Update: Microsoft announces ‘Anthrax XP’ demo.
Sony Cures Cancer…Two Decades Ago
PITTSBURG (AP) — Scientists were amazed today when a new report revealed that there had been, in fact, a cure for cancer since the 1980s. This starting revelation was made at a press conference around 9:00am in which Dr. Stephen Kaufmann reported a distinct connection between cancer rates and the number of people listen, or listened, to cassette Walkmans.
“I figured out when I was looking at my mother and father during one particular long and boring story about how he defeated the gophers that were eating all of our turnips in 67. I suddenly realized he had smoked fourteen cigarettes in ten minutes. Mom was very far behind him. When I though back on it, theyd been doing this for as long as I could remember. Dads destroyed five mattresses and lost all the hair on his back smoking in bed. There was no logical explanation for why they shouldnt have been dead from lung cancer years ago, so I became curious. I started to look into their other lifestyle habits, to see what I could find,” Kaufmann said to the media this morning.
“It was a wash at first,” he continued, “or so I thought, because the only thing the two had in common was that they were desperately hooked to really bad music from the 80s and didnt know how to work modern technology. The first time my mom saw an AOL CD, she thought it was a coaster. Anyway, dad hasnt done much of anything but lounge about in the pool since he retired, and he always has his Michael Jackson and Frankie Goes to Hollywood tapes with him in his floaty-chair, along with an ancient Sport Walkman. Mom spends hours a day putting together pornographic jigsaw puzzles, and she listens to music on a Walkman while doing that, too. Tiffany and The Breeders, mostly. Never quite figured that out.”
Being a good man of science, Dr. Kaufmann knew he had to pursue every possible lead, no matter how nonsensical it might be. He interviewed his entire neighborhood. Had they battled cancer? Had anyone they knew died from it? He noticed a surprising trend. Every single person in his parents subdivision that had died of cancer was either so old and archaic that they listened to nothing but vinyl records while cane dancing, or they were so young they had never had to rewind anything in their lives. People who owned portable mp3 players, and nothing else, had a 98.45% chance of getting a brain tumor and dying within three years of purchasing the device. “People who didnt listen to music at all had what we would consider normal cancer rates, but they also had a life completely devoid of joy or Cobain, making me wonder what the point of living was for them anyway,” according to Kaufmann.
But not a single person who listened to tapes on a vintage Sony Cassette Walkman had ever had cancer, or so much as a mole.
“I couldnt believe it. It really didnt seem possible. People who owned other portable cassette players dropped like flies. Two of the people who owned CD Walkmans died in front of my very eyes; one of them spontaneously combusted. And then there was this one guy, who must have had one of every album ever played on MTV in its first decade on cassette, and he looked like he could lift a car he was so healthy. And he was 113 years old! I knew I was on to something.”
It turns out that Sony used a special kind of smooth plastic in these original Walkmans which, when influenced by the minute magnetic field surrounding the tape itself, released a type of radiation previously unrecorded. Kaufmann dubbed them “Vikiterasta waves”, after his mother, who had been crushed by a large novelty donut in the two years since Kaufmann had started on his journey to greatness. “When they did the autopsy, her lungs were as healthy as the day she was born and three times as pink.”
Dr. Kaufmann quickly contacted the president of Sony, who disregarded his claims as unimportant. “He told me, Weve already designed the PlayStation 3 to cure cancer and most forms of Tuberculosis, so thanks anyway! when I called,” Dr. Kaufmann was quoted as saying when talking about Sonys reaction to the news. “Hell, if theyre right, more power to them. I just hope it works better than the original PlayStation. Im on my fourth one of those this month. Thank God they still make them.”
After the press conference, Kaufmann passed out a thirty page document containing a full list of all the devices he had currently discovered to have cancer-curing effects. On the list were, of course, a full list of Sony Walkman model numbers, as well as three 1960s models of “oscillating vaginal pleasure devices”, one My Little Pony doll, three Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures based on the third movie of the franchise, and one lot of dancing Santa dolls made in 1997.
“Im in talks with Pfizer about synthesizing the effect for the mass market. Im also at work, with my new assistants, on using Apple IIes to cure HIV in its late stages, although thats not going as well as we have hoped.”
