Washington, DC January 17, 2011 -- Whirlpool (WHR: NYSE) stocks surged fifteen percent today on the release of their latest “must have consumer appliance,” the Macrowave Non-Oven™. The Whirlpool Corporation, marketers of Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Brastemp, Bauknecht, Consul and other major brand names, has seen its marketshare decline in recent years and has put all it can into this appliance that can be used to quickly chill foods and beverages.

“The Macrowave will do to refrigeration what the microwave did to cooking” said Whirlpool CEO Edmund Silver in a press conference today.

London, August 29, 2009 -- Ice cream trucks, the ubiquitous roaming purveyors of frozen dessert products that infest suburban neighbourhoods around the world, announcing their arrival using strident, uniformly irritating off-pitch melodies, have been found in a recent study to be a leading international cause of insanity.

Washington, D.C., March 16, 2007 -- The Iraqi Adopt-a-Highway Program, launched with considerable fanfare and high expectations last October, has thus far proved to be a "disappointment", according to a high-level U.S. Defense Department source who asked to remain anonymous. According to the source, subscriptions to the program have reached less than two percent of initial projections, with current trends indicating modest to virtually non-existent growth.

Iraqi Adopt-a-Highway Sign

Los Angeles, March 19, 2010 -- Andy Warhol's famous phrase, “In the future, everyone will be fat and slightly stupid,” correctly prognosticated two alarming social trends that have led to a sharp rise in the incidences of heart disease, diabetes, right-wing talk radio and other obesity-related maladies among the ever-larger American populace.

What the eccentric 1960s pop artist failed to predict, however, is another trend that now has sociological statisticians scratching their unkempt scalps: the remarkable rise in short-term celebrity status among citizens from all walks of life.