Fans Furious at Movie Star for Aging Naturally

By Stuart Swanson

Article IX

July 22nd, 2056

79-year-old smooth jazz singer and B-list independent film star Stuart Swanson thought it was okay to continue living a healthy, peaceful life for 79+ years.

Sounds harmless, right?

Not anymore, not in 2017 and still not in 2056.  While shopping at a local farmers market in Encinitas, California, he was looking older than usual, and was about to find out that was unacceptable to the World’s app users.

He knew it was coming eventually.  In his last several movies, in particular “Stuart: The Plant Killing Vegan,” he could see the signs of aging, but he figured that was okay because we’re all human.  Still, he knew that people are unforgiving when it comes to physical looks, so he tried his best to just stay indoors, never get tagged in photos, use Ageless Moviestar™ software, and only post pictures online if they were taken several years ago.

It worked for 40 years, but it finally caught up with him on Saturday when he bought his last piece of fruit as a free man.  He was enjoying a nice afternoon talking to vendors and walking past people who didn’t recognize him from the smash hit “Cat Sitting, part III: Find the Poop.”  But then he caught someone looking at him too closely.

He knew he was caught.  A bored Encinitas police officer had nothing else to do, as usual, and stopped Mr. Swanson as he was trying to sneak away in the parking lot.

“What are you doing?” the officer asked.

Unsure how to answer, Old Man Swanson tried to be silly and just responded “I’m talking to you!”

But the officer wasn’t having it.

“No.  No you’re not.  You’re being old.  Just look at you, you’re so… old.  I know who you are, and you’re disappointing all of your fans.  Why are you doing this?”

Again unsure how to answer, Mr. Swanson made one last attempt to fool the officer.  He pulled out his wallet and showed him a 40 year old picture of himself, saying “this was taken yesterday.”

Unfooled, the officer placed him under arrest and took him to the station, where a decent jail picture of him was then taken and circulated around the internet within 24 hours.

Everyone was furious.

The internet lit up with all kinds of comments, and even though the “Friends? LOL” star didn’t officially commit a crime, everyone jumped to conclusions and vilified him based on his appearance alone.

“Geez, what’d ya do, stay alive for 8 decades?” commented one person about the 79-year-old man.

“What’s going on with those sideburns?” said another.

“You just lost two fans, one for each part of that double-chin.” said 2 people (from one of those shared profiles made up of one woman and half a man.)

His biggest fan wrote him a postcard, simply stating: “Disappointed.”

But Old Man Swanson was just glad to hear from anyone.

Seeing his temporary joy, the prison staff took an awful picture of him reading it, then confiscated the postcard and shared both images with the internet.  This fueled everyone’s anger, and added to his jail time.

And now that we are living in the future, and we’ve mastered predictions, we know what ultimately happens from here.  Stuart Swanson then completed his life sentence, living a healthy prison life for the next 40 years to the crazy age of 119 years.  Honestly, he looked good for his age, but when the internet saw the final photo of the world’s oldest inmate, all they could talk about was how old he looked.

 

 

 

 

Trusting Face No Longer Good Enough, Says Marketing Team

By Stuart Swanson

Article VII

July 5th, Current Year

Back in the 1960’s you could sell cigarettes to the entirety of America just by taking a picture of some random hitchhiker off the side of any road in America, and it was a great photo because everything was beautiful and there were no problems.  You’d then sell your photo in New York City and became a millionaire within 24 hours.

Back then, you could even just DRAW a picture.  Everybody bought it the next day in the magazine, and you took the money to the bank and retired at age 35.  

 

Not no mo.

Today in 2017, everyone has things figured out.

“People are onto us,” said a slick down-to-Earth marketing rep. “America’s general population is jaded.  You can’t just post a picture of a gentle-looking 40 year old boy and expect people to buy your stuff.  To sell anything anymore, you need a gimmick and a jingle by Drake.”

“Oh no, that’s expensive.  What about a jingle by not Drake?”  Someone asked.

Everyone at the table booed, and that person got fired immediately.

“You need Drake.  Ok?  The jingle needs to be done by Drake,” said a supercool marketing rep who always hides somewhere, never seen by other team members.

“You need the jingle, it needs to be FUNNY, it needs to be SERIOUS, and it needs to be socially acceptable by every person,” he or she said from the shadows.

“It needs to be funny, it needs to be serious, and it needs to be socially acceptable by every person,” 

he or she said from the shadows.

The End.

 

 

 

Father of Six Putting Less Effort into Made Up Stories

By Stuart Swanson

Article VI

July 4th, 2017

33-year old partially normal person Thomas Smith was looking forward to a much anticipated 4-day weekend, that is until he remembered he has a huge family full of children and babies.

Friday afternoon during his commute home, he heard a funny sound on the radio and it made him laugh, reminding him of that time he laughed in 2008.

His moment of joy was then immediately interrupted by the visual sight of his street.  That’s when the stress always kicked in.  His stupidest child was always laying flat on the road, and it was on a different part of the road each time, so he always had to be on the lookout.  That was just the beginning of his troubles at home.

Being such a large family, the Smiths were recently able to buy a house they can’t afford, which was great for the kids.  Just the kids.

Thomas was a single dad now too, as his wife left him earlier this year.  Yeah, immediately after giving birth to her 6th child she voluntarily passed away because she didn’t know how else to get out of the relationship or stop having children.

Being the only parent, Mr. Smith had to answer every question thrown at him, and as you can imagine, a house full of unsupervised home-schooled kids have a lot of questions.

Before he even got into the house, his eldest child yelled from the kitchen window, “Hey dad!  Can duct tape stop a gas leak?”

The Smith kids were not smart because they got all their information from dad.

As the 4-day weekend dragged on, the constant questions started to wear him down.  His answers weren’t even making sense because he wasn’t answering them in the same order that the kids were asking.  

On Day 4, he’d had enough and took the kids to a nearby festivity, where the questions continued.  Mr. Smith was undeniably a beaten man, as he was overheard tiredly making up false stories about American history, then also creating false side-stories to support his original stories.  Everything he said was now a lie, such as the whopper that he “forgot his wallet at home.”  But the moment he finally checked out was when he responded to one question with “Go ask your mother,” which everyone knew was impossible.

 

 

 

 

Record Number of “Sorries” Expressed at Canadian Event

By Stuart Swanson

Article V

July 1st, 2017

Canadians, often referred to as Earth’s Friendliest, are also among the most apologetic citizens in the world.

Just kidding, they’re totally the most apologetic.  Yes, they are “among” the most apologetic but they also are THE most apologetic, by far.  There isn’t even a second place.

Without even trying, Canadians solidified their position on Saturday by breaking a world record during just one of the many events dedicated to Canada’s 150th Anniversary.

At this particular event, every Canadian was excited to be there, and just like every hockey game and Hip concert, nobody wanted to step on anyone’s shoes while finding their seat.

Seat by seat, each instance of a new patron finding their seat required an obligatory Canadian “sorry”, one per shoe to be exact, so that’s 2 sorries per Canadian, per shoe, per seat.

Furthermore, it’s customary that when a Canadian says “sorry” to you, your duty as a fellow Canadian is to say “sorry” back, even though neither of you did anything wrong and nobody was harmed.

Watching this unfold is one of the most entertaining parts of any Canadian event.

Occasionally, if you listen hard enough and with a bit of luck on your side, you’ll hear a “quadruple sorry” because one of them will say it twice twice.

In text version, that spells “sorry sorry sorry sorry,” just to be clear.

And that’s just one Canadian finding his seat.  As you can imagine, the number of sorries continued throughout the event.  As this venue housed 20,000 Canadians, with an average 27 sorries per Canadian it easily made for a record breaking 540,000 sorries at a single event.

An amazing record.

This record is not expected to be broken anytime soon, and Prime Minister Trudeau has already apologized twice.  I’m even kind of sorry to report about this new unbreakable record, but I’m half-Canadian so that totally makes sense.