“You Are Currently Held In A Black Hole”

by TONY FYLER
edited by T. Allan Christopher

Hello? Anyone there?

I knew we should never have hired THIS guy!

If I’ve learned one thing this week, it is this: Don’t mess with web developers, they’re more powerful and more stupid than they know…

It was a Wednesday morning. Katie, our conference organiser, bursts into the office, all frantic energy and hair, and says, “We’ve got a bloke who can’t use the conference booking system on our website!”

“OK,” I said, “what’s up?”

“He’s from Germany,” she said.

“What?”

“He’s from Germany…”

“Ohhhhkay…”

“Apparently, Germany’s not listed as a country on our system,” she explained.

“Oh.”

“And it won’t let him be from anywhere else, ’cause his address details and phone code don’t match any other country…”

“Well of course not, he’s in Germany.”

“But he can’t be in Germany if Germany doesn’t exist. You can’t be somewhere that’s nowhere, and of course, you can’t be anywhere else, ’cause you’re in the country formerly known – and indeed currently known to most of the world – as Germany.”

“Tricky, I admit.”

“So we need to rebuild the Rhineland.”

“What, just you and me? I’m kind of busy this morning…”

“Dumkopf! Get on to the developers, and get on to them now, tell them to reinstate bloody Germany, so our bloke can officially be there.”

“Yawohl Frauleinn…”

Lemme Learn You Some Kentucky

by PROBABLY MATT LINVILLE
edited by ANDREW HICKS and J.MIZ

The Kentucky slogan committee could never agree on anything but this slogan. Eventually, they fell.

—

I’m from Kentucky. Let me share some information that I’ve collected about the land that I loathe. Let me start with something to impress you. Kentucky is the 37th largest state. Our population is the 26th highest in the nation. With those numbers, I am amazed that we have managed to become No. 1 in prescription pill abuse, and No. 3 in meth labs. (Good job, Indiana, you came in first on that one!)

Thanks to the Kentucky judicial system, I learned all that in DUI class. We also have the largest percentage of smokers of any state which of course is accompanied by the highest cancer rate of the entire country.

Now, let’s have some good news. 83 percent of our kids graduate high school, and our dropout rate is only 2.89 percent. You may think I’m bad at math, but I actually got that statistic from an official government web site. I guess there’s truth in our state slogan: “Where Education Pays.” For the record, I don’t think suicides count toward the dropout rate, but Kentucky ranks in the top 10 for suicide as well.

My home state is also host to the Kentucky Derby, North America’s largest and most famous annual horse-racing event. The race is known as “the fastest two minutes in sports,” which I’m sure reminds female Derby attendees of disappointing men from their pasts, and which is why the Mint Julep was created.

The Kentucky Derby: Old men, hot chicks, big hats, lots of alcohol.

The Kentucky Derby has an old tradition for women: the wearing of the big hat. I can only assume they don’t want to worry about their hair when they get hammered as they flirt with whichever random bored C-list celebrity happens to show up. Personally, I don’t need to use the Kentucky Derby as an excuse to get drunk and flirt with a higher class of women that don’t want to talk to me. I do that all the time

For me, the most exciting Kentucky-related information of all is that Muhammed Ali, George Clooney and Johnny Depp are all from here. To me, this is exciting because they found a way to escape. All three managed to accomplish huge things, which gives me hope that I, too, one great day, will bang women who like me for my money, even if I am from Kentucky.