San Francisco, CA, USA -- Quarterly earnings reported from Widget Manufacturing are at an all-time high. Everyone in the world seems to need widgets these days, and Widget Corporation widgets are on the top of every smart-thinking company's shopping list.
From the beginning, when Joe Dingbat sold his first widget in 1956, widget consumption has been on the rise. The construction of Widget Manufacturing last year, however, began what can only be called a widget bull market. Widgets are now being created in sizes and styles which could never have been imagined in the past. Widgets for cars, widgets for home electronics, even paper widgets for use in disposable diapers! Widget Manufacturing widgets have saturated the market with the highest quality widgets, and that quality is reflected in monumental sales.
And now, with the opening of Widget Operations in San Jose, CA, Widget Corporation is moving into the Computer Age! Widget chips are the fastest microprocessors to hit Silicon Valley since the Motorola 750. Nothing now stands in the way of a widget takeover of the entire computer industry! But wait, there's more! Widget Foods, with plants opening in Singapore and Stockholm, will make human comestibles which make Beluga caviar seem like so much catfood! And Widget Dingbats, named after our founder, Joe Dingbat, will revolutionize the printing industry!
Yes, 1998 is truly the "Year of the Widget".
Lubroberg, Pottsylvania -- Scientists at the Widget Gadget Think Tank in Lubroberg announce the invention of trans-time widget-gadgets. Starting from the standpoint that Einstein was incorrect in his equations concerning relativity and the space-time continuum, Dr. Melvin Schnozlump, the world-renowned expert on quarklets and widget particles, announced last week the invention of trans-time widget-gadgets, miniature electronic devices which create self-contained pockets of time which flow at a variable rate, based on the setting of the Time-O-Matic dial on the trans-time widget-gadget.
"This is the dawning of a new age in the history of Mankind," stated Dr. Schnozlump modestly at a press conference held in the New Sewage Treatment Facility in Lubroberg. "The trans-time widget-gadget allows the individual to move freely through space and time, while still maintaining a constant flow of time through the back-flowing cross-currents which interpenetrate the cross-time interdimensional trans-flux. It's a remarkable invention, and one which will make me a gazillionaire! Why, I spoke with Sir Walter Raleigh and Joan of Arc just last week, during one experiment. Now, it is possible for the average person to spend a week at the office and still become slenderer and more beautiful with each turn of the Time-O-Matic dial. My wife has just ordered half a dozen for her Garden Club!"
Scientists at Lawrence-Berkeley Labs in Berkeley, CA, in a separate press conference held Thursday, denounced Dr. Schnozlump as a poseur and imposter. "If this trans-time widget-gadget is so great," shouted one Dr. Howard Burbleblatz, "how come it made my skin turn green? I say it's a complete fraud! Besides, everyone knows that the cross-time interdimensional trans-flux is really rotationally directed in semi-circular bits, not in the sweeping round x-rotations that Dr. Schnozlump indicates in his report... It's absurd, preposterous!"
Dr. Schnozlump, when asked for his response to the accusations of Dr. Burbleblatz and his colleagues, shrugged his shoulders in disdain. "Dr. Burbleblatz is just jealous because my trans-time widget-gadget makes his semi-circular trans-flux particle rotator a dinosaur, a useless lump of lead. He'll be sorry when he sees how rich and powerful I become from my invention. When his wife demands one of my trans-time widget-gadgets, I will be laughing from my position of superior moral advantage and obscenely overstuffed bank balance. Ha! I sneer at his semi-circular trans-flux bit rotation, I laugh at his reflux y-rotation analysis! Pish tosh! I spit on his stupidity! Pitooee!"