Author: Seanbaby

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Eyes Right 🌭

In 1920, a man named William Horatio Bates published a book about curing poor eyesight with eyeball exercises. His claims were dubious, disproven with even the gentlest application of the scientific method, and eleven years later he died a disgraced liar. Eyes Right with Bethany Alldridge is a 1992 VHS tape showing you how to use the same methods!

Before we work out those eyeballs, the video has a warning. Two warnings, in fact. The first warning is simple: This video is for people with eye “complaints” not eye “disorders.” So if your eyes have something wrong with them that affects your “vision,” you obviously aren’t going to cure that by moving your eyes around. You eye idiot. You goddamn dumb-eyed fool.

The second warning is sort of amazing. It takes what we’ve learned from the previous warning –how none of this is going to work– and places the blame on you. When this doesn’t fix your eyes, it’s because you will have not put in the work. And while it’s normal for a workout video to claim they aren’t responsible for your injuries, this is the first one I’ve seen that adds the caveat “fuck you even if you do everything exactly like we tell you.” You almost can’t hate a scam this plainly obvious that also opens with two warnings about both of the ways it will never work.

The host, Bethany, explains how a lot of eye disorders are psychosomatic. She says strengthening eye socket muscles can affect your vision, sort of like how your legs fall asleep when you sit down? Oh no, we’re only moments into this and she is telling us to rub our back because it, and I quote, “gets the oxygenated blood up to the optic nerve to get all of the toxins out.” This dingbat isn’t even trying. She sounds like she’s reading random words from pamphlets in her hypnotist’s waiting room. The last time I heard anyone giving medical advice this bad I told them, “Shut up and sew those goat testicles into my chest, Francisco. I have need of a six day boner.”

The most important move Bethany needs you to learn is called Palming. It’s going to be unfamiliar to anyone who bought this tape because it involves holding your head in your hands like a person capable of feeling shame. She warns you not to mash your eyeballs. You’re merely squashing them. If your vision is blurry, that’s mashing. If your vision improves and you no longer need glasses, w-wow. Please call science and tell them the secret was rubbing your eyes the entire time. Anyway, Bethany shows viewers how to squash their eyeballs with their palms for sixty seconds.

Now that you’ve learned the basics of eye medicine, it’s time for shoulder rolls. Your knee jerk reaction to this is probably saying, “what does this have to do with vision problems?” That’s your first mistake. If you had simply shrugged fifty times, you’d have perfect vision. At least that’s what Bethany seems to believe while they film her awkwardly, sometimes sexually, shrugging fifty times.

The mild non-eye exercises continue for ten minutes. Bethany has us move our head left and right. She shows us how to nod for a full minute and a half. I’ve seen Karate Kid, so I know there’s a good chance I’m being tricked into learning Head Karate, but as for improving eyesight, I think there’s a reason these techniques were all soundly debunked 60 years before they produced this video. This is dumb as fuck. This idiot is bouncing her smooth brain against the sides of her ape skull and calling it eyeball science.

Bethany explains there’s no real way to know how long you have to do these exercises. It’s suspicious, and not made any less suspicious when they show some clipart of people who have “thrown away their glasses.” There’s not a single testimonial. No one comes on to say, “I nodded and shrugged for ten minutes a day, and after a week I told my quack eye doctor to shove his glasses up his ass! They’re lying to you! All the optometrists ARE LYING TO Y– oh no, they’ve found me! The potion didn’t wor–!”

No, they assume you believe every bit of this flagrant nonsense and you’re ready for medium-intensity looking up and down. Be sure to take frequent breaks from this ordinary eyeball motion to hold your head in your hands. Check with your local scientists to see if that’s something.

Next try side-to-side. What’s special about this video is that it’s exactly as stupid as your laziest imaginings. Like if you asked someone what an eye workout would consist of, they’d say, “Looking around in different directions, I guess?” You can’t invent something dumber. The fact that it doesn’t work is secondary to how even if it did, there’s no possible way you’re not already an expert in it. The blindest dipshit in the world would create the exact same eye fitness routine as the leading professor of eyeball science.

It’s time to move on to the most advanced direction to look– around in a circle. Bethany seems to think she invented this, and says “Don’t worry if your first attempt at circles becomes triangles. Keep trying and you’ll get better.”

Is this something that’s hard? Maybe living and working inside an American Gladiator Atlasphere has made me an eye circle genius, but I got this on the first try. And maybe making love inside an American Gladiator Atlasphere has opened my mind in ways Bethany can’t conceive of, but looking around the room in increasingly stupid ways won’t reshape your cornea.

The point is, there are really only a few ways to look around, this video found them, and none of them will help as stated by science and the VHS tape’s own disclaimer. But aside from wasting thirty minutes of your day for the rest of your life, it’s harmless. It’s not like they’re telling you to go outside and stare directly at the su– oh no.

Bethany says, “SUNNING is simple. Go outside. Close your eyes and look at the sun.” So you’re telling us the secret to improving our eyes was cooking them sous vide? Jesus fuck. And Bethany tells us, “Bates says to do this for 10 minutes 3 times a day if you can.” A lot of people can’t spare a half hour a day to grin at the sky like an ape broken by captivity, but it’s up to you if you want to put in the work.

Bates, as I mentioned, is that disgraced doctor from 1920 who notably did not make glasses obsolete. I counted twelve different times during this video where Bethany says “Bates says…” followed by ancient stupidity. The makers of this video read one book, a hundred-year-old get rich quick scheme by a discredited grifter, and they cite it like they’re medical researchers.

Okay, that’s enough sun. If we really want to improve our vision we need to sort of wiggle back and forth. This is called SWINGING, and why not? We’ve already looked around in all four directions and baked our face. Fucking do a little dance, who cares?

You should also blink, which is a thing that gets its own section and explanation. It’s when you sometimes close and open your eyes really fast. Let’s see… what else, what else…

Reading! Bethany explains, “Bates says you should read every day.” And they show her doing it for sixty uninterrupted seconds! While they explain reading! Listen, I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before, but never on this scale. Imbeciles who decide to become educators always assume they are teaching people dumber than they are. It makes sense. But when you’re teaching something that doesn’t exist, but is also too basic to require teaching, it creates a kind of stupidity spiral where their intended audience, by necessity, must become less and less capable. Anyone still watching this video must need the very concept of reading explained to them, and they need to see a woman holding a book for a full minute to really get it. I swear I’m not setting up a bit when I say these assholes are one segment away from teaching us how to wash our face.

So Bethany teaches us how to wash our face. She literally leans over an imaginary sink and splashes make-believe water onto her eyes. With the rictus grin of a North Korean prostitute, she pretends to dry her eyes with a towel. “Bates says this is very good for the eyes as it creates a massage-like vibration.” Or to put it another way, “A long dead liar claimed washing your face is like a vision-improving eyeball massage and here is an amateur mime performance about it.”

They explain a few more helpful exercises like “MEMORY OBJECT” which is really looking at objects and then trying to remember them, or “OBSERVATION” which is really looking at objects and then nothing else. You could also try “ZOOMING” which is watching your hand slap you in your own stupid fucking nose. 

Which leads us to SQUEEZING. Just fucking squeeze your face and silently scream and it’s so simple I don’t know why eye doctors even bother existing. Every optometry school should be replaced with this:

If you want something more stimulating, the section called “EYE GAMES” lists all the games that can improve your vision. They cite Dominos, backgammon, and other dice games. Wait, also card games, any games with colorful shapes, Scrabble… it seems like if you’ve ever played a game, any game of any kind, you may have accidentally given yourself perfect vision. But let’s talk about NOSE PENCIL.

You draw things with a cute little finger pencil on your nose! Every person you see without glasses does this for three hours every day after they’re done sun-baking their eyelids. Anyone still blind this long after this amazing video was released wants to be.

The last section is called EDGING, but it’s not the kind you’re thinking of because if you do it right you will absolutely cum. You’re welcome, now fully satisfied and perfectly visioned reader. You’re welcome.

…
This article is brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: The Artist Formerly Known as Devon, who has such tantric control over his eyeballs he can look at something for up to six hours without climaxing.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Sanford and Evans Double Feature 🌭

Doris Sanford and Graci Evans spent the 1980s making inconceivable books about childhood trauma, and they’re my favorite team of well-intentioned maniacs. Today, we’re going to read two of them. One, Please COME HOME, is about divorce because Doris and Graci are always careful to soften a book’s subject matter with a vague title. The other one is called DAVID HAS AIDS. Oh, did you think David has trouble making friends? No, AIDS is what David has. It’s Upsetting Day, not Happy David Day.

Let’s start with Please COME HOME. It opens with Jenny sitting alone in an orchard and thinking back to the time her newly single mom told her her father doesn’t love her.

This is pretty standard development for a Sanford/Evans mother character. When they write moms they think, “What would a lazy Skeletor do here?” I’m not a psychologist, but I do own nineteen of these womens’ books about depressed kids, and the mother in each one is a neglectful sociopath. There’s no bedrock of hope in a Sanford/Evans book. It’s madness and sadness all the way down, and God is there ignoring all of it.

Jenny has decided to never speak to her father again, but quickly changes, then loses her mind. She has entered the Bargaining stage of grief, followed by the Demanding Help From Trees stage. And it can really feel like that, kids. Trees everywhere, and not one of them a custody lawyer. I never thought I’d say this, but this kid’s book about divorce is too depressing and we should switch over to DAVID HAS AIDS.

This is the very first page of DAVID HAS AIDS. It opens not with the dangers of his deadly disease or its origin story, but with a group of mean kids saying, “Keep it moving, buddy. The AIDS section is over there.” This lonely child is dying and we’re going to focus on how he’s being bullied.

Already this is better than Please COME HOME. “My body is filled with AIDS, but theirs are filled with fear,” is something you would say if you were in a prison wrestling league and also a genius. It’s only page 2 and this book is calling 9-year-olds cowards for asking a classmate with full blown AIDS to play somewhere else. It’s amazing. At this point in most Doris and Graci books, the main character would just be sitting around explaining their problem to God.

Right. Exactly like that. What is going on here? Is David praying or sending God a letter? And why is he explaining AIDS to God? As someone who grew up in a religious, conservative household in the ’80s, trust me, God knows exactly what AIDS does. Theologically speaking, this is like explaining how bug spray works to your exterminator. Oh man, that sounded darker than I meant it to… maybe we should switch back to Please COME HOME?

So when we left Jenny she was holding her head and shrieking for a tree, any tree to deliver her from the unbearable pain of a broken family. She’s since pulled herself together to calmly express herself to her teddy bear. This is hard, and it hurts, but her parents’ divorce has not driven her insane.

Oh shit.

Jenny, no. What are you doing? Product of divorce or not, you absolutely need to stop sharing your secrets with the talking bear in the woods. Let’s go back to the kid less doomed than you, the one with AIDS and a God who hates him.

So David got a mysterious bag of cookies from a child who calls himself “Washington,” a name two elderly white women, after a difficult discussion, decided to be “non-racistly black.” Washington has been watching David, and he wants to play with him. It’s all very normal, including how he ends the note with the default 5-word message Shopify prints on every gift receipt, “I know you have AIDS.”

The two become fast friends, so David writes a very weird, very passive aggressive letter to God.

Dear David, 

Ha ha what? His comfort is the kind with a FORT in it!? Are you sending me the “maybes” from your grandma’s needlepoint idea notebook? This sucks. If you want to figure out why I don’t treat you like most people do, SEE FUCKING ABOVE.

I know you have AIDS,

God

P.S. I know you have AIDS.

Jesus, is this kid still talking about how safe AIDS is? Look at Washington’s face. Even he is tired of hearing about this shit. David will be going over this for awhile, so let’s see how Jenny’s mental breakdown is going in Please COME HOME.

Not great. Her teddy bear is still speaking in the tongue of Man. You know, it’s been several pages and it’s still not clear if this is a therapeutic exercise, rhetorical device, or total psychotic break.

Wait. Oh no, what. The teddy bear can wave goodbye to her while she’s not looking at it? S-so this isn’t taking place in her head? I hadn’t considered this fourth option: something unknowable whispered life into this toy after hearing a forsaken child’s screams on the wind. It’s safe to say we’re now in a murder race between Teddy and AIDS. Let’s see what David is doing. Probably talking about how safe it is to be his, despite his AIDS, friend, right?

“Class, let’s thank Sandra for bringing in her box turtle, Battlecat. So cute. Now up next for Show n’ Tell is… ugh. David. Okay, let me guess what you brought in. Your AIDS?”

He’ll be doing this, again,  for a while, so let’s get back to Jenny.

I don’t know what Jenny’s mom and whatever now lives inside her teddy bear said to her, but Jenny has decided hurting her father is how she is going to make them happy. And Graci Evans knew exactly what you’d be thinking: “I’d love to see a colored pencil drawing of the custody handoff after Jenny rejected her father’s unopened birthday gift.”

This is rough. You know what might cheer us up? Hearing what David is talking about.

Damn it, Dave. Are you still lecturing your classmates on the safety of AIDS? How is that disease your most likeable personality trait? Let’s see what Jenny is up to.

It’s important to remember Jenny is not the narrator of this book, so when you hear them stop the story to editorialize, “UNDERWEAR IS NOT A PRESENT!” remember it’s not a second grade girl. This would have been the perfect time for her to realize she shouldn’t have rejected her father’s love or his presents, but instead her teddy bear stares into her soul and tells her how special she is, forcing her to repeat its words fifty times. I’m, of course, kidding. Can you imagine how insane that would be? 

Ha ha, reader. You fell for the classic demon teddy’s gambit. Let’s go see if David has finished his 831st presentation on why someone should play with him, and by “play with him,” David means “listen to his 832nd presentation on why someone should play with him.”

Hold on a second. Is David sitting inside watching Washington spend time with his grandmother? Was the weird bag of cookies and the note a plan to… okay, this is going to sound nuts, but did this kid just steal his grandma? Is this the dying boy version of cuckolding?

We’re not cutting back to Jenny. We need to see where this is going.

Dear David, 

Last week, you had a grandma and AIDS. Then I sent you a friend with a bag of cookies, and now all you have is AIDS.

Love,

God

Dear David,

“What is dying like!?” I’m an eternal being, the Alpha and the Omega, and you’re a little boy whose entire life was spent suffering organ failure. Like, you tell me, David. Asshole. You asshole.

Love,

God

P.S. If you think this is bad, let me show you what I do to kids who betray me and follow the teachings of witch bears.

Jenny’s story wraps up nicely with her mother neglecting her, her father being pushed completely out of her life, and her teddy bear just fucking ecstatic about it. It’s nothing, certainly. A horror egg hatching from a broken mind, but a happier ending that any of us should have expected. Let’s see how David’s story concludes.

Dying is… it’s like what? It’s like fucking what, Grandma Brown? Doris and Graci gave Jenny a magical teddy bear to emotionally counsel her through her parent’s breakup. Yet this withering child of God has been begging his creator for an explanation since the day he learned the word “AIDS” and the best the authors could do for him was to send a confused old lady to his death bed to tell him dying is like a reverse movie something, maybe? This is so fucked. But I guess with the way David’s story was going, we’re lucky the book’s finale wasn’t a two page spread of his grandma wordlessly grabbing his neck and ending things her way.

O-oh fuck.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Dan Bush: who understands that dying is like a backwards movie and living is like a sideways book and fucking? Baby, that’s a horizontal game.

Categories
PODCASTING DAY

Podcasting Day: UFC 1 Was a Magical Shitstorm 🌭

This week on the Dogg Zzone 9000, we go back to 1993 to discuss the dumbest commercial for a jiu jitsu school ever filmed which also ended up being the most important night for martial arts in the history of the world: Ultimate Fighting Championship 1: The Beginning.

Listen here or wherever you podcast.

This show we welcome back our old friend, Zak Koonce, producer of our podcast’s untouchable theme song and accomplished Ground Karate grab-puncher to discuss this bloody battle between 8 warriors, 6 of which had no idea what the fuck was going on. And speaking of not knowing what was going on, while UFC 1 was one of Zak and Sean’s most defining things, Brockway had never seen it before. So he learned 28 years too late that using the style of Sumo to run straight into your enemy with furious slaps doesn’t work.

Besides the fascinating changes in the martial arts landscape that happened before our eyes that night and how they’ve evolved from there, we also talk about the complete shit show of the production. The announce team, especially Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, had no idea how to say words or describe violence. The referee didn’t know what these maniacs were or were not allowed to do and didn’t even want to make a guess about what makes a fight “over.” Plus, the guy he asked for rule clarifications was the big brother of one of the competitors. It is objectively the stupidest shit and it can’t be overstated how much it instantly changed the lives and careers of millions of people.

And for clarity, the part of the show where Sean is laughing too hard to talk, he’s trying to describe the moment Bill Wallace fucked up the name of the event, the name of both fighters, the pronunciation of each of their fighting styles, and then threw to his broadcast partner, Rich “The G-Man” Goins, with this:

It’s a night of confused boxers, winded men, missing teeth, and a few more Nazi salutes than we expected!

Like us on subscribe! Ground us on Poundus! Hot Dog patrons can listen to the bonus podcast on our Discord or Patreon where Zak and Brockway trade recipes from an unthinkable semen cook book. And we, of course, leave you with this: tournament champion Royce Gracie’s UFC 1 headshot.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Seanbaby Nerding: Pokemon and Harry Potter – A Fatal Attraction 🌭

It was the year 2000 and a secret, supernatural war was being waged against the youth of America. A single brave evangelist was all that stood in the way of your children and a thing called “Pokemon,” a boy named “Harry Potter,” and a best friend named “Screampopper the Counting Anal Beads.” He was only able to defeat one of them, but Phil Arms left behind a handbook for anyone else to give it a shot against the other two.

You might have seen a book like this before. Sometimes Christians are so Christian they think toys and fiction have to follow the same rules as the Bible or it makes them wrong, which makes them evil, which makes them an elaborate scheme of the Devil, which makes them your responsibility to defeat. Phil Arms is an apex Devil hunter. He can generate four pages of panic from a single keyword on a Pokemon card. He generated eight gallons of fear diarrhea before Harry Potter even left for wizard school. No one is more sure we are all going to die and less certain Pokemon are fictional than Phil Arms.

The introduction lays out Phil Arms’ mission: some non-Christian things don’t follow strict Christian rules and you need to know several incorrect details of how this makes them dangerous. It’s too stupid to try to explain. It’s like he wrote a manual for owners of a Charbroil Performance 475 Four Burner Grill to help them identify which pancakes aren’t their Chocolate Parformance 476 Five Burner Girl.

My copy of Pokemon & Harry Potter: A Fatal Attraction is used, and the previous owner was gung ho about joining God’s army against the forces of evil. They highlighted several sentences in the introduction about the scourge of New Age symbolism in kid’s shows. Then, like all people who don’t care if their children go to Heaven, they gave up after two pages. Even the kind of person who brings a highlighter to a book about the hidden Satanism of Pokemon couldn’t bring themselves to read this stupid shit.

To give you a sense of Phil’s urgency in this battle for the very souls of our children, the first four pages are about how he’s not much of a morning person. Boy does he need his coffee! His wife, on the other hand, she’s a real morning person. Not him, though. Don’t even talk to him until he’s had his second cup of joe! Anyway, demons are clawing at your sons and daughters from Pokemon cards and it’s far too late for most of them. Also, did you know “Pokemon” is short for “Pocket Monsters?” Fucking monsters! Monsters. Maybe you’re not hearing me. These cartoons are not human, or even puppies. “Satan tricked me,” said anyone who thought Pokemon were puppies. You’re still not getting it. Here, let Phil explain some more:

Sometimes I look through a book like this hoping to find some kind of hilarious irony or embarrassing lack of self-awareness, and I’m sorry to tell you I couldn’t. This is just some guy who God put in charge of fighting against the demonic witch powers of Pokemon complaining about all the dumb assholes who can’t tell real from make-believe.

Anyway, after Phil explains to his son how Pokemon are actually monsters, and monsters are actually real, the boy gets to work throwing all his toys and books away.

After all the unlikely stories of monster powers, it’s nice to read about something that really happened, like Phil’s son putting all his belongings into a trash bag, then pulling each of them out to explain how they violate God’s truth, then putting them back in, and then dragging the bag to the dump.

What I love most about this made up story is that in order to tell it, Phil Arms, a man who has literally been going on TV to complain about the evils of dancing since the ’80s, has to admit he pays so little attention to his own boy that he collected an entire garbage bag full of secular videos and occult books. It’s like inventing a story about how you won a roller skating race because your dick is too small to have weight.

Besides Harry Potter and Pokemon, Phil also covers some other occult threats like Magic: The Gathering, which through rigorous study, he has made himself an expert in.

Most of Phil’s understanding of Magic:The Gathering and Pokemon comes from taking gameplay terms, mistaking them for one of the mystic folklores feared by his religion, and letting his imagination do the rest. So he thinks kids summon Magic cards by holding up a wand and calling upon the playground’s dead to inhabit their body. Also? He thinks you have to sacrifice a white creature to power Soul Exchange when in fact you can sacrifice any creature. Ha ha, can you imagine how underpowered that card would be if it cost two black mana but your target creature had to be white!? Ha ha ha ridiculous. I mean, does God not fact check?

Speaking of facts, let’s look into the facts about Pokemon:

Phil received a letter from a Houston mother whose son enjoys Pokemon. She explained, “Something is going on.” This woman saw her kid watch cartoons and simply couldn’t describe it. And more shocking, this woman saw Phil Arms on TV and didn’t know he was fucking stupid. This woman has poorer judgement than a man entering a roller skating race with a 60 pound penis. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told that man: “Congratulations on getting first place, me.”

Look, we’re all having fun, but this is serious. Phil works hard to help idiots protect their children from threats that don’t exist by figuring out which fictional creatures are Buddhists.

Phil is at his best when he thinks he’s cracked the code of the secretly non-Christian cartoon characters. These pocket monsters almost got away with their secular behavior except they use the term “master,” a term Phil’s keen eye noticed and cross-referenced with the goals of Buddhism. “H-how did you know?” pleaded the Pokemon, its deceit laid bare. “Because no Christian Jigglypuff would let his wife transgress upon him without stoning her until death,” said Phil, pulling the trigger on another of Buddha’s secret agents.

“This is what happens when you forget your training,” says Buddha from the media room of his spy training center. “And fellow Pokemon, there’s no reincarnation if you’re shot with a Christian gun. Now let’s pair up and work on our HOA complaints and gay wedding disapprovals.”

You barely have to look at these creatures to know they have sweet powers and aren’t Christian ministers. And pocket monsters, don’t even pretend you’re fulfilling the divine mission of a holy God. How are you supposed to tell people about Jesus Christ if your half squirrel/half turtle mouth is blasting a Machamp’s rippling chest with water? Oh, are you just now realizing Squirtle isn’t an ordained minister? Fucking wake up!

It’s unfortunate, but in order to protect us from secular culture, Phil has had to make himself an expert on it, even the lyrics to the Pokemon theme song, famously of the “rap” genre. Keep in mind he was this ignorant in an era where every pizza chain, breakfast cereal, and local library advertised only in rap. I’m choosing my words carefully here to represent Phil Arms with maximum precision: to miss this wildly with a “rap song” identification is exactly -in every way- like calling the police on a tanning salon for creating black people. It’s wrong in a way too stupid for anyone to be sure it’s racist.

I’m sure you get Phil Arms by now. He’s Pussy Hitler in a world war against toys. But maybe there’s a part of you curious about what would really happen if Pokemon values became widespread. Let’s look!

Wait, holy shit, he’s upset about Pokemon’s dark path of mutual understanding and empathy!? I-is Phil sure he’s supposed to spell out his evil fascism this clearly? It’s like he stopped his book about the dangers of saying “evolution” out loud to level with the reader, “Look, Christian brother, we are unequivocally the bad guys. We will piss on the graves of the kind and tear the love from the teeth of their orphans. In Jesus’ name, White Power.”

Phil doesn’t limit his research to which Pokemon care about others. He also thumbed through the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook for sex words and found one. He also found a news article about a cop’s son who read the same book and killed himself only two years later. No further proof was needed, and so none was given. I think we can safely move on from this related, but far less dangerous sexual perversion and discuss the sinister teachings of Harry Potter.

Phil mentions eight times in his book how children (and some adults) don’t know the difference between real and fiction. Yet in the 147 pages he typed about the evil powers of witchcraft and Buddha, he never once admits they are make-believe. He genuinely thinks wizards exist and they are our enemy. So his take on Harry Potter is understandably, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE SATAN IS TRAINING SORCERERS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!?”

Phil suffers from a common nutcase symptom of thinking everyone is into everything as much as he is into the Bible. He can’t picture a child simply enjoying a book, ranting about how they can’t “serve two masters!” He can’t understand how you can be in a religion and then also read a non-Bible, and this line of thinking means he spends dozens of pages accidentally establishing Harry Potter as something as powerful as the God he worships. It’s the kind of crazy most of us are used to, so it probably seems normal to you, but if this was the first you’re hearing about Him, you’d be wondering how this God asshole manages to lose a fight to every random storybook or toy-branded fruit snack.

Let’s get back to Pokemon concerns.

The great thing about being religious is you make a final decision and then figure out why you made it later. It’s like a puzzle game you can’t lose, and all it costs you is your dignity, which means nothing when you can decide you’re dignified using the same process I recently described. The point is, if you’re a Christian and want to prove Pokemon is a threat you can cite a Fox News report of an anti-crystal cleric from North Carolina who said it’s sort of the same thing as the kind of stuff the Columbine shooters dabbled in. I honestly think a researcher would punch you in your stupid goddamn face if you said this string of words in front of them, but to Phil Arms, this babbling nothingness is better than proof– it’s something you dedicate years of your life to.

In video games, which are a type of “computer,” players are often encouraged to use “items” which are similar to what you and I know as “things.” Based on shaky logic alone, these items are similar to ones used by occultists to protect themselves against the supernatural, and I feel very confident saying this knowledge will be of no use to anyone even if they stumbled through a portal into a world where it’s real. Phil is upset because items in video games protect from evil, and I’m paraphrasing here, “but I mean come on.”

Now that we know the basics, let’s find out how specific Pokemon are killing God.

Phil continues his deep research by going through a video game manual looking for words liberals and scientists use in other contexts and begging you to get upset. He cites the words “confuse” and “shock into submission” as two of the Pokemon crimes, and accuses Nidoran of anti-Christ behavior for having two genders, which he definitely mistook for some kind of trans thing. For the record, Phil Arms is so transphobic he heard a little bunny creature might be a boy or a girl and he declared, “In Jesus Christ’s name, not on my watch.”

Let’s stop playing around for a second. If there’s some kind of war being waged for our souls and you’re over here complaining about Psyduck “resorting to the use of the paranormal to accomplish his will,” fuck you. It’s over, and you lost. Satan is five million steps ahead of you. You’re so goddamn slow there’s no field of education to help you catch up with the rest of us. You’re dumb beyond a normal person’s ability to conceive of dumb. And what I mean by that is that it wouldn’t occur to the most patient special needs educator on the planet to ever say, “I’m not sure why you’re not getting i– wait, hold on. Phil, you know Psyduck isn’t real, right?”

Ken Sugimori: “Hypno is a Pokémon who uses hypnosis to put his enemies to sleep.”

Phil Arms: “Oh, like Indians!? Robbing their dreams!?”

Ken Sugimori: “How did you get in here? Why are you so upset?”

Phil Arms: “This is how the savages healed the sick! How they helped people!”

Ken Sugimori: “America must be a wonderful place to become so furious over such a small and objectively nice thing.”

Phil Arms: “It fucking sucks! Your evil Godless monsters made our sons gay and kind!”

This one is majestic. Phil Arms filled half a page on Zobat, which isn’t how you spell Zubat, and the way it steals its opponent’s energy. Phil seems to think it’s because it uses psychic powers on its enemy’s chakras, but to be clear, Zubat is a bat. It is stealing energy from its enemies because it’s drinking their blood. Like a bat. This ordinary thing bats are known to do has nothing to do with Eastern religions, and after hundreds of pages of this shit I’m still amazed this goddamn agent of Christ saw a vampire bat sucking monster blood and he’s only mad because it’s maybe Hindu. Seriously, if you’re making jokes, what analogy do you build from that? It’s like getting mad at the man stabbing your wife because he seems like the kind of guy who’d have a tattoo that insults Frasier. I have no idea. Phil Arms is crazy in directions my fingers can’t point to.

We should try to wrap this up. Let’s talk about the five fundamental truths.

Phil teaches parents five truths, and they’re all based on utter insanity. The first one is how you need to beat your kids when they look upon secular toys. The second is how you need to stand up against evil, but the only example he gives is his son telling his classmates their books are evil and then getting mocked by his entire school. The third truth is self-explanatory. “Teach your child that Satan controls this world’s systems.” The fourth is the first one again, and the fifth truth is to explain to your child how everyone is going to hate their annoying ass. I swear on the sick-healing third eye of Hypno I’m not misrepresenting any of these. If you told me I had to sum up this summary of his philosophy in ten words, I’d say, “No problem. Satan is everywhere, so beat your confused kids.”

You need to educate yourself and stay alert! For instance, did you know the Pokemon creators released another occult game called Digimon, which is both not an occult game or from the makers of Pokémon? That’s how treacherous these Satanists can be. And keep an eye out for “telemedicine.” Doctors who use the phone are probably hiding goat legs.

I’m going to leave you now with one of my favorite parts of the book: Responding to Critics.

Phil got a letter from a cranky kid who told him to get a life and then defended Dungeons and Dragons with the kind of even-handed pedantry you’d expect from an indoor teen looking down the barrel of three decades of virginity. And Phil’s response was glorious.

He wrote a two page response to this child and printed it here where everyone could look at it. It’s the most emotionally raw self-own an angry hate mail could ever hope for. Phil splits hairs over every single one of this kid’s points. He says word-for-word, “And Angry, I do have a life.” And Phil regrets to inform you that, um, he is “not ‘worried’ as you called it, over Pokemon.” So at the end of Phil’s very stupid book about making the children of helplessly stupid fundamentalists worse people, some nerdy kid told him to fuck himself and he did. It’s the perfect ending, unlike this one where I just say Pikachu tits.

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Fucking Day: SEXERCISES 🌭

In 1967, a very cranky Canadian fitness consultant with a master’s in philosophy wrote a book about calisthenics you can do to improve your dick stroke. He called it, fucking what else, SEXERCISES.

Don’t let the bland, featureless cover fool you. This book is no fun. But it is weird, and that weirdness is already on full display before Edward O’Relly, M.A., M.S.P.E. is even done with the dedication:

The first thing Edward O’Relly, M.A., M.S.P.E., tells readers is, “I dedicate this book to my four children and my wise, satisfying decision to show them how to fuck.”

If this man told me, “I call my sons-in-law every night to confirm my daughters’ pelvic bowls brought them to climax,” I would say, “Yeah, that was in the subtext of your book’s dedication, Ed.”

You’re going to think I’m making this up, but the first 40 pages of SEXERCISES are a mean-spirited essay on why sex is useful and how mechanization is killing it. It’s a joyless hate letter to you soft failures and your unporked wives. The book jacket sells this like it’s Jumping Jacks for Lovers, but before he gets to that, he needs you to understand sex as a concept. As a biological imperative. Look at this fucker go on and on:

I’m not kidding when I say this is the majority of the book. This overschooled PE teacher sat down to write an erotic fitness program and couldn’t resist the urge to start with the very birth of the meaning. SEXERCISES is more than anal contractions; it’s the story of the first fish who crawled from the sea to invent premature ejaculation. He’s also got a quirk you see in hack writers where he rewords the same idea over and over like his dumb reader just isn’t getting it. Like the first fish who crawled from the sea to just fuck up something that isn’t that complicated.

Every page of CHAPTER 1 is a less readable version of Edward’s same two points– sex exists and you’re just hearing about it now. So let’s move on to CHAPTER 2: WE HAVE BECOME A RACE OF SEX CRIPPLES.

Ha ha I wasn’t kidding about the title. Edward is what you might call a Mediocre Supremacist, but he might be overestimating how much better he is than everyone for sometimes taking the stairs. Anyone who types, “escalators are making legs almost useless,” has deluded themselves into thinking they live in a world where their mere adequacy makes them a god. It’s worth reminding ourselves this book was supposed to be about fuck exercises, and an old man is complaining, incoherently, about all these traindebobs and autowhatsits that do all the hiking for you. I mean, what’s next? Wheeled shoes? Delivering mail over the radio?

Let’s move on to the next part of the book, which isn’t about ways to tone your body for intercourse, but about whose fault it is that the intercourse sucks.

I was excited to read this book. I got all dressed up for it. I am wearing gym shorts, a sweatband, and a condom. But this isn’t anything. This is a bad workout and worse couples counseling. Edward O’Relly has written a book for grumpy Luddites who want to think three minutes of side bends every morning make them elite specimens and champion lovemakers. But, sigh, since we’re here, let’s read more about how marriages work.

I don’t want to brag, but I knew this guy was going to hate women when I saw it was a 1967 book about sex. Though I didn’t know the “well-known fact that many men who are actually impotent with their wives are not impotent with other women.” I assumed when your dick didn’t work, you didn’t take it with you on clandestine dick missions. Sorry, this blows my mind. Canadian men were stepping out on their wives in the ’60s with medically floppy penises and someone was collecting boner data on it!? Science is amazing.

Looks like this man who thinks it takes women “weeks or months to reach orgasm” is still assigning blame for the sex being bad, so let’s skip ahead to the next section called… ha ha ha, no way. FLABBY BODIES DETRACT FROM SEX ENJOYMENT.

This book is incredible. He diagnoses the sudden trend(?) in admiring hot people to be our fat collective’s “subconscious reaching for something we know we are losing.” This confused and horny nerd writes like he got his master’s in P.E. without anyone ever reading one of his papers. He just said (eleven different ways) that sex was fun and we were wired for it, and now our interest in fuckable people is a psychic cry for help from our once visible abs? And did this pretentious son of a bitch say the Romans “substituted slaves for muscles, and were destroyed from within by the slow corrosion of luxury“!? Jesus. He sounds like Jordan Peterson explaining to a waitress how critical race theory and the unmopped floor of the International House of Pancakes means he is owed a free dessert, nay a duo of such.

You should always be suspicious of below average white people who hold themselves this high above society, but did he really say the main problem with slavery was how it sapped the can-do vigor from once great men? Aren’t we supposed to be learning fuck situps, and oh my god, he’s complaining about mechanization again.

I think this is what happens when white supremacists think about things too long. They figure out they are even more superior if you’re allowed to count animals. Ed doesn’t care what scientists say, he is so much better than stupid handless, footless dolphins and has twice, nay triple of such superiority when comparing himself to a pathetic everythingless snake. And I guess he makes a good point here that, before he gets to the sexercising, fuck snakes, right? Hey, snakes, grow some goddamn brain-directed feet or get the hell out of this competition. Escalator-users, same deal.

We might as well get warmed up. Edward talks the reader through something he calls RUNNING IN PLACE. Edward has some kind of post graduate degree in gym class, but the aerobics in his book are what you’d expect a mermaid to come up with on her first day with legs. Basic isn’t a strong enough word. This is more like the chosen Basic destined to meet the minimum requirements for the most general of knowledge, sent here from the Planet Duh on the Starship No Fucking Shit. Suck my relaxed, unpumped dick, Edward.

Let’s move on to some jumping ja– wait, no, to something Edward invented called ASTRIDE JUMPING WITH ARMS RAISING. After all, this is a sexy book, so things should have sexy names. And if you’re feeling adventurous, here’s an Expert-Level Edward O’Relly Workout Tip: exercise is harder when it’s harder.

Honestly, I’m just as disappointed as you that this is just the half-remembered PE program from Edward’s whites-only elementary school, but at least we’re up and doing stuff, right? The book seems to be done with the dry philosophy on the psychic causes of lady frigi– oh, damn it.

Don’t give up yet, intended audience of SEXERCISES! Edward has finally, officially decided you understand how much better he is than TV watchers, train riders, The Romans, and all animals without hands. He’s ready to discuss how fitness can help your lovemaking. First, he notes how weird it is we don’t train our women how to take a dick, and then, as is his way, notes again how weird it is we don’t train our women how to take a dick.

It is now chapter SIX of the sexual fitness book, and we’ve discussed slavery, impotence, and porpoise intelligence, so we have the foundation necessary to learn our first sexercise, “THE VITALLY IMPORTANT PELVIC THRUST.”

For the men, this chapter of SEXERCISES is all about pumping that dick. Standing erect against wall, standing erect away from wall, wherever. Pound that shit. Blast that shit. And there are pelvic tips for the ladies too!

Like the handless porpoise, Edward doesn’t expect much from women.

The male routines are all the same– get a firm base and do your best to slap yourself in the face with your dong. Fuck and thrust! Just violate the negative space around you like an existential sculpture.

If you’re a lady, we’re going to mainly focus on different ways to rest with a hole aimed upward.

Keep pumping, men! Hit! The! Back! Of! It!

Same for you ladies. Go for it.

Really pound it in there, fellas.

Ladies, you have your role to play too.

Pelvises are not merely a tool for in-and-outing. Try fucking the ceilings and walls of the thing! There are no wrong directions, men!

You can try too, ma’am, but please don’t strain yourself.

Most books wouldn’t take the time to illustrate a STANDING GLUTEAL SQUEEZE. A single, still image of a clenching butt is so magnificently of no help to anyone. It’s like offering a drowning man a photo of a clenching butt.

Women, maybe try lying down and flapping your feet back and forth? Men, let’s let that cervix know it’s in a fight.

Don’t stop now, men! SEXERCISE!!

It’s so magical that some asshole in the ’60s, with an educational background seemingly built for it, decided to design a sex-specific workout and the best he could do was “dick pumping for the fellows” and “advanced laying down for the ladies.” Our poor grandmothers must have thought sex was just some nightmare you had to endure to keep a father in the kids’ lives.

You might be thinking from all those pictures of an active-crotched man and a napping woman that this finally switched from a condemnation of modern living to a workout book. No. Edward still had a lot to say about you lazy, pathetic members of society. You garbage pieces of trash probably won’t even do these routines, no matter how great the benefits. Oh sure, you women jump right into a robust regimen of SITTING, HANDS ON FLOOR, but before long your fanciful sub-porpoise mind is distracted by the modern trappings of books, crossbowing, or the automobile.

Don’t scroll down any further, I want to see if you can guess the ending.

Now, the obvious way to end an article about sex exercises, especially ones where the men do all the work and the bored women hate it, was the premature ejaculation gag I already did. I’m not better than that, but I really wanted you to see how Ed finished his masterpiece. Scroll past the girl getting her ovary pump on to see the final page in its entirety.

Out of respect for Edward O’Relly, M.A., M.S.P.E., I’m going to end this article the same way he ended SEXERCISES: abruptly and with penis kegels. Hrk! Hrrk! Hrrk! Hrrrrrk! Hrr–

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Dan Bush: who is a 7th Dan master of Pelvic-Ryu Karate and learned nothing today.

Categories
PODCASTING DAY

Podcasting Day: Japanese Battle Comedy, with Lydia Bugg! 🌭

Brockway often makes suggestions that don’t make a lot of sense at first. For instance, “Let’s change our name to Shimmy Jim and the Hustlers,” or “Corporate saxophone fighting,” or “Shut the shit up, we do a Face/Off.” But when he suggested we watch a 2016 game show about ten Japanese comedians locked in a room and trying not to laugh with no rules or structure, I said, “Oh fuck yeah saxophone fighting. And also let’s do the Japanese thing.”

So this Podcasting Day, the Dogg Zzone 9000 team is joined by our own Lydia Bugg to discuss the first season of the 2016 show, Hitoshi Matumoto’s Documental. 

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts! Click and engage all the buttons that algorithms love!

Like at least one other show, Documental is an unknown treasure hidden deep in the limitless bowels of Amazon Prime’s catalog. Or maybe it’s not? We think it might be a show only for comedy nerds. Or maybe for 11-year-olds. They have no idea either. It’s dick jokes and endurance gags limply offered by people who seem as confused about what’s going on as any audience from any culture. They had to pay $10,000 to be there! It’s screaming men putting on dresses and digging through each other’s assholes to see if maybe this is where comedy is found?

We definitely don’t figure it out, but we all agree it’s something. And if you want something way more American, Hot Dog Hero patrons and meatier can listen to the Extra Wiener bonus podcast where Brockway and Liddy match pickup lines in a very seductive Seanbaby’s Book Game! Can they out-creep the suggestions from 100 BEST OPENING LINES! by Eric Weber, the incompetent virgin author of How to Pick Up Girls?

Spoiler alert: nothing is creepier than incompetent virgin author Eric Weber. If scientists start growing human breast tissue on the backs of tarantulas, the first words those tarantulas say will be less creepy than Eric Weber’s tips for harassing lady pedestrians. Please enjoy, and from everyone here at Shimmy Jim and the Hustlers… keep on hustlin’.