Hey Kids! After college, when we were idealistic Young Turks keen to set the world on fire, our artistic movement failed after a typo caused the Paris Review to publish, rather than our manifesto, our manifest, i.e., a list or invoice of the passengers or goods being carried by a commercial vehicle or ship. Lacking literary street cred after the fiasco, we were forced to go to work for Amalgamated Corporation writing ad copy and instruction manuals for big wheel trikes, easy-bake ovens, and man-portable anti-tank guided missiles like the FGM-148 Javelin. It’s not funny, it’s real—as real as Bugs Bunny waking up broke and alone in some shabby SRO hotel downtown, needle tracks in his arm, wondering where his life went. You’re not Napoleon, Bugs. You never were.
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Ever wanted to be the life of the party? Do you dream of one day being blurbed as “America’s foremost absurdist” by an obscure pop culture authority like Chuck Klosterman or Neal Pollack? Of finding remaindered copies of your book, featuring an Annie Leibovitz of you dressed in ironic clothing on the dust jacket, in some bargain bin at K-mart? Now those dreams can become reality with Amalgamated’s Do-it-Yourself Comedy Kit™. Just mix and match these hilarious one-liners, gags, spoofs, parodies, and satires and begin performing today (Amalgamated not responsible for any resulting injury, depression, ostracism, or dementia):
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Help! I’m trapped in a world I never made!
A man and his son were in a car crash. The man was killed instantly and the boy was rushed to the hospital, but the surgeon said, “I cannot operate on his boy, for I am strung out on meth! Also I never attended medical school and have been faking it all these years!”
I recently translated a book from Japanese to English. Since I don’t know any Japanese, I translated every word as “Yikes!,” which, after all, was more or less true.
This is not a sentence. Aw, I’m just joshing you—it is a sentence after all.
Sometimes, isn’t what we call Rhode Island really just another way of saying a small state in New England with its capital at Providence?
Nowadays, of course, we realize Peter Pan suffered from anephebiosis, a rare disorder wherein the patient never undergoes puberty. In later life he participated in Bono’s benefit concert for the victims of this tragedy.
This sentence is a lie. No, wait, not that one. This one is a lie.
The Wayans Brothers is a hoax—there’s no Damon, Shawn, or Marlon. It’s just Keenan Ivory using trick photography. Wake up, people, they used the same trick in The Parent Trap forty years ago! Also, Jim Carrey is just a Claymation figurine. In fact, pretty much the entire cast of In Living Color was one kind of doll or another, which is why they were never seen in the company of Jackie O—she had a debilitating fear of dolls, mannequins, androids, or other human simulacra.
These and other gems, contained within!
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This vignette is dedicated to Little Richard. Not the famous Little Richard—it’s dedicated to an even littler one.