the Funnelwhich

Neighbors question judgment of Kid Nation participants’ parents

After parents involved in the Kid Nation program subjected their children to extreme negligence and exposed them to extreme danger, neighbors of many of those parents have begun to question their good judgment. “I used to trust John with everything,” Ashley says, who lives next door to John Badparent, long-time resident of this quiet, nondescript suburban place. John’s child, Nicholas, was placed into Kid Nation after John wanted some fame. You see, John was never famous as a child, and he decided to live vicariously through Nicholas. That way, his child could be straddled with the same emotional baggage.

“But now, not so much,” says Ashley, mother of two children herself. “I’m seriously thinking of returning a music CD John recommended to me,” referring to the All that Glitters album that sits—unopened—on her desk. This trend is pandemic across all Kid Nation parents, I’m told. One man reports not buying the fruit his neighbor used to recommend. “It was good fruit, but now I just get this awful, icky taste whenever I bite into one of Dan’s recommended apples.” Another reports vomiting upon reading the complete works of John Steinbeck, recommended to her again by a Kids Nation parent Scientists have yet to determine if Kid Nation is the sole cause of that problem.

Tom Forman, who was the main producer of the show, has lost all friends. According to him, people have begun doing the opposite of what he tells him. “Not out of spite,” he says. “They just distrust me that much.” Schoolchildren, as they should, throw eggs, egg cartons, and sometimes whole hens at him. The hens’ eggs either hatch and produce more hateful chickens or become violent projectiles thrown by the hens again at the evil, miserable spirit that is Tom Forman.

Upon being questioned, the spokesman for CBS would only yell desperately, “Mistreating children is cool, right? What with first-degree burns and starvation and whatnot. Teenagers like that stuff! We’re hip! We’re hip! We’re still relevant!”

Poll reveals people fucking hate scrolling

Contrary to what many Web swamp creatures, who first appeared after W3C published their HTML validator, believe, most users do not enjoy a tiny, 3-pixel scrollbar that is impossible to click and a mile-long web page to navigate and especially difficult to bookmark. Says one swamp creature, “Huh? What I’m advocating is bad for developers and users? I don’t believe you.” He then lurched and devoured a newbie for not using XHTML 3.0 alpha.

Playing checkers leads to aneurysm in stupid people

A new study from the British Institute of Rotting Teeth and Health reports that the cognition stress of playing checkers can substantially raise the likelihood of a “brain malfunction” in stupid people. Checkers, a game invented by Albert Einstein’s cat Chester in Wickshire in 1982, was originally designed by the Nazis to exterminate their bigoted notion of mentally incapacitated people. In today’s society, we are free of these arcane notions and simply isolate retards in special institutions so society never has to deal with them like mature adults so that we can perpetually fear them. No word yet on how pornographic mahjong games may affect the user.

Firefighters to combat fire with giant marshmallows.

[FIROZABAD, INDIA] Here at the Oregon Pine and Oak Reserves off a little meander of the interstate’s I-281, firefighters are coming up with new and innovative ways to combat fire. “Water just doesn’t cut it anymore,” says Fire Marshal Timothy Pyron. “The customers want zazz. They want pop and bling and, above all, kablowie!”

After receiving enough venture capital to synthesize a marshmallow so large it casts a photosynthesis-inhibiting shadow over the three lakes nearest to us, all they had to do was wait for deployment day. “I can’t tell you how many days we spent ignoring the puny housefires and waiting for a great, big, wooden fire! A fire with real zazz and pop and bling and, above all, kablowie! A fire with grrreat big tits.”

That day came today. At 4 AM, the triple-alarm warning sounded. Firefighters sat up in their bunks, waiting. Was this the one? Then it came: that sweet melody over the intercom. “This is the one, ladies and gentlemen. Everybody to their stations! Suit up! We’re going to the Pine and Oak Reserves!”

Says one firefighter, “I’ve prayed really hard this entire week for a fire of this calamity. I think this is proof that it’s not what you pray for that matters; God just likes persistence.”

Says another, “Can’t … breathe …”

Upon being asked, local citizens generally ignored the issue and whined about their lost homes.