Reno, September 22, 2155 -- The festivities were frolicsome, the conversation frivolous, and as the last of the guests slip one by one through the vapor-lock and into their plasma cubes for the bounce home, the hosts sigh at the hurricane-like swath of residue left by the merriment: glass shards, cracker crumbs, innumerable dribblings of hors d'oeuvres. But do they don decontaminant apparel and reach for broom and dustpan?

Individual NannoGoat (shown in front of a half-inch $500 coin)

Washington, D.C., January 7, 2006 -- Legendary lobbyist and indicted political connections broker Jack Abramoff has been "renditioned" by an undisclosed agency of the United States government and is currently being held in an unknown location for "interrogation, I suppose, or whatever else we can think of do with him until some of the heat is off, or the 2006 midterm elections, whichever comes first", according to an agent of the CIA who requested anonymity.

Fort Meade, Maryland, August 12, 2006 -- With all the controversy surrounding President Bush's illegal NSA (National Security Agency) wiretap surveillance program, some of the benefits and the remarkable technological successes brought into being by the admittedly unconstitutional operation can be easily overlooked. One of these unheralded achievements carries attributes that many will find surprising: namely, four legs and a tail. Meet Mother, the NSA's router-sniffing spy dog.

Ottawa, Kansas, April 6, 2008 -- The presidential campaign of dark-horse candidate Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) may be facing an new hurdle with the announcement that the virulently anti-abortion neo-conservative is pregnant. The Brownback pregnancy is, in the words of campaign press spokesman Diana Herodias, "really not part of the game plan and may create some serious challenges to our crusade for the White House".