by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
"The JournoMoWri App had a bad habit of starting its articles with a quote," said Hugo award-winning New York Times political columnist Albert Brooks. "Every first year journalism student knows that you start with at least one paragraph of exposition to set up the basic premise of an article before you start quoting people. It was making me look bad!"
Six months after most people in the developed world (and parts of Boston) went on holiday and let their digital apps run their lives, the vast majority have returned. Some, like Brooks, had bad experiences (although perhaps none so bad as Donald Trump, but since that story has been rehashed dozens of times in newspaper and magazine articles, three different made-for-TV movies and even an au gratin potato dish, we won't rehash it here).
Others found that when they lost their phone service, they effectively lost their lives.
"It was horrible!" said freeform orthodontist Foster Brooks. "Minutes after I lost my Mortgage Manager app, seven separate real estate brokers put my house up for sale! Because the bank had dealt exclusively with the app, it wouldn't accept that I still existed, even when I went in and stood naked in front of the Accounts Manager! It wasn't my proudest moment, although a lot of the tellers did ask me if I was working out..."
Brooks - that would be Foster, not Albert - found his life spiralling out of control after that. "I...I'm getting used to this box I'm currently living in," he stated. "What it lacks in room, it makes up for in draftiness!"
While we all know people with equally sad stories (there wouldn't be a country music industry without them), a slightly smaller but otherwise congruent vast majority had a very different reason for coming home.
"Sales were up a hundred gabillion per cent in the six months that I was away," carped Mel Brooks, President and CEO of Consolidated Crappe (proud makers of the Benito Mussolini bobble-head figure!, the zero-gravity whoopie cushion!! and the five mile long bendy straw!!!). "I didn't want the board to think I wasn't earning my ridiculous annual bonus! I...I like my bonus. It helps me sleep at night..."
"My daughter Millipede's grades shot up when I was on holiday," stay home take-away mom Brooks Avery moaned. "When I hacked into the camera on her desktop, her bed had been made and there were no empty whiskey bottles on her dresser. I had to come back - I didn't want anybody to think I was a bad mother! Can I help it if I like strip Mah Jongg with the girls night? There's nothing wrong with that. I can quite any time I want to - I just never seem to want to..."
Although Millipede Brooks refused to be interviewed for this article, GoodGirlsDont, the app that she was running while she was on holiday, stated that she came back because she didn't like being shown up by a stupid computer programme just because it ate all of her vegetables and never let a boy get past first base on a date and made her room tidier than the clean room at a computer chip manufacturing plant and got her homework in - not on time, no, that would be bad enough - but early, and that she would show it, and the world, and even her parents, that she could be a good daughter without it.
In short, people - and, not just those named Brooks, either - started drifting back to their regular existence when they realized that their apps were better at living their lives than they were.
"That's a rather harsh assessment," demurred clinical nosey person Brooke Shields. "A lot of people found that sitting on the beach, sipping Pina Colodas while listening to Rupert Holmes got boring after a couple of months. I don't understand it myself - Pina Colodas are damn tasty! - but most people have returned to their tedious, droning, monoto -"
When I suggested that it wasn't Shields who responded to my question, that it was, in fact, Shrink Rap, a source of psychiatric information and insight for journalists, she indignantly responded, "Of course it's me! W...who - what would make you think it wasn't?"
For one thing, I pointed out, she had given a 46 word response to a question, and didn't lapse into psychiatric jargon once.
"Oh, ah, negative reinforcement penis envy," Shields, if it was Shields, sputtered, "...ah ah ah Electra Industrial Complex...Triumphant Individual Telemetry for Thematic Apperception Tests...ah..."
A small number of people continue to enjoy a holiday while they allow their computer apps to live their lives for them. But, for how much longer? For. How. Much. Longer?