SAN FRANCISCO — If you’ve felt even a passing melancholy this week, you’ve already violated three federal statutes. Here’s how to fix it: file Form S-14 (Section 7) with the Office of Emotional Compliance within 72 hours, pay the $42.50 emotional processing fee, and await approval before crying again.
The new Emotional Tax and Feeling Registration Act took effect Monday, making sadness a scheduled activity that requires advance scheduling and proper licensing.
COPENHAGEN — In a stunning display of bureaucratic audacity that would make the most zealous open-source evangelist blush, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has formally announced it will abandon Microsoft entirely across its public sector, affecting 30,000 employees — civil servants, judges, and even the police force — in what officials are calling an existential stand against vendor lock-in.
“This is about data sovereignty,” declared Dr. Kurt Vogel, the state’s IT procurement czar, who has spent his entire career configuring NixOS configurations while simultaneously screaming at every Microsoft update notification that appears in his life. “We refuse to have our judicial decisions filtered through a licensing agreement we did not write. We refuse to pay Microsoft €10 billion a year in royalties for software that runs perfectly fine on GNU/Linux.”
After years of regulating everything from emotional frequencies to celestial compensation, the U.S. Department of Inner Experience (DIE) has finally introduced the Soul License initiative, which now requires all citizens to file quarterly introspection reports to prove they haven’t developed ‘Existential Inconsistency.’
Early adopters report being denied service for ‘Insufficiently Questioning Their Own Birth,’ while the Department claims the new system will ‘Reduce Metaphysical Fraud’ by 40%.
The program, unveiled last Tuesday at a press conference where Director Brenda Vantress wore a ceremonial ‘Certified Introspector’ badge and a gray suit for ‘Neutral Aesthetic Compliance,’ requires every American to submit a 23-page form documenting their emotional trajectory, spiritual alignment, and ‘Psychological Footprint’ over the preceding 90 days. Each application must be stamped and verified by three licensed ‘Therapy Bureaucrats’ who undergo ‘Emotional Calibration Training’ to ensure they can identify ‘Vibe Inconsistencies’ in a soul’s paperwork.
The Department of the Interior has unveiled what it calls the Monument Condition Index, a groundbreaking new metric for measuring the state of federally protected landmarks across America. According to the index’s lead architect, a team of three career civil servants who have never actually seen the Washington Monument in person, the new system will “bring unprecedented scientific rigor to our understanding of obelisk condition.”
“The current framework is hopelessly inadequate,” said Interior Department spokesperson Karen Mullen, a woman who has not visited a single National Mall monument since 2019. “We’ve been flying blind, metaphorically and geologically. Now, we can quantify exactly how much damage a single pigeon drop has inflicted upon our nation’s soul.”