Of course, it came to a
point when there simply was too much news. Daily newspapers doubled
in size and were as thick as a James Joyce novel (not Portrait of an
Artist, you smart Alec). Everyone agreed that with its increased size
and weight the newspaper had become most unwieldy, as reading the
news was practically a two-man job. Reading the paper on a train or
bus was all but impossible unless you were sitting next to an
accommodating stranger with whom you shared similar interests.
And nobody could finish
an entire newspaper in a day. It took three or four days, minimum,
and even the most voracious readers tended to be a few years behind
in their understanding of current events. BBC's Have I Got News For
You prided itself on making topical quips that were no more than four
years old, but unfortunately most of its viewers were grappling with
even older news and thus couldn't understand Ian Hislop's witty
topical wit. After a long period of steadily declining viewing
figures the BBC decided to cancel Have I Got News For You and chose
to replace it with a looped clip of Ian Hislop's wrinkly old body
dressed up in ladies clothes, doing the sort of dance a lady might
do. Critical responses were, on the whole, positive about the change
of programming, and most people agreed that this was secretly what
they always wanted to see.
Some radical
environmentalist whack-jobs started to worry about the mass
deforestation taking place in order to print all of the news, and
thought it especially awful considering everyone was pretty much in
agreement that internet news websites killed significantly less
trees. The environmentalists were very vocal about their opposition
to all of the news, which ironically was in itself newsworthy and its
estimated this news was responsible for the killing of a handful of
trees, which technically speaking is about one tree, possibly less,
depending on the size of the hand. They staged numerous protests,
burning newspapers and using the fire to toast their marshmallows of
environmental justice (which luckily were on offer in Tesco) and also
to provide atmospheric lighting and warmth for their guitar-driven
protest songs. Things reached something of a crisis point when the
environmentalists decided to bomb large portions of the Amazonian
rainforest that were being used for the news, causing devastating
forest fires and pretty much wiping out what was remaining of the
rainforest.
The evisceration of the
rainforest created an irreconcilable paradox: the environmentalists
had caused a catastrophe of profound topical importance, while
simultaneously removing the resources available for printing a
written account of their embarrassing blunder.
That is why the UN
eventually decided to enforce a worldwide ban on all news. If a man
so much as mentioned a topical event in a public place he was guilty
of propagating news and could face up to eight years in prison. Of
course nobody knew about the ban, seeing as it was in itself a piece
of news, and thus people naively dealt out news left, right and
centre. They would have been arrested if the police were informed of
the news, but as it was the UN collectively decided that news of the
ban must not leave the meeting room.
I imagine this will all
be news to some of you, in which case I ask you to burn this or the
computer on which you are reading this in order to protect your
innocence.
If the communication of
this news is impossible due to the criminality of sharing the news of
the ban on news, is it not somewhat of a plot hole that I am able to
relate to you this news?
To that question I
answer this: no, you're a
plot hole.
