The first two links are very disappointing when you actually go in to read them, Charlie.

See the final link, Noel. It'll make your day. Or your newspaper!

45e10 points if you can somehow theorise a link between each story that culminates in the destruction of reality by the Great Old Ones*.

*(AKA Murdoch family, SKY, Virgin)

I'm waiting for the day when Rupe has to take out Chinese citizenship to have a tv station there, the way he had to cease to be Australian to own whatever tv station he has in the USA..

I'm probably waiting in vain.

Paris Hilton in smurf swearing shocker — well what do you think this is about?

Clearly something unfortunate happened in Iraq or Afghanistan recently, and Ms. Braindead Celeb was called out to create what Alfred Bester once called "Fun, Fantasy, Confusion, and Catastrophe" to bury it on page 9.

destruction of reality

With the sort of reality we get these days, who'd even notice?

" why can't they do what everyone else does and just shoot their SA-80s in the air?"

Well, they'd jam, obviously.

Aye, you'd want an AK47 for a gig like that.

Paris Hilton vs. the Smurfs. I honestly don't know which side to choose.

The first item had a link to another which wouldn't have looked out of place on your list: Save the world with liposuction.

American newspapers already are as trivial and superficial as TV news divisions, and have rather more concentrated ownership and less competition. (In any US city, there are fewer daily newspapers than TV broadcast channels -- to say nothing of cable TV.) The FCC ruling just allows one bunch of dinosaurs to mate with another; its effect on US politics will be nearly nil.

Fetus in fetu is nature's turducken.

Paris is ours! (Go USA!) "Oh, they're so cute. Let them eat cake and then make them dance around the Christmas tree while singing Smurf songs! NOW!" What more could we want from one of our aristos?

Jeff

Far be it from me to defend Paris Hilton but if I took a job that involved me getting painted blue and impersonating a Smurf I would expect a degree of indignity and patronising comments from the audience.

I'm more shocked by the Smurfs' unprofessionalism than Paris Hilton's behavior. If you're going to take a gig as a cartoon character, expect to be treated badly. Anyone who's worked at a theme park can give you a list of ways visitors abuse them

I had a friend who worked at Islands of Adventure and Universal in Orlando. One of his roles was a Doctor Doom before they had to remove all of the villains from the park. It seems that tourists thought it was great fun to walk up and punch the "bad guy" characters, or pull on their capes, or trip them, or whatever. Teenagers usually being the worst.

"Although worthless to the army the ancient tank is worth a fortune to collectors."

Well, that kinda puts things into perspective to me. Also, they could make them safe and auction them off, surely?

How come you missed out on the Lakota unilaterally declaring treaties with the US government null and void?

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Descendants_of_Sitting_Bull_Crazy_Horse_1220.html

tp1024: that news broke after my posting. Plus, we know what happens to folks who unilaterally declare independence from the USA.

C.S said: we know what happens to folks who unilaterally declare independence from the USA

We pull them back into our loving fold. Once you are assimilated there's no going back. Ever.

Jeff

Jeff @ 19:

That's not true. If your skin is dark enough the US is only too happy to get rid of you. Look at Cuba and Liberia.

Har, har. So, of course, I only went to the Paris Hilton link. It immediately made me think of hyperreality. As Paris is herself a hyperreal figure (not to mention the capital of France), she is probably seriously confused about the nature of reality.

I discovered hyperreality when I acquired some late '20s - early '30s music by Annette Hanshaw and found out from Wikipedia that she was the real inspiration for the hyperreal character Bettie Boop. I'm thinking, great, more French Deridda-derived deconstructionist crap, but, you know, there just might be something to this hyperreality thing. Most Americans would probably prefer to go to Paris in Las Vegas than in France.

Sorry, Charlie, this is more of Gibson's recent schpeil than yours.

Interesting, the reference to hyperreality is gone from the Annette Hanshaw page at Wikipedia.

True, in a way. Except that maybe some president runner up might get the idea, that actually helping them, referring to the american dream, the pursuit of happiness etc (US residents here probably know these better than me) might help them offset a couple million dollars worth of money raised for their election campaigns ... (The hypocrisy of which I won't mention here ...)

Andrew G. , I think it's clear that the Federal Gov of the USA would not allow a state to secede from the Union. Of course the Constitution allows for secession (in some abstract way), but theory and practice are obviously two different things. Heinlein predicted that the Crazy Years would result in a United States that breaks up into lots of smaller countries, and the same was true in Stephenson's Snow Crash--taken to hyperbolic extreme. Quite a few sf writers seem to think it's inevitable that the US will collapse under its own blotted mass, imploding from some combination of chaos factors. But then, lots of people still want to come here, so perhaps we'll just have to assimilate more and more and more until we become a Doctorow-esque-post-scarcity-Bitchun-society. Dude!

But then, lots of people still want to come here

Think osmosis, but with money instead of sugar.

Re state's seceding, the only scenario under which I could see this happening is if the Federal government went bankrupt. My impression was that the amount of money that the states get from the Feds is the main thing that keeps the union together. Unfortunately, in the Bush years, somehow that money has wound up flowing from blue states to red states -- go figure.