Embedded Files
Special Humor Edition
The FCC took bold action Saturday by putting a stop to all retelling of a controversial joke in print or in any other type of medium.
The joke in question seems to have obscure origins but has been disseminated widely in recent weeks on the Internet. Sources claiming to have heard the joke tell The Satirical Rogue that it is “by far the funniest joke ever told.” One source reports that after hearing the punch line of the joke, he lost all control of his bodily functions, fell to the ground, and laughed himself to sleep right on the crosswalk of a busy intersection. He said it was a miracle he escaped with his life. People everywhere report numerous debilitating effects as a result of hearing the joke, and many claim that, unlike most jokes, mirthful reactions to this one tend to escalate with repeated exposure.
One man, who wished to remain anonymous, reported that after reading the joke online and then hearing it again on the evening news, he barely slept and was sore at work the next day from laughing.
The most frightening revelation, however, is that eliminating exposure to the joke may not be enough to curb its disastrous consequences. Said the same source, “I had to take an early lunch break because at one point during the morning while staring at the computer screen and inputting data, I just thought about the joke and began snorting and snickering so loudly that I nearly spilled my coffee, and people in nearby cubicles started shushing me. It nearly cost me my job, and it is taking a toll on my marriage.”
The FCC wasted no time in taking necessary steps to curtail the joke and avoid any needless tragedies the joke might cause. Sources inside the FCC allege that Chairman Genachowski heard the joke at a closed door session, “laughed maniacally,” then allegedly said, while wiping a tear from his eye, “That’s too funny.” Sources say that staffers and senior counselors immediately flew into a flurry of action, making calls, alerting press, and drafting an official ban on all audio/video and print communication of the joke.
In the Monday morning press conference, FCC spokesperson Linda Velasquez announced, “While we find nothing offensive, inappropriate, or crude in this joke, the FCC is taking aggressive measures to help avoid widespread turmoil that the joke’s hilarity might incite. The retelling of this joke will not be tolerated, and the strictest of fines and/or criminal charges will be imposed on those brazen enough to ignore these laws.” Sources report that at this point in her announcement, Velasquez stopped, put her head down, and covered her mouth with a closed fist as though to suppress a cough. Many, however, speculate that she was attempting to cover up a jovial titter at having fortuitously recalled the joke.
Government watchdog groups are not laughing, though, and say that the FCC ruling tramples First Amendment rights.
So far, no fines have been levied, but some fear the joke has been so widely circulated already that the ban will only serve to increase the joke’s popularity.
-The Editors
___________________________
Man Gives Up On Comb-Over, Despairingly Accepts Baldness
Robert Vinson of Lafayette, Indiana, no longer sports his trademark “comb-over” as of this past Thursday.
Family members say the 57-year-old family man had been bald for about fifteen years but still grew a tuft of hair from one side of his head long enough to comb over the denuded dome, connecting the sides of the head like a greasy bridge of self-delusion.
“It was pathetic,” said Vinson’s thirty-three-year-old daughter Melanie Bailey, also of Lafayette. “It was like he thought that nobody knew he was bald because he had those three strands of hair greased over his head. Half the time they would fall out of place or get blown over, and he wouldn’t even know it. It was embarrassing when I was a teenager and he would have one patch of hair as long as mine. I mean, did he hold the bottom of the strands and comb it out each night? Did he have to get a special nightcap with a huge sleeve off the left side to hold it as he slept? I am just so relieved he finally let it go.”
Vinson’s wife of thirty-six years, Lucille Vinson, explained what catalyzed the cutting of his comb-over: “We were at the fruit market when a bunch of teenagers in the parking lot started yelling things at him. They were saying, ‘Hey baldy, did you know a caterpillar is crawling across your head?’ and ‘Looks like another satisfied customer of Bosley Hair Restoration.’ I felt bad for him because he just pretended not to hear, but then he got into the car and just drove home quietly. Next thing I know, he’s standing at the bathroom sink with a crazy look on his face and a pair of scissors, and he says, ‘Luce, is it really that bad? Have I looked ridiculous all these years?’ and I felt bad for him, but I had told him many times he should just cut it, and I knew he was in the Slough of Despond, so I just said, ‘Bob, you do what you want, and I will love you no matter what. I’ve looked at your head like it is for the last fifteen years, so what do I care?’ but then he just kept getting more and more depressed, then he grabbed his hair in his fist and cut it off at the base, turned to me with a triumphant look, and said, ‘There! I did it!’ and I said to him, ‘Yes, you did,’ but then he looked at it like he was having second thoughts, but it was too late.”
In the days following, Vinson has been a quieter, more contemplative man who seems to shun being in public as though he, like the Emperor, has lost his magic clothes. Vinson declined to comment, but his wife said that he wears a hat most everywhere he goes now. She is hopefully optimistic, however, that he is beginning to accept the fact that he is bald, and she sees this recent, spontaneous snipping as an important step in the right direction.
-The Editors
____________________________
Rookie teacher Rachel Huber stood corrected when reading roll on the first day of school at Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, Minnesota.
Huber had read through the lists of names after trying to put names with faces by looking at last year’s yearbook to avoid just such a mix-up, but in her nervousness, she read Kirsten Davis’s name “Kristen.”
Said Huber, “I was reading through the names, and I told them to let me know if they went by something different, like Mike for Michael or something; then I read ‘Kristen Davis,’ and Kirsten said, ‘Uh it’s actually Keer-sten.’ So I looked at my sheet but it actually said ‘Kristen.’ Then I said, ‘Well, looks like the sheet has a mistake,’ and she said, ‘Looks like you made a mistake.’ Then at lunch I was telling one of the other teachers, and she told me that the girl’s name is actually ‘Kristen,’ but she was sick of people asking her about the actress, or she just wanted a change, so she told everyone to start calling her ‘Kirsten.’”
Davis spoke to our reporters briefly in the hall after slamming her locker and holding her books to her chest, but was in a hurry to meet a boy for lunch and said with a flip of her hair, “It’s not that hard to read a name. There is a big difference between ‘Kirsten’ and ‘Kristen.’ That little wide-eyed toad [Huber] is so fresh out of college I can still smell the dorm on her clothes, and she needs to get a clue real fast.” Huber added over her shoulder concerning the fact that her name actually is Kristen, and the fact that it was written as such on Huber’s list, “Whatever. She better recognize who she’s dealing with.”
Huber has since taken to calling Davis “Kirsten” to avoid unnecessary unpleasantness.
-The Editors
__________________________
Man’s Spelling So Horrendous That Even His Spoken Words Often Misspelled
Taylor, Mich.— Dan Sherwood, who often misspells his own name, has such poor spelling that the words he speaks often come out audibly misspelled.
Sherwood, or “Shurwood,” depending on when you talk to him, traces his spelling pons asinorum to his method of reading Hardy Boys books as a youth. Sherwood stated, “I wood [sic] lay [sic] in my top bunck [sic] freeyng [sic] boogers from the constraints of my nostrals [sic] and read threw [sic] a book in about too [sic] ours [sic]. My trick was two [sic] just look at the hole [sic] word or sentence as a unit rather then [sic] as indavidual [sic] words, so I never learned to recanize [sic] when a word looked write [sic].”
After furiously writing and scribbling and listening to the almost nonsensical words pouring out of Sherwood’s mouth, our reporter asked Sherwood to write his statement out, but the result was deemed egregiously inadequate for repetition of any sort, especially in such an esteemed and respected publication as The Satirical Rougue; therefore, the above quote represents only the spoken words of Sherwood.
Oddly enough, Sherwood’s brother is an English teacher and a freelance journalist. Throughout college, Sherwood would often have his brother critique, edit, and sometimes completely revamp his papers for coherence and readability. Unfortunately, none of his brother’s linguistic instinct rubbed off on Sherwood.
Sherwood has learned to make peace—or “piece,” as he refers to it—with the red, squiggly lines under his words on Microsoft Word. “I pertend [sic] they are little werms [sic] I stommped [sic] after a ranefal [sic],” said Sherwood with a chuckle.
Sherwood works as an accountant for an apparently nepotistic uncle who, despite Sherwood’s woefully inadequate ability to spell, has yet to fire him.
-The Editors
___________________________
Baby Mysteriously Calmed When Mother Holds, Soothes Him
Hershey, Penn.— A six-month-old baby became mysteriously quiet, docile, and pacified when his mother plucked him out of his crib at 1:44 a.m. and began rocking her while saying soothing, gentle things in her ear.
Thirty-four-year-old Chrystal Vargas stated, “I was at my wits’ end, and so I decided in a last-ditch effort to try holding and soothing her; to my astonishment, she slowly stopped screaming, sniffled, and then quietly cooed on my shoulder. It was the most astonishing turn of events I have experienced in motherhood.”
Vargas, who has three other children, said that she never in her wildest dreams imagined that gentle rocking and singing soft lullabies would have that effect on a baby. “I have tried literally everything,” said a still dumbfounded Vargas, “from dancing and shouting in front of her to bursting into her view in a gorilla mask. Nothing worked. Then, out of nowhere, I decided, ‘Why not try gently rocking and soothing her?’ And, lo and behold, it worked. I just wondered, if this is not a fluke, why hadn’t anyone else thought of it? And why aren’t they teaching you this kind of stuff in Lamaze?”
Vargas said she has been using this new technique on a nightly basis now with almost completely positive results and plans to offer her own class on the art of bedding a baby.
-The Editors
____________________________
Ohio State Trooper Sees Law-Abiding Michigander Driving Limit, Does Nothing
Sugar Ridge, Ohio— Frank Chadima of New Baltimore, Michigan, was taking his family on vacation when he drove past an Ohio state trooper under the Sugar Ridge Road bypass on I-75. Much to his amazement, the trooper did nothing.
Chadima said, “I don’t understand it. I was trying to stay in packs of cars to be inconspicuous, but all the Ohio plates were speeding, so I had to back off, leaving me alone and exposed to the Ohio cop. I knew at the moment I saw him sitting there that my goose was cooked, because I had never heard of an Ohio cop not pulling over a Michigan driver, even though I was doing fifteen under. We budget in our vacation funds for the token Ohio ticket. Most of the time they threaten to haul you in if you don’t pay them cash right then and there, whether you have babies, crying kids, or anything. But this guy saw me go by, He saw the U of M flag flying from the back window, he saw my blue and white plate, and he made eye contact with me.”
Chadima seemed so shaken up at this point in the interview that he had to take a break. He later continued, “It was as though time slowed down and then stood still as we locked eyes. My heart was pounding in my chest like a jackhammer, and I don’t think I breathed for the next three minutes. It was as if I had looked right into the eyes of the Devil himself, but then he just sat there. I watched and watched in my rearview mirror, just waiting for him to pull out and start the flashing light—I know how they like to tease us and make us think they are going to let us go—but I watched my rearview in horror all the way until I crossed the Brent Spence Bridge into Kentucky, and he never materialized. It was like I had been granted a new lease on life.”
Sgt. Ben Hobbins, the trooper Chadima evaded that day, had no comment for The Satirical Rogue, but fellow trooper Chad Billington said disgustedly of the missed opportunity that day, “[Hobbins] is a disgrace to the Ohio state trooper department and the state as a whole. This isn’t the first Michy he let go, but if I have anything to do with it, it will be the last. I mean, no ticket? Fine, but he didn’t even pull the guy over, let alone make him get out of the car and pat him down or take a sobriety test in front of his family. I think at the very least he could have ripped up the upholstery looking for drug paraphernalia or weapons. This is black mark on our proud department and a sad day for our state.”
Other Ohio troopers had similar complaints about Hobbins, one going so far as to accuse Hobbins of often observing stop signs, speed limits, and other traffic laws. Hobbins has been a trooper for nearly fifteen years now and is currently not under suspension, but is under investigation.
-The Editors
Google Sites
Report abuse