Doritos Reveals New Human Tracking Chips

orrowing a page from every cautionary future tale ever written and 60% of all science fiction films to date, the Frito-Lay Corporation today unveiled Trakos, a new line of Doritos brand “human tracking chips� designed to thwart kidnappings and various other ugly crimes in four delicious varieties.

The new chips, offered in Ranch Attack, Hellapeño, Nacho Bacon, and Four Course Meal flavors, use cutting edge technology to embed edible microchips into the snack food. These microchips can then be tracked by satellite and hand-held scanning devices worldwide, providing a huge aid in missing-persons cases involving recent snack chip consumption. The high-tech snacks are being offered in response to recent public demands for improved homeland security and a snack food that tastes like nacho-flavored bacon.

“The public has been resistant to this tracking technology for years, but now we’ve made it delicious,� explained Doritos head Ken Abenly.

“People may balk at the idea of being implanted with a tracking device, but we think the time has come to put those outmoded fears to rest,� said Abenly. “The threat of an embarrassing public death at the hands of some crazed terrorist or your cheating husband is just too great these days. Criminals may still resist the concept of being tracked through microchips floating around in their bile, but we’re confident we’ve made these chips delicious enough to overcome any objections.�

Chip-hating privacy advocates have protested the trend, citing fears of a Big Brotherly government agency using the American public’s weakness for tasty snack foods to create a vast surveillance network, leading inevitably to political oppression and embarrassing high-water jumpsuits for all.

“The rest of our chips have been known for years to be major contributors to obesity, heart disease and stroke, yet that hasn’t stopped anyone from pounding the things like they were going out of style,� continued Abenly. “So we don’t foresee privacy concerns being a major deterrent. After all, which would you rather have: A tiny, painless microtransmitter in your gullet, or a spaghetti tangle of gross heart tubes coming out of your chest? Yuck. Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Plus we made sure they taste like nacho-flavored bacon, which the people seem to love.�

Despite protests, the technology appears to be a likely hit. Plans are already in the works for several other tracking foods, including Grandma Come Home pitted prunes from Sunkist and Ralson Purina’s upcoming Trackin’ Wagon dog food to aid in the search for missing pets.

Sadly, the technology has not yet advanced to the point of aiding in the search for pets or loved ones who are already missing, though unsubstantiated reports have Hershey Foods working on a time-traveling chocolate bar that might allow consumers to go back in time and feed tracking foods to their currently missing pets before they disappear. Dim-witted focus groups have also drawn attention to the need for intelligence regarding what kinds of snack foods car keys might enjoy, so that they can be fed tracking snacks and never be lost again.

n a staunch memo from the White House, written on the president's customized Wild Thornberrys stationary with the head "From the Desk of George II," the president issued a decree confirming the controversy over intelligence errors was at an end.

"Let it ring forth from the Oval Office, loyal Americans," the memo stated, all i's dotted with smiley faces, "that the alleged problem with intelligence has been resolved. We shall not address these topics again under penalty of whatever we can do to you."

The stern warning stems from revelations that Bush used unconfirmed reports of Saddam Hussein attempting to buy uranium in Africa in a Jan. 28 State of the Union address. The report later proved a forgery, and not even a good forgery, forgery critics have reviewed. The misstatement is the first public proof of inaccuracy in Iraq intelligence claims against the president, if you exclude the obvious lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at all. Critics of the president—you know, non-Republicans—were quick to attack the false claim in the wake of recent information.

"Mr. President, for the American people, I ask you, Where are these weapons of mass destruction?" accused Democratic presidential nominee Dennis Kucinich in a fund-raiser only he attended.

White House officials were caught off guard by the public story revealing the inaccuracy of the uranium claim, and pointed to the CIA as the culprit. In their estimation, the CIA is responsible for verifying every statement the president is to say before he says it, or make it true in the aftermath once he has said it. CIA Director George Tenet, as captain of the rotting ship, took full responsibility for the error. According to other CIA insiders, Tenet had previously made White House speechwriters remove an Oct. 7 reference to the same forged documents until it could be verified, but failed to intercede on the president's behalf in January.
The backlash came in a form of public outcry about the legitimacy of intelligence collected by the CIA, and a frustrated Bush responded by saying he retained faith in Tenet, who was responsible for his false declarations, and that American intelligence was in good hands, describing it as "darn good." Political pundits were on the offensive again however, noticing that Bush stopped short of calling the intelligence "the bee's knees" or "rootin' tootin'."

The presidential decree, the first of its kind, was released Saturday, following a failed attempt the week before to urge the nation into silence by calling the matter "closed." The decree, while not a Constitutionally-viable change in public policy and holding no legal ramifications for the disobedient, could be the first in a series of presidential changes in lawmaking to enforce the will of the president over his subjects. Which is how Bush sometimes refers to his constituents.

White House mouthpiece and new meat Scott McClellan defended what some considered a presidential overstepping of duties.

"His will is divine and not for us to question," said McClellan Saturday. "He is merciful and wise. Your opinions to him are like the gnats buzzing around the head of the large and noble wildebeest of the Serengeti plain."

It could be neither confirmed nor denied at press time whether wildebeests roamed the Serengeti.

Guilt is a pretty super thing.

Fortune has taken an upturn since the last column. Actually, it took a swift downturn, plummeted into a crash, then whatever remained took an upturn. Which is usually how things go in my life. But it all started with my dad getting beat into a coma in that rumble last month.

Dad's in the hospital, head injury and all, and the only way he can communicate is to do Dave Letterman's Uma-Oprah bit from the Oscars years back. Put there by Steve, my sister's life partner, during the lesbian-old fogey turf war they had. But check it out, even though Steve clearly put a beating on dad, she's still suing him for punitive damages with the shit he called her. And on top of that, she filed a lawsuit against me for calling her Steve all the time instead of "Stephan," which she alleges is her name. I thought it was a compromise, since I stopped calling her "Marcy" when she asked me. But no. Some lesbians are pretty touchy about name issues.

See? I said some lesbians. My sister is teaching me not to make generalizations about people. Lawyers are always trigger-happy with lawsuits on about generalizations like that.

But none of this sounds good, of course, and it wasn't. Isn't, since the lawsuits are still pending—I guess they have to get in line behind my other libel suit. For about two weeks, though, I'm on whatever cloud is below cloud 9 and gets their plumbing overflow. Dad is in the hospital, but his gang is mending their wounds in my living room, mom is still sharing the same bed, and I'm having trouble making the rent since lawsuit # 1 Jayme Kristofson stole my Metallichick job. Just when things look their bleakest, I manage to pull it out of the fire again.

How I managed to pull it out of the fire was, my sister Cassandra felt so guilty about her old lady suing me and the mom and pop, so she took me out to lunch (her treat, natch). She said she was sorry it was turning out like this, and she was trying to talk Butch out of the lawsuit and whatever, but in the meantime, she was going to help me by cutting me a check to pay the legal bills. And sis hit me with this big-time check, like four zeroes, and said she'd slip me another one if I needed it, until the lawsuit thing passes. Siblings can be beautiful things, dudes.

She had plenty of suggestions on how to spend the money, of course, like telling me the name of this big fancy-pants lawyer in downtown Manhattan, apparently he's the last word in civil litigation. But I don't need to be told how to spend money, just how to come up with it. So I dipped into the lawyer fundage and rented me a place out in L.A. right near the action, so close to Warner Brothers you can hear them making the director's DVD commentaries. It's quality real estate. Pricey, yeah, but I'm not footing the bill.

Needless to say, it doesn't help my New Jersey apartment rent problem none, and mom and the gang might be kicked out on their asses, but I've prepared for that as well—I didn't give them the address of my new apartment. No midnight visits to Clarissa when the eviction notice comes.

I even had enough money left over to get a lawyer, too. He's not top-of-the-line like the Winston Price guy my sister told me to get, he doesn't own a suit or anything, but he's got to be good. His name is Jerry Nascar and he has an office as the same building as the commune, so you know he's legit. He's got a law degree from somewhere on the wall right next to the picture of this huge fish he caught, so the guy's no joke. And now, best of all, I only have to make one trip when picking up my commune paycheck and sorting out my legal issues. Life is sweet.

º Last Column: Swish Side Story
º more columns