By Ben Suroeste

NEW YORK – Online news aggregator InfoCompServlet (ICS) is apologizing today for what a spokesperson called a “regrettable tech glitch” over the weekend, which caused a seemingly random jumbling of facts between variety of mainstream news and adult entertainment-related articles and headlines.

“A review of our server logs and incoming customer feedback suggests the problem began around 1:45 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday morning and unfortunately continued over the weekend until our IT staff was able to return the service to normal,” said Dave McDonnel, deputy director of public relations for ICS. “We regret any confusion this might have caused among our users and readers — particularly those who were mistakenly led to believe there was to be a massive ‘red tag’ sale on pornographic videos at Macy’s over the weekend.”

While the most immediately noticeable impact of the glitch was to introduce elements from porn-related stories into mainstream news articles, key non-porn facts also were mismatched, migrating haphazardly from one news category to another without regard for reality or plausibility.

Examples of botched headlines created by the glitch included “NASCAR Cuts Ties with Trump over Pope Francis Porn Documentary” and “Immigration Controversy: FIFA’s Blatter Will Not Travel to Canada for Live Sex Show Featuring Ted Cruz.” Yet another proclaimed: “Grateful Dead Injures Ankle Watching Porn With Supreme Court Justices.”

While McDonnel said most ICS users immediately recognized there was “something very wrong” with their news feeds, he said the company did receive some feedback from readers who clearly were confused — and in some cases shocked and frightened — by what they had read.

“I have been looking for confirmation of this story everywhere on the web, but I can’t find anything,” wrote in one distressed ICS user. “Please, please, please tell me it’s not true Mila Kunis has agreed to marry Dolph Ziggler for $1 million as part of the Greek austerity measures!”

While no deaths, major injuries or notable paternity claims appear to have resulted from the mishap as yet, media critic Marshall Luhanmac said it’s “only a matter of time before the unfathomable horror stories begin to claw their way to surface after being thrust into existence by this unforgivable techno-negligence on the part of ICS.”

“This is what’s wrong with the news media today, especially in the online space,” Luhanmac wrote in an emailed response. “There’s no professionalism, no dedication and no real fact checking, so mistakes and falsehoods become commonplace, from prolific minor typogphixal erorfs to serious calamine lotion — often because automated systems are only so good at determining the propeller context for correctly spieled wards usurped in any graven sentencing.”

Perhaps a greater problem for ICS: Some of the scrambled news elements resulted in the aggregator publishing “potentially actionable falsehoods,” according to purported Los Angeles-area attorney Earnest S. Hitter, Esq.

“While aggregators typically enjoy the immunity bestowed by certain statutory ‘safe harbors,’ I’m pretty sure ICS is a landlocked company, so it’s not clear to me how these harbors would apply to them in any way,” Hitter said. “Plus, as an aggregating service, it’s pretty hard to explain how a tech glitch could lead to a mistake in republishing basic, easily confirmed facts — particularly when one of the resulting articles refers to a certain female former Secretary of State as a ‘porn-addicted, socially conservative right-wing Christian segregationist’ who is further alleged to have contracted MERS while performing a rap duet with the Mayor of Philadelphia.”

Manhattan resident Sheila Weathers noted while people have been complaining primarily about the impact on ICS’s news feed, her smartphone’s ICS-authored weather app appeared to have similar issues over the weekend.

“I was getting ready to go out for a jog on Sunday morning but it was pretty overcast outside, so I checked my app to see if any rain was expected,” Weathers said. “When I opened the app, it said the current conditions were ‘partly cloudy with a chance of double-penetration.’ I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but it sure sounds like it might be even worse than jogging in the rain.”

In a related story, a spokesperson for Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham has staunchly denied an ICS report claiming Graham told a supporter in Iowa not to vote for him in response to Bree Olson warning young women not to drink Tiger’s blood because it contains undisclosed genetically modified organisms and tiny pieces of the Confederate flag.

(Ted Cruz image by Gage Skidmore.)