I haven’t posted anything in a while.
Ruffy Guilty
Nothing is more arresting than the allure of brand name intoxicants, like Gucci or Rohypnol.
Filed under Images
The DIALOGUE Machine: “The Schrank Family Take A Drive”
The Schranks pile into the station wagon for a family outing. The kids play in the backseat. They are Mary, aged 12, and George, aged 10.
MOM: Hey kids, look up ahead, train tracks.
DAD: You know what that means, kids.
GEORGE: No.
MARY: What does it mean, daddy?
DAD: It means you have to lift your legs when we drive over them, ok?
MARY: Ok.
GEORGE: Sounds like fun.
MOM: Here we go, ready… and… lift.
Mary and George lift their feet off the floor and giggle.
GEORGE: Yay!
MARY: Fun!
MOM: Wasn’t it?
DAD: Look ahead, we’re entering a tunnel.
MOM: Oh boy, do you know what that means, kids?
MARY: No.
GEORGE: What does it mean, mommy?
MOM: It means you have to hold your breath as long as we’re in the tunnel.
DAD: No cheating, you can’t breathe out until we reach the other side.
GEORGE: Ok.
MARY: Sounds like fun.
DAD: Here we go, ready… and… breath in and hold it.
Mary and George breath in deeply and hold it. The Schranks drive into the tunnel.
After a few seconds they catch up to a traffic jam. The kids start looking strained.
MARY: [pained muffled sounds]
MOM: Don’t you dare exhale.
The kids start flailing about.
GEORGE: [tormented noises]
DAD: My god, if either of you so much as let out a molecule of breath I, swear…
The kids start turning blue. There traffic advances slowly.
A bit later, the Schranks finally emerge into the daylight. Mary gasps for air and coughs violently. George lies motionless.
MARY: I did it, yay.
DAD: Looks like George didn’t make it.
MARY: I win?
MOM: Don’t be stupid, it’s not about winning.
DAD: Look at that.
The family see a Volkswagen Beetle. Dad turns around and punches Mary in the face. She falls silent next to George.
DAD: Punch-Buggy, no punch backs.
Filed under Sketches
Anthony Patch on Congress: The Meaningfullness Of Work In The Meaninglessness Of Life
“… he tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men, with copybook ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lustreless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people–and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!”
Text from The Beautiful and Damned (1922) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Image “New York” (pre 1925) by Jan Matulka
Filed under Uncategorized
Customer Satisfaction Obligatory
Don’t forget to fill out our customer satisfaction sheet before you leave.
Filed under Images
The DIALOGUE Machine: “There Is No Chicken Salad”
Rebecca – nearing 30, a Rabbi’s daughter
Alec – nearing 30, a Psychoanalyst’s son
Rebecca and Alec burst into her apartment, making out and groping each other.
Rebecca excuses herself to pee.
Alec starts going through her kitchen, discovering neither chicken, nor salad. There is nothing to eat.
Rebecca returns.
ALEC: There’s no food, therefore, there’s no chicken salad.
REB: Yes, there is.
ALEC: Where? I don’t see it.
REB: You can’t see it.
ALEC: Can I eat it?
REB: You can believe you can eat it.
ALEC: I don’t believe you. You have to prove that there is chicken salad.
REB: No, you have to prove that there isn’t chicken salad.
ALEC: Why? You’re the one positing the existence of chicken salad. The onus is on you to prove it.
REB: You’re the one positing the non-existence of chicken salad. And in my experience, chicken salad does exist.
ALEC: No, I’m not saying chicken salad doesn’t exist. I’m saying there’s no chicken salad here, to eat, right now.
REB: And I’m saying there is.
ALEC: Prove it.
REB: You prove it. Prove that I’m wrong.
ALEC: I’m hungry, and I’m not eating chicken salad. So, there.
REB: All you’re saying is that the condition of your hunger not being satiated by chicken salad is constitutive of the non-existence of chicken salad. Whereas the determinant existence of chicken salad is independent of your hunger.
ALEC: Exactly—wait, no… what?
REB: If you admit I’m right, I’ll give you some chicken salad.
ALEC: So, you do have chicken salad?
REB: I sure believe I do.
ALEC: OK, you’re right. There is chicken salad. Now, can I have some?
REB: Do you believe you can have some?
ALEC: I’ll die of hunger if I don’t.
REB: That’s the spirit.
Alec stares at Rebecca, clutches his stomach, and falls over, dead.
Rebecca looks down at his lifeless body. She clutches her stomach.
REB: Oh, right.
Rebecca kneels down beside Alec’s body and starts eating him.
Disclaimer: In order to defend himself from being labeled a ‘racist,’ the author encourages any reader who so chooses to replace the above mentioned ‘chicken salad’ with ‘tuna salad.’
Above image done by my pal.
Filed under Sketches
The LIST Machine: Show Ideas For The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)
Another list inspired by boredom and bitterness, this time directed against TV’s tubby tyrant and her new Network Reich: OWN.
Show Idea for #OWN: “Family Ties” Normal families labeled as ‘dysfunctional’ are chained together and the last survivor eats the others.
Show Idea for #OWN: “Bookface” Classic literature is made accessible to the masses by recycling it’s paper for cosmetic wrappers.
Show Idea for #OWN: “Ur In” People who have changed their first names to ‘Doctor’ analyze people’s diets by drinking their pee.
Show Idea for #OWN: “Successors” Failures in all walks of life adopt colorful babies to give their lives meaning.
Show Idea for #OWN: “Dear Diary” Pop psychologists help bored women spice up their childhoods memories by inventing pervy uncles.
Above image designed by my pal.
Taken from my twitter on January 05, 2011
Filed under Uncategorized
The POINTLESS JOKE Machine: “There’s A Fly In My Soup”
A man at a restaurant calls over the waiter. Waiter, waiter, he complains, what is this fly doing in my soup? The waiter looks down and answers, why, he seems to be committing suicide. I know that, the man says, what I want to know is, why has he given up on life? Does he not have any plans for the future, any dreams as yet unrealized, any legacy he’d like to offer the world? The waiter stares down the man and says, he’s a fly, his life is pointless, and so is this joke.
Filed under Uncategorized
The COMMENT Machine: Madoff’s Loaf of Bread @ The Huffington Post
In response to this article:
Bernie Madoff Defends Himself: ‘I’m A Good Person’
“Bernie Madoff’s personal PR campaign has begun. The convicted Ponzi schemer made a series of calls from prison to writer Steve Fishman in hopes of setting the record straight…” from here.
“I don’t find it too cognitively contradictory for a man like Madoff to do what he did and still consider himself ‘a good person.’ Theft on such a large and abstract scale must seem completely divorced from it’s consequences, at least at the time. My grandparents lost their savings in the Madoff scheme, and trust me, they want to see him flayed in hell for eternity times one hundred. But if they had him over for coffee and cake (before the scheme went bust), I’m sure they’d all get along swimmingly.
The point might be that people don’t hate him for stealing, they hate him for getting caught. The system is set up to encourage all different kinds of stealing. Theft isn’t a crime, it’s a game, and getting caught means you lose. Remember Jean Valjean who stole a loaf of bread to feed his family and spent his life as a criminal. The differences between Madoff and Valjean aren’t just the magnitude of their crime, and how many people profited and lost from the consequences, but their respective positions inside and outside the system.
Still, who would you rather come over for coffee or cake, Madoff or Valjean?”
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Tagged as fraud, madoff, theft, vicot hugo