The unusual side effects, which occur in as many as 2% of women who drink Red Bull while pregnant, were first reported by researchers at the University of California San Francisco, who used a study group of over 800 women over a course of 3 years. The researcher’s results were published last fall, but the FDA and Red Bull executives had until yesterday been resistant to acknowledge the group’s findings. Now with the FDA seeming to validate the researcher’s claims that “Red Bull directly contributes to leathery, bat-like appendages which grow out from the child’s shoulder blades”, Red Bull is scrambling to prepare for huge losses and numerous lawsuits.

“Red Bull is disappointed with the FDA’s action, and does not think that such action was necessary,” said Red Bull spokesman Tyler Cowell in a prepared statement. “Our company has acted responsibly and will continue to act responsibly.”

Public outcry over the Red Bull energy drink’s side effects has been understandably high. Red Bull, which has cornered half of the energy drink market in the United States (and is large outside of the country as well), “has a clientele that is both numerous, and heavily caffeinated,” said Yale Law Professor Laura Bernard. “This is a pretty good recipe for a lawsuit storm.”

“The fact that the FDA approved this product in the first place will likely also have repercussions,” continued Bernard. “This is going to be blow up huge, and take a lot of people down with it.”

Gavin Tyson, an FDA lawyer, disagrees.

“There is no basis for a lawsuit, because there are no damages,” explained Tyson. “So far the only allegations are that this product gives children wings. Have you ever met a child who did NOT want wings?”

Bernard, however, is not convinced that Tyson’s argument will hold up in court. “Children as a rule want to fly – flying is the whole point, not the wings,” said Bernard. “As of yet, none of the children who have been born with these wings have succeeded in achieving flight. Until they do, I think the Red Bull is going to get sued, and I think that the FDA is going to get sued for approving the product. And they are both going to lose.”

There are signs that Red Bull executives privately agree with Bernard, and may believe that they are indeed vulnerable from a legal standpoint. According to several inside sources, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, Red Bull has this last week alone spent fifteen million dollars in research and tests.

“The purpose of these experiments is principally concerned with creating stronger wings that will allow a child to become airborne” said one source. “We’re hoping to achieve a flying child long before this thing reaches the courts.”

David “Fried Nuggets” Putnick, hero of snow-sports enthusiasts and adventurers the world over, left this dimension last week from the slopes of the Chilean ski resort Valle Nevado. Vowing to be gone no more than 8 days, Mr. Putnick has returned ahead of schedule after 6 of “the greatest days of [his] life”.

“People have been looking for a way into other dimensions for centuries,” says Putnick, assuming a scholarly air. “The problem is that they’ve only ever done it from inside the domeage that alights their shoulders. Now don’t get me wrong, I give big ups to astral projection and drugs, but I wanted something more. I wanted to take my bones up there with me.”

Putnick’s biography writes itself: Raised in a Colorado hippie commune, he grew up in an atmosphere in which mind expansion and interdimensional travel were a fundamental part of life. Putnick was praised as a child for having a special aptitude for accessing the astral plane, purported to be the first dimension removed from ours. Putnick would often thrill members of his community with tales from his travels there, such as the time he played Wii tennis (a technology not then invented) with Joan of Arc.

“He used to hide in the hybrid squash-berry barrels at the organic co-op,” says Lyzra Walbaum, a former commune resident. “He would always tell the most interesting stories. Mice who wear underwear on their heads and grow leftist political cartoons from their ears, old sailors teaching him the most effective knots for hog-tying an eight-limbed creature, a young Elvis giving a blow job to a raccoon…Most people would just write them off as the sweet nap-time dreams of a child, but we all knew he was really going somewhere while he was under those genetically altered squash.”

As a young man, Putnick devoted himself to snowboarding and began traveling the world in search of an “endless winter.” Working at ski resorts and spending as much of his free time as possible out on the slopes, he quickly became a respected figure in the ski bum world, renowned for his board skills, his other-worldly quality and his fantastic drug connections. After spending a rare few months of summer in Brazil learning to surf, Putnick became enamored with the burgeoning sport of kite-surfing, in which the rider is harnessed to a large, often inflatable kite. He was among the first people to adapt the use of these inflatable kite-surfing kites to snowboarding.

“When [Putnick] came back from Brazil, he was on a newer level,” says Jose Mendes, a comarade of Putnick’s who learned English primarily through the slang-laden international crowd that staffs ski resorts. “Hardly anyone was snowkiting at this time. At first, he sometimes was in a kitemare and the kite would Hinderburg into things or peoples, but it didn’t take him long to get shit hot. Dangerous weather was no problem for him and he would go out even when it was nuking. That’s how he got such big air.”

“Big air,” the term used to describe the fantastic jumps one can achieve while snowkiting, is a prized aspect of the sport. Some jumpers have managed to remain airborne for up to 20 seconds at a time. Taking an inside joke that a snowkiter with that much hangtime would be able to “glide straight to heaven” more seriously than it had been intended, Putnick launched himself on a quest to snowkite into a different dimension.

“I was out there every day, boosting off everything I could, trying to send it through the power zone 100 % of the time. On the big jumps I started to feel something opening up. Then I glimpsed it – like a golden hole in the middle of sky. I knew I could make it after that point so I called a Babe Ruth for Monday and said I’d be coming back in a week. There was nutty people gathered there, but I pulled it off.”

What exactly Putnick pulled off is unclear because, while it has been confirmed that he disappeared into the sky and did not return until six days later, he will not talk about what he saw there, or what level dimension he may have attained. Since the affable Putnick is usually happy to talk about his adventures, there has been rampant speculation as to what is currently holding his tongue. Some people believe that the experience has humbled him so much that he doesn’t want to brag, or perhaps that what happened up there was extremely personal. Other more cynical observers have mentioned that Putnick is currently in negotiations for a book with Random House and has been sworn to secrecy prior to a marketing campaign. Either way, this dimension continues to wait for its far-out ambassador to let us know what it was like up there.

Citizens could not leave their homes in the parts of the city hit hardest by the Bunny-vasion, as it has been deemed. Certain prominent buildings and hotels even found rabbits in their lobbies, ostensibly having hopped in through the revolving doors. Bankers, lawyers and stock brokers appeared horrified as the A train screeched to halt, the tracks, a pile of hopping fur and twitching noses. Students of area colleges found themselves unable to attend class, taxi drivers could not find a fare and children all around the island squealed with glee.

The inconvenience did seem to put many a friendly New Yorker on edge for the day, but more prominent was the sense of bewilderment. Everyone seemed to be asking each other what could have possibly brought the bunnies upon the city and where they could have come from. The internet was quickly a buzz with theories ranging from underground Mole People-run rabbit farms to terrorist attack. But most theories fell flat and New Yorkers found themselves with more questions than answers.

Then, at dusk tonight, as mysteriously as they came, they left. “It was pretty gradual,” commented lifetime New Yorker Scott Bonett. “They just starting hopping away.” City workers quickly emerged to gage the damage. Said one Manhattan employee, “there’s some chewed up wiring around street level and you can’t find a carrot this side of the Hudson, but other than that, things seem pretty normal.” There was also a thick layer of rabbit fur and little pellets of bunny poop.

The city is now on alert in case any more rabbit invasions occur. New York Mayor Whitey Corngood has already hired a staff to develop a containment strategy and they are said to be planning a “Bunny Baricade” – somewhat similar to the plexiglass pens found in pet stores. “It certainly is the most adorable disaster in New York’s fine and storied history,” Mayor Corngood.  The fur has now been swept away and the poop disposed of. More  carrots are on their way from the Mid West and massive rolls of electrical tape have been passed out to city employees. Although, those allergic to the rabbits are still being advised to remain indoors for another 24 hours.

The best results, farmers and scientists have found, come from fruit and vegetables that have been sung to. Something about the tonal qualities in the human voice cause the fruits to perform at above-average rates. A friend and avid Music-Fruit enthusiast told me over the phone Sunday, “I bit into a Sung-To Orange. It was like a Citrus Explosion! I can’t imagine eating regular fruit ever again.”

Indeed the results of this new technology do appear to have staggering benefits and absolutely no negative effects. But at what cost? Sung-To Produce is so expensive that only the yuppiest yuppies can afford it, though developers claim that by 2012 Sung-To fruit and vegetables will be as affordable as an organic pineapple.

Another question that no one is asking is: Who is singing to this fruit? Children’s voices have proved especially fruitful and children across the third world are quickly being enlisted into song camps where they sing from the darkest hours of dawn until late into the night, all for the benefit of upper-class produce consumers in industrialized nations. Their working conditions are far from satisfactory and several large produce harvesters are currently under investigation. Children sleep with their fruit, exposed to the elements. But straight from the mouths of babes: “It beats sewing shoes at Nike.”

When each blood sample returned from the Lab with the same results, the students immediately suspected someone at the Lab was asleep on the job, “or at least stoned,” commented Jennie Brown, a 5th year biology student. After firing the Lab staff, hiring a new staff, training monkeys to train the new staff, and then firing and re-hiring the new staff (just for fun), they sent the samples out again. Nothing changed in the results, so the students then tested the blood of other majors as well – Literature, Economics, Dance, Political Science, Pan Asian Studies–  to create a “control group.” Sister colleges in Pennsylvania, California, and Georgia were also enlisted to run blood tests and the results were staggering. No one from any field of study except Law possessed what has now been deemed the “Lawyer Gene.” It exists among and only among, lawyers, and those studying to become lawyers.

The “Lawyer Gene” is a mutation found on the 13th chromosome. It is believed to enhance the qualities of stubbornness, combativeness, and to enhance the desire for wealth while simultaneously minimizing the need to be a useful and ethically responsible member of society. It also appears to be particularly strong among corporate lawyers.

In order to locate the cause of the mutation, extensive tests were performed and form questionnaires were completed with few relevant results discovered. That’s when psychology professor Mitch Chiplittle chimed in. His suggestion that perhaps a behavioral situation caused the mutation prompted an in-depth study of behavioral patterns of the mothers of the lawyers. “Immediately it became clear that these women were cut from the same cloth,” reported Chiplittle. A preliminary oral history of each of the tested lawyers and their families found that during the seventeenth day of pregnancy, each mother encountered a homeless veteran and refused to relinquish any spare change, despite the fact that each had at least a quarter in her pocket at the time.

News of the discovery spread quickly throughout the campus. The Norman Richter Law Center For Lawyers and Such, Including But Not Limited to Attorneys Admissions Department rapidly set to work revising admissions guidelines. Students interested in Pre-Law now must submit a blood test along with their GPA, S.A.T. scores and personal statement. If they lack the lawyer gene, they are encouraged to apply to the Business Department.

Cats have not always possessed night vision, scientists are now claiming. Mark Gillian and Seth Arlinger are former cancer researchers who refocused their studies onto cat pathologies “because there’s more funding in it.” These two men have found that night vision in cats is actually a relatively new phenomenon, most likely dating back to the turn of the 20^th Century.

The scientists believe to have isolated the night vision gene while performing comparative studies on modern house cats and the preserved mummies of ancient Egyptian felines. The discovery of an archaic “cat cemetery” last August in Alexandria, Egypt has been “a godsend in our ongoing quest keep federal funding rolling in and to make a living as a scientist” said Arlinger via phone on Tuesday. The over 250 mummified cat corpses have given Gillian and Arlinger much needed DNA samples. “We now have a great baseline for feline DNA pre-Industrial Revolution,” wrote Gillian in his grant proposal. And strays, rounded up off the streets of D.C., have given the two men their modern day subjects.

After testing the DNA of both groups of subjects, Gillian and Arlinger found that the modern cats possessed several extra genes that the Egyptian cats lacked. Among these (possibly mutant) genes was the gene that allows cats to see at night – the night vision gene.

The appearance of the night vision attribute is thought to be caused by the effects of radiation, though no one will go on the record of claiming this for sure. Increased exposure to radiation through appliances, nuclear testing, and pollution have had the unexpected side effect of giving cats the ability to see at night. Though not often discussed publicly, radiation is also being used on cat food as a pesticide and FDA guidelines are less stringent for food that is not intended for human consumption. Therefore, your furry friend is being exposed to radiation in his or her diet. Radiated food is not thought to have any harmful side effects, though animal rights groups have filed several law suits this week against pet food manufacturers and distributors claiming negligence.

Why this has affected cats and only cats still remains unseen, though young boys desiring what they see as “superpowers” are already buying up cat food. Gillian and Arlinger are working around the clock studying dogs and other animals, as well as a few humans, to try and better understand how the genetic change came about. In the mean time they are warning against the human ingestion of cat food and suggest instead that those who desire to see at night buy a flashlight.

The marriage of Nascar Nation’s technology-fueled speed obsession with rampant consumerism has produced here a hazy vision of our country’s increasingly complex, yet ultimately lowbrow future that rivals the work of any good dystopian. It comes as no surprise then that this should be the site of the first human contact with aliens.

It was roughly 9:00pm on August 23rd when amateur racing enthusiast Jeff Johnson says that he began a conversation on his radio scanner with a being claiming to be a member of the Niblix clan from the planet Chinlax:

“It was lap 98 and most of the lead cars were on pit road,” says Johnson. “I wanted to hear what the crews were saying about mechanical changes, but I was getting a lot of interference so I started pushing my SC230 up to the stratosphere out of sheer frustration, but once it hit the peak at 1300 MHz it just kept going, straight into no man’s land. I was at about 1570 MHz when I started noticing the blips.”

“The blips,” as Johnson describes them, are a series of beeps heard in the upper frequencies that combine to form intelligible sentences when scanning quickly up and down through the range of 1550 – 1620 MHz. Each frequency itself has no discernible pattern, but when flipped through in rapid succession one can hear words, much the way that looking through a gap in a fence shows only a tiny bit of what’s beyond it, but when walking quickly by the fence, all the bits combine to give a fairly complete image of what’s on the other side.

The fact that the aliens chose to speak directly to Johnson was an affirmation for the 47 year old project manager.

“I felt pretty special about it,” said Johnson. “They were asking me to spread the word about them and make sure that people weren’t afraid of ‘em. They’ve seen the movies we make and they know we’re scared of ‘em, so they wanted to talk to me an’ see if I could convince people otherwise. They were nice to me, asked me how my mom was doing and everything, so I told everybody around me about how wise and understanding they are and a whole bunch of people were interested.”

Johnson says that he asked the aliens if they wanted to speak to someone with a little more influence and they told him that they only wished to speak to him.

“They wouldn’t even talk to the announcers,” says Johnson. “They said the way to spread the word about the coming revolution was through someone ordinary and unassuming, a regular guy. I told them I could hook them up with the agency that does Carl’s Jr. ads, but they said they just wanted me. It was flattering.”

Not everyone is as welcoming and excited about the impending arrival of extraterrestrial beings here on Earth. Nashville xenobiologist and local crackpot Alan Milbourne heard about the event through one of the alien chatboards he runs. Milbourne feels that the aliens intentions are not as friendly as Johnson believes, but rather that the aliens wish to lure us into a false sense of security before attacking.

“The ‘Greys’ are finally starting to show some smarts worthy of the phrase ‘intelligent life,’” says Milbourne. “They know that L Ron Hubbard has cornered the celebrity market, so they’re taking a lesson from classical religion and concentrating their efforts on the general public, who are much easier to fool than anyone else. They’ll act really nice at first, but the next thing you know they’ll be eating people’s eyeballs and running forceful takeovers of major companies. People really need to ask themselves whether or not they actually want these extraterrestrials to touch down terrestrial-like.”

Reykjavik, Iceland – Ever since gaining independence from Denmark in 1944, Iceland has arguably grown to become one of the premier symbols of forward-thinking, progressive democracy. According to the Human Development Index, it is the most developed country in the world. In a move seeming to confirm this status, Prime Minister Gier Haarde announced today that Iceland will begin constructing a giant plastic bubble to protect the island nation when global warming plunges us all underwater.

“Basically what we are doing is saying ‘fuck you’ to the rest of the idiots on earth and protecting ourselves since everyone but us seems determined to let this planet go to hell,” said Haarde at a press conference attended by media outlets from most of the Western world. Despite the fact that Haarde speaks English, he chose to speak in Icelandic, an incredibly bizarre native language long assumed to be fake, in order to further his point that Iceland is “way better than everyone.”

While describing the plan in further detail, Haarde admitted that geographical luck will play a large part in the success of the bubble. Iceland is a volcanic island, located directly above a geological hotspot: a literal crack in the Earth’s crust that provides residents with relatively easy access to geothermal and hydroelectric power. Iceland already produces 99% of its energy from renewable sources and scientists believe that these energy sources will sustain themselves long after the rest of the planet has either been drowned or reduced to taking turns huddling on the tiny bits of mountain peaks that remain above water.

Konrad Steffen, a glacier expert who has been collecting global warming data for years at his research facility on Iceland’s Arctic neighbor, Greenland, said that the bubble plan has an almost 100% chance of working. “The resources those lucky bastards have at their disposal aren’t likely to run out for hundreds of years,” Konrad says, “which is more than long enough for them to figure out some way of adapting to life on a mostly-water Earth. Of course, they got this idea from a joke I told during an environmental conference, but is there a place for me in the bubble? Nooooo. It’s like a modern day Noah’s Ark now and what would those ‘fish-fuckers’ want with a glacier expert like me when the whole problem is that soon there’ll be no glaciers left?”

Even though the bubble is not expected to be done until 2020, the race is on to secure a spot on the only inhabitable piece of land this planet’s future seems to offer. People from all over the globe and a variety of backgrounds from astronauts to contractors to artists to janitors are flocking to the island, hoping to become part of the bubble project as a means of saving their asses from very likely doom. Many, like artist Jaan Waalbuurn, complain that decisions are based soley on nepotism and personal connections. “It’s like New York’s Chelsea galleries,” he says. “If your daddy’s on the board, you’re in. Other than that, it’s all about who you know and who you blow.”

Iceland’s government has also received heavy criticism from the press for the methods it will use to pay for what is undeniably the largest engineering endeavor in history, specifically the part of the payment plan which includes opening Iceland’s rich offshore oil deposits to drilling by foreign companies. Facing attacks of hypocrisy, Prime Minister Haarde was indignant, stating that “the only way we are going to get foreign nations to pay for us to protect ourselves during a global catastrophe while letting the rest of the world die a miserable death is to offer them the one thing they can ignore all moral consequences to buy: oil.” He says that an earlier fund-raising plan involved a world-wide benefit tour featuring such Icelandic music sensations as Bjork, Sigur Ros and Mum, but that the bands refused to play on the grounds that the bubble was just too selfish to be financed by the people it would exclude. Haarde did mention, however, that Sigur Ros has agreed to let their music play from speakers installed throughout the bubble.

“They’re just so catchy,” Haarde said. “They’re terrifically upbeat and they’ve really perfected that whole three minute pop song thing into an art form. It’ll lift people’s spirits to hear them 24/7, broadcast from the heavens.”

To close his speech, Haarde ended with a joke about Greenland, which he said was either the best or the only joke about Greenland since the Viking leader Erik the Red tricked his people into moving to the glacier-covered island by calling it the “Green Land”.

“Imagine that the people of this planet have now burned enough oil to melt Greenland,” said Haarde. “The punch line of course is that now all the oil companies can get to the oil that used to be under the glaciers, so that they can burn that too and melt more ice to get even more oil.”

“That’s the kind of joke that’s just going to get better with time,” he continued. “I’m sure we’ll all be laughing about global warming for a long time while we’re underwater in our cozy plastic bubble.”

While most cities have been slowly adjusting to the increasingly warmer climate for the past decade, McCook’s unique positioning has caused it to remain unscathed by the heat of civilization’s inevitable march towards apocalyptic doom. In most of the world, outrage over the global heating trend has been channeled into political organizing and shameless advertising ploys. McCook has found itself in a different boat, floating in the increasingly hot water of blind rage.

The unusually warm spring season this year has caused violence to break out in McCook. Here, to the surprise of all involved, spring flowers have taken up arms against the human population. Local elected officials, including the Mayor and City Council members, have all been taken hostage. They are reportedly being held in Frank Lloyd Wright’s historic Sutton House where police are attempting negotiations. Members of the School Board are living in fear, terrorized by white envelopes filled with pollen being delivered to their homes. The PTA’s meeting space, Room 24 of Lincoln Elementary School, was vandalized, the windows shot out and the chalkboard riddled with bullet holes.

The terrifying tigerlilies, gruesome geraniums and violent violets are wreaking havoc to this slumberous hamlet. The Spring Flowers, believed to have deemed themselves Los Floristas, are outraged by global warming. The peak in temperatures, brought on by overcomsumption by humans, has caused the globe to warm noticeably and pushed forward bloom times for plants and flowers. Spring flowers which previously bloomed in May are blooming in March, putting their wilt time two months earlier as well.

To most flowers this has gone unnoticed. After all, the weather remains the same while the calendar month changes. McCook, Nebraska’s flowers are particularly aware of the human calendar because in 2001 the majority of the spring flowers in McCook entered into a timeshare, putting them in Cabo for two weeks in June. One chatty crysanthemum explained the problem, “I was supposed to go to Cabo, now I’m too wilted to make the trip!” As well as being dangerous, it is also unseemly. “No one wants to go to Cabo looking wilty!”

The irate flora have channeled their rage into a militia, fighting guerilla warfare with the town. Spring flowers latest terror tactic has been to enlist kamikazee bees (kamikabees) to sting the inhabitants of the town, as well as giant, harmless, stinger-less bumble bees to buzz loudly in the ears of children and annoy them.

As of my last call to McCook, the townspeople had not decided on their plan of action. “We’ve discussed over-powering them with brute force,” reported Sally Hennings, local housewife and mother of three, “but a lot of us are leaning towards just chipping in so the flowers can have an April timeshare. I hear it’s really nice in the Canary Islands that time of year.”