VBVW for January 4, 2008: The Future Awaits

• The Very Best

Barack Obama, a black male, placed first in the Democratic caucus held in Iowa, an overwhelmingly white state. Yes, we had to read it twice, too.

A window-washer who plummeted 47 stories from a New York skyscraper is now awake, talking, and expected to walk again. Alcides Moreno may have survived his 500-foot fall by clinging to his platform as the scaffolding beneath him collapsed. All other New Yorkers find scaffolding annoying when it’s upright.

Sony BMG Music has announced plans to release songs without copyright protection software that prevents it from being downloaded. Sony is the last major label to untie the reins on digital rights management and accept the Internet as a marketplace. Welcome to 1999, fellas.

• The Very Worst

Residents of two upstate New York towns have filed suit against IBM, claiming the company released cancer-causing, brain-damaging chemicals into the local water, air and ground from 1924 to 2002. The townspeople are distraught, yet grateful that they now have an explanation of why so many New Yorkers elected Hillary Clinton to the Senate.

Violence over a disputed election in Kenya has reduced the normally staid African nation to a Stone Age civilization. More than 300 have been killed in riots, including 35 people who were burned to death in a church and two policemen who were killed with bows and arrows.

Cyprus and Malta became the 14th and 15th nations to adopt the euro. The U.S. dollar can now officially get the crap kicked out of it by Third World countries.