Economic Meltdown Affecting Everyone

You don’t need me to tell you that it’s a tough economy right now. The signs are everywhere.

In fact, here’s 20 recent developments caused by the bad economy you might not have been aware of…

1. Twitter is cutting it’s character limit from 140 to 125 characters. As a result, tweeters will have to update more efficiently…or just do less.

2. American Idol will be making cuts to their health insurance plans, meaning Paula Abdul will only be half as medicated on future broadcasts of the show. Whether this will make her appear more or less unstable is up for debate.

3. Bounty Paper Towels will now be picking up spills at the same speed as other paper towels.

4. The Disney Channel will be cutting back on reruns of “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody”. The show will now air only 34 times a day, instead of the current 63 episodes a day they show now.

5. Michael Jackson’s nose will be 10% smaller than it was last year. Which, to be honest, isn’t a new development. His nose has shrunk in volume from one year to the next for 19 consecutive years now. Scientists are saying that by 2012 it will be antimatter and by 2020 it could become the nexus of the universe.

6. Facebook is enacting a new policy change limiting the amount of random facts one can write about themselves to 10. Expect this decision to be rescinded in a few weeks when half of the known world joins a “Bring Back the 25 Facts” Group.

7. Subway is going from 5-dollar Footlongs to 5-dollar ElevenInchers. They’re cutting a half-inch off both sides of their bread and donating the nubs to the Olive Garden for use as croutons. “We’ve got to come together and help each other out.”, Subway spokesperson Jared Fogel said this week, “and on my diet, losing that inch of carbs every day will help me drop another 30 pounds this year.”

8. Jack Bauer plans on streamlining his torture methods to use pain more efficiently. “There’s only so much pain to go around,” Bauer said while removing a terrorists’ tongue with fingernail clippers last week, “I’m just doing my part to make sure there’s enough pain left for my kids’ kids to dole out when I’m dead and gone.”

9. The RIAA will reduce the number of lawyers it has suing people for downloading illegal music from 750 to 200. The number of people downloading illegal music will never change.

10. ABC’s The Bachelor will be reducing it’s number of female bachelorettes form 25 to 15. “Don’t worry,” an anonymous studio exec was quoted as saying, “the show will stay the same. You will still be able to see the runner-up get her heart completely crushed into a thousand pieces during the finale. And we will still deliver a final couple that has little to no chance of surviving because the bachelor has spent the previous month developing emotional and physical intimacy with a dozen women.”

11. Seedless grapes may now have one or two seeds in them.

12. iPhones will no longer be able to receive MMS texts or take videos. Oh wait, they already are incapable of doing that. (By the way, now seems like a good time to mention that this has got to be the most ridiculous thing in the history of modern technology. Every time I tell people that the iPhone is incapable of receiving pictures through MMS they look at me like I just told them I am dating Steve Jobs. Just doesn’t make sense.)

13. Donald Trump’s hair will be reducing it’s ridiculousness by 50%. Even with the drastic cutback, it will remain the most ridiculous hairstyle in the world by a wide margin over #2 (#2 is Sanjaya from American Idol, of course).

14. Christian radio stations will cutback on playing high quality music from “1 good song out of every 10” to “1 good song out of every 15”. When asked how hard the transition would be to find enough mediocre Christian music, radio disc jockeys just laughed. They are, in fact, still laughing.

15. Duke Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski says the Duke basketball program will be reducing it’s hate-ability by 40% over the next 3 seasons. “It will be a challenge,” he said with his scrunched up mouth, “but we’ll try to bring in less annoying players and do what we can to keep Dick Vitale away from our program.” Good luck with that.

16. Charmin Ultra toilet paper is going to reduce the thickness of their top of the line bathroom tissue by 15%. While it will still be thicker than most generics, it will no longer feel like you’re wiping with a down comforter.

17. Comcast has announced that their appointment windows are going to be less accurate as a result of the economy. Their service windows are going from 6 hours to 6 days. “When we say we’ll be there sometime between Tuesday and Sunday, we will ABSOLUTELY be there between Tuesday and Sunday,” a proud Comcast rep told us on the phone. Sure you will.

18. Jon and Kate Plus 8 have put two of their children on eBay.

19. The Amish have announced a new doctrine into their communities which allows for some electric appliances to be used in the home. “In this economy, I need to work as much as possible. I don’t have 45 minutes to toast my bread over an open fire,” says Amos Kingfus. “Having a toaster oven is putting more bread on our table. Bread that we can toast in 90 seconds thanks to the technology of the devil.”

20. Blog entries will face cutbacks as bloggers shave words and ideas from their writing. “Take this list you’re reading right now,” says blogger Bryan Allain, “in a good economy, I would have given you a legitimate 20th point. But in this economy? Forget it. You’re getting this sad excuse for an ending.”

If you’ve got any more suggestions, feel free to add them in the comments…