News, Newsy, News-ish

In an effort to become more like a real print journalist, all of our stories, today, are two to three days late. They aren't so much "news" as they are "new-ish." For those of you who get most of your news from the Internet, you may take this time for review or you may smoke if you got 'em.


FDA Ponders Raising Standards for Birth Control Drugs -- WASHINGTON - The government is considering setting higher standards for birth control drugs used by millions, saying that newer pills appear to be less effective at preventing pregnancy than those approved decades ago.

A spokesman for the FDA said, "We believe there could be several factors contributing to the decreased efficacy of The Pill. First, the bitches need to remember to actually take The Pill. Our studies have shown that not taking The Pill has even less effect than a placebo. We conducted the experiments at a Tau Omega Beta frat house. Using a control group of 100 female freshmen our research has proven that only the girls who actually took The Pill did not become pregnant. The other 73 girls went back home and are currently lying to their friends and family."

"Contributing to the study's results is that a very high percentage of the women who got pregnant were blond. Now, we have to be careful when analysing this sort of ancillary information. This does not necessarily imply that blonds are dumber. It could just mean that "good girls" don't fuck around."

Another factor affecting the quality of The Pill is that, in an effort to cut costs, Phizzer has outsourced it's manufacturing to a company owned by the Vatican. Plant Manager, Cardinal Roselli, was unavailable for comment.



Coin Shortage Could Turn Pennies into Nickels -- NEW YORK - A potential shortage of coins in the United States could mean all those pennies in your piggy bank could be worth five times their current value soon, says Conrad Velde, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Sharply rising prices of metals such as copper and nickel have meant the face value of pennies and nickels are worth less than the material that they are made of, increasing the risk that speculators could melt the coins and sell them for a profit.

The best solution, Velde said, would be to "rebase" the penny by making it worth five cents rather than one cent. Doing so would increase the amount of five-cent coins in circulation and do away with the almost worthless one cent coin.

"We think rebasing will really catch on. If it works with pennies our next move will be the dollar bill. In fact, we are currently sending tens of thousands of Sharpies to banks all across the country. The tellers there are being trained to turn one dollar bills into five dollar bills. This could be a real boost to the economy!" he enthused.

When asked if rebasing would work in other sectors, Mr. Velde said, "Why not? Remember that old Chevy in your garage? By rebasing it, you could be driving a luxury car. All you have to do is recognize that it is worth less than the material it is made of. Then declare it to be worth five times it's current value. Hell, everything I own is like that. If this catches on, I'll be a millionaire." After a brief pause for thought he continued, "Of course, the only place rebasing wouldn't work is Hollywood. If those people were worth half of what they think they are, they would probably double in actual value."




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