November 23, 2029—Millions of Americans are expected to remain stranded on the Moon during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, as the spaceline industry struggles with overbooked flights and long lines at the space elevator.

Demand for space trips back to Earth have quadrupled over the last three weeks in the wake of news that the supposed asteroid threat to the planet was all a hoax.  U.S. Spaceways, for example, says it has more than 80,000 customers on standby lists.  And the skyrocketing demand has led to exorbitant fares that are leaving many refugees unable to afford a trip home.

“The fare structure is nuts,” said Emma Stucke, who fled her home in Arlington, Va., in August and has been living in a refugee camp near the city of Craterburg. “A one-way ticket back to Earth costs $35,000. A round-trip ticket costs half of that. But why the hell would I want a round-trip ticket?”

The spacelines are hiking fares despite the fact that 10 state attorneys general are investigating claims that the companies engaged in price gouging during the massive and ultimately unnecessary exodus from Earth earlier this year.

“We truly believe the spacelines tried to take advantage of asteroid crisis before it was exposed as a hoax,” said Florida Attorney General Sonny Day. “Now they appear to be pulling the same tricks to exploit everyone’s eagerness to return home in time for turkey, pumpkin pie and Black Friday deals. 
 
Meanwhile, the space elevator has been operating at double capacity for the past two weeks and has broken down twice. Moon refugees have already formed long lines to buy tickets for travel home in time for Christmas.

FU transportation analyst Otto Buss said the travel crisis on the Moon is actually good news for people still on Earth.  Since more than half of the population is stuck off-planet, traffic on U.S. highways should be significantly reduced over the holiday weekend.

November 19, 2029—A bipartisan bill introduced Wednesday would provide incentives for states to ban drivers from picking their noses while behind the wheel.

The legislation, introduced in the Senate, is the latest measure designed to curb deaths and injuries due to so-called distracted driving.

The measure attracted a fair amount of support during a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, but some lawmakers said legislation should be left up to the states, while others called it too extreme. 

Sen. Wynn Power, (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and Trey Fick (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security, believe their legislation will save lives.

“Over the years we’ve barred drivers from talking or texting on handheld devices, eating and drinking, and even talking with other passengers in the car,” Power said at the hearing.  “But we still have too many traffic accidents and fatalities, because we have people concentrating too hard on clearing their noses. Banning nose-picking seems to be the ultimate way that we can make sure people aren’t distracted when they’re behind the wheel.”
 
People “are driving lethal weapons,” and digging around in your nasal cavity while doing so is “the grossest kind of negligence,” Fick said.
 
Power said studies show more than 916,500 drivers pick their noses while behind the wheel at any given moment. Last year, 5,800 people were killed due to nose-picking drivers.
 
The legislation would create a grant program for states that enact laws prohibiting nose-picking while driving and impose significant penalties for drivers who cause an accident.
 
Sen. Lee Bertarian (R-Calif.) said he thinks states should take the lead in developing such laws, but added that even state legislation that impose nose-picking restrictions goes too far.
 
“There a certain innate, semi-private human behaviors that occur no matter where one is—at home, behind the wheel, in a public restroom stall,” he said. “We can’t legislate against all of that. What’s next? Are we going to ban blinking while driving?”

November 17, 2029—TEL-U Mobile said today that network disruptions yesterday led to inoperable augmented reality service, leaving millions of customers to walk or drive around with no information about what they were seeing.
 
The outage began about 2:16 p.m. ET yesterday and lasted until early this morning, affecting customers across the country, a TEL-U spokesman said.  The company says a software error led to the disruption.  

TEL-U customers complained that they felt virtually crippled without the augmented reality (AR) data that tell them everything from the source of the beans used in their Starbucks coffee to the marital status of a person passing them on the street. The incident underscored Americans’ deepening dependence on AR -powered eyeglasses and contact lenses to get through the day.    
 
TEL-U advertises its AR network and eyewear as the most sophisticated in the nation. The company boasts more than 7 million subscribers.

The company yesterday was deluged with calls from angry customers. Diners complained that they had no data to determine whether a restaurant they were considering patronizing had any health-code violations. Consumers complained that the outage hampered their everyday search for the latest fashions.

“I was walking down Park Avenue and noticed this woman wearing a gorgeous cashmere coat,” Manhattan resident Pru Tenchus said. “I wanted to know where she bought it and how much she paid for it, but the data didn’t pop up on my AR sunglasses. This was highly inconvenient.”

Pedestrians griped that they had no information about the criminal history, political affiliation or religion of people they passed on the street.

“I started chatting with a very nice man in line with me at the deli near by office,” said Chicago resident Sue Spiches. “I was waiting for information about him to pop up on my contact lenses, but it never came. For all I know, he was a registered sex offender or a Mormon.”
 
For other customers, the outage merely hampered their personal lives a bit.

“I was sitting at a coffee shop and was attracted to a woman sitting at the table next to me,” said Greg Aryus, a longtime TEL-U subscriber. “But I’m a conservative guy. I like old-fashioned girls, and without the AR network functioning, I had no information on whether she was a member of a NOW or a regular contributor to Emily’s List. Unaugmented reality bites.”

November 13, 2029—Michael Phelps’ upcoming autobiography contains a shocking admission that he never actually used illegal drugs during his storied career in competitive swimming.

According to an excerpt of the autobiography, “Wet,” published today in Googlenews.com, the 14-time Olympic gold medalist says he actually leaked a fake photo to a British tabloid in 2009 showing him using a bong to smoke marijuana (then a controlled substance).  USA Swimming subsequently suspended him from swimming for three months.

“I thought I could eventually sell more copies of my memoirs if I had a blemish on my image that I could talk about in detail,” Phelps confesses. “I figured people would want to read about how ashamed and humiliated I was.”

He said he later sent a letter to USA Swimming admitting that he faked the photo for money-making purposes, but that the organization ignored his confession because it wanted to convince the public that it was cracking down on illegal drug use in the sport.

Retired tennis pro Andre Agassi, who wrote a 2009 autobiography in which he admitted to illegal drug use during his career, issued a statement sharply criticizing Phelps.

“I think Michael has learned that over the years that celebrities who admit to past drug use—myself, LeBron James, Bill Clinton—are a dime a dozen,” Agassi said. “So he’s decided to cash in by claiming to have faked bad behavior instead of actually having engaged in it. To me he’s right up there with [actor] David Duchovny.”

Agassi was referring to longstanding rumors that Duchovny lied about being a recovering sex addict back in 2008 in order to boost ratings for his TV show, “Californication,” in which he played a sex addict.

November 12, 2029—Former NASA Administrator Cy Phiphan appears to have fled the planet after learning that a special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate his role in the apocalypse fraud scheme.

Federal investigators yesterday subjected Phiphan’s family to hours of mind probing, and learned that the former NASA chief, who resigned under fire last week, had headed into space on his private shuttle before dawn on Wednesday morning.  Phiphan’s escape came less than 12 hours after Attorney General Beau Biden named longtime prosecutor Barry Cuda to lead an inquiry into the so-called Armageddon-gate scandal.

“We suspect that Mr. Phiphan will run to the lunar principality of Moonaco, which has no extradition treaty with the United States,” FBI Director Don Jeeman said in a press conference this. “So it may be very difficult to retrieve him to make him atone for his apparent hoax on humanity.”

The investigation stems from an FU story published last month showing that the asteroid that NASA claimed to have discovered heading on a destructive path toward Earth was in fact a fabrication. Phiphan conspired with other government officials to concoct the story in order to steer lucrative contracts to LockMartin Corp. for the construction of planetary evacuation ships.  LockMartin allegedly agreed to pay kickpacks to Phiphan and numerous government officials in exchange for the contract award.

Cuda will also investigate allegations that Homeland Security Secretary Marshall Lawe joined the scheme in order to help enrich his mistress. California real estate mogul Sela House, who says she began an affair with Lawe in 2027, has admitted in an affidavit that she and Lawe volunteered to help NASA and the Pentagon perpetuate the asteroid hoax so that they could manipulate housing values.

Meanwhile, the world community is condemning the United States and its allies for allowing the asteroid scare to proliferate unchecked. The Palestinian Authority accused the Jolie administration of using the scheme to clear the West Bank and Gaza Strip of all Palestinians so that Israel could settle those areas permanently.  Russia accused the administration of using a concocted secondary crisis—aliens entering the solar system—as an excuse to revive the old “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative. And North Korea and Iran both condemned the U.S. because that’s what they always do.

November 11, 2029—Sammy Sosa says a revolutionary cosmetic cream he uses to soften the skin around his cheeks and eyes is the reason he now resembles an Asian woman.

The former Chicago Cubs slugger, whose use of cosmetic creams and hair-straightening products has drawn attention for two decades, was photographed at a gala event in Las Vegas last week with a noticeably different face and ostensibly new gender.

Sosa, who turns 61 tomorrow, says he is not suffering from any skin illness and has not undergone any gender-alteration surgery or ethnicity-changing treatments. He says he has been using a revolutionary cream for a long time, and combined with bright camera lights that made him squint, it made his face look feminine and Asian.

Sosa in 2005 (left) and today

FU’s occassional step away from the future and into our crazy present. 

Using tissue grown in a laboratory, researchers have engineered fully functional replacement penises. The organs were made for rabbits, but the technique may someday be useful for people. 

 ”This technology has considerable potential for patients requiring penile construction,” wrote researchers in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Oddly, the procedure seemed to make the rabbits randier than usual. 

We predict that this will lead to a thriving new industry of penile-growth products that will far outsell Viagra and other erectile dysfunction  treatments .   But men will be advised to call their doctor if their new penis continues to grow for more than four hours.

November 9, 2029—Federal health officials announced today that, because they have to ration the scarce supply of the new death vaccine, they will withhold the medication from groups that have been identified in public opinion polls to be the least deserving.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its vaccine distribution plan during a morning press conference, emphasizing that it only has enough of the vaccine to immunize the most at-risk populations, such as the elderly and people with genetic predisposition to life-threatening illnesses. Last on the priority list will be people working in the most hated professions, as identified in various surveys.

“Unfortunately, there are several groups that will not be eligible for the vaccine because of supply shortages,” said CDC chief Anne T. Septec. “These groups have been selected based on the low esteem in which they are held by the majority of Americans. They include trial lawyers, politicians, journalists, collection agents, tax auditors, parking meter monitors, and street mimes.”

The Food and Drug Administration in September approved the vaccine, called Survivasil, for immunization against virtually all natural causes of death, including communicable diseases, genetic mutations that lead to cancer, and simple aging.  It does not, however, cure the common cold.

Eli Lilly & Co. did not anticipate such a huge demand for the vaccine, and is developing new supplies, but says its manufacturing process takes considerable time. 

Septec said people in the low priority groups may be able to get the next round of vaccine when it becomes available in March. But organizations representing those low-priority people are nevertheless protesting the CDC distribution plans, saying many of their members could be dead by the time the new supplies of vaccine are released.  Immediately after the CDC press conference, the American Trial Lawyers Association, the American Bar Association, the Committee to Protect Journalists and National Association of Silent Performers (NASP) all released statements condemning the plan as discriminatory.

“             ,” Noah Tauker, NASP President, said about the CDC strategy.

And Republican lawmakers say they will introduce a bill that would require CDC to provide members of Congress with the vaccine. The Democratically-controlled House is likely to try to quash that legislation unless they can attach an amendment that would also insure the vaccine for tax collectors and MSNBC employees.

November 5, 2029—Pitcher Emery Ball held the Yankees to just two hits and one run on Wednesday, leading the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the World Series for the first time in half a century. But baseball fans openly refused to believe the Pirates’ victory, accusing the federal government of rigging the game to draw attention away from the scandal surrounding the end-of-the-world hoax.

“They expect us to believe anything,” said longtime Yankees fan Skip Tickel about the 6-2 victory in Game 5.  “We bought the whole story about the asteroid heading toward Earth, and the aliens that were supposedly entering the solar system. But for them to think we’d believe the Pirates actually won the Series is pretty insulting.”

Until this year, the Pirates’ 37-year streak of consecutive losing seasons was the most of any of North America’s four major sports leagues.  Under manager Ian Field, the team turned around this year with the help of a strong pitching staff that featured Ball and C.C. Sabathia III. 

FU sports analyst Bob Caustic said the public skepticism about the Pirates’ win is understandable given the government lies that have been exposed over the last week.

“The chances of two longtime losing baseball teams suddenly becoming colossal Cinderella stories is highly unlikely,” Caustic said, referencing last year’s World Series win by the Chicago Cubs.

FU’s occassional step away from the future and into the crazy present.

Galactic Suite has revealed that plans to open the first hotel in space are on schedule and The Galactic Suite Space Resort will be open for business and accepting tourists by 2012.

 But it’s not a bargain stay. The Barcelona-based architects of space resort say it will cost 3 million euro ($4.4 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island before the trip.   They could make a reality show out of the training camp alone. Read more…