Tag Archives: comedy

How To Read A Book

What are books? 

Books are stiff magazines that take raw hubris and stamp it onto thin, inedible wafers. There are well over one hundred books ever made.

Each book contains a unique combination of runes that when decoded by a  human sense can do many amazing things but cannot help one achieve everlasting life unless the spell within is effective. Besides spells, a book can tell a story about real or fake people, animals, towns or sports, and can even tell you how much pepper to add to suet to make it palatable to orphans.

How do you read a book?

Books stamped in English are read from left to right. Asking “why?” is like asking why a clown’s nose is red: it’s easy to explain and most people would leap at the opportunity to do so.

Reading English left to right mimics the voyage of the brigantine “Heart Reaper” as it made its way across the equator teaching remote societies an economical new language, while gathering fresh mullet in its holds to feed the insatiable King Cody the Beautiful. Prior to the voyage the direction books were read was up to the reader leading to mass confusion, including the popular misconception that the best way to greet someone was by saying, “Meet Hello, I’m what you aren’t.” Following months of petty arguments aboard the ship concerning the ending of the only book available (the book’s hero, the Runt, did indeed slay the Master Piper), Captain Adam recommended to the Council a standardization that would honour his voyage.

Now to the clowns. The noses we know today were the product of a dispute between two rival factions within a long forgotten circus troupe. One side was confident that round red noses would appeal to children because they resemble apples, the era’s top selling candy. Another felt fashion was the answer and pushed for something pointier. They solved their dispute the way most circuses do: by setting out two piles of sausages representing each choice and having a snake slither to the most attractive pile. Some say one pile was spiked with fresh mint to entice the snake toward the red pile while others claim it’s nonsense created by the losing half to help deflect embarrassment.

A fashionable beak created by the pointies who went on to form a famous fashion house.

A book must first be opened to be read. Bottled up heat within the book’s meat (each slice called a “page”) will escape upon opening. If captured and run though a Thermoelectric generator, a reader can produce enough heat to incubate the egg of a small gull. A book is bound by a spine. Like any mammal, if the spine is severed, the book will perish.

Once you have a book, look at each word, remember it, then move onto the next word. When you see the low dot (a “period”) quickly analyze what all the previous words meant then move onto the next chunk.

What happens if you can’t read the whole book in one go?

If you do not finish the book you must somehow mark your progress so as to continue the next time your eyes need a snack. Some classical examples are:

Whispering the page number to a child and having them remember it in exchange for salt and jacks.

Baking the page number into a loaf.

Tattooing the page number onto yourself or a piece of hard fruit

Associating the page number with something familiar in your life. For example if I left off on page 254, I would link it to my memory of father making me smoke 254 cigars after I flat out refused to go into the family cigar business

What do you do after you finish a book?

If you are able to get to the end of the book, do not worry because there are other books. The one you just read is not the only book. Do not burn the book unless it was bad. Do not eat the book unless it is tasty.

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City Toads (1990)

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The best sandwich board quotes for your restaurant

Regular readers of this motherfucker know that I love food more than I love toys. Living in the cultural trail mix that is Toronto has exposed me to every type of cuisine out there and most local restaurant owners know me personally as “the guy who only orders one drink”. Using my vast knowledge of food and restaurants, I’ve come up with very good sandwich board quotes for various types of eateries that are free for anyone to use. I’ve learned that nothing puts meat in the seats quite like a cleverly-worded street ad.

Coffee juicer

coffee

pizzariaria

pizza

hamburger hut

hamburger

onion shack

onion

beer bar

beer

wine bar

wine

chinese food store

chinese

Fruit juke

juice

 

10 Reasons School Stinks

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HERE’S ANOTHER BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL THAT I POSTED ON A DIFFERENT WEBSITE. SCHOOL STINKS.

What is it like in today’s schools?

Next week kids of all heights and weights will go back to school to learn about things we adults don’t care about. But today’s schools are vastly different than the ones we used to dream about sex in, and the kids have changed too. Back in my day we’d jump to class and instead of computers we had smart kids chained to the back wall.  What else is different? Let’s find out:

Did kids still get in trouble for chewing gum?

The roots of chewing gum in class go way back to the origins of gum itself.

Aristocrats loved getting seated beside the windows of posh restaurants to show the hungry poor how well-fed they were. It got so popular that the wealthy yearned for a more portable way to display their ability to eat food any time they wanted. Chewing gum was designed as a way for the rich to appear to be eating while on the go and it caught on quickly, but thanks to gum’s low prices, fake eating became a trend that everyone could enjoy. It was especially prevalent in schools and soon every child was chewing, causing teachers to burn school lunches and eventually the banishment of gum once they figured out what was happening.

Even after gum went from being a tool for pretend eating to a pleasurable mouth exercise, schools continued to enforce the century-old rule. Surprisingly, gum is quite popular in today’s schools but rather than chew with their mouths, students chew with their noses for easy concealment and fresher snorts for when they sniff screw after school. Sniff screwing has essentially replaced the more pedestrian blow job and will likely inspire the next generation of pornography.

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What happened to Coles/Cliffs Notes?

We’ve all ‘cheated’ on a test, book report or salad contest by using abridged versions of course material called Coles Notes here in Canada and Cliffs notes in the United Stains. You’d be naive to think that modern children don’t use shortcuts to get their homework done, they just do so in a different way.

In modern schools students are surrounded by technological devices, providing ample nooks and crannies in which to hide tiny scrolls called “wee cheaties”. Teachers have a very hard time controlling the flow of wee cheaties within school walls because of the sheer number of them.

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What about bullies?

Today’s culture doesn’t reward bullies like our generation did but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist–at least in the physical world. During the school day all identified bullies are strapped into rigs that take them into a massive simulation where their avatars are free to roam. They are able to live their fantasies of killing teachers and pissing on nerds so that by the end of the day they can return to a normal home life.

Do they still have to ask before going to the bathroom?

Everyone remembers the embarrassment of having to ask a teacher to use to the bathroom. Today’s schools have replaced bathrooms with “Creative Co-Habitats”, which are essentially white-walled rooms filled with bean bag chairs and Plasticine. Students are free to enter the habitat whenever they please and are encouraged to explore their bowel movements and innovate new ways to dispose of human waste while collaborating with their peers.

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Do teachers still get apples from students?

No, they get frozen honey instead.

What happened to blackboards?

Blackboards gave way to whiteboards which have been replaced by advanced LED displays linked to an intricate network of schools around the globe. The display aggregates lessons worldwide ensuring that the pepperoni dancer’s son in Italy is getting the same education as the blacksmith’s bastard daughter in Tokyo.

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This way, every idiot of the future will be very easy to control and manipulate because we’ll know exactly what’s in those shriveled little fuckin’ peanut brains of theirs. Today’s random assortment of morons is very difficult to control because we cannot predict their actions, which has led to crime, teenage pregnancies, Amy Adams movies and the Washington Redskins.

New video — Toronto_GameBoy return$

This is the follow-up video to this baby, which introduced comedy fans to a new and innovative character who’s into toys. Get crazy and watch in public for everyone to enjoy.

Hat Man V. Rat Man (1987)

After my old hockey coach died while immersed in virtual reality, he left each of his favourite players something in his will. I received the rights to the story of Hat Man V. Rat Man, which he had purchased in 1989 at an auction famous for selling the original recipe for Duct Tape.

With the rights set to expire on Halloween of this October, I decided I’d better do something with the story and since my screenplay hasn’t been laminated yet I can’t legally produce a film. Here’s a brief telling of the tale that will hopefully go viral enough for me to make t-shirts.

Hat Man V. Rat Man 

The graffiti wars of the 1980s were well-documented but specifics are scant due to the artists’ unwritten rule that “Players aren’t Sprayers (we are sprayers in that we spray paint but we don’t talk about spraying (paint))”. Upon further research we learned that the rules were in fact written on the side of a low wall in Central Park:

graffitirules

These famous lines were painted by a Bronx-born,  sewer-educated street artist named Lance “Hat Man” Thipthin. In 1987 it’d be hard to find a wall without his signature tag splotched on it like Peter Criss’ autograph on the thick thigh of a Kentucky housewife:

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For about a year, Hat Man was New York’s reigning king of spray paint spray painting until one unusually lukewarm July lunch hour when he spotted a tag near one of his own:

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Some say Kavid “Rat Man” Hice gained his artistic wizardry after being bitten by a radioactive Chinese man who bred Gremlins in the back of his junk store.  In reality, the Newark-native learned his trade while visiting Manhattan on weekends to visit a friendly police dog famous for sniffing out true talent and people who love to stab things.

As he walked the streets he took in the art that had exploded all over the big city streets. He would practice back home in Jersey using nothing more than a can of whipped cream and a piece of cardboard that his father ate because he thought it was a cake. Eventually, Rat Man brought his New Jersey street style to the New York streets whose street style was the style of the street, and the Rat was loose.

The pair actually painted the same walls for several years but never noticed each other’s tags due to each man’s stubbornness when it came to perspective.

“I only painted vertical walls and I never looked up because around here, on my streets, looking up leaves you open to someone pulling down your fly and filling it with with chocolate eggs. You get Easter’d in my neighbourhood you never get respected again,” said Hat Man in a rare interview.

Rat Man had a very different attitude:

“I decided to paint up high because in New Jersey you gotta keep your eyes to the skies unless you want them seagulls gaining a strategic advantage over you,” explained Rat Man in a New Jersey tourism guide from 1991.

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Another problem was how similar some of their tags looked while in close proximity to each other. Outsiders who weren’t from the Bronx OR New Jersey and who weren’t afraid to enjoy a full view of the world were confused by the apparent redundancy in the pair’s work.

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Once Hat Man saw what was going on that fateful July day, he knew he had to take action.

“I saw his shit when I accidentally looked up to check out a cloud that some guy said looked like a laundry machine. I was shocked and looked up at some more of my famous spots to find RAT MAN all over my territory. I switched my name to ‘Rat Man’ to show him what was up but he saw mine and did the same thing so for a couple weeks ‘Hat Man’ was ‘Rat Man’ and ‘Rat Man’ was ‘Hat Man’, which really pissed off Cat Man who got that man (Hat Man, formerly Rat Man) and me together for a truce,” Hat Man mentioned in a foreword to a cookbook penned by Cat Man, a respected graffiti elder in NYC.

The trio met in an alleyway where Cat Man had set up a complex system of mirrors so that both men could look each other in the eye without having to adjust their preferred perspective. There was some confusion over nods and head-shakes but eventually the two masterminds realized they were cousins and had played together as children.*

*In my script they try to kill each other then you learn that the narrator of the story is their mutual uncle named Fat Man, but it got too confusing.

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Only known picture of Hat Man and Rat Man together

And that’s the story of one of the great rivalries in graffiti history, which might be more well-known were it not for the story of CHUBBSTER V. NIMBST!, a tale that was loosely adapted into Jingle All The Way starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad as two feuding fathers.

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Oh wait, sorry, my hockey coach is alive and well. Turns out we were both in the VR chamber and this whole story rights will thing was part of a new simulation. Phew. Too scary for me though, I think I’ll go back to an old favourite.

COMPUTER, please load c//steel_dreams.exe

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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Utopia To Me

I had the honour of being on my pal Chris Locke‘s excellent podcast, Utopia To Me! Listen as Chris and I build my ideal world run by a wise older brother and full of vehicles and Clearly Canadian drinks. Grab it on iTunes or Stitcher if you know how to use those things.

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How to pack light

Traveling can be a stressful experience, especially for those of us who are scared of everything. A smart traveler should eliminate as many controllable stresses as possible to leave their brain open to handle the unexpected, like having to sit beside a guy covered in moss.

In my experience, packing is one such stress that is easily combated. Here are three tried and true travel tips for travel trips that’ll nip stress in the hip.

Tip 1: Denim Blend

Everybody loves denim because it looks good, tastes good and is good. Unfortunately it’s the heaviest fabric in North America so packing a couple pairs of your favourite blues can lead to a lame load. Here’s a simple way to take your jeans with you without all the heavy lifting:

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Step 1: Add your denim to a blender or food processor with a splash of coconut milk and a pinch of cardamom. Place in resealable bottle or container.

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Step 2: Before hitting airport security, drink your jeans and enjoy the tropical, aromatic flavour.

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Step 3: Upon arrival at your destination, visit a kitchen supply store and purchase a simple pants mould.

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Step 4: Regurgitate and/or defecate your jeans mixture at earliest opportunity and pour contents into the mold

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Step 5: Bake mould at 350 degrees for one hour or until jeans are golden blue.

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Step 6: Remove from mould and try them on!

Tip 2: Towel Roll

You’re not always going to stay at a proper hotel when traveling so sometimes you’ll have to pack your own towels. Hear’s a surefire method to keep your towel load light and lovable:

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Step 1: Roll your towels as tightly as possible.

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Step 2: Prior to leaving for the airport, bus hut or train barn, smoke your towels right down to the nub.

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Step 3: Upon arrival, seek the local shaman and request a smokening. The standard rate for such a ceremony is usually around seven euro. The shaman will extract the spirit of your towels from your lungs and force it to orbit around you until needed.

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Step 4: Shower, swim, dip, soak, sweat–go ahead, live the wet life. Once sopping, the spirit of your towel should dry your body so long as the shaman successfully bound it to your essence.

Tip 3: Diapers

Author Douglas Adams famously declared the aforementioned towel as the most important travel accessory in his masterwork, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While I don’t disagree on the merits of a towel, the fact remains that they are a nuisance to pack. If you’re only going to pack one item on your next vacation, choose diapers instead.

Diapers can act as a bathing suit, underpants, a towel, a beach hat, a weapon against local crooks provided you fill it with poo first, knee pads, a bandage, shoes, socks, a rat trap and a reasonable canvas for autographs in case you run into any celebs during your trip.

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An insightful traveler tries his hand at winemaking in the Bordeaux region of France.

Got any travel tips? Let me know in the comments and maybe I’ll steal your user name for use on my next child!

New comic – “Call of the Child”

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