copyright 1998-2021
Jay J.P. Scott
<jay@satirist.org>
Here tower my grandest accomplishments among the modern Whales written since 1998. Putting this list together was a humbling experience. How can I ever be as great as myself?
| 3 April 2021 | Bureaucracy is not your friend, it is your lover, your jealous lover with a passive-aggressive streak. Bureaucracy will never let you go, but it may reject everything you say because you joined your forms with a paperclip. |
| 13 July 2021 | May the road rise up to meet you (ouch!). May the wind be always at your back (well of course, with the road pressed up in front). May the sun shine warm upon your face (uh oh, your neck is twisted 180 degrees). And the rains—OK, who said this was a blessing? |
| 31 July 2021 | You try not to make the same mistake twice? Hah! I try not to make the same mistake zero times. |
| 1 August 2021 | At long last I had delved to the bottom of the universe. Examining the basis of reality, probing the fundament of all things that are or will be, in one corner I discovered lettering incised into spacetime itself: NOT TO SCALE. |
| 17 October 2020 |
The Government We Deserve
It’s called an election, but it feels more like a dinner party with the Donner Party. For dessert, we’ll get our just deserts. |
| 8 August 2020 | James Stephens said in the unsettled year of 1949, “We are at sea, but we are not at sea in a desert.” Today is a little different; we are lost, though we know where we are, and adrift though we are making way on our chosen course. But it’s not hopeless. On the horizon we can see mirages. |
| 21 June 2020 |
Be Ready For the Changes
A great plague was visited upon the lands of the Earth. Strange signs became visible in the sky, stars even; I guess people turned off some lights. I received an envelope claiming to contain important information, and it did contain important information. All the portents indicate extraordinary events. |
| 6 February 2020 | So, you have a snake oil company, but there are laws against lying about your snake oil. Don’t worry, it’s a solved problem: Attack your own weakness as if it were a strength. “There is no fuddy-duddy evidence that snake oil cures cancer, prevents migraines, or reduces minor skin irritation. But I swear by it. Watch me as I waltz safely through primordial Burmese jungle without a single lion attack!” |
| 2 November 2019 |
Practical Transit Etiquette
This seating reserved for passengers with dishabille-ities. |
| 20 September 2019 | I pledge all legions to my fragment of the United States of America, and to the public that takes its stand for some notions, undebatable, and libations with crushed ice for all. |
| 10 August 2019 | Austen novels pretend to show us a clear view of a social world, with stern rights and wrongs, but are secretly about the unclarity of good conduct. In Mansfield Park, we are subtly told that Sir Thomas is a slaveowner through his Antigua holdings, which ties in with his authoritarian household management style. Yet antihero Fanny, the novel’s ostensible standard of morality, agrees with him except on one point—she wants the freedom to marry for love, not for money. Meanwhile, Mrs. Price shows us the risks of marrying for love, and Maria Bertram shows us the risks of marrying for money, and on the third hand the marriage of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram makes points in both directions. Mary Crawford, Fanny’s counterpart and counterweight, is shown as clearly wrong, but also has a playful personality that reminds us of the author’s voice. We mortals can’t keep up with Jane Austen; all we know for sure is that it is not a man’s field. |
| 9 March 2019 |
Decline and Fall, Promotion Of, How To
The word “thusly” was invented as a joke, but today people increasingly use it seriously, in formalous contexts. Thuslyso, morefurthermore progressification is requiremented! |
| 2 November 2018 |
Weird: Whether you are a metronome or a rural gnome oldies station: Bring up the heat, boys, and feed that coal Weird: of humble Dearborn or fancy Cheapside oldies station: I wanna raise steam so the train can roll Weird: equal among firsts or kissed by alpaca lips now oldies station: To Rockaway Smart: Are you feeling old? Weird: Time passes like the buck. |
| 13 August 2018 |
This PSA Paid For by Space Drive Wranglers, Inc.
Have you ever accidentally wiped out a primitive planetary civilization? It’s such an easy mistake, I’m sure most of us have. Just one stray micro black hole, or a minor antiproton leak as you are accelerating by—and wups! You may not realize it, but these helpless creatures are fully capable of feeling pain, and even of realizing the misfortune that has befallen them from causes they cannot comprehend. So have a heart! Tune up your warp drive today and you will not only prevent needless suffering of lower life forms, but reduce your fuel costs! |
| 20 April 2018 | Bureaucracy is proof that you can be all-powerful and yet unable to achieve a damn thing. |
| 2 March 2018 | “Undercover” should mean it’s nighttime, but it means secret. “Under wraps” should mean brand new, but it means secret. “Confidential” should mean you’re sure about it, but it means secret. “Classified” should mean you know what it is, but it means secret. Words with other meanings may exist, but if so, they are secret. |
| 31 December 2017 | Why don’t we teach quantum mechanics to school children? I think it is for the same reason that we don’t teach them Bayesian statistics, even though it is more useful than dividing fractions; it is thought too difficult. The reasoning is backward. The formal details of quantum theory are complicated, but that can wait until the 10th year or so when kids are ready. The underlying ideas seem difficult only because they are counterintuitive, and nothing that you learn young enough is counterintuitive. |
| 8 June 2017 | I predict there will be no sudden robot revolution. We know how to design machines that we control completely (we barely know any other kind). But in the end, the player with more bandwidth has more power; see Silvio Berlusconi. Machines have far more communication bandwidth than humans, who can process perceptual data at a high rate but can only learn a few bits per second from it, and then lose it all when they die. As this century runs, machines will surpass human knowledge and decision-making ability in more and more areas. It will slowly become a mistake to rely on human judgment, first at the steering wheel and later in the parliament. And I’ve seen the accident rates for both, so I’m all in favor. |
| 24 May 2017 |
The State Of Journalism
The sky is blue, according to unconfirmed reports. “Just look at it! Look! No offense intended, but are you a freakin’ moron or what?” explained one witness. Atmospheric scientist N. Plainview opined, “The blue color is due primarily to Rayleigh scattering from nitrogen molecules in the air.” Yet other witnesses disagree; one remarked “Huh? It’s night now, sky’s kind of black.” Whatever the true story, stay tuned for our breaking reports! |
| 25 April 2017 |
Daniel Boone Killed a Bear
In the far future, when the books and optical disks are no more, archeologists will have to puzzle out the English language from inscriptions. One day we will come across D BOON KILT A BAR. Hmm... we’ve seen all the words before.... Well, in the meantime, here are some ancient Mayan glyphs to ponder. |
| 28 August 2016 |
Stalinist Security
Adults know how to discourage trouble. When I was a kid and told on the other kids (“so-n-so threw a rock at me!”) I was regularly warned, “False accusations are a serious business.” The skillful combination of threat, victim-blaming, and laxness in investigation certainly kept trouble away from adults. Today as an adult, of course, I know that false accusations are nothing serious at all. The news reminds me every few weeks when another person is removed from a flight and interrogated for studying Arabic, or for wearing a suspicious beard. In fact, false accusations are a great way to discourage trouble. Hurry, denounce your neighbor before they denounce you! |
| 30 July 2016 | Society is racking up huge debts that future generations will be stuck paying off—that’s false. And your kids will blame you for it—that’s false too. Future generations will act like past generations, they’ll either roll over their debts and make more or go bust, and they’ll blame themselves. |
| 16 May 2016 |
One of the basic rules of propaganda is that whenever you do or claim
something questionable, accuse others of the same. At worst you’ll
give the impression that everybody’s dirty. Once you know the rule,
world events become easy to interpret.
China: The U.S. is militarizing the South China Sea! |
| 31 March 2016 |
traveler: Hi! Hugh Everett: What the which?!? Where’d you come from? traveler: I’m a dimension traveler from another universe. Hey, this place looks a lot like home. Hugh Everett: Sure, sure. traveler: Let me run a scan.... Oh, there’s the difference. What are the factors of 91? Hugh Everett: Uh, seven times thirteen. traveler: In my universe 91 is prime. That’s the only difference. Hugh Everett: So you’re here to make fun of my worldsview? traveler: In a way, maybe. At least it explains why you were surprised to see a dimension traveler. Hugh Everett: Yeah? traveler: How could you work out the theory when math is so messed up? |
| 27 August 2015 | Fears that the sky may fall are unsupported. Fears that the earth may swallow you are groundless. But fears that your words may not toe the line are justified. |
| 22 May 2015 |
Dog Civilization
Ever since the ancient time when dogs first domesticated humans, dog civilization has relied on a sophisticated system of covert messages, “bottom secret - noses only”. Dogs perhaps do not fully understand the complicated “intelligence” adaptation of their servants, and now, as human knowledge advances, they risk decipherment of their hidden messages. But what do they care? Frisbee! |
| 10 May 2015 | What could be plainer than plain English? Let’s take “guinea pig” as our guinea pig. It’s “guinea” because it never cost 21 shillings and it is not from Guinea, or Guinea-Bissau, or Equatorial Guinea, or New Guinea (it’s from South America). And it’s called “pig” because it’s a rodent. So in fact serial numbers would be plainer than plain English—they wouldn’t mislead you. |
| 25 March 2015 | “Love” is a tricky word. Sometimes two people mean the same thing by it. |
| 17 November 2014 |
Advice To All Governments
There are three kinds of policy, misguided, shortsighted, and lucky. Your aim should be to keep trying different shortsighted policies until you get lucky. |
| 26 September 2014 | Death came from the sky with terrible thunder. As the last desperate survivors huddled deep in a remote Gibraltar cave, awaiting their violent end, one, armed with nothing more than Mousterian flint tools, toiled to carve a final message into the living stone: Cruise missiles! Look at it, fuselage, wings, tail. You at least have to admit that the Neanderthals knew how to draw an airplane. |
| 5 July 2014 | We neither confirm nor deny that the United States is run by a cartoon dog, a former planet, and other underworld figures in a plutocracy maintained by means including but not limited to exclusion and limitation. |
| 20 February 2014 | Accept complexity. You can soar free on the pinions of an opinion like an onion, or be pinioned by an opinion like a pin. |
| 12 September 2013 | The traditional NSA Short Alternatives were “No Such Agency” followed by “Never Say Anything”, but they have Not Stuck Around due to the Numerous Snowden Announcements. We need a new NSA Substitute Acronym. What about Network Sucks Again? |
| 13 July 2013 | As trilobites and ballistas pass away and gardens and black helicopters arise, what lives on turn after turn? It moves slowly, it has no protection but obscurity, it dries up under sunlight, it leaves behind a trail of slime that is expensive to produce—if you had never seen a slug or an intelligence agency, you wouldn’t guess that such a creature could survive. |
| 20 June 2013 |
Spain Revisited
The gains of Keynes go mainly down the drains. |
| 2 January 2013 |
Shooting the Fiscal Cliff
We stride boldly forth onto this new rung in proud expectation that, before this decade is out, this nation will commit itself to build a second rung for the other foot. We avoid falling not because it is easy, but because then it is somebody else’s fault. |
| 27 December 2012 | When the wind of change scatters the leaves of memory to clog the gutters of care so that the rain of days pools by the foundation of companionship and seeps into the basement of motivation where the humidity–you get the idea. You can’t close the door on the passage of time. |
| 7 December 2012 | What could be more touching than a young couple sitting close side by side, faces lit by the glow of joy as each gazes intently at their own beloved phone? |
| 19 July 2012 | When I become King of the World my rule will be overseen by the Pubby Council and enforced outhouse-style by the Court of the Moon Chamber, which will not be a kangaroo court at all but an adorable koala court. These and other public relations officers, representing my will to the people, will be granted diplomatic immunity until they make a mistake, when they will be declared persona au gratin and distributed to the grateful masses. |
| 31 May 2012 |
You want to protest, but you’re not sure what to oppose?
The Daily Whale can help. Take one of our suggestions:
Down with lithofacies! |
| 27 August 2011 |
Why Read Another?
Crackling with labyrinthine energy, this compelling portrait
of a spine-tingling final showdown ventures outside the
confines of groundbreaking and pioneering. |
| 13 April 2011 |
Democracy Slam
guide: All you new freedom lovers need to learn about
democracy, so we thought we’d show you how it works at this
poetry slam. |
| 7 April 2011 |
Is Political Inaction Due to Incomprehensible Jargon?
Dear Europe, |
| 27 January 2011 |
I Have Seen North Korea, And It Doesn’t Work
Unpredictable, confusing, hard to see into, sometimes dangerous—as far as I can tell, North Korea is the future. |
| 2 November 2010 |
The Soap Comes Clean
The dish soap that I use claims to be “safe & effective”, and I believe it. In the voting booth, I have to decide for myself which candidates are safe and effective—I’m the regulatory agency, however clumsy I may be at it. Most regulatory agencies make their decisions using a simple party test. That is, they look at the soapbox, and they believe it. |
| 25 July 2010 |
Standards of Evidence
I have a rigorous proof that proofs work, and I heard a rumor that rumors are true too. |
| 11 June 2010 |
business: Let’s see, CAN-SPAM is next on the agenda. shoulder devil: That means MUST-SPAM. shoulder angel: No, stay good! It means SHOULD-SPAM. business: It says we have to provide an unsubscribe mechanism. devil: Yeah, but only customers care whether it works. angel: Do even customers care? devil: It’s fun to make them call Customer Entertainment and pretend that we’re helping. angel: What I mean is, it’s all gravy. We get credit for new business from the campaign, and lost business from everybody we infuriate can’t be recognized in any of our metrics. business: OK, that’s a decision. devil: Do I need to try harder? |
| 19 April 2010 |
The Infinite Analytical Regress
In government policy, good is bad and bad is good. For example, high cigarette taxes reduce smoking. That’s good, so we know that if we look more closely we’ll see that it is bad: Tax revenues give government a perverse incentive to encourage smoking. So it must be good, because as the tax rate increases with each recession, eventually only the rich will be able to afford smoking, providing a long-term force to reduce income disparities and stabilize society. Which is bad because then we’re stuck that way. |
| 22 December 2009 |
Copenhagen Accord
We, the Governments of the Planet Earth, in Order to maintain our independent Sovereignty, establish Jurisdiction, insure international Continuity, provide for the common Deference, promote the generals to Royalty, and encourage the Knack of Swimming in Islanders and Coastal Residents, do ordain and establish this Covenant for the Preservation of Business as Usual. |
| 26 September 2009 |
Or an Esthetic
The operations of destiny proceed without anesthetic. |
| 16 April 2009 | They say that physics is the parent company of which all others are subsidiaries, but isn’t it really computer science? After all, computer science has “science” in its name, so you know it’s not just some engineering discipline. And physics doesn’t. To see why, let’s consider traffic cones—no, those are too simple. Let’s consider electrons. Every electron is a tiny quantum computer that computes how to be an electron under specific conditions. If you want to understand electrons, the only problem is that all these computers don’t tell you what they’re doing. Physics is the engineering discipline of creating I/O devices for naturally-occurring computers. |
| 23 March 2009 |
Another Lesson of the Financial Crisis
Learn well from your defeats, because you’re going to forget from your victories. |
| 31 August 2008 |
U.S. Election Analysis
On the one side we have Barracks O’Bomber, who by traditional criteria is unelectable due to his name and skin color. But nobody seems to wonder whether he prefers a broad black brimmer or a checked headcloth, because he’s good at talking, and (though Americans tend to forget it) that’s what politics is about. Campaign slogan: “Change without details.” Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea, John McCain has designs on this generation’s Abel. His strategy, the inverse of the Karl Rove plan of attacking strong points as if they were weak, is to complain that his opponent’s natural disadvantages are unfairly advantageous. Campaign slogan: “The hottest conservative positions that money can buy.” May the lesser slimeball win! |
| 19 July 2008 |
What to Gamble On
How can we rectify the alternating currency? My observation: The District of Columbia is always reversing direction, but Atlantic City is steady as she goes. |
| 10 June 2008 |
Here on Diatomaceous Earth
The diatom is the world’s second-smallest cathedral (the Higgs boson is the smallest). That’s possible only because diatoms are not diatomic; I propose that instead we take them as diatomous and, with one telling blow, derive an oblique expression. Dress the cleavage fragments diaphanously and we display the whole diacronic dialectic of human dianoia. |
| 21 April 2008 | A dangerous animal need have no fear of humans unless it loses its fear of humans; then we shoot it. You can only be right by being wrong. Governments have long since learned this lesson, and will never lose their fear of humans. |
| 24 September 2007 |
reporter: How does it feel to potentially save the world from
a potentially dangerous alleged potential terrorist? officer: Just doing my job. reporter: Would you really have shot her if she hadn’t complied? She did turn out to be innocent. officer: She is not innocent. Scaring people is illegal unless I do it. reporter: Even so, she had no bomb. How would that have felt? officer: It would have made no difference to me. I’m already an ace. reporter: An “ace”? officer: Sure. You know how lots of kids these days wear these shoes with lights that flash when they walk? reporter: Um.... officer: Look. They give me one of these little turban symbols every time I nail one. |
| 15 May 2007 |
They Are Smarter Than You
The spelling checker is a device which promotes a mere typo to a grammatical error. We’ve had those for a while. Now it is time for the next step, the thinking checker that promotes a grammatical error to the semantic level.
original: I lurrrve you. |
| 3 April 2007 |
Official Directive
You constitute approximately 0.00000000015 of the human species. Please ensure that your efforts are commensurate. |
| 31 January 2007 |
Serious Reporters Ask About the Paparazzi
reporter 630: Prince William! |
| 14 September 2006 |
Stuck in the Mammalian Bottleneck
When mammals first evolved, during the Cold War, it was important for survival to see everything in black and white and red all over, and to have sharp ears to catch the whisper of policy disagreement—I mean, of commie subversion. Since then some lineages, notably primates, have developed nuanced vision and sophisticated intelligence assets. Those freaks. Good thing we’re not related. |
| 10 September 2006 |
Endurance Vile
A sufficiently big project is like a cage, and you’re locked in the cage with this monstrous project, because it’s also a monster, and you and the monster are locked in a marathon struggle to run a marathon, and you have to drag it toward the finish line because it’s locked to you like a ball and chain, and all you can do is keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going because you’re tide-locked like a moon and can only face toward the ball, which is also a planet. One day, at last, you unlock it and set it free, like a genetically engineered weed, and it becomes a tail and wags you. |
| 31 August 2006 |
Dear Posterity,
I’ve written and written. I’ve sent you letters, and faxes, and novels, and artworks, and great philosophical movements, and pet rocks. I have buried time capsules and carved stones for you. I have given you vast archives and the dazzling scientific theories of geniuses—and I have never heard a whisper of reply. I don’t think you’re even listening. Is a phone call too much to ask? Well, that’s enough! I’ve had it! From now on, all you’re getting from me is debt! |
| 30 August 2006 |
Long-Term View
Surely it is immoral to waste time working out the details of your personal moral philosophy when you could be building your political power base to impose it. |
| 8 December 2005 | Planning for the future is necessary. Predicting the future is impossible. It averages out. |
| 10 November 2005 |
Cease and Decease, or, Explicative Deleted
In this devil-make-hair world, the English language is, for all intensive purposes, held together with duck tape. I have finally come to turns with it; I am no longer uphauled by you creative sages—in poignant fact, I heartily batter an eyelid at “antidotal evidence”. It may be deformation of character, but it is also free rain to exercise the ghost of giving short shift to the goal standard of a bonified honing pigeon. All hale the whole-scale old wise tail! |
| 2 May 2005 | If you’re afraid of the right things, courage is a mistake. |
| 14 March 2005 | Why do people have so much trouble looking ahead and grasping the long-term consequences of their actions? Consider the positive effects of censorship: Mass entertainment consists of wishful thinking, only without the thinking. Censor it, and the wishes are lost too, leaving nothing. The people would have to invent their own entertainment. Grass roots would show up the tarnish on the cheap old tinsel, and with the sudden boom in quality fun, global industrial production would collapse. Result: Environmental utopia. If only people would look ahead! |
| 7 June 2004 | The principal principle is that principal is worth more than principle. |
| 7 March 2004 | I have constructed a mathematical model of all possible mistakes, but it’s one of them. |
| 25 January 2004 | And a darkness descended across the land, and the darkness was called night: And those who hated the darkness watched prime-time television and went to bed, while those who loved the darkness stayed up late to learn Its secrets: And by the former is the world run, and by the latter is the world remade ever and anon, and each time vaster: So let those who love the darkness seek It on near globes or far, and let those who hate It read always of celebrity gossip and offer no distraction. Amen. |
| 12 January 2004 |
“Open-ended fighting—check. Bold space policy—check.
Korean missile crisis—coming soon. My plot to become
JFK is developing nicely. It’s about time to start
planning the assassination attempt.” — George W. Bush’s private thoughts |
| 16 October 2003 |
Be SWIFTER And SMARTER In The HEAD!
* Gain up to nearly 30-50 IQ points or even much more! |
| 23 June 2003 |
Living Joyously In the Surveillance Society
1. Ask if you are on the List, so that They put you on the List
for mild surveillance. |
| 19 June 2003 |
Nobody’s Perfect
I’ve tried making mistakes, but I just can’t do it right. |
| 15 March 2003 |
1% insipience and 99% impercipience
Bush: War is 1% installation— |
| 26 October 2002 | I control my own accuracy. When I want to be right more often, I talk more. When I want to be wrong less often, I shut up. |
| 20 August 2002 |
The Gods Must Have Decreed It
I haven’t read the research on beliefs, but in my opinion, one of life’s chief mysteries is this: Why do people have opinions about matters they know they don’t understand? |
| 6 March 2002 |
deliberate, methodical, systematic, orderly, judicious, comprehensive,
disciplined, controlled, meticulous, detail-oriented, realistic,
steadfast, discreet, thoroughgoing, patient, diligent, far-sighted,
prudent, resolute, firm, unwavering, consistent, planned, synchronized,
dynamic, forward-looking, vigorous, aggressive, innovative, rapid
— bureaucratic words meaning “slow” |
| 7 February 2002 |
July 2001
Dear Kenny Lay, As one of 10,000,000 satisfied readers of How to Get Rich by Lying About Numbers, I thought you might be interested in my new title, Bailing Out Before the Crash. Priced at only $249,000 a copy, Bailing Out includes four fact-packed pages of indispensable financial wisdom. Additional copies of How to Get Rich (666 pages) are still available for one dollar each, plus postage and handling.
Sincerely mine, |
| 13 October 2001 |
Two Coins with a Single Side
Are insight and outlook secretly the same thing, or secretly different? |
| 3 June 2001 |
Money is no object; most of it is a bunch of numbers in computers.
When you take your nickels and dimes to the bank, the bank measures them
with a Nicholson Dymometer and—ZAP!—virtualizes them in the
Material Girl Currency Dematerializer, changing your change into
ones and zeros, or as they say in England, oughts and ought nots.
The bottom line is that the root of all evil has grown with imperceptible slowness into the beating heart of human endeavor, and we should have used more fertilizer. |
| 24 May 2001 |
Once upon a time there lived a fellow named Rainyday.
He was a thoughtful man who loved puzzles, but often went hungry
because he didn’t feel like weeding the garden. One day
a friendly shopkeeper offered, “I’ll give you a sweet potato
if you can solve the problem of existence by Kantian
analytic a priori methods involving the unity of the plurality
of the totality of the axioms of intuition. Are you up to it?”
Of course Rainyday took up the challenge, but he found it difficult to demonstrate the necessity of the reality of the totality of what is. Every day he sat under a three-limbed tree, thinking. Finally his patient mother protested. “Rainyday, why aren’t you in the garden? The slugs are bigger than the cabbages! What do you do all day under that tree?” Explained Rainyday, “I think there for a yam.” |
| 4 March 2001 |
More on the Uselessness of Advice
All human knowledge is less than what the average teenager finds too frustrating to explain. |
| 7 November 2000 |
Look At It How You Like, Every Angle Is Terrible
Some of you people, through no fault of your own, are Americans of voting age. Try this thought experiment: A Rilkean angel with a heart of starfire and eternal hurricane wings bursts like an expanding universe in your living room. You’re about to perish from its stronger existence, when it thunders in a Mount Rushmore voice, “Vote for...!” Yes? Which candidate does the angel suggest, Ralph Nader or Dave Barry? |
| 20 April 2000 | I Grew Cotton, Harvested It, Spun It, Wove It Into Cloth, And Sewed It Together, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. |
| 31 March 2000 |
Omnipotence Has Drawbacks
God used to answer heartfelt prayers. Then one night an atheist prayed, “Please, God, don’t exist.” |
| 27 February 2000 |
Jam Echelon Day
Spamming Echelon will (North Korean weapons-grade plutonium) never work. These guys are too (untraceable Semtex plastic explosive) sophisticated to fall for a crude trick like dropping extraneous (Osama bin Laden has set the attack date) keywords into your messages. But heck, it won’t (Airbus project code name Smokescreen Barrage) hurt. |
| 18 May 1999 | Welcome to planet Earth. I’m Qxzyz and I’ll be your guide today. I know you’re all eager to get on to the main attraction, so I’ll run quickly through just a few sights. Notice the interesting shifts in atmospheric chemistry due to primitive autochthonous industries. These animals are called frogs. This population is dying out from chytrid fungus infection. Indigenous tribes are engaged in numerous military and economic conflicts, and here is one of the more charming—observe the curious mass execution ritual. And now, on to the big event! Does everybody have their costume on? Good. Remember, by local custom we must stand in line before we see the Star Wars movie. |
| 11 March 1999 |
M.I.D.A.S. G.O.L.D.
Dear Privacy Advocates, Your concerns about Intel’s Pentium III hardware serial numbers and the far more ubiquitous Microsoft Windows 98 software serial numbers are totally unfounded. The Microsoft-Intel Design for Absolute Supremacy is nothing more than Good Old Love of the Dollar, a venerable business tradition. Please withdraw your erroneous allegations, or your friends will no longer speak to you and you may notice unusual charges on your credit card bill. Sincerely, Uncle Bill and Cousin Andy |
| 14 February 1999 |
The roses are dead. The violets are, too. And it’s better unsaid What I think of you.
Heedless Saint Valentine, |
| 5 January 1999 | A lot of strange things make sense once you reason them out logically. All those year-end wrap-up stories in the newspaper must be for people who missed the year and need to catch up. You know: coma patients, time travellers, the House of Lords. |
| 7 December 1998 |
Reagan administration: Mistakes were made.
Bush administration: Maid taxes were missed. Clinton administration: Made misses were taken. |
| 30 August 1998 |
How choosy are you about who you’ll date?
A. I require perfection. Please present your certificate for
inspection. |
| 11 August 1998 |
Look how the rosy-fingered dawn, The morn in russet mantle clad, Bleeds her life out on the lawn. Isn’t that too bad!
Classical dawn goes down to day, |
| 31 May 1998 |
Romeo and Juliet Condensed
No chickens here, but still it’s out of the frying pan, in with the Friar. |
the Daily Whale
copyright 1998-2021
Jay J.P. Scott
<jay@satirist.org>