tillz0r
15-12-2005, 05:46 PM
I posted this in the writing forum yesterday, but it's obvious that no-one checks there. What do you think ?
In the Year 2013 (the very same year that McDonalds finally bowing to outside pressure by health fanatics replaced the original potato French Fry with the steamed spinach French Fry), the Australian Federal Government decided upon trial-ing a new method of voting; Internet voting. This style of voting was cheap, efficient, totally automatic and produced an instant result, but was not without its fair share of glitches. Deciding to outsource the responsibility of running this voting service, the Federal Government chose a small, but respected web-hosting company on the Gold Coast to monitor the service. This small company consisted of four company executives: the Chairman (a small brown haired man in his mid 20’s, known only as ‘Martin’), an Executive Officer (a smaller red and green haired creature that looks suspiciously like a parrot and answers to the name of ‘Edgar’), a Guidance Officer (an even smaller man dressed as a butler who lives on Martin’s laptop and answers to the name of ‘Jeeves’) and a Crisis Manager (a tallish man in his mid 20’s with sandy blond hair and a particularly nervous disposition named ‘Heath’).
Wishing to test the new voting system (which was now affectionately becoming referred to as ‘Bob’ by some of the more closely related families in the Ipswich region) the Australian Government asked the Gold Coast web-hosting team to run a small referendum test, which would inquire of the Australian people whether or not they were ready for a republic. And so the Gold Coast team set to work and decided to use the same sort of simplistic questioning technique used by former Prime-Minister John Howard during the last Federal referendum on the notion of a republic. Two weeks later with a profound sense of accomplishment Martin uploaded the simple YES/NO question onto the Internet for the Australian people to answer. As the average Australian read this simple question ‘Do you want a republic’ and chose to answer either: ‘Yes I do want a republic’ or ‘No I don’t want a Prime-Minister I want a President’ the public breathed a sigh of relief, having finally witnessed their first fair and unbiased referendum.
And so 112 years after Australia’s Federation the Australian people democratically decided with a vote of 83% in favour, to formally cut all ties with the British monarchy and to no longer recognise King Charles (who became king in 2010 only after a mammoth nose job operation which lasted 36 hours!) as Australian head of government. It was unanimously decided that upon the next federal election the new Head of Government would become the first President of Australia.
As the year rolled on the exciting race to see who would become Australia’s first president gained momentum, with seven major candidates striving for the nation’s top job. The candidates ranged from politicians to movie stars, sporting celebrities and even to a former school lunch lady (however Marg the school lunchroom lady was forced to drop out of the race early on after being rocked by a scandal which involved a large salami sandwich, a drop of mustard on a school apron and the mysterious disappearance of $2.25 out of the school lunchroom’s cash register). After several visits on ‘Presidential Big Brother’, and ‘Who Wants to be an Australian President’ (which many audiences thought lacked any real relevance to the presidential race, since Eddy seemed more interested in knowing if participants could guess the correct translation of ‘Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem’ which of course nearly all of us understand to mean ‘In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags’, instead of questioning participants on their presidential policies.
Finally the big day came around and at 12am on November 14th Martin and his team uploaded the finished document onto the Internet for the Australian people to vote on. Again simplicity was opted for and the question simply stated “which of the following 7 people would you prefer to be president” this question was then followed quite plainly by the list of all eight names. Martin was proud of his team, the questioning technique had been proposed by his little friend Jeeves (who always somehow managed to switch himself onto standby when he wasn’t needed but was immediately there and waiting when sought for), Edgar had hyperlinked all the candidates names in order to produce a fair and accurate result, Heath unfortunately had been forced to take a short trip to the hospital after chewing quite deeply past his fingernail during a slight moment of unrest when Martin had blown his nose quite loudly, and of course Martin himself had done the fine tuning and uploading of the program.
Deciding that he should cast his own vote before he went to bed, Martin scrolled down the list of candidates and was quite surprised to find his own name added to the list. Chuckling to himself after realising that Edgar had placed his name accidentally on the list instead of at the bottom of the page with the advertisement for Gold Coast web-hosting, Martin voted for the first candidate – waved goodnight to Jeeves (who appeared to be sleeping as denoted by the pale green light his home was emitting), gave a small water cracker to Edgar and went to sleep for a well earned rest. Awoken some 6 hours later to the sound of a large mob surrounding the outside of his small Robina home, Martin opened the front door to a barrage of flashing lights, a large crowd of reporters, dozens of TV film crews and a small dark haired man named Abdul (who was sitting on the back of a large Alsatian whist wearing a small dark green frog suit).
Jumping back inside the house Martin raced inside to wake up Edgar. “Edgar, what’s happened?” Martin cried. “There’s an army of reporters outside the front door (and a man in a frog suit riding a large dog)…. What have we done?” Edgar smiled “Why I have made you Australia’s first president Martin, all those candidates were hyperlinked to your name, you won the election by a landslide!” “What…Edgar!” Martin yelped. Edgar’s small black eyes glazed over and narrowed. Instead of his usual squawk, Edgar replied to Martin’s frantic cries in a deep sinister and booming voice (which was enhanced by the small microphone taped to his throat), “Edgar?… My name is not Edgar! These many years I have been infiltrating the human world with one objective…..WORLD DOMINATION!” screamed Edgar. “And now I have my chance, through you Martin will I begin my conquest of your species, beginning with this continent I will begin my subjugation of all peoples and nations. From now on I wish to be known by my real name: ‘Dr Squabbles!’”
Still staring somewhat malevolently at Martin, Dr Squabbles continued “Now I have been setting this moment up for years, if you stand in my way the consequences will be unimaginable! Now get me some of those water crackers and then go and claim my presidency!” With dismal resignation Martin fed Edgar (now Dr. Squabbles) two water crackers, opened to door to his home and stepped forward to clam the presidency.
On 16th November 2013 the newly elected President Martin (Australia’s first president) was sworn into office, along with him to Canberra he brought a small evil parrot bent on world domination (now appointed head of the: Australian Military, ASIO, Taxation Office and Public Relations Commission), a small intelligent man (still dressed as a butler whom he made Chief Presidential Adviser) and a highly over-anxious manager (appointed: Secretary of State and Chief of the Critical Response Unit). Together they prepared to lead Australia forward to a glorious future, this is their story:
In the Year 2013 (the very same year that McDonalds finally bowing to outside pressure by health fanatics replaced the original potato French Fry with the steamed spinach French Fry), the Australian Federal Government decided upon trial-ing a new method of voting; Internet voting. This style of voting was cheap, efficient, totally automatic and produced an instant result, but was not without its fair share of glitches. Deciding to outsource the responsibility of running this voting service, the Federal Government chose a small, but respected web-hosting company on the Gold Coast to monitor the service. This small company consisted of four company executives: the Chairman (a small brown haired man in his mid 20’s, known only as ‘Martin’), an Executive Officer (a smaller red and green haired creature that looks suspiciously like a parrot and answers to the name of ‘Edgar’), a Guidance Officer (an even smaller man dressed as a butler who lives on Martin’s laptop and answers to the name of ‘Jeeves’) and a Crisis Manager (a tallish man in his mid 20’s with sandy blond hair and a particularly nervous disposition named ‘Heath’).
Wishing to test the new voting system (which was now affectionately becoming referred to as ‘Bob’ by some of the more closely related families in the Ipswich region) the Australian Government asked the Gold Coast web-hosting team to run a small referendum test, which would inquire of the Australian people whether or not they were ready for a republic. And so the Gold Coast team set to work and decided to use the same sort of simplistic questioning technique used by former Prime-Minister John Howard during the last Federal referendum on the notion of a republic. Two weeks later with a profound sense of accomplishment Martin uploaded the simple YES/NO question onto the Internet for the Australian people to answer. As the average Australian read this simple question ‘Do you want a republic’ and chose to answer either: ‘Yes I do want a republic’ or ‘No I don’t want a Prime-Minister I want a President’ the public breathed a sigh of relief, having finally witnessed their first fair and unbiased referendum.
And so 112 years after Australia’s Federation the Australian people democratically decided with a vote of 83% in favour, to formally cut all ties with the British monarchy and to no longer recognise King Charles (who became king in 2010 only after a mammoth nose job operation which lasted 36 hours!) as Australian head of government. It was unanimously decided that upon the next federal election the new Head of Government would become the first President of Australia.
As the year rolled on the exciting race to see who would become Australia’s first president gained momentum, with seven major candidates striving for the nation’s top job. The candidates ranged from politicians to movie stars, sporting celebrities and even to a former school lunch lady (however Marg the school lunchroom lady was forced to drop out of the race early on after being rocked by a scandal which involved a large salami sandwich, a drop of mustard on a school apron and the mysterious disappearance of $2.25 out of the school lunchroom’s cash register). After several visits on ‘Presidential Big Brother’, and ‘Who Wants to be an Australian President’ (which many audiences thought lacked any real relevance to the presidential race, since Eddy seemed more interested in knowing if participants could guess the correct translation of ‘Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem’ which of course nearly all of us understand to mean ‘In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags’, instead of questioning participants on their presidential policies.
Finally the big day came around and at 12am on November 14th Martin and his team uploaded the finished document onto the Internet for the Australian people to vote on. Again simplicity was opted for and the question simply stated “which of the following 7 people would you prefer to be president” this question was then followed quite plainly by the list of all eight names. Martin was proud of his team, the questioning technique had been proposed by his little friend Jeeves (who always somehow managed to switch himself onto standby when he wasn’t needed but was immediately there and waiting when sought for), Edgar had hyperlinked all the candidates names in order to produce a fair and accurate result, Heath unfortunately had been forced to take a short trip to the hospital after chewing quite deeply past his fingernail during a slight moment of unrest when Martin had blown his nose quite loudly, and of course Martin himself had done the fine tuning and uploading of the program.
Deciding that he should cast his own vote before he went to bed, Martin scrolled down the list of candidates and was quite surprised to find his own name added to the list. Chuckling to himself after realising that Edgar had placed his name accidentally on the list instead of at the bottom of the page with the advertisement for Gold Coast web-hosting, Martin voted for the first candidate – waved goodnight to Jeeves (who appeared to be sleeping as denoted by the pale green light his home was emitting), gave a small water cracker to Edgar and went to sleep for a well earned rest. Awoken some 6 hours later to the sound of a large mob surrounding the outside of his small Robina home, Martin opened the front door to a barrage of flashing lights, a large crowd of reporters, dozens of TV film crews and a small dark haired man named Abdul (who was sitting on the back of a large Alsatian whist wearing a small dark green frog suit).
Jumping back inside the house Martin raced inside to wake up Edgar. “Edgar, what’s happened?” Martin cried. “There’s an army of reporters outside the front door (and a man in a frog suit riding a large dog)…. What have we done?” Edgar smiled “Why I have made you Australia’s first president Martin, all those candidates were hyperlinked to your name, you won the election by a landslide!” “What…Edgar!” Martin yelped. Edgar’s small black eyes glazed over and narrowed. Instead of his usual squawk, Edgar replied to Martin’s frantic cries in a deep sinister and booming voice (which was enhanced by the small microphone taped to his throat), “Edgar?… My name is not Edgar! These many years I have been infiltrating the human world with one objective…..WORLD DOMINATION!” screamed Edgar. “And now I have my chance, through you Martin will I begin my conquest of your species, beginning with this continent I will begin my subjugation of all peoples and nations. From now on I wish to be known by my real name: ‘Dr Squabbles!’”
Still staring somewhat malevolently at Martin, Dr Squabbles continued “Now I have been setting this moment up for years, if you stand in my way the consequences will be unimaginable! Now get me some of those water crackers and then go and claim my presidency!” With dismal resignation Martin fed Edgar (now Dr. Squabbles) two water crackers, opened to door to his home and stepped forward to clam the presidency.
On 16th November 2013 the newly elected President Martin (Australia’s first president) was sworn into office, along with him to Canberra he brought a small evil parrot bent on world domination (now appointed head of the: Australian Military, ASIO, Taxation Office and Public Relations Commission), a small intelligent man (still dressed as a butler whom he made Chief Presidential Adviser) and a highly over-anxious manager (appointed: Secretary of State and Chief of the Critical Response Unit). Together they prepared to lead Australia forward to a glorious future, this is their story: