by May Monten

Created on: December 17, 2010   Last Updated: January 10, 2011

This satirical list reveals the top ten most hoped-for leaks, along with notes about their expected impact on the world:

1. Cable from the American Ambassador in Paris, detailing his sighting of a tiny UFO landing inside a pastry shop. 

These aliens may be small, but they have a ferocious craving for croissants and can stuff hundreds of baked delicacies per hour into their tiny furry bodies. Expect a worldwide shortage of flour, butter, and sugar.

2. Videotape from the employee bathroom of the Jefferson Avenue, Detroit, Bank of America branch, showing a night janitor stealing toilet paper from all of the stalls.

Expect this to ruin tellers' days, leading to high error rates, causing the collapse of the banking giant.

3. Internal company memos from BP executives showing the company has secretly been manufacturing pipes for new suburban Atlanta subdivisions.

Expect the pipes, of course, to leak. Good times ahead for Atlanta-area plumbers.

4. Memo from President of American Airlines discussing plan to introduce a "Standing Steerage Class" on all domestic flights, with passengers who desire seats being charged a "premium" fee.

Expect massive grumbling fading quickly to resignation.

5.  A microfiche copy of Barack Obama's MasterCard bill from February 2010, showing he ordered a dozen red roses for his wife, Michelle.

Expect bloggers, on a slow news day, to spin this into evidence of communist sympathies.

6. Transcript of telegram from Apollo, threatening to stop carrying the sun unless he is given a raise.

Expected impact minimal after rumors surface about the existence of paintings of Apollo's nocturnal activities.

7. A parchment smuggled from the residence of the Dalai Lama, showing that his successor has been discovered in a tiny village in northern Tibet: an eight-year old donut-maker named "Ness."

Get ready to greet His Holiness the Holey Ness.

8.  Top-secret CIA list of the best pizza places within a half-mile radius of CIA headquarters.

Expect the publicity to bring new crowds to the pizza places named on the list.  Expect CIA agents, frustrated by the long lines at their favorite pizzerias, to defect to Chinese restaurants.

9. Secret photographs taken by hidden camera of a thermo-nuclear family.  The family (Bob Jones, Jenna Jones, and their children Steve, Sally, and Heather Jones) were all captured on film wearing "Thermo" brand long underwear.

Expect increased scrutiny on the issue of why the Jones family refuses to turn up the heat.

10. Page from President Obama's personal diary, telling how he plans to stand up to his opposition.

Expected impact: None.

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