Devil’s Guide to the 21st Century, Part 3

by TONY FYLER
edited by ANDREW J HICKS

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: Tony Fyler presents the following definitions with respectful acknowledgement to the great journalist Ambrose Bierce, who wrote the original Devil’s Dictionary in 1911. Click here to read Fyler’s previous Devil’s Guides. –AJH]

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Agnosticism: Theological bet-hedging.

Airplane: The dream of gods and heroes, an airplane is a magical conveyance that allows man finally to achieve the goal of flight. So magnificent is it, in fact, that it requires the invention of a special device – the airline – to turn it into a soul-sucking cavalcade of human misery. 21st century airlines are very good at their job.

Alcohol: Evolution’s accelerator pedal.

Bank: A legalised consortium of thieves, scoundrels and extortionists which, against all the laws of mathematics, collectively manages to achieve a moral standard somehow lower than any of its parts.

Baseball: The least imaginative use ever made of a baseball bat.

BFF (Best Friends Forever): A promise made by people too shallow to understand that “forever” extends beyond next week.

Capitalism: Economic system that gives the rights of personhood to corporations and the rights of deities to currencies, in the belief that money, if sufficiently worshipped, will reproduce.

Catholicism: Pyramid scheme with pointy hats and promises.

Celebrity: Egomaniac with entertainment value.

Chocolate:  Throughout the whole of recorded history, mystics, alchemists and other assorted hippies have searched and toiled and sweated to discover the distilled elixir of life. Now available at Walmart.

Cocaine: Sugar for those with more money than sense.

Coalition: System of government specifically designed to ensure nobody gets what they want. A finely-tuned misery engine, in essence.

Communism: Economic and political system based on the idea that many idiots are better than one.

Compromise: A 21st century notion by which everybody loses. Originally the invention of desperate parents of multiple siblings, it was never meant to be taken seriously by anyone over the age of 8.

Credit Card: A plastic lie which guarantees not only its own discovery but also its own punishment.

Cynicism: Accuracy.

Debt Ceiling: The economic value of exactly how much sincerity can be forced into this statement: “The check is in the mail.”

Ecology: The idea that extinction should be avoided at all costs. Currently unsupported by large groups of people who appear to believe that, so long as everyone else dies first, they win.

Fashion: A subtle co-mixture of style and stupidity.

Fast Food:  If you watch chimpanzees eat, several facts become apparent. They eat with their hands, grunt and squeal unintelligibly and will, if the occasion demands it, happily ingest a mouthful of feces. The theory of evolution claims mankind diverged from his chimpanzee cousins some 5-7 million years ago. Fast food restaurants prove that the theory of evolution may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Gym: A voluntary torture chamber.

Gymnastics: Sadomasochism with a scoring system.

Homeland Security: The notion that the nation can only be truly safe once everyone’s under suspicion.

iMac: The supermodel of computers – very pretty to look at but functionally illiterate.

Infomercial: An extended commercial. Strict linguists are now demanding these be referred to more accurately as “bullshimercials.”

Islam: A relatively immature religion, currently going through its teenage phase of slamming doors, yelling “I never asked to be manifested!” and killing thousands of people for no readily identifiable reason. Many Christians look down on Islam for this kind of behaviour, almost as if the 15th century never happened. Or the 16th century. Or the 17th, come to that.

Journalism: An alternative to earning an honest living.

Looting: Revolution for personal gain.

Microsoft: The ultimate profanity. Known euphemistically as “the M Bomb,” it is generally only used when all other linguistic ordinances have been exhausted. Sadly, the nature of 21st century work means the M Bomb can be heard in every office in the world on a daily basis. Usually around two minutes before an important deadline or meeting.

NASCAR: A popular motorsport, the chief attraction of which appears to be the opportunity to watch hillbillies explode into greasy balls of flame.

Nouvelle Cuisine: The Emperor’s new dinner.

Novelist: A professional liar.

Olympics: The celebration of a collection of sports that no one gave a flying 50-yard fuck about for the past three years and 50 weeks.

O’Reilly, Bill: Proof that 3.5 million people can be wrong after all.

Philosophy: The contemplation of the universe’s navel, and the investment of serious time and effort in trying to describe the fluff found therein.

Ready Meals: Food that should come with a handful of barbiturates or a shotgun to take the taste away.

Resumé: A structured lie.

Romance: Man’s most effective sexual lubricant. Also, in the long run, his most expensive. It is possible there is some sort of mystical connection between these two facts.

Search Engine: Device that makes actual searching entirely obsolete. Should more accurately be described as a command engine. Or a genie.

Sobriety: State of being which allows one to see things as they actually are. The history of mankind has been one long flight from such a ghastly prospect.

Staycation: The fashionable name for sitting your poor ass on the couch.

TiVo: Device that allows you to record television programmes you didn’t care enough about to watch and store them so you can not watch them over and over and over again.

Twitter: Website where those who can only be interesting or funny for 140 characters or fewer are the most successful.

Walmart: Ultimate 21st century practitioner of the Find The Lady trick, the “lady” in this case being sweatshop production labor, de-unionised store labor, minimum-wage exploitation and shoddy product quality. But ooh, look, sneakers for a dollar ninety-five. How do they do that?

WMDs: Weapons of mass destruction. In the 21st century, these were discovered to be not only invisible but actually nonexistent.

Devil’s Guide to the 21st Century, Part 2

by TONY FYLER
edited by ANDREW J HICKS

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: Tony Fyler presents the following definitions with respectful acknowledgment to the great journalist Ambrose Bierce, who wrote the original Devil’s Dictionary in 1911. Read the first part of Tony’s brilliant invective here. -AJH]

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Altruism: Self-interest in full camouflage.

Astrology: Entrail reading’s less socially awkward cousin.

Atheism: The understanding that there is no grand plan for human existence. Life has about as much meaning as the existence of Brussels sprouts, so everything we do is ultimately, in the long term, pointless. Still, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?

Baby: A young human. Also a term misapplied to fetuses, embryos and even blastocytes by those who seek to deny a woman her reproductive rights. The proof of this misapplication, of course, lies in the fact that humanity has bothered to come up with entirely different words for these different stages of life. By “pro-life” logic, teenagers too should be considered babies, and it should be illegal to destroy them. Clearly, that way madness lies.

Beck, Glenn: It is commonly believed that there are only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is the result of a transcription error in the King James Bible. In reality, there are Five Horsemen – War, Famine, Pestilence, Death and Hysteria. Anyone who has watched Glenn Beck’s show knows that the Fifth Horseman is already here. Of course, most people who have watched Glenn Beck’s show rather wish that the Fourth Horseman had preceded him.

Creationism: Proof that evolution does not necessarily select for intelligence.

Dear 16-Year-Old Self

by ALLISON STEIN and THE WOMEN OF WNF
edited by ANDREW HICKS

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Dear 16-year-old self: You're gonna grow up to be Demi Moore in overalls.

Dear 16-year-old self:

• Your brother’s obsession with hand lotion is NOT because he has dry skin.

• Just because you don’t have boobs yet doesn’t mean that you wont have D’s later on in life. But your boyfriend who told you, in the back seat of his mom’s car, that his small penis is going to “get bigger” when he reaches full-on adulthood… well, that kid is sadly mistaken.

• Penis is nothing to be afraid of. It is to be mastered and conquered, and with that comes immeasurable power.

• Weed isn’t that bad, and your mom will never notice. Just try it.

• You know how you wanted to get your period so you could be a real woman? Yeah, it sucks, don’t it?

That’s Not Funny…

Print it out and sign it, you unfunny twatwaffle.

… according to PAUL LAO
edited by WOO

[Editors Note: This piece, while containing plenty of humor, is more of an advice column for those striving in the Stand-Up comedy arena. We could all use advise from one who has been around, and we all know Paul Lao has been around!] 

I have been doing stand up for 8 years and I know how to spot a hack, a train wreck, a complete waste of time.  Here is (from my findings) what I consider to make one suck at the hard art:

1. Don’t hate fuck the crowd.
If you think this is going to go well because you shocked the crowd with a raping grandma’s corpse joke while curb stomping a baby, then guess again.  Also don’t talk shit about the venue, the owner, the staff, and the audience.  You are there to make people laugh. At least start with a welcome and a smile before you decide to fist them with no lube.  Wait for them to wrong you then come down on them with furious vengeance.

2. Don’t dress up and make a joke about it.
Resourcefulness is a very admirable attribute when we think of a hero.  And what’s worse than to give him/her a situation that they are completely prepared for?  Diehard would have sucked if John McClane had the Ironman suit.  I have seen guys wear Hawaiian Shirts, 3 piece suits, hats of every genre, t-shirts, props glued to their chest, a doll house on their head, and a guy who slammed his hands on his shorts and popped red fake blood onto the floor.  If you make a joke about a circumstance that you put yourself in you will not get any laughs because the surprise isn’t there.  Or the punch is going to be weak if they see it coming.  Comedy is about misdirection and an awakening of the mind.

Do material about the body you are born with, and how you deal with it.

Pearls of Wisdom from J.Miz

by J.MIZ
edited by ANDREW HICKS

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  Tell ya who Nancy Reagan DIDN'T "just say no" to -- Frank Sinatra. Bow chicka wow wow!

  If at first you don’t succeed, try something you don’t suck at.

• To thine own self be true, but lie to others so you look better.

• What goes up must defy physics, so catch that shit, exploit it, and sell it by the gram.

• That which does not kill us only proves it’s a pussy.

• Misery loves hostages.

• Those who see the glass as half-full are optimists. Those who see it as half-empty are alcoholics.

• Just say no way am I passing up free drugs.

• He who laughs last is retarded and didn’t get the joke.

• Rome wasn’t built in a day, because they didn’t have enough Africans and Jews.

• Silence now has less value than gold.

• If you love somebody, set them free. If they come back, they obviously didn’t hear about your new boyfriend.

Doesn’t Get Much Better Than That

by ANDREW CLINE
edited by ANDREW HICKS

John Lennon: Followed Andrew's advice about wearing multiple sunglasses. Did not follow Andrew's advice about having a nice haircut. Got shot. Learned lesson.

You ever ask yourself, Hey, why don’t I get the ladies or have a cool laser guitar or other fabulous things? If you’re currently noting, Yes, I DO think that all the time, then congratulations. This essay is for you. If not, then think to yourself, Hey, why don’t I get the ladies or have a cool laser guitar or other fabulous things? then get back to me, because right now you’re wasting everyone’s time. Dummy.

Living a glamorous life like that of your regular ol’ garden-variety Andrew is a fairly simple process that I’mma let you in on right now. (WARNING: This process is not fairly simple and shouldn’t be executed unless you’re totally hardcore about committing to it). It can be accomplished via the following three steps:

Easy Living Made Easier

Now Jenny is finally ready to watch TV safely.

by ERTEL GRAY and ANDREW HICKS

If life has taught us anything, it’s this: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. In fact, stay away from horses. In fact, just stay away from any animal that has a better-than-average chance of mauling or trampling you to death. In fact, just stay away from animals altogether. This includes invertebrates and microscopic nuisances.

There’s an easier way to make like Prince and “get through this crazy thing we call life.” If you’re interested in learning how, slide back from the edge of your seat (You could fall!), and listen up:

• Duct tape couch cushions and pillows around your torso and limbs, and wear a bike helmet everywhere you go. Fashion probably isn’t your friend if you’re reading these words, so why not make safety goal No. 1?

• Breakfast is the most important meal, yes, but it can also be downright deadly. The solution is to eat soft foods with rounded corners and avoid crispy foods. Blend cereals together if possible. Or, better yet, prepare your cereal weeks in advance, so those crispy, jagged flakes become a gruel-like paste that you can intake easily through a straw. The roof of your mouth will thank you for liberating it from the daily bloody assaults of that sadist seaman Cap’n Crunch.

Facebook modifications needed: J.Miz has spoken!

See these Zuckerbergs? J.Miz did 'em both!

by J.MIZ
edited by ANDREW HICKS

Facebook is constantly modifying and updating their features, but they never implement the changes that would benefit me the most. Members should be allowed to make suggestions, and here are mine:

• Have you ever friended somebody, and they have yet to confirm or ignore it, but their posts still show up constantly in your newsfeed? Look buddy, if I’m not good enough for you to pay attention to my friend request, I shouldn’t have to be subjected to your Facebook activity. It’s like an Internet cock tease! I can see all the places you check in, read about your mom’s pap smear and read articles on ED and D&D that you post, but I can’t see your pictures of where you went to college? Get the fuck outta here! ALL OR NOTHING, BABY! ALL.OR.NOTHING!

• We often “friend” people on Facebook who are famous or, for varying reasons, Facebook famous. Say you comment on a famous person’s thread. You get shit-tons of notifications about the lamewads who also comment, right? All you really care about is who “likes” your comment or responds to it, right? So, the notification should rightfully read, “Dumb and Dumber and 13 other dumb fuck strangers responded after your clever shit.” I don’t for ONE FUCKING SECOND give a shit what those randoms said, nor do I consider that gaggle of muthafucks my “friends.” Help me, Zuckerberg! You’re my only hope!

• Facebook should add a People I Fucked category under “Relationships.” Then maybe I could find a common ground with some of these bitches. I can name my brothers and sisters, so why can’t I name my Eskimo Brothers. And Eskimo Sisters?

• Hand in hand with People I Fucked should be a “J.Miz recommends you fuck this person” feature. It’s a useful tool. If it comes “from the desk of J.Miz,” you can guarantee cummage. It’s also a useful tool in not becoming sloppy seconds to the people with Lazarus genitalia that you keep on your friends list out of sheer laziness. The Anti-Follow the Drip campaign.

Possession 101

by MICHELLE DEE

[Editor’s Note: We’ve previously underestimated our popularity with the ethereal and undead. Please accept this piece as our apology to you, you demonic bastards.]

1. You are weak. You are a fucking ghost/demon. An entity from the SPIRITUAL world. YOU HAVE NO PHYSICALITY.

2. Energy must be drawn from human emotion. Fear and anger are the quickest ways to go about this and, let’s face it, the most fun.*

3. You must start out small, planting the seed into your victim’s–er, resident’s–mind that you are there.  Do things like toss keys on the ground, knock things over or move small things out of their usual spots.

4. After that, you can do more obnoxious things that effect them financially. Turning on their water faucets or electronics, for instance.  You have the power to make it extremely cold in pockets of the house. Try to hang out by the thermostat. This is effective to achieve the anger we mentioned earlier.  Also, messing with kitchen cabinets and doors might seem lame, but do it just to watch the look on their faces. BWAHAHAHAHA!