The New WMDs:1

A WMD (weapon of mass destruction) has been discovered in Iraq.

It is a telephone in one of Saddam's old palaces.

 With cameras rolling, the telephone was activated and proceeded to ring off the hook for the next 6 hours with calls from telemarketers and lesser forms of life.
My parents, who are in their mid 80s, are constantly bedeviled by phone calls and telephones themselves. When I visit - once a week minimum - there are about 70 messages on their telephone electronic dustbin.

My mother is very conservative and very Republican and would not harm a fly. However, I have caught her sitting on the couch, looking daggers at the telephone, and reading the works of Mikhail Bakunin. Last week, as we were watching their television, she drove me to distraction by surfing the 100 channels. So I suggested we look at the tv book. The tv book consists of program titles plus Linear Matrices of channels, the columns of the matrix being the letters A through K, and the rows being what appear to be the best guesses of the tv book as to which number the channel might be today, ordered from best guess to worst guess. On the average, surfing the channels took 2.1 minutes to complete whereas the tv book required 6.7 minutes plus the 3 minutes required to rip it up and toss it.

 I sense that the people responsible are the same who wrote up the new Medicare program. And when my mother needs a new cellular telephone, she wants one that will just place calls and receive calls - nothing else. She hasn't caught on to the infinite number of useless amenities available in this Brave New World.