Free Planet Press

Japan patents the hot dog

By a correspondent

Japanese inventors have patented the hot dog. Patent JP90109275, filed by Taira Yoshinobu, shows how you insert “food ingredient three” (a sausage) into “food ingredient two” (a “cylindrical housing” made of bread). Japanese boffins also claim to have invented the pizza, according to the patent lists.

We suggest the rest of the world fight back by patenting sushi. Kilo for kilo, a meal of maguro and hamachi is worth a darn sight more than pizza and dogs.

Pic: Stillframe/ Flickr/ Creative Commons 2.5

China learns to rock

By a correspondent

"Are you ready to rock?" Er, no, probably not. The rallying cry of rock stars still gets a half-hearted response in China—but the good news is that the underground scene is starting to hop.       

Little America in China

By a correspondent

So here we are on a sleepy street of roomy bungalows, where blond children play under sprinklers on well-manicured lawns. The sound of American TV floats from the open windows. Dad arrives home from work with a package of donuts for the kids. Where are we?

In China, of course. New Housing developments in Shanghai and Beijing are more American than America. The Emerald in Shanghai, for example, is a hamlet of red-brick homes with its own school, chapel and barbecue area.

Beijing's Western-style homes even have the proverbial wood-framed, picket-fenced houses. Some developments are close to sites scheduled to be turned into drive-thru burger shops.

A Germany-born resident of one of the developments on the outskirts of Beijing told the Free Planet Press: "It's weird. I work in Mainland China, but every night I go home to Middle America."

Bagpipes, kilts "are Chinese"

By Nury Vittachi

Hey? Who can blame me for being confused?

            I’m sitting eating Japanese raw fish topped with Mexican chilli in a Spanish restaurant listening to a Hong Kong friend explain to me that wearing tartan kilts and playing the bagpipes is a Chinese tradition.

            Really? Chinese? Not Scottish?

            It’s Hong Kong Chinese, he explains. As an afterthought, he adds: But maybe Scottish people have it too.

            East and west are colliding dramatically, gloriously, luxuriantly, hilariously, much faster than any of us could predict.

Google Earth saves farmers

Poor farmers in rural India were about to be cheated out of their money -- and then technology came to their rescue.
     The rural workers were about to have their lands taken from them at cut-price levels after government authorities declared that they were unfertile areas -- although this was not true. The government was working to build a massive industrial zone outside Mumbai.
   Then one man had an idea -- he logged on to Google Earth, a wonderful program that allows anyone with a computer to patch into satellite images.
   They downloaded images of their smallholdings.

Files for fiction writers

Download novelplayfilm.doc

Download Defamiliarization.doc

Download love-sample-essays.doc

Download 2BC4T.doc

Disclaimer

The satire featured in the Free Planet Press is intended to be satirical. That means it is meant to be funny, and is featured in the interests of fair comment. This disclaimer has been made necessary by the fact that a proportion of our readership finds it difficult to distinguish the satire from the real news. We sympathize.
The FPP Team