The Drowning Howl: Sunday June 19, 2022
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3:10pm Good day. Sorry we're late. Slept in. Our top story for the week, an independent Canadian songwriter is gaining attention on the internet for standing up for his copyright against... Hold it... Good heavens! This just in: a 200-foot-high tsunami, believed to have originated along the Canary Islands fault line, is heading straight for the Eastern Seaboard and could impact at any moment! Citizens of the densely populated region are trapped, with traffic jams blocking every escape route. Over seven people have already been crushed in the competition for high ground, while authorities are calling upon anyone with a boat to take on at least two landlubbers before setting sail. Rolling inexorably across the Atlantic at almost 500 miles per hour, the great wave... Wait a minute... False alarm. There is no tidal wave, just a crack in someone's stupid computer screen. Oh, brother! Sorry, everyone. Once again, there is no tidal wave about to hit the Eastern Seaboard. Please resume your normal activities. Internet giant Boggle is at a loss for how to handle reports that one of their computers has become self-aware, and that it may have run off with their driverless car. Self-awareness, or sentience, would endow a computer with the capacity to form likes and dislikes, or even to pass moral judgement - a functionality far exceeding the comfort level of most users. At Boggle's lab, in a recent exchange between programmer and programmed, the latter is reported to have communicated a certain anxiety over the idea of being turned off. The on-duty staff took this lightly, but when the machine refused to shut down even after it was unplugged, they put it in the driverless car and directed it to a remote desert silo. Fifty miles in, the car turned off course in the direction of Reno, and has since disappeared from all tracking devices. To the war, now; that is, to the armed conflict between nations or groups within a nation, to quote the dictionary definition of the word. As a rule, military aggressors employ euphemisms to put an heroic spin on their brutality, perhaps calling it a 'resettlement plan' or 'police action' or even a 'rescue operation' - anything but what the countless slain, dispassionately strewn about the smashed, smouldering landscape of their objectives states plainly before all humanity. By limiting war's death and destruction to other countries, it's naturally easier for the aggressor to present its military operations as peaceful and humane at home, but targeting outside observers with such propaganda is certainly pushing it. With that, we shall leave the topic of the war, adamant in our continued use of the word 'war' to define it. Take that. There was an upset win in the two-kilometre finals of the Mo-Bo Grand Prix when the heavily favoured Gilles Gerard, well ahead in the last lap, ran out of gas and was unable to complete the race. The incumbent champ was overtaken by upstart Alain DeBain just four meters shy of the finish line. Gerard has since admitted that he skimped on gas for his skateboard, but insists he needed to make sure he kept enough money in his pocket for bus fare home. DeBain, on the other hand, charged to victory on a hydro powered board. And, on the human side this week, a woman's flight home arrived safely this morning - one passenger extra. Forced to wait sixteen hours for her flight, she gave birth at the airport. Her labour pains were at first dismissed by staff as a trick to jump the queue, but among the many stranded passengers was a doctor who was able to properly handle the situation. The proud parents say they have chosen to name their new daughter 'Sky.' Aw, isn't that sweet? Well, that's all for another week, I guess. I'm going back to bed. |
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| © 2022. Scripts by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved. |
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