However, the cuts don’t stop there.

“We didn’t feel like it would be right to ask only our staff to participate in our recovery, so these cuts will also affect the letters ‘Q,’ ‘X,’ ‘Z’ and ‘K,’” said Pandy Simpleflower, a spokesperson with Sesame Workshop, the non-profit producer of the show. “We wanted to target roughly 20% of the alphabet as well. Since five letters would have put us just over, we decided to cut four of them, plus the semicolon, which no one under the age of 50 knows how to use properly anyway, if they’re even aware it exists.”

Simpleflower said the four letters were drawn from the least-used members of the alphabet. “We felt it only right that those that were least productive should be the first ones to go,” she added.

Big Bird - and the letter "H" - were both unaffected by the layoffs.

One of the easiest decisions, she said, was the elimination of the letter ‘Q.’ “99% of the time, that letter required its own dedicated support personnel – namely, the letter ‘U.’ We just can’t support that level of inefficiency in today’s economy.”

Early-childhood education experts generally praised the actions.

“Sesame Street was in a tough spot, and they had to make cuts,” said Dr. Frontloaded Pederast. “You never like to lose accessories, but I’m glad to see that they targeted letters that few, if any children – and many adults – would ever have a use for. The semicolon, while fun to draw, probably should have been eliminated decades ago.”

The letters’ absence will be felt more by some words than others, said Pederast, and kids who rely on Sesame Street in their efforts to gain literacy will be running into some classic words with new twists. As examples, he cited the substitution of the word “cwicly” for “quickly” and “cic” for “kick.”

Pederast was unsure how words such as “zip” would be written, while Simpleflower would only say that Sesame Street had devised a “fun, uplifting way” that would “accommodate all learning styles, from the gifted to the profoundly stupid.” However, she refused to offer further details, deferring to a rollout of an entire new phonics system, which will be introduced on the show in coming weeks.

“Ultimately, none of this matters,” noted Pederast. “The only time today’s youth ever use the alphabet is when texting, and everything is abbreviated in those circumstances. Letters really become secondary to emoticons and the general absurdity of pointless communication.”

Pederast envisions a future alphabet consisting only of the vowels plus the consonants S, R, L and C. “A nine-letter alphabet is in our future,” he said. “The only question is when.”

Originally posted 2009-03-16 17:59:56. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The game, dubbed ‘Obamanopoly’, will feature many of the original’s longstanding elements like property spaces, board layout and a bank but with major rule changes celebrating the President’s newly launched policies.

Now kids can redistribute wealth, just like the President

One major twist: instead of buying properties, houses and hotels from the bank, players will now be able to finance them through a Mortgage Lender (an offshoot of the game’s Federal Bank), paying off each purchase in small installments stretched across 30 game ‘turns’.

“Instead of just a couple of hours, families can now enjoy literally months, years – heck, even unlimited playtime. It’s the game that keeps on giving!” exclaims Shrilly Bettercakes, Vice President of Fun! at Hasbro subsidiary Parker Brothers, makers of Monopoly.

Other changes from the original game include:

Foreclosures – Instead of mortgaging properties, players can simply stop paying on loans, while still earning full rent values.

GO – Changed to HOPE. When a player lands on or passes this space, they will collect a $2,000 ‘tax break’ and get two to twelve extra turns, depending on the dice roll.

Jail/Go to Jail – Jail is renamed ‘Gitmo’ and is therefore closed, effectively a free space. The ‘Go to Jail’ space is now a ‘Yes We Can’ space that instructs players to print between two and twelve $1,000 bills using the game’s added rubber stamp U.S. Treasury Printing Press and stack of blank bills, depending on the dice roll.

“You’ll never go bankrupt again!” Bettercakes replied to questions as to purpose of the added game pieces.

Free Parking – Changed to ‘Free Housing’, granting anyone lucky enough to land on the space freedom from all debts to the Federal Bank.

Chance and Community Chest Cards – Now Called ‘Change’ and ‘Entitlement’ cards respectively.

Examples include a Change card that forces the player with the most money to pay a $10,000 tax break to all other players and an Entitlement card that grants the player with the least amount of property their choice of half of the properties owned by the richest player.

For now, both Hasbro and Parker Brothers are remaining mum as to the shapes of the player pieces as well as property names, including the Railroad spaces, Water Works and Electric Company spaces.

As for the Income Tax and Luxury Tax spaces, Ms. Bettercakes tells us that “the player with the most money who lands on these spaces must pay fifty percent of their assets to the Federal Bank.”

Originally posted 2009-03-04 19:40:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter