Swedish Guy Forms Underground Resistance to Google

News that Google has been cloning smart-phone users for the purposes of market research and then killing them has met with mixed reviews from the public, with reactions ranging from outright anger to total indifference. “So they know I like pizza, big fucking deal,” Citizen Danny said Wednesday on Richmond, “They're not killing me, just a cardboard cutout of me, which is pretty much all a clone is. It doesn't have any of my memories, it's thoughts and fears are it's own, so it's no skin off my back.” On the other end of the reaction spectrum is Google's Actually Slaughtering People, a group who's website says they are focused on actively destroying Google's new marketing scheme through awareness campaigns and active resistance. The leader and spokesman for GASP is a Swedish national named Axel Hjalmar, who's rabid articles have spread across the internet in recent weeks condemning Google's actions, demanding they cease the cloning program and insisting Google stop their policy of total media silence since announcing the program.

Axel Hjalmar is a hard man to find. In an effort to speak to him one starts with the people sympathetic to his cause and tries to pin him down from there. After weeks of trying to contact him this reporter finally received word that he could meet Hjalmar. To this effect I was blindfolded by a group of his fellow resistance fighters in a port city on the Atlantic coast and taken on a two day car ride, three different helicopters, forty minutes in a rickshaw and finally a short walk down a flight of stairs. When the blindfold came off I was faced with the man - tall, blonde, totally Swedish and standing over a topographical map of Antarctica in a dank and dark steel room with water dripping from the ceiling. Here is the full transcript of my conversation with Axel Hjalmar, leader of the underground resistance to Google's tightening grip on the world:

James Betty: You're a hard man to find, Mr. Hjalmar.

Axel Hjalmar: Yes. I prefer it.

JB: So you don't get many Christmas cards then?

AH: [steely silence]

JB: Sooo... you don't visit your mother often then?

AH: Occasionally I mail her a page from the current Farmer's Almanac. She knows what that means. She knows I am alive. That is all the comfort I can spare.

JB: You run a pretty tight ship.

AH: How do you know this is a boat?

JB: I, uh, don't...know... this is a boat.

AH: Good. That was a test, to see if you know you are on a boat.

JB: We are definitely not on a boat.

AH: Why did you do that?

JB: Do what?

AH: You winked at your tape recorder. Why did you do that?

JB: [stuttering] I was just hitting on it, you know, practicing my game for when I get back on land... where ladies are.

AH: I told you how important security was to us. This is not the awareness I envisioned a journalist creating. You promised discretion in your questioning. It is very difficult to hide from a company that has it's own satellites and cars driving around documenting every inch of the world's public domain. You have no idea the setback you have created for GASP's ultimate operation.

JB: Wait, that sounds important, what is GASP's ultimate operation?

AH: You must leave. You can keep your tape recorder and do what you wish with the contents. GASP has certain free democratic principles that we will not allow ourselves to break, but GASP will be packing up and moving it's entire operation to a new secure location...

JB: [interrupting] One that can't sink?

AH: Yes, one that cannot sink. Now leave. You have already wasted enough of my time.

JB: Okay, if I want to contact you should I...

AH: [interrupting] Leave meddlesome typist!

JB: Right, I'll just...

[sounds of scuffling]

JB: [muffled] You're moving anyways, do I need the bag on my head to leave?

AH: Yes, at the moment we prefer it. I bid you good day, Mr. Betty.

[footsteps]

That didn't go well. No information was gained as to the details of GASP's ultimate plan for ending Google's new marketing scheme, but the bag they put on my head kind of smelled like crayfish. More details to come as they become available.

Slippery the Seal Escapes; Great Lakes Turned into Unprecedented Ecological Disaster

The sea lion exhibit at Storybook Gardens was having a storybook opening with the return of it's star attraction, the re-animated corpse of Slippery the Seal, drawing record crowds until two weeks ago when a curtain was erected around the entire exhibit. The park had initially said the exhibit was closed for renovations, but Ovaltine Goose-Shredder held a press conference early Wednesday and announced that was not the case. “Firstly, I'd just like to apologize to all the humans, and animals too, I guess. Anything with ears really. I'm really sorry about violating the sanctity of death. It won't happen again.” He then went on to announce that the unthinkable had happened. “Slippery the Seal has escaped again, pretty much exactly like he did last time, except he took all his new friends with him.”

The three other sea lions in the enclosure had initially been terrified of the re-animated Slippery. “They stayed up for days just screaming, and you could tell Slippery was put off by that,” Goose-Shredder said, “He exhibited signs of depression. He moped in the corner, he wouldn't eat. Initially he was not happy about being alive again, absolutely.” The saving grace was that eventually the other sea lions would grow tired and stop screaming in terror. “Apparently Slippery bit them on the neck when they fell asleep, and they became something akin to zombies like him. They were totally right to be afraid of him, and I'll definitely think twice about locking a living thing in a pit with a monster in the future.”

The other sea lions being turned into zombies was initially a weight off Goose-Shredder's mind. “I was really worried that Slippery wouldn't be able to re-integrate with his kind. Just imagine if no one ever wanted to hug you again, couldn't do anything besides scream at you, it would be the worst. Like growing up with Vladimir Putin for a father. I was physically ill thinking about the existence I had brought Slippery into. It was so painful seeing my creation completely unloved by his own kind,” he said, pointing to a map of the Great Lakes Watershed completely shaded in red. “Luckily he has lots of friends like him now because this death-limbo thing is totally contagious. Who knew right? So it's no one's fault that the Great Lakes are pretty much completely zombified now...”

According to Goose-Shredder it has taken less than two weeks for all the creatures in the Great Lakes ecosystem to catch the zombie-esque plague. “It exploded exponentially through the ecosystem once the sea lions were introduced...by accident.” Scientists confirm that the creatures now zombified cannot breed, but can't die either, so the entirety of the Great Lakes is now frozen in a stasis that will not change until the earth is destroyed. “Once bitten the creatures will develop a mad bloodlust. You could ask the sea lion trainers about it, but you actually can't do that at all, so I'm going to trail off now and hope no one has any follow-up questions,” Goose-Shredder said, “In an unrelated matter, since we've seen how the bloodlust affects humans anyone caught swimming in the Great Lakes will be shot on sight.”

In an effort to protect all of humanity a crack team of zombie hunters has been deployed in guard towers erected around the perimeter of the Great Lakes, and the watershed has been re-branded the Great Zombified Lakes in an effort to raise awareness of the dangers of entering the water. “It's just a reminder that entering the lakes means forfeiting your life.” Goose-Shredder said.

Since the revelation of Slippery's escape, questions have been raised as to how involved Goose-Shredder was in the seal's flight, with accusations running from turning a blind eye to faulty safety measures to full on opening the gate for the re-animated corpses to waddle through. “I will not entertain any accusations of wrong-doing,” Goose-Shredder said, before adding an apparent non-sequitur, “We really felt that I needed to make some amends, to make some progress with a moral imperative. Sometimes in order to go forward you have to go backward. I learned that in parking lots. It's my hope that I can begin to make amends for violating the sanctity of death, even if the progress can seem counter-intuitive or even downright apocalyptic. The important thing will be that the perceived wrongs can no longer exist, and a new era of freedom can hopefully be corrected by our future Einestiens, because I'm seriously out of ideas on this one.”

Google Terrifies Everyone With New Marketing Plan

Google has launched a new smart-phone app which uses a needle/spectrometer attachment to measure and track a persons blood sugar, a representative of the company said at a press conference early Wednesday. “We're marketing this to everyone, low blood sugar can lead to dizziness, vomiting and fainting spells which can be very dangerous and even fatal while driving. It would be irresponsible for a person not to use it.”

The app and needle attachment tests a persons blood sugar and recommends healthy options such as a specific quantity of apples or orange juice to optimize it. In more dangerous cases the app can also immediately call 911 and direct an ambulance to the user using the GPS tracker in every phone. “We really feel like Google is on the cutting edge of lifesaving technology right now,” the rep said, “which is good because so many of you are dying everyday, of really mundane things sometimes, and this app just takes one thing off your mind. This company is just brilliant. You're welcome.”

For the professional on the go it also tracks blood sugar levels across weeks and spots points in a person's daily routine where their blood sugar dips to unhealthy levels. The app then recommends healthy-eating options to prevent abnormalities from occurring in the first place. “For me, the app spotted a consistent dip in my blood sugar right around two o'clock in the afternoon and recommended apple juice as a pick-me-up,” the spokesman said, holding up his phone, “It also noticed that it dipped the most on Fridays, when I would be running around trying to take as much of the workload off the coming Monday and I would only have a cup of coffee all day. Now I've changed my habits for the better. I make sure to take a full lunch on Fridays and not stress so much about what Monday will bring. This app has significantly changed my life for the better.” He then kissed his phone with a lot of tongue and the press conference went on a short hiatus while he settled that out on stage. When we got back about half of the journalists had left, so they missed the last bits of what the Google representative had to say.

“It also just happens to be possible for the app to record the user's DNA profile and upload it to Google servers.” After some awed whistles from the few remaining journalists the representative went on to explain that the company is currently building a database to log all genetic markers that may pre-dispose a person to buying or being attracted to a certain product. “This way Google can now know and market to a persons unconscious desires and tell them about products they don't even know they want.”

Towards this end, at Google's Antarctic Base there is a team of scientists dressed in primary colours cloning people out of their newly formed DNA database for the purposes of market research. “For instance, we could clone you and make you walk through a mock-up of a grocery store ten thousand times, with the end goal being when we detect that the real you is walking through a grocery store thanks to your GPS tracking smartphone, Google can send a targeted message to you knowing that 8,461 times out of 10,000 you lingered on a Delissio Frozen Pizza and suggest you buy it. It's all about knowing what a person is predisposed to do before even they are aware of it, and I think the people who advertise with us will agree that this makes us the world's cutting edge marketing firm.”

The Google rep then went to to allay any fears the public might have about their clone being brought to life in an unpoliced international zone. “Don't worry, when we're done with the market research we kill the clone. That's why we do this in Antarctica.” When asked exactly how they go about killing the clones the rep said “We let them run off and shoot them with rifles, and then they're left to the local wildlife, like God intended.”

The new app is available for download across all smart-phone platforms, while the needle/spectrometer attachment is mailed to the user after purchase. The company has already mailed out over one million free needle/spectrometer attachments and it's associated literature to prospective users but there is a buzz in the streets of a resistance movement growing amongst a segment of the population in regards to the cloning/killing portion of Google's new initiative. More details to come as they become available.

James Betty has the Sickness; Phones it in This Week

I've been sick all week. It looks like this is going to be a Monday to Friday kind of thing, which would be fine if I was getting paid, but phlegm is only trading at about $0.04/oz right now so making a living is difficult. You would have to have a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters smoking two packs a day to turn a profit at those prices. Monkeys are also notorious for ignoring spittoons, so I guess that harvesting method wouldn't work at all, actually. One more get-rich-quick scheme down the drain. Had real promise too.

I totally have an article, actually two, done this week, but I'm having trouble concentrating and just making something up seemed like a way better plan than taking something seriously. Even if what I'm looking at is utter nonsense, proofreading requires an attention to the English language that just doesn't seem appropriate right now. Also I once let a friend mix scotch and cough medicine and she turned out great so I haven't really got anything to lose by running with this. It's all uphill from here.

I've figured out why old people suck. It's daytime television's fault. The medium itself is like late-night television without the cussing and innuendo, but they still try and fill entire hours at a time with whatever wanders by. The difference is that without dick jokes you're left trying to fill time with human interest stories featuring moral plot-lines that border on goonish emotional thuggery. How old people have the energy to sustain the emotional resonance over weeks is beyond me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they only pick up on two or three different stories and then repeat their morals at every family gathering until the part of their brain that stores it gets too mushy. Goonish emotional thuggery, I'm onto you grandma. I'm calling her out on it when we're at Easter.

The structure of these shows is strange. They're rounded, they roll all over the place. You don't see one side of anything for too long before it's tuned over. Today on Ellen Megan Fox brought up the fact that future humans went back in time and built the pyramids to give us a head start on what triangles look like and she barely got a second to talk about that before Ellen threw to commercial. I'm going to get to the bottom of this, and I don't care if there's a lesbian haircut is at the top. I'm going on a crusade on behalf of pretty people with stupid ideas everywhere. Where's my kaballah bracelet?

I was going to go on a crusade, but I'm pretty sick this week and my bed is really warm. Also the news is really bumming me out this week, so did you know that there is competitive R/C car racing? Why not, right?

Live(?) Coverage of TSN TradeCentre

12:17 - I woke up at noon to find a slow drip of content coming out of a sports network adopting a 24 hour news cycle format to cover the NHL trade deadline. It could work, but it's not the weekend so it's pretty boring. When I turned on my TV they were projecting the player selections/line match-ups for Canada's 2014 Olympic Hockey Team. Premature? Absolutely. Jonathan Toews could be playing for Al-Qaeda by then. Afghanistan could build an arena by then. A producer at TSN could figure out this is a terrible format by then. All maybe's because two years is a long time. On a day when nothing is sure to happen, there will be more to come...

12:28 – Gambling to the rescue! Gambling websites are offering 5:1 odds on James Duthie being crushed by his inability to make TradeCentre entertaining and having a complete mental breakdown live on air. Maybe I was a little too harsh on the format. Live TV kind of rules when you think about it.

12:30 - Twitter is full of smart people huh...

12:47 – The boredom is getting to the on air personalities too. Bob McKenzie and Gord Miller have stripped to the waist and are about to have a bare-knuckle boxing match for the ages. A smart network would turn on their sepia filter right about now.

12:53 – Things are actually happening! Right now the odds are pretty good that I'll be eating my words. Too bad I'm doing this Live(?) on my Word Processor so the TradeCentre bashing can't be changed. Apparently the New York Rangers have traded Sean Avery for Ron Artest. Word is they're trying to add some psychotic-unpredictability down the stretch and ditching their clownishness. Really, Ron Artest has always seemed like more of a hockey player than a hoopster.

1:01 – Jason Spezza has been traded for a go-kart. Ottawa Senators General Manager Brian Murray has said “A go-kart will give the puck away less, and be more fun.” Spezza will be a Kart-Waxer at Little Indy Go-Karts near the Playdium in Mississauga.

1:23 – Mark Crawford is announcing that the Edmonton Oilers went all Air Bud and signed a full on Polar Bear. Crawford thinks this will add some much needed grit to their roster. The signing from the Metro Toronto Zoo is conditional on the bear learning to skate on two legs. Also likes the zoo's adding Taylor Hall to the monkey pen, saying “Hopefully the chimps can keep their fingers out of his head wound.”

2:21 – Brian Murray has got Jason Spezza back from Little Indy Go-Karts for their 4^th and 5^th round picks. Murray is saying, “We need a Kart-Waxer now that we have a go-kart. Who knew? The towel boy told me to go to hell when I told him to do it, so we're glad to have Spezz back. With his familiarity with the organization he should step right into his new position with no difficulty.”

4:41 – Ha, just kidding. I got bored and made all that up. Also I napped for most of the afternoon. If there are fewer commentators at the desks I'll assume something interesting happened and look into it, but actually nothing happened so I can just watch the last twenty minutes and assume I saw everything. Excelsior!

4:54 – They've gone into silent film! The TSN panel went into a black and white silent film mode! It's a triumph of experimental journalism that's got me seriously reconsidering what I'm doing with my life. I'd given up on ever being impressed by the TSN crew, nay, I never even gave them a chance. I never thought I could be surprised by a bunch of people who had no idea what to say for 9 hours, but they slogged through the hours of doldrums to create space for the magic moments of sublime artistic re-invention they ended with, and I'm in tears. I never thought I'd say this, but I may be a hack journalist. I think I have to write a sonnet for James Duthie, or maybe I just owe him that pair of queens I bet against his mental stability.