Nerds! Others! Come listen to EpiSSoDDe FiVVe of The Dogg Zzone 9000, the official podcast of the popular jokes n’ fun browser-page, 1900hotdog.com. Seanbaby and Brockway are joined by gentleman bastard, Brendan McGinley, comic expert and author to help explain the insanity, awesomeness, and goddamn stupidity of comic books.
From the Golden Age, Brendan brings us The Puppeteer, a gentle carver of puppets who works as a Puppeteer selling puppets of The Puppeteer, yet he hides a secret– he is actually the crimefighter and falconer known as The Puppeteer!
From the Modern Age, Brockway takes us on a journey through the mind of a tortured, moronic comic writer trying to make sense of his own script as he tackles organized religion using the best tool to do that — a teleporting elf! It’s one of many things inconceivably written by the comic’s disgraced and dumb-as-fuck author, Chuck Austen!
And from the Bronze Age, Seanbaby talks about the greatest story in the history of literature: The Time All the Avengers Died and Had to Fight Each Other and Also Dracula for the Fate of the Universe.
And of course, Dogg Zzone Ffans, Brendan and Brockway face off in the high-stakes world of SeanBBaby’s BOOk GGame. Who can plan the saddest meal for one in their Microwave? Their instincts, along with the recipes of tragic culinary fishwife, Sonia Allison, will decide! They’re doing battle inside MICROWAVE FOR ONE!
They cured obesity in 1987 and you fools missed it. I’m, of course, talking about Lose Weight Now: VIDEO HYPNOSIS WITH SUBLIMINALS, a VHS tape from the series Dick Sutphen’s Life-Changing VIDEO HYPNOSIS. For $19.95, viewers could allow Dick into their brain to reprogram them to be thinner in a half hour. It was never harder than that, yet here we are 33 years later inventing larger and larger sizes of pizza to satisfy you. Giant? Screaming Cowboy Giant? Life Raft Party Pie? We Let You Eat The Delivery Car? Come the fuck on, people. Let Dick Sutphen’s bewitching video cassette into your mind so he can help you replace these pizza names with Dick.
The cover Dick chose seems to be a human butt floating in a dream. I like this because it seems like something a sarcastic person would say if someone asked, “Does anyone have any ideas for the cover of this hypnosis weight loss tape?”
The copy on the box is less elegant. The back has 400 words about what hypnosis is, what subliminal messages are, a full transcription of the video itself, and a description of weight loss. Its stated goal is reprogramming your mind to lose weight which sounds unlikely, so the most important thing to establish to your audience is that you’re not fucking crazy. This does not do that. I’m not even sure what the title of this goddamn thing is. Going by AP Stylebook, Dick technically named this: “VIDEO HYPNOSIS Plus Audio & Video Subliminal Suggestions Lose Weight Now Generates an Eyes-Open Altered State of Consciousness. Two Kinds of Hypnosis and Two Kinds of Subliminal Programming Make This The Most Powerful Self-Help Programming In The World.” If it takes you that long to name and 40 times longer to explain an idea no more complicated than “weight loss hypnosis,” my first instinct is to not trust you to rewire my brain.
According to the sprawling wall of text on the back, the viewer will be hypnotized two different ways. One is with mesmerizing instructions and swirling colors. The other is with quick flashes of text commands. And even assuming these techniques are a real thing, I worry Dick doesn’t have the brevity required for subliminal commands. For instance, if he wanted you to “KIDNAP THE MAYOR” he would flash the words “My Trusted Love Companion Has Betrayed Me and Left Me for the Corrupt Mayor, Three Psychic Curses Upon His Penis, Which is to Say I’d Appreciate It if By Force You Brought Him to Me Using Ropes, Alive (Ropes are Like Rocks But Softer and Longer).” Jesus, am I still talking about just the box? I think Dick might already be in my head.
Nothing has ever been as exactly as you expect it as this VHS tape. It is some spiraling stars and shapes with Dick, an untalented voice actor, doing a bland take on psychotherapist cliches. And in true Dick fashion, he opens with several minutes of unnecessary explanation of how the fuck to watch TV. Want to hear his helpful tips! Look at the screen and “feel as you normally do when watching television.” It seems like there can’t possibly be more, but there is. He explains how TV watchers have clear minds fully open to alpha waves and subliminal messages, which is absurd because in 1987 TV watchers had frantic minds wondering what trouble Alf would find himself in next.
I suppose there’s no way to get around this since hypnosis is an exact science, but the first ten minutes of VIDEO HYPNOSIS Plus Audio & Video Subliminal Suggestions Lose Weight Now Generates an Eyes-Open Altered State of Consciousness. Two Kinds of Hypnosis and Two Kinds of Subliminal Programming Make This The Most Powerful Self-Help Programming In The World., which I’ll abbreviate to VHPA&VSSLWNGAE-OASOC.TKOHATKOSPMTTMPS-HPITW. from now on, is nothing more than “relaxing” breathing instructions. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen too many Super Friends fall prey to this, but when I hear a very slow, affected voice commanding me to obey, my first instinct is to attack before they can raise their psychic shields. It’s why I’ve never woken up in the middle of a bank robbery holding bags of cash while my eleven partners whisper, “One of us has left the hive. Find him.”
After 10 minutes of this, I’m starting to worry the pounds might come off too fast. I can’t wait to tell people the secret to weight loss was right there in front of us for 33 years– telling your TV to moan about relaxing until your brain is stupid enough to learn the dangers of food. It makes me wonder if Dick ever got bitter after he saw our sloshing avalanche into a national obesity crisis. Or did he feel responsible? Did he think, “This is all my fault. I should have made the tape that could have fixed all this a more inviting $14.95 (Higher in Canada).”
Thanks to the power of technology and my immunity to, kidnap the mayor, hypnotism, I was able to capture one of the video’s subliminal messages. In VCR Settings font it says “YOU EAT SMALLER PORTIONS AT MEALS” That’s it? Why not hypnotize me into hating ham? Or liking the taste of amphetamines? This is such a waste of unlikely sorcery. One other message is “YOU NOW CONTROL YOUR WEIGHT,” which seems like the only one I’d need. It also commands “YOU QUIT ALL SNACKING,” but you don’t need a degree in monkey paw studies to see how reprogramming a brain to be incapable of a common, ill-defined thing could lead to danger. If I’m on a hike do I have to bring candles and place settings to eat a granola bar? If it’s 3pm do I need a psychic notary to declare a sandwich a “late lunch?” Is anyone else’s mind screaming? Excuse me, is anyone else’s mind screaming, mind screaming?
Most of the messages are basic diet advice reconditioned for hypnotic commands, and when I say basic it seems virtually impossible to say anything dumber about dieting. If you grunted angrily at a plate of nachos any nutrition scientist would say, “That is the exact level of fitness expertise demonstrated in the hit hypnosis film, VHPA&VSSLWNGAE-OASOC.TKOHATKOSPMTTMPS-HPITW..
Despite owning probably more books and tapes on hypnotic suggestion than any living person, I wouldn’t say it’s my area of expertise. That being said, I don’t think this is good hypnosis. Dick jumps between first and second person a lot, which seem like big differences when your subconscious is planning a mayor kidnapping, excuse me, weight loss, snackless weight loss. He also seems to have no care for keeping a steady pace or tone. He’ll often stop and say, “That’s right!” as if he just blew the viewer’s mind with his idea of wishing really hard to be thin. And one of his subliminal commands is “THIN IS YOUR KEY WORD FOR CONDITIONED RESPONSE.” What the shit does that mean, Dick? That is merely the promise of future menace. What is going to happen to me when I am commanded to “thin,” Dick? And don’t say kidnap the mayor because, how did I get here, the mayor is already in my trunk! I am very thin and the mayor is in my trunk!
You already know this from all the times you’ve accidentally killed someone by misunderstanding tango instructions, but the body is lined with “pressure points,” or invisible buttons that control organs with magic. It isn’t much more complicated than that, but George Dillman still makes it easy in PRESSURE POINT KARATE MADE EASY.
Fifty years ago, George Dillman was “U.S. National Karate Champion” four times, whatever that means, and he’s husband to a woman who wears pajamas to Karate Book Picture Day and tells photographers, “No, I’m good. I ran a comb through it a few days ago.”
Before we start, let’s talk a little bit about George Dillman. This book was published in 1999 which came at a unique point in George’s Karate journey. It was six years after the debut of the Ultimate Fighting Championships, which as you may know, suggested the hilarious inadequacy of Karate when the other person is allowed to do non-Karate. This forced people with careers in traditional martial arts to pivot from “WE’LL TEACH YOU TO KILL WITH YOUR FUCKING HANDS” to “we will watch indoor children at affordable rates.”
Instead of starting daycares, some insecure Karate masters tried to rebrand themselves as wizards. George did both. His Karate evolved from punching potential muggers to teaching kids how to poke a body’s forbidden death spots. Long story short, this combined with his narcissistic personality disorder to convince himself he could knock people out without even touching them. And six years after he published this book, he was so deep in the delusion he seemed genuinely unprepared for it not to work in front of a National Geographic film crew. George stammered out a series of excuses about how the test subject who resisted his mightiest Karate waves must have had his toe or tongue in the secret force field spot. Karate analogies are not an exact science, but this was like a mechanic guessing your engine light came on because of un-journaled dreams and reading your confusion as a signal to put his penis in your husband’s hand. George unleashed such a profoundly embarrassing string of lies, the exact quote takes up half his Wikipedia page:
“The skeptic was a totally non-believer. Plus — I don’t know if I should say that on film — but if the guy had his tongue in the wrong position in the mouth, that can also nullify it. You can nullify it — you can nullify a lot of things. In fact, you can nullify it if you raise those two big toes! If I say I’m going to knock you out, and you raise one toe, and push one toe down… I can’t knock you out. And then, if I go to try again, you reverse it. If you keep doing this, I won’t knock you out.”
What George did here was incredible because the thing about martial arts is they don’t have to work. If you’re the shittiest Karate master in the world, the worst thing that can happen to you is a second Karate master has a different opinion about how you should kill hypothetical ninjas. And yet in an industry where there is no fail condition, George Dillman managed to do it. So as we read, keep in mind that after sixty years as a Karate celebrity and author, what the writer of this book is mainly remembered for is how his Karate doesn’t work.
Meet an eagle! He’s an unnamed Karate eagle who appears every few pages with a very stupid person’s idea of wisdom. Here he’s saying, “You want to BE a black belt, but are you willing to BECOME a black belt?” This intimidating message is a bit undercut by the picture of two little girls who seem to be saying, “We come here after school and wait for our dad to finish his Karate job. He said these belts normally cost $84, but he gets them for sixty. What? Seventy four? My sister says he still has to pay seventy four.”
Now that PRESSURE POINT KARATE MADE EASY has set the bar you need to clear at “mightier than a full-time sixth grader,” it’s time to learn Pressure Point Karate, easily. Well, not quite yet. A lot of this book is George Dillman’s personal photo album. And I don’t mean recent or relevant photos, but random vacation pictures and every single time he’s met a movie star. It seems indulgent past the point of sanity, but you don’t want to buy a book on combat acupuncture and find out on page 30 the author has never even met Billy Blanks.
The Photo Album section eventually ends, but George keeps including giant, pointless pictures of himself long after he’s started talking about Karate. Here he is going on about the philosophy and history of his once secret style of karate-jitsu and he can only fit one full paragraph on the goddamn page because he dedicated 3/4 of it to a glamor shot of him pulling some guy’s hair. Looking good, George. If this is your ancient style of fighting, it explains why 12-year-old girls excel at it.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone so unphotogenic force this many pictures of themselves onto the world. He has the features of a baby who kept a vow to never let his bones change shape and the figure of a baby without a funny second thing.
After this instruction book opens with twenty seven pages of instructionless narcissism, the Karate eagle appears to tell us “Real masters don’t brag! They are too busy learning more.” It’s right under a caption written by George Dillman explaining how George Dillman is one of the most respected and sought-after martial arts teachers in the world. This fucking guy looks like Estonia tried to make their own Gremlins 2, but as real master of comedy, Seanbaby refuses to mock a mentally ill person’s appearance. He is too busy crushing ass.
Finally, some pressure points! Here’s the chart for death-touching your enemy’s right arm. Want to shut down their large intestine? Okay, there are ten spots that do that. Number seven is “halfway between the elbow and the wrist” and it must be pretty big since there are starting points to start measuring from either of those locations. You can tell this is a real thing and not made up because of all the times you’ve seen volleyball players receive a serve and die there on the spot, blasting shit out of their mouth and pores.
Not all of the pressure points are meant to destroy organ function or cause cramps. Some of them are more like puppet strings? For instance, if you rub the Triple Warmer #11 up and down, it will make your enemy straighten their arm. This is great for after you kill someone and need their body to wave as if to say, “I’m fine! No one has killed me!” Anyway, I think it’s great this man who teaches children has created an elaborate fantasy world where he can kill with his fingers and, maybe unrelated, control exactly how bodies move by rubbing them.
The book limply tries to convince the reader that this is a special kind of Karate with practical combat uses, and the reason the old Karate never worked is because of a conspiracy to teach school-children bad Karate intentionally to keep them safe. This is what the rise of mixed martial arts did to the brains of Karate teachers. George almost certainly believes this because the alternative, that he’s spent his entire life learning a style of fighting he can’t use in a fight, is unthinkable.
There’s not even an internal logic to this shit. If school-children aren’t safe around effective Karate, why is your job teaching it to school-children? What changed your mind about putting the power of life and death into the hands of kids? You could have cut twenty pages of your photo album to explain why you were a part of this century-long conspiracy. And it seems outrageously irresponsible not to include a chart of which states allow you to shut down someone’s liver with your finger.
Here’s a great example of karate-jitsu, the secret style finally available to hopefully-not murderers. If an attacker grabs you by your elbow, put your arm four inches to the right and wait for them to run away and trip. When they say “EASY” in PRESSURE POINT KARATE MADE EASY, they mean you’ll be facing opponents who lose control of their nervous system near gently moving children.
I’m not saying this is a bad fighting move. I’m saying if scientists grafted Stephen Hawking’s cells onto chicken DNA to make an eyeless wad of feathers and all it could do was scream, it would instinctively respond to an attack more effectively than this karate-jitsu move. I’m saying if every government on the planet required its citizens to dedicate a year of their life to mastering this maneuver, all human life would end before it knocked over a single person outside of George Dillman’s beginner’s Karate class. If I saw this happen I would assume that guy stepped on his own tampon string.
Not all of George’s moves are as well thought out as “maybe just kind of throw your elbow-grabber with your elbow?” Here he demonstrates how to force one of your students to give you a footjob after they kick you in the dick. Karate eagle says, “The less handsome the Karate student, the less they’ll expect it!”
This is the kind of move two gentle brothers would invent when they’re six and eight, and love each other very much. I don’t think you need to be a champion kickboxer to know that if someone kicks you in the leg and you give theirs a cute hug, they got the better end of the deal. And now each of you is hopping on one foot for reasons George never explains. This isn’t the set up to some second sweet move– it’s just George not wanting to waste a super sweet picture of himself from his hairline’s good side. Plus, hang on a second– if a little girl can throw you into the ground when you’re attached to her elbow, imagine how far a grown man is going to send you flying with his whole leg. If karate-jitsu is to be believed, this is basically loading yourself into a catapult.
George reminds the reader many times how karate-jitsu is the good kind of Karate unlike karate-do, which is a trick played on children by long dead Okinawans. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s not like anyone can prove he’s wrong. He’s betting his career on how no one will ever do a blind study where they beat the shit out of kids to see which Karate instructor was right.
Fun Fact: That watchful man whose name George misspelled is Bob “Pit Bull” Golden. He helped develop this fighting style from “pressure point touching” to “no touching at all.” So if you were wondering how any of this could get any dumber, that’s how. These dumbshits invented “The Force.” Which brings me to my main point: there is no place on Earth more safe than directly in front of George Dillman after you’ve made love to his wife through the hole in her pajamas.
The Karate eagle has an “important secret of self-defense” here about how you can bend your own elbow. George doesn’t really make it clear how that’s helpful, but if you go into a kidnapping armed with the knowledge that bendable elbows are some kind of secret weapon, it will be your second unpleasant surprise of the day.
After a few pages listing general areas you can tickle to take command of someone’s organs, and a few almost sarcastically bad Karate moves, George forgets what the shit he’s doing in his own book. The entire last third, forty fucking pages, is taken up with a step-by-step kata. Not a modern karate-jitsu take on a kata, but the exact same imaginary fist fight our grandmothers performed to earn their yellow belts and then took to their grave without ever meeting the specific man it was choreographed to defeat.
Look at that fuck. George Dillman looks like something Willy Wonka would point to and say, “Here’s one of our finest soldiers guarding the peppermint brook from ghosts,” and then lean in close to whisper, “THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, BUT THAT OOMPA LOOMPA’S SKULL IS TOO SOFT FOR SLAVERY.”
Let’s go over what we’ve learned: several questionable battle techniques, which ’70s kung fu stars are actually really nice in person, and which dots on a woman’s body controls her elbow. George suggests you now know more than some black belts. This dork really thinks his badly edited photo album of children he failed to kill is his magnum opus. He thinks he’s given you a new future in this dying industry of grifters and nerds. Then, after finally wrapping things up, he adds one more thing. It’s, of course, a full-page glamor shot of himself pulling someone’s hair.
Okay, now, after finally wrapping things up and adding one last full-page glamor shot, he adds that same full-page glamor shot again, and I’m not kidding:
This time he’s really done, and the Karate eagle’s closing statement is “Some people say, Practice makes perfect. They’re wrong. Practice makes permanent; perfect practice makes perfect.” And speaking of, what a perfect thing to say after forty pages of a disgraced liar showing you still photos of how to practice fighting against an opponent whose moves you know ahead of time, who can’t give you feedback, and who also doesn’t exist. This is like Billy Blanks’ barber putting up a sign that says “Subtlety is an angel’s soft kiss; all hair should be very round on the top.”
… This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Doug Redmond: Who is both Billy Blanks Flat Top 2 and 6 – the most powerful flat top duo in history.
In 1982, Pac-Man was so popular one genre of book was “something, fucking anything, about Pac-Man.” This perfectly describes THE PAC-MAN RIDDLE AND JOKE BOOK. It’s a deconstruction of the entire concept of “something.” This is Plato’s Cave if the shadows on your wall were Pac-Man and everything behind you was Pac-Man. In fact, Plato should have called his stupid allegory “the cave adaptation of THE PAC-MAN RIDDLE AND JOKE BOOK.”
I talked about this book once before in a Cracked article, but never stopped thinking about it. There is not a single sane page within it– not one coherent riddle or joke. This is a decapitated head trying to add the sounds “pac” and “dot” to words with the last of its escaping brain blood.
This one is only to help ease you into what you can expect in THE PAC-MAN RIDDLE AND JOKE BOOK. I don’t have a joke about how Mike Thaler “America’s Riddle King” changed the name of a different video game to make a vague reference to Pac-Man’s own video game. Or maybe I do? Let me try. It’s sort of like if a Star Trek joke book said Captain Kirk’s favorite movie was Star Wars but they meant a star like you’d see in Star Trek, not the “Star” from the title of Star Wars? No, no, I was right. I don’t have a joke about this.
This is the least fun thing I’ve ever seen from the least functional fun delivery system. It is almost suspiciously exactly what I would put in a Pac-Man riddle and joke book if all I wanted to do was hurt children. We all knew what we were getting into, but try to imagine the disappointment of a bright-eyed 1982 Pac-Man fan. They opened this book for joy and saw the inventor of the pasteurization process, punned three different ways with the same word, illustrated by an artist any physical therapist would call, “My quadruple amputee who draws like he’s also missing a fucking mouth.”
Winni-Pac Canadot? More like “Dot-phisticated word-plac!” What’s it like getting annihilated like this, Canada? This is devastating– a masterclass in the power of satire. No matter our politics or beliefs, every lie we tell ourselves gets laid bare once we see something sacred to us get words from Pac-Man mashed into other words.
Nobody tags a joke like Mike Thaler “America’s Riddle King.” Look how he assaults you with his sense of humor. You’re still reeling from “Pac-Pong,” and he adds that, in addition to the pun, you should consider how Pac-Man’s known attributes of eating things and nothing else means he’s bad at the sport name he’s lampooning! There’s not really an industry term for this kind of hilarity combo. It’s the kind of comedy you normally only see when someone says something in Tagalog you can’t understand and then a nurse translates, “The doctor, he say both bullets in your liver. You die here in the Philippines.”
I wasn’t expecting “Pac-Man Goes to the Dentist” to be funny, but I definitely wasn’t expecting the dentist character to immediately reject the joke’s conceit. Why are we here if he doesn’t have teeth? Why would, in a universe where Pac-Men go to the dentist, this not come up until this stage of the dental appointment? This is like saying, “Welcome to the 72nd annual World Fart Championships! I’m Burp Peppers, and thanks for sticking around after the 73rd annual Chili Cook Off!” and having your friend respond, “What? No, I think your name is Frank something and this is an improv show in a bookstore! And it’s not even really that because the guy who screamed ‘fart contest’ is your co-worker! You’re both cops and I’m only here because my parole officer, the fart contest guy, said it would be a bad idea for a convicted child molester to also be an unsupportive friend. So here I am! Do you want me to come up there and, like, make up a song or something?”
Oh, fun; let’s do this one! Number One has got to be Half-“PAC!” And Four is, oh cute! That’s a back-“PAC!” And number 6 is… oh my god. Sperm PAnC? This is a Pac-Man sperm, right? B-but it can’t be from his balls since he’s made of just this one shape, so are you saying Pac-Man himself is one giant testicle? Are you fucking telling me that if Pac-Man turned his gaping mouth toward us, we would see a gnashing swamp of Pac-Man sper– wait. Rat “PAC.” My bad, I see it now. The Rat PAC with, like, I don’t know… Frank Sin-DOT-tra and Sammy BLINKY Junior? PACter Lawford? Dean… Dean Ms.-Pac-Man? Ha ha I can’t do it. It’s why you’re the tops, Mike! The Riddle King, baby!
I think it’s a bad sign when you see an abomination and you think, “Oh, thank God, this creature is part rat, not all sperm.” But these “What Kinds of Pacs Are These?” quizzes continue through the book and only get more perverse and disgusting.
How is Combover Centaur Pac-Man (5) more disturbing than Hairy Gonad Pecked By Bird Pac-Man (3) and Uncircumcised Pac-cid-Man (2). Combover Centaur Pac-Man is not a riddle– it’s a ritual marker for sex druids. It’s the birthmark on a newborn crawling out of a mass horse grave. If a stranger ever handed me this filthy thing…
… I would immediately start fighting for my life. And God help the cursed traveler who finds it on my dead body. My final words to you are these: You have five days to tame The Stallion and his frothing has already begun.
This isn’t all the way “racist,” but it’s as close to the line as I think a Pac-Man riddle book should get.
Here’s the, I guess, official Pac-Man origin? It seems like in 1982 they let writers do whatever the hell they wanted. I’ve written for some big IPs in my career and it’s absurd how many days I spent going back-and-forth with creative directors and their bosses about whether Dolph Ziggler would eat a human heart or if we could make it so Salacious Crumb has three spear-like penises that penetrate anywhere on his lover’s body like a bedbug. Mike just casually adds to Pac-Man’s canon, “he was formed when, I don’t know, a cheesecake came to life and murdered a waitress? suck my ass who gives a shit.”
W-what? So he’s the moon only… only a-also Pac-Man? No. No, I refuse this. As a representative of this Earth, I reject Pac-Moon. I declare whatever -this- is to be the enemy of my people.
Never at any point did Mike Thaler, the author of THE PAC-MAN RIDDLE AND JOKE BOOK, think, “Maybe this one doesn’t work.” If a word had any sound close to “dot” or “pac” in it, it went in. If a word had a “d” or a “p” that was fine too. No thought was given to whether something was funny or clever or appropriate for children. If Mike would have walked past a holocaust museum during the writing of this book, he would haverushed home repeating, “DOTschwitz, DOTschwitz, DOTschwitz, don’t forge– is that a new Pizza Hut? Oh my god, more like Pizza DOT! Don’t forget, Pizza DOT, Pizza DOT…”
I’m sort of being serious. The way Mike handles sensitive subjects with zero context and a childlike understanding of puns is grotesque. It’s like he’s trying to show his wild side in a Marmaduke fan letter. For instance, say someone was famously kidnapped and, after a series of sex crimes, forced to commit armed robbery. What’s the clumsiest way you could handle that with a Pac-Man pun? Oh, that’s an insane thing to try? An unthinkable thing no one would ever do?
Boom. This is why Mike Thaler is “America’s Riddle King” and we’re not. You and I think things like, “What a terrible loss it is when a child dies.” Mike Thaler thinks things like, “PAC-iatric cancer? Whooping DOT? Crib DOTh? There it is. Crib DOTh.”
Here’s a fun look behind-the-scenes of a 1-900-HOTDOG article. That joke is the end result of several minutes of wedging Pac-Man puns into tragic childhood ailments. I was all… “DOT-arrhea, small PACs, PAC-io, unDOTagnosed DOT-ism,” and when I stopped at “crib DOTh” I thought, “Jesus, I’ll definitely come back and soften that. I’m not sure a Pac-Man joke book warrants crib DOTh.” But then I got to this page in THE PAC-MAN RIDDLE AND JOKE BOOK where Mike actually published three of my less funny childhood DOT-sease ideas, and then repeated one of them.
So whether you agree with my criticism or not, here is very literally what happened: I tried to think of a joke the laziest, most humorless, pun-loving piece of shit would write about sick children. That was the task I gave myself. And the author of this book, Mike Thaler “America’s Riddle King,” published, word-for-word, three of the things in my maybe pile. So he’s not the worst writer I can imagine– he’s the deleted drafts rejected by that worst writer. And I’m truly humbled he went beyond my wildest imaginations by writing “Chicken Pacs” a second time, separated only by “Small Pacs.” It’s breathtaking. Beyond any wonder I’ve ever seen.
Psssst, children! Children, do you like riddles? You do? Oh, good! Grand!! Wonderful!!! Listen closely now: What. Pac-Man. Was a famous… murderer. Ha ha ha ha ha haaaa!!!
What? No, not Jeffrey Dot-mer, but that would have been good. No, not the Zodi-“Pac” Killer. No, I don’t mean A-“Dot” Hitler. O-or “Pac”mann Göring. Okay, stop, it’s not any of the Nazis, okay? Oh, it’s not Charles Pac-Manson but that’s better. Who’s Coral Eugene “Dots?” No, it’s not “Pac” Kevorkian eith– holy fuck what is wrong with you kids?
As you can see, most of the book is Mike performing the minimum amount of wordplay to legally count as a pun, but he eventually launches into a stream-of-consciousness story about what would happen if Pac-Man escaped his arcade cabinet. This could be interesting, right? Pac-Man is an immortal being of infinite hunger with no remorse or understanding let loose in a world of a silly writer’s imagination! Anyway, I’m not a psychologist, but from among the limitless possibilities available to Mike, the first activity his author surrogate selects is, “SNEAK UP ON A FAT WOMAN AND EAT THE CLOTHES OFF HER.”
It keeps going with Pac-Man eating a kid’s yo-yo, a leopard’s spots, a clown’s nose… if it’s roundish, Pac-Man takes it from you with no remorse or understanding. Each event is completely without whimsy. Did Mike Thaler ask a kindergarten class to name things that look like dots and think, “These fools are writing my entire book for me!” Is it a cautionary tale of what will happen when we unleash artificial intelligence? Is it the pornography of a man with a dotless fetish? Because it is not fucking anything close to riddles and jokes.
It is a relentlessly pointless series of events until Pac-Man eats a fruit stand. The cops had nothing to charge Pac-Man with when he was harassing animals and women, but they absolutely went after him once he started harming fruit. Pac-Man evades justice because he apparently brought arcade escape tunnels with him into this world, a terrifying hint at how the breach between our realities could have more serious ramifications than simple clown mutilation. And sure enough, the story ends the only way it ever could: an unstoppable Pac-Man heading straight for our delicious sun with no remorse or understanding. Have a nice “DOT,” I guess!
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Timmy Leahy: The PACster of his DOTmain whose PACking a huge DOT.
Two Learning Days ago we looked at Science 4 for Christian Schools, a textbook training children to kill the moon. It also covered tubed and untubed plants along with the latest confusion about the mysteries of electricity. I think we can all agree I, top-rated Internet’s me, was a delight when I made fun of it, but I’m not sure it’s fair dunking on a book made entirely out of stupid questions. So let’s take a look at a book made entirely out of stupid answers because, lucky us, I own a copy of the teacher’s guide for Science 4 for Christian Schools.
This homeschooling book lays a great foundation for a future in volunteer border patrols or cautionary zoo deaths. It seems to have been produced by taking a regular 4th grade science program and adding several chapters on how the moon can’t possibly be true, thus proving all science is fake. It’s something a mother would only teach her children if she was trying to get their brains soft enough to join her multi-level-marketing business.
The very first lesson the book is, you guessed it, using the moon to prove the limitations of science. If science can’t touch it, hear it, or taste it, science should shut the fuck up. And was science there to taste it when the moon was born? ANSWER ME. Oh, it wasn’t? Well then you’re done with Lesson One: Theories About the Moon’s Origin. None of this, and I mean all of this, means anything.
The 17th strangest thing about Christian education is how after they prove it’s pointless they keep going. So we are given a series of questions you as the teacher can ask your children about the moon. For instance, we all know the moon sucks and can’t exist, but what are the three ways it glorifies God? (holds messages, tells time, lights) And which type of God could magically make a whole universe? (a great one!) Those aren’t jokes! Those are Christian sciences!
Not all of the questions are fun, though. Question #7 is: What’s the point of this stupid fucking moon? The answer is, and I’m paraphrasing, to one day turn red and kill you. This is a fantastic type of crazy, and if I’m being honest, I don’t understand how homeschooled Christians didn’t end up being the coolest genre of people. If someone asks me about the moon I bore them to death with crater facts. A graduate of Science 4 for Christian Schools will tear off their shirt and scream, “Did you say moon!? Hurry! It can’t see you if you’re nude, wait, who sent you!? Show me the birthmark!”
Like all good scientists, we know disproving the moon’s origin isn’t as simple as saying “you weren’t there, checkmate.” What you need to do is, wait, this seems weird… send your child into the back yard and tell them to spin? Throw balls at them and discuss? I’m not even sure what angle to take to ridicule or debunk that. This is like declaring the sun is a hoax by gesturing at an unfinished game of Candyland. And then gesturing at it again and again before saying, “You know, this would make a great science textbook in honor of His majesty, Jesus Christ, help there are too many bees behind my eyes.”
I started off thinking this book was pointless, mainly because its first lesson was how all knowledge was pointless, but now I worry about handing knowledge this powerful to a child. If a game of dodgeball proves man is wrong about the moon, could tennis undo the cotton gin? Would not frisbee golf threaten to unravel our understanding of time? Secular science is completely lame in the face of these fantastic possibilities.
If you read the student version of this book, you know their section on electricity was a long complaint about how electricity is an invisible mystery no one can explain, and also a shout out to hair dryers. In order for you to teach this valuable lesson to your kids, ask them four questions:
One: Where does electricity come from? (No one knows for sure.)
Two: Can you see electricity (no)
Three: Where does electricity come from? (No one has figured it out since last time you asked.)
And Four: What are some times electricity has hurt you? (No right or wrong answers– this one is just for fun.)
It’s hard to think of any way a teacher or a student could fuck this lesson up. This is a group shrug (for beginners) with a lesson plan. I expect the section on Photosynthesis will just suggest I pull a knife on my kids and tell them they’re asking a whole lot of questions about photosynthawhatsits.
Speaking of questions, there are a few more regarding the moon.
Let me summarize. Here’s the science you know about the beginning of the moon, dipshits: none. Here’s who would know the science on that: um, maybe someone who was there? And let me check if that was fucking you: no. So using logic so plainly obvious it seems strange they bothered to write it down, the only one who could know where the moon came from is the unknowable being who conjured it. Whether or not He told someone about it is how we can tell fact from theory. Theories, if you can prove them, can become laws, but they can never become facts. And unprovable facts, or facts, are this science we’re discussing, but not science. Science is your enemy, help, the skull bees are back; free me from their terrible bites.
Very briefly, I want to review Plants with Tubes. As you recall, our lesson included how plants with tubes are true plants, liverworts may try to trick you, and nothing else. There is one thing to add, though. Liverworts are named after the ancient belief that they could cure liver disease, but science says maybe not. So now it’s a question of who we distrust more: science or the word of an untubed plant. Discuss this with your child (missing).
Now that we’re finished with biology, let’s get back to the moon. It moves around the Earth, but what if it didn’t? (We don’t have to guess because it happened.)
Discuss how awesome His marvelous power must have felt to the people of the book of Joshua while a stationary sun boiled them alive. (so awesome) Emphasize how God really did that shit. (Jesus Christ!) Ask them to name a single human who would even try something like that. (Hitler, maybe some Batman villains, answers may vary) Think what He might do to you if you refuse to accept the Sudden and Unexplainable Moon Theory (keep pushing Him, you goddamn kids, I dare you).
Welcome to Lesson 25: The Throat. I guess these Christian educators figured if none of this mattered, you and your children might as well build a fuckable robot mouth out of garbage?
We’re almost done, but there are a couple more things we need to discuss about the moon.
The Bible is vital to a Christian’s study of science, so don’t be afraid to use it to answer tough questions. For instance, what ingredients did God use when making the moon? (none) What kind of idiot would think the moon was made of something? (unsaved, foolish) What was electricity again? (fuck you, I don’t know) Thank you for your standing-sure-forever counsel, God. ( … )
Oh, sweet. There’s a Lasers chapter. And… it’s oddly comprehensive. There’s a lot of actual laser science and no mention of how they’re fake or an optometrist conspiracy to print Satanic messages on Lutheran corneas. So when your child graduates from Science 4 for Christian Schools, they will know two things: how nothing means anything, and how to build a real lightsaber. Five stars. 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
“Men! WHO CAN FIGURE THEM OUT?” are the first words 101 Ways to Get and Keep His Attention says to the reader, and I challenge any author to more quickly demonstrate how inadequate their book is going to be. In six words, Michelle McKinney Hammond has told her audience, “I not only have nothing original to say about the topic, I can’t even conceive of someone who does.” And she’s right! Let’s read her shitty book!
There are a few important things to mention right away. One, Michelle is very Christian, and this book is not for people who perform, discuss, or condone sex. Two, when this was published in 2003, she had already written 17 other books exactly like this and did not have 101 more romantic tips left inside her. And three, Michelle is looking pretty good. She’s a handsome and sturdy woman who could show up to church in her worst hat and still get a few offers to breed a family of strong sons. And you should always question romantic advice given by clearly fuckable people.
Book Backstory: This book’s previous owner bought it on sale from a place called CHRISTIAN OUTLET and made only two notes– she underlined one Bible quote about love and kept a list of “verses to look up” before she presumably died untouched and alone. I probably now own her copy of 101 Ways to Get and Keep His Attention because it went unsold at her estate sale! The less grim option is she is still alive and has simply given up on love! Can you imagine surrounding yourself with thousands of these books when your brain immediately and ceaselessly extrapolates dark histories like this?! I can! I can.
The book opens with lists of body parts, delicately avoiding the self-lubricating or nippled ones. Tip #1 is “Eyes” and tip #2 is “Lips,” a couple things you’ve heard of and are already heavily marketed to women as important. It’s a nuclear amount of obvious. No matter where you are, if you just hatched from an alien pod more than six feet from this book, you will literally not be able to avoid learning all this before you’ve crawled your way to it.
Michelle speaks poetically about all things as if they represent the majesty of His creation, but her main point is you should make your eyes and lips look nice. And here’s a fun tip: if you’re trying to clinically prove you’re unnecessary as an author and person, start your book about attracting men with, “Ladies, men can see your whole face! But would you believe they make decorative paints… for your eyes and lips?”
For tip #3, “A Welcoming Smile,” Michelle suggests your “grim lips are hiding the beautiful inner you.” That’s not anything. That’s a slide you’d expect to see at the launch of Google MindSmile, a new solution that generates weird sentences about smiles. And I’d argue by the time Michelle gets to tip #4, “Beautiful Teeth,” that’s close enough to “A Welcoming Smile” she’s already started repeating entries. So to be clear, in a book about 101 things, she has said two things you couldn’t possibly not know, gone insane, started repeating herself, and we have 97 things to go.
No one has ever so purposefully run an idea into the ground as quickly as this. I was promised 101 cute tips on luring Presbyterian dick and this woman is describing hands and arms to me. Tip #10 is fucking “Neck!” And it’s not about perfumes to rub on it or exercises you can do for it– it’s about how a neck can express, and I quote, “How dare you! Don’t you ever do that again! Stop right there. Don’t even think about getting any closer!” Oh, are those not enough things? She also suggests a neck can say, “Get back!” This woman sat down to write a guide on attracting men and she’s explaining what necks are and how they might be useful in defending against ape attacks. If 1994 Damon Wayans told you, “I have this new character I’m working on called Dicksuck Jackson,” listening to his pitch would have the exact same content as Michelle McKinney Hammond’s “Neck” entry.
“Yeah, girl, feet.”
– Michelle McKinney Hammond
Once she’s listed all the parts she’s comfortable talking about, Michelle suggests maybe having a hot body might work to attract men. She supports this with a Bible verse about how tits are like gazelles which was not one of the verses the book’s previous owner marked for further reflection.
I don’t know why I brought this one up because I have no notes on it. I honestly think this would work.
Michelle does concede 84 entries later that just having a regular body should work too. Look, do your best not to die, have all your holes with you, and that’ll probably do it. With those gazelle titties God gave you and that church full of foot perverts, you’re going to be fine, girl.
The gun pressed against Michelle’s head. “Say something obvious about brushing your teeth,” the unseen voice commanded.
“I already did! Several times! This book has so many mouth and teeth ones!” She tried to sound strong, but her voice betrayed her fear.
“Do another one,” the gunman growled. “We are trying to do more than get his attention. We need to KEEP it.”
Michelle took a deep breath. “Tooths are the moon and stars of the mou– no, wait. F-fresh breath is a… is a must! Uh, uh, especially if you want to be kissed! I did what you asked; let me go!”
“Not until you’re done. You said something obvious. Now say something weird.”
Michelle screamed her response, “Your breath carries life in it! It speaks of the woman within!”
The gunman must have been satisfied because he vanished into the shadows. “This is actually really good,” conceded Michelle as she saved her progress to the floppy drive.
Praying together isn’t just a fun activity for horny singles. When you synchronize your prayer you can determine which one of you God hates more. Yeah, science, girl.
The author slumped at her desk holding her head in her hands. “Come on, Michelle, just 24 entries to go. Think, think, think… what gets a man’s attention? What gets… wait, no. Could it really be that simple?” The word shone on her monitor like a glistening desert oasis. Woman.
“Thank you, Jesus, for this inspiration in my time of need,” the author whispered.
“ALSO FEET!” boomed a voice from all directions at once.
You might think there’s nothing stranger than listing body parts in a Christian guide for picking up men, but Michelle includes a chapter in this book called “Smell– The Scent of a Woman.” And it is all about smells. Like “Myrrh,” the embalming fluid inexplicably given to Jesus’ mom at her baby shower. What does this have to do with romance? Shit, I don’t know. The best she could come up with was, “A woman must carry herself with an air that expresses attributes of being able and willing to sacrifice at the appropriate times for love?” Which raises the question, are you happy with that, Michelle? Are you sure you’ve successfully adapted that child’s book report on the Gospel of Matthew into dating advice? Because it seems like you might have lost your entire goddamn fucking mind.
Even with me constantly reminding you and myself, it’s easy to lose sight of what the hell is going on here. This is a book by an accomplished romantic author intended to condense her vast knowledge of desirability down into 101 pieces of advice. And she has reserved one of those for raisins. Ladies, if I am listing your positive qualities and “she leaves raisins out” makes the top 101, you are a piece of trash. If anyone, ever, has complimented your raisins it’s because you had too many open sores to risk mentioning your face or body. If a man says, “You have the best raisins,” he’s really saying, “You are so ugly that if anyone catches us having sex I’m going to tear your wig off and pretend it was a fist fight.”
Pungent fruits? Say no more, girl. I am good to go.
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