Author: Seanbaby

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: The Haunting Musical Puppets of Sandra-May

We each live in our own silo crumbling to dust on a different entertainment wasteland, so I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the increasingly less popular television show, Britain’s Got Talent. It’s like American Idol, but some singers do trampoline dunks. Others do something much closer to m̵͓̯̊́a̷̞̭͗͠d̶͉͐͘n̵̈́̂͜e̶̜̗͝s̴̨̖͊͝s̶̖̋.

This is the story of Sandra-May Flowers, who auditioned for the 14th season (2020) with a musical puppet something.

I should add some more background. These shows used to really indulge in the torture of the delusional and desperate. In the early 2000s, about 40% of these shows was dedicated to showing ugly nerds that the entire world was going to be 7th grade. Like all things in the 2000s, it was sort of fun, but a terrible mistake. So they’ve slowed down with the bullying. Most acts in the recent seasons are either very good or suck in a charming way. Sandra-May Flowers was none of these things. She is a true, unexplainable mystery. She’s not an “oddball” or an “idiot.” She is a dream fragment from an undone timeline, and her act started the only way it could: with awkward confusion.

Her greeting is sweet, but asynchronous and strange, like one stranger going for a complicated handshake while the other tries to suck their fingers. Normally I wouldn’t think anything of it, but I’m about to make the case that one of these people is here from the wrong universe.

Sandra-May tells the judges she has been traveling the world like Batman to enhance her performing arts, and she has now returned home to show what she can do. This is the only clue anyone is given before the show’s co-hosts, Ant and Dec, bring out two human-sized dolls. The dolls are dressed for disco or worse, and whatever Sandra-May is going to do with them can’t be too complicated since they were just dumped on barstools by two untrained TV presenters with no idea what’s going on. My point is, a magician or a juggler doesn’t start their act by saying, “Go ahead and throw my sex dolls wherever.”

The music starts, and it’s worse than anyone could have expected. We hear the delicate sounds of birds chirping and piano demarcating the peace you once felt with Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You.” It’s the song with a famously impossible high note, and it’s bad news. It’s the epic bacon of zany song choices. But don’t understand this act too quickly…

… Sandra-May picks a rhythm violently unrelated to the music and starts jerking her arm and neck in opposite directions. Is she meant to be theatrically strolling? Maybe d-dancing? How are the sex dolls going to come into this? By the way, the male sex doll looks like this:

It was made from waxing salon debris and has teeth. It is distinctly not a “funny” sex doll. This looks like violated human remains that would disappoint a serial killer father. It looks like a mole George Clinton would ask his doctor about. If a voice inside this begged for help, you would know they meant “shoot me.” Anyway, it grins lifelessly from a tangle of body hair as Sandra-May writhes confusingly.

She finally starts singing, and it’s stunning for a couple reasons. One, there was no reason to believe this was going to be a singing act. Two, it’s fine? Usually a woman dragging two dead bodies and putting in “Lovin’ You” at karaoke means you’re in for some clumsy sarcasm. But this seems like a sincere attempt by a 4/10 singer to do her best. Everyone seems pleasantly surprised. “Oh!” says judge Alesha Dixon.

And then Sandra-May sexually caresses her doll’s teeth. “Huh? Fucking god damnit, what the fuck,” says judge Alesha Dixon.

I don’t know how to describe what happens next.

As far as I can tell, Sandra-May bends down to wipe something off the doll’s shoe, rubs it on its mustache and mouth, and then eats it. Then she gets to work picking termites out of its hair. It’s a weird adaptation of “Lovin’ You.”

None of this is human body language anyone has seen before, but if I’m reading this boner correctly, she’s eating gum off this thing’s foot seductively. Whatever this is, whatever she is doing to the doll, she’s trying to fuck it, or us. Judge Simon Cowell senses it too, and he’s not interested. Sandra-May gets her first X.

Maybe Simon rejected her too quickly, because when the “🎶dood’n dood’n doo-doooo🎶” part of the song starts, she props the doll up by the pole in its ass and they foxtrot. It’s much closer to a mall intruder giving a mannequin the time of her life than it is to entertainment, but it’s beautiful in its way. A story is forming. It’s the story of a fifty-great-year-old woman robbing Michael Jackson’s grave and falling in love with his bones. Oh shit, here comes the high note.

Amid all the corpse molesting, everyone had forgotten about the approaching note. There’s no way this amateur pubic hair sculptor will be able to hit it, right? “Fucking not even close,” says Sandra-May as she picks up the doll and shrieks in its face. “YAAAAAIIIIIEeeEEEEEEeeeEEEeEEE” she sings like a steamboat cumming; like a cat being punished for its eternal sins. And it’s too much. The judges are stunned beyond the capacity for comedic bits. Why do this? Why a toothed puppet? Why a puppet at all?

We’ll never know. Sandra-May certainly doesn’t. She flips the doll upside down and positions its legs. Not for something, like you’d expect, but only to add to the puzzle. This is no dance or pantomime. This is now a singing woman plunging a doll as it eats its own asshole. The judges are openly discussing what the shit is happening. The audience members are no longer laughing or cringing. They are starting to panic, their primitive senses telling them this may be a type of unknown to be feared. If deadly gas started billowing from this no one would be surprised. If she stopped singing to say, “I just tricked ten million people into seeing how I masturbate,” they would be even less surprised. Judge Amanda Holden isn’t waiting to find out. She gives Sandra-May her second X.

With no answers to her riddles given or coming, Sandra-May grabs a second puppet lover and attaches it to the first puppet’s butthole pole. As troublingly strange as anything else, she does this with no thought to theatrics or showmanship. This is a woman who added eleven sexy steps to licking a scarecrow’s foot, and now she is assembling a mannequin naginata like a bored toll booth operator. Despite this, she screws it up and the girl puppet’s wig flops off, giving her act its first laugh. It’s a laugh of pure relief. It’s a hint that whatever this may be, she’s maybe not good at it. We may be looking at mere failure, not a ritual to raise the tormented dead.

Next, Sandra-May spins. Again, and again. With no skill, thought, or reason, she twirls. Only twirls, for far longer than you’re imagining. What does it mean? Is the girl doll stealing her doll boyfriend? Does this represent the turmoil of a mostly mannequin throuple? The puppets offer no hints, their limbs flopping from the edge of a nonsense tornado. And again, this is not what anyone would call “dancing.” It’s more like a home remedy for children with too much blood in their torsos. It’s the wikiHow for “Easy Solutions For Wet Mannequins.” Call it what you want; it’s physical enough to affect Sandra-May’s singing.You can’t hold a note during a 700 hit Dynasty Warriors combo.

She endures. Sandra-May continues screeching and twirling, screeching and twirling, generously giving everyone time enough to react. Is this a silly thing? A sex act? The ordinary behavior of a being raised on another world? But no amount of twirling is enough. The audience and judges remain mostly confused and stunned, but as she howls the next high note, Sandra-May gets her final two Xs.

Her act is over… a grotesque violation of our natural laws. Scholars and historians can argue about the best way to describe it, but with both too much and not enough self-awareness, this woman face-tanked a cliche during a double sex doll Star Wars Kid. And as the sound of the buzzers grind her inconclusive spinning to a halt, she froths heavingly at the judges.

She’s been rejected, but Sandra-May pants and waits, pants and waits, for the judges to gather their thoughts. They have no words. How could they? I barely have words, and I’m a writer specifically about madness. After four years of thinking about this, it looks like I typed… “froths heavingly”? That’s no help to anyone. There are no answers here. This is an axe wound in our understanding of things.

Almost with unconscious muscle memory, each judge politely tells Sandra-May her reverse puppet stick fight musical “is a no from me.” As if one can simply stand before the howling visage of the Frenzied Flame and go, “Nah, not today, dawg.”

Britain’s Got Talent cuts away and moves on as if ripping apart the foundation of our reality is a cute thing to squeeze between breakdancers and a one-man-band. But I wasn’t satisfied. I had to know what I was missing. How could a person decide to do this? What gauntlet of casting directors saw presumably less polished versions of this and agreed, “yes, I choose this form for the traveler.” So I found Sandra-May’s YouTube page.

Hidden among her three videos was the prototype for this very act. It is Sandra-May and these exact puppets doing an a capella performance of “Hey There Lonely Boy” in a basement talent show. It’s… I’m not going to say “better,” but she does incorporate more moves than she did on television. Instead of spending the whole song in a double lariat, she sings to the doll, makes it kick, and generally hints at the vague feeling of “human behavior.” At least until the end.

With no judges to buzz her off, Sandra-May gets to do her big finish. It combines ventriloquism with very specifically not ventriloquism. She holds aloft her disco sex doll and says the words, “I LOVE YOU SANDRA-MAY, WHAT!?” It is two sides of a conversation screamed with a single voice, mouth, and sentence. It’s perfect. Then, for some reason, she does it again. And it’s perfect again.

Despite that being aggressively not a conclusion to anything she has done, she whispers, “thank you” and leaves with half her puppets. The video then lingers on six minutes and forty-three seconds (6:43) of silent darkness. It’s what the cowardice of the Britain’s Got Talent judges took from us; a better finale than anyone could have hoped for.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Patrick Herbst, now with telescopic puppet pole! (Orifice not specified.)

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Fucking Day: Sexercises

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Mirthful Kombat

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Dealing Effectively With Idiots 🌭

Our story today is about idiots, but it doesn’t start there. It started in prison, with our author getting his skull bashed open by a homemade morning star:

That is an excerpt from a webpage written by a mysterious, unnamed karate master advertising access to a secret move. It’s a move he invented as a teenager that made him King of Supermax, and it can be yours if you order now. Obviously, this is completely awesome, so I’ll let him continue:

You’ve maybe already spotted something about the author’s writing style– he never says something once and clearly when he could repeat it again and again across twenty sentence fragments. You’ve fully read the beginning, middle, and end of the story he’s telling, and he will tell it again hundreds of times. He goes on for 8808 words, and that’s real, I counted them…

If he ever sells a second fighting move…

He will technically have a novella…

A fucking sweet one.

Suspiciously similar to video games of the time, his enemies were muscled beyond human proportions and carried all manner of item pickups. But they were no match for our hero’s special… it was called the Blackout, a “controversial” move that does something no other attack does… amplify pain. The author somehow found a way to make attacks hurt. Let’s learn more.

This is going to sound crazy, but The Blackout sounds like a nose punch. Like, a punch to the nose. But that would be nuts. There’s no way. No way.

I mean, this is a nose punch, right? Sure, he added on some stuff about mercifully granting your enemy his pitiful life afterward, but this sounds like someone who got hit in the nose once and immediately knew he’d discovered life’s secret cheat code: it sucks to get hit in the nose. There’s no way this nerd has been in a real fi–

Holy shit. Okay, only a couple dozen people have eighteen UFC fights, so this is either a hilariously brazen lie or the author is a world-famous fighter I’m certainly familiar with. I’m rooting for the first, but both possibilities rule. We won’t find out for now, because he starts over on the story about him Double Dragoning through the supermax prison as a teenager, now with wildly different details:

There are now three thugs, and the ringleader has a shank equipped. Their only mistake was bringing their noses. Also, our hero’s “2 world championships” have somehow become “7 world fighting championships.” Which probably isn’t a mistake because he’s also smart now. “Great job on the prison tests,” said the warden! “You’re familiar with all the tests we give here in prison. Oh, your pain scores are also quite good. Hmm… a 9 in cooking as well; excellent stats all around,” added the warden character who never makes another appearance.

I’ve never wanted such a clearly fake story to be true more. The author beat every level of a fully armed prison and the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame inducted him for it! This is the story Frank Dux would have made up if he had a Super Nintendo. You’re probably ready to order one The Blackout now, but maybe you don’t spend much time fighting prison gangs and you’re wondering if the move has any uses other than self-defense. Yes! Here’s a story of how you can use it around the kitchen:

Do you have a sex criminal fucking your pork rolls? Not anymore you don’t: BLACKOUT.

I love every detail of this, but not everyone is a child molester defending his food impregnating den. Some situations don’t call for shutting off someone’s brain with The Blackout, which I still think is just a nose punch. Luckily, the author tempers his invincible supermove with a philosophy of peace.

The Seven Nations held a meeting! To vote on whether the wasichu who killed a prison with nose punches should take charge of their sacred peace pipe!

And they voted YES.

It was an unusual honor. Fucking insane, almost.

And he still has it.

He didn’t even throw it away.

So he can find it pretty quick if there are any pipe smoking emergencies in the Native karate community.

Where was he.

Sorry…

The author got a little lost during his free association. He went from “I never go looking for a fight” to “In fact, I was entrusted with our nation’s most peaceful artifact” in five sentences. Incredible.

Anyway…

He gets back to his sales pitch.

After thousands of words, the author still hasn’t shared his real name. But as he’s explained several times, he earned the prison nickname “BAM” from all the nose punchings he did. However, keep reading and he’ll “reveal the very disturbing way he earned his prison nickname.” I don’t want to spoil anything, but he got it from the obvious reason he’s already said many different ways. When you run into concentrated madness like this, it’s hard to know what exactly happened. Did he accidentally copy and paste every draft of his fake life story into the same document? Is this the top 30 entries in a Final Fight Coloring Book Writing Contest? Maybe this is just what your memoirs look like when you get hit in the head with many padlocks.

Wait, so the Blackout is illegal in the UFC? That means I was wrong about it being a nose punch. In fact, the only face attacks that are illegal in the UFC are eye gouges and fish hooking. And I hope it’s an eye gouge, because otherwise this man wrote a detailed guide on putting your fingers in your cellmate’s mouth.

Biting is also illegal in the UFC. It could be a bite? A nose bite? Assuming the author is honest and correct, two things he definitely is not, nose bite is my current best guess for the Blackout.

Finally, the author includes a call to action in his sales pitch. After an avalanche of redundant words he put a button going, “CLICK HERE FOR A VIDEO OF THE FORBIDDEN NOSE BITE ALONG WITH MY PRISON SURVIVAL BO–” oh my god. Fuck. Did you see what he said!? Included with every order is the author’s full name. Amazing. Amazing in an unprecedented way. The fucking greatest bonus feature any karate move has ever included.

Well, the joke’s on you, Mr. X. Because sports keep pretty good records, and if you are 14 and 4 in the Ultimate Fighting Championship you are either Stipe Miocic or Ketlen Souza.

Except maybe you’re not since neither of those people bit their way through a prison. Or are 5’7″. I’m also told by the nighthawks they are not currently protecting the ancient peace pipe of the Seven Nations. Plus, and this might have been a mistake, you included the same identical graphic of your book six times except one of them has your real name:

So your name is Jermaine Andre, and no one is going to believe this, but you really were a 2012 inductee into the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame!

He was lying about most of the other stuff, but not by a lot! He actually does have a 14-4 record in MMA, but only one of his fights was in the UFC in 2000 (he lost to Lance Gibson by knockout) and he didn’t have seven world titles. Also, I can find no record of any prisons found full of dead bodies with missing noses. Still, it is the most unbelievable twist that this maniac talking about a secret unbeatable move had a real fighting career. This means he’s absolutely unteachably stupid, or he thinks you are.

Maybe it’s the second! Because clicking the link for Jermaine’s free (definitely nose biting) video brought me to a page with no videos and an offer to buy his prison survival ebook, along with his Navy SEALs karate book, plus FBI kung fu for $37! A $97 value! You save $50.00! Wait, that doesn’t sound right!

But I guess it is!

Something about a grifter ex-con who can’t remember things or do math made me wary to give Jermaine my credit card, so we’ll never learn what The Blackout is, though we all know it’s 100% a nose bite. However, now that I decoded his real name from subtle clues and the time he showed us his real name, I could do the next best thing to learning a secret move that can kill anyone– I could buy one of this idiot’s books. And oh my god, you’re never going to see this coming:

Jermaine, martial artist and excellent prison intelligence test taker, wrote a book on dealing with idiots in 2012. Why the duct tape? Is Jermaine kidnapping the idiot? Murdering them? Kind of, but reverse it. According to the… I guess you’d call it a “joke” on the back, Jermaine, the author gagging a prisoner with duct tape, is the idiot. And if you don’t read his book, this is how you’ll die. It’s dark! Strange! Also, reverse it again!

On the copyright page, Jermaine repeats the photo and says it’s now a non-idiot dealing with an idiot. Okay, we are not off to a great start, but it could be worse. He could have started with “Webster’s Dictionary defines idio–”

Oh my god, this book is going to be so goddamn bad.

Wait, forget what I said. This is going to be incredible. Jermaine is going to use his martial arts ability to, if I’m understanding it correctly, counter strike idiocy itself. Basically, this is aikido for dumb. Or to put it another way, if someone is stupid, you reverse it so it’s you who is stu… oh no. I don’t think this is going to work. Let’s give him a chance, though! The Seven Nations didn’t give him that peace pipe for nothing. First idiot!

This is… not what I expected. This is barely anything. I’m supposed to ignore a Road Rager? I thought the 8-Time Supermax Champion of Knife Prison would have a cooler way to deal with an angry driver than “nothing.” How about intimidating them by holding up one of the human heads you pulled off a shiv-wielding pork roll fucker on your way to your car. Why not roll down your window and jump onto their hood? This is advice you’d give a second grader being bullied by a first grader. Disappointment is too small a word for what I’m feeling. This is like running into Steven Seagal at a buffet and instead of telling you the secret of redirecting any attack he says, “Forks are useful for food, they are the ones with three pokeys instead of a scoop; use a separate dish for pudding. Plus, I’m not Steven Seagal. I get that sometimes.”

Oh, are you trying to manipulate me? I’ll ignore you– reversal! We are only on the second idiot, and Jermaine has already repeated his plan of doing nothing and hoping the bad things go away. This is the precise opposite of “effective” and “dealing.” It’s also worth mentioning these people aren’t really “idiots.” He could have called Effectively Dealing with Idiots something like Summer Soups for Dentists or Pork Roll Sex Positions and it would have been no less misleading. Maybe Jermaine just needs a simpler kind of idiot, like a rude drive thru teller…

All you do is drive off and call his manager the next day? You goddamn Karen, I thought you were an 11-time World Inmate Kumite champion. What good is that if you have to take shit from a kid at Wendy’s? This is cowardly and petty garbage. This is a story a cop’s wife would make up if she dropped his chicken nuggets on the way home.

Jesus Christ…

Here at 1900HOTDOG, I’ve known adventures. I’ve seen a woman vamp for an entire sex book about not quite putting it in. I’ve watched a couple shatter their minds against the task of listing 1001 places to bone. I’ve seen a man in mad desperation try to fill 62 pages with semen dishes. But I have never seen anyone more helpless, more completely fucked than this martial artist who gave himself the task of inventing and then defeating 50 idiots. So far he has only ignored them or called their manager on them, ideas too basic to even engage with. We might as well put our idiot bashing nunchucks away, because we are reading the Passive Dumbfuck’s Guide For Remedial Breathing.

I’m shocked Jermaine’s idea for dealing with haters is to ignore them and hope they go insane and their life spins out of control for unrelated reasons, but what is that comment at the end? You “wouldn’t want them in your entourage anyway”? What does it mean? I understand he self-published this book while caught up in the media hype of being one of Missouri’s only 11 inductees into the 2012 Martial Arts Hall of Fame, but does he expect us to believe he leads an entourage facing off against rival entourages? This is the sad kind of delusional. I miss when Jermaine was defeating white supremacist gangs with illegal face karate. Maybe he’ll come up with something better for the next idiot, ordinary retail sales associates!

I like that Jermaine is getting more assertive. This fucking idiot came at him like he was going to sell something only to get hit with the perfect martial arts counter of “I’m only browsing. A-and also I have no money. Wait, sorry, come back please. Do you have this in a size passive-aggressive-bitch junior? Of course I can pay for it, I was lying earlier when I said I had no money. Dummy.” A perfect, effective way to handle this ordinarily impossible scenario. Thank God for this brilliant book.

So if someone is verbally abusing you, set a trap by wearing a cup! Then, the next time they humiliate you, punch yourself in the dick and tell a very long, very weird joke using wordplay about words no one has said. Of course, that’s only Phase One. Phase Two is waiting for everyone to get it… to understand what you’ve done. You’ll know Phase Two is over when you find yourself beginning Phase Three: explaining the joke. Like a winner. Like a martial arts winner! Keep in mind, this is the hypothetical best case scenario as imagined by the plot’s author. In a real world application, it might not go this well.

We’re a quarter through Effectively Dealing with Idiots, and all of Jermaine’s wisdom could be replaced with a coin that says IGNORE on one side and KAREN on the other. By the way, there is no text on the even-numbered pages of this book. Jermaine gave himself two pages for each idiot, but none of them needed more than one, so there’s a lot of blank space. It might not seem worth mentioning, but all of these things come together to create a truly unique monument to failure. “As a master of brutal, unstoppable martial arts, I leave unsanitary resteraunts, those idiots, and notify the proper authorities, half a page of blank space, one full page of blank space.” In a lot of ways it’s beautiful, like a swan too stupid to swim.

I think some of the book is trying to be funny, but it’s a problem. Jermaine’s idea of a gag is “haha kill your ex-girlfriend with a shotgun” and then he steps on his own joke by making sure you murder her with a legally registered shotgun with which you are properly trained and has been stowed in compliance with your county’s gun storage laws. Furthermore, and this is no laughing matter, follow the rules of engagement when gunfighting any former lover. The most important thing is fun. Now, let’s get out there and kill some idiots.

Do you have a home intruder? Get rid of that idiot in many subtle, easy steps! Start with the usual: act boring, offer no snacks… standard martial arts defense. The next part can be more complicated. Be a bad conversationalist and sometimes leave. Since idiots who don’t know when to leave are excellent at picking up non-verbal social cues, your passive aggression should work. If not, work your way up to asking them to leave by informing them “you don’t appreciate uninvited visits.” If that doesn’t work, you can try changing your name and abandoning your home. Martial arts!

As a master martial arts instructor, Jermaine advises anyone receiving unwanted sexual attention to shrink into themselves sheepishly and to reduce the number of dates you go on with your stalker to the lowest number possible. Whenever possible, huddle in this prison of fear forever. Maaaaaartial arts!

God damn it, Jermaine is asking to speak to the manager again. I’m going to skip ahead and see if I can find a crazy one. Hold on, wait wait wait what the fuck:

What? Someone is hitting on your girlfriend, so you ask him to taste your body on her lips!? And you’re claiming you’ve done this more than once!? Madness. I don’t even have a joke. What I do have is this, a perfect neural map of Jermaine’s mind:

It was clear almost instantly this was not a book about intimidating idiots with our nose bite or roasting them with our wits. It turned out to be a book about rolling into a ball and hoping a manager, God, or anyone would punish everyone around you. Yet as feeble as this book is, I’m not sure I could have imagined we would deal with a dirty joke by fleeing from it. I get we can’t make the dirty limerick guy choke on his own blood, but this is pathetic. Jermaine Andre writes like a liberal arts major in an Adam Corolla routine, and that’s it– that’s the worst thing you can say about someone.

This seems handy. If you think someone might be a thief, lay a childlike trap using all the guile of a man who was legally dead for seven minutes after he got hit in the head with a padlock!

This made me fucking gasp.

His idea to counter a loudmouth is to lie in wait for an opportunity to deliver a one man play about them? “Hark, countrymen! Lend me your ears to hear the tale of Loudmouthus, the truck! Guys, hold up, I’m doing a bit where Gary is a truck because he won’t shut up a-and I have a pedal bike, on the highway. I know that’s weird; this is sort of a premise heavy comeback. Let me finish! See, this is an allegory where our need for attention is vehicles but Gary’s is bigger than mine, because I am so normal. Hey! Be quiet! There’s a lot more! Martial arts!“

Push the button for the operator! That’ll show that dumb robot!

One of the things you notice in books like this is that as you get deeper into them, you can see the author losing perspective on who he’s writing it for, and what wisdom might be in general. This is no longer a book for people fumbling through normal situations. It’s so much less. Jermaine has been out of wisdom for 29 entries, and this is now a guide for horses making their first phone call. This is potentially the most dogshit stupid, useless tip about anything that could ever be possible. There does not exist a person for whom this is advice. Jermaine went from 8-time MMA Earth Champion to writing the first book for mashed potatoes.

I’m going to ignore the casual racism here because Jermaine makes a good point– all destitute foreigners deserve our contempt. But this, and I don’t need to tell anyone this, is the opposite of advice. Does Jermaine not know you get kicked to the back of the line when you hang up? When you disconnect, the call center doesn’t go, “Let’s rally, people! That passive aggressive dick is going to call back any second, and when he does I want him given top priority, and everyone speaking better English!” I don’t even know what you call this behavior. It’s rude and entitled, but not in a way anyone will know about. This is like the homeopathic essence of a Karen… a missing hiker demanding the name of her quicksand’s supervisor.

Okay, you have a bad boss? Here’s what you do: work really hard. Focus up and do a great job. Kiss his ass if you have to, and dedicate your life to making him and the company money. Next comes the easy part: keep doing this until you are laid off or dead. Martial! Aaaaaaaaaarts!!!

Are you in a bad relationship? Get out of there! DUMP THEM! Or you know, you could stay a bit longer. You might look like an idiot, but would that be so bad? Idiots run teams of highly motivated employees and are resteraunts. Maybe if you stopped laughing at their jokes and were more boring they would leave on their own. Maybe hang up and call back until you get a better person.

What are we, a fucking magical cat? We’re giving quests now? With exposure therapy traps designed for “idiots” to overcome their fears? How did this happen? It’s all nonsense, but I’m most troubled by the word “constantly.” Did you picture readers luring their friends past dangers with a cache of treasure more than once? “Hey! Who keeps putting all my fig newtons at the top of this towe– by gosh, my fear of heights is gone! This seems like the work of martial arts.”

Ha ha ha that should do it! Of all the infantile ideas this padlock-brained lunatic has thrown around, this could be my favorite. This is a man who has bitten the nose off multiple white supremacists, and his take on racial intolerance is the exact thing every 4-year-old says the moment they learn people have colors. “Um, technically, those are wrong. White? Try Pink. Yellow? Hello, more like Sunset Peach. What was my point? Oh my god, was that my whole point!?” Anyway, great job, Jermaine. Racism solved.

Alright, this is a food one, so we already know how he’s going to handle it. I think Jermaine might be out of surprises…

… is he somehow getting more passive aggressive? He got rid of his TV and turned his life into his roommate’s least favorite pie rather than confront him. I’d joke that his style of martial arts seems to be limply punching his own dick, but he already did exactly that. Come on, there has to be a real piece of advice somewhere in this book.

No, that’s ignoring again…

… and that’s asking to speak to the manager again.

What the shit? He told us to be the “kiss @ss” 13 entries ago, and now he’s giving us advice on how to deal with people like us? I think the stupidity is collapsing in on itself. I don’t know what to do! I’ve never seen this style of martial arts!

Jermaine writes like a 9-year-old refusing to accept the results of a spelling bee. This motherfucker is writing his dream comeback to a rude smoker, and he brings up his own farts twice. Once to be a pedantic twat and again to be a pedantic twat. There is no weirder way to put any of this. If Jermaine added, “Mayhaps I remove this sandwich from its bag and we use it to c-collect one of your farts, m’lady,” it would be no weirder. It might even improve. Which means I find myself organically saying that if Jermaine wrote 50 Ways to Ask Strangers to Fart in a Bag, it would be a better book.

What an unbelievable twist ending.

No one could have seen this coming.

Not even the grand practitioners of Black Dragon kung fu who are technically pinkish…

This whole time, the idiot…

… was Jermaine!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mickey Lowman, master of the True Dragon Blackout Technique, which is leaving a two-star Yelp review under a pseudonym.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Pro Wrestling Finishing Holds

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Clown Ministry Skits for All Seasons 🌭

Hi. Clown ministry. As someone who collects and writes about mistakes by maniacs, it’s hard to maintain a perspective on “strange.” And so I’ve ignored this 1990 clown ministry book in the clown ministry section of my library for years. It’s called Clown Ministry Skits for All Seasons.

In my world, this is boilerplate… background noise behind a thousand piercing screams. Call me when the clowns are children. Or when the author has contemplated Christian clowns so much he has forgotten the meaning of both words. This is not madness. This is more like an instruction manual you’d get with a wig.

Even the back of the book promises nothing outside the generic idea of clown ministry. The author, Floyd Shaffer, describes himself as a clown minister who made Clown Ministry and wrote Clown Ministry. And he writes clown instructions with that same dynamic and vibrant style. Let’s take a look at his introduction:

The book opens by explaining what holidays are and how the book is organized, and then describing the organization of books and how some events are called “holidays.” It takes Floyd four tries to explain “brainstorming” which he calls “Word Ticklers” but also “brainstorming.” So this is crazy, but I’m not sure it’s fucking crazy yet. Intros are hard to write, and I think I proved that when I said, “Hi. Clown ministry.” Let’s keep reading.

I see. This is a trap. All this dullness is some kind of clown gambit. ‘We are normal, this is no big deal. Some Christians are clowns, turn to page 73 for handwashing instructions for your Godlaffs “Real Human Hair”®️ wig.’ Well, I don’t buy it. This normal clown minister is about to reveal himself as a third kind of deranged.

Fine. Keep your secrets, clown. For now. We’ll begin with the religious holiday of Advent, which the author explains is a type of holiday and a kind of holiday.

Oh, I see what’s going on now. This is a land mine. Clown Ministry Skits for All Seasons is absolutely a plot to destroy the career of clown ministers before they become Floyd’s potential rivals. This sucks shit, would completely bomb, and it’s the opener! Floyd is telling the reader to have two clowns (or more) learn about air circulation from The (small) Bible and the only lines are coughing. You don’t do that if you want young clowns to have promising careers in Christ. This is designed to strangle baby clowns in the manger. The only other possibility is that this 20 year Christian clown veteran is a confused, joyless idiot, which yeah, okay. It could be that also.

People in church are used to allegories and metaphors stretched beyond recognition, but it would take such a generous audience to watch two (or, again, more) clowns cough at each other until they remember windows and think, “Oh, I get it! Christ our Lord is the ventilation! Wonderful! Three honks for all these remarkable clowns!” Nonsense. Clown-deflating nonsense.

Let’s check out another Advent one.

Th– what the fuck? I’m meant to dress like a hobo and silently assemble furniture? Over the course of a month? What kind of show is that? And the goddamn finale is “leave”? This is how an alcoholic father builds a bookshelf, not how you spread the message of Jesus Christ. And did Floyd describe the manger as “opened in readiness to receive the Christ-child”? What? Is the audience meant to say, “This mime intruder has built a babyless trough in our church, slowly, across several weeks, and I agree that’s strange, but… it seems about the right size to receive God’s son! Wow, can you imagine!? If God’s son was in there!? Majestic!!” I can’t stress this enough: nonsense.

I’m going to move on to Christmas skits.

So I need a homeless clown in a box with a canned fish cold cut sculpture. Fucking why? Are we phonetically acting out a Beck song?

This is nuts. Clown Two sneaks up on Clown One while he or she is sleeping and starts going through Clown One’s things. “Not a violent reaction, in fact no words at all,” says Clown One in this situation. And then the two clowns walk into the cold to die together. Or fuck? It’s weird none of these skits have endings. Less weird than the fish made from cold cuts, but still. Anyway, Christmas made Floyd think of gifts, so he did a skit about gifts.

Okay, new theory: a group of creatures crawled from an opening in our reality and Floyd Shaffer was the anthropologist who went missing while studying them. “Day Two: The giftless clown appeared to give itself to the others, who accepted by ritually removing two feet of their height and disguising themselves as gifts. They seem suddenly aware I’m watching them. Could my presence be violating some sacred taboo? They are approaching qui–”

Oh, good. There are Lent skits.

So a clown, or a group of clowns, hugs their way through your church amid incomprehensible manifestations of fear and then they vanish. Am I crazy, or are these starting to make sense? No, but seriously, what the goddamn fuck is happening? This is a dream I would describe if a clown ate thirty people and I was trying to get out of jury duty. Then disappear. Speaking of, “Then disappear.” is a chilling way to end your instructions on a clown fear skit, right?

It’s the only ending clowns know.

These are all real endings taken from other skits in the book. Floyd Shaffer has dedicated most of his life to clown theater and has somehow decided “unexplained vanishing” is the best closer. Maybe because he’s tried these skits and knows how crowds respond when prompted to “let the clown ministers know what you thought about that.”

I don’t know why they keep vanishing, maybe I never will; I only know I hate it. It’s bad writing and leaves the whereabouts of legitimately troubling people unaccounted for. I have finished typing this paragraph, I give you a clown hug and disappear.

I want to do another Lent one, the Christian holiday dedicated to resisting temptation:

Three or more clowns enter with something that dirties their hands? Say no more. I’m in.

Jesus fuck, this is what you’d write if you were the only survivor of a circus slaying. Clowns can’t kneel until they have washed their hands with pizza coupon-sized towels, and the clowns then disappea– wait, why did I use a pizza coupon as a unit of measurement? Oh no, did I conjure this? This was lurking on the next page of the book:

Clowns in Bellevue, Washington designed and photocopied their own Pizza Hut coupons and hid one in this book. And there is no expiration date. If Washington clown law is to be honored, Pizza Hut has to give me an $8.99 Medium Supreme Pizza, and then a second pizza at half price. Now and forever. Maybe? There are surprisingly few details on these bootleg Pizza Hut savings, and I don’t think it will be much help to tell the cashier, “I’m here for God on behalf of clowns. Now, before His watchful eyes, are you refusing to honor the homemade pizza coupon of clowns?” Ha ha what is any of this; all of reason is boiling into wigged lunacy.

Sorry, I’m having too much fun. Let’s do a sad one.

This routine uses something Floyd calls the “running gag” technique, a clown insider term meaning to get sadder and sadder every time you reappear. End by leaving, very sadly. As sadly as possible. I included a scan of the entire page because I didn’t think you’d believe me if I said the skit was a clown getting more depressed as his balloon deflates, the end. He doesn’t even disappear. This is not religious comedy. This is how a French filmmaker would tell 1921 he never loved his wife. What is going on? I hate to pull this card after only 1300 words, but look at this, what God would allow this?

Let’s move on to Maundy Thursday/Good Friday, though as Floyd’s sudden self-awareness explains, “the very nature of the observance may seem paradoxical for the presence of a clown.”

Okay, Floyd had me worried a pod of clowns might set the wrong tone for remembering the torture and execution of Jesus Christ, but finding out it’s only a single clown and he’s only crucifying a loaf of bread, it seems appropriate. I love that I’m not exaggerating in any way when I say this nutbag told his readers to make a hat for bread out of barbed wire, shake it in half with a crucifix, offer empty cups of nothing to a church, and run away. It’s such haunting senselessness. It’s something a fortune teller would say to a Subway marketing executive about to meet with a young man named Jared Fogle.

From the writer of “Sad Balloon Clown Grows Sadder” and “I Have Killed Your Bread Christ” comes the quote, “I truly believe that laughter is the only authentic response to God’s grace.” So Floyd does think these skits are funny? The month-long manger building project? The tiny towels thing? I’m not really asking. I’m almost positive laughing at those would be seen by any god as a betrayal of the natural order. I guess my actual question is this: is the message of Easter really “Death is conquered!” Because that rules.

“At first clowns are sad about the death,” types Farts Fartinson, the 38th century’s most popular time prankster before dropping this fake book in 1990. Untold eons later, an advanced and unknown prankster would add the pizza coupon.

By this point, it would have been fair for any reader to say, “Oh. Easter skit. Let me guess. A bunch of clowns get very sad and afraid and then disappear?” And yet that’s exactly what happened.

One thing I’ve learned from Clown Ministry Skits for All Seasons is there are no actual traditions in Christian traditions. You can walk into a church dressed like a clown, fuck a baguette inside out with their faith’s most holy symbol, brag about it in a book, and they’ll be fine with it. You can see Floyd almost realizing this himself when he says nobody knows how to celebrate a birthday for church, so go ahead and do whatever. No one will object if you bring in a group of mimes wearing flaming mouth headbands. Or whatever; that’s of course not a real sugges–

Freed from all constraints of tradition, Floyd has chosen to symbolize Christianity with a group of mimes wearing flaming mouth headbands. “Erect” ones, but that feels like bait left here in the past by another time prankster. It’s going to be tough to express this without accidentally giving a nu metal band its name, but we are reading the unmedicated rants of a clown disorder. The onl–

God damn it, I knew it. We’d better skip to the end of this skit.

“So the tongue of fire… headbands let the clowns play k-kazoo, or any such impossible task,” asks a man truly trying to understand.

“Don’t talk to the fucking prisoners,” says the other guard as their armored van is suddenly attacked. The clown has disappeared.

To celebrate Pentecost, why not have five or more clowns enter holding signs meaning nothing, intentionally nothing, before the hugs, before everyone’s hugs? Don’t give up, we can survive this! They seem to be weak to sonic attacks! Hold them back with these firecrackers while I read their skit idea for Transfiguration Day!

Something about this still feels a bit off. For instance, the subject of the book is clown ministry. But also, this passage reveals people who are not yet clowns are called “clowns” by other clowns, as if cursed by clown destiny. I don’t like how clowns spot future clowns magically, like Jedi recruiting children with high midi-chlorians. I honestly don’t like any of this, or where it’s going. These clowns are going to multiply and vanish and we are running low on firecrackers.

This is how clowns are born? Not eggs? Who would watch this, and why would they associate it with Jesus? Why am I still demanding answers when Floyd has just answered my most desperate question? Do you see what he did here? This skit about making more clowns has an ending! Floyd Shaffer wrote a big finish! I guess there’s no need for clowns to mysteriously disappear when all are clowns, honk, when everyone is clown.

We haven’t done a WORD TICKLERS yet. Let’s check the word ticklers for this skit.

This idea, clowns putting clown makeup on a clown and nothing else, was inspired by the words “eyes clouded” and “honor.” I can’t believe I ever, for a single second, looked at this book and thought, “That’s not so crazy.” Hey, I wonder if clowns celebrate…

I’m sure this will be fine. We can trust the judgment of an increasing number of sad and missing clowns.

This is how the words “you have a railroad spike in your skull” sound when you have a railroad spike in your skull.

Cutting people shapes out of red and yellow paper to represent ethnic diversity is a real celebration of Whiteness. “Does anyone have a non-white they can call about this,” Floyd asked his 1990 Lutheran church, accidentally writing his first good joke.

What.

Alright, fuck you. You’re telling me a clown minister wrote a skit about Martin Luther King Jr. Day with racial paper dolls, a “seed envelope” which he himself puts in quotes, and now someone has hidden a “deflated love balloon,” which has to be what Lutherans call a “used condom,” which has to be what the Amish call a “”seed envelope,”” in a Bible. This is an obvious prank by malevolent reality meddlers, and I will not fall for it.

So on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, we do various insanities and genetic experiments to no effect and then celebrate the segregation of the paper races? There are only so many ways I can demand to know, “What the goddamn fucking shit.” This skit feels like the author was specifically inspired by the word “racism,” but there’s no way for me to che– wait a minute.

Hey, there’s our word tickler: “racism.” It’s second to last before “respect,” which is exactly where a cunning clown would put it to seem least suspicious. “What do I think of when I think of Martin Luther King Jr.? Well, certainly busing… justice. What else… opportunity. Personal worth… r-racism? And finally semen. In balloons, in envelopes, all over everything. I mean respect! Envelopes of respect.” Hey, while I’m losing my mind, let’s do Valentine’s Day.

Rookie clowns, you don’t need to make things complicated. The perfect Valentine’s Day skit might have been staring at you with glassy eyes from a dark bog this entire time. Hold completely still until your prey is close enough to grab!

Special thanks to trapdoor spiders for sending in this skit idea. If you have a clown skit idea, send it to Floyd Shaffer by whispering it to any Pizza Hut cashier while negotiating a homemade coupon covered in clowns.

I have a new concern. Did I, me personally, somehow do this? Because “Have one other clown enter and carefully examine this “Valentine” clown,” sounds like something I would Photoshop onto a fake clown pamphlet. And not in a first draft. That would be carefully calculated and polished absurdity. I’d look at the words “carefully examine this ‘Valentine’ clown,” and be certain I’d written the perfect joke. So I ask again, is this me? Am I Farts Fartinson from the year 3970?

This is getting too silly. Maybe there are some clown skits about honoring dead soldie–

Fuck yeah.

“I’m not here to be funny, I’m here to restrain you by your fingers as a reminder of the day’s significance.” – All Clowns

“The sad clowns tie the church’s fingers together. Clowns disappear,” says a voice from behind many layers of restraints. “Move closer, closer to my teeth so I can tell you the rest.”

We should do a nice, normal one. Like a birthday.

Maybe not this normal, Floyd. I was finally getting used to this dark world of unfiltered clown madness and his birthday tip is “get them a big card”? Come on, Floyd. I was fully prepared for something like an old sheet filled with clown holes.

Oh no, the book can hear me.

“Surprise! We are clown heads! Alright, goodbye! Unless you guys are partying?”

Okay, you’re not going to believe this next one:

Floyd Shaffer has written a highly critical 4th of July mime skit. The clown who has chosen to spread the one true religion through confusion, human seed, and vanishing has notes on how we’re running the country.

If you’re going to perform this skit, you should know it’s both very anti-American and highly clown intensive. You’re going to need at least five clowns, and an 8-foot cardboard Statue of Liberty. But don’t worry, all of those things should have spawned from the PEOPLE SEEDS envelope we made back on Martin Luther King Day.

Oh my god. This is something the Viet Cong would make John McCain perform for a prison camp’s Hùng Kings’ Festival. The clowns are going to call out the Statue of Liberty for every last one of her false claims. Oh, did you think we called your name, “Your Tired?” Well, it says here your name is “Your Getting the Fuck Back on the Boat, III.” Better luck next statue, assholes! I’m sure you already see where this skit is going, but let’s read it anyway:

Through the power of pantomime and shackled clowns, Floyd Shaffer puts the last of America’s hypocrisies on trial. Begone, “your poor.” Communicate your fear elsewhere, “your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This is indistinguishable from Soviet Cold War propaganda. Floyd has to be pulling from his Maybe pile with this one, because there is no way he’s ever tried performing this in front of a bunch of Ohio Pentecostals. And when the authorities are breaking up a fight between a white church and a group of invading clowns calling the Statue of Liberty a liar, I think I know what side the cops are taking.

Back to the skit, the USA has kicked out “your poor” and “your huddled masses,” so I guess that’s the whole poem debunked. Time for the clowns to vanish.

What!? The IRS sent a clown to take down even the “Give me” part of the poem! I don’t know what to say. Floyd finally wrote a surprise based on disrupting our expectations rather than the random brain misfires of a man dying of clown’s disease. I wonder what word ticklers he used to inspire it.

Okay, I’m definitely using this book to send myself messages from the future. And speaking of me and my forbidden clown knowledge, I think Floyd eventually tried one of these clown army skits and it didn’t go well. Because I own his video, Clown Ministry Video, and it comes with a warning to the viewer to never clown in groups of five or more. If a clown cluster is too large it can have an off-putting effect on an audience, and I have never seen any concept communicated more clearly and in so many ways. I did not edit this in any way, it was made like this by a leading clown advocate:

Author Floyd Shaffer sat at his typewriter. “I’m not really going to suggest Christian clowns at a wedding,” he word tickled. “Hkkkk,” his mouth said as a skeletal hand reached out and tapped, “NO LONGER TWO, BUT ONE”.

A stickler for credits, Floyd Shaffer makes it clear he adapted this skit from a skit by Floyd Shaffer, with permission.

So the clown meddling with the drinks at your wedding has the groom mix a pitcher of blue chemicals with his new bride’s pitcher of yellow chemicals to symbolize the miracle when Jesus turned Mountain Dew into Mountain Dew Baja Blast. You might be so distracted by how fucking insane all this is, that you didn’t notice what was missing.

The clown has not disappeared. If you invite Floyd Shaffer to your wedding, he will put suspicious chemicals in your food and remain there until the union is consummated.

There’s another wedding skit idea:

It’s sort of a loose one. You basically get dressed up like a clown, show up to a wedding, and keep yourself busy. Whatever you, with your Christian clown judgment, think the married couple didn’t plan for. I’m sure you want more details, so Floyd offers all three:

First, try standing outside the wedding and greeting people. Silently. Call you and the other clowns “silent greeters,” but silently and to yourselves.

Second, wait for the wedding to start and begin decorating. Tie “love” balloons to things, wherever, an industry term for “normal” balloons with a tablespoon of clown semen added.

Third, go to the reception and tie the married couple up by their fingers, along with others as appropriate. That’s the whole thing, the whole skit idea, then clowns disappear. Amen.

I vanish silently.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Cerril, the clown who enters with a bloody cross, points to three children, and then silently disappears. Those three children each die within three years. Seeds are planted. Plants are harvested. Clowns. Clowns.