“How exactly did it come to this?” The gangly, talentless Hollywood film star spread his arms at the end of the table as his pneumatically blonde wife looked on, attempting to do her serious face. The Alt20 summit was in full session, leaders from the world’s top branches of woo in an emergency session to determine what could be done about the failing, er, wooconomy.

“Let’s look at the whole picture,” said the holistic therapist. “We’re facing a...”

“Gaia is angry.”

“Shut up Lovelock.”

“Now she’s angrier.”

The holistician glared. “Yes, well the way I see it we’re facing a lack of confidence that’s rippling through the wooconomy. People have lost faith in capi... I mean alt-med. I blame facts.”

“Pah, you can prove anything with facts.”

“Indeed Mr. Cheney.”

“It’s hard times,” said the acupuncturist. “We’re having to resort to ever more innovative ways to keep afloat.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. For example, we’ve recently launched our new voodoo acupuncture service.”

“Really?!”

“Yes. You don’t have to go. Saves us money on clinics and secretaries and all that.”

“I... wow. Anyway, we need to find a way to inject confidence back into the system.”

“Ha, to get us bending again,” said the chiropractor.

“That's not funny. You’re not funny.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, we all know there’s only one way to inject confidence back into the system, and that’s by spunking billions and billions of dollars on random stuff.”

“Well, actually you only need pennies”, said the homeopath.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“If I take this cent out of my pocket, place it in a jar, and shake it a bit, that’ll do as much good as millions of dollars.”

“Shut up.”

“But it’s true, a Victorian said arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh...” *plop*

The chair returned to its upright position as the movie star’s finger hovered ominously over the fire pit button. “Well thank you Mr. Holistician. Any other good ideas?”

“I’m a mother.”

“Thanks Jenny, that’s..”

“Mothers should have the vote I think.”

“Totally, but moving on... Ah, Linda”

"Hi Jim. Well I'm doing okay at the moment. I'm branching out into horses, and how you can read the bumps on their heads".

"Really?"

"Yeah, it turns out people who own horses are mostly rich. Great market. And I can really help them too. Did you know for example that a 'Quirk bump' is a small bump several inches below the eyes, and that it indicates a horse that's likely to have mood swings?"

"OhmygodohmygodohmygodIhaveaquirk bump!!!!"

"No Jenny, that's your nose," sighed Jim

"FUCK!" the blonde screeched and pouted.

"Well thanks Linda," intoned the inexplicably famous moronic actor, "so that brings us on to, er, Chiropracty. No more bad jokes Bob."

Bob the Chiropractor rose unsteadily from his seat. "Sorry Jim, I don't move so well since my stroke."

"That's a coincidence Bob, the last chiropracty representative had a stroke as well. And actually the one before him."

"Well I'm sure, that it's probably just a coincidence. I mean we can't say that chiropractors cause strokes. That would be legally wrong."

"Why yes Bob, I mean, God forbid somebody should threaten to sue the person transcribing this meeting for making such a claim."

"That would be terrible," Bob agreed, "So we should make it clear that chiropractors probably don't cause that many strokes."

"That sounds like a good compromise Bob."

"Thanks Jim. So, we've been having a lot of success promoting these Chiropractice building schemes. Basically, until now, many chiropractors have been struggling to repay their student loans, so we've been helping them out with ready made solutions for marketing their skills.

"I see Bob, so is it working?"

"Oh yes, we're making a ton of money out of it."

"Excellent, excellent. You know, your stroke must have been quite a traumatic event. You should consider writing about it. I've heard that it can help."

"Probably not a great idea in my position."

"Ah yes, writing's probably quite hard for a man in your condition."

"No, I mean as a chiropractor. Chiropractor, stroke... stroke, chiropractor. Best not to put those words together too much."

"Agreed. So, SocraticGadfly, you wanted to say something... but nope, you're just babbling or something. I'm sorry, but I'm Jim Carrey, and I don't do intelligent or subtle. Let's move on to... ah, a talking cat!"

"Meow"

"Hold on," said Linda, "I can translate by reading the bumps on her head."

"MEEOWW!"

"What's she saying?" inquired the deeply unfunny idiot actor.

"She's saying 'don't grab my head'."

"Right."

"But essentially she's... DOWN... she's saying that there are plots afoot to put science in books."

"What are books?" asked Jenny.

"They're like unedited scripts," replied Jim, "What else is she saying?"

"She's... ooh those claws need a trim... she's saying that a major new skeptic activist project has been launched. With podcasts and everything."

"Damn them," cursed Jim, "and their stubborn rationality and insistance on evidence. They're even calling Jenny ignorant."

"Wibble," said Jenny. "I can fly!!"

"You're just bouncing Jenny, we've talked about this. Right, Jeremy, how's it going?"

"Well pretty good. I've been spending some time in Africa, but things have heated up a bit lately. We tried to create a BCCI-style alphabet soup of organizations to conceal who ran what in UK homeopathy, but it went wrong."

"I see, did investigators from regulatory authorities across the world, cooperating with several national intelligence agencies piece together your complex web of mystery?"

"It was a blogger. Called Gimpy."

"I see."

"He used Google."

Jim shot Jeremy a withering look. "Still, Africa is a good market to exploit."

"Absolutely, they're happy to believe our advice, and it's not as if we're, ha, going out there and potentially contributing to a small holocaust of AIDS deaths by persuading people to turn their backs on the medicine they need."

"Ha, no Jeremy, I mean if we were misleading people, thus potentially contributing to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths, we'd be basically disgusting evil people who should be locked up in prison to think about their moronic behaviour for the rest of their miserable lives."

"Ha, yes, fortunately of course we're not, because everyone knows that homeopathy cures AIDS."

"Indeed. Speaking of threats to public health, David, how is the electosensitivity market looking?"

*rustle*

"I'm sorry David, your foil hat's rustling. Could you... ah that's better."

"Well basically, we think that electricity probably causes cancer," David repeated, "there's some slightly annoying science stuff to contend with, but we reckon some good marketing should pay off. After all, you can never be too careful eh?"

"Well, I'm not sure about that - sometimes the statistics aren't always very obvious. Like on helmets for motorcyclists for example," opined Jim.

"Huh? Where did that come from?"

"It's just something I wanted to fit in to the meeting, and I didn't really know when else to say it. Anyway, back to our final representative - Helen our parapsychologist. How's the paranormal market?"

"Well it's good, and we're being really helped by our friends in the TV industry," replied Helen.

"Excellent, well I suppose dead people are always a growing market!"

"Although one that we in no way contribute to," Bob the chiropractor interjected.

"Nor us," cried Jeremy the homeopath.

"Well I'm glad that's cleared up. I'll see you next time!"

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