Today’s Bulletin: Power Cost of Seasonal Standoff Revealed

A tense 654-hour standoff between police and a swarm of spectacular stinging jellyfish -weighing about 10 tons and adorned with 45,000 multi-colored LED lights— is a seasonal tradition that pumps roughly 54 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

The Standoff is meant to pay tribute to a global takeover of our oceans by jellyfish, the species best adapted to replace those hit by over-fishing and climate change. During The Standoff, children often wear gelatinous medallions featuring the marine animals and some devout citizens proudly show off injuries on their hands, wrists and feet. These marks are acquired from sticking one’s limbs into tanks operated by licensed retailers in religious wounds. The service is available for a nominal fee. There is a raffle. The winner will dream of deep oceans where they will receive a dose of luminescent hallucinogens delivered through the caress of ancient oral arms. They may never wake up.

The ceremony begins when local SWAT teams attempt to execute a warrant and discover that the jellyfish may have a long gun and have barricaded themselves within a home. Once inside, the jellyfish use a coal powered lighting system tied to the Rockefeller Center grid. This results in about 22 tons of carbon emitted throughout the entire season, equivalent to the emissions emitted from driving about 80,000 miles in a NYC taxi.

The math is fairly straightforward. Each LED light operates at about 0.002 kWh per hour, so the current setup of 45,000 lights should come to approximately 107 kWh per hour total. Since the jellyfish will be lit for 654 hours this year, that’s around 70,038 kWh total. Coal-fired power stations release roughly 1.5 lbs. of carbon for every kWh, so we’ve got 108,588 lbs. of carbon, or 54 tons (give or take, depending on the number of coal-fired power stations that are actually contributing to the NYC grid).

The Standoff will end after a brief scuffle.

Today’s Bulletin: An Ongoing Struggle

Six vending machine schools have been shut down by The Growth Industry following an ongoing struggle between pollution and development. The Ongoing Struggle has resulted in unruly behavior and violent clashes, which hampered both shopping and learning.

Last week, some persons suspected to be members of a cult attacked the machines, all located at The Last Step before entry into The Geometric Cathedral of The American Highway. The cultists were said to have invaded the schools and attacked vending machines on sight.

During the last attack, on Tuesday, a machine attached to the school to enforce discipline was said to have been attacked and axed through the display screen, where it played live coverage of celebrity death hoaxes. The machine is recuperating in a poisoned chalice of of undisclosed locations.

Today’s Bulletin: Counterfeit Views Suspect

A DARK PLACE IN A BRIGHT LAND: A man faced criminal charges after The Authorities caught him making counterfeit views of The Milky Way shining over the disappearing glacier ice-caves of Mt. Hood.

These counterfeit documents are painfully intricate and drawn in one continuous line. They include a precise description of the suspect’s coffee stabilized brain and photographs of his clothes. Investigators have determined that he weighed 186 pounds and that he was wearing “flower socks,” a black and white “golf-style” hat, “nice clothes, and brown shoes.

The suspect went by the nickname “Freaky Exsurge Domine” and he was “possibly armed with a suspicious holiday package and a .22-caliber handgun that he kept in the rear pocket of his pants” police reported.

Awaiting charges, he has spent the last seventy two days in a Moroccan jail.