GOVERNMENT PROPOSES CHANGE TO 911 NUMBER TO REDUCE IDIOCY

April 8 2009

Washington, DC – The immortal words of Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav still resonate today. Not in the rappers multitude of television shows, celebrity appearances, or even in his declaration of knowing what time it is. Flav’s most important social commentary in his days as a member of one of the most influential hip-hop bands in history has come to be the diatribe ‘911 is a Joke’ and that has inspired a new call to alter the emergency number to something less easily pressed by accident.

A rash of nonsense calls have been flooding 911 call centres across the country with everything from complaints about fast food portions to being a tool in an argument between neighbours. Those false and frivolous calls have frustrated emergency services the nation over and brought calls to local governments Washington to either enhance punishment against offenders or overhaul the system completely to help prevent such abuses. The Obama government, already trying to fix every problem they can think of, is apparently looking into a solution that will alter the emergency number to something more complicated.

“The inherent problem here is that the number has a phonetic resonance that sticks in people’s minds. Add to that the popularization of the term in music and television shows and you have a number and a brand that is stuck in people’s minds. That is a good thing for ease of calling when it is an
actual emergency, and it is easy for children to remember but it also allows it to stay n the brains of dumb people  and that is where the abuses occur,” said Scrape TV Crime analyst Willard Weston. “The simple mnemonic nature if the number means that even the least intelligent people are able to remember and dial the number and those are the people most likely to call about a cold Filet ‘o’ Fish. That ease has been its beauty, but also its curse.”

Some of the proposals include extending the number of digits in the number or including non-number symbols such as the pound key. Most proposals are aimed at breaking up the memory of the number and forcing the less intelligent to adapt.

“It may very well be that the number will have to change every now and then. Kind of like a crazy ex, eventually they find the new number and you have to change it again. The more complicated you make the number though the more likely people will die from fat finger syndrome,” continued Weston. “The transition will also be tough for intelligent people. The routine and the muscle memory of the
number, even for those who have never dialed it, is almost ingrained in the species at this point and so changing is going to be difficult. It’s very likely people will die or at least suffer serious problems with the change but it may be a necessity as more and more morons gain access to telephones.”

The government is also in talks with major cell phone manufacturers to include a lockout chip on their handsets that will prevent the new emergency number from being put into memory. Most cell phones have very simple interfaces and functions, something most observers blame for the increase in asinine phone calls.

“That may be the other option. By making both cell and home handsets more
complicated the idiots will have a lot more difficulty in figuring out how to program new numbers which would dramatically decrease the silly calls,” continued Weston. “The added advantage this potential change has is that it will also reduce the number of legitimate calls from stupid people and that will help firm up the species a little bit, a kind of Darwinism via Alexander Graham Bell. This will of course reduce the number of amusing calls posted on the internet, but it will save a few intelligent lives so the trade off is probably a good one.”

Contacted for comment, Flavor Flav stated that he did indeed still know what time it is.   

Mike Michaels, American Correspondent    

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