WHY WE LOVE AMERICA, IT MAKE SATIRE SO EASY
The Shrub makes absurdity so surreal. Insanity so accesssible. Ridicule so apropos......
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WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT ANDREW MARLATT'S "ECONOMY OF ERRORS"
"Hysterically funny. Marlatt's satire tells you more about what's happening than the 'real' news. I love this book!"
— Jane Bryant Quinn, Newsweek columnist, author of "Making the Most of Your Money"
"I loved Suck, and I love The Onion. Though Andrew Marlatt chose not to name his book 'The Suckion,' it is that smart, and that funny."
— Kurt Andersen, author of "Turn of the Century" and co-founder of Spy magazine.
"ECONOMY OF ERRORS is drop dead funny! Andrew Marlatt's intelligence, wit, and razor-sharp powers of quirky observation kept me screaming with laughter. Do yourself a favor, buy this book. Your view of current events will never be the same."
— Wendy Northcutt, author of "The Darwin Awards," founder of www.darwinawards.com
"Simply one of the funniest books I've ever read, ECONOMY OF ERRORS takes a Swiftian approach to (surprise!) satirizing the online world, the offline world, and any world in between. The stories are great because they make me lose weight with belly laughter while bringing the sheer magnitude of the events into human focus."
— Jeff "Hemos" Bates, co-founder, Slashdot.
"With so many hilarious business stories in one book, I can now cancel my subscription to Forbes."
— Andy Borowitz, humorist, The New Yorker and The New York Times.
"If your idea of a power breakfast is scarfing down a bagel as you synchronize your PDA with the latest orange juice futures, ECONOMY OF ERRORS is not just for you, it¹s about you. But for the rest of us, Andrew Marlatt restores our faith in the exquisite oxymoron "funny business."
— Michael Rosen, editor of "Mirth of a Nation"
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AmeriKa: The World's Biggest Joke
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Excerpts:
ENRON ADMITS IT'S REALLY ARGENTINA
Now Massive Ineptitude, Corruption Make More Sense, Analysts Say
Houston, Texas (SatireWire.com) — Collapsed due to gross mismanagement and insurmountable debt, energy company Enron today confessed to what many observers had long suspected: it is actually Argentina.
Congressional leaders, who have called for an investigation into the biggest corporate failure in U.S. history, immediately dismissed Enron's claim, but Argentinians weren't so sure. "The shady deals. The crazy debt. I knew there was something familiar about those guys," said Banco del Argentina director Ernesto Caballo.
Enron chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay, speaking through an interpreter via phone from Buenos Aires, apologized for any confusion the subterfuge may have caused, and noted that as a sovereign nation, the company was immune from U.S. prosecution. Lay also insisted that he had not "fled" to Argentina, but had returned home to the capital to visit "mi familia."
While not directly stating it, Lay also hinted that he might in fact be Argentinian President Fernando de la Rua. Reached in Buenos Aires, de la Rua admitted he couldn't rule that out. "Things are pretty crazy around here. Who can say?"
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FED DROPS INTEREST RATES, ACID AT POLICY RAVE
Federal Reserve Not So Reserved Anymore
Washington, D.C. (SatireWire.com) — Proving the Federal Reserve is anything but reserved, U.S. central bank governors this week announced they had dropped interest rates, their pants, and 162 tabs of acid and Ecstasy during what turned out to be a two-day "policy rave" that ended Thursday.
What Fed Governor Bradley Muer looked like to Fed Governor Nathan Gladstone.
According to those present, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan did not ingest any hallucinogens, although he was affected. "Alan didn't drop, which was probably a good thing, because for about two hours there he barked like a chicken and had laser beams shooting from all 12 of his eyes," said committee staffer Julie Lindstrom. "But his gossamer wings were soooo beautiful."
"Everyone was soooo beautiful," she added.
The closed-door session of the Federal Open Market Committee reportedly began with Greenspan discussing his upcoming Congressional testimony. However, it quickly raved-up after an unidentified staffer, frustrated at not being able to understand the opaque chairman, passed around tabs of Ecstasy and LSD, which he identified only as "Greenspan Decoders."
"About 45 minutes later, (Fed Governor) Nathan Gladstone says to me, 'Julie, can you bring us the reports on monetary interventions, bond yields, and three dozen pacifiers?'" recalled Lindstrom. "Then we ordered some glowsticks and Jurassic-5 CDs, and the Open Market meeting got really, really open."
For the next 36 hours, the committee's dignified board room was transformed into a trance room, with the heads of the New York and Dallas central banks banging out jungle-drum rhythms on the massive oval table, and the head of the Detroit bank insisting consumer confidence tastes like candy-coated clouds. Toward daybreak, male committee members and staff reportedly took off their trousers after their zippers began to emit radio signals which they feared could be picked up by passing spaceships.
While the rave was "definitely a dope groove," Fed Governor Bradley Muer said members did exhibit restraint. "Some people were going to candyflip (combine Ecstasy with acid), but most of us are Old Economy, and acid just seemed more traditional," he said.
The rave fizzled about 7 a.m., and was about to adjourn when a staffer reportedly noticed the committee hadn't covered every item on the agenda. "We just hit re-entry, and were going watch the sun come up over the Treasury Building, when somebody said, 'Oh shit, we forgot to drop the fed fund rates,'" explained FOMC member Gerald F. Cohen. "Then everybody just started calling out whatever numbers they saw floating in front of their eyes."
Hours later, the board finally agreed to cut rates half a percentage point. Initially, said Cohen, committee members decided to lower rates by 8 million basis points, from 2.00 to minus 7,999,998, but were talked out of it by an art deco wall sconce that claimed it was Cary Grant.
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Seymour? Looka here, hombre:
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God, I miss Franz Kafka. |
