 Future steaks will taste perfect. For several years, the Intergalactic Business Report has toyed with the idea of inventing a new school subject that would replace “History.” We believe that at some point, top scholarly institutions will adopt this, but for now, we can only complain about how much the past sucks and why it is absurd to spend so much time studying it. Unlike the past, the future offers us hope, utopia, and a resolution to most of our current problems. And yet we continue to read old books dedicated to telling us every detail about everything people ever did. To make our point clear, we’ve tried to break down the main differences between what happened in the past and what will happen in the future so that you can see why one is clearly better than the other. These nine reasons will have you wondering why you were ever forced to study history and also leave you angry at the horrifying teachers and perverse adults who pressured you to be part of it. 1. In the past, people died of horrible diseases. In the future, nobody will die ever. At some point, scientists or really good car mechanics will be able to make us all cyborgs who never die. Sound awesome? We know. But people still waste their time stupidly studying already dead people who have nothing more to offer our species. 2. In the past, people fought over silly things like coffee, their honor, and land. In the future, people will play video games. There’s really no comparison. Want to get stabbed for real because some king made you be in a war? No? Want to play Mortal Kombat 87? We thought so. 3. The future will be so easy, you won’t even need to try. The past was so hard, it sucked all the time. Again, easy choice between everything being effortless or every moment of your existence being you trying to plant a seed or fight off a wolf. We’ll opt for easy. And so will you. 4. In the future, your favorite teams will win at some point. In the past, they either lost or they won but it’s over, so that sucks. 5. People in the past were stinky. People in the future take showers and have really good deodorant.* 6. In the future, food will taste however we want it to. In the past, it tasted like whatever it was and that sucked. We’re pretty sure a scientist will invent something that will make food taste exactly the way we want it to, and not some chef's interpretation of however he thinks you want it to taste. Instead of hearing, “How would you like your steak?” You just tell the waiter to shut up and give you your fucking food. So much more satisfying. 7. There was some good music in the past, but the future has that music too, plus more. The future will always have a larger music catalog because it will have the latest songs and artists, whereas the past will only have whatever they had. For example. In 1950, they only had music people’s great-grandparents would listen to. 8. Kennedy was assassinated in the past. In the future, he doesn’t get assassinated. If this one doesn’t convince you we’re right, then you probably support assassinations. 9. Hitler is from the past. Glulu Lightstage is from the future. Don’t know who Glulu Lightstage is? Just wait. But he only exists in the future. In the past, you just get Hitler. *Except in France. They’ll never take showers or wear deodorant.  Dear IBR readers: As we come to the close of another universe-shaking year, our team at the Intergalactic Business Report wants to thank you for being smart enough to learn from our wisdom. You did great. Frankly, considering the stories and information we gave humankind over the last twelve months, we could end this publication today and many historians would consider us not only some of the best and finest people to have ever lived, but also the most original, sincere, and intelligent. But because we care so much about the future of our readers and the human race, we have decided to continue on this journey and keep offering you the most insightful reports on everything you don’t get anywhere else. You’re welcome. Please take a moment to review a small sampling of our favorite highlights from the past year. From March 5: Seven things your dog wishes he could tell you. One of our first articles to use proprietary animal translation software. READ NOW. From August 12: Breaking news: the lottery is fake. This year, we learned the lottery is fake. READ NOW. From August 20: Five new, terrifying facts about the Mongolian Death Worm. The story that started it all. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.READ NOW. From September 7: Science: drinking enormous amounts of beer can make you immortal. You always suspected it, but we prove it’s true. READ NOW. From September 17: 14 things Americans need to know about England before they even go near that little island. When we unveiled secrets about England, some people from England were pissed. They called us “twats” and some other adorable insults. READ NOW. From September 18: I was a millionaire at age 23. And you can be too (at any age). This inside view on the secrets to being wealthy is probably being studied at business schools all over the country. READ NOW. From September 21: Unreal news. Heaven exists and you need money to get in. We sent writers into the afterlife to find out if financial planning is really that important. Turns out it is. READ NOW. From September 28: Breaking genetic news: you are probably related to yourself. 23 and me can suck it because we have the real story on genetics. READ NOW. From October 16: 4 unexpected positive outcomes of global warming. In one of our most expensive reports, we went to the Antarctic and uncovered the future. READ NOW. From October 22: Exclusive first ever interview with the actual devil. Yes, we interviewed the devil. READ NOW. From December 9: Sex robots will be designed to fulfill us in every way, and you won’t believe how. We go deep inside the sex robot industry to predict the future. READ NOW. From all year: The best and worst report. The best. The worst. We explained it all. From company benefits to drunk people. READ NOW. From all year: Up for grabs. We offered free creative counsel with ideas for everything from naming your penis to naming an adult website. READ NOW.  For years, editors at the Intergalactic Business Report have believed that the tiny country of Iceland was either fake or sustained by supernatural forces. Many established news organizations and geographers scoffed at this idea, but they may soon change their minds as we have finally found definitive evidence that Iceland is powered by an invisible phallus, which they hide in plain sight. Below, we outline how this discovery unfolded over the years and how we were right all along. ORIGINS OF THE “INVISIBLE DICK” THEORY: Years ago, an Intergalactic Business Report Editor said to someone, “How is Iceland even a country?” The guy he said it to claimed to have actually been in Iceland, and he went on to explain that he had visited a museum dedicated to penises in Reykjavik, their capital. Our editor then went out to buy more beer, and while he never ended up talking to the guy who traveled to Iceland ever again, he always remembered that Iceland had its own dick museum. THE THEORY DEVELOPS FURTHER: Perhaps five years later, our editor was drinking with some random people he met in a bar. They seemed nervous around him and explained that he should probably “slow down” and take a cab home. This enraged him and he told them all to fuck off. He was escorted out of the bar and he told the group that they were a bunch of “dicks.” A BREAKTHROUGH: Sometime around Christmas, although he can’t remember which one, our editor found a bottle of Icelandic Vodka in a liquor store. This made him think of the penis museum in Reykjavik. He mentioned this to a woman working there, but he had trouble articulating his thoughts and it just looked like he was holding a liquor bottle and screaming something about penises. He was removed from the store but as he was pushed onto the street he had a breakthrough thought. “What if I…” he said to himself. “What if I…” Then he forgot what he was thinking and headed to Taco Bell. A FORTUTIOUS MEETING: At a hotel bar, our editor asked several men how big their penises were. They seemed very unsettled by this question. One of the men was from Iceland and asked if this was what Americans talked about in bars. Our editor then asked him if he knew about the dick museum in Reykjavik. The man said, yes, he’d been there. “How big does your dick need to be to get into that museum?” our editor asked. The man explained that there were no human penises at the museum. But, he said, there were troll and elf penises, only you couldn’t see them, because they were invisible. THE MYSTERY UNFOLDS: Our editor immediately took this new information to the Intergalactic Business Report. At first, we didn’t know what to do with it, till someone said, “Maybe the reason Iceland’s even a country is because somehow those invisible dicks have something to do with it.” Moments later, we began a formal investigation into the link between invisible troll penises and Iceland’s existence. THE INVESTIGATION BECOMES FULLY ERECT: While we didn’t want to spend the money to actually fly writers to Iceland to investigate the penises, we did agree that Iceland would probably not be a place at all if it weren’t for magical invisible dicks that they held in a museum. Somebody asked, “Why would an elf penis be invisible?” We didn’t have a good answer for that, so we moved on. CONCLUSION: Iceland has existed for at least a hundred years. Maybe longer. And there’s no way anyone could live there unless they were fueled by an invisible dick. UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Although our research on the subject is supremely solid, there are still a couple questions that remain. Of all the dicks in the dick museum, which one is the source of Iceland’s power? And is it a troll or elf penis? The only way to know for sure would be to remove one magic penis at a time from Iceland and see if the country disappeared or sank. For now, we must be satisfied with knowing that we’ve once again uncovered a scientific breakthrough that will change human understanding of life on our planet. As always, you’re welcome.  Not the IBR holiday party. If you haven’t read my column before, let me just get this out of the way—my dad bought it for me. Got it? Great. Now let’s move on. Also, another update. I think the IBR editors have stopped “editing” my columns and are letting me publish this without their oversight, which is not really an amazing development. It just means that they’re sleeping or drunk or busy stealing shit from my apartment again. So there’s a tradeoff. Because it’s almost Christmas, I thought I’d tell you about the Intergalactic Business Report holiday party. Some of this may actually be used as a legal record or statement, or something like that. Anyway, the “party” was as bad as you’d think and left a lot of people in terrible life situations and trauma. Here’s what happened. The IBR editors sent an email out to everyone saying thanks for a great year and how we were all building this fantastic brand together and that they were starting to see the first signs of success and on and on and on. Just to be clear to readers, I’m pretty sure the guys who run IBR do it out of a van and they owe everybody (and I mean everybody they’ve ever come in contact with in their entire lives) money. So when they send those emails out, I just stop reading and skip to the end, which is usually the part where they ask for money or a place to sleep or alcohol. The end of this email was different. It said they were holding a huge holiday party this year and that we were all invited, all expenses paid. They said they’d finally secured funding for the magazine and were going to celebrate by recognizing our hard work. I was skeptical to say the least, but I showed up with all the other writers and staff at the car pool lot the editors said would be the “entry point” to our party. Everything was going to be a surprise and we were just told to pack a bag and wait. I know, I know. What was I thinking? A bus pulled up and I was shocked to see the editors climb out. This was a nice bus. Like a luxury bus. And apparently it was going to take us to the party. The editors were all jacked up, like they were on something, but they were friendly and slapping everybody on the back and making weird noises and yelling about how we were going to “party all night” and “get fucked up.” Then one of them slapped me on the back super hard as I was getting on the bus. It was so hard it almost knocked me down and it was like he was so juiced he couldn’t stop himself from just randomly slapping people. I looked back at him and he had this crazy look, like he wasn’t there and some drugs or something had taken away his soul. That’s the only way I can describe it. I just quietly moved to the back of the bus and knew something was wrong. We drove away on the bus and the editors started passing out beers. They’d brought two kegs on the bus, which was really cool, but they were already so sloppy wasted they were just pouring a lot of it on the ground and it was soaking the carpet. Then, of course, they all gave speeches about how great they were and how nobody believed in them and that they built this thing out of nothing and then they’d just kind of forget what they were saying and be silent for a while till one of them would scream something about getting fucked up or partying. That went on for like two hours. The bus pulled up to the side of some resort and as we got out a bunch of waiters and waitresses were there to give us drinks. A hotel manager or something welcomed us and told us to head out to the “lodge” where we could continue the party. The lodge was nice. It had a huge fireplace and a Christmas tree and the booze was flowing pretty hard. I started to think that maybe the editors were the geniuses they always said they were and that writers would even start getting paid soon, instead of working for free. I noticed the editors were gone and that the Christmas music had stopped playing. And the waitresses weren’t there. And then that all the doors to the room were shut. It was quiet. People stopped talking. Then a bunch of guys in crappy suits walked in the room. One of them asked for our attention. He thanked us for being there and welcomed us again to the lodge. Then he started talking about timeshare opportunities and how each of us had to sit with one of his representatives before we left, just to “hear them out” and that there was no pressure, except that when I tried to get up and leave, one of them told me that if I didn’t “hear them out” I owed them four hundred dollars. I looked around for the editors. None of them was there. I looked outside. The bus was gone. The head timeshare guy was super aggressive. I could hear him telling people that they were “fucking stupid” if they didn’t buy today and that he wasn’t going to let them walk out of there without taking the best opportunity they’d ever had in their lifetimes. Some of the younger guys signed up. I have no idea how. They maxed out credit cards or emptied their bank accounts. I asked to use the bathroom and was followed there by a creepy dude who waited outside. So I crawled through the window and landed in some snow. I made it to the road and was able to get an Uber to the next town. What kills me most is that when I saw the editors the next day, they were all like, “How did you like the holiday party?” And I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with you guys? You drove us all to a timeshare pitch and left us there!” And he just said, “I drove you to a holiday party.” Then, as I was leaving, one of them approached me and was all angry. He said that he found out I hadn’t stayed to hear about the timeshare and that I owed them four hundred dollars. I asked him about all the “funding” they’d secured. I asked if they were lying about finding investors. They got super angry at this and they told me they didn’t lie when it came to money. I started recalling all the times they had specifically lied to me about money and they just started waving their hands around and telling me to stop. Then I asked if the timeshare guys were the “funding” they were talking about. “So?” one of them said. Then one of them tried slapping me on the back as if he were trying to be friendly but it was just weird and inappropriate. He said to not worry about the four hundred bucks and that he had something more important to discuss. He asked me if I could take out a second mortgage on my apartment and be a real investor in the Intergalactic Business Report. I told him I rented. He said, “So?” I asked him if he understood how mortgages worked. He nodded but I could tell he had no idea. Then he just said, “Well, at least think about it.” So I decided to quit for good, till my dad called me and said he was so proud of me and loved my articles. That was a little confusing since all my articles are about how hellish my life has become since working at IBR. But still it was nice to have my dad be proud. He got really upset when I told him I was quitting, so I promised I’d do one more piece but then I’d be done. So, just in case the editors got back to “editing,” I’m going to end this with some fake shit I don’t mean. The Intergalactic Business Report holiday party was amazing. And I feel so happy for my co-workers who were smart enough to take the opportunity to be part of the timeshare lifestyle. Let me know if you’d like any information on “the Lodge” or any other properties. Till next time, Smurfus McRathbone  Boston is a city torn between being a smart person place with quaint old bumpy streets and whatever Mark Wahlberg is. So if you’re planning a trip there, be sure to brush up on your bar fighting and history of people and books no one cares about. But beyond the basics of Boston culture and life (old books and drunk fighting) there is so much more (like drunk fighting over old books, for example). The Intergalactic Business Report again uses its proprietary research to give you the knowledge you need to not only survive, but to thrive in Beantown and have the natives see you as one of their own. These eleven tips will make every Bostonian your new brother or sister who has an awful accent everyone else in America hates. 1. Call it Beantown. That’s what the locals love and that’s what they call it. They love it so much that you should probably try to work it into all your conversations multiple times. Example: “Hey, Beantowner, I just got here to Beantown, and I wondered if you could direct me to the nearest Beantown pub so I can get drunk and fight you.” 2. The term “Beantown” actually comes from James “Beantown” Buttons, a revered Bostonian who married his own cat, named Mrs. Muffin, and announced, “Our great city of beans shall be called Beantown and we shall lie with cats!” This began Boston’s literal love affair with cats (see number four). 3. You may have heard they’re into the Patriots. They’re not. The Patriots are in Foxborough, Massachusetts, not Boston. While you may not want to talk ill of the Patriots when you’re in Foxborough, feel free to say things like, “Fuck the Pats” anywhere else. 4. The “Freedom Trail” is a popular journey you can take through the city. It celebrates Boston’s greatest cat molesters who came to Boston to find the freedom to molest cats. 5. Try to talk like them. When you approach anyone from Boston, just mimic their speech so that they feel comfortable around you. It’s tough at first because by speaking that way, you must slow your brain down to talk at a lower level of humanity. You may even find yourself feeling really dumb and stupid sounding. When you start feeling that way, you’ve done it. Congratulations! 6. Most Beantowners will admit that Philadelphia and New York are much better cities, even though Philadelphians eat horse shit after they win the Super Bowl. Go ahead and commiserate with people on this subject. Start by saying, “New York’s better than Boston, right?” Most Bostonians will groan and agree and then go on to mention a litany of other cities that are also better than Boston. When they get to Philadelphia, remind them that people there eat horse shit, literally. And that they’re still better. 7. Don’t come for Saint Patrick’s day. While the city was once known for its Irish Heritage, today it is mostly Albanian. 8. When one of the locals starts blathering on about the history of the city and blah blah blah, just put your finger over his mouth and say, “Shush. None of that matters.” That’s the best way to deal with the problem and most of them will just hang their head in shame and agree. 9. The biggest trending joke among Bostonians right now is that a female member of their family worked as a prostitute at some point. So, if you want to really fit in, just riff on this with them. Say, “Hey, I heard your mother is a prostitute,” or “Don’t I know your sister from her being a prostitute?” Get ready for people to laugh and buy you a drink. Want extra points? Say the joke in your best funny Boston accent. 10. Despite their reputation for fighting and drinking, most people from Boston are good at neither. If you want to have some fun, challenge one of them to a drinking and fighting contest and tell him you’re from wherever you are and you’re better than he is at everything. Most likely, he will run straight out of the bar in total fear of your superiority. But be judicious with this. You don’t want to empty out all the bars in Boston! 11. Hitler once said that his favorite American city was Boston. This was at a conference with Stalin, who nodded his head furiously in agreement. True story.* *We firmly believe that truth is a choice and we chose it in this case. |
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