You think reading up-to-the-second headlines on your iPhone is cutting edge? Wait until you try NewsDrops! We print each story on razor-thin rice paper, wrap them around butterscotch candies, and drop them from a hot air balloon at regular intervals. SMACK! What was that? Tastes like the new new media!
Hey, we get it. You’re busy. You’re exhausted. You’re too distracted to drive and text and eat and laser off that owl tattoo on your thigh AND follow the news. Right? It’s time for News Between the Lines! Just track the new virtual yellow lines on any major arterial, translate the dashes to Morse code, translate that to your language of choice, and suddenly you’re cruising to the speed of news!
Tired of all of the biased opinions in Old Fashioned Journalism? How about an almanac tied to a kite string caught in a hurricane and bookmarked with milkshake straws? We thought so!
On the way to work, I saw a “Happy Retirement” balloon caught in a tree. Something tells me that tree was actually fired. But then it hit me: The “news balloon” gets caught in our “brain trees” every day! That’s the inspiration behind HeliumUmUmUm.biz!
You still crave the clatter of the paper against the storm door, the rubber band around the folds, and the ink, yes, on your fingers and wafting in the air? As such, it is not the paper as a thing-in-itself but the gestalt of the ritual. Here, take this pill. When you wake up, the clatter will still ring in your head, the rubber band will lie discarded, and your fingers will be filthy with ink.
The news should not only inform! Agreed, it must startle and inspire. That tingling on the back of your neck, in this case, is Newsy the Rat, hot on a lead and ready to share the latest, right in your willing ear! Yes, his little reporter’s hat is stapled on.
Look, some say the old media is a bloated corpse. Some say it’s a slightly perverted zombie. Some say it’s a cat’s tail curled around the stem of a wine glass and the carpet is too late to save. But my grandfather started his newspaper with nothing but a steam engine, a tub of ink, and a sealed envelope with HEARST BLACKMAIL PHOTOS scrawled across the flap.
And once, when I was four years old, my grandfather took me to see the printing press, grabbed a warm paper from the belt, and held it against my cheek. “This isn’t the news,” he told me. “This is the raw material for a pirate’s hat, or maybe a boat. You take this boat, boy, and sail into sky, sail into the stars, sail into a new horizon of ravenous demand. Create a new format for those clingy masses!”
And you know what he left me? That’s right, this gray lump of chewing gum, indented with inverse Braille that we can revise with up-to-the-second headlines. Just pop it in your mouth, feel the indentations with your tongue, and BAM! You’re tasting the past and future of news.
In your mouth!