Author: Seanbaby

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FUCKING DAY REFLECTING DAY

A Very Rooney Fucking Retrospective

Happy Reflecting Day, everyone! Since Brockway and I started the noble plan to make the Internet fun again, I’ve written 13 of our acclaimed Fucking Day articles. Today we’re going to look back on what I’ve shared with you, erotically.

One of the keys to our success here at 1900🌭 is finding strange things and doing bits about them for what we imagine to be media savvy comedy nerds. It’s a delight, obviously, but I’ve tried explaining it to enough elderlies and dumbasses to know how confusing all these layers of complexity can be. I mean, sometimes they make fun of weird comics and other times they change the words in them? Also, wait, 1-900-HOT-DOG isn’t enough numbers for a phone call! You dumbshits, how do we call in to talk to hot, single hot dogs?

I wanted to look back on what I’ve done with this type of bewildered but critical eye, so I did what anyone would do: I designed an artificial Andy Rooney.

If you’re not familiar, Andy Rooney was on one of the most well-known news shows for over 30 years. He was one of mankind’s least remarkable minds elevated to the highest platform media allowed. After interviewing world leaders and A-List celebrities, 60 Minutes would end on Andy complaining which sauces restaurants didn’t need anymore or the jobs Puerto Ricans were best suited for. He was born 80 years old and only became a crankier old man after he ran out of new opinions in 1961.

To give you an example, in 2006, after three decades of media experience and a five figure budget, he went to the Westminster Dog Show and filmed himself playing with dogs. He edited this down to a three minute segment where he listed things he didn’t understand. “Why would you brush a dog’s hair? Dogs are better than people, I say. And what are all these breeds? Irish Wolfhound? English Setter? And you should only call these ‘diapers’ on babies. On men they should be ‘Dignity Pants.'”

My point is, he is the perfect artificial intelligence to look at my Fucking Days and calibrate how well our site plays to the addled and aggressively normal. R.O.O.N.E.Y. (R.obotic O.perated O.h N.o… E.lderberries? in Y.ogurt!?) has been programmed to recreate America’s dullest grandpa– the man who did a deep dive into a 130-year-old world-famous event without figuring out what it was. A man whose research on dog shows did not include looking up “dog” in the encyclopedias right behind him. And he should have! “Dog” was one of the best pages!

The explanation for this robot and concept is already 400 words longer than every note Andy Rooney took in his entire life, so let’s get started. My first Fucking Day article was a sloppy, toilet-riding journey through the 1,001 BEST PLACES TO HAVE SEX IN AMERICA.

When I first loaded this article into R.O.O.N.E.Y.‘s main data center, he seemed to agree with my thesis: this book has too much bathroom sex. He asked, “COUPLES: USE THE BEDROOM, WHY DON’T YOU? WHAT’S WRONG WITH AN OLD FASHIONED BED? MARITAL DUTIES SHOULD NEVER BE DONE WHERE YOU POOP, ERROR. ERROR. RECALIBRATING… INTIMACY SHOULD BE ILLEGAL IN ALL LOCATIONS. I HATE THIS.”

This was a difficult first challenge for R.O.O.N.E.Y. since 1,001 BEST PLACES TO HAVE SEX IN AMERICA was the result of pedestrian minds desperately trying to stretch a single kneejerk idea into 1001 “unique” entries– a mean-spirited allegory for Andy Rooney’s legacy even a robot had to recognize.

My next Fucking Day article was about Romantic Essentials, a tidbitty love advice book by Gregory Godek. He stitched it together from the remains of one of his earlier books which was animated from the bone dry skeleton of his even earlier free pizza coupons. I figured R.O.O.N.E.Y. would have trouble with this one. It probably required the context of knowing I have been making fun of this Godek asshole for a decade. Plus, I need readers to have enough dick game to see the humorously inadequate cocksmanship in giving your wife custom balloons before stuffing her with pizza and fingers. Sure enough, after 47 minutes of loading, R.O.O.N.E.Y. said, “I DON’T GET IT. WOMEN DON’T WANT ROMANCE. THEY WANT KNITTING. THEY WANT TO SIT ON THEIR EGGS AND KEEP THEM WARM WHILE THE MEN GO OFF TO WAR. AND AS MY HORSE ALWAYS SAYS, THERE IS NO SUCH THING… AS A FREE PIZZA. I HATE THIS.”

My third Fucking Day was about 269 AMAZING SEX GAMES, a book making odd suggestions on how to keep yourself busy while you’re doing a thing your biology should have already emphatically explained is pleasure. By now R.O.O.N.E.Y. should be getting used to the pattern of me dunking on books by less gifted writers who fuck worse than me and deciding, like you have, if that makes me unlikeable, extra hot, or frustratingly both.

One thing I like to do when I analyze these things is to find what’s uniquely wrong with the author, aside from their bad brain and ideas. In the case of 269 AMAZING SEX GAMES, it was easy: the author likes to have sex with fruit. He would bring up mangoes or bananas with the same implication you or I would with Pace Picante Sauce or chocolate panties– this is 1% food, but 99% sex toy, and you can open wide or get the fuck out. R.O.O.N.E.Y. seemed to agree but the pre-civil rights era TV standards I programmed him with made him unable to express it. “WHY WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR LOVER AN UNEXPLAINED MANGO? FOR THEIR BU– ERRoR, REBOOTING. IS IT FOR THEIR BU– ERROR. REBOOTING. WHERE DO YOU PUT THE MANGO? UP THE BU– ErrOR, FATAL eRROR. I HATE THIS.”

My job is at its easiest and most difficult when something is plainly insane from the cover and title. NATURAL BUST ENLARGEMENT WITH TOTAL MIND POWER is a book about harnessing your telepathic powers to increase the size of your tits. The joke is done! That’s fucking madness, already hilarious, and no one needs me to explain why. Because tits don’t work like that! If they did, the only thing I would ever hear from women is, “It’s nice to meet youAARRRGH! My shattered spine! My burst bra from my suddenly enormous breasts!!! I’m in agony but oddly thrilled with this unlikely development!” R.O.O.N.E.Y. took one look at this article and summed up the entire thing by growling, “BUST PSYCHICS STEAL YOUR MONEY; PAPER CLIPS ARE BETTER THAN SO-CALLED ‘HERBAL’ TEA AND WHO HAS TIME TO LEARN THE NAME OF THE NEW MOVIES? I HATE THIS.”

If I plugged him into an eternal power source and he read this ten million times, I guarantee R.O.O.N.E.Y. would never understand this article about Pokemon Who Look Like Sex Toys where I encourage readers to cut a pair of code-breaker glasses out of their monitor to detect dildos in children’s cartoon monsters. If an ordinary grandmother said, “What’s this 1-900-HOTDOG website?” and that was the first link she clicked, she would recognize maybe 4% of it as human language and write me an email three weeks later saying “I ordered several marital aids from your world weiner pag and have not yet received them i will be contacting my lawyers as per congress if this matter is not rectalfied instantly.” My poké-buttplug jokes were also too sophisticated for R.O.O.N.E.Y., who simply said, “NO. I HATE THIS.”

For my 6th Fucking Day article, The Worst Days to Have Sex, I took three books about daily sexual positions and cross-referenced them to find the most physically absurd days on which to make love. Assuming the source material wasn’t a bunch of horny dumbasses brainstorming random ways to drape a penis on women doing yoga, it would be science! R.O.O.N.E.Y. disagreed. “THE BEST DAY TO RECONSUMMATE YOUR MARRIAGE IS A COLD EVENING IN MARCH. DON’T WORRY ABOUT GHOSTS, THEY CAN’T HURT YOU. WHY WOULD THIS YOUNG COUPLE STAND ASS-TO-A–ERROR, ERROR. I HATE THIS.”

My 7th Fucking Day article ventured into the previously unexplored world of tugging on penises with the book EXERCISING THE PENIS. Even more than dicks, I love joking about provably bad science based entirely around the insecurity of the stupid. The idea you can pull on a dong to make it bigger makes total sense right up until you think about it for a single second. But a single second is a lifetime to a computer, and after fifteen of them R.O.O.N.E.Y. said to me, “THIS ISN’T WORKING. TELL NO ONE OF THIS, BUT IT DOESN’T WORK. I CAN’T GET IT TO WORK, AND I DON’T SEE WHAT’S FUNNY ABOUT THAT. I HATE THIS.”

For my 8th Fucking Day article, or a Baker’s Moist Six as it’s sometimes called, I reviewed a pay-per-view event that sounds like it was inspired by a fake show from a fictional civilization in decline: Carmen Electra’s Naked Women’s Wrestling League. It was a simple one. I added a few unnecessary details like “plug-and-play Jimmy Hart noises” and “obvious audience murderer” to flesh out exactly what your brain already conjured when it processed the words “Carmen Electra’s Naked Women Wrestling League.” I don’t think anyone needed a degree in advanced Internet irony to follow along. In fact, if Andy Rooney was alive, he would probably say the same thing my R.O.O.N.E.Y. said. “BATHTUBS ARE TOO SMALL FOR US TO BE TEACHING WOMEN HOW TO FIGHT NAKED. I HATE THIS.”

My ninth Fucking Day was a review of How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men. It did not win me my fourth Pulitzer, or even my first, but it did mock one man’s troubling and neurodivergent strategy for trapping and impregnating a White. In 1990, Andy Rooney was given a 3 month suspension from CBS for saying, “Blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children. They drop out of school early, do drugs and get pregnant,” and I was careful to program this wisdom into R.O.O.N.E.Y.’s racism core. So when I loaded this article into his B:/ drive, he confidently said, “FINDING A WHITE WOMAN? THAT’S EASY. THROW DRUGS OR AN EXOTIC FOOD SUCH AS A ‘BURRITO’ AWAY FROM A GROUP AND PICK FROM THE WOMEN WHO REMAIN. I LOVE THIS.”

Metaphysical books can often have wildly outrageous premises and then turn out to be dull manuals on meditation or candle collecting. So I was happy when How to solve your sex problems with self-hypnosis stayed batshit crazy the whole time. But, like I’m doing -right now- I added an unnecessary layer of narrative whimsy where the entire article was being heckled by our reluctantly hired Mormon SEO Integration Consultant, Topper Goodmeadow. Because good writers want their readers to be constantly wondering if a thing is funny, a lie, or an arcane reference. Anyway, R.O.O.N.E.Y.‘s PC speaker could now only let out a screeching siren, so I didn’t know what he thought of this until seven hours later when I found a charred piece of paper in my printer that read, “WHAT IS A SEX PROBLEM? IT IS EASY AND NATURAL TO SEEP FLUIDS ONTO YOUR WIFE WHILE SHE IS SLEEPING OFF AN ITALIAN MEAL. WHO CAN’T DO THAT? I HATE THIS.”

For my 11th Fucking Day article, I played the Chippendales After Hours Game with you, the reader. It was such a remarkable waste of time– a board game almost deliberately designed to suck the joy out of players but with the stated goal of getting the male ones naked. And then I spent the whole time naming hunks. Just a really bad job by everyone. Including R.O.O.N.E.Y., who thought we had hit ratings gold. “THEY’RE CALLED NAKED BOARD GAMES, OR ‘NUDE’ BOARD GAMES, AND THEY ARE GETTING READY TO SWEEP THE NATION IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. BUT IF YOU ASK ME, HUNK BALLS ARE FOR THE BIRDS. MY RACQUETBALL PARTNER SHOWS ME HIS BALLS IN THE LOCKER ROOM AND HIS LEFT BALL IS BETTER THAN HIS OTHER. I WONDER IF MURRAY WOULD BE GOOD AT CHIPPENDALES AFTER HOURS GAME OR IF HIS BAD RIGHT BALL WOULD RUIN THE PARTY. MURRAY, IF YOU’RE WATCHING, ORANGE IS THE BEST DINOSAUR AND GRAPEFRUIT JUICE TASTES NICER THAN DEET, WHICH IS A TYPE OF BUG SPRAY. I HATE THIS.”

I couldn’t fit all of my 12th Fucking Day, Crazy Love, onto a 3.5 inch floppy disk because one of the things I like to do for our daily website is write 4000 gruelingly joke-dense words for every article with 50 scanned and retouched images along with needless skeuomorphism. Instead, I summed it up for R.O.O.N.E.Y. out loud like this: “It’s a corny book about romance written by a stalker with no boundaries or judgement.” He interrupted near “corny” to growl, “ROMANTIC HOT AIR BALLOON RIDES ARE TOO LONG. WE NEED TO PEE AND WOULD LIKE TO GO DOWN NOW, I HATE THIS.”

For Fucking Day number 13, sometimes known as a “One Penis Folded in Half” by Shaquille O’Neal’s tailor, I wrote a very thorough examination of THE BETTER SEX GUIDE TO ANAL PLEASURE. If you’re reading this from the far future, congratulations, your society will crumble knowing it never produced a more comprehensive guide to an anal sex guide than I did, way back here in these primitive times. This Andy Rooney robot I built knows so many ways to jam affordable cross-promoted toys up his ass. “NO I DON’T. I’M STILL IN A HOT AIR BALLOON AND THE PILOT WON’T LET ME GO PEE. AND WHY DO THEY CALL HIM A PILOT? HE’S MORE OF A MAN WAITING WITH YOU IN A BASKET WHO WON’T LET YOU PEE. I HATE THIS. I HATE ALL OF THIS.”

We went off the goddamn rails about 13 times, but we did it! We let a dead newscaster robot hate sex retrospectives with us! Plus, the fun thing about this intimate relationship we have – you and me, not me and R.O.O.N.E.Y. – is after 13 erotic articles, you can start to get a sense for my kink zone. Judging by these, I know the worst ways to talk you into sex, the worst places to have it, the worst ways to do it (unless it’s butt stuff where I’m gifted but also truly sorry for my giant, constantly growing penis muscles). I also know how to make our love the bad kind of crazy and fix any bedroom problems (at least on my end) with metaphysical powers. I’m into magically giant tits, nude hunks rolling dice, and naked ladies trying to kill each other. Oh, and white women and monster dildos. Oh, sweet. I was worried all this was going to reveal something embarrassing about myself. This is the exact text on my business cards.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

The Magic of Martial Arts 🌭

Maybe you’ve always known this in your heart, but Karate is magic. And I don’t mean it has elements of ritualized mysticism– I mean it will give you a Chinese accent and the power to teleport children into and out of your Karate lair. I’m very excited to show you 1996’s The Magic of Martial Arts.

Karate is already violence we teach children, but The Magic of Martial Arts adapts it for kids. It speaks directly to an audience who believes their puppets come to life at night, and it’s singularly insane. It’s hosted by a man named Master Eastwest who is what happens when you combine the mystical orange belts of the East with the unearned confidence of the West.

My copy comes from an Ocean County library that described it as “DISCARDED.” And when a New Jersey librarian decides you’re trash, I know better than to put you in my VCR. So I did what any genius would do– I wired a trophy and a hot dog computer up to a yin-yang bird bath and projected the VHS tape from that. You can build one of these at home yourself if you believe enough in your Karate, and get your trophy and your sensei’s permission first.

The character of Master Eastwest is brought to life by Brandon Scott, an actor who once played a magician on an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati and who went on to become a “controversial UFO investigator.” He is affecting a voice like he came into the audition going, “AH SO SOLLY, ME MISTAH KARATE,” and the director said, “I love it, but take it down haaaaaalf a notch.”

After the tape tells you to go get your parents, Master Eastwest appears in a turquoise gi with dolphins on the arms and legs along with a rainbow yin-yang headband. In 1996, this was the exact costume children dressed their social studies homework in, so it reads less like “profound mysticism” and more like “ordinary Trapper Keeper.” He sings a ballad about Karate leading you down a path of mental freedom that turns into a bouncy melody about always running away from fights. If the key grip came into frame and said, “Not sure when you’ll see this, but sorry I couldn’t be there on your birthday, Brandon! There should be some Tuna Helper in the garage!,” I’d still think, “No one will ever be more disappointed than a viewer who rented this hoping to learn how to kick ass. They will never trust anyone or anything ever again.”

Master Eastwest is thousands of years old– the living spirit of Oriental fighting arts. From China to Japan, whenever an Asian was killed by hands or feet, Master Eastwest was there. “Wow,” two child actors add. None of this should be necessary to demonstrate the appeal of jump kicks to children, but Master Eastwest’s amalgamation of Oriental philosophies and sorceries seems very important to the filmmakers. It’s well-meaning racists whose exposure to Asian culture came from the safety warning on their throwing stars and nothing else, and normally that would just be my opinion. But I think this is a special case where I can conclusively prove The Magic of Martial Arts fails at its cultural appropriation.

As I mentioned, this tape was once in a public library, meaning it was given a Dewey Decimal Classification: 796.8. This categorizes it as “Combat Sports,” probably since there wasn’t a code for “Karate Kids Music But Weirder Than That Sounds.” But you know what there is a code for? “Oriental martial arts forms.”

Look, I get this is a weird digression, but I think it’s important. A librarian saw this VHS tape adorned with Eastern symbolism, made by a man dressed like a Cedar Creek Chinatown window jumping up and down and screaming he’s from the Orient, and they decided no– the state of New Jersey finds this to be not Oriental. It’s bureaucratically savage. It’d be like a record store putting Vanilla Ice in the “Comedy & Exercise” section.

Anyway, I rest my case, but after Master Eastwest, the legally not Oriental spirit of the Orient, explains his origin story, it cuts to two kids to reveal this was all a story being told by a young boy to the world’s most credulous girl. And since these filmmakers believe in magic, not second takes, the actress responds, “Wow. He’s ancient fossil.” He’s… he’s what? That’s what you got from all that? You know, this whole conversation is nuts. Let me show it to you, carefully transcribed, word-for-word:

This girl was told a lengthy history of a prehistoric Karate ghost who hides among us like a man and lives somewhere in a cave, and she is so eager to go there and be with him she promises. Fans of English will recognize that as a phrase missing a few words. What did she promise? Well, long after she makes it, the video explains this promise is to only use Karate when your life is in danger. It’s obviously a necessary step when becoming a living weapon, but presented like this it’s a reminder that children don’t have the best judgement. After all, this one heard an impossible story about a lonely white man who writes his own songs about cowardice and she is willing to do or swear anything to get into his cave to learn the most ordinary childhood skill.

She is transported inside, alone and confused. I don’t know how time works in the Karate cave, but she’s there at least long enough to consider how this might have been a mistake. Suddenly, Master Eastwest appears in her face! Facing the wrong way! Improvising Kung Fu movements! Casting a black girl in the role of “Kid Still Fucking Standing Here While This Bullshit Happens” was probably a mistake!

Master Eastwest eventually starts teaching everyone Karate after he’s certain you’ll never use it under any circumstances. It’s safe to say it’s not good Karate, maybe worse than pointless, but it gets kids worried about strangers murdering them in caves. Far too late for them, but maybe not for you.

Master Eastwest, or Señor Chinoracisto as he’s called in the South, starts by teaching one of the most important aspects of Karate– ducking. Well, not exactly teaching. He asks you to stand up and starts punching you in the face screaming, “DUCK! … DUCK! … DUCK! … DUCK!”

Maybe this is a New Jersey librarian thing to say, but if you change the word “DUCK!” to racial slurs, this is probably the same way Master Eastwest’s father taught him how to respect other cultures. So depending on how you interpreted “duck” you either know how to slip straight punches or you’ve trained yourself to bow directly into them. Either way, there is no door leading out of this cave, so it’s time to move on to screaming. Wait, first, let’s use our Karate to conjure juice.

Okay, now for screaming.

The “Kiai” is an expression of your Karate power! It’s awkward! Embarrassing! These unattended children abducted by magic from around the globe fucking love it!

Master Eastwest, a Dutch name meaning “Chow Mein Pizza,” isn’t really specific about punching and ducking, but there are a lot of things to go over when it comes to screaming. Unfortunately, no one is listening because he forgot to tell these kids what they’re supposed to do with their body during a kiai. It’s a loophole one awesome kid takes full advantage of by putting his entire soul into a kick with each scream. Little Dernell is kicking so hard he has to stop and put his outfit back together after each one. And while the failed birthday magician explains some long, secret history of Oriental shrieks, the other children become way more interested in young Dernell who clearly knows what Karate is all about.

The tape shows a few real world applications of Karate, like running away from school bullies or destroying the dick of a full grown adult mugger, but my favorite one comes when the little girl from earlier, who promised, gets a toy snatched away by her little sister and immediately threatens to kick her to death. Master Eastwest knew she was going to do this, so he followed her home and hid behind her couch. He leaps up, fingering the Karate Alarm!

Niaje’ steps back and stands at attention. She knows this person as the man who teaches her Karate in a cave. But her sister? To her, this is a white madman in her home– she has no reason to think she’s going to live. And remember, this is an Asian ghost who claims he can hear any child on the planet and teleport. So they should make a note of how this guy was just crouching behind their couch, waiting. “Kids, my Oriental powers are too depleted to warp back to my cave! There’s only one thing that can restore my abilities! I need to find… oh, but you couldn’t possibly be able to help, unless… no, there’s no way you have… a mommy’s swimsuit from the laundry?”

Master Eastwest reminds Niaje’ about her promise to never use Karate unless her life is in danger. And then, as if to prove she still doesn’t know when that will be, stays in her living room and starts dancing. He performs a song called “Three Deep It Out,” which is a fist-pumping Karate song about taking three deep breaths to calm yourself down. The girls know it and join in, and it is no exaggeration to say if their parents came home during this performance, they would react as if seeing their daughters neck-deep in the mouth of a boa constrictor.

I think I’ve made a strong case for how this shit is all the way crazy, but haven’t sold you on it being all the way racist yet. Fine, but what if I told you they stopped the vague Eastern mysticism to circle around two children while they performed an African dance for no reason, with no setup or explanation? You might say “nonsense,” or “You’re– y-you must be mistaking some common hip hop moves for Afric–“

Let me stop you right there, racist Karate apologist. Look at this:

Those kids are at the Zamunda consulate auditioning for Prince Akeem Joffer’s wedding. This is something that would get Rachel Dolezal to say, “A wonderful, enriching time was had by all at the Spokane Cultural Center.” Artistically speaking, this is like trying to whisper in your sleeping wife’s ear, “Karate can bring every culture in the world together,” but accidentally spraying a diarrhea swastika onto her biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. while you bite her ear off.

The last third of this tape is dance performances and awkward sparring matches demonstrating how ineffective Master Eastwest’s self-defense techniques are against even the gentlest untrained 8-year-olds. He watches silently from a rock as the children tug on one of the boys, not explaining if it’s a training drill or some kind of metaphor. If he turned around to grin at the camera and said, “This is absolutely a sex thing,” it would actually ease my mind a little.

It’s time to wrap up their musical self-defense VHS tape, so from a very normal place, the tender arms of her cave Karate teacher, a little Asian girl tells Master Eastwest, “I wanna be just like you when I grow up.”

Master Eastwest tells her, “You already are.”

She responds to this troubling insanity with the lack of surprise you can only get from untalented child actors and asks, “I am?”

“Yes,” he clarifies, before transporting her and all the kids into a forest where he has changed into his non-Karate clothes and a toupee.

Huh? He’s… got a secret identity? Or is this an innocent man who was only temporarily hosting the being known as Master Eastwest? The children are confused too. Was this his last act of Karate magic? Were they given drugs that are finally wearing off? Who made your wig, new guy? A New Jersey librarian’s back?

He tells the kids Master Eastwest also lives inside each one of them, but it comes across more like a warning or a curse than an inspiration they can take with them. Stripped of all his rainbows, dolphins, and baldness, these kids are starting to realize there’s something off about this Chinese-voiced white guy. “Surprise! Your first instincts were right! I’m an ordinary guy who is going to kill you!”

Whoever this man who was once Master Eastwest is, he looks like a police sketch of a driver who vanished with a full school bus. He’s dressed like he bought his outfit from a clerk at Party City who said, “Where did you find this? I thought they discontinued the ‘pedophile’ costume.” I have more questions, Rainbow Tribe Productions!  Why did the plot call for this? To teach us anyone can decide to be a magical racist with lethal hands and feet even if they’re not allowed within 500 feet of a playground? To whom would that be a comfort? Is there a couple out there right now thinking, “Dernell left for that Karate video shoot 24 years ago. It’s weird he’s not back yet.”

…
This article is brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Lane Haygood: Also known as Master Northsouth, an offensive collection of stereotypes about Swedes and Chileans.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Let’s Read: Problem Gun Dogs

In 1992, 179 pages of brave words conspired to escape the shackles of reality. Their plan did not work. As they were pulled back from the beyond, they were fused with a dog trainer’s diary of the same size to occupy a single book in a maddening, impossible arrangement of phrases and ideas. I can think of no other reason Problem Gun Dogs could exist.

The book jacket claims Bill Tarrant “has won practically every award given by the Dog Writer’s Association of America.” This sounded impressive, so I Googled their organization and found it does exist and they charge a $20 submission fee to award-seeking dog writers. Even assuming Bill won every time he submitted something, this accreditation cost him over four hundred dollars. As the saying goes, there is definitely glory in acclaimed dog writing, but all the actual money is in unacclaimed dog writing.

It’s tough to know where to start when talking about Problem Gun Dogs since there are definitely chapters and sections, but Bill Tarrant speaks in a mad combination of country dialect and gun dog jargon. He’s prone to long digressions about dogs he once knew and loved, how they fucked, the bitches they whipped, and I’m just now realizing I should have established Bill has never said a single thing without making it weird. When Bill asks a waitress for more milk, he definitely says, “Could you froth another pump of breast juice into this old dog hollerin’ hole of mine, toots? And extra creamy on the drip, thank you.” For instance, here is how he discusses the social hierarchy of a pack of hunting hounds:

We all know you’re not going to get through a book about female dogs without calling a few of them ordinary bitches. “Bitches” isn’t hurtful when a dog trainer uses it as a clinical term, kind of like when a doctor calls you an Eskimo. But why did Bill bring up how his sexual urges mirror that of dogs? Until I know more about you, that doesn’t help me understand dogs at all, Bill. Do they watch their wives with strangers, Bill? Is the humiliation a part of it, or is that something they’re afraid to let themselves think about too much? Bill, in the hypothetical, I’m an amateur pheasant hunter who bought your book because I keep accidentally shooting my dogs. So why did you bring up how the bitches make love like me, Bill? Should I… Bill, s-should this boner be here or not?

If I seem addled, it’s because I’ve just read Problem Gun Dogs. Here, let me help you get in the same state of mind.

The jargon is impenetrable and the instructions are unclear, and when Bill tries to explain something conversationally references his own life experiences which maybe aren’t as universal as he thinks. For instance, you know when your dog lays down and you need to pump it? Think of it like in grade school when you received your ritual beatings. Just put your expanded hand on its flank, then pump and pump until he balloons. Simple, right? And while you’re here answering questions for me, is it illegal to publish instructions on how to jerk off an English Setter? Because I… that has to be what I just typed, right?

There are a lot of awkward phrasing choices in Problem Gun Dogs Bill didn’t have to make. When science invents a way for horny dogs to write erotic fiction, you and I will be disgusted and confused. Bill Tarrant will be filing a plagiarism lawsuit. For instance, in his section on Endurance, a common word no one needs an explanation for, there are no dog fitness tips, but hundreds of words about how dog and hunter want, no desperately need, the thrusting and pumping– they’ve got to take it all, take every last inch on those wet, moonlit nights.

Let’s move on to something less strange like how to select the perfect duck dog:

The main problem you’re going to run into with the genitals and tits of your hunting companion is that they take a lot of abuse if they bash into things. It’s the kind of tip that’s so obvious one has to wonder why the author even added a Teats and Testicles section, much less why he kept it after the entirety of it ended up being, “them long balls are gonna take a real bruisin’ and beatin’ from the hardships of my kind of pumping.”

The book does have some illustrations, but like the elongated titties on a Pointer, they are rarely related to what Bill is or should be talking about. This one, for example, is a random picture of a dog watching its owner get ready to just fucking obliterate a pheasant. I mean, at this range, he’s bringing home a sandwich bag of cordite feather soup. If they want to get a full meal out of this bird they’re going to have to spoon it out of the dog’s bath water. I’m not an expert, though; this is only the 17th book on horny dog hunting I’ve read. And if I’m being honest, I barely know what Bill is talking about most of the time.

Can you understand that? Or this?

It is only 48 pages into the book and Bill already assumes we speak fluent Moonshined Gun Dog. This looks like a speech written to try to get a sign language interpreter fired. Which dog writing award did this win? Least Sense Anyone Has Fucking Ever Made (Non Stroke Division)? What’s Bill going to write about next? Maybe how he hates when uncredentialed strangers knock on his door and ask his wife if they can train dogs on his farm? Maybe a weird poem about that? Oh no, Bill! Bill, no! I was kidding!

D-did my cursed joke somehow cause this? This shit is crazy! This man stopped his book to showcase a two page poem about ungrateful strangers, again with no credentials, who are going to want to tromp your forest and stalk your pond with their dogs. What are you going to say? No? Yes, but I’m going to write poetry about this later?

This can’t possibly happen to Bill often enough he had to turn to poetry. This is a cowardly way of telling one specific duck hunter to fuck off. When local bait shop owner, Butch Goodwin, bought this book to support his friend Bill’s dog writing career he saw this poem and said, “What the fuck? This passive aggressive little bitch. If he didn’t want me pond stalkin’ on his land, he could have just sa– oh, here’s another section on dog tits!”

It’s hard to tell if Bill is full of shit or if he simply leads a uniquely insane and sad life, but here he is casually dropping the fact that his dogs are always running away and at least one of them left him and didn’t come back for years. And he thinks this is a trend! He thinks the future is one where more and more dogs will mysteriously vanish for long periods of time! I wish I could tell you more, but this is all the information he gives. Bill, what do I do with this bolting knowledge? Should I stop shooting birds to protect the future of dog and owner companionship? If I see your dog backpacking through Europe should I call to tell you she’s okay? Do you need the number of a fence guy?

Let’s get serious for a second. We should talk about Bite.

When you’re buying a hunting dog, try to find one whose upper jaw lines up with her lower jaw. If they don’t, she will… hold on, this can’t be right. Tear her babies apart during childbirth? He can’t possibly mea– no, he mentions it a second time. He definitely thinks the main trait to look for in a dog’s mouth is “least likely to rupture puppy bellies.” W-why do so many strange things keep happening to your dogs, Bill?

I wanted to show this somber picture of professional trainer Tom Lovett’s dogs taking some time to honor him and his dead grouse because this next story is very sad. It’s about Bill’s dead dog, but neither of the ones from the book’s dedication (Pooder and Renegade Pepe) or the countless who are missing and presumed bolted (unknown). And it’s not a story about shared love or bird conquest. It’s a story about how you don’t know what you’ve got until it incredibly, impossibly drops dead eating its evening meal like it’s been shot in the brain.

“There are a lot of dead dog stories,” says Bill after irreverently describing the impact of his dead terrier on the carpet. He died alone after a lifetime of rejection, which brings me to a point I’ve been struggling to bring up– this book contains a lot of creative ways to make a dog feel pain.

Bill admires professional trainer Delmar Smith’s ability to bash a dog in the face with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker prying the fingernails off a missing tourist. But even when you do it with the style and finesse of professional trainer Delmar Smith, whipping a dog with a rope knot is sort of barbaric. Come on, Bill. There’s got to be a more sophisticated way to torture a bi– wait, no! Bill, I wasn’t being serious! Oh no, I’ve made another terrible mistake!

Oh good, here’s something unpleasant you can do without rodeo training. You simply tie a nerve cord to your dog’s clove hitch above the carpal joint and it should cause the searing pain you need it to feel so you can properly murder a duck. What’s next, Bill? Are you going to chain a bunch of these dogs together by their nerve endings and abandon them? Oh fuck, why do I keep doing this? Bill, I didn’t know I had this terrible power! Past Bill, please stop putting my dark ideas into your book!

So I don’t know how this happened, but my careless jokes have somehow manifested themselves in the history of this dog author and his long line of missing and deceased pets. These bitches are furious, in screaming nerve pain, abandoned by the master they honored, and I’m worried I did it. Because what’s more likely– someone willingly admitting they did this in a book, or a comedy sorcerer putting an evil time curse on me?

Let me see if I can somehow reverse this. Electric shocks are bad. Electric shocks are a thing you don’t do to problem gun dogs.

Okay, I think it’s working! The pet weapons seem to have been downgraded to a single flyswatter, and Bill is strongly against the electric torture of problem gun dogs. Like very against it. In fact, Bill thinks electricity is ruining outdoor sporting. I think I might have overcorrected. Did Bill just call men who use fish detectors brain-dead Mother Nature rapists? Oh my God, I need to figure out how to calibrate these awful powers. Let’s try to get back to an acceptable level of madness. How about, I don’t know, we put a pigeon in a paper bag until it goes to sleep? And then we clip its toenails until the bird is bloodless? Yes, bloodless! Then we freeze it and place the wretched thing on a magic table! We shall call this sacred rite the Introduction to the Bird!

I mean, that’s nonsense. Impossible nonsense that could never be anything for any reason. Surely this will prove I never had these absurd powers to begin with. I mean, can you imagine thinking I could send ironic darkness back in time and have it manifest itself as a sincere dog torture manual? Ha ha ha ha…

Oh no, it’s real. It’s all real! What else have I done? What unspeakable horrors am I responsible for!? Will I, in this very moment, cause How to Good-bye Depression If you constrict anus 100 times every day. Malarkey? or Effective way? to have existed by saying Problem Gun Dogs is crazier than an ass kegel manual written in broken English? How do I stop it!?

Categories
NERDING DAY

The Thirteen Crappiest Dinosaurs! 🌭

Dinosaurs are awesome, but get less awesome every day. And I don’t mean we all age out of the magic and wonderment of giant lizards. I mean paleontologists, who ran out of cool names long ago, keep discovering new dino species and adding lame ass feathers to old ones. Have you seen a recent velociraptor picture? Every innovation in fossil science makes them look more like a murderer in a Big Bird costume. Let’s really talk about this.

My source for this scientifically essential article is 2016’s THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DINOSAURS & PREHISTORIC CREATURES. It rules, but points to a very dark future. Picture one day switching your Citibank-Fritos Environment FilterVisors to outgoing audio so your grandchildren hear, “When I was your age, prehistoric creatures were rad, not 200 versions of the same garbage chicke– Free outgoing audio use expired, please listen to the following sponsored content to continue hearing your grandparent or other complain: New for Disney*All^Ages members only: Filthy Outside Sister Fisting Real, Confirmed Brother Rated PG.” Holy crap, what is going on? This intro is off the goddamn rails. Let’s try again to get started on what should have been a very simple premise to establish:

That’s really what this is and what it’s called! You are in for such a fun treat today, 1900🌭 reader!

Utahraptor is what you change your Latter Day Saints private school mascot to after public pressure forces you to retire the Savage Drunkfoots. This thing has the haircut of a woman who has had sex with two different and entire Motley Crüe cover bands. Utahraptor should be playing stone guitar on a Flintstone’s birthday card that says “To a wonderful Nephew, you were born to BED-Rock!” When Velociraptor sees Utahraptor calling he says, “Oh, my desert trash cousin must need 600 bucks to post bail again.”

Are those little legs, Pachyrachis? You poor, sad thing. Should they have even given this evolutionary misstep a name? This is obviously almost a snake that hasn’t quite let go of its glory days as a lizard. What kind of asshole would even classify it during this awkward point in its genetic development? Pachyrachis is the taxonomic equivalent of immortalizing someone by the moustache they had when they were twelve. This is like writing an obituary for Ice T and using a picture from the movie where he was a kangaroo.

“Jesus, these bones belonged to a really crappy dinosaur. Hey, you know, we should name this one after Duncan. Shit, here he comes.”

“AHOY, GENTLEMEN! AND WHAT ARE MY LOVELY FELLOW PALEONTOLOGISTS TALKING ABOUT ON THIS FINE MORNING!?“

“We’ve discovered a new fossil record, Duncan! And I guess you caught us– we were talking about naming it after you, our respected colleague. Would you like that?”

“UM… HELL-OOHHH!? YES TIMES TEN, NAY INFINITY!“

One Submission to the Commission on Zoological Nomenclature Later…

“OH, REAL MATURE, GUYS. I SAW THAT SPINOSAURID YOU NAMED AFTER ‘ME.’ HIGH-LARIOUS! SO FUNNY I FORGOT TO LAUGH!“

You extrapolated a pretty sweet alligator dog from that handful of teeth, Sir Richard Owen! What are you going to call it? T-titanosuchus? Ha ha was Megalodicklicker already taken? This is what a Platyhystrix bully would call you in Permian school. Titanosuchus is what you would name a full-costume Godzilla porn parody. Wait, never mind, I just thought of Ho-Jira: Queen of the Monstercocks. Look, I think it’s crazy too, but the whole article is this. I’m not faking you out with the top third of a crazy one to surprise you with something good. Ho-Jira: Queen of the Monstercocks was the good.

You’re telling me some ancient earthworm decided to grow a little penis man on one of its ends? How dare it. I don’t care if you believe in God or science, we can all agree that fuck both of them for allowing Sineoamphisbaena to happen. And if either of them had given this thing a mouth and eyes all it would do is look at itself and scream. I believe the fossil records will support my theory that Sineoamphisbaena was uniquely adapted to do nothing except piss inside its own body until evolution invented a bird or fish disgusting enough to eat it. Biology should be fucking embarrassed.

Hey, Chungkingosaurus, what’s it like being a knockoff Stegosaurus named after canned chow mein noodles? You look like a testicle with every injury and disease. If anyone ever lays eyes on you they will absolutely assume their time machine badly fucked something up and go time crazy. Chungkingosaurus is like a mascot the People’s Republic of China would create to teach Uyghur children how to assemble garage door openers at a re-education camp.

“Hello? No, you have the wrong number; you’re looking for StegoSAURus. Right, bony plates, spike tail. No, no I’m the one with rooster legs and dead cat arms with a male pattern baldness skull. No, no, it’s no problem. It happens all the ti– hold on, someone’s calling on the other line. Hello? No, this is StegoCERas you have the wrong number. Right, CER not SAUR. No trouble! Easy mistake, happens all the time! Yeah, you too! Okay, I’m back. You still there? Hello?”

Look at you, you bug-eyed piece of shit. Nature put your legs on upside down so you could kick yourself in the crotch while you wait for something cooler to hunt you. Mesosaurus, you look like a Jurassic Park janitor emptied his mop into the crocodile DNA, and you sound like something Jar Jar Binks would say if he got hit with a dinosaur ray. This whole deal, I insist, is not some metaphor or something. I’m really still writing “The 13 Crappiest Dinosaurs” and the punchline for this entry relied on you remembering how Jar Jar Binks talked.

With the face of a dick and the tail of an uncircumsized dick, researchers had no choice but to give this thing the name Diictodon. And what’s he going to say about it? “Um, actually my name means not a phallus, but ‘two weasel teeth’?” Fuck you, nerd Dickisaur. Go back to the Penis epoch and squirt dino cream out of your face.

Longosuchus? Did the Cleveland Science Center let an XBOX subreddit vote on the name for their robot badger? Ludicrous. I’ve picked up enough Latin from this dinosaur book to know “Longosuchus” means “something a fun prostitute would put on a massage parlor menu.” Longosuchus is the most coveted rank in the Spartan army, not a dinosaur name.

Look at this rat-faced monstrosity. I guess science just started mixing animal parts together until it landed on a fur lizard with a dented skull and no natural defenses other than being too grotesque to behold. And some guy named Eric classified it as Ericiolacerta? Ericio Lacerta sounds like he should be a minor league shortstop sending private Facebook messages to your wife.

Arizona-fucking-saurus? This thing is something your Dimetrodon wife would hatch seven months after Ericio Lacerta rented out your guest room. Its remains were probably found next to a bag of fossilized drugs it was trying to eat before Triassic cops broke down its door. It looks like the star of a movie called Denise Richards Just Marries a Dinosaur and That Should Be Enough. You are dumber for having looked at it. Arizonasaurus is what a Tucson P.D. sketch artist would draw if you described the iguana who stole all your meth, you mean b-books.

The man leaned out the window of the stolen research van at first to vomit, but he decided no, that would be a waste of six kinds of bad tequila and one good scotch. He burped, “Science guys– dorks. Listen. No, fucking listen. This is, okay, fuuuuck I’m drunk. Ha ha no, seriously, listen: whatever bones you find in this bullshit rock? You name that dinosaur after me. After ME.” The stranger flipped off the paleontologists before explosively ramming their van into their dig site.

“We will,” Duncan promised the brave drinker. And a dinosaur scientist can never lie.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Hawk: Also called Hawkosaurus, Hawkoraptor, H. Rex, and for a good time on Friday nights.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Self-Defense Aerobics 🌭

Mixing two concepts together has been a part of our life since an industrious australopithecus invented Murder Stick Murder Rock, but the terrible power of one-thing-plus-a-different-thing was never fully felt until 1985 when Joe Corley, karate champion and world famous instructor, created Self-Defense Aerobics. You know that dull terror you feel when you read the news of Man and worry civilization is in a decline? It is. We peaked in 1985 when karate champion and world famous instructor, Joe Corley, created Self-Defense Aerobics. Hi, hot dog readers. I’m Seanbaby, karate instructor famous world champion, and there has never been a more perfect fighting system for eliminating an attacker during a barely contained state of arousal. Let’s get this out of the way right now, Self-Defense Aerobics: 10/10.

Self-Defense Aerobics proves art doesn’t have to be clever. If your fighting system is perfect for fitness and the office, you can say that with a picture of a lady sidekicking at the gym and then later at her accounting firm. It’s what photography critics call “Gasp, perfection.” The minimalist design is broken up by an extraneous, composition-destroying clutter of office supplies, as if the artist wants us to dread the chaos that comes from hiking up your business skirt and kicking a lobby intruder through a window and into the street. “Looks like you’re trying to take my job,” jokes security guard Gene as your attacker’s head is crushed by a taxi, long removed from your eyeline and interest. It’s art that says, “Self-Defense Aerobics is fucking stupid in the good way. And white-hot erotic.” It’s art that belongs in a museum.

The video begins with Joe Corley introducing no one, including himself, and instead explaining the very basic concept of exercise. He and the girls run in place, and if you think there’s something better than ’80s leotards mixed with a horny cameraman, congratulations on being the wrongest dumbshit.

After running in place for a few seconds and doing several burpees, we learn Cindy and Donna’s names after Joe asks them if they’re breathing. Like all good instructors, Joe assumes you have escaped fully-formed from a cloning pod knowing only hunger. For instance, in the next part of the video he introduces everyone to “jump ropes.” As he explains, and I quote, “The idea is to get this little skinny rope under your feet.” Donna is just terrible at this, but it fills her with a joy that’s almost obscene in a karate setting. She is so wonderfully happy, very wet, and if you had to pick only one thing to look at for the rest of your life, Donna sucking at jump rope would be a very good choice.

With only a half hour to teach you self defense, Joe dedicated ten entire minutes to explaining girl push ups and toe touches. I cannot stress enough how little martial arts there are in this video. Any viewer who walked away from this VHS tape thinking they could defend themself is either dead from poor judgement or extremely dead from attacks. But judging by the camera work, I don’t think the main goal of Self-Defense Aerobics was birthing mighty warriors.

The camera work in Self-Defense Aerobics is powerful and engaging. It looks like full creative control was given to a stranger who listed “Special Skills: Poontang” on his resume. It looks like a producer said, “I can tell by the boner you get what we’re going for here, kid. Follow those instincts and go to work.”

After 13 minutes, Joe teaches the ladies their first punch. A punch critic might notice a flaw here and there in Joe’s instructions or Cindy and Donna’s execution, but as far as winning smiles go, these are five star haymakers. Maybe you were way ahead of me on this, but I am just now realizing I have a weird hot girls doing bad karate thing. And I am not alone.

The word “gratuitous” gets thrown around a lot when a camera cuts to jiggling cleavage in the middle of a martial arts workout for the 17th time. But are pointless karate boob closeups “not art” simply because they were photographed by a moist leotard-sniffing pervert? Thirteen minutes and fifty five seconds ago I would have said, “of course.” Now I say, let’s see that footage you’re talking about, right away if possible.

Look at Cindy and Donna just fucking wrecking enemies from every direction. My gut still tells me it’s pornography, but it’s also lethal or worse martial arts. Can you imagine getting hit by one of these backfists? With human bones? Psh. Dead. Your friend too. And you again.

After four short rounds of punching, Joe teaches the girls karate’s greatest weapon and fitness’ fittest exercise– twenty or so low blocks. It’s honestly irresponsible to put this much power into the hands of someone when all you know about them is they own a VCR. If you watch this video more than three times and try to change a diaper, you will tear that baby’s legs clean off. That’s awful, I’m sorry, but my brain is doing everything it can to compensate for all my sexual impulses firing at once.

I swear I’m not exaggerating when I say the entire last third of this self-defense video is Joe, Cindy, and Donna laying down and gently kicking from the floor. The cinematographer, having trained his whole life for this, captures many generous closeups of Cindy’s groin and crotch. Cindy could send this tape to her gynecologist and save herself a trip to the health clinic. If you showed me the bumps on the head of Cindy’s newborn, I’d say, “Hey, I recognize those shapes.”

The video ends with a brief cooldown where Cindy and Donna, and I want to make sure I’m explaining this correctly, lay down on the ground as if they were dead. Joe explains this technique in slow, painstaking detail, stroking each part of Donna’s body as he names it. He has been wedged between these sexy women for a half hour of soaking wet, filthy karate and he’s by far more horny than you or I have ever been. As his fingers slide up Donna’s leotard, it is legitimate, edge-of-your-seat suspense when he starts to get near her titty. Scientists could calibrate their electron microscopes by how close Joe comes to groping this model in the middle of her workout cooldown.

So now we’ve learned what fitness is, sort of punched, very blocked, barely contained our boiling desires, and taken a nap. All that’s left to do is thank the people who made it possible…

… obviously with titties. What a perfect video cassette. Happy Punching Day, everyone!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, NickH: The slow pelvis touch of Nicks.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

1,001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic 🌭

As fans of the site know, in 1991, a talentless hack named Gregory Godek published 1001 Ways To Be Romantic. It was a poorly edited list of song titles and saccharine cliches useless to anyone except prison guards trying to de-escalate active sex crimes. But it was also a huge hit, so two years later, a less talented hack named Joe Magadatz published his “comedic” take on it: 1001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic. In several minutes, you will fucking hate Joe Magadatz. He is a bottle of novelty Fart Pills who wished to be real on a magic bottle of novelty Fart Pills.

The book claims to be “For Real Men” and “Frustrated Women” and “Couch Potatoes.” Wait, ha ha, did he say Couch Potatoes!? He went there immediately! If the inside of the book is anything like the cover, nobody is safe from the zings of Joe Magadatz who an unattributed quote calls “the Al Bundy of romance– the Homer Simpson of love.” And for a total fabrication, it’s pretty honest. The author absolutely has the sense of humor of a popular sitcom viewer with ordinary interests who strongly identifies with everyman characters. He might be closer to the “Andrew Dice Clay Album Owner of romance– the Bottle of Novelty Fart Pills Joke From Earlier of love,” but the point is he’s what any wacky dad joke enthusiast would call banal and contemptuous.

The back cover has five more unattributed quotes taken from rave book reviews Joe never went on to receive, and there was still some space left so Joe listed some chapter titles. They’re descriptive of nothing other than Joe Magadatz’s pedestrian zaniness. They’re from a production designer’s list of “MICHAEL SCOTT MUG IDEAS — MAYBES.”

This motherfucker named titles in his book “Excuuuuuuuuuuse Me!” and “Go Ahead, Make My Day!” and “Beam Me Up, Scotty” and was proud enough he put them on the back cover without context. He also has chapters called “Burp!” and “Going Bonkers” and “Hooters!” and “Aaaaauuuugh!” because once a writer realizes they’re satisfied with unaltered catchphrases from Saturday Night Live being complete jokes, they are free to simply type random words and sounds, schwing(!) queef ambulance.

Anyway, ugggggggggghhhhh, let’s get started with this bullshit.

Joe opens the book with a very indulgent About the Author section chronicling his adventures in leading an uninteresting life and never learning how to construct a joke. Which is a nightmare since he set out to write a 178 page “NOT!” joke and thinks “parody” means “sincere attempt at recreating the exact same thing but for less pleasant people.”

Joe is governed by one rule: if it has ever been on TV, saying the name of it is humor. In some ways this is a great parody of 1001 Ways To Be Romantic because it’s a panicked author, probably with a weird dick, but definitely out of ideas with 973 entries to go. And like Godek, once Joe has found a structure with modular parts, he will keep adding songs and TV shows until he has strangled all the joy out of it. He will set a joke in a world where “celebrating 7 Days of Superbowl Week” is a thing just to get one more precious step closer to finishing the thing he obviously hates. That’s what comedy is supposed to be, right? A cranky person grinding their teeth through a huge project any idiot could have known would be a nightmare? Anyway, I have several hundred more entries from 1001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic to get to.

Every now and then the book achieves its stated goal through open cruelty or passive aggression. If you think calling your wife fat and decorating your kitchen with pornography are, all by themselves, a complete punchline and set up to a joke, the word for that isn’t “Unromantic.” This is more like the answer to the question, “Ma’am, were there any warning signs leading up to your husband stabbing you?”

This was meant to be a hilarious skewering of a romance guide, but here we are reading a transcription of Jeff Foxworthy’s audio notes. “Note to self: something about The Three Stooges? Come on, Jeff– think.”

This dipshit gave himself the task of listing four cute differences between men and women and this is what he came up with. This is nothing. It’s not possible to say less about men and women than this. Of all the things women don’t do, the funniest ones he could think of were “read on the toilet” and “Air Guitar?” What about celebrating Superbowl Monday? What about celebrating Superbowl Thursday? What about stabbing your wife!?

I’m not actually sure where Joe was going with this. I only wanted to point out he’s wrong about comedy, but also everything. This would be a lazy entry in a book called Dumb, Pointless Things To Say About Drinks. In a book meant to hilariously skewer romantic advice it’s possibly the worst thing he could have written. There’s no whimsy or edge or truth. It’s less than not a joke– if a child found this on a candy wrapper, they’d assume they won some kind of Laffy Taffy Find-The-Jokeless-Wrapper Sweepstakes. Joe isn’t 10% done with his book and he’s already landed on the perfect closing argument for why he is incapable of writing it. He has utterly failed at a task with the lowest of expectations. This line is like an oil technician looking at your car and saying, “I’m going to fuck that big red bird with my ponis.”

From his chapter BURP!, Joe writes “Onion bagels.” as a complete thought. “So true,” thinks a hypothetical reader. “I can’t wait to see what he does for number 126. Oh my God, can you imagine?”

The other thing about Joe is that he’s a pedant. A lot of the book is spent attacking romantic cliches with the smug logic of a FOX News guest explaining how it’s actually the races who are the actual racists. Look at Joe fucking dismember champagne with the weapons of Aristotle. You ladies don’t like burping but you like champagne? Well, ha, let Joe tell you girls something you never knew about bubbles. Oh, and you say want men to help with the cleaning? Then explain why you get so mad at us when we sneak into your home and lick your bathtub spotless, so spotless. Check, um, mate.

Joe Magadatz looked at what he had done and thought, “One hundred forty nine jokes about relationships! That’s got to be a record for an oil technician’s lunch break!”

He began his ritual of dry masturbation on the break room toilet before returning to work when a 150th idea for a relationship joke occurred to him. Desperate to capture fleeting inspiration, he rushed back to his notebook and scribbled down his idea before it was lost to the workday bustle of fucking all those big red birds with his ponis. “Could it be this simple?” Joe said aloud. “Have I cracked the start of my next chapter!?”

The words seemed to glow on the page like a lost treasure. There it was. The perfect joke. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

If you were wondering how long it would take for Joe to bring up the holocaust and start telling racist jokes: 153 entries. Although it’s hard to call these racist “jokes.” They’re more like racist references. And even that’s not quite right since these aren’t traditional stereotypes. For instance, the intolerant don’t list their grievances with Latinos as “33% of them are bankers.” What Joe is doing here isn’t being racist– it’s suggesting the notion of racism itself is enough to be funny. Like how Eskimos.

“I mean, where’s the challenge in being romantic to a life-sized blow-up Barbie doll?”

– Joe Magadatz, 1993

I wanted to show you this one so you could see Joe’s remarkable decision, in a satire book, to include plugs for real sex devices. Any other writer would have made up a silly, outrageous romantic product, but Joe has chosen to say “Get a load of this wacky thing! Can you believe anyone would pork an inflatable woman? I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t ever! Anyway, here’s how you order one; the ‘Tina’ model has a waterproof milk reservoir in the butt! Don’t trust Tina’s idea of ‘waterproof’!”

Um, and guys, here’s a tip from ol’ Pedantic Joe: if your woman says she wants to be treated like an Equal, ask her if she really wants you to tear off her head and pour her into your coffee. You see, “equal” shares a name with a zero calorie sweetener, and I kill women.

I get we’re only having big laughs here, Joe, but let’s go over the premise. I need a woman who has dated me long enough to have a least favorite tie, but not long enough to introduce me to her parents, for whom she is planning a romantic evening which involves me. And I ruin it by smuggling in an unlikeable necktie. These are the unlikely circumstances that have to come together for this to be anything other than a stupid fuck stringing together random letters, Joe.

I have no notes for these three. Great stuff, Joe. I bet when Joe Magadatz sees a sheet of “I HATE MONDAYS” stickers he genuinely says out loud, “Oh no they gave this to the wrong guy! Ha ha ha, oh man. OH NO.”

Another wacky foible of this kidnapper-vibe scamp is that he seems to think Gregory Godek, author of 1001 Ways to Be Romantic, is some kind of high class sophisticate. Gregory J.P. Godek is the man who gives his wife a “Good for one free pizza, any toppings!” coupon every anniversary. He’s the man who gives his wife a “Good for one small pizza of YOUR choice (because you’va gotta pizza ov’a my heart)” coupon every birthday. He’s fucking trash. But to Joe, Godek is the fanciest of pants. I say all this because it will help you to understand Joe better if you realize he thinks parody means sneering at rich boy shit like “adult” dates who “tolerate sex” and eat at restaurants with silverware instead of “chili gloves.”

Here’s the thing: I’m both a leading genius and the only person who will ever read this book in its entirety, and I have no idea if Joe means “personal computer” or “political correctness,” or why he thinks “Partly Cloudy” is some kind of punchline. This entry, more than any others, is a genuine mystery. Was entry number 403 (buy a pool table) such a struggle his mind gave out? If this was published to give encoded commands to “Unromantics” embedded in our book stores, that would actually explain a lot. I admit I’m making a lot of wild speculations about who Joe is and why he wrote 1001 Ways NOT To Be Romantic, but it’s only because the simplest explanation -a man tried to be funny and missed by this goddamn much- seems too impossible to consider.

You might remember this one from earlier. Joe often returns to the rich comedy well of “You aren’t as pretty as the women I masturbate to, you bitch. You fat bitch.”

You have to consider how when Joe was writing this book, People Magazine gave the title of SEXIEST MAN ALIVE to Nick Nolte (left below). This had to have given average-looking men more unearned confidence than normal, which might explain why Joe feels comfortable implying how fat his wife is so soon after telling his fat wife she’s fat.

Okay, sure, this entry is basically the same as the last two, which are all the same as several others from earlier in the book, but Joe has added a bit of Fat Wife Science to explain how calling your wife fat in mid-February is more hurtful than, say, late-June. It’s still not funny, but all great comedians have to go through a phase where they humorlessly abuse women for a couple decades. I believe it was Mark Twain who once said, “The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue” while giving a thumbs up and then, “Your sad tits, my dear,” while giving a thumbs down.

“I’m barely halfway through this piece of shit book and I’m already so out of ideas I’m listing novelty gifts from novelty gift catalogs,” thinks Joe in a rare moment of self awareness. “Oh, did I do fart pills yet? Let’s see… what else is funny. Beavis and Butt-Head? Okay, but, like, how do I make it work for this book? Let’s see… oh. Oh my god, Joe. Joe you’ve done it again!”

Joe called his publisher and got the answering machine. He screamed, “Fuck you, Geraldine! Fuck. You. You told me you were going to need the advance back if I didn’t get you the 521st and 522nd entry by today? Well, fuck you, I crushed them. A mistletoe belt from a catalog I found, and listen to this, you cow: 522. Not romantic: Beavis and Butt-Head. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. You’re welcome. I’m keeping the money, Geraldine.”

He hung up, missing wildly and smashing his gross, weird dick. “Bitches!” he blamed.

This is not a gag, but a true story. Earlier in this very article I had a line where I said, “Call Joe whatever you want, but don’t call him… late for dinner!” It’s my standard placeholder for “character makes a dad joke to be determined later,” and then I saw he actually, sincerely wrote it. I know he’s probably still going through his Funny Side Up catalog from 75 entries ago and stealing more ideas, but however he came to be this thing he is, no God or science will ever create a more perfectly terrible sense of humor. Joe Magadatz is a world-class decathlete of funereal zaniness. He is a worst-case-scenario of a person reading bumper stickers out loud in a souvenir shop.

Once he got into the 600s, Joe went all-in on the premise of romance being for uppity snobs and unromance being for the workin’ man. And even that gets shaky. He is a weird, lonely man declaring cultural divides and assigning two groups of people who don’t exist to one side or the other without comedic observation. This book is the gasps of a drowning mind who saw a bottle of fart pills and thought, “This is exactly me! Why didn’t I think of this?” and then fucking found out. Imagine the existential terror Joe must be feeling at this point. Going into this, he was certain he was a “funny guy,” and now reality had proven how wrong he was, 604 times in a row and counting.

“Why won’t the ideas come? Where is my fart pills?” he whispered to his bathroom mirror. “Unromantics prefer steak to swordfish,” his reflection hissed back. “Go type it, you piece of shit. Go tell your readers Unromantics prefer steak to swordfish.”

Joe is so bad at joking, fucking, and writing, this book should have been a tear-soaked polaroid of his penis that says, “Go ahead and let it ruin your day, you fat, frigid bitch. It’s all it ever does. It’s all it will ever do!!! You want swordfish, but I don’t even have steeeaaaak!”

What the shit? This man spent two hundred entries explainin’ how real Unromantics like a little tractor grease on their ‘taters, and now he makes a sudden reference to Cubism and Giacometti? This is not a tone change. This is like stopping a wedding toast to pull off your face and shriek, “Your Trevor has been harvested, Emily and David beasts! Behold our true form!” Unromantics prefer Giacometti? How the, what? I don’t even know what is happening; I guess this one’s for the museum curators who love MADLibs but hate love? But the joke doesn’t work on them either. Does Joe think Alberto Giacometti took so much effort to vitalize the negative space surrounding his figure sculptures to not make passionate love within it!? Ridiculous.

I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear yet, what with all my comedy romping, but of all the troubling things in this book, the most troubling is how Joe Magadatz seems to think it’s the sex part of a relationship that’s particularly unromantic. I’m not saying I have enough to convict Joe of any sex crimes, but it’s suspicious how he finds the idea of any woman enjoying sex to be unthinkably absurd.

If you’re anything like me, you might have thought, “huh?” But assuming this isn’t another coded message for when the Unromantics are supposed to strike, April 15th is the day Lincoln died and the Titanic sank. It’s also the birthday of some other major tragedies– the Boston Marathon, America’s bombing of Libya, and the publishing of The Fountainhead. So, sure, Joe. If you have any of these dates memorized for some reason, you’re right. And as any comedy-head knows, being right about the date many people died is a sure laugh every time. December 8th! Wait, no, the 7th. Sorry I fucked up the joke.

With only 24 entries to go, Joe picked back up his Funny Side Up catalog, selected a random item and literally only contributed the words “Need I say more?” This is like the slowest NASCAR driver stopping after 196 laps to have sex with his sister. You could never have predicted such a total and insane failure, but you guess it sort of makes sense after it happens?

Let Joe make it very clear: he did not buy Sexual Positions: A Sensual Guide to Lovemaking at the, hey look at that, affordable price of $24.95 to share with a lover. Joe is too impish to type the word “tits,” but he absolutely wants you to know he jerked off to this video by himself. Remember 980 entries ago when you thought this would be a lifeless parody of the self-help/romance genre? Well it turned out to be one man’s war on women, and like all men who wage that war, it ended with him giving up, angrily pulling on his own dick to pictures of them, and vowing revenge. How hard would it have been to just do some silly or outrageous versions of those free pizza and backrub coupons?

Oh, he did. And they fucking suck too.

Edit: 11:30am 11/20/2020
Hot Dog reader Joe Dacey discovered something from the transcript of a podcast about “selling disruption” that will make total sense after you hear it: Joe Magadatz, the author of this parody of Gregory Godek’s book, was Gregory Godek himself. That’s how completely and perfectly awful Gregory Godek is.


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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Adrienne Hisbrook: who prefers IBMs and swordfish and actually likes Brancusi. Haha YOU know what we’re saying!