The Fortnight That Wasn't
IN THE wake of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, the candidates worked hastily to retool their campaigns.
Barack Obama announced that in an effort to shore up his appeal to white ethnic voters, he was changing his surname to O'Bama.
Mitt Romney promised voters in Michigan that if they chose him he would stop using metaphors that related to the Olympics.
While saying he was pleased with the results in New Hampshire, John McCain asked that votes be counted more quickly in future primaries so that he could give his victory speeches prior to bedtime.
Looking ahead to the next round of primaries, Hillary Clinton warned voters that she would come to their states and start tearing up if polls there showed they were not supporting her candidacy.
Rudy Giuliani defended his decision not to campaign in the early primaries, saying they were mostly beauty contests that measured little more than candidates' likability. "Later on, once people are ready to vote for someone unlikable, I feel confident they'll choose me," he said.
Huckabee supporters rejected feelers from the Romney campaign to switch their support, saying they "weren't born yesterday." However, they did concede they were created just 6,000 years ago.
And in Massachusetts, residents said that Obama's inspirational message of nonpartisanship and "yes we can" reminded them of Governor Deval Patrick's own "together we can" campaign in 2006, and they looked forward to the day when Obama is president and every state in the country would have destination casinos.
In other news, global warming skeptics said that near-record snowfall in New England at the end of 2007 vindicated their doubts, while global warming advocates said record warm temperatures in early January proved they were right all along.
Google unveiled Oogle, the latest iteration of its Street View software. Unlike Street View, which displays a 360-degree views of streets at ground level, Oogle concentrates on second and third floor levels, using photographs shot in the early morning and evening. Google dismissed complaints by privacy advocates that Oogle was a blatant attempt at voyeurism. "All these images are taken on public streets," said a spokesperson for the company. "It's exactly what you could see walking down the street - if you were 30-feet tall, that is."
In the latest development of a controversial business practice, Fenway Franks announced that it had purchased from the Red Sox the naming rights for Fenway Park, which would henceforth be known as Fenway Park. "Until now, all people thought of when they said 'Fenway Park' was a Boston neighborhood," said a spokesperson for the Company. "But now that we've spent all this money, they'll have to think of our hotdogs."
NASA announced a stepped-up schedule of flights for the shuttle and dismissed worries that the 27-year-old craft was too aged to handle the strains of the additional missions. "We're talking technology from the 1980s, some of the best that's ever been made," said a senior NASA official, as staffers demonstrated how they continued to rely on their 3-pound DynaTAC cellphones, Commodore 64 computers, thermal-paper fax machines and dot-matrix printers. "Sure, today's new-fangled technology may be lighter and a bit glitzier," added the official, "But we're talking rocket science here - not Second Life."
Scientists said they had successfully created a new strain of fluorescent, glow-in-the-dark pigs. Analysts said the market for the animals was likely huge. "This will be a particular boon to people who dine in those dim, pricey, candle-lit restaurants," said one. "Now they'll be able to find their food."
Pitcher Roger Clemens strenuously denied using steroids but did concede that he had received injections of vitamin B12 and painkillers from his former trainer, Brian McNamee. "I did keep wondering why he wouldn't just let me take a One-A-Day and some aspirin," Clemens recalled. "But heck, he's the trainer - if he says I needed a painful shot in my buttocks, who am I to doubt him?"
And finally, the federal government announced a $1.5 billion program to help owners of old-fashioned televisions purchase the equipment needed to keep their sets working after digital signals replace analog a year from now. Officials denied that most of those with the obsolete televisions were NASA employees.
Published on January 13, 2008 on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.