Sta.sh
In the 1970s, the most desirable occupation for a little girl or boy was to become a rock star. These rock stars received tremendous amounts of money and attention. In return for this, they were only asked to play music which conformed to the unspoken criteria of the time and genre, and to abuse illicit drugs and attend clinics to recover from the effects of these drugs in order to generate work for journalists and entertain the public.
Only ten years earlier, the most desired career was to become an astronaut. There was a time when very few people were allowed to travel into space. Both because it required the financial and material support of a large and paranoid nation just to send people into space, and because the process was so crude and unrefined, it would likely kill all but the most qualified.
Kazim Janic could, if he wanted—though he probably wouldn't because he's not prone to gloating—point and laugh at every rock star, astronaut, president, cowboy, supermodel, basketball player, and any other cool successful person any little girl or boy has ever wanted to be. This is because Kazim Janic has the coolest job that has ever existed: he is a Time Officer.
Time officers have the very important job of preventing people from taking advantage of the poor ignorant peoples of the past. After all, a simple Google search will reveal the outcome of most any sporting event, or the success of any company (such as Google) on the stock market. Although exploiting modern knowledge for personal gain would be lots of fun, it simply wouldn't be fair. So it's not allowed.
Not that all who infringe on temporal law are bad people. Many are well intentioned people with admirable goals. Nostradamus is a famous example of what can happen when the TTA doesn't do its job properly. Nostradamus' real name was Norm Adams, and he was trying to warn people against future disasters. Most of his advice was fairly simple, such as that one should wash one's hands in order to avoid plague. However, in order to avoid discovery, he masked his predictions in abstract poems, which nobody has ever decoded. The people at the TTA responsible for the oversight were very thankful for this.
However, the TTA did have a perfectly reasonable excuse for failing to stop Norm Adams from nearly preventing half of history. They were distracted by the Deimosian prince trying to take over the universe.
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It could use some tightening and working on. I think you mean "conformed" rather than "confined" in the rock star portion And the astronaut paragraph could use some trimming. The third paragraph is perfect.
If I could add anything to this which I feel would make it funnier I'd add:
...the poor[,] ignorant[, astronaut-appreciating] peoples of the past. After all, a simple Google search will reveal the outcome of most any sporting event, or the success of any [bygone] company (such as Google) on the stock market. Although exploiting modern knowledge for personal gain would be lots of fun, it simply wouldn't be fair. So it's not allowed.
I love the nostradamus bit. You tell us about this incredibly interesting event and then say "but nobody noticed, and the reason they didn't notice is because this other thing was happening so let's talk about that!" That's really funny.
I like the idea of mixing this new narrative material with the old vignette and "found documents" material. I'm becoming a huge fan of the idea of montage and style shifts in the arts so I'll really enjoy sitting down and looking at all the collected time weasel stuff as a gestalt when you're done.
2. Predicting the downfall of Google is fun, but we are making a practice of avoiding this type of prediction as they tend to come across as heavy-handed or vaguely judgmental.
3. Thank you very much for your feedback and compliments! They mean a lot to me.