the Funnelwhich

Neighbors question judgment of Kid Nation participants’ parents

After parents involved in the Kid Nation program subjected their children to extreme negligence and exposed them to extreme danger, neighbors of many of those parents have begun to question their good judgment. “I used to trust John with everything,” Ashley says, who lives next door to John Badparent, long-time resident of this quiet, nondescript suburban place. John’s child, Nicholas, was placed into Kid Nation after John wanted some fame. You see, John was never famous as a child, and he decided to live vicariously through Nicholas. That way, his child could be straddled with the same emotional baggage.

“But now, not so much,” says Ashley, mother of two children herself. “I’m seriously thinking of returning a music CD John recommended to me,” referring to the All that Glitters album that sits—unopened—on her desk. This trend is pandemic across all Kid Nation parents, I’m told. One man reports not buying the fruit his neighbor used to recommend. “It was good fruit, but now I just get this awful, icky taste whenever I bite into one of Dan’s recommended apples.” Another reports vomiting upon reading the complete works of John Steinbeck, recommended to her again by a Kids Nation parent Scientists have yet to determine if Kid Nation is the sole cause of that problem.

Tom Forman, who was the main producer of the show, has lost all friends. According to him, people have begun doing the opposite of what he tells him. “Not out of spite,” he says. “They just distrust me that much.” Schoolchildren, as they should, throw eggs, egg cartons, and sometimes whole hens at him. The hens’ eggs either hatch and produce more hateful chickens or become violent projectiles thrown by the hens again at the evil, miserable spirit that is Tom Forman.

Upon being questioned, the spokesman for CBS would only yell desperately, “Mistreating children is cool, right? What with first-degree burns and starvation and whatnot. Teenagers like that stuff! We’re hip! We’re hip! We’re still relevant!”

On the Yucatan Peninsula, Hurricane Dean uncovers the Incan Civilization

In a stunning, glorious turn of events, Hurricane Dean led nearby archaeologists in Peru to discover the thriving, modern Incan civilization long thought to be lost after Spanish conquistadors arrived, smothering their language with easy pronunciation and their nostrils with organic salsa. The archaeologists immediately held a press conference on a sacred burial ground, proclaiming, “Today is a great day for people interested in prodding these indigenous people with diseases and instruments and sadness. Too long have these people played Hide and Go Seek and won; today we win.” as they trampled over expensive steam-punk machinery and children. Says one, “Apparently, they were hidden under an extensive network of forestry and fauna. Totally by accident; I’m sure they’re glad we discovered them thanks to our hard work.” Hurricane Dean could not be reached for an interview, citing extreme fury, indignation, and “betrayal.”

When questioned, the Incans groaned. “It took a century to pull off the last disappearance, and it’s going to be such a pain to retrieve those plans from our state-of-art archival library located next to the flying car mechanic shop and our Helioport.” One woman speculated they might try going to another country. “How’s Darfur? Nobody in the West pays attention to Darfur, right? That should tide us for the next five hundred years.” The Incans went to their collective attics and pulled out the banners from last time to hang, dusting off centuries of age and regret. “We don’t have any fucking gold,” said one banner. Another, “Please stop sneezing.”

“Have you ever thought about tourism?” I asked. “No, the Vikings proved that idea would never work. Boy, they are a rowdy bunch.” “Don’t you mean were?” “Uh, yeah.” The man I was interviewing then hid a curious horned helmet behind his back. When I asked to see it, he stabbed me with them. As I woke up in their hypermodern hospital, attached to wireless IV drips, I pondered the fate of this ancient civilization. Where would they go next? How do they cure impotence? The future awaits.

“No it doesn’t!” screams an Incan child running away with his family. The hospital is deserted for the Incans have packed their bags again. Without anyone to operate my medical treatment, it’s getting blurry now. Blink. Blink.

Mahdi Army soldiers’ manlinesses are in doubt tonight

In light of their allegiance to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army have been thrown into an existential crisis of virility and general manliness. “We’re, like, being controlled by a nerd sitting up on his high throne while we risk our necks,” proclaims anti-al-Sadrist Josh Fighter, who hands me a brightly colored pamphlet calling for democracy among the Mahdi Army so that they may impose a Shi’ite theocracy upon others. “We have been long oppressed!” the pamphlet exclaims. “It is time we brought democracy upon ourselves! No fights without representation! No anger without recognition!”

In his room, al-Sadr paces nervously as he attempts to resolve this crisis. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” he mutters to himself every now as if to reassure his demons away. Still, al-Sadr sweats profusely, and now his desk is bathed in the brackish water like a Red Sea, pre-Moses who in the 18th century severely disrupted the aquatic ecosystem by parting it. “I always thought my army liked me, you know,” al-Sadr says. “Where did this resentment come from? Why doesn’t anybody talk to me rationally like an adult? Can’t we just discuss this?” al-Sadr has attempted to enroll in a sword-fighting class in case any of his guerrilla army is a feudal knight. He tells me he wishes he could write a computer program or a thesis to magic away this anger.

Mean while, Josh Fighter prepares to wage a long and unfathomable war to bring democracy to the Mahdi Army hoping that one day, he too can spread something nobody wants to a region nobody understands.

Bridges everywhere choose to collapse before 2008 begins

Following the I-35 MSR Bridge and Hunan bridge collapses, many bridges have begun pondering implosion or explosion. “We’re sick of people walking all over us, you know? We have feelings too,” said the Brooklyn Bridge, an old stalwart of the anti-human movement among primarily American infrastructure since the turn of the 20th century. “Did you know that they make car tires specifically to touch us and hurt us as much as possible?” Many bridges have adapted to the car annoyance by growing spikes or venom glands, leading to many horrific deaths as a car’s steel slowly warps into a tiny metal box, trapping humans inside as the bridge’s internal immune system ejects it to a tiny, watery death beneath, where the water demons hide and wait.

On Thursday, thousands of bridges marched down the streets in protest—destroying the streets in the process—chanting “We’re not highways, we’re not highways; Let us through, we’re not byways!” that echoes the bridge-highway tensions ignited in the 1955 Infrawar in which thousands of American casualties occurred after one resident called the Brooklyn Bridge the Brooklyn Highway by accident. In the world of bridges, the social hierarchy follows like this: airports, seaports, railways, bridges, roads, streets, and people. The rules, once de facto, were codified permanently in the 1821 Bridge Order Resolution Memorandum, commonly known as SimCity to many lowly pedestrians. It’s a common misconception that SimCity is a simulation game, an old wives’ tale held predominantly among humans. In reality, SimCity is an arcane and complex work of synthesis, bringing together legions upon legions of ancient infrastructure lore into one complex reference model of an idyllic world without any humans. It’s most telling that, though no humans appear in the SimCity games except Dr. Wright, who is actually an alien made excitement and hair, humans still believe the game is about them. “That’s a key example of how humans are always about themselves,” says Professor Rhodes, a bridge who works as a professor emeritus at the University of Hard Knocks. “Humans cannot bridge the cultural and social, ha ha,” and he could not stop laughing at his own pun. He died of asphyxiation due to the fixation to his own verbal libation.

The new parallel bridge installed as a companion to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, quickly assimilated into one bridge, expects to collapse in December of 2007 in an attempt to postpone the inevitable conflict and to warn humans of the danger they face traveling not only it but all bridges without the due respect bridges everywhere demand. “It’s sad,” Mr. Narrows says, “but this is the we only way we know how to change people’s opinions about us.”