As an investment tool, newspapers have long been recognised as one of the safest and most stable investments available. After all, everybody wants to know about recent events. However, a recent discovery has cast doubt on this supposed financial stability. Join our correspondent in the field to find out more. Over to you, Yodel Yarnyammer.
Thanks, Pillsbury. We are here today with the newly famous scientist and the subject of almost 10,000 dartboards across the country, Gorsolf Blottenburg. From his birth, Blottenburg has dedicated himself to one goal: changing his godawful name. But science comes in a close second.
“Yes, I did contact a government agency one time about my name. You know what they did? They laughed me out of the agency! I wasn’t even there, I was on the phone! Now I’m banned from it forever!” Blottenburg walks me towards the infamous laboratory where he first made his stunning discovery, complaining about his name the whole time. The man never shuts up about it. This is his day in, day out. The rest of us hate our names too, y’know, but none of us spend 3 STRAIGHT HOURS talking about it! Anyway, I digress. As we walk, in between his insane rambling, Blottenburg occasionally says something relevant and scientific. From what I’ve pieced together after hours of walking (I hate walks), he first hoisted his sorry overly-whiny body to the stepping stool of stardom when he attempted to drop an apple on his head, trying to mimic the famous children’s novel, “Ishmael Noton Discovers Gravity.” To nobody’s surprise, the apple did nothing, because only children believe in silly things like gravity. But waking up the next morning, Blottenburg felt something different for the first time. Pain. In classic Blottenburg fashion, he ran up and down the street in only bathrobes, yelling something along the lines of “ow.” Owev Pilferport, a newspaper reporter who had until recently been investigating cheese viscosity, was shocked to hear her name called but was luckily able to get an exclusive interview with him. But what happened afterwards was shocking.
“I was shocked,” Blottenburg told me as we entered the laboratory, “Really shocked. Flabbergasted.” After the interview was released, people were dying to get their hands on the news. “It was Christmas in there. Paper flying off the shelves. Also, a huge money wreath for some reason.” But what did that mean for collectors? Well, as Ms. Geasmand, who has been in the industry for over 60 years, responds, “My mortgage! My house! My savings fund! When I get my hands on that man, I’ll [description too explicit for publishing]”. Following this, Blottenburg told me his principal motive for research was to “blow the country’s GDP to smithereens!” Linguistics consultants have revealed that a “GDP” is an archaic name for a sort of wobbly hat. Blottenburg’s meaning is currently unknown.
While Blottenburg’s inadvertent economic depression seems completely unprecedented to the layman, leading economists say that it holds a great deal of precedent. “I mean, this is going to be the baseline for maybe 50 years of economics,” says an unnamed economist. “We’ve never seen anything quite like it.” The economist then ran away and took my purse. Looking back, I don’t think that guy was actually an economist. Do we have an actual economist in the building? “Yes,” says the unpaid intern I’m currently quoting for no good reason. I’m not sure why I’m narrating my own speech. Okay, seriously, cut over to the economist now. This has been—-
Okay, let’s stop listening to that idiot. I’m Stultio Asininus, the BorBor Bugulator’s resident hirer, here with our newest economist, sadly without a name, who was reportedly doing some street-level economics when we picked him up. Mr. Economist, can you explain what exactly this revolution in printing is about?
Absolutely, Stultio. Investors have always thought of newspapers as the next generation in finance. But our current newspapers are simply too old. People would call them oldpapers if that wasn’t a stupid name. You see, newspapers derive most of their value from their ability to convey information. From the unassumingly complex “Crucifix-Letter” to the drama-packed “Query Pillar”, newspapers have been read for their informational values ever since the good ol’ days, which seem to always be 20-30 years ago relative to the modern era. But it was about a hundred years ago when statisticians reached an incontrovertible conclusion. People had read every single newspaper. There was nothing left to read. You could toss one onto somebody’s doorstop, and they would have probably already received the same copy about 5 times. Since then, newspapers have been getting rarer and rarer. Every copy lost to a dog, every roll sacrificed before a sanguine altar, brought the value of each remaining newspaper higher and higher. I myself own an old 1900s tabloid that was probably worth around $3 million before. But now? Its value is down to the thousands.
But why could that be, Unnamed Economist?
Well, that one interview launched a whole new printing line of papers! People got their hands on the new line and just started reading the current news! What Blottenburg discovered was a very beautiful yet unknowable truth: as time passes, stuff happens.
Inconceivable!
And when stuff happens, guess who’s the first to capitalise? Newspapers, that’s who! And now the market’s overflowing with papers, bringing the prices down for everyone!
But why didn’t the printers just print about things that were happening before this discovery?
Well, if you had been paying attention, obviously nothing was happening!
Nothing?
Yeah, besides all the everyday humdrum.
Nothing? What about elections?
We’ve had a dictator in chief for years, Apweiovls. We don’t get elections.
But, but surely something must have happened in all those years!
Well, most probably something did.
Well then, why didn’t the printers write about that!
I guess they just didn’t think of it.
Oh, ok, that makes sense. Alright. Heh, I was really worried there that your whole explanation was just a bunch of verbal padding and you weren’t actually an economist, but I suppose that does tie things up nicely.
I mean, I’m not an economist.
You’ve been talking about economics here for an hour. You can’t just not be an economist.
Well, I’m not. You remember you just picked me up off my raggedy homeless blanket and dumped me on this television set, right?
Yeah, that’s how we usually hire people. So if you’re not an economist, we don’t have to pay you, right?
Probably.
Wonderful! Cut to the other guy!
Pleasure to be back. Blottenburg here is currently working at the cutting edge of a new technology. His most recent obsession? Cheese. “We had thought that cheese appeared at the dawn of time in little wheels,” Blottenburg explains, rubbing his nonexistent beard thoroughly and insecurely. “We still do think this,” he explains, but “we’ve discovered an incredible new method to increase the quality of its taste!” He shows me over to a specially designed Science Plate, trademark pending. On it, a wheel of cheese looks completely ordinary. “If we keep this wheel of cheese preserved for a few months, its taste will go through a miraculous transition to a much better taste!” He requests that I try a few plates. On one plate, the cheese has just freshly appeared. On the other plate, the cheese has been carefully preserved for several months. Both pieces taste exactly the same. “Well, you clearly don’t have the refined taste of a true cheese connoisseur,” says Blottenburg, “but let me assure your neophyte tongue that the right cheese is utterly superior to a trained taster.” The left cheese, which he appears to be pointing at, also looks exactly the same. Blottenburg walks me past the two completely identical pieces of cheese, past twelve completely pentagonal cheese monoliths, and past a cheese fetus he’s been training to exclusively feel pain, finally arriving at a large door. Behind, a horrific scene. Economists in droves. They scurry across the fine, precisely-measured marble floor, chasing cheese balls to build higher and higher stacks of meaningless cheese. The marbles on the floor are swept up along with the cheese and consumed for nutrition. This reporter really fails to see what all the fuss is about cheese. It’s just a bunch of spoiled milk, or some—ow strangulation really hurts, please cut away.
Thanks for that wonderful insight, Yodel! We thank our noble reporter for their sacrifice in the name of news. Next up, how can you tell if the weather is sunny or cloudy? Experts say “eyes” could be the solution.
