Iraqi Karate Coach Shot by Insurgents, Star Pupil Plans Vengeance at Insurgent Karate Tournament

Iraqi Olympic karate coach Izzat Abdullah was shot dead by gunmen this Friday in the city of Mosul. While it is not known exactly why Abdullah was targeted, insurgents regularly targeted athletes and trainers during the height of the Iraqi insurgency. Mr Abdullah, 45, was a former karate champion who moved from Baghdad to Mosul after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

Meanwhile, Abdullah's best student, known only by his nickname The Kid, is training harder than ever to avenge his master's murder at the Insurgent Karate Tournament later next month. Reports indicate that Mr Abdullah was like a father to The Kid, and that he has taken the shooting harder than anyone else. "He stayed alone in his dojo all weekend," said The Kid's on-again-off-again girlfriend, "Then after dinner last night, he went out into the rain, dropped to his knees, and cried out about how he will avenge his master's honor. I thought it was kind of gay."

According to another of Abdullah's students, The Kid has started an intense training regime so that he's in peak shape at the Tournament. "He keeps running around shadow-boxing, chopping lumber, digging ditches... all while listening to 80's music: mostly Kenny Loggins, but I heard some Phil Collins a few times."

Reports show that The Kid is an orphan of the first Gulf War, who's parents were adamantly anti-Hussein and subsequently murdered by Bathist fanatics. After shining shoes for coins on the mean streets of Baghdad, The Kid got himself mixed up with a street gang during his teen years. As part of the gang, The Kid had to burglarize a random house. The house he attempted to break into belonged to Mr Abdullah, who caught him in the act and forced The Kid to do chores for him instead of turning him into the police. Eventually a bond was formed between the two, and The Kid became Abdullah's finest student.

All eyes are now on the Karate Tournament, which promises to be a spectacular event. Rumors have it that the final match will likely involve The Kid going one-on-one against an overly 'roided Joe Piscopo while featuring music by Tangerine Dream. Only time will tell if The Kid can succeed, sell out, and then quickly fall into obscurity.

Robotic Garbageman Steals Jobs from Social Outcasts

Italy has unveiled the worlds' first trash collection robot, called Dustbot. The robot can be summoned to an address through a mobile any time of day. It finds its way through streets using GPS and a sophisticated gyroscope to keep it upright on just two wheels. Dustbot has many other sensors so that it does not collide with anything. Dustbot's inventor hopes to put an end to fixed times for garbage collection. The prototype currently operates in Tuscany.

Robots hauling off our garbage, it makes sense when you think about it. People don’t want to deal with disposing of all the goddamn garbage they make, so why not have robots do it? It’s only our garbage, right? Well you could be dead wrong. Do we really know where the fucking they’re taking our refuse? There’s no guarantee that it’s not all being hauled off and used to build the terrifying robotic war machines that will soon be striding through our streets, picking us off with their fucking heat rays and robotic tentacle arms.

First of all, do we really need to create a world where robots are now competition for menial labor? We’ve already got a bunch fucking brain dead hillbillies complaining about immigrants taking their jobs, if you add robots into the equation you’re just asking for cataclysmic battle between man and machine. And seriously, if we let robots take jobs from the goddamn local mutants we call trash-men, who eye middle school girls on the way home from school, then what are they going to spend all their free time doing? With all fucking seriousness, I don’t want to know. So I say we put a fucking moratorium on the idea of a robotic trashman, butler, ditch digger, cesspool cleaner, mailman, or Pizza Hut employee, because at least we know what those fucking freaks are doing for most of the day.

The other problem, we’re allowing robots to freely roam our streets. It seems convenient that you can call a service to have them dispatch a robot trashcan to you. In fact, that’s great. We’ll all get used to having these washing-machine looking fucks rolling around. That way nobody will question their appearance when they start showing up at our homes on their own and cramming our shattered bodies into their trash compartment for disposal. Of course, the damn thing looks so fucking goofy that nobody would ever expect that they’re methodically taking us out one family at a time.

In my opinion, trash disposal isn’t worth risking a potential robot holocaust (as illustrated in the 1986 documentary Robot Holocaust, now available on Comcast OnDemand). We should let the dregs of our society handle our garbage, like god intended them to, that way we keep the fucking crazies busy sifting through our shit and as far away from us as fucking possible. In the end, if it comes down to robots or humans, you just have to side with the humans, no matter how ugly, disgusting, perverted, mentally deficient or noxious they might happen to be. It’s like Eisenhower always said: “better dead than a damn dirty fucking robot.”