As I wrote at the very start of this blog back in 2002 (and thanks for sticking with us over the past seven years!) there is no way for any satirist to improve upon life itself:
When Malcolm Muggeridge was the editor of the British satirical magazine Punch in the early 1960s, Khrushchev had announced he was going to tour England alongside its prime minister. Muggeridge wrote up a list of the silliest tour stops he could think of, and then put the article to bed, ready for publication. When the actual tour list was drawn up, he had to massively rewrite the article. At least half the tour stops in his satirical piece were actually on Khrushchev and the British PM’s agenda!
Which is why Muggeridge’s Law is: there is no way that a writer of fiction can compete with real life for its pure absurdity.
It’s also worth noting Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of politics:
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Assuming it’s not a belated April Fool’s Joke of awesome proportions (and of course it is in a sense, but is it a deliberate one?) Conquest’s Third Law applies in spades to Project P.U.M.A., which takes the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition from Congressional Motors and trumps it a thousand times over.
Or does it? Perhaps P.U.M.A., in this case, stands for Pelosi’s Unwanted Miniature Automobile, thus perfectly squaring the circle.
Update: More or less related thoughts from Alfonzo Rachel.
More: “The wheelchair with a motor.” To boldly go where Captain Christopher Pike has gone before!
And before too long, we’ll have these battery operated PUMA’s which are safe enough to drive themselves – all we’llhave to do is tell it our destination, and the GPS and the motion sensors will get us there safely while we surf the web on the integrated browser, talk on the integrated Bluetooth cell phone, watch TV, put on makeup, whatever we want.
Then we’ll begin adapting homes and businesses so that we can cruise our PUMAs indoors.
Next, they’ll begin making reclining models with integrated toilets so we never have to get out of the things.
Then they’ll build robots to collect and stack all of the trash we’ve become too lazy to pick up – we can call them WALL-E.