ILLUSTRATION BY S. VU VIA CANVA

Originally published June 6, 2025

WARNING: The contents of The Canine Comical are purely fictional and intended to be humorous, satirical. Readers are advised not to confuse them with real incidents. 

   Journalists age twenty times faster than regular teens due to the slow newspaper creation site and the adviser’s relentless dad jokes, officially classifying MBMS’ journalism program as a retirement community.

   “Marq loads one pixel per hour. In TCC, I’ve seen journalists viciously fling their Chromebooks, often ending in combat sports,” eighth-grader Stay Yung said. 

   Marq, the newspaper-creating site, has sparked outrage across campus. The agony of navigating grumpy sources, sluggish websites, and, worst of all, adviser Peter Warning’s bottomless pit of dad jokes has pushed the sanity of journalism students to the limit. 

   “I couldn’t take any more ‘why did…’ jokes. I would never admit it to Mr. Warning, but I don’t care why crabs don’t volunteer. These jokes have diagnosed me with selective hearing. In case anyone’s wondering, it’s because crabs are shellfish,” seventh-grader Mayaio Pun said. 

   Warning claims that his puns are meant to be cheerful. But, many people, such as his recent group therapy, claim that his “addiction” to dad jokes is far from uplifting, going as far as demanding that he go to individual counseling instead. 

   "Seeing the constant irritation on my students' faces encouraged me to brighten the mood with jokes. Except, I just can’t seem to stop blurting them, now they’re meant to be endured instead of enjoyed, dad jokes have become my primary language and weapon,” Warning said.

   His relentless jokes have become a contributing factor to journalists’ suffering; in fact, puns from Warning have been considered “the spells of doom” or a “curse.” With the damage done, students in journalism have reported growing grey hairs, becoming addicted to bingo, and an overuse of “back in my day…” phrases. To restrain these habits, MBMS resorted to changing the journalism program into a retirement community.

   “The retirement community gave me confidence by competing in bowling and bingo conventions rather than newspaper or yearbook conventions,” eighth-grader Rafein Gilbreath said. “The staff transitioned from stressful deadlines to a laid-back environment with board games, nap time, and normalised usage of massive font sizes.”

   Although the aging process was purely driven by anger and disaster, the retirement community was created to embrace it. 

   “I’m glad this community was created, as an ex-graphics editor, I couldn’t deal with the ‘spells of doom’ while clicking undo a million times in a row on my digital art. But the damage remains, I will have to embrace my shrimp-like posture,” Yung said. “I’m just thankful it’s not like anything back in my day.”