Horse abuse

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened by the neglect or abuse of any living creatures, which is why we find the Man v Horse Marathon disturbing. Not only do they pit human athletes in top shape against horses who have not had time to train, but they then make them run a course designed to exhaust them more than it exhausts their human counterparts. What's worse, they then hold over the horses heads that they are not so fast as they thought they were because in this rigged race they can't always beat all of the human entrants. Don't get us wrong, we thing it would be great for humans to be included in horse races and horses to be included in foot races, but we think that this so-called Marathon has perhaps gone too far.

Notoriety

In the past month BP has, with help from the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch, created quite a literal and figurative mess. The literal mess, of course, is the oil soiling beaches and wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico while the figurative mess is the public relations nightmare that having such a huge literal mess naturally causes. We feel sorry for BP as, after all, it was our nemesis that got them into this mess, but we also feel that they should bear the brunt of the cleanup cost as nobody made them negotiate with the UBHP. When you stop to think of the magnitude of the problem you will undoubtedly be overwhelmed, which is presumably why a BP executive had a brilliant idea: if you can't clean up the literal mess, just clean up the figurative one and then the public will stop noticing the literal mess and you're off the hook. It's much easier, after all. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not appreciative of such cunning, but we are also nothing if not hoping that the world citizens don't stand for it!

Warning: Adverse reaction between North Korean super drink and smart clothes!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thorough, which is why we are always running product compatibility tests in the background. We have tested innumerable combinations of products including using an iPhone while sitting on the most common office chairs. Most of the time, as was the case with the aforementioned iPhone experiments, we find nothing statistically significant. Occasionally, however, we stumble upon serious adverse reactions when combining unrelated products.

One such reaction that we recommend avoiding at all costs is the recently-mentioned smart clothes and North Korea's new Super Drink. Simultaneous use of both of them has nearly cost one of our testers her life, and several other testers were nearly injured in the incident. We would honor the testers publicly, but we wouldn't want to blow their cover just yet.

An unlikely source of emotional support

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not excited by progress in its many (brad-free, of course) forms, which is why we are thrilled that we can direct your attention to Barbara Layne's latest sensation: smart clothes. When you're wearing smart clothes you won't need friends or family to tell you that you need to "chill out" or to "stop feeling sorry for yourself" because your clothes will do it for them. What's more, not only will your close friends be able to read your moods, but even people on the street who have never met you will be able to read your LED announcement to the world that you are trying to calm down. It's a wonderful extension of the concepts espoused by Twitter, so we're hoping you'll get yours soon!

A Vicious new Attack

We would like to take a minute to warn our supporters who are on Facebook that not everybody is as altruistic as we are. Take, for instance, this new "clickjacking" attack. It may be possible that your friend did not in fact post Justin Bieber's private phone number or naughty pictures of your favorite celebrity, and that he or she, in fact, was taken in by the same ruse you are about to fall for. We are not sure yet whether the Parent Corporation is behind this vile use of Facebook and this horrible ruse, but we will keep you updated on what our operatives find. In the short term, we urge caution to avoid falling prey to these horrendous attacks.

Tools of evil: brads and hole punches

It has recently emerged that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was not only caused by operatives of the Parent Corporation, but that it was also created using their favorite tools of evil: brads and hole punches. No matter how many times we try to tell the world about their evils, we can never say too much. Who would have thought that using robotic hole punches to weaken the failsafes and inserting brads into the drilling mud would have had such a catastrophic effect? (Well, our scientists had already considered this scenario, so as a matter of fact, we would have thought that, but the rhetorical question was really aimed at those that haven't read our reports, so our guess is that the answer is really "nobody") At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not hoping that this illustration of their deleterious effect will go a long way to stemming their popularity!

Disclaimers

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to excellence, which is why we always read disclaimers on products we use. If, for example, Google maps warns you that walking directions are in beta and may lead you to places without sidewalks, we would suggest that you take that into account before blindly following the directions and suing Google when you get hit by a car. Even if you don't consider it before acting, please consider the disclaimer before pursuing legal action.

The Consequences of Dealing with the Enemy

We have suspected for several weeks now that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was not simply an accident, but an act of extreme evil by our nemesis, the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch. Until now, however, when we discovered the incriminating communications, we had no hard evidence that could link them to the disaster. Daniel's work on transmission lines has paid off again, this time in letting us overhear some communications between top UBHP officials. The exchange was essentially a report from an operative on how the evidence of their involvement in the leak has nearly been destroyed by the subsequent efforts to patch the leak, and that no one will suspect what really happened. We hate to rain on their parade, but we do suspect what really happened, which is essentially this:

Several months ago the UBHP approached top officials at BP with an offer of alliance. BP rejected the unholy alliance and told them, in essence, to get lost. The UBHP responded by infiltrating BP and getting their own personnel to the drilling rig that exploded. They simultaneously changed their approach with BP executives and started trying to woo them with gifts. The gifts worked, and the BP executives finally relented and agreed to a secret discussion. "Edgar" flew in on his private jet and met with them, but, to their credit, the BP executives saw through the overtures and gifts and recognized that the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch was not someone they wanted to deal with. The meeting ended with "Edgar" being escorted from the room by BP security, all the while vowing to "get even" with BP.

The events immediately preceding the explosion on the drilling rig are the subject of intense scrutiny at the moment, so we won't attempt to cover them other than to mention that the UBHP operatives were in place and performing their mission when the disaster occurred. It is also likely, although the evidence is not all in yet, that they had something to do with the prior damage to the well that precipitated the crisis.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not observant, which is why we can note that neither the UBHP nor the Parent Corporation has resorted to terrorism before and that we have never found evidence that either one has had a failed secret meeting with company executives in the past. It seems, then, safe to say that if you agree to an audience with "Edgar," you had better be serious about it.

Our operatives have confirmed that the spies used by the UBHP did, in fact, perish in the incident and that their efforts ensured that the well would remain uncapped for over a month. We would like to take a paragraph or two to denounce the irresponsible methods of the Parent Corporation, but that will have to wait for another day. For now it will suffice to say that we are shocked and appalled by the utter indifference to the welfare of the world and its citizens shown by this act of terrorism, and that we will be stepping up our harassment of our enemies. (Incidentally, the overall incident rate has dropped sharply since the incident involving "Viktor" and The Allies. More about that, later). Keep up the good work, and remember to just say "no" to negotiations with the Parent Corporation!

Update on the Great Eggo Famine of 2010

Thanks to some excellent work by our Waffle Department, we are now officially declaring the end of the Great Eggo Famine of 2010 as waffle production is again nearing optimal levels. We are extremely pleased with the way Waffle Department handled the crisis, and we are pleased to report that the number of deaths from this shortage of waffles was 98.3% lower than predicted. We would specifically like to recognize the efforts of Department Chair Gertrude Delaney for her tireless leadership. She personally endured wafflelessness for eight days straight before she collapsed and was taken to an IHOP restaurant to recuperate. We would also be remiss if we did not extend our gratitude to Phineas Smith, whose strategies for rationing of waffles can be blamed for the significantly lower-than-expected death toll. Don't think, however, that because disaster was averted this time that we can be less than vigilant and that our efforts were to no avail. Take our word for it--computer simulations showed that without our intervention this Famine would have been a terrible ordeal indeed.

Safety first?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not hopeful about the future, but we tend to wonder about certain individuals' place in the future. Take, for instance, these would-be burglars. Either they were planning to do a lot more than take the ATM, or there were ... um ... certain holes in their plans. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to excellence, which is why we hope you won't follow in their footsteps.

Safety first!

We applaud the efforts of the creators of the iPad Steering Wheel Mount for making safety a top concern from the beginning. They aren't waiting for people to be killed by sudden acceleration to point out repeatedly that this is safer than texting while driving, an activity which has been declared illegal by many US states. After all, how bad can it be if it's not that bad? (Okay, so technically the answer is almost as bad, but we won't keep considering the answer to the question). It's safe...r than something dangerous, and that's good enough for me.

How not to mug someone

If you are going to turn to crime, please make sure you don't choose to mug your victims near a school for ninja warriors. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we think it is nothing if not sad that a group of muggers in Australia didn't seem to know this.

Accidental shootings

From time to time we hear of accidental shootings, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical, which is why we are setting up a panel to investigate such shootings. We expect that they will decrease the number of accidental shootings around the world, and if they don't, don't be surprised if there are some accidental shooting victims from our panel.

Cost sharing

Dog owners in one condo are being asked to approve a plan to test the DNA of all dog residents so that any dogs not cleaning up after themselves can be appropriately punished. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not fair, which is why we understand the motivations for this policy. Unfortunately, we are also nothing if not against discrimination, which is why we feel that passing the entire cost of this program on to the owners of the dogs is not quite right. Shouldn't other residents pay part of the price to keep their residences waste-free? After all, it isn't just dog owners that are hurt when waste isn't cleaned up, and it isn't just non-dog owners that benefit from a cleaner condo.

Who would you trust with your financial information?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not wary of unscrupulous individuals who are constantly trying to enrich themselves not through hard work but by stealing from others. Because of this wariness (and our outsourced FAQ experiment) we have opted to not outsource. This decision has been controversial--we received three thousand e-mail messages about it within the first three minutes of the announcement. We have openly defended our decision against sometimes harsh criticism, but we have now been validated as the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are setting up an outsourcing center in their jail. The inmates, whose crimes apparently do not prevent them from handling your sensitive information, will perform work for banking firms. If you can't trust an inmate with your information, who can you trust?

Hero of the People? We're not quite sure

Elaine McLuskey may have just become a Hero of the People for her latest invention. Designed to allow conversations even in noisy rooms such as pubs, her speech bubbles are an important addition to anyone's wardrobe. Okay, so maybe not anyone's wardrobe, but certainly anyone who wants to go to a bar looking like a wannabe deep see diver. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not eager to honor world citizens who make important contributions to society, but we cannot always award them the Hero of the People award due to its stringent requirements. Not only must a Hero of the People do something awesome, but he or she must also further the cause of the Board of Dictators through said awesomeness. Unfortunately, Elaine has not yet committed herself to the New Future, so we are unable to award her our highest honor...yet. If you know Elaine, please put your speech bubble on and follow her down to the local pub so you can spend some quality time with her and still get the message across about the GPD!

All he wanted...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to creating a society wherein everyone can achieve their potential, however vast (or limited) that may be. In order to reach that goal we have a standing policy that responsible world citizens should obey the laws of their respective government entities or contact us about an injustice and at least pretend to obey the law while we resolve the dispute. This policy, however, isn't an absolute law. We also take into account the circumstances. For example, when this Maryland man was walking home and decided he would rather have a ride home he had very limited options. He couldn't call his mother as his cell phone was out of minutes. He couldn't hitch hike as that has gone out of fashion and is likely illegal. The only number he could call on his cell phone was 9-1-1, but he knew that calling 9-1-1 without a good reason is also illegal, so he devised a good reason. He pretended he had been robbed. When police responded and investigated his story they found it lacking and it came out that he had just wanted a ride home. We find it disheartening that this man couldn't get a simple ride home without committing a crime, and as a consequence we are investigating the possibility of instituting a "ride hotline" that will also work with cell phones without minutes and will allow unfortunate walkers a legal alternative to get what they want. Expect details in your GPD newsletter soon!

The GNU Reform: Open Source Healthcare

It has been nearly a year in the making, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not tenacious, which is why we have finally unveiled our plans for an Open Source Healthcare system that will take care of all of our health needs at a fraction of the cost of the current model. This idea had its genesis at a conference we held in Seattle last year, and since then we have been consulting with the best minds in health care to create this plan, which has already been picked up by several high-ranking officials in the Obama administration and several influential members of Congress*.

Everyone knows that the biggest problem with the care system is the out-of-control cost of delivering health care. Why is the cost spiraling out of control? Some blame the insurance companies who, for some reason, want to make a profit. Others blame lawyers who encourage patients to sue their doctors for malpractice and thus require doctors to purchase malpractice insurance and pass the cost of that insurance back on to the consumers (or, more precisely, to the insurance companies backing the consumers). Others blame other harder-to-explain problems for the uncontrollable costs, but whatever your object of blame is, it is clear that the system is too opaque. An individual consumer of health care cannot possibly understand why he or she may be charged a ridiculous amount of money while in a hospital for some Tylenol he could have bought for himself at a fraction of the cost, nor can he or she understand why the insurance companies convince doctors to charge them less, and the list goes on.

The solution which is gaining momentum in influential government circles is to move to a revolutionary Open Source Healthcare system, wherein the empowered groups are not lawyers, doctors, or insurance companies, but individuals. The recent health care reform bill lays the foundation for this change by creating "Alternate Certification Requirements" for medical care providers and "Insurance Class D Licenses" for individuals interested in becoming small insurers. These reforms are, as we said, merely the groundwork for the real reforms. Rather than rely on Universities and medical boards to decide whether a person is fit to be paid to remove an ingrown toenail the individual can now review the potential provider's history and read reviews from prior customers, much as he or she can do on web merchant sites such as eBay and Amazon. Based on a review of this information, or, as is certainly more common in web merchants, a quick glance at the rating of the provider, the individual can choose whether to entrust his or her well-being to the provider. This reform alone will save us millions of dollars by relaxing the burdens of evaluation of providers for medical boards, universities, and hospitals. It will also create more jobs in the medical field as the barriers to entry for doctors are significantly lowered.

This same sort of ratings system will also be used for insurance providers (and individuals with Insurance Class D Licenses). Rather than paying out exorbitant amounts of money to a company who uses your money to offset their own costs of doing business you can choose to give your insurance money to any provider. This will, of course, create some situations in which unruly insurers will take people's money and not provide the services, but negative feedback on their ratings will discourage this sort of behavior and make it difficult for them to make much money off of deceit. In addition, the government has agreed to completely resolve disputes for every consumer of health care up to three times in their lives without asking any questions.

The same system will be used by insurers and providers to rate the individuals seeking health care so that, for example, a provider won't get stuck providing a fourth MRI to an individual who didn't pay for the first three.

Emergency care will be handled differently from regular, preventative care. Because people sometimes need emergency medical attention and won't have time to study the ratings of their alternatives when they need the care each individual will choose his preferred emergency provider beforehand. When the need arises they will call for emergency services from their favorite provider and, assuming they have kept their service subscription active, they will be treated to emergency support.

The beauty of this system is in its simplicity. Rather than using a heavy-handed approach that requires a lot of oversight and regulation, the market simply takes care of health care by itself. Providers who don't do a good job will receive negative feedback, and insurers who charge too much will be replaced by more reasonably-priced alternatives.

We are hoping that these reforms will satisfy the conservatives and the liberals and will create a truly bipartisan effort to solve the problems with the current health care system. There are still some challenges, but with the groundwork laid by the initial bill and the rising levels of support in government circles we are sure that soon the medical world will be rejuvenated beyond our wildest dreams!

*While we know that Congress already passed a reform bill and that we are a little late to get our ideas into it, we also know that in the 1,000+ page bill we were able to insert a lot of provisions that make our plan the next logical step. We just need to wait until people start implementing the bill and then we'll be able to get our plan implemented.

That pesky code

We have been running further analysis on the code and have come to some interesting conclusions. We have hesitated to state them in this public forum for fear of being wrong and losing credibility, but the data have been checked and rechecked, and these are certainly the most likely possibilities. It appears that we were correct in that the Parent Corporation has indeed embedded messages in the text of the Shakespearean play; these messages are almost certainly not just random happenstance. This revelation, however, leaves us with some unsettling possibilities:

1. The Parent Corporation stole the time machine Shakespeare has been using and used it to go back in time to embed these messages in the manuscript before it was published in 1727.
2. The Parent Corporation somehow persuaded Shakespeare when he visited the present time to go back and embed these messages in the manuscript.
3. The Parent Corporation has actually existed for much longer than we had believed, and either Shakespeare was a member of the Parent Corporation's Board of Directors (or somehow affiliated with them) or the influence of the Parent Corporation was such that it was able to force Shakespeare to embed these messages

None of these possibilities are particularly palatable, especially the thought that the Parent Corporation may have been operating much earlier than we had thought. We have our best men searching for more details and trying their best to prove or disprove these possibilities. At the GNU Public Dictatorship, after all, we are nothing if not thorough!

Please get on this right away, Mr. Medvedev

We have been voicing our security concerns about Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's apparent visit with aliens for some time now, but due to less-than-perfect relations between the country in which we live and Russia we haven't been able to get anyone there to investigate the incident, which is why we created an independent commission to answer the question of whether Mr. Ilyumzhinov could have revealed any information which would compromise the safety of world citizens. After all, he is a high-ranking Russian official and might have access to such information. We are pleased that Andre Lebedev, a Russian MP, has now taken this same crusade as his own and is asking Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to formally investigate the incident. Our commission has found no evidence as of yet that the aliens gained any useful information from the alleged encounter, but we would definitely appreciate another investigation to validate our findings.

The Code

Many of you have written in with theories regarding the evil Parent Corporation code that Daniel recently broke, and we would like to take a few minutes to update you on our progress and thank you for your suggestions. First, we would like to recognize a few individuals whose suggestions helped us progress on interpreting the messages:

• Ezekiel Cartwright of Wichita, Kansas, USA for his suggestion that the code might be using a variation of the beloved Fibonacci sequence to hide more important messages. In fact, using an overlay of Pascal's triangle did show us many interesting things, but these messages were encoded in the original Shakespeare, so unless the Parent Corporation captured Shakespeare's alleged time machine and used it to encode these messages in the play... hmm... that's something to investigate.
• Janice Robinson of Lubbock, Texas, USA for her suggestion that the code might be more understood by stripping vowels from the text and using a huge array of varying numbers of columns to find predictions of events that would have been in the future when the play was written but are now part of the past record. We investigated this method and found that we could predict the downfall of the Nazis and have found a passage that possibly predicts that Britney Spears will become President, but we're not sure whether to believe it.
• Gary Weaver of Salisbury, UK for his suggestion that we should look at the entropy of the messages for patterns. We found the message "Hi mom!" encoded in this way, but we don't suppose it is useful.

We are making a great deal of progress on deciphering the code, and hope to be able to use it to subvert the Parent Corporation soon, but we'll keep you posted!

How not to get cited for DUI

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to being responsible citizens, even if the current governments available fall short of the perfection we are offering the world. We do not support the avoidance of responsibility or the shirking of duties, but we do like to point out inefficiencies in the current system and ways that people could easily exploit it--not so that people will exploit them, but so that the so-called authorities will stop them from being so effective. Anyway, I digress. The reason I'm posting this today is that this recent case in Minnesota illustrates an interesting strategy for avoiding being cited for DUI. We're not sure everyone could exploit this loophole, and certainly those who do not own a dog would have trouble using it, and another problem is that you would have to be drunk enough to throw up and simultaneously be aware enough to blame it on your dog. We have our statisticians working right now on finding the percentage of people cited with DUI that could have avoided the citation using this strategy, so hopefully we'll soon know the real impact of this loophole.

Discrimination

We're still investigating this incident, but we would like to state that at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not against discrimination, and we would like to remind people that it is usually a good idea to reserve judgment until you are sure that the message you received was the message that was sent. More specifically, please ask yourself whether anyone would ever state that they want to bring their "gay dog" into the restaurant before making conclusions.

An environmental solution

There are days when some of us begin to wonder whether we are pursuing the appropriate environmentally-friendly policies. After all, they are rather complex and they do interfere with business growth. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are committed to responsible use of the earth and its resources, which is why we are always looking for things we can do better. Innovation, this time, has come from the Chinese. Instead of spending exorbitant amounts of money to clean up or move landfills away from population centers, the Chinese have simply been spraying deodorant on them. We are still evaluating the full effects of this treatment, but we are encouraged by the dramatically reduced costs versus moving the garbage away from the population. Here's hoping this innovation can be copied elsewhere!

More of what's wrong with the current system

One of the reasons the GNU Public Dictatorship has helped shape the economic collapse of recent years is so that we can replace the system with a better one. Many of our supporters have complained that we haven't reached our final goals yet, but we suggest patience. After all, at least we're not doing what the SEC enforcers did as the economy was failing. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not excited about improvement, however slow it may seem!

An apology

I must apologize for not posting more regularly over the last few weeks. I have been deeply involved in negotiations for the release of the 7,500 souls acquired earlier this month by the British firm Game Station. Now that they have finally agreed to release their claim to the souls so deceptively captured I think we can just about get back to normal. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not against deceptive practices, which is why we champion the open-source government model. With a little persistence and a lot of hard drive space you could become your own auditor of our government!

At Last the Code is Cracked!

As many of our readers already know, I have been doing an in depth study of transmission lines in an attempt to intercept the radio communication of the Parent Corporation. For months the transmissions intercepted all seemed like meaningless theater. Then I ran across a badly translated quote from "Double Falshood", Shakespeare's New Play:
"Where they were eyes, voice, several enchantments,
Each particle of beauteous, each admittance without the name,
The parents of love it does shine intensively? [Vs] these in by it,
It regards, it was not: but disease in me,
That wished admittances in to it. " (From Act II, Scene III)

It is unclear as to the message of this particular passage, but it soon became evident that they were broadcasting various strategically chosen parts of the play. We discovered that there is a close parallel of it's plot to our search for Lord Victorious. There is much valuable information which can be learned through a closer study of the play.

A misprint? Or a subtle racial missive?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to equality, which is why when we see subtle discrimination passed off as "mistakes" or "typographical errors" we are generally quite suspicious. While we understand that it may have been a mistake, this cookbook that instructs readers to add freshly ground black people to your tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto, we suspect that someone had an agenda, especially since the only way we got our spell checker to suggest "people" instead of "pepper" was when we spelled it "peeple" and anyone knows that while e and r are next to each other on the traditional keyboard l is on the other side entirely. I guess it's possible that the writer was using the Dvorak layout, where r and l are neighbors, but since nobody uses the Dvorak layout that seems unlikely.

What's wrong with society

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to an ever-improving society, which is why we cringe when we hear of others working against us. We are especially disappointed that Story, Indiana continues to encourage idiocy with their "village idiot" award (which comes with a US$100 bar tab). This year's winner set her hair on fire while lighting a cigarette, which is hardly the sort of act that should be encouraged.

Clerical error? maybe...

Everyone knows about Indonesia's early adoption of parity for typewritten messages, which is why the "clerical error" reported in this article smells fishy. It's always possible that there was a double error which rendered the parity check useless, but if they would just adopt a more sophisticated system (checksums or CRCs, maybe) then we could know for sure whether it was simply an error.

Letting Sleeping Professors Lie

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned about protecting productive members of society from miscreants who try their best to harm or discourage others, which is why we have been pushing for nose-recognition devices at airports and other public places. We were pleased to find that these devices were used to ascertain that professor Kris Lines posed no threat to the airplane he fell asleep on, but we were less thrilled to hear that he was left on the plane after it was moved into a hangar. Even with mild outdoor temperatures the temperature inside a parked car can climb much more quickly than you might expect. We urge caution in leaving children or professors in parked aircraft, even if you don't plan to take long.

When not to ask the police for assistance

We know that for most of you this post will be an utter waste of time, but if you are one of our supporters that thought this would be a waste of time we ask you to read just a bit further to avoid making the same mistake John White did. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not law-abiding, which is why we definitely do not condone illegal activity, but we would like to let you know that if you are going to perform an illegal act and leave a slip of paper with an address at the crime scene it might not be such a good idea to flag down a policeman to ask directions to said address, even if the officer doesn't happen to be the one investigating the crime you committed. If we can prevent just one slip-up of this nature, we will feel that we are making a difference in the world!

The cure for hayfever

For all of our supporters who are persistently plagued by annoying ticklings in your noses each spring there is finally relief! A Japanese firm has released a ring tone scientifically designed to encourage the pollen to drop out of your nose. You may have to call yourself occasionally, and you may have to walk around with your phone under your nose, but at least you can get rid of those extra tissues!

New supporters

We hate to count our chickens before they hatch, but we think that you, our loyal supporters, should know that Juliana and I have been working tirelessly to increase the number of our supporters. I have been working on a plan that will increase support in one region by approximately 50%, and Juliana has been working on another region where the absolute increase will be similar, but due to a slightly larger existing support pool will amount to an approximately 33% increase in support. We have been working on these deals for nearly nine months now, and it is great to see them come to fruition. Oh, and don't worry. They won't cause the island of Guam to capsize.

Too much confidence?

We didn't report on this yesterday lest our supporters mistake a completely serious post for an April Fool's Day joke, but we probably should have posted it anyway.

As it turns out a group of pirates in the Indian Ocean were looking for someone to hijack and saw the USS Nicholas, a US warship. Sensing an easy victory they deployed their skiff and commenced firing on the warship. Somehow in the fray the warship was able to disable and sink the skiff after taking the pirates prisoner. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not surprised by the pirates' show of confidence in this incident, but we believe it highlights an important misconception in the groups of people wishing to overthrow the current oppressive governments and looking to replace them with something, well, like the New Future. As we have repeatedly stated, the GNU Public Dictatorship is nothing if not committed to change, but we don't think it is a good idea to confront "The Man" head on. Bringing knives to a gunfight might be fun, but it probably won't end well. We prefer to work our change through subtle methods, pulling the strings of the economy and governments. It has worked well for us so far, anyway!

Innovation

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to continual innovation, which is why we are announcing today that we are the first to hire full-time toad earthquake predictors. We will have these toads placed around the world, especially in earthquake-prone areas, and we hope that with their help we can avoid loss of life and property during earthquakes. Even if it might be too late to save the world we can do our part to innovate!

Persecution (Warning: May Contain Vegetables)

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not tolerant of others, which is why we are so angered by persecution in all of its forms. We have worked long and hard to combat the spread of brads, which, as you all know, are the tangible symbols of the unequal treatment of women by men. We have tried to stamp out persecution of fruits, vegetables, microbes and of zombies, but no matter what we do it seems we can't stamp out all persecution. Case in point, the man who was trying unsuccessfully to rouse a long-dead opossum in the middle of a road. Just because he cares for this unfortunate animal and doesn't simply believe that the animal is dead (after all, opossums are known to play dead for extended periods of time) he is labeled a weirdo and treated as if he were crazy. We have our work cut out for us.

Pac-man

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not excited that we can finally verify that Pac-man was not, as has been widely reported, invented by Namco in 1980, but that he was, in fact, an interplanetary traveler whose likeness was recreated in the aforementioned game. And to think that those who have argued this in the past were laughed to scorn...

How we wish we could honor our guerilla grape artist publicly

Our guerilla grape artist has been outdoing herself. Reports of grape "decoration" are up 183.4% over the last three months, and a good portion of those grapes sport messages authorized by the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators. It seems, however, that our beloved artist is expanding her horizons and has recently moved into frying pan art. We thought we recognized her hand in this beauty, but we weren't sure until today when we finally talked with her again. She's very busy and has been hard to get a hold of, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not patient. We just wish she would allow us to release her name to the public...

How not to avoid being caught

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not optimistic about the human race, which is why we spend so much time trying to give you the opportunity you deserve to excel. With us governing you there will be little to stop you from meeting your full potential, but I digress. Today's post is a cautionary tale to those of you foolish enough to flaunt the law of the land you live in by knowingly and repeatedly committing crimes. Before we start, however, we would like to explain that true supporters of the GNU Public Dictatorship work within the law to obtain their goals, not outside of it. The GNU Public Dictatorship does not encourage or coerce its supporters to do anything illegal or unethical, but instead expects complete obedience and conformity to our will from our world citizens.

Anyway, today's cautionary tale is inspired by this couple, whose admission on national TV that they regularly profited from illegal activities has finally caught up with them. While, as mentioned above, we do not support such activities, we would like to enumerate some common-sense ideas that may help avoid such embarrassment.

1. Most people, regardless of whether they are affiliated with law enforcement, watch some television. Do not assume that because there are no uniformed officers in the studio audience that none are at home listening to the show.
2. This same rule should also apply to public websites such as Facebook and YouTube. Just because you don't see the cops doesn't mean they don't see you.
3. There is no patient-doctor confidentiality when speaking to Dr. Phil in front of a television camera. You can't assume that nobody else hears what you tell him.
4. If you are going to state your income from illegal activities in public, you may want to omit the part that it is from illegal activities. Better yet, refrain from illegal activities.

We hope these guidelines have cleared up some of the confusion that caused this couple to boast about their illegal exploits in a public forum.

A clarification

A number of our supporters have written in response to this post letting us know that "rush" and "soul" are the names of products produced by Rain Nutrition. We would like to start by thanking you for attempting to keep us accurate, but we would like to state that we, in fact, know about these products. The post itself was made before we took any time to look at their site, but we soon discovered that the meaning of the mysterious sentence was much more clear than it at first appeared. We figured that our supporters would have the same experience we had, and that they would appreciate the nonsensical feel of the statement more if we didn't solve it for them. We apologize to any of our supporters who will no longer have the opportunity to discover this meaning on their own, but due to the volume of e-mail we figured we had better make a public statement.

Genius, perhaps

In the same vein as yesterday's post, some ideas are either genius or idiocy. We're not sure, but we think this automated dog wash that takes only 35 minutes and tortures your dog while it washes him or her just might be genius. But then again, we might be wrong.

Refrigerate soul?

There are times when a decision could be either a stroke of genius or a horrible error, and it is usually not clear until years later when the public's reaction to said decisions has become clear. It seems to me that advertising companies encounter these decisions more often than the rest of us, and today I encountered one of these genius/horrible mistake campaigns. On a box labeled Rain Nutrition I saw the following:

For best enjoyment refrigerate soul and rush upon delivery

I'm still not sure what it means, but it got me to visit their site. Genius or nonsense? You decide!

More about Shakespeare's time machine

For those who are interested in following our investigation into the alleged time machine created by William Shakespeare we would like to state that our inquiries have been inconclusive. It is possible that he built such a machine, but it is also possible that he did not. We can find some evidence to suggest that a man fitting Shakespeare's description has been seen in Scotland recently, but that is hardly conclusive. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical of "coincidences," which is why we consider it rather interesting that Shakespeare's lost play was published right at the time these allegations have been raging. Perhaps we'll never know, but we won't rest until we do (or don't).

A successful trial!

We are pleased to report that we have conducted a successful trial of our cutting-edge seafood delivery mechanism over Australia. There are still a few kinks to work out (for example, not all of the fish survived the journey) but we are confident that our scientists will work them out very soon. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not innovative, which is why we are always striving to improve the GNU future!

A mix up? Maybe...

The individuals involved in this troubling incident are saying it was an honest mistake, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical. This operation reeks of the Parent Corporation's vile henchmen and we would not be surprised if further investigation reveals that it was, in fact, their doing.

Astro-squirrels: the future of space exploration

While the debate rages on about whether man should return to interplanetary travel and what role NASA should play in the United States' future space exploration it is good to know that alternatives are being considered. (Incidentally, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to space travel and won't be resting until we have perfected warp drive, but we understand that conventional governments are not particularly good at innovation and so we don't fault them for that). Today's innovation comes not from the private sector as many experts were expecting, but from the animal kingdom. Jane Roberts has been experimenting with preparing astro-squirrels for space flight for quite some time now, and she is about ready to let them man their first rocket. The rocket was built especially for them and has tiny nut-shaped controllers. We are unsure how Miss Roberts will understand their transmissions from space, but we are confident that she will find a way.

Were we wrong?

We have always joined the world at large in rejecting the theory that Shakespeare never, in fact, died, but instead created a time machine using pages he stole from Leonardo DaVinci's journal and traveled forward in time to live out his life in the future. There have been a few stubborn adherents to this theory, but for the most part everyone agreed. Time will tell whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, but some recent discoveries seem to suggest that perhaps Shakespeare made it this far forward in time after all. We have our operatives working on confirming or denying the stories as we speak, er, write, but we should know soon. It would explain the sporadic sightings of the Loch Ness monster (for those who don't remember, DaVinci's alleged time machine was allegedly shaped like a dinosaur of some sort), but we're still rather skeptical

No, it was not an evil plot...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sorry for the riots and other disturbances incited by our careless reporting of what we believed at the time was a Parent Corporation plot to steal our time from us. We are especially apologetic to those who lost friends or relatives in the ensuing chaos, but we would like to remind our supporters that it was their own reaction to their fear of the Parent Corporation that caused this tragedy.

Further research has indicated that the loss of time caused by the earthquake in Chile was not caused by the Parent Corporation at all (we are not suggesting, however, that they are not involved in similar projects and in fact we believe the Parent Corporation incited these riots in order to hide their real plans). It seems that the earthquake was caused by an overly ambitious environmental advocate who was trying to enact Daylight Saving Time on a global scale and much sooner than it is typically used. He apparently believed that the energy savings would justify the loss of life and property. He, obviously, did not live in Chile. He also, obviously, made some mistakes in calculating the magnitude of an earthquake necessary to take an hour from our days.

We have taken action to prevent future eco-terrorist attacks and hope that all of our world citizens will come to us with their ideas and not simply carry them out on a whim.

An evil plot?

We all know that the Parent Corporation has evil in mind for us, but even so we are often surprised. New intelligence shows that they have been looking at ways to shorten our days and thus require us to use their "time-saving" devices. We have thought this was all bunk, but recent statements by organizations such as Nasa about the apparent effects of the recent quake in Chile make us wonder. If they can cause a large quake (most people now agree that it was their doing) and kill hundreds of people just to take 1.26 microseconds away from us each day, we wonder where they will stop.

How not to avoid an argument

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned with your domestic bliss, which is why from time to time we share some ideas to improve your relationships. Today's lesson is on how not to avoid an argument, and is based on Timothy Ray Sutton's recent experiences.

Mr. Sutton had a problem: he had given away money to someone less fortunate than himself, but he didn't think his wife would approve of his action. He had several choices, too. He could (1) tell the truth and face the consequences, (2) claim that he lost the $5 in question, or (3) claim that the money had been taken from him. In the interest of analysis we will theorize about the likely consequences of each action before moving on to Mr. Sutton's choice. If he chose to tell the truth chances are his wife would probably be angry and give him an earful. If he chose to claim that the $5 were misplaced, his wife would probably be angry and give him an earful. If he chose to claim that the money was stolen his wife would probably be sympathetic but might give him an earful for letting himself get robbed. She also might ask him to file a report with the police.

We think that most people when faced with this choice would realize that the predictable consequences, although negative, of the first two choices would be preferable to the possibly disastrous consequences of the third choice, but we also understand that the prospect of sympathy (even if it is just a possibility) can be a big draw. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Sutton chose the third choice. We don't know the details of the exchanges between him and his wife, but we do know that he chose to file a report with the police.

Most people would have realized that the police might be able to prove that no robbery occurred and would be reluctant to complicate the situation, but, presumably to avoid an argument, Mr. Sutton did just that. The police decided that his report was untrue and filed charges, transforming the $5 argument he would have had into a $1000 bond argument.

The bottom line is that we, the Board of Dictators, believe that attempting to scheme to avoid an argument is more likely a path to creating a larger argument down the road, and, unless you intend on ending your relationship before it hits the fan we recommend that you choose the simpler options that will not complicate the situation. We hope this exercise has been beneficial!

If only we knew its name...

We all know that sometimes people act in a generous way in order to receive praise or glory from others, and most of us would agree that, for instance, anonymous donors are more generous than those who ask for a wing of a building to be named after them. One such "anonymous donor" is this dog (apparently a Jack Russell terrier) who, at significant risk to itself, led police to its hiding owner. We would love to name it as a Hero of the People, but, alas, it is too modest a dog to give its name to the reporters. Thanks for inspiring us, nameless Jack Russell terrier!

Unfortunate News

It seems that, while the Parent Corporation is having to resort to unorthodox means to transport their office products, that they are not in quite so bad shape as we had initially hoped. They have pushed most of their resources into their criminal affiliates and have left but a shell to be regulated by the courts as they go through bankruptcy. We have not yet been able to persuade the courts to investigate the affiliates, but we hope we will be able to do so soon!

"Viktor" and his secret mission

It has been quite a while since "Viktor" faked his own death, and since then many things have happened. "Viktor" and the Allies have been explaining to us in some detail the events that transpired before and after the apparent death of our chief operative, and we are finally feeling comfortable with explaining to you, our loyal supporters, the reasons behind this unorthodox strategy. Before we begin we must state that the Allies have requested that we keep a number of things secret as they could aid our mutual enemies. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not hesitant to be anything but "Open Source," but we understand the reasoning behind the Allies' request, and have chosen, for now, to comply.

As the Allies have been fighting the Parent Corporation since before the current members of the Board of Dictators were born, it is understandable that they were able to obtain some intelligence that we had not yet been able to get. As it turns out the Parent Corporation had been working for decades to release a new and even more sinister office product early in 2010. (We would like to state what it was, but the plans have been kept so secret that only three people have ever seen the plans, two of which are already dead. The third is "Edgar" (not the figurehead "Edgar", but the real one) and so we cannot say much about what exactly it was to be) The Allies have been working to stop it for many years, mostly by infiltrating the criminal affiliates of the Parent Corporation. It seems that last year one of their operatives was asked to get rid of "Viktor" as he was apparently getting close to finding out about the new product. There was a great deal of concern over whether he had found anything, which is apparently the motivation behind the surprise infiltration of "Edgar" into our Nevada offices in the Quisling incident last year. After they confirmed that he had not discovered anything yet, "Edgar" ordered the assassination of "Viktor."

"Viktor's" father Wolfgang was concerned that "Viktor" would kill his agent, and so he made contact with him. He explained enough of the situation that "Viktor" agreed to let himself be "killed" in the hit. Over the next few weeks he was briefed in all that the Allies were undertaking and was given an important task to perform. The rumors of "Viktor's" death reached the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch and because of the way we treated his disappearance they believed that everything was going according to plan.

It was at this point that the Allies plan went down. We cannot yet talk about many aspects of it, but "Viktor" was instrumental in making sure that the Parent Corporation would not be able to recover from this blow. He obtained and destroyed the plans for the sinister office product, leaving "Edgar's" brain as the only place this evil could ever emerge from in the future. They were not able to silence "Edgar" for good, but by getting the public eye on the Parent Corporation and its finances they believe "Edgar" will not be able to make another attempt for another decade at least.

We would like to thank "Viktor" for deceiving us in the line of duty and for dealing such an important blow to our enemies. We would also like to thank the Allies for being willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of society. Many of them have already been assimilated into our intelligence crew, and Wolfgang himself is now one of our chief strategists. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with our recent progress, but we are always striving to do more!

An update on the Succession Crisis in the Kingdom of Pop

Many of you have expressed concern over the last few months that the succession crisis that has held the Kingdom of Pop in its grips since the untimely death of Michael Jackson last year has not yet been resolved. Even without an heir apparent most of us expected that the Kingdom would be up and running again by now, even if it was just a temporary government. In fact, try as we might, we have not been able to get even the most basic of services up and running again, and there is no prospect in the near future of any real measurable progress. As we said, though, it's not because we haven't been trying. Now that we have had time to go through all of the records left in the Kingdom's library we can explain a bit more about what has made this succession crisis so difficult to resolve.

First of all, the Kingdom of Pop has been in decline for many years. It was managed well for a few years, but over the years it has slipped into a nearly unrecognizable state. Many experts had hoped that with the passing of the First King of Pop there would be a chance to get the Kingdom back to its original glory, but the layers of disappointment are still being unraveled today. We aren't trying to blame Michael for this decline--that would be disrespecting him and would violate our own rules. We are, however, blaming the decline on the world's reactions to Michael's unconventional approach to government.

Beyond the generally stagnant state of the Kingdom of Pop, however, is the more pressing problem of general apathy. The subjects of the Kingdom have for so many years had a government that did not respond to what they saw as the issues affecting them that they have become apathetic. A survey of 8,192 subjects revealed that a mere 14 believed that the Kingdom of Pop needs a new king in order to function. With apathy at such high levels it is no wonder that the temporary government set up by Michael's family was never considered legitimate.

A third problem is that there are no candidates for the job that compare in any reasonable way to the former King of Pop. He was so talented, quirky, and just plain bizarre that any candidate seems sadly unqualified. Experts consider two candidates (Michael's brother Jermaine and a relatively unknown singer by the name of Arthur) as the most likely choices, but as time wears on we wonder whether the Kingdom of Pop will simply be disbanded.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened by the decline of the Kingdom of Pop, which is why we have offered to annex it. Considering the apparent level of apathy among its subjects, however, we fear that nothing can be done and that it will simply cease to exist over the next few years.

Those scoundrels!

We knew about brads and brad paraphernalia in our public schools, but we never dreamed that the Parent Corporation would stoop to spying on school children at home! Okay, so we dreamed it, but we didn't think that even they would stoop that low. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not appalled by this behavior, but we are at the same time pleased that the bankruptcy protection is causing some of these lesser-known activities to come into the public arena. We are confident that once the public knows more about the Parent Corporation that they will do the right thing and eschew them and their nefarious office products.

One more avenue of financing gone...

We are pleased to report that the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch has been dealt another blow. A judge has found a dozen French wine makers guilty of passing their wine off as a more expensive variety in order to increase their profits. We estimate that this wine scam has accounted for nearly half of the Parent Corporation's advertising budget in recent years, suggesting that they will have to scale back their advertising for a while. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with these little triumphs!

An exciting development!

In a surprise (to most of the world, anyway) announcement the Parent Corporation announced today that it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This is a huge step in our master plan, and we are very pleased with everyone who made it a reality. We know that many of you have questions (our inboxes have been quite full), so we will endeavor to explain to you the ramifications of this historic announcement.

Q. Does this mean the Parent Corporation has been eradicated?
A. Unfortunately, no. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection exists to keep a company afloat during restructuring. It is a sign that the Parent Corporation is unable to pay its creditors, but it does not mean that they will be going away any time soon.

Q. Could this just be a trick?
A. With "Edgar" at the helm of the Parent Corporation there is always the possibility of some elaborate subterfuge going on, but the intelligence we have suggests that the blow dealt by "Viktor" and the Allies was enough to force them to this.

Q. What do we do now?
A. As mentioned in the opening paragraph this is one of the large steps in our master plan for eradicating the Parent Corporation. We expected to reach this step later this year, but due to the surprise assistance of "Viktor" and the Allies we have reached it earlier than we had expected, which may cause some complications. We have been turning the public against government assistance of private corporations for some time now, but we are not sure that we have convinced everyone that no evil Parent Corporation is too big to fail, so we need each of you to write to your governmental representatives (assuming you have them. Supporters living in governments unresponsive to the Will of the People are exempted from this request but are being asked to stage anonymous protests to have their governments cede power to the GNU Public Dictatorship as soon as possible) and ask them to oppose bailing out the Parent Corporation.

Q. You mentioned getting governments to cede their power to you. How can we assist?
A. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not ambitious, which is why we have been involved in so many seemingly-unrelated things over the last few years. The need right now is for our supporters to explain to their friends, neighbors, and elected representatives that the GNU Public Dictatorship is their best chance for true happiness and freedom from brads and hole punches. Polls already show public opinion turning in our favor, and with a little more word-of-mouth advertising we are sure to succeed!

Q. What is the likely outcome of the bankruptcy proceedings?
A. Our lawyers have explained to us that the most likely outcome will be that the Parent Corporation will have to hide its remaining resources in apparently unrelated business ventures and that the courts will help the Parent Corporation restructure so that it can pay its creditors and return to profitability. We expect this to mean that the coordinated attacks that have been on the rise recently will be curtailed, but we do not expect the real leaders of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch to cease their scheming or their smaller attacks. As of right now we have no reason to assume that the courts have been tainted by their operatives, but we will keep our eyes open.

Creativity without Brads or Hole Punches

This one's for all those members of the GNU Public Dictatorship who are just dying to show their creativity and finding themselves restricted by their inability to use traditional crafty methods. We have been working on developing a book to help you see the many ways in which creativity is not impeded by your moral choices. Enjoy!

Still more info

We have been engaged in marathon debriefing sessions with our friend and operative "Viktor" for the past several days, and it is time that we shared with you the information we believe that you, our supporters, should have. We are not yet sharing everything as there are still a few loose ends in the Allies' plan that are being tied up and we would hate to jeopardize them.

It seems that after Wolfgang Gottlieb's "disappearing" plan had been carried out that the remaining members of the nameless society met to determine what they could and should do for their families and the world. Unfortunately they were required in many instances to choose between helping their families and helping the world at large. Luckily for the world, most of them chose to help all of us. We have previously recounted much of what befell "Viktor" in the ensuing years, but with our new information we can fill in a lot of the gaps. Wolfgang's dedication to the Cause was extraordinary, and what is even more surprising is the ways he found to influence his son "Viktor" for good without revealing that he was alive. Wolfgang new that his family would be persecuted in Tocopilla, Chile, and so it was he that persuaded his wife through subtle hints that it was time to relocate to Europe. The incident with the Romanian customs official was not foreseen by Wolfgang, however, and the dark period which followed in which Angela was abused and "Viktor" sent to the orphanage were very difficult for Wolfgang. He eventually exerted some influence to get his wife away from the abuse and into a hospital while simultaneously creating the post of "Lord Victorious" at the orphanage where young "Viktor" was being held. He used this older orphan as a proxy trainer as he feared that if his son knew he was alive that both of their safety would be jeopardized.

All during these trying years Wolfgang was also setting in motion the plans which culminated only recently. Once "Viktor" escaped from the orphanage Wolfgang thought he could relax, but when Angela died shortly thereafter and "Viktor" fled to the Himalayas. Wolfgang once again had to step in, this time in providing him with a monk friend and mentor.

In the last year Wolfgang realized that his plans were coming to fruition, and that with the right set of circumstances he could make it so that his enemies would be powerless for years to come. He contacted "Viktor" while we were busy investigating the Quisling incident and explained to him everything we have just explained and more, asking him to leave us for a while to finish Wolfgang's plans once and for all. "Viktor" knew, however, that if he were to leave us that the Parent Corporation would immediately become suspicious, especially after his betrayal of the Company. He decided on his course of action: to fake his own death so as to leave himself free to act on his father's behalf.

The blow that has been dealt to the enemies of the people is a great one, and we hope to be able to explain it in more detail in the future, but for now this will have to suffice as we cannot reveal much more without jeopardizing the aforementioned loose ends.

Boredom: the new killer

We have all heard the phrase "bored to death," but most of us have dismissed it as hyperbole. Until now, the scientific community has agreed. A new study, however, links boredom to higher death rates among civil servants. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not helpful, which is why we have dedicated this post to helping you understand the implications of this study.

Q. Should I worry if I have a "great deal" of boredom?
A. Yes. If you are often bored you should fill your life with fulfilling activities. Consider volunteering at your local GPD office or raising Chia Pets.

Q. What is it about boredom that can kill people?
A. When people are bored they are more likely to take up hobbies such as scrapbooking in which brads and hole punches figure prominently. We have long released statistics linking these activities to early deaths, and it should be no surprise to our supporters that boredom can lead to such dangerous activities.

Q. How do I prevent death by boredom?
A. The most effective means of preventing death by boredom is to stay alive.

We hope this information has been helpful!

Some fallout

"Viktor" has been pretty tight-lipped so far about the goal of this clandestine mission, but he has let us know that certain things, such as Microsoft finally fixing a 17-year-old bug, are related to his mission. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not patient, but we do hope to know more soon!

Covering up

We know the media often engages in cover ups to try to subvert the truth about the threat the Parent Corporation poses to society, but we think making it look like this teacher had students fight for no good reason is a little too far, even if the teacher was an agent of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.

A potential ally

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to destroying evil in all of its forms, but more especially in ruining the Parent Corporation and its sinister subsidiaries, which is why we are always looking to enlist more people in our cause. With the recent success of "Viktor's" still-mostly-secret mission, we appear to have gained an important and influential ally, which, while we are working out the pros and cons of revealing specific information on this case, we will refer to as the Allies.

It seems that some 37 years ago in Chile a small group of intellectuals that included "Viktor's" father, Wolfgang Gottlieb met together to discuss the rising threat to civilization posed by the increasing use of the brad. This group met secretly for many months and organized a substantial anti-brad movement. (Incidentally, this knowledge is rewriting our understanding of the previously-unexplained dip in popularity of the brad from 1973 to 1978. We now believe that without this secret organization the brad would have overrun society before those of us currently leading the efforts to eradicate them would have had a chance)

This anti-brad movement was secretive and decentralized enough that it used no names or codenames and few knew of its existence, let alone knew anyone who was a member. Unfortunately for Wolfgang and his fellow intellectuals, the Parent Corporation learned the identity of one of the members and blackmailed him into revealing who the founding members were and that they lived in Tocopilla, Chile. Within weeks a coup had been organized and in September of 1973 Augusto Pinochet took power. While many of the disappearances were politically-motivated, the Parent Corporation took advantage of the chaos caused by the coup to seek out and destroy the secret society. Fortunately, however, the society's chief operative (Wolfgang himself) found out about the plan to have them disappeared and used the Parent Corporation's plan and implemented his own plan, which was to have the members of the society "disappeared" before the Parent Corporation could get to them. Even with his plan, however, three members of the society were lost.

Details of what the secret society (who we will now refer to as the Allies) has been doing since then are not entirely clear to us yet, but if we can believe the tidbits of information we have pieced together they have laid low and exerted their influence only when necessary (so as to maintain a low profile) but have been planning a major operation, which all came to a head last week. We know the blow to the Parent Corporation has been a sharp one as we have seen their reaction to it, but we are still waiting for "Viktor" and the Allies to let us in on the details. We hope to know more soon!

Unacceptable

Certain things are unacceptable in our enlightened society, such as persecution for any reason. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to the end of persecution, but we are also realistic. We know that sometimes people claim they are being persecuted for one thing when in reality they are being punished or chastised or whatever for a completely different reason.

Case in point: this biker who was harassed by policemen for driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.16 and who had his mystical powers ruined. We have written to the officers involved in the incident to warn them to not destroy people's mystic powers in the future, but we are fairly sure that Mr. Show was not a victim of discrimination as his blood alcohol level was well beyond the accepted limit for driving.

More Information

Many of our readers were very concerned last Wednesday when we posted this correction to our story about the fate of our beloved operative, "Viktor." While most of the respondents expressed concern that we were letting our investigation be derailed by a single piece of "evidence" that we didn't release to the public, some expressed concern that we might be betraying our true purpose. In response we, the Board of Dictators, would like to state that we took a calculated risk. We have detailed statistics about our readership, which we used to come to the only statistically sound conclusion: state that "Viktor" is truly and once-and-for-all dead, ending the debate in news sources that do not dig beneath the surface, while, admittedly, arousing the suspicions of those readers who don't simply take things at face value.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pragmatic, which is why we opted for this solution. We did not relish the embarrassment of having to print corrections not once, but twice, but we knew that the mission "Viktor" was on would have been irreparably damaged if his adversaries had reason to believe something was amiss. Yes, you read that correctly, "Viktor" is in fact alive and well and in the wrapping-up stages of the most important mission of his life. Our post of Tuesday hit close enough to the truth that "Viktor" emerged from hiding long enough to deliver to our operatives a message imploring us to keep silence for a few more days and that he would explain it all to us when he got a chance. We authenticated the message from "Viktor" and realized that, as only bad has come from doubting "Viktor" in the past, it could only be the truth. We have not yet finished our debriefings, but what we know we can tell you know is that (1) the mission has been a success, (2) it appears to have been in the planning stages for over 35 years, and (3) "Viktor" apparently learned much more about his past.

We are looking forward to passing on as much information to you as we can, just as soon as we get it and can verify that it won't help our enemies!

The importance of peer reviews

One of the foundations of the GNU Public Dictatorship is that a Board of Dictators is much better for everyone than a single dictator. This same principle is what keeps open source software afloat, as even when one individual may not see a problem his or her peers will most likely see it. Some of our supporters have been suggesting that perhaps we are taking too much time getting our dictatorship launched, but we would like to remind them that haste can often cause us to make serious mistakes, as was the case in this incident. If the undertaker hadn't undertaken to review the declaration of death from the attending physician, the victim would not be alive today. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with the progress toward ruling the world that we have made so far, but we are always striving for more!

A correction

We apologize for the confusion, but for reasons we are not at liberty to discuss just yet we are certain that our eye-witness to the apparent death of our chief operative "Viktor" was lying, and that "Viktor" is, in fact, dead. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to truth and full disclosure, and so it pains us whenever we have to withhold information from the world. Let it suffice, however, for now, that we are sorry for having misled any of you and we hope that when our reasons become clear that you will understand why we cannot discuss it more fully here and now.

New developments

Since we received the new information from the alleged eye-witness to the incident in which "Viktor" apparently lost his life we have been re-examining every shred of evidence in order to know whether there is any truth to his story. We have been surprised at how much help his testimony (which, incidentally, we cannot make public until we have had time to verify it and determine what its impact on world politics would be) explains the little details that we hadn't quite wrapped up. None of the details by themselves led us to suspect anything other than that the crime scene may have been disturbed, but the new evidence sheds light, for instance, on why there were only three strands of "Viktor's" hair in the folding chair when we expected to find at least five based on our reconstruction of the scene.

Regardless of the details our lawyers have asked us not to discuss, we are thinking that we will have to revise our declaration that "Viktor" is believed to be dead to be a little less certain. We are now stating that "Viktor" is believed to be either dead or to have faked his own death so that he could carry on with some presumably noble cause we are not allowed to know about.

A milestone!

In the GNU Public Dictatorship's campaign for equal rights for everything there have been a few highlights, such as the time the EU finally decided that misshapen and irregular fruits and vegetables could participate in the above-ground food markets without fear of retribution. As momentous as that occasion may have seemed, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we think it may have been surpassed this time.

Since its inception the film industry has been one of exclusion. For many years the equipment was so expensive that only major studios could make movies. While cheaper, better equipment has removed wealth as a precondition to entering the movie market, the studios have still dictated the kinds and quantities of movies being made. All of this, however, is about to change. Thanks to some dedicated activists the first ever monkey-made movie is about to premier (if only on television, for now). We expect the reaction to be positive, and we are extremely pleased that someone other than humans has finally been allowed to make a movie. We hope other species will follow suit soon, and that before long we will have our theaters replete with movies that satisfy gerbils' need for social interaction.

You can't fool us

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not intelligent, which is why mere news stories can't change our long-standing beliefs. While we know that bacon doesn't generally come from sheep, we have been working with our geneticists who have created a 39% better form of bacon (that, incidentally, is indistinguishable from normal bacon as far as taste in our trials) using sheep. We also know that regular oats may not grow on trees, but that our geneticists have been working on methods for growing more oats on less acreage and have successfully cultivated a number of varieties of oat trees. We are disappointed that the mainstream media would mock our achievements so directly, but when you are the world leader in anything it seems like everyone wants to make you look bad.

Could we be wrong?

Last night after one of our regularly-scheduled Board of Dictators meetings we were approached by an individual that our security team informed us was an eye-witness to the apparent death of our operative "Viktor." We haven't released many of the details from the crime scene, so we were surprised when this witness recounted much of what we knew about the crime scene. Based on what he knew, we are fairly sure that he had been to the crime scene before we secured it.

He went on for some time describing the events we had reconstructed, with one important difference from the way our forensics team reconstructed it. In his version "Viktor's" lifeless body wasn't dragged from the scene to a waiting helicopter by a lone survivor of the group that ambushed him, it was the other way around. "Viktor" dragged one of the bodies of his attackers to a helicopter and boarded it.

We are not convinced that our informant hadn't been impaired from using too many controlled substances on the night in question, but we have been able to verify that he would have been able to see what he claims from the location he claims to have been in, and that, furthermore, the participants in the battle would not likely have noticed him. It seems incredible that "Viktor" would have faked his own death (after all, who would he be hiding from but us?), but we're not leaving any stones unturned.

Good news

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not reluctant to keep using our soap box to educate you about the same things, but we would like to let you know that it is working. The Center for Convenient Statistics has released a study this morning showing that inappropriate use of emergency services is down 84%. The full text of the study is available at the CCS website*. Add to this authoritative statistic a lot of anecdotal evidence, and we believe that our campaign has nearly eradicated this abuse! Many thanks to all who have helped spread the word!

*Some readers have complained that this isn't the Center for Convenient Statistics' web page. We would like to state that, in fact, it is. Unfortunately, the CCS has been involved in a long-running feud with the Chicago Computer Society for many years. It isn't that the site doesn't belong to the CCS, it's that the Chicago Computer Society routinely hijacks it in an attempt to bully the CCS out of their domain name.

Lord Victorious, again

We have spent a great deal of time verifying the stories of the two individuals who claimed to be "Lord Victorious" in order to prove (or disprove--at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pragmatic, and so we don't mind if the scientific method proves one of our hypotheses wrong) that the stories about the mysterious mentor having been placed there deliberately to teach "Viktor" are wrong. Try as we might, however, we could not prove that either individual is not who they claim to be. We tried tracking down the former residents and officials from the orphanage in question, but it was torn down 25 years ago and it has proven quite difficult to locate the former inhabitants a quarter of a century later. The more we try to disprove that either of these individuals was "Lord Victorious," however, the more overwhelming the evidence seems.

Last week, however, we finally caught a break. We have been trying to locate records from the orphanage for quite some time, and we finally found them in an ice cave in Siberia. Orphan enthusiasts have often suspected a great store of records existed in Siberia, but until last week nobody had actually found it. It appears to have been collected by one of the former guards and sent to his friend (a political exile in the heart of Siberia) for safe keeping. Both the friend and the guard died before passing on the secret, but thanks to some excellent investigative work on the part of our remaining operatives we found it late last week!

The documents have been authenticated by our experts, and prove beyond a doubt, that there were indeed multiple orphans who claimed the title of "Lord Victorious." Both of our individuals were listed there, but the one who held the title during the time "Viktor" was there was not one of these two, but one simply referred to by the guards as "that one." There were no records of his arrival, and no records of his departure, but he arrive a few months before "Viktor" and shortly after the escape of "Viktor" he disappeared, never to be heard from again.

It pains us not to be able to definitively state that this "Lord Victorious" was or wasn't placed there solely to train "Viktor," but we are pleased that we have cleared up some of the other mysteries surrounding this important time in young "Viktor's" life.

I guess we're not doing that anymore

One of the more exciting recent guerilla advertising projects proposed by our as-yet nameless guerilla grape artist partner has been canceled due to problems encountered during a trial run in the Denver area. While we honestly believe that if she had started with the GNU Public Dictatorship ads instead of an ad maligning golfer Tiger Woods that the public reaction would have been very different, our artist has recommended that we not go through with our plan. In her words, "your current supporters would indeed be thrilled, but the general public would get the wrong impression of the intent of your organization." She went on to explain that for an aspiring group of world leaders the fact that they were even tangentially connected to a "product tampering" scandal would scare potential supporters away. I guess she's probably right, but it sure would have been fun to change all of the Nutella jars to GNUtella jars.

Enrichment

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not eager to exert our influence for good on the rest of the world, which is why we have helped orchestrate some of the dramatic changes that have happened in the world economy over the last two years. We are pleased to inform you that we now control more of the world's economy than ever before, and, as you can clearly see, people everywhere are better off now than they were very recently. Unfortunately, however, other groups have also capitalized on the instability we created to make their own adjustments to the world economy. We would like to assure you all that we are working tirelessly to stamp out abuses of the world economy as soon as we see them, and that we are working toward a future in which none are enriched at the expense of others.

We would also like to recognize some world citizens whose ideas for correcting economic concerns are, if nothing else, rather unique. Take the traffic fine policy in Switzerland, for example, where the total fine is calculated based on the net worth of the perpetrator. This simultaneously provides much-needed revenue and encourages police officers not to target the poor minorities, as their net worths are generally much lower than that of the powerful elite. The US state of Arizona is proposing to sell its buildings and lease them back, a net loss of about half a billion dollars, but it will allow it to generate a quick 735 million. Besides, the government of Arizona will be able to more truly say that it belongs to the people. Another interesting bid to generate revenue is the "Google Tax" proposed by the French government. By taxing Internet companies regardless of where they are based the French plan to eliminate the enrichment of these companies at the expense of other French companies.

We are, overall, pleased with the results of our economic revolution, but we would like to remind you that it is still a work in progress, and that the full effect of our improvements will likely not be felt for a few more years.

Lord Victorious?

Our recent plea for information regarding the mysterious "Lord Victorious" has turned up some interesting leads, most notably two individuals who, interestingly, claim to be none other than "Lord Victorious" him or herself. We have always assumed "Viktor's" mentor was male ("Lord" is, after all, a masculine title), but, now that we have re-examined the evidence in light of this new development we realize that "Viktor" never made the gender of his mysterious mentor clear.

Both individuals are approximately the right age and both have stories that have held up under our initial scrutiny, but we know that it would be very improbably for both people to have been "Lord Victorious" unless of course the title is akin to the title of "Dread Pirate Roberts," which is something we haven't been able to verify as of yet.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thorough, so we will be letting you know the results of our further investigations as soon as we have something to report!

GNU Public Theme Park thefts!

It is with great sadness that we must announce today that we have confirmed at least 17 incidents in which rides or portions of rides that are showcased in the GNU Public Area at the GNU Public Theme Park in Corpus Christi, Texas, have been stolen and used at other theme parks not adhering to the open-source ideal. (For the curious, this count does not include the TORSO reality simulator ride stolen in the Quisling incident, as that stolen ride was not subsequently marketed or used for commercial gain.) We are pleased, however, that we have not been able to link a single incident to supporters of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch, which implies that it is not (yet) in their strategy to bring us down.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to justice, which is why we are actively pursuing appropriate compensation in all of these cases. Our lawyers are advising us not to comment further on the specifics of these 17 cases, but we would like to issue a warning to all of you ride pirates out there: we are watching you!

Thanks, Guerilla Grape Artist Who Shall Rename Nameless

Many of you have been asking us whatever happened to our friend and ally, the guerilla grape artist who agreed to spread the word about the GNU Public Dictatorship through that exciting and unorthodox means. We have been surprised by the lack of media coverage of her pieces of GPD art, but we have it on good authority that there are many buyers lined up for them, but none of them are for sale. It seems people who stumble on GPD vegetables don't want to part with them. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with her work!

Oh, and for the curious, some of her work that has received more attention of late includes this beautiful banana, this strawberry crab, and these special spuds. Great work, nameless artist who values her privacy and will remain nameless regardless of the fact that we would regale her with public praise if she would just let us!

Technology is wonderful

Some experiences in life are nearly universal. Take, for instance, a time when you put toast in the toaster and waited patiently for it to pop up so you could eat it. As the seconds become minutes your attention wanes slightly but your appetite is unaffected. Suddenly, however, you smell something new and sinister--something is burning! You quickly pop the toast up only to see that by the time you smelled the burning it was already too far gone. You discard the toasted bread, adjust the toaster, and try again, this time with more frustration than anticipation. As you wait patiently this time you are perhaps more attentive to the toast, not daring to leave the vicinity of the toaster lest you miss the initial signs of burnt toast, but even so, the tell-tale smell reaches your nose too late to stop the destruction of yet another piece of innocent bread!

If this tale sounds familiar, you will likely join with the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators to thank the inventors of the transparent toaster. Not only does it cook the toast perfectly, but it does so right before your eyes and for a reasonable price of £160 (US $256). Thanks, guys!

Update

We haven't posted much over the holiday break, but that's because most of our time has been spent following up on messages we have received from people claiming to know more about "Viktor" and his background than we have published. We would like to state, first of all, that the vast majority of the stories circulating right now are nothing more than fabrications. We have been able to prove all but one patently false. It may come as a shock to some of you that "Viktor" wasn't one of the original Teletubbies, and that he didn't invent Silly Putty, but we can assure you that the stories are not true.

The one story we haven't been able to prove false yet is that "Viktor's" mentor in the orphanage, who called himself "Lord Victorious," was actually not an orphan at all and had been sent to the orphanage for the express purpose of teaching "Viktor." We have tried every angle we can think of, but there simply is not enough reliable information about this alleged orphan mentor to draw any sort of conclusion. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not cautious with our statements, which is why we would like to make it clear that we are not saying that the story is true, just that we haven't proven it one way or the other yet. If you have any information about "Lord Victorious" please contact your local GPD office. Thanks for your support, and now that we have completed the bulk of our investigations we hope to posting with more regularity!