Category: LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Crop Circles Resonance Cards 🌭

Post author By Lydia Bugg
Post date 08/21/2023
4 Comments on Learning Day: Crop Circles Resonance Cards 🌭

It’s time to stop paying for healthcare, everybody! What, you haven’t been? Great! The secret to healing has finally been revealed and it is shapes. Why didn’t we think of shapes sooner? Here, have some healing shapes; they’re based on crop circles and come in a crop circle resonance pack of 49 cards:

I know what you’re thinking: these high-quality, hand-assembled squiggles must be so expensive! Not so, my friend. It’s only $44.50 for 49 artisanal cards. That’s practically a steal when you consider they have to pay ET’s astronomical residual price for the IP.

The History Channel show Ancient Aliens featured a variety of “Alien Experts” who consider themselves an authority on stuff like crop circles. You’ve probably seen clips of the main Ancient Aliens guys like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos and Ariel Bar Tzadok, you know, the famous ones, but if you go deep, deep into the Ancient Aliens bench, you’ll find B-list alien expert Freddy Silva, creator of the crop circle resonance cards.

I don’t know if I trust a guy who looks like if cigarettes were a person to tell me how to heal myself. That’s probably why Freddy doesn’t heavily advertise his connection to the crop circle resonance cards. I only figured out they were his product because the instruction booklet directed me to cropcirclesecrets.org for additional information and most of the additional information was how to purchase Freddy Silva’s books. He primarily writes about aliens, but he also wrote one book about how dogs are cute.

On the section of his website where he sheepishly admits to creating the crop circle resonance cards, he says that while he was sharing his knowledge on detecting subtle energies at sacred temples, his audience of thousands was clamoring for a way to get some of that BHE (Big Healing Energy) without traveling to their local crop circle. Finding your local UFO landing site can be a hassle. Now you get all of the benefits of being abducted without all the surplus cow carcasses!

So, how exactly is a picture of a rejected spider man logo supposed to cure your IBS? Well, you see, the answer is DNA shapes, and so are these; therefore, it works. It’s just science, you guys. Here I’ll let the instruction booklet explain in far less detail.

This scientific word salad works for me. The ancient cultures did it, so it must be good for you! Back in the day, when a splinter could kill you, they really understood healing better than we do now. That logic is always solid.

Great news, you don’t need a medical degree to use these cards. You don’t even need to understand what an organism is. Imagine a doctor saying, “Unfortunately, you have measles but don’t worry, I have the cure; it’s three dots. Oh, those aren’t working for you? Try four dots; one has a weird little hand coming out of it. If that doesn’t cure you, we’re going to have to pull out the big guns. Yeah, that’s right, one dot.”

Using these cards is so easy you literally don’t have to do anything. The obligation to heal is placed on, as Freddy Silva so kindly phrases it, “the diseased person.” The aliens that made these crop circles want you to pull yourself up by your bootstrings and heal yourself. You have to choose the shape that will heal you the best. Pick a card, any card, but do it quickly before your appendix bursts!

So essentially, these cards are a medical Rorschach test meets Russian Roulette. You have to look at them, guess which disease you think they should heal, then hope you guessed correctly, or die. This might come out wrong, but if you’re one of those people who think every obscure blob looks a little bit like a penis or vagina, I hope you’re blessed with only genital diseases.

Again, if the healing doesn’t work, it is the diseased person’s fault. Don’t forget healing is a personal choice, and what does healing even mean anyway? Defining a healed person as someone who is alive is actually a little close-minded. Woke people understand that aliens consider death a form of healing. In fact, the Predator considers it the most efficient form of healing, and it made at least two-thirds of these crops circles for you.

If the Predator’s intent doesn’t come through the cards correctly and heal your bunions, that might not be what you actually need. According to these cards, the universe might think you need to die to learn your lesson. Wow, crop circle cards. That’s the darkest thought a one page pamphlet has ever conveyed to me. I bet Freddy Silva saw Final Destination and rooted for the inevitability of death.

Should you decide that you’re not happy with the universe teaching you a lesson by not healing you, there is a customer service email for the cards. You can just email your private medical information to the man from Ancient Aliens, and it will help you heal…somehow. Probably by adding you to his mailing list for future cute dog books as he hard pivots away from alien healing.

The thing that really gets me about these cards is we know crop circles aren’t real, even more than we know how most psychic phenomena aren’t real. Two British men named Doug and Dave admitted to producing over 200 crop circles starting when they were teenagers in the 1970s. They lived in a small town with not much else to do, and they decided to spend their weekends pranking the entire world for two full decades. That’s right, one of the greatest mysteries of the modern era was solved, and the solution was “Doug did it while he was trashed.”

If I find out one day that Doug and Dave did Stonehenge, too, I am going to be so pissed off. Of course, hardcore UFOlogists didn’t really care that Doug and Dave admitted to the crop circle hoax, even though several crop circle experts recognized them as two of the first on the scene at most crop circles – almost as if they knew where they were because they were WORKING WITH THE ALIENS. Caught you, Doug, and Dave.

Doug and Dave showed reporters old design drawings and photographs of themselves making the circles. They presented a truly overwhelming amount of proof, but some people just weren’t willing to let the crop circle dream die because they were making big crop circle money by that point. Again, it’s nearly $50 for some cards that aren’t even laminated! There’s a whole section in the instructions on caring for the cards that basically says, “Look, these are not very well made, so don’t touch them a bunch with your greasy little fingers while they’re healing you.” If you do, call me for wet card advice, I’m so alone.

So, when you use these cards to request healing from the subtle energies of the universe, you’re not actually relying on the intelligence of a high race of beings. You’re asking two elderly dudes from rural England. Granted, they seem like smart, chill guys who would probably heal you if they could. They had a bunch of people publicly claiming no human technology could produce crop circles for two decades before they came out and said, “lol we just used a board with a piece of string tied to it.”

By the way, if anyone is spontaneously healed by these circles (or killed if that’s what healing means to you), you owe 1900HOTDOG payment in the form of one of our approved currencies. We accept Hulk Hogan hats, your deepest secrets, or Malibu Comics.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Craig Lemoine, who is also a form of healing not approved by the government or recommended by any doctor.

Tags aliens, Free, grifters, new age

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The 2023 NHL Draft Lottery 🌭

Post author By Alex Schmidt
Post date 08/10/2023
6 Comments on Learning Day: The 2023 NHL Draft Lottery 🌭

The 2023 NHL Draft Lottery is an accursed video. You’d think it would be normal. Nope! It’s like if a boring regional business made a hostage video. It’s like if Dunder Mifflin kidnapped a hockey executive, and sent Scranton P.D. a threatening tape, but forgot to clear out the chintzy ball machine from Cringe Bingo Night. I can’t believe the NHL uploaded it at all. They uploaded it to their main YouTube channel. Me and more than 100,000 other sickos watched this.

What did we watch? A harried-yet-snorifying sports commissioner, describing ping pong pull logistics, whilst fidgeting between three ferns.

(Sean, please add the appropriate Gary Bettman showmanship to the attached screenshots.)

Okay maybe two ferns and a fig tree. I’m not a botanist. I am a person with a passing knowledge of sports. So I know the NHL is the world’s most prominent hockey league. A huge entertainment organization, with millions of fans…and apparently an allergy to entertaining. This huge NHL event is a snooze. A snooze! Even though hockey is – not to get too technical – a sport. Hockey is a sport. Sports are fun. You don’t have to agree with that claim, or feel that fun in your heart. I’m saying sports are by definition “fun.” They are a member of the “fun” category. Like circuses, and pony rides, and the Ginuwine song “Pony” inappropriately played to children at a circus. It’s like how an oil painting of a bowl of fruit is art. Whether you want that on your wall or not, you would define it as “art.” Hockey has that intrinsic “fun.” But somebody (everybody?) involved with the world’s top hockey league lost track of that here. For comparison, here’s the look and feel of the U.S.’s pro basketball league’s draft lottery:

That’s a show. With an audience. Because this is fun! Those teams are playing a lottery, i.e. gambling, i.e. fun. Then after the lottery, all the teams’ fans get an awesome new young guy to root for. It’s a joyous occasion. So the NBA’s draft lottery is a glitzy party. The sports drafts that follow are even bigger parties. The U.S.’s top football league held their draft in a giant public space this year, on a stage bigger than a football field, and more than 100,000 people tried to attend in person. They took over Kansas City to accommodate tens of thousands of draft goers, and they still had to turn people away at the gate. Because it’s fun! I don’t watch football anymore and this still looks fun to me:

That’s great. That’s like if the Bellagio was a city’s main square, in a good way. Meanwhile, in hockey land:

That experience is most of this video. For sixteen-plus minutes, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman gives a medium-effort explanation of arcane draft lottery rules. The camera framing gives equal emphasis to the National Hockey League’s next draft and the location of this conference room’s fire extinguisher. That’s the format for staring at Gary Bettman – a hockey commissioner so despised, he gets booed when he attends hockey games. The NHL serves up that guy, with no pizzazz or co-host, droning about policy changes from a recent NHL board of commissioners meeting. It reminded me of that time Jason Pargin revealed the low-key kink communities of YouTube. I wondered if this video’s other viewers have some kind of bureaucracy/minutiae hard-on. I turn my love of details and facts into something constructive, thank you very much. I don’t funnel it into a YouTube video of a hockey team called “The Anaheim Ducks” losing at Joyless Powerball.

A fun sports video should not make me wonder just how perverse the Internet can be. Especially not a hockey-related video. Hockey is more than classifiable as fun. Hockey is legit fun. Hockey is a series of supermen moving at terrifying speed, mounted on foot-swords, whilst always on the verge of (legally!) punching each other into unconsciousness. Hockey is so thrilling, they have to play most of the games in Canada, just to water down the excitement. Hockey is so cool, it made something interesting and organic happen in Ottawa. Yet when it comes time to see this video’s event, and discover the future of hockey, we get a video where almost all of the runtime could’ve been posted in a webpage’s fine print footer. An elderly man in an office building in Secaucus, New Jersey walks you through the potential results of drawing two sets of lottery balls. And he kicks it off with a bang:

Reminder: we are not watching this video live. It’s a recording they uploaded later. The NHL posted this with an untouched “uncle misunderstanding camcorder” at the beginning.

Imagine making this video. I can! I’ve filmed Internet videos in office spaces at a budget of zero dollars. In that circumstance, everything around you is a tool. I can relate to grabbing all the plants in the nearby conference rooms, and distributing them spread-out-ish-ly for decor. That’s free. That fits your budget. You know what else is free? A little verve. A bit of showmanship. A pre-taping rehearsal of the physical act of holding up today’s newspaper.

In this video, Gary Bettman holds up today’s newspaper to prove it is today. You know: like in a hostage video. That guy is essentially the CEO of hockey. That’s a cool job. Why are we watching him do proof-of-life drudgery? It feels like he got kidnapped by the league office’s nighttime janitor.

Good news: this guy (NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman) is not the only member of our cast of characters. Our ensémble includes such thrilling stars as Scott Clark Of Accounting Firm Ernst And Young. You know: Scott Clark! Of Accounting Firm Ernst And Young! And I’m sure you started a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ as soon as the camera panned to him, in the very first camera movement of the entire video, more than four minutes in.

The next reveal is even better. This draft lottery was attended by two representatives of NHL teams! Which is weird. Normally, in entertaining leagues, every team sends somebody to the lottery. Then those guys have some kind of active role: opening an envelope, reading their team’s name, wearing fashions the rest of us find humorous. That’s standard draft lottery entertainment stuff. It’s what these basketball guys are doing:

Does the NHL set up less than a hundred bucks worth of logo podiums for their teams? They do not. In the NHL, they only convince two teams, out of sixteen teams, to send a guy to this event. The two guys who turned up have nothing to do. And the staging of their reveal is “now please wave at the camera from a plastic folding table you did not think we’d film.”

The commissioner then gives that “[not actually your uncle but we call him that] bugging you” treatment to three reporters…

…before directing the camera back onto himself. Then, he asks if anyone has any questions. Seriously: he does a classroom teacher style “are there any questions?”, at the NHL Draft Lottery. He even asks for questions with that Inexperienced Teacher vibe, where he’s outwardly disappointed in the group when nobody pipes up.

“Are there any questions” is a bonkers agenda item here. Why bother? How would that impact anything? Also, all the people in this room are either league officials or reporters. If they ask a question, they are presenting themselves as incompetent at their job. All the less-than-a-dozen guys in this stale room are paid salaries and health insurance to know this event’s “inside puckball” details. Don’t bother stopping to ask for questions, Gary. That’s like if a Taylor Swift show ground to a halt to make sure everybody knows the name of the sparkly lady.

After that beat of “is the class even paying attention?”, we get a thrilling twist. We meet our story’s handsome young lothario. I say “lothario” because I assume that word is a contraction of “lottery technician.” Gary brings in lottery technician “Martin Gorba[muffled].” Martin enters the frame, to operate the ping pong ball device. This entrance is when the league’s flair for showmanship sparkles:

Oh heck yeah! Let’s let ‘er rip!!! I’m on the edge of my seat for the [reading that video screen as it is staged] 202023 DRDRRAFT LOTTETERY. I gotta say, bit of a wonky text alignment with the machine there. But hey, who could’ve predicted a glass cylinder would bend that image? No time to resolve that! The NHL’s burliest setup interns aren’t on hand. They’re several floors away, scavenging a fourth decor ficus.

I do want to celebrate Martin. He’s wearing black on black on black on black, in a way that visually highlights his industrial lotto machine speed-changer. Or maybe they asked him to dress like a hockey puck? Either way, he’s both manning the machine and navigating the erotic charge between himself and Gary. Sparks fly as Gary and Martin enjoy enough physical space for them to walk around each other, but only sort of enough physical space.

Martin is the third person in this video with a job to do. The second was Accountant Scott Clark Of Accounting Firm Ernst And Young. And after Gary and Martin select a few balls, we find out who gets the first pick in the draft…right? That would be what any viewer wants. But nope, not right, not yet. You see, the balls are not the teams. The balls are confusingly linked to a coded numbered system, in a way that ties the statistical odds of a lottery win to the inverse points standings of the previous hockey season’s [you skip ahead seventeen paragraphs in this article] and finally, read to Accountant Scott Clark. Scott Clark hears these numbers, then quietly looks at a stapled packet of paper. Then Scott whispers a city name to the commissioner. The commissioner then blurts that city, louder, to us, while mid-pivot. That is the dramatic reveal of which hockey team won the draft lottery. This lottery is legitimately a big deal! But it’s got all the thrill of your boss remembering to tell you there’s a package in the mailroom.

Bonus points to Martin for punching up this moment, by doing slick mob stuff with his jacket and hands. “Youse pickin’ foist Chick-agh-goh. Youse pickin’ foist.”

Let me pause the column for the non-sportsheads among you. The above screenshot is an earth-shaking moment in hockey history. It is the moment when Chicago’s hockey team got the first pick in the annual draft. That is a big deal. It’s an especially big deal this year. This year, scouts say the likely top pick is the best player of his generation. So everyone knew this draft lottery had Actual Lottery For Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars stakes. It’s major news which multi-million human fanbase gets to root for that super-talented guy, and which other multi-million humans will settle for a different consolation Canadian. Yet for some reason, the NHL chose to under-undersell this event. Again, I’ve made videos with zero dollar budgets in office buildings. I’m both upset and thrilled that I could’ve done this better. Heck, it’s even easier to shoot than the basketball version. It’s hard to keep a whole basketball player in the frame. Look at the most recent basketball draft. The spooky pallid “short” man in this photo stands six foot three.

Also, that is a nice photo. Basketball’s whole operation tends to be well-presented. They celebrate their new class of talent with a well-lit parade of beauteous slendermen. Hockey celebrates their version with a hostage video. The room is so beige, and the camera is so inert, it approaches the vibe of sad pornography. It also super, super doesn’t feel like pornography (Martin’s too angelic). But the action on camera feels obligatory for all involved. And at the end, it achieves full Hostage Mode:

That’s right: the NHL bothered to post and share this piece of mandatory legal evidence. The actual announcement happened on U.S. and Canadian sports channels. I’m guessing they let the sports show anchors make it funner. Maybe they light a fireworks array that spells “Chicago”, or pull the news out of a hot dog with too many vegetables on it. You know: showmanship! This entire video is not that. They taped this to prove their draft lottery happened in a not-rigged way. It is a grim exercise in airtight legal surety. And it does make sense that the National Hockey League taped that. There’s a history of other leagues, such as the Slenderman Association, allegedly rigging these lotteries. The theory is that they rig things so the cool and big teams get the cool and literally big players, because it’s more lucrative for New York and Chicago to beat Podunksville and East Podunksville. That suspicion clouds all sports draft lotteries. The NHL wanted to avoid that. So they posted this, and achieved that purpose. We’re all sure this NHL draft lottery was not rigged. Right? Right. Right! That must be the end of the column. I do see more words below this, but surely that’s the end of MY DEAR HOTDOGGER: I am thrilled to report the NHL’s video made me more suspicious of their draft lottery, not less. There is a yawning, gaping hole in their proof of above-board drafting. Because this video puts every element of the draft lottery process on screen…until the exact moment when they are pulling the balls.

Shocking twist: a fourth guy has a job here! A person we never see gets told to turn around and not look, and then call out the timing of lottery ball selections. We do not see him turn around. We just trust that he did that. Also the NHL wants us to believe my beautiful giant son Martin couldn’t get a ball machine with a gizmo that picks the balls for you. Those exist! But instead, they used a mysterious off-screen ball-caller. And then this draft lottery hands a generational hockey player to the huge-market hockey team in Chicago. Fun fact: Chicago won this lottery at an all-time low point in the team’s public image and reputation. Not to mention, a time of looming Chicago Hockey Team name change pressure. They haven’t even begun to address those problems. Chicago really, really needs a piece of good news to cushion the pain of all that. And oh, wow, they happened to leapfrog two worse teams to get that good news. It’s fishy. It’s fishier than the gross mollusk-based “hat trick” tradition in Detroit. And more than a hundred thousand of us saw the evidence. So there’s our accursed element, folks. This video isn’t just the dopiest anti-entertainment I’ve ever seen. It’s also the source of a grim, plausible NHL conspiracy theory. We thought we’d only consider this footage for a day. Instead, we’ll wonder if that guy turned around and looked away from the ball machine for a lifetime.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Brianne Whitney, the Martin Gorba[muffled] of the San Quentin M[muffled]m Secu[muffled] Pris[muffled] intermediary co-ed [muffled]ball team from 19[muffled] to presen[muffled].

Tags best of 2023, Free, Sports, tv

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Truth About S.T.D’.s

Post author By Seanbaby
Post date 07/28/2023
15 Comments on Learning Day: The Truth About S.T.D’.s

Tags books, sex

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Is We Is, Or Is We Isn’t? 🌭

Post author By Robert Brockway
Post date 07/27/2023
16 Comments on Learning Day: Is We Is, Or Is We Isn’t? 🌭

1987. Flora, Illinois did not have a lot going for it. It was a farming town of about 5,000 people, where you spent your life getting drunk atop a thresher and your retirement plan was getting too drunk atop a thresher. Flora needed help, and there was only one solution: have the entire town execute escalating publicity stunts to appease a power-mad governor who gifts prisons.

You know, that old chestnut. A tale as old as this country, practically Americana. “Gonna start me, HUH / a hot air balloon raaace / just to get a prison / put up in this place, rock on” sang John Cougar Mellencamp, in the original draft of “Jack & Diane.”

Today we think of American prisons as a maelstrom of societal failure, but to 1980s Flora it just meant jobs where you didn’t dry-drown in a corn silo. So when mad emperor Governor Jim Thompson started distributing prisons to his favorite jesters, Flora petitioned him through official channels. Twice. It didn’t work. If you want a new castle from Nero you don’t write the motherfucker a proposal, you paint his name on a cow, slaughter it in front of him, and hope he claps.

The next time the prison raffle came up, they knew it required a grand gesture, so the civic leaders of Flora, Illinois got together and came up with an idea: Serenade Governor Jim Thompson with a pleading country song in the style of a whiny toddler.

A sound plan, but you need an insane mogul to appease another insane mogul. It’s like how you can only get rid of a monkey infestation by unleashing more vicious monkeys. They enlisted the help of oil tycoon Bill Snyder, who wanted to get into country music the same way Elon Musk wants to get into the public zeitgeist: unwanted, but willing to spend a fortune to find that out. He paired up with the town’s former police chief, Ed Guyott, why the fuck not, and together they formed Chief Ed Guyott and the Long Arm of the Law Band. They cut a single called “All We Want’sa Prison.”

It sucked in ways you can never expect, a country dirge sung by a fussy baby, with prideless lyrics utterly debasing themselves before the Ra-like might of an Illinois governor.

It’s exactly what a power-mad narcissist would love. It should have worked. Instead, the prison went to a town that painted their football field for Thompson and sent his secretary flowers.

Flora had to be ready for the next prison raffle. Jack Thatcher, owner of the local newspaper, gathered the Flora braintrust and started planning. They needed novelty. Attention. Something not just praising Governor Jim Thompson, but also prostrating themselves. Something stupid, embarrassing, and very public.

It was 1987. They were white people with no rhythm. You know exactly what they were going to do.

They were going to rap.

It wasn’t a fun, impromptu thing. They strategized every detail of this, they had the entire marketing plan locked down before they even wrote the song. It had to be bite-sized so it could fit into desperate ‘local color’ news segments. They’d exploit Jack Thatcher’s news contacts to get it off the ground. They studied the media landscape daily to ensure their release date wouldn’t go up against some major breaking news.

Bill Snyder, still the area’s foremost oil maniac, wanted to get into the rap scene in the same way Elon Musk wants to be respected by his father: Unwanted, but willing to spend a fortune to find that out. He formed all the civic heads of Flora, Illinois, into a kind of boy band. Snyder carefully crafted their lyrics to match their personas: Mike Springstein, newspaper editor, would be the young buck. Jack Thatcher, newspaper publisher, would be the wild card. Former police chief Ed Guyott was the sensitive one. Mayor Charlie Overstreet would be the streetwise hustler. Probation officer Bill Ridgeway would be the wild card. Current police chief Willie Thompson would be the sexual powerhouse. And railroad man Frank “Meatball” Zimmerman? Pure wild card.

There was just one problem: Bill Snyder knew nothing about hip hop. There was just one more problem: Each rapper would only have a single rhyming couplet. There were just several more problems, we’ll get into them.

It was enough to start, anyway: They roped a local TV station in to shoot the video, the entire town was given an unofficial day off, school was canceled. Its name was Flora and it was here to say, it likes to hip and hop in a very cool way.

They were called The Barbed Wire Choir, and their single was “Is We Is Or Is We Isn’t (Gonna Get Ourselves A Prison?)” Maybe there are racial problems with that phrasing. Maybe Flora should have been petitioning for a school instead. But that’s not important in the face of moves like this:

That’s Mike Springstein, newspaper editor and youngest member of the choir by an order of decades. He’s here to bring that youthful energy as he croons-

It’s desperate, it’s soulful, it’s how the least popular BTS boy would ask for your panties, understanding a “gross” is inevitable. It’s followed by the kind of saxophone solo that has to pay child support. This is the right way to kick off a rapping plea to a power-mad governor for prison construction.

HONK!

You better hide your girls and your 36 oz. steaks.

Rollin’ up Boss Hogg style, complete with hat whomp, it’s Mayor Charlie Overstreet. You know it’s the mayor by the stunning white Cadillac, the enormous steer horns, and also the tiny “MAYOR” sign handwritten by a corn-hooch drunk silo orphan.

Wearing an all-white suit is a power move when you drink this much barbecue sauce. Drop your verse, high-roller.

There’s a sick synth breakdown, whoever’s rocking these beats is doing it like it might be their last act on earth. I can’t wait to meet the DJ spinning this shit.

It’s a fitting intro for wild card Jack Thatcher, who spits his words with peak Beastie Boys attitude, by which I mean daring the camera to question his hat choice.

Next up is-

Next up is the whole choir rapping that funky chorus. They’re collectively older than a redwood and their flow is downright laminar.

Let’s take it down a notch with the sensitive one, former police chief Ed Guyott.

Even in a novelty prison rap openly begging for state scraps, it’s still Ed’s job to be the embarrassing one. Somebody has to lay on that sword, and Ed has the unshakeable confidence of a man who wears transition lenses.

Damn, there’s another nasty synth breakdown here, some cutting guitars burst through it like a Miami Vice chase scene. A speedboat one. We need to meet this DJ-

-before he passes beyond this earthly realm.

Yeah, DJ Walter’s got an AARP card: Ass Assaulting Rap Punisha. Yeah, he’s also got a normal AARP card, there are some good deals in there.

Those ancient beats break and scatter like the ladies of Shady Pines’ hipbones after Walter finishes his set. Because here comes the new hotboy in town – I’m talking about Flora’s chief willie, Chief Willie Thompson.

Chief Willie knows he’s packing 260 pounds of love in a 253 pound body. He moves like the Bee Gees were stung by many bees, and he’s got the kind of saucy jaunt you only learn from a lifetime of busting truck stop prostitutes.

You’d better check your melanin levels, because here comes some police brutality:

Oh shit, he went for the latina headwobble! Chief Willie Thompson is an ethnic changeling, absorbing the powers of any minority he busts.

He tagteams with Bill Ridgeway, rapping probation officer, who brings to mind the filthy slyness of an Eazy-E.

Okay, maybe a Flavor Flav. But he knows how to work a crowd. The whole jury chimes in-

Before voting to unanimously indict Bill Ridgeway for improper use of courtroom resources.

Throw it to the choir.

Hell yeah, I haven’t seen that much broken joyless hopping since I accidentally stepped on a frog as a child. It haunts me to this day, much like Jack Thatcher’s hip hop hands.

It looks like we’re pulling out-

Something Frank “Meatball” Zimmerman never does! He didn’t wring 9 children out of a Protestant wife by respecting the pullout. Distorted sicko effects warp his voice for one final-

I lied. The final words of the video go to a cow.

Who gently whispers the title on our way out, as a mother would to a beloved child she just rocked to sleep.

If art is the act of debasing yourself before clueless, unappreciative wealthy patrons – and it is – this is art. All that’s left was to give it to the world. The Barbed Wire Choir called TV stations, using Jack Thatcher’s savvy media contacts to… get repeatedly and instantly rejected. Only WGN Chicago knew they had history on their hands. They ran it as local color, ABC brought it national, and before they knew it Flora was being invited on Good Morning, America. They decided to send Mayor Charlie Overstreet and Chief Willie Thompson, because a plantation cosplayer and an authoritarian sexual tyrannosaurus were their most relatable members.

The story blew up. America went crazy for rural white men in their ‘60s rapping. It was the Northern Boys without the irony or talent. The town of Flora itself landed a manager and a record deal. They cut an album.

They sold T-Shirts. They wrote a cookbook! It has been lost to time and I will eat what surely must be the whitest taco recipe ever penned if somebody can find it for me. I bet there’s gelatin in it.

Flora, Illinois fucked up. People wanted to exploit these hicks, not negotiate with them. I mean that literally, People Magazine wanted to run a profile piece on the town but ghosted as soon as they heard a manager was involved. Flora went bigtime and it took all the charm out of their story.

But the real question, one asked a thousand times and never once coherently:

Is we is?

Governor Jim Thompson loved the idea, he loved the execution, he especially loved how embarrassing it was. But he did not love that Flora got more attention than he’d get in his entire career, and they did it almost overnight. He couldn’t say no, he’d look like the bad guy. So he just suspended the entire contest, awarded nobody the prison, and waited for fifteen minutes to count down.

Which they absolutely did. There was an “Is We Is?” parade, which has been lost to time, and I will dance what surely must be the whitest choreography ever staged atop a tractor if somebody finds it for me. They made a mini documentary. Good Morning, America did a brief followup piece, but the magic was gone. Fame faded quickly, and Governor Jim Thompson gave the prison to another town. Maybe one that put on a small stageplay for him. They could have written a Prison Mambo. Bought his maid an electric trimmer. Who knows? We don’t know what works on Governor Jim Thompson, we only know what doesn’t, and that’s making the concept of institutional injustice fucking rock.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Benjamin Sairanen, who likes to think of himself as the Frank “Meatball” Zimmerman of Professional Speedboat Racing.

Tags Free, history, music videos

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Eat Great, Lose Weight!

Post author By Lydia Bugg
Post date 07/24/2023
6 Comments on Learning Day: Eat Great, Lose Weight!

Tags books, Celebrities, dieting

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Captain Hadacol 🌭

Post author By Robert Brockway
Post date 07/20/2023
13 Comments on Learning Day: Captain Hadacol 🌭

Look, in the sky! It’s a weak child! It’s a lack of appetite! It’s trouble focusing on schoolwork, NO! It’s Captain Hadacol! Captain Hadacol was the official superhero of anemic kids back when we diagnosed most childhood diseases as “god just couldn’t wait to see his favorite angel again.” There was even a promotional comic where Captain Hadacol saved dipshit children from their own hubris, and it was all in support of Hadacol: A supplement drink which treated the symptoms of any illness just long enough for a Hadocol salesman to cross state lines. It was mostly Vitamin B and iron and that’s fine, I take a multivitamin every day that does the exact same thing: Nothing.

Hadacol itself was for everybody and every symptom, but Captain Hadocol was only for the kids. This was the early 1950s, corporations didn’t have to do that “we never marketed it to children” shit. Giant screaming heads would call your child a pansy across a full page comic book spread and the FDA called that practice “medically awesome.”

“Is your kid a picky eater? Hadacol! Does your child suffer from doctor diagnosed Punyism? Hadacol! Trouble in school? Maybe they should buckle down… and finish their Hadacol!” It was the only thing holding Darwinism at bay for an entire post-war generation of wienees.

In his thigh high boots and collared shirt with his rosy cheeks, Captain Hadacol looked like 1951’s Most Bashful Prostitute. He could only be found around children making mistakes. I’d say he’s a walking red flag but he’s mostly blue. In this issue his secret identity is going on an adventure with the Reddie children as their adult best friend and travel companion, a phrase we recognize today as the tragic opening lines of a police report.

After a day of new experiences we shall not discuss, the Reddie children sit around a campfire with Cowboy Ed of Ed’s Dude Ranch. He tells them tall tales about Wild West legends-

And then notices someone else is listening to his whimsical little story.

HADACOL QUIZ: What do you think Cowboy Ed does about these shy eavesdroppers? Drink your Hadacol and you’re sure to come to the right answer! Does Cowboy Ed…

Invite them to sit by the fire.
Speak louder so they can hear.
Work a timid character into the story so they know it’s alright.
Fire his pistols wildly into the dark, hoping for murder.

Send in two Hadacol box tops for the answer!

“Goldarnit,” Cowboy Ed huffs. “These here tales of fanciful adventure ain’t for yer ears, cowpokes! When you meet Jesus you tell ‘im MMRRFF on account of I shot out yer teeth!”

To counter prospective whimsy thieves, Cowboy Ed hides the map while loudly announcing its location. Then he strangles everyone within earshot with his little neckerchief, as Cowboy Code demands.

Luckily John Wright, adult friend to unattended children, is a light sleeper.

He wakes up just in time to take a Grade 4 Conk. Doctors qualify a Grade 4 Conk as any conk which robs you of your fourth grade education. Here’s how John reacts to a surprise night conking:

He immediately leaves that night-shirted old man to fend for himself while he grumpily grabs a 1950s hangover cure. Just one shot of that Hadacol gives John Wright the unearned confidence of a heterosexual white man in 1951!

There’s a joke to be made about an inadequate man facing some kind of adversity, retreating to a bottle until he thinks he’s a superhero, then coming back and getting suddenly violent.

And yet, I’m not making that joke. Hmm.

Anyway, those no good story-hearin’ bandits got away with the map.

Time for another HADACOL QUIZ: How do you think Captain Hadacol and the Reddie family react to this news? Knock back some Hadacol for quick Quiz Confidence! Do they…

Start blasting.
Contact some kind of super-dog with a racist name.
Fucking quit because this shit is hard.
Drink more Hadacol, the only medical tonic that cures burglary in children!

You assumed this was an “all of the above” joke. No. They just quit. This sucks, and they’re on vacation. “They stole a pretend map based on a campfire story,” Cowboy Ed says, “there’s nothing even on it. I used it to practice drawing titties because this is 1951 and it is crazy hard to masturbate.”

But the Reddie children are not so easily discouraged, and set out after the bandits alone. Their parents don’t notice, because this was 1951 and we kind of let nature figure out which kids would “take.”

Oh but don’t worry – mysterious friend to unattended boys, John Wright, has been watching the children from a bush! I said don’t! Don’t worry about that! Keep not worrying when he decides to shoot some Hadacol and dress up pretty!

The treasure map turns out to be real, and bandits corner these idiot children in a mine because the Reddies’ plan, if they actually found the thieves, was “…”

But what’s this? Captain Hadacol is here!

To make everything catastrophically worse!

He misjudges an impulsive punch and accidentally caves in the whole mine, damning everybody.

There’s another joke to be made about this scenario. Something about an inadequate man hitting the bottle until he thinks he’s the hero of the office Christmas party, then taking a swing at Santa Claus, knocking the Christmas tree into a water cooler, and burning down the annex.

I’m still not making that joke. That’s weird.

You know what this situation, caused by Hadacol consumption, needs? More Hadacol!

I have done this exact thing: Took a shot, ruined everything, decided the solution was another shot, and then spun headlong into a mountain attempting to drill an escape passage.

All I got was an interesting scar on my forehead and an absence in my brain where cursive used to be, but Captain Hadacol gets those kids out safe from this disaster he alone caused.

Hey, this is accidentally the place where the legendary treasure is hidden! It’s such a hasty ending and wasn’t earned by a single character in any way. The last panel is the entire crew mutely grabbing treasure.

I don’t know why that cracks me up. Maybe it’s because that’s the exact posture of me and all my extremely stoned High School friends gathered around a Taco Bell bag.

Captain Hadacol didn’t have to be a good comic book, it was just an excuse for page after page of insane lies about vitamin supplements kids should repeat to their parents.

Hadacol wouldn’t merely help you get stronger like other snake oil comic book scams – all of these children were dying from Hadacol deficiency and just didn’t know it yet.

When the doctor pulls his stethoscope away, shakes his head, and says “there’s nothing I can do; your child just sucks.” Hadacol can help!

Hadacol rules! Hadacol! Let’s join the Captain Hadacol Club!

All the coolest kids are in medicinal fan clubs! Kenny loves Camphor! Look at Billy in his Octaplex shirt! Little Suzy saved up her Efemist points and bought a pony! They shipped her a live pony! It can only say “Efemist is an EfeMUST” but it’s fucking crazy a pony can say anything!

It’s insane to expect a child to be enthusiastic about medicine, but you guessed this twist long ago: Hadacol was 12 percent alcohol.

That’s already a strong wine to give a 7 year old, but it also contained hydrochloric acid which, in small doses, delivers alcohol through the body much faster. In large doses it melts you. The bottle says you should only take 1 once in a glass of water four times a day, which is a third grader’s equivalent to butt-chugging a pint of Mad Dog. But look back at those child testimonials: They’re measuring doses of Hadacol in bottles. One of those girls is five years old and she’s slamming two Four Lokos a day. Hell yeah her attitude is better, she’s completely fucking blitzed.

The tone of this whole comic changes, now that you know John Wright, watcher of lonely children, is just pounding a few nips, dressing up funny, and attacking wildly.

Hadacol wasn’t only marketed to children. Adult testimonials swore it could do everything from teach you how to read to make you more attractive. It was a prohibition workaround in dry counties, and sold by the shot in “pharmacies.” So everybody had to be a little coy about it, but even at the time we knew this was just liquor. And we still funneled it into any kid who wouldn’t eat their vegetables.

Hadacol was invented by Dudley LeBlanc – a Louisiana state Senator, which we all know is a party senate. He had no background in medicine or pharmaceuticals, what he did have was “a barrel behind a shed.” His words! He poured vitamins into alcohol, stirred it with a paddle, then drank 14 bottles of it and didn’t die. That was enough testing for him, and apparently America. Now is a fine time to mention his last company, Happy Day Headache Powders and Cough Syrup, was seized by the FDA. Guess why!

That’s enough setup. This is the reveal stage, where I tell you how it all went horrifically wrong.

It didn’t!

Hadacol swept the entire country in the early 1950s, and everybody loved it. “Hadacol Boogie” was a radio hit, “What Put the Pep in Grandma” wasn’t far behind. LeBlanc started a roving Hadacol fair that toured the country. They adapted a liquor into a circus!

See that fine print? You could win a pony!

Wait, no, the other fine print: Coloreds have a separate section!

Shit, no, the other fine print: Cesar Romero, Minnie Pearl, and Hank Fucking Williams headlined this drunken child carnival.

It wasn’t a fluke appearance before they were famous. Milton Berle, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope – the biggest celebrities in the entire world performed at the Hadacol Caravan Show. It drew crowds in the tens of thousands, their worst problem was finding places large enough to contain it. And the only way to get in? Hadacol box tops. 2 for adults, 1 for kids.

They sold Hadacol outside if you came up short, so that’s two shots for daddy and one for junior before heading inside to tear it up with the Joker and Hillbilly Shakespeare.

In 1951 alone, Hadacol sales were nearly 4 million dollars. And yet LeBlanc sold the entire company that year for 8.2 million. Adjusting for inflation, that’s everything. Every dollar in the world. Just a ridiculous fortune.

After a few weeks of accounting, by which I mean digging through child-vomit stained box tops, the new owners discovered why he was so eager to sell: LeBlanc spent more advertising Hadacol than it ever sold. The entire thing was a scam on every level, scams working within scams – a scam medicine to run a prohibition grift, a farce festival for a conman company. And LeBlanc walked away with millions. Somebody had the audacity to ask him if he regretted anything, and LeBlanc said “the man who buys a horse has only himself to blame if the horse keels over and dies.”

Incredible. It was a classier time, when you had to use more words to communicate certain delicate sentiments, and that’s such a poetic way to say “haha, eat shit.”

But LeBlanc needed that money. His only dream was to leave a lasting political legacy, and he wanted to be governor of Louisiana. He ran twice, the second time in 1952 using the profits from Hadacol, but some silly negative press about this whole drunken child fraud carnival cost him that election.

Don’t feel too bad for him. LeBlanc had already secured his legacy, even if he didn’t fully appreciate it yet. His first gubernatorial campaign was in 1932, where he pledged to create a monthly stipend for senior citizens if elected. Huey Long, LeBlanc’s opponent in that election, would later steal that idea (total party senate) and Franklin D. Roosevelt stole the idea again (total party country) and actually put it into effect when he became president.

It’s the modern social security system. And it was invented by a traveling grifter who ran an alcohol circus for children.

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This article is thanks to a hot Hot Dog Tip from Johnny Unusual.

Tags comic books, Free, grifters, history