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Please, don’t say cheese

By on September 6, 2005 in Parody & Satire, Skwibby fiction

LONDON (Ruetars) – Many British citizens are outraged to discover that they are not allowed to smile for their passport photos.

Always a dour affair, applying for a UK passport has become even more unpleasant. Officials at the United Kingdom Passport Office service have told applicants not to smile for their passport photos, so that the portraits are more easily scanned by facial recognition technology.

“It seemed, like, reasonable to me and all,” Lucy Sheppard said. “But then I discovered what it’s really all about did’n I?”

Customs officials in the US and Canada have requested that passports do not have photos of smiling Brits because of the sub-standard dental hygiene in Merry Old England.

“It’s outrageous! Just ‘cause some Yank gets all squeamish about me teeth!” Sheppard said, between clenched jaws. (Which thankfully did not reveal her baked-bean-like chompers.)

Officials in both the US and Canada were unavailable for comment, but one Customs Officer in Toronto was willing to say, off the record, “look. It’s a terrible job, and we just don’t want to have to look at bad teeth on top of it all.”

Inspired by:

Don’t smile for passport photos

Atomic Transvestite Theater

By on September 4, 2005 in But is it art?, Parody & Satire, Skwibby fiction

Atomic valkyrieSylvia Nun-Fellows, Artistic Director and Interim Potentate of the Chesley Opera Company (COC) knew that this was their final season unless they could turn it all around.

Attendance had been steadily declining for years, and they were about to lose their grant from the Canadian Arbiter of Culture Office (CACO).

Reading the Opera Times, she saw that COC was hardly the only company in trouble. The San Francisco Opera was turning to historical themes, planning an opera about the building of the atomic bomb. In London (England) they were even more desperate, putting together some kind of new thing called, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. An opera flush with lesbian love, onstage nudity, and from what she could make out, themes of domination of submission.

Smart buggers. Why couldn’t SHE come up with something like that?

Yes, why couldn’t she? They had planned to do Wagner this year. What if the Valkyries were all gay? Even better … transvestites.

And they could be atomic – no, radioactive. That sounded cool. And so the first all-transvestite, irradiated version of Die Walküre was born.

It was pure CACO, and the COC was secured.

Inspired by:
Singing Lesbians to Rescue Opera House | The Epic, Tragic, Operatic Story of Doctor Atomic

Thag Not Like Angry Sky

By on September 3, 2005 in General Skwib, Parody & Satire, Skwibby fiction, Thag

Image of lightning strikeThe Thunka Grunka clan had never been so frightened.

The storm had started the afternoon before, a clash of angry bull-mammoth fighting in the sky, but it had not seemed out of the ordinary. But the thunder did not stop. The light kept flashing. It went on, and on. Through the night. They’d never experienced such a storm. At least dawn was finally approaching.

It was the thunder, the terrible noise that sounded as though the mountains were falling on them, which terrified them so, but Thag knew that wasn’t the only danger.

He looked around the cave in the predawn gloom. The body of Nooka, one of their youngest had not been moved, and neither had her mother, Mrooga — everyone was afraid to go near them. The child had fallen dead, mysteriously, when she approached the wall of the cavern, and Mrooga had fallen when she went to get her child.

He wondered if they would continue to stay in the cavern after the tragedy.

Their shaman, Weasel-Scratch-Face-Brother, said that Nooka had angered the Sky Mother, and that was why she was killed. Thag thought the medicine man was an asshole: he had no idea why Nooka died. Nor her mother.

The copious hair on his arms stood on end again, and another crash shattered the air around them. His mate, Onga, moaned in a fitful sleep and held onto him even tighter. He hugged her back; surely the storm would end soon?

At that moment, there seemed to be only two certainties: that despite everything, he loved Onga desperately, and that for all their wisdom and traditions, they were completely at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Hat tip to:
We are powerless in the face of nature| Lightning photo by jeffk

The Lost Power Point Slides: Liberation of Paris Edition

By on August 25, 2005 in Parody & Satire, The Lost PowerPoints

De Gaulle walks with Eiffel Tower in hand

Charles De Gaulle presents “A French-Made Liberation” (slide 5)

  • Paris! Outraged Paris! Broken Paris! Martyred Paris, but liberated Paris!
  • Liberated by the people of Paris with help from the armies of France.
  • Also with the help and support of the whole of France.
  • Yep, just France.

Charles De Gaulle presents “A French-Made Liberation” (slide 6)

  • Only France fought. Really. Nobody else.
  • Who are those ranks of Americans? Tourists! The Tourists are Returning!
  • Ignore them. Those English yobs too. Long live France.
  • France France France France France France France France!

[Slide wipe when when his head explodes.]

German Military Governor Dietrich von Choltitz Explains Why Paris Not a Second Stalingrad (first slide)

  • Didn’t want to wreck Paris. Paris is nice.
  • Except for the waiters, of course.
  • And the shopkeepers.
  • And any person in the service industry, actually.
  • However, they are quite accommodating if you have a gun.

Fact checking:
Liberation of Paris, August 25, 1944 [Wikipedia] | DeGaulle’s actual speech