million dollar prize for the first civilian team that develops a completely robotic heavy bomber capable of delivering 100,000 pounds of ordinance to a specific GPS coordinate and returning to and landing on an aircraft carrier without human assistance. DARPA is also considering a program to reward the first religious cult to develop a cloned super-soldier, but has not yet completed the specifications for that challenge.

Matthew writes: According to a study conducted at the United Nations University, satirical shorts consume an average of 55 kilograms of raw materials each—a dramatic environmental cost basically equivalent to the weight of an adult human female.

While most of the material weight is in the form of water contained in the massive 64-ounce Mountain Dew fountain drinks consumed in the production of satire, an unexpected amount of petroleum products are consumed in the trip to the gas station to acquire the requisite Mountain Dew. Trace chemicals such as caffeine, glucose, and whatever the crumbly coconut coating on mini-donuts is made of compose the remainder of the raw materials.

“This report shows just how important it is to re-use and recycle satire, rather than simply forgetting about it or letting it get stale when the news is parodies is no longer current.” Says Eric Williams, a researcher at the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo and one of the report’s co- authors. “We need to get used to hearing the same gags multiple times, and we should all do a lot more e-mail forwarding of links to joke sites to reduce the amount of new satire that we need to produce.”

Matthew & Mearzuh writes: Job hunting website Monster.com and Ebay.com have teamed up to create Jobaynster.com, which promises to revolutionize the process of hiring and firing employees. Jobaynster.com COO Helmut Krieg explains:

“Over the last few years, many businesses have found themselves overstocked on employees. Traditionally, when companies laid employees off, they e-mailed them a pinkslip and let them go. That process is incredibly wasteful.”

“We’re turning that excess human capital into a valuable resource by creating a bid based human capital market. Essentially, employers who have excess employees can put them on the block dutch-auction style, moving tens, hundreds, or even thousands of employees in a single transaction.”

“For example, Boeing just offloaded 4,000 employees to Minnesota Mining & Machine and pocketed a hefty 125 per head. That’s a half million dollars that they were previously just letting go.”

“We add value by sorting and classifying the human capital into similar job categories and grouping them by weight. The sick, old, and uninsurable are sent to recycling centers, and the remainder are groomed for sale with an hour of resume and shoe polishing.”