In case you missed it, one of my all-time most popular posts…
https://leeduigon.com/2014/02/04/are-centaurs-real/
They are certainly as real as Social Justice.
Tag: general silliness
Self-Esteem Board Games for Collidge Types
Winter Festival games for the collidge student in your family!
The bad thing about games is that somebody wins. That’s so racist. Imagine snowflakes trying to play Monopoly. No, it just won’t do. Give gifts commensurate with a modern collidge eddication! Games that pump up their self-esteem. Like these.
Everybody Wins! In this board game, there’s only one square and players sit on it forever with nowhere else to go. With every turn, each player gets a $500 bill and a “You’re Fantastic!” card. Each card comes with an uplifting message–“You’re a winner,” “You’re so smart,” “Good job,” “You’ve aced your Graphic Novels 101 exam,” etc.
Take a Knee is a simulated football game in which players kneel and make rude noises whenever the National Anthem is played. You don’t have to know anything about football, because the football game in Take a Knee never actually starts. Any show of disdain for America earns all players, all at once, 50 Social Justice Points. That way, everyone finishes with exactly the same score.
You’re always a winner when you play Self-Identify, the game of defining reality to suit yourself. Just throw the dice and declare “I am now a woman,” “I am the president of my college,” “I am the Sultan of Swat,” or whatever else pops into your head, and the other players joyfully affirm your declaration.
Antifa Roulette casts players as Social Justice Warriors. Spin the Wheel of Combating Fascism and move your piece to whatever square is indicated by the arrow–Savings Bank, Dollar Store, Auditorium, and others–and announce a Protest. All the other players immediately move to that square, at which point the building is burned down and it’s the next player’s turn. Great fun to play while wearing ski masks! The game ends, and everybody wins, when the entire Town Board lies in ruins.
Once these catch on, there will surely be more to come. Watch your favorite student’s eyes light up when ze finds one of these with xer name on it waiting under the Gender Tree!
‘Oy, Rodney’ Gets Serious
I don’t know what possessed me to write that headline. Sorry.
In Chapter LXXXXI of Oy, Rodney by Violet Crepuscular, the jovial shepherd known as Mack the Jovial Shepherd goes missing overnight. His sheep are nonplussed. The next day he is found floating face-down in the vicar’s backyard wading pool. There are tentacle marks all over the body. Constable Chumley shakes his head and opines, “Aye, me gangers, ’tis a murragh dally-dooly ront, so I tell ‘ee.” The townspeople continue to believe they really ought to get a constable who speaks English.
Meanwhile Lord Jeremy Coldsore is horrified that the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad, is going to marry Lady Margo Cargo, the richest widow in all of Scurveyshire. Lord Jeremy was supposed to marry her, as his only hope of staving off bankruptcy and losing Coldsore Hall. How this came about is very difficult to explain, and Miss Crepuscular finally gives it up as a bad job.
Willis comforts his friend. “Donchew worry none, Germy! Oncet me and Lady Margo is hitched, you and me, we’ll jist change places an’ the ol’ gal’ll never know the diff’rence!”
To everyone’s surprise, the vicar suddenly recovers from his conniptions and declares himself anxious to perform the marriage between Lady Margo and Sargon of Akkad, Ruler of All Mesopotamia. This is accompanied by a sinister smile that he never had before. When asked what he saw when he peeked under the wading pool, he only smirks and says “What conniptions?”
The other mysterious stranger who came into the book a few chapters ago hasn’t said or done anything yet.
More on ‘Oy, Rodney’
I didn’t feel well yesterday, so I read a bit more of Violet Crepuscular’s dauntingly long romance novel, Oy, Rodney.
Faced with bankruptcy and ruin, young Lord Jeremy Coldsore hires a mysterious stranger whose only talent is performing imitations of persons whom most people have never heard of. He avoids giving his name, but his impression of Pete Runnels would really wow everyone if they only knew who Pete Runnels was.
Lady Margo Cargo, the richest widow in Scurveyshire, insists on going out to check her mailbox and has a nasty fall. The termites have been at her wooden leg again. Jeremy is still trying to find the right way to propose to her. “Here is how Pete Runnels would do it,” says his new adviser. But Jeremy gets tongue-tied.
(In case you were wondering)
Willis Twombley, the American adventurer who claims he’s Sargon of Akkad, sues to get his ancient empire back. An unscrupulous solicitor takes his case.
Two pages of Chapter LXXIII are completely black, indicating two nights in which nothing happens.
The vicar, recovering from his conniptions, can now say, “Rodney! Rodney!” No one knows what he means; nor is anyone else willing to peek under the backyard wading pool to see what he saw.
Please stop criticizing my choice to display the cover of Lord of the Tube Socks. My copy of Oy, Rodney is one of those books with the cover torn off so it can be sold cheaply.
‘Oy, Rodney,’ Continued
My heel spur was acting up today, and I turned my ankle yesterday on those confounded walnuts that are all over the yard, and a pipe broke in our basement so we can’t use the washing machine and I had to go to the laundromat instead–so it seemed an apt time to read Chapters XLV and XLVI of Oy, Rodney by Violet Crepuscular.
(I have been asked why I always show the cover of Lord of the Tube Socks instead of the one for Oy, Rodney. It’s really much nicer, that’s all.)
The mysterious stranger who looks like Ed Begley but isn’t, it turns out, has been in the book under false pretenses, having sneaked in from another book entirely. Ms. Crepuscular was rather put out when she discovered that, so that character has since been abruptly written out–leaving the way clear for our hero, young Lord Jeremy Coldsore, to propose marriage to Lady Margo Cargo, the richest widow in Scurveyshire. In a real stroke of luck, Jeremy finds the glass eye that fell out of Lady Margo’s head some months ago and is trying to get up the nerve to return it to her.
Meanwhile, the vicar, recovering from the conniptions he suffered when he peeked under the backyard wading pool to see what was making that awful noise, has stopped speaking backwards and now speaks sideways, which makes him even more difficult to understand. It has not yet occurred to him that he could write down what he saw and then people would know.
Jeremy’s scheme to introduce wild koalas to Yorkshire has gone belly-up and he’s running out of time to recover his family’s lost fortune and save Coldsore Hall from another mysterious stranger who wants to tear it down and build a MacDonald’s in its place. Under pressure, Jeremy hints, “Maybe it’s time I went to see Rodney.” I still think Rodney will turn out to be a rabbit.
But that’s enough for now.
The Riddle of Centaur Evolution: Solved!
In an announcement that has rocked that part of the scientific world that concerns itself with centaurs, Dr. Hobart Dogbed, Professor of Comparative Gender Studies at Jidrool University, has solved the mystery of centaur evolution.
“I laugh when I think of how long it took us to work this out,” he said, “but it’s obvious, isn’t it? Centaurs evolved from special apes!”
The thing that was special about these apes was that they were half ape and half horse. Dr. Dogbed calls them Ape-taurs.
Although no fossil remains of any Ape-taurs have been found, Dr. Dogbed defends his theory as “the only one possible. Only racists and Anti-Science fascist biggits would deny it. Since when do we have to show fossils of any of this stuff?”
The Ape-taurs, he said, lived in what is now the Bellyup Nature Preserve “somewhere in Africa” and lived in perfect harmony with all other species. “It was only when the top half started to evolve into a human that centaurs began to get a reputation as troublemakers,” he said. “But that’s what always happens when apes evolve into humans.”
Dr. Dogbed is also an associate professor of Superhero Studies somewhere in Africa.
Movies That Never Made It
Jackie Chan as Edvard Grieg?
Here are a few films which, for one reason or another, never made it to market.
Song of Norway remake starring Jackie Chan. An attempt to tell the life story of Norwegian composer Edvard Grief as a kung-fu movie. It is rumored Mr. Chan refused the gig.
50 Shades of Puce. A movie about seasickness. You can imagine.
Skin Man! A new superhero who, for all practical purposes, is nothing more than an empty human skin–which allows him to travel folded up inside a suitcase. His sidekick, the faithful Fongo, goes up on the rooftops and drops him on top of the bad guys, and Skin Man does the rest. Too gross.
Oppressed Millionaire Athletes Who Deserve More of Your Money. Abandoned in mid-production when market research indicated that absolutely no one would ever want to see this film.
Feel My Feelers. A sensitive college student volunteers to be injected with moth hormones in a fruitless effort to transition himself into a woman. Done interview-style with gender-neutral pronouns and lots of Play-Doh. The only print of this low-budget masterpiece was accidentally thrown out with the trash.
That Ain’t Hillary
Speaking of those literary titans, Bill and Hillary Clinton, some people just can’t be honest about anything.
This is the back cover of the dust jacket of Hillary’s new book, What Happened, her thrilling analysis of how it’s everybody’s fault but hers that she isn’t president. Look at it closely.
It’s not Hillary. This woman is a model who bears a resemblance to Hillary but isn’t her. (Is this starting to sound like Oy, Rodney, or what?) She couldn’t even put her own picture on her own book.
But hey, it’s a great marketing ploy, and I’m all ready to take advantage of it personally! Yessireebob, when my next book, The Silver Trumpet, comes out, I’m gonna have my picture on the back cover! And here it is: drum roll, please.
Waddya mean, it isn’t me? I think I detect some hate speech in the air…
A Few More False Facts
Even a fool, if he holds his tongue, may be thought wise. King Solomon said so. But who can hold his tongue?
Here are a few things that anyone can say to give an impression of deep wisdom and great erudition. All you have to do is say them with lots of gravitas. (That, by the way, is another word that really smart people use all the time.) You will know you’ve succeeded when someone’s eyebrows shoot up and he exclaims, “I didn’t know that!” But it’s even better if they just nod sagely. Then you’ll know that they’re faking it, too.
Here are your new false facts:
*The Moors in Spain, in addition to having beautiful water fountains, also had fountain pens that were centuries ahead of their time.
*Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by a woman named Rhoda MacTavish, with the exception of Prithee the Zoo, which Shakespeare wrote himself under the pseudonym Biff Mossbunker.
*Einstein has turned out to be wrong about time running backwards in regions where the curvature of space is less than 120 sporns.
*Studies by scientists in the European Union show that common people actually thrive on a diet of hickory bark and beetles.
*Among the Popjoy tribe of Siberian Wooshu people, 17 distinct genders have always been recognized, affirmed, and honored by specific rituals pertaining to each one. Consequently, the Popjoy are the healthiest people in Asia–and have also been found, by a special United Nations panel, to be the happiest and wisest.
Just remember, folks: say ’em like you mean ’em.
New Book Says ‘Be Your Own God!’
Self-described “Alternative Theology” maven Joel C. Hodgepodge has come out with a new book which is virtually impossible to obtain, due to certain errors in the publishing process. It falls apart when you open it.
Undaunted, Hodgepodge has scheduled a speaking tour to promote Be Your Own God! The Ultimate Self-Help Manual.
“One day, about a year ago,” he says (you have to read the blurb quickly, because the cover tends to disintegrate when touched), “I noticed that when I was praying, I was, like, talking to myself. And then it hit me! Bam! We are all gods! We all create ourselves!”
The other night, on the Sappy Sapirstein radio show, Hodgepodge said, “Once you realize that you can choose your gender, anything is possible! You can even choose your species! Although I must warn you, if you choose to become an Airedale or a tent caterpillar, it’s kind of hard to change your mind and go back to being human. One of my disciples became a traffic safety cone and can’t seem to change back.
“Y’see, Sappy, we actually create our own reality! The sages of the East have always known this, but in Kentucky we had to learn it from Science. Now we know that whatever Science says is real, is real. And Science is us!”
“Please get off my phone,” said Mr. Sapirstein.
Mr. Hodgepodge has thus far been unable to create his own talk radio show.