Friday, December 29, 2006

!!! NAVIGATOR STIKES ICE-BERG !!!

Dearborn, Michigan. (P0300Press) – Officials of the Lincoln Motor-Car division of Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Car Company have confirmed today, that its flagship motor-car known as the Lincoln Navigator has struck an ice-berg in a motor-car parking facility, and is in the most dire of consequences and peril at the hour of this writing.

HORRIBLE DISASTER GREATEST IN MOTOR-CAR HISTORY OF WORLD

First reports of the calamity were received by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office via wire-less telephone, directly from the grief-filled pilot of the stricken vessel, Mrs. Buffy John-Smith. This most devastating event is reported to have taken place while the Lincoln Navigator was being piloted through a treacherous motor-car parking-place at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, California. Transporting several hundred close friends, and friends of which she just has tolerance, Mrs. John-Smith had just concluded a satisfyingly banal social outing at that facility’s Nieman Marcus retail purveyor of fine goods. It is told that Mrs. John-Smith ignored known reports of large icebergs in the parking facility (apparently the remains of a Cirque du Solei entertainment event), and proceeded to pilot the Lincoln Navigator at a high rate of travel, whilst simultaneously applying facial make-up, consuming a mixed coffee beverage and randomly shouting utterances into her wire-less communication device. Eye-witness reports from the scene of carnage confirm the pilot’s outrageous and most negligent actions, as the iceberg was struck head-on, resulting in Air-Bag deployment, and several gallons of mixed coffee beverages, Evian-water and Gucci Hand-Bag contents spilling out of the ejected doors of the vessel and onto the cold, dark abyss of pavement below.

The Lincoln Navigator behemoth, just hours before the tragedy

MANY OF WORLD-WIDE PROMINENCE FEARED MISSING, ANNOYED

At this time it is feared that upwards of a hundred souls, most of them females of affluent and fine back-grounds, are either wandering missing, or have survived without physical injury, albeit in an extreme mood most foul and disconcerting. Off in the distance could be heard soulful murmurs such as “damn, I broke a nail!”, and "thank goodness I put my lawyer's phone-number on speed-dail". The utter horror and humanity of the scene will with no doubt cause many eye-witnesses future mental anquish!

At this most desperate hour, the list of notables are the entire cast of the tele-vison programme, “Real Housewives of Orange County”, the Chairwoman of the local Ladies With Meaningless, Boring Lives Auxiliary Society, the wife of the Rt. Honourable Mayor of Newport Beach and her prized Lhasa Apso, “Poopy”), as well as many other fine Ladies of influence and stature in Orange County.


Seen with Cirque Du Soleil performers still frolicking, this is beleived to be the actual ice-berg responsible for the downfall of the Lincoln Navigator!

WIRE-LESS CALLS SEND STATION-WAGONS AND MINI-VANS RUSHING TO AID OF AUTOMOTIVE COLOSUSS

The Orange County Sheriff, and Lincoln Motor-Car officials, upon receiving the wire-lessly-transmitted pleas for assistance, immediately dispatched instructions to several station-wagons and mini-van type motor-cars in the vicinity. Being imminently more practical and efficient, many of these shining examples of modern motor-cars, piloted by average citizens, are steaming with post-haste to the site of the tragedy with intent to rescue survivors, or at the very least, provide a place for the fine Ladies to sit-down in an Air-Conditioned place as they deal with the immensity of the historic debacle, of which a part they have just become.

LINCOLN MOTOR-CAR COMPAY STUNNED BY AWFULNESS OF DISASTER, RELUCATANTLY SHARES NO NEWS ON WHICH HOPE CAN BE RAISED

Launched amongst much pomp and circumstance, and boasting much of which fine Gentlemen and Ladies of wealth deemed necessary conveyances and luxury for this class of motor-car, the Lincoln Navigator was purported by many to be at the pinnacle of such excess, and deemed “uncrashable”. A spokes-person for the Lincoln Motor Car Company, after incessant pleas from Dearborn Dispatch, Detroit Free Press, Oakland News and other Detroit area News purveyors, finally admits truths about the design of the vessel that are sure to shock innocent adults and children alike. Lincoln Public-Relations spokes-person Dorothy Dodd, admitted the bafflement and contempt that motor-car executives feel toward those that purchase vehicles such as the Lincoln Navigator and its sister ship in the fleet, the Ford Explorer. She quoted a senior Ford engineer as stating "Unfortunately, despite the massive profits that arise from the sale of such vehicles, our re-search indicates they tend to be bought by those folk being insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills”. “These poor sods need only to participate in artificially induced visions of grandeur, as they pilot a vehicle which is up high, so as to be easier to see if something is hiding underneath or lurking behind it”. "Even though they may claim as much, wealth and title will never be able to repeal the laws of physics that govern us all". Actually going “off-road” as the young people of our times have now called it, is “totally out of the question”.

But, the now very red-faced Mrs. Dodd also stated that Henry Ford, the skinny, wrinkly-faced, but nonetheless revered patriarch of the World-famous company, said, “Fine, build these Godforsaken behemoths, ..my children and their children and their children after them will always need new boots, and heaven help anyone who suggests someone without the Ford name ever running this company, ever! Now, run along and stop bothering me with this uppity crap”. Now, with free-rein, Ford designers took inspiration from elegant Ladies whose only desire in such a motor-car was the need to drive up over the curb and onto lawns to park at large parties in Beverly Hills. In fact, Ford's senior marketing exec-utives were described to be most blunt in their admission that "We performed market research whereby we traveled to affluent neighborhoods, and counted the number of times that our fair Ladies, often lightly inebriated, missed the drive-ways of their Husband’s estates at 3 –o-clock in the morning, being forced to leave their motor-cars on their finely-groomed lawns and gardens…oh, what an embarrassment that must be!”.” The height measurements we obtained from the curbs, and our calculations on relative velocity contributed to the design of our Lincoln Navigator”. However, Ms. Dodd also admitted that “Unfortunately, we were unable to account for the presence of any ice-bergs at the time of this vehicles' develop-ment" As she turned away in a most hasty retreat, she indicated that the Ford engineers were now to consider ice-berg cameras, so as to further insulate wealthy owners from any shameful blame or responsibility.

AND THE BAND PLAYED ON

The ever-vigilant eye-witnesses also added a much saddened post-script by reporting that, at the time of the striking, the audio entertainment device on the Navigator was heard to be playing loudly, the popular song “My Heart Will Go On”, delivered with divasciousness by a one Miss Celine Dion, of Canadian ubringing and notoriety.

Friday, December 15, 2006

a Wagen for Folks

Wolfsburg, Germany. (exclusive to P0300Press) - The ashen and Teutonic atmosphere in Wolfsburg was disrupted today after a Volkswagen assembly line worker submitted a improvement proposal in the form of a completely-built car. Like most others, Volkswagen AG encourages their snappy Nike-shod and blue smock-clad workers to submit improvement proposals. When accepted and implemented, submitters are rewarded with an hour off of his/her 29 hour work week or free currywurst with pomme frites and mayonnaise in the assembly hall cafeteria for a week.

Currywurst, pomme frites, mayonnaise, in VWAG cafeteria No. 1a, 27kl.9aumlaut

23-year old Axel Aggregatentraeger, lead hand on Golf V front subframe shift VK/FwAgG-54.2/B saw an opportunity to improve a .50Euro locating pin on a lifting appliance. After many failed attempts he realizes the vehicle subframe itself needs to be revised. The new subframe then requires a new engine, the new engine required a new front hood, and on it went for months. Before he knew it, amongst the hundreds of empty cases of St. Pauli Girl in the living room of his second floor-walkup on the Heinrich Strasse, Axel had built an entirely re-engineered Golf V. The project being much to the chagrin of his Turkish immigrant neighbors, Axel commented that “I made it worth their while by buying lots of parts from them, that they smuggled out of the factory“. “The only problem I had was wiping their lardy fingerprints off the upholstery bits” he added.

Axel, who is known affectionately as “Kleiner Einstein” (“little Einstein”) by his colleagues, was hired by the Volkswagenwerk after he had made several thousand trips to various assembly halls around the werk as a pizza delivery boy. “His talent was noticed immediately” says 54.2/B shift supervisor, Hans Getriebeschalter. “Each pepperoni slice would be placed in precisely-staggered 50 millimeter radius increments, spaced exactly 3 millimeters apart ...a true German, if you know what I mean. Installing our engines and subframes requires the same accuracy”.

Unfortunately, the jubilation of Axel’s co-workers was short-lived when the engineering staff rejected his proposal. The reasoning was that Axel’s closet-engineering prowess failed to meet the very stringent "minimum complexity standards" imposed on all VWAG engineers. An ueberengineering spokes-diety stated that, “Axel’s arrangement of parts would have make it too easy for dealership technicians to perform routine maintenance on the car”. With a bespectacled scowl typical of most native Niedersacheners, he also mentioned that, “Volkswagen requires a minimum of 86 computerized control modules communicating with each other via 3 discreet CAN-Data Bus on each car. Axel used only one... this is unacceptable, and besides, the colour was absolute scheisse”.

Axel’s valiant efforts where further thwarted when his Union Steward insisted the strict VWAG improvement submission protocols be followed, and that the car actually be retooled to fit inside the suggestion box. Undeterred, Axel says he is planning a facelift of his
suggestion, “in about 4 years”.

Axel and co-worker, sober, for now