WASHINGTON, D.C. The Department of Homeland Security today issued an advisory to internet users to avoid excessive use of exclamation points in email messages or risk a meltdown of the world-wide network that connects people by computers.
Chertoff: “You don’t see me getting all exclamation-pointy in my emails.”
“We want to avoid extreme measures, but if we have to resort to exclamation point rationing in order to preserve our nation’s ability to communicate critical security information and dumb blonde jokes, we will,” said Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security.
Yogurt-based tuna noodle casserole: Yum!
Increased internet usage has generated an upsurge in exclamation points in short-hand messages such as “Thanks everybody for the tuna noodle casserole recipes!!! Duane my husband will appreciate them I’m sure LOL!!!!!”
J. Edgar Hoover: “Get your hand off that computer mouse thingy and nobody gets hurt.”
Department of Defense officials say many users of the “LOL!!!” formulation do not actually laugh out loud, and thus the use of a punctuation mark for emphasis is unnecessary. “Excessive exclamation point use clogs fiber-optic cables and slows transmission speeds for highly sensitive communications between federal agencies such as ‘I need your Final Four Sheets in my office before the tip-off of the play-in game between Murpheesboro State and University of Washington-Yakima at noon!’,” according to Chertoff, who was voted “Most Likely to Become a Scary Government Official” by his classmates at The Pingry School.
Not actually laughing out loud.
Technology experts have speculated in the past that the biggest threat to web-based communications would be an anti-satellite weapon that knocked out the infrastructure of the internet, but the exponential increase in the use of exclamation points in mundane messages is now seen as a more immediate concern.
Anti-satellite missile: “I want to enter the On-Line Pepsi Challenge but my screen is frozen!”
“Our first reaction was that if we could get to the nation’s housewives through a program of public education we could control the problem,” said Chertoff, “but sports blogs and chat rooms have become just as much of a threat. I counted fifty exclamation points in a single Pacman Jones post yesterday, and that was just about his earrings.”
“Hey, Jack–you don’t like my earring you can shove it!”
The internet grew out of a packet-switching system developed by the Department of Defense known as the “ARPANET”, an acronym that stands for “Are you planning on asking out Naeann Ehrke tonight?” The first computer network to allow general communication between users of various computers, the ARPANET is sometimes blamed for the US’s slow start in the space race and the loss of North Dakota to Canada in a 1964 skirmish. “Until Canada withdraws from occupied territory along our border,” said Chertoff, “we need to make internet use safe, legal and rare.”
Copyright 2008, Con Chapman
