St. Patrick’s Day! (Plus Premonitions of AI media, the Epstein Files, and “wardrobe malfunctions”)
The Balow Star, the reigning tabloid of Shuteye Nation 2000
Along with Shuteye Town 1999, Shuteye Nation is the most imperiled of the major works of R. F. Laird, the guy behind this and other Instapunk blogs. It’s trapped inside a Wordpress site whose vendor can no longer be reached to correct its own software glitches, although the monthly fees are still being paid like clockwork. Why we periodically offer you an opportunity to visit these amazingly predictive works about what the 21st Century would be like in our own era, a quarter century later.
This post focuses on two timeless American traditions, St. Patrick’s Day and the annual Oscar telecast. (There’s also a bonus topic we’ll explain later…) In the year 2000, some things were different and some surprisingly the same. Brawny, brawling big city columnists may be fewer in number now, but today is the day when some of the survivors will be writing about the sacred Irish version of Mardi Gras, still celebrated in places like Chicago, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Here are two related columns from Shuteye Nation’s second banana newspaper, the Balow Star:
The Star was no stranger to controversy, as the typical front page shown above might indicate. That story concerned the controversial release from custody of J. Doe, the protagonist of Shuteye Town 1999, thanks to the wiles of the eminent deerskin-clad defense attorney Jerry Stunce (whose real life counterpart, Gerry Spence, just passed away in 2025). The whole country was shocked by the failure to convict a notorious mass murderer like Doe. In comparison, the Tough Guy column about St. Patrick’s was much lower on the outrage scale, but disciplinary measures were demanded by members of the public, and so the standard apology was published in the still popular nonapology format:
The highlighted links don’t work here, but they do in the original, which we’ll show you how to reach in a few seconds time in the Below the Fold section of this post. Meanwhile, on to the Oscars, which just had its own outrages and disappointments in 2026. The more things change, the more things stay the same:
Clear hints here of the intrusion of AI technology into live broadcasts. Not to mention the possibility of wardrobe malfunctions like the one Janet Jackson would experience four years later. Imagined here 25 years ago. How did it work out in 2000? Where the disappointments enter the picture, like always:
By now you must be wondering about the links. Both Shuteye Town 1999 and Shuteye Nation 2000/2001 are immense works that are navigated principally (if not necessarily) by hyperlinks. There are standalone sections which can be read linearly, but all the segments are also jumping off places to explore other parts of the work until it’s hard to find your way back to where you started, though your back button is a lifesaver. One way to think of the hyperlinks is as an invitation to one or more punchlines that lead to still other punchlines. You know. Fun. In spite of all the serious implications underlying everything.
Which leads to our bonus section of this post…
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Below the Fold
In the Tough Guy apology above, you may have noticed the link to Jane Doe, a key part of the legend of Bill Clitton. If you could take the link, you’d go to a section of Shuteye Nation titled ‘Who’s Who in Ameria,’ and specifically to this entry:
Actually, there are more Jane Does than this. But you get the picture.
One more thing about the Jane Doe text entry above. If you look closely, you’ll see some words have little superscript circles attached, like degree signs. These are also links, specifically to the Shuteye Nation Glossary, which gives the meaning of the word in the year 2000 (and generally speaking in 2026 as well). For example, the word ‘Republican’ has a Gossary link. Here’s where it takes you:
It’s easy enough to get to the real files. They’re available at the Shuteye Nation site. You may be required to skip through the following two screens first. It’s a one-time two-step. Once in, you can go directly anywhere you want. There are a lot of places to go.
This is a Wordpress CYA. The only one not ‘Safe’ here is R. F. Laird, whose files
are being held hostage by a software glitch Wordpress can’t be reached to fix.
Nobody’s monitoring this space to grab your credit card information.
.
This connection is about as private as you can get. Like a priest’s confessional.
One click should take you to this page, where the Balow Star awaits. If it should seem to stall out before taking you here, just refresh your screen.
From here it’s up to you.
One last thing. Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the time travelers of Shuteye Nation!
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