Category: LEARNING DAY

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Society of Classical Poets 🌭

Don’t. Nobody can publish that list without getting kicked to death. Critics ask “what gives you the right?” Grad students ask “What is a list?” Writers ask “Did I get third, first, or both?” Instapoets ask “How do I look at rain without drowning?”

No answer can save you, because it’s subjective and loaded. You’d make fewer waves writing “The Top Four Skin Tones, Ranked.” And everyone involved fights dirty. The arts don’t teach universal truth: they teach arguing until a senior citizen taps and lets you graduate.

It’s a trap for anyone. The Society of Classical Poets are just the worst people alive to try.

This went viral while I was in editorial hell:

Or rather, viral again. “10 Greatest Poems Ever Written” is the clickbait version of square borders. One half-assed afternoon guaranteed decades of war. Individually, Top X lists, incompetence, and pride are all cash crops for conflict farms. Together, they’ve paid for at least one horse.

The picture makes me feel for Evan before reading one comment. You can be a myopic fuck in math or bowtie design without trending. But calling ten sepia white people history’s best writers is a one-way trip to So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed II: Shame Harder. At best, embarrassing. At worst, a career boost:

This list would be doomed if it was good. I’m talking about it, so nope. But I recognize this seven-year-old fuckup got extra heat in today’s digital knife-fight. Though in 2016, we were also somewhat agitated. I don’t think there’s been a year friendly to The Society’s proud dumbfuckery since Iran-Contra.

Here’s where a big team helps. Many comedians blindly suspect verse poetry is for pretentious dickheads. Two degrees in, I know it. As a half-vampire, I’ve seen this nightclub.

Still, we can’t flip in and start slashing. They might drink Beyond Blood. And think you look like Wesley Snipes. And have a dad who hates daywalkers. Wild times. Anyway, this list gets a chance.

Evan’s lineup looks paler than a fair trial, but I get it. We’re not very lyrical uptown. If we were, black one-liners would dominate music and culture. Modern slang would be jokes my sisters killed ten years ago. Searching “famous black people” would bring up nine lyricists and the last president fluent in English. This list is for the masters.

Let’s meet the tenth greatest poem of all time.

 

Ballsy. You know you’ll piss people off, so you simply don’t try.

Somewhere, a man with gravity-warping nuts walks among us, knowing one wedgie would wipe out the city. He limps forward for our sake. Why mock this hero, when I can celebrate him?

To be clear: Frost’s great. Schools strip-mine his work for a reason. The thinking behind this list? Less so. This is diet water.

Three wars ago, my sister forgot her poetry project. I punched it out in fifteen minutes, amidst the active fistfights of a public school cafeteria. I chose “The Road Not Taken,” and the analysis sounded exactly like this.

Still, after all the propaganda and public breakdowns, it’s nice seeing someone fuck up without stakes. No one gets tortured because Evan’s trapped in high school. No viable careers depend on the Society. His arrested development is his problem.

Is the rest of the article this quarter-baked?

It just might be.

That, or Evan stole my eighth-grade homework.

Alright, I get Evan’s game now.

Evan is a bowtie.

Bowties are everywhere. Fiction bowties wax about the death of the novel, and their manuscript reviving it. Black bowties say Shakespeare stole Othello from Iceberg Slim. Sci-fi bowties cry through the Hugos every year. Poetry bowties think poetry died when people started reading it.

I suspect this entire club’s made of bowties. Writing cliques are like high school, and the Society skips parties with loud music or premarital dancing.

Let’s hear their pitch.

There’s one real problem here.

Every journal overwrites “we make words good.” That’s a freebie. They can even call themselves “the Society” and keep half their dignity. The fuckup’s promising to “reestablish poetry.”

We’re not talking about polar bears or watchable news. Poetry’s everywhere. Visionaries and frauds bore audiences worldwide. It’s the only branch of literature or humanity to benefit from Instagram.

I’m curious about Evan’s work. Let’s see what else he gets up to.

Ah.

In a mood, I’d say Trump was just in court for tiger-like attacks. But we’re being reasonable today. I’m reasonable. Evan can turn this around.

Fucking why? I try empathy for the first time in my life, and you dick me over like this? I wanted to sit at the nice kids’ table, and now I’m back to googling synonyms for “backwards dickheads.” Thanks, reactionary dipshits.

Evan judged the greatest poets of all time, and then wrote this. He might not make the cut. Maybe tenth, if Robert Frost killed your father and you think enjambment describes bad sex. But it’s really continuing an idea across two lines. For example:

Fuck it, Evan’s just one writer. He doesn’t represent the group.

I’m sure his other work’s saner.

Every day is the weirdest day of my life.

This is fine. Evan’s divinely inspired: he steals directly from Chick tracts. More power to him, if he can edit work that isn’t in tongues. Journals generally settle into a nice rhythm of “me and my three friends” anyway.

Are his friends like this?

All of them?

I see. I’m the new Midas: everything I touch turns into screaming lunatics. That’s fine. I’ll just recharge with a little nostalgia, and read some Dilbert. I loved that strip in middle school. A few sharp digs at office culture should help me reset.

Something’s gone wrong.

We can still be fair today. I’m fair. I’m a balanced, insightful soul. It’s an entire society. There has to be something of value.

We’re not doing this. Try again.

Darkling, are you serious?

Sure, writing like Matt Walsh’s dungeon master is cool. I’m nice today. I shat on hostile interviews less than a month ago. I can’t go Crazy 88 on poetry nerds until August.

To the pain.

Migrants should run this journal. Their poems wouldn’t look like NewsMax wordclouds. You can’t strangle a language you don’t know. Russel knows and loves English, just like God knew and loved Job. Most languages are killed by someone in their household.

Topical fanfiction is a Society feature, the way that napalm is an American export. Not my thing, but I respect it, and never lie. Any idea can be a poem if you hate words. And better ideas would be a waste: if you write “most wondering” in 2023, your ceiling is iambic bomb threats.

Russel indulges often. For example:

Maybe I fell down a well and hallucinated two decades. We’re actually on season 15 of The Boondocks, Dick Cheney’s on vacation in the Hague, and Target’s only on blast for child labor. While Russel writes beloved advocacy and self-help for the micropenis community. His memoir Be More With Less helps thousands of “MicroStrivers” abandon hate.

If you curate and publish this, you’re unqualified to pick the best glue you ate today. You burn crosses with childproof matches. Everyone laughs when you leave the rally. You’re a level of stupid prose can barely contain, let alone describe. I’ll try free verse:

Alright, it’s out of my system. What else does Russel have?

Better! Saying less than nothing takes work. When I expect madness, an information hole’s a perfect twist. This is a void in the world. Bipartisan emptiness. When I stare into this poem, it stares back.

The Society’s above modern mud-slinging, so I’ll put this in their language: Society no write good. Poems suck big failure. Glue not food! Glue for paper. Eat cookie instead, feel sparkle. Delete website, many sparkle! Yippee!

Could someone break this failure killstreak? Or suck another way? Fuck it, give me a leftist dumbass. Tell me snoring while white is fascism. Tell me Will Smith preserves Source Awards culture. Tell me Stalin fought Ukrainian obesity. I’ve run workshops, I know your slush pile gets worse. Medieval Tom MacDonald is just one flavor in a failure spectrum.

I’m praying to an empty heaven.

Norma’s English, in case you think lead poisoning is U.S.-exclusive. The name’s her best feature. Norma Pain could be a killer pro-wrestler, The Black Dahlia Murder’s opening band, or even a competent poet. Instead, we’ve got this.

But she has a point. If you question the vaccine, your work’s “cliched.” If you don’t buy gender ideology, it’s “pretentious thesaurus vomit.” And if you even mention faith, it’s “6 AM on the fucking subway.” Diversity of thought matters.

Again, I can relate. Before the thought police took over, I could’ve questioned Norma’s chromosome count and punched out. Now I’m stuck engaging her work, whose title drop sparked my first migraine in ten years. You can’t say anything anymore.

Maybe I’m fixing the game. I should go on the Society’s website, click “Poetry,” and enjoy the first poem I see. Their newest, front-page work, as I’m writing.

I miss Saina.

If Jeffrey worried about offending God, he wouldn’t rhyme might and right in public. Or private. He’d whip himself until Easter for thinking of it. In the Old Testament, his keyboard would turn into bees. In the New Testament, his keyboard would turn into redeeming bees.

But it’s fine, since no one’s watching. I mean readers, not the demiurge. Jeffrey’s the piss break on Aryan poetry night. Somehow, someway, he makes Evan and Russel look better. He’s Luigi’s Luigi, if Mario were a Vogon.

The twist? This Westboro Baptist freestyle loses focus. The drift from “fuck deviants” to “recycling is hard” makes this the first hate speech about composting. If you mailed this to GLAAD, they’d send back Adderall. And ask why you swiped Dane Cook’s most famous joke.

Sorry, let me translate that into zero pussy:

What kind of postmoron writes like this? Did Galactus grant you cosmic stupidity? Did you frustrate Reed Richards to death? Do you herald a new, brainless age? Because you’ve fried mine.

Since God’s sleeping in: Satan, can you send writing that isn’t cribbed from Goebbels or Gallagher?

Thank you, master below.

Yes. More. This cornball intro has an idea and creates context, without one wink at genocide. Mark’s rocketing upwards.

I love it! It’s not good, but it’s today’s best. If this journal was just puns by PhD zoophiles, they’d be better off. Mark is, in his style, a big dog on a pile of toxic garbage. Or small porch, whatever.

This trendy pet glurge works. So maybe, just maybe, fixating on the past holds the others back? The Society isn’t anyone’s ceiling. Norma’s one slur away from Texas A&M tenure. Evan could sneak into a Wall Street Journal desk without anyone noticing. And our next poet was born to write Gutfeld!, God’s cruelest joke.

Hint: if your alt-text is embarrassing, start over.

Now that breeding’s mandatory south of Canada, new mothers should know we hate them. Break eye contact with Junior, and the Society will rhyme sad, mad, bad, and whore. Next time, think twice before existing.

But why mention controllers? They’re redundant reminders of time leaving Joshua behind. Why not highlight another aspect of decay? Like impotence, or brain fog, or impotence?

Three more Luddite jams follow, which is brave in a web journal. Read digitally. On screens. The comments are full of iPhone 2 typos. Some writers snub art for their brain, but Joshua tossed his into the sea.

Let’s go back to patient zero. I’ll give the president one more shot: if Evan can write one sane update, I’ll join the Society.

Cool.

Make that two shots. If Evan can write one sane poem, I’ll join the Society.

Dance! Yes! I love dance. Poetry’s grace, without dog puns or murderous hate. Let’s dance. I’m surprised Evan’s on this side of Footloose.

Wait.

Ah. I’ve lost my mind.

Fun fact about Shen Yun: they’re a cult with side flips. I’d still dig them, save their push for a hot war with China. That’s insane, apocalyptic, and impatient. Foreplay’s the best part of extinction. Even if you love Fallout, Falun Dafa has angles on interracial marriage that most faiths save for subtext.

Anyway, Evan’s all in:

Read closely. You might see Evan triple-wielding caricatures of white vacuity, black poverty, and mystical asians to piss off almost everyone alive. Or his fifth review of Cirque du Zion Ranch since 2012. I see my defeat. This is a fine ad for Chinese Scientology.

Evan wins. I’ve joined the Society of Classical Poets.

Specifically, “Amadeus Vult” and “Laura Kelly” have joined. A duo proudly producing patriotic poems since this morning. I have a two hour commute.

I hear you, strawman. “Dennard. You smashed Laura Ingraham and Megyn Kelly’s names together like a McMahon. Was ‘Coulter Braun’ taken? And ‘Amadeus Vult’ isn’t so much a pun as a swastika in Webdings. Any editor, most people, and some chimps would see through that.”

“Alright, you’ve broken the Prime Directive. But as your strawman, I refuse to believe there’s an actual poem. Please, father, set me free.”

“Cool. Father, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“How is this possible? Why was I born to suffer?”

“The Code of Straw is clear. I’m shocked the Society added photos of a rap hooligan and Good NegroTM. Shocked. Set me free, father. Let my soul fly.”

“This seems to be a tribute to ‘Uncle Ruckus’ from The Boondocks. Surely this time you’ve overplayed your hand. I must pretend not to know this worked. I hate you, father.”

“They love your fake poet. How unlikely! May I die now? I’m ready for God’s punchline.”

In fairness: Evan changed the title from Making a Ruckus. I hope he sniffed a joke, but he publishes Russel. Only God knows. A.k.a. Li Hongzhi, enemy of the CCP and miscegenation.

Either way, writing classical poetry’s fun. Without new ideas or unpaid sex as distractions, I could focus on richly stilted language. I’m a convert. I’ll submit 10-syllable beauty under false names for years to come, just to keep the craft alive.

As for the list: every community argues over authority. So what makes you credible? Skill? Experience? Hatred? Eight dollars? Hiding your mediocrity behind Marlowe’s corpse?

Fuck if I know. I teach word-karate and don’t remember what a sestina is. I almost failed a student for asking if I can hardflip. When questions like this come up, I tent my fingers and say “interesting.”

But joining the Society for Classical Poetry doesn’t give you authority. It doesn’t even get you a CPAC ticket. You’re just dry-humping the graves of people that would have fucking hated you.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jeff Orasky, whose slam poetry makes Percy Shelly look like a little Bysshe.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Recipe for a Perfect Cartoon

“The Recipe For A Perfect Cartoon” is a “how to toon!” guide, posted on a conservative political cartoonist’s janky personal website. It’s even worse than that sounds.

Michael P. Ramirez is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. I don’t know why. Best guess: the general badness of political cartooning. That genre is a howling void of anti-comedy. Bad political cartoons have none of the upsides, and all the downsides, of humor and art and politics and information and editorials and a sixth thing I’m probably forgetting. With rare exceptions (Jen Sorensen and Gerald Scarfe and (RIP) TheNib.com), political cartoons are the work of an old crank with nothing interesting to say and C-minus art skills. Also, no one wants them! No one ever asks for them! Political cartoons are just kind of *there* in the newspaper. The last time somebody bought a paper to read the political cartoon was at least a hundred years ago. And folks, I have terrible news: some of those readers demanded political cartoons because cartoons are a good medium for pretending other races are space aliens. Seriously: cartoons used to be Racial Hatred Confirmation Doodles. The invention of photography was a somewhat-effective antidote to the overwhelming racism of most illustrations. Photos indicate the truth that every human is human. A lot of cartoonists depicted the opposite, on purpose, and got paid for it.

Anyway, that’s political cartooning for you. It’s bad today. But I’m glad we’re past that racist era of–

Hoo boy. I wasn’t aware Black Americans’ ears sprout from their lymph nodes. Unless…this drawing is racist? You would think Michael P. Ramirez – an artist of color – would be less weird about drawing a President of color. If you make Obama’s ears Masai-ish, you’re basically doing a Birtherism. Michael P. Ramirez is doing a Birtherism, and I’m confident it’s on purpose. Tragically, he is excellent at art. He represents anything accurately. Even in his exaggerated caricatures, his Trump and Biden and various Dummycrats look like people. Look for yourself! Michael P. Ramirez draws things humorously or picture-perfectly. But when it came time for Michael P. Ramirez to draw two-term U.S. President Barack Obama, he pretty much drew Klan fan art.

That carelessness isn’t discussed or illuminated in “The Recipe For A Perfect Cartoon”. Which is bonkers! It’s my first question. Also, I shouldn’t even know this cartoon exists. It should be deep in the Mariana Trench of Michael P. Ramirez’s archives, like some kind of bottom-feeding hate-fish. Michael could’ve featured anything else here. He’s drawn hundreds if not thousands of cartoons. But when it came time to pick one cartoon, to represent his entire process, Mikey highlighted this one. That’s even more racist than drawing it. Also, I’m far from the only person who’s seen this thing. Michael P. Ramirez is the full time political cartoonist for Las Vegas’s main newspaper, and previously Los Angeles’s main newspaper, and previously Memphis’s main newspaper, and simultaneously a star ‘toonist for USA Today. Mikey’s been the main political cartoonist for…what, a quarter of the United States? More if you count chain hotels? So he’s not just proud of this cartoon. He’s earning a mint from it. Again, this:

Anyway, on to the message here. This political cartoon delivers so much clever criticism of…some kind of accounting fraud or numbers fraud? Accounting fraud involving terrorism intelligence? Terror attack risks are numerical, I guess, because every element of life can be made numbers. Therefore: Mikey got ‘em. It’s perfect. You could only describe this political cartoon as “perfect.” It has me thinking and laughing at the same time. It’s hard to both think and laugh this much, all at once! Ow, my face and brain, ow! I looked at this cartoon, and now I’m bent in a twisted rictus of mouth-chaos, struggling to “wow” and “ha” simultaneously. Wow/ha: my jaw fell off. Worth it. Wow! Ha!

Okay I’m back from Urgent Care. Setting aside my ha-ha hole, let me express something with my wow-hole: wow, there is a lot here. Theoretically this cartoon accomplishes wise political thought, acerbic comedy jokes, and quality visual art. All three tasks must be hard to juggle. That creative process would be interesting to explore. Which element is the initial germ leading to the final cartoon? How do you balance those three goals as you draft a complete cartoon? Do you ever bail on a cartoon that’s funny artistically but weak politically, or vice versa? I would like to know that stuff. Michael P. Ramirez says he is here to walk us through the answers. “The Recipe For A Perfect Cartoon” is a painstaking, seven step breakdown of how Mister Ramirez got from “blank page” to “cartoon blurring accountant metaphors and chef metaphors.” We get off to a breathtaking start, because it turns out Michael’s blank page was a napkin.

Michael P. Ramirez is telling us he stinks four different ways, on a post on his own website. Also, I am skipping “this stinks because the hanging skillets look like testicles.” They do, but he fixes that in the final version. Setting aside this draft’s heaving nut-woks, this thing is four varieties of mess. The messes are:

🌭Michael P. Ramirez is a full-time newspaper cartoonist with two Pulitzer Prizes, and he sketches out his cartoons on napkins. Why? Art supplies exist. Paper exists. A hasty iPhone note documenting the Only-Words Version of this idea would be less embarrassing.

🌭The napkin is specifically a cocktail napkin. You know: the Official Napkin Of Getting Drunk. He says it’s his main drafting medium, for his constant full-time cartooning. Is he compulsively broadcasting his alcoholism? Is he The Onion’s “Kelly” but real? Or, alternative theory: is he a sober guy pretending to be a Glamorously Drunk Artist? Is he faking Ernest Hemingway-style Booze-Brilliance for Cool Points?

🌭“I sketch out ideas on napkins mostly so I won’t forget them.” Yikes! Here is the thing about tales of jotting inspirations down on cocktail napkins: everybody celebrates the genius entrepreneur who hatches something brilliant in the midst of a drunken night. “Our Founding Cocktail Napkin” is the Hemingway Booze-Think Archetype for businessmen/inventors. However, we only celebrate the initial note. Nobody celebrates the next step, where you must pocket-tuck or purse-tuck a scribbled-on bar napkin. It’s awkward. It’s why you only use cocktail napkins for one brief note about one idea, and then use anything else on Earth for the real work. What kind of barfly and/or Hemingstan uses cocktail napkins for daily ongoing creativity? Does Michael P. Ramirez have a soggy heap of gin joint napkins in a file cabinet? And good lord: what about keeping ideas for later? How do you archive them? Would you stick the napkins in one of those binders/wallets for Pokemon cards? Or use Kraft Singles wrappers like they’re comic book sleeves? And imagine the scale of this! This guy isn’t saying he knocks out one idea on a napkin. He says he logs TEN TO FIFTEEN ENTIRE CARTOONS, PER DOODLE SESH, on cocktail napkins. How big are his pockets? Or is he now my hero, because he’s fanny-packing? You can’t pocket that many booze-scribbles. You cannot keep ten to fifteen pen-ravaged napkins into your pants pocket. In that night’s performance of The Brilliance Stowed In Your Slacks Pockets, your house keys will be playing the role of Wolverine.

🌭Number four could’ve been number one through one million. What is Michael P. Ramirez’s writing process? Or art process? He’s telling us Step 1 is an entire finished cartoon, on a napkin. I remember reading that and thinking “are the other steps just transferring this napkin art to paper?” My dearest Hotdogger: those are the other steps. But they’re so much dumber than that.

There are a total of seven steps here. Step 2 is my dumb question, answered. Step 3? “INKING.” Basically Step 2 with another pen. Step 4: a pretty long write-up of the specific DPI he uses for document-scanning paper. That’s hilarious if you know what DPI is. Don’t feel dumb if you don’t know. The gist is an easy to explain image resolution thing. It’s not “creative process” stuff. The gist is one machine setting at Kinko’s. That’s followed by Step 5 (“COLOR BASE”) and Step 6 (“COLOR BASE CLEANED”).

Step 5 is Michael P. Ramirez coloring in his own drawing, without staying inside the lines. Step 6 is Michael P. Ramirez using his computer to make it look like he did stay inside the lines. Two whole steps here are “kindergarten art class but digital.”

As Michael says, welcome to “the color realm”. We remain there for Step 7. The final step. Which is a tiny amount of further shading, and…that’s all! Those were the steps. “The Recipe For A Perfect Cartoon” is an almost-finished cartoon, followed by an old man listing his Adobe software presets. It is…not enlightening. I wonder if Michael P. Ramirez is proud of that? Maybe he refused to do the namby-pamby handholding they do in art schools, or in any form of teaching where a student learns something. Guys who make this kind of anti-Obama art are the same guys crankin’ off to the legend of their own self-reliance. It’s sad! Self-reliance is good, to a point. There’s something to be said for a “draw the rest of the owl” mentality. But there’s a reason I got that owl art from Reddit’s r/funny section, and not from a place that charges tuition or helps anybody. It’s a joke – and Michael P. Ramirez would know that if he weren’t such a HUSTLE clod.

I’m so sorry, we’re not done, we need to go back several steps. This blog contains a part even funnier than “here’s how my computer colors inside the lines for me.” There’s a gem here far more glittering than “I’m a Drunk, unless I’m stealing Drunk Valor.” My favorite bit is tucked into Step 2. Let’s revisit it. It’s the closest Mikey comes to explaining his writing process:

Reread that if you’d like. Reading it once is like trying to see the Grand Canyon fast. In this step, Michael P. Ramirez says each cartoon appears perfectly in Michael P. Ramirez’s head. It arrives finished. Second drafts are for cowards. Next up: Michael P. Ramirez’s memory does not work. Oh well. Probably not an issue for a cartoonist making political arguments. You don’t need to remember past events to understand the present or select a future. Just live in the present! The present is all we’ve got, other than the past and the future! Just live in the present, because we all die sooner or later. Great news: when Michael P. Ramirez likes somebody, and they die, he writes them a loving tribute/obituary:

Anyway, back to “The Perfect Cartoon.” Michael P. Ramirez–

Just kidding. My mind is lost in the labyrinth of this whole other cartoon. Yours is trapped too, right? We both saw this, and it sucked us in, and now we’ve crashed our ABC’s Lost plane into its beach. You and I are like two hot actors, grappling with a Heaven allegory and a smoke monster. If we try to leave this cartoon without first understanding its secrets, we’ll have to go back. That’s how much this cartoon stinks. A political cartoon is one picture. It should let the reader depart. Michael doesn’t allow that. His cartoons are maximum bothersome to any thoughtful mind.

What is happening here? Rush Limbaugh is in Heaven (lol). Rush is returning a book to a bearded angel and/or God. The book says “TALENT” on the front in big letters. And Rush has to return the TALENT book because…he checked it out? I can’t really follow this. I detect an attempted message of “Rush Limbaugh was TALENTED.” But this cartoon doesn’t really say that. The whole situation’s too weird. And it suggests several layers of cosmic canon, all at once. They include:

🌭When the dead reach heaven, their primary quality substantiates into the form of a labeled book.

🌭Dead people might* be required to return those books to a heavenly library. (It’s not clear whether Rush is forced to hand his book over, and his statement suggests an active choice rather than an enforced return.)

🌭Heaven has a library. It might contain regular books too? Or maybe there’s a separate library for Cloud Nine’s beach reads.

🌭When someone dies and their Primary Quality Book substantiates into their hand, the book’s cover will feature the logo of the dead soul’s broadcasting company. It has to be printed on there. We know that because in the cartoon, the “Excellence In Broadcasting” corporate logo is presented alongside a good drawing of Rush Limbaugh and a giant caption of “RUSH LIMBAU@H”. So we know it’s Rush Limbaugh. The tiny, dark, hard-to-read logo isn’t necessary. You might assume that’s a flaw in Michael P. Ramirez’s cartooning. But as discussed by Michael P. Ramirez, Michael P. Ramirez’s cartoons alight into his brain in their perfect finished form. Therefore, Michael P. Ramirez added a broadcasting logo because Heaven is real and that’s how these books look up there.

The book return opens up bizarre cosmological possibilities:

🌭Post-book return, does the dead soul spend their eternal afterlife *lacking* their primary quality? Is life in Heaven like the middle stretch of Space Jam, where all the NBA stars regress into oafs, but for every human quality?

🌭Do the books circulate? Will another soul check out Rush’s book? Will a current person or future baby receive Rush Limbaugh’s exact talents? Will Rush’s TALENT BOOK scream across the cosmos to its next host’s location, before shelving itself into their body or mind?

🌭Younger Hotdoggers may think the furniture behind Angel/God is some kind of shelf. Nope! It is an antiquated library practice, where libraries maintain a giant wooden set of drawers containing a physical card catalog. Why does Heaven’s library have this? Is it because Rush Limbaugh is old? Is Heaven’s library kind to the dead, easing them into the afterlife with a library transmogrified to fit each soul’s generational expectations? Did Heaven’s library get its first computer when Heaven got its first dead modern guy? If Michael P. Ramirez died, would those card catalog drawers be full of his dumb-ass cartoon’d napkins?

Wow: I despised that experience! Speaking of despicable experiences: let’s return to Step 2 of our blog/hell. You might think your life is hard, from time to time. Nobody has a harder life than the (alleged) close creative friendship circle of Michael P. Ramirez. They’re the most astonishing part of “The Recipe For A Perfect Cartoon”, Step 2, Paragraph B:

According to Michael P. Ramirez, he runs each of his ideas by a group of friends, and asks them for feedback. Then, he ignores their feedback, and says their feedback stinks on his website. And he does this every day. Michael P. Ramirez works for daily newspapers. This is not a novelist asking for manuscript notes once per two years. This is not an actor or comedian who needs one more butt in their show’s seats. This is a cartoonist busting into a group chat with a “what do u think of this but also fuck you” – and he’s doing that in service of insights that aren’t even worth thinking.

He’s right: politics is crazy! Who can say why! It’s simply crazy. Crazy as a reply text from a (former) friend who claims your idea “isn’t anything” and asks why it’s drawn on a Jack Daniels coaster. Still: one must overcome that kind of obstacle. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Michael P. Ramirez, it’s three things: the power of positive thinking about yourself, the power of negative thinking about everyone else, and the power of stubbornness about your first-‘n-final napkin-drafts. Hey, Robert. Hey, Sean. Scan these thirty-seven bar napkins I mailed you into your hot dog website. Your edits are wrong and your DPI setting had better be my favorite.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neil Bailey, who has to return the ASS-KICKING book to God when they die. Good luck collecting if they don’t, God.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Semen Retention 🌭

Have you ever looked at a rich, successful, ripped specimen of a man and thought, “that’s a guy who for sure never fucks. Not a thimble of semen has left that man in decades. You can just feel the power of never, ever cuming, radiating off of him like the spirit of a Catholic kaiju.” That’s right; it’s time to talk about absorbing semen into your bloodstream like a true Alpha Male, a full-on Stay Puft Marshmallow Man full of daddy sauce. Oh no, I’m already enjoying this too much.

This book was written by non-cumming expert, Arcan Scriverius. How does semen retention give people such cool names? Other titles on the same subject are written by Rich King, Mr. Harry Matadean, and Mantak Chia. Yes, there are multiple books on this subject. It’s not an unpopular theory; in fact, the book opens with a quote about the power of semen retention from Nietzsche.

Ah, yes, we should all model our lives after famously stable men, the hermits. By that, I mean we should never clip our nails and live in rich people’s gardens or mountain caves. The book goes on to quote other famous men including Jesus, Mike Tyson, and Kanye West. Important to note that this book was published in 2022, so I’m not sure if that’s before or after Ye’s Alex Jones appearance where he praised Hitler from a full body stocking, but either way, probably not a great role model for achieving spiritual calm and enlightenment, Mr. Scriverius.

There are so many wonderful things about this book. The chapter titles alone are some of the best I’ve seen in all my years at Hotdog. I love them so much that I had to make a tournament-style bracket to determine my favorite.

“The Trials and Tribulations Of Excess Ejaculation” won because it sounds like the title of a soap opera with a main character named Excess Ejaculation.

To establish a baseline for what you’re going to learn, after quoting Nietzsche, the introduction explains how you should think of semen as a super rocket fuel. Not just regular rocket fuel, oh no. That would not be manly enough to fuel a dude rocket. This super rocket fuel is so strong that wasting it can suck the goals and ambition right out of your body. It’s just like my pastor used to say: every time you cum you’re spraying your dreams right out of your penis. It’s the only thing he said, right into the eyes of every child.

Listen, bro, instead of being horny for sex, you should be horny for success. Imagine if every time you thought about sex in a day, you just replaced that thought with whatever goal you wanted to achieve. You see an OnlyFans ad, and BAM, you’re thinking about how to bake the world’s largest soufflé. Obviously, it might be a struggle at first, which is why there’s a whole section called “The Mind Is Your Greatest Adversary.” This book only delivers wisdom in sentences that sound like they could be yelled by a wizard during battle.

The book goes on to talk about how the Greeks, Toaists, and Hindu sages all had various practices of semen retention. Also quoted in the chapter about harnessing the power of the ancients, noted man of ancient wisdom, DJHARDCORETRUTH.

I bet you can guess what the secret elixir is. At this point, I’m only two chapters into the book, and my overwhelming feeling is that maybe some men can’t handle having a penis? While I think it’s weird to brag about how much sex you’re having, it’s somehow even weirder to brag about how much sex you’re not having. Maybe get a hobby that in no way involves your dick? Have you tried just cooking a nice meal? (Sean, I swear to God if you link to that semen cookbook here).

Now I know by this point you’re probably saying, “Show me the science, Lydia. I see a lot of quotes of spiritualism attached to penis colada, but I do not see the hardcore facts. Don’t worry; this book directly cites passages from the internet’s most trusted doctor, WebMD.

There you have it; the facts don’t lie. Semen is good; therefore, hoarding it like a gross little cum dragon will make you super powerful. Also, if you worry you might miss orgasms, fear not; you can learn to have a dry orgasm. This is a better form of orgasm that allows you to maintain your iron grip on your penis pudding hoard.

Now, I’m not a scientist or a penis-having expert, but this seems not natural to me, and there are several other claims this book makes that I find somewhat suspect, including the claim that semen retention can improve your sleep, prolong your mobility and strength as you age, give you thicker, smoother hair, make your voice deeper, slow the process of aging, and act as a natural painkiller. However, the most dubious claim may be that it will make you more attractive to the opposite sex.

Women are not going to start coming up to you in bars, going, “Hey, I couldn’t help but notice you over here, not cumming. That’s hot. It seems like you haven’t jerked off in a long, long time, and that’s impressive. Can you tell me more about that?” Again I would suggest anyone who thinks this could happen get a non-penis-related hobby, something like; I don’t know, maybe you could invent something? (Sean, do not link to Jason’s article on Victorian boner alarms).

“The Trials and Tribulations of Excess Ejaculation” are pretty much just the exact opposite of the positives of semen retention. If semen retention makes you have thick, lustrous hair, excess ejaculation makes you go bald. You lose motivation, “vital nutrients,” energy, and vitality. A lot of men have tried to convince me that semen contains vital nutrients in my life, and I guess this is where they heard it?

The book does go into detail about how to prevent yourself from accidentally gushing out all of your vital nutrients. It’s a surprisingly spiritual method that involves rooting your semen through all of your chakras, sort of like a very wet psychic labyrinth.

A lot of the advice provided in this book is not that bad and honestly might lead to a better quality of life. Stuff like eating a vegetarian diet, exercising, and practicing meditation are all good things that you could totally do without making it weird, dawg. If you’re masturbating so much that you think diverting all your sexual energy could literally build the “coliseum,” maybe taking a little break is great advice!

Something tells me that jerkin’ probably isn’t the only thing preventing you from painting the Mona Lisa. Also, the other examples listed in this book were built by a lot of people. Do you think whoever built the pyramids went home at night to carefully and deliberately not ejaculate? Absurd. Those aliens fucked. Cumming doesn’t have to be your only hobby, artists, industrialists, and aliens! You can do a second thing, I promise!

Most of what is in this book is in every other self-help book. It relies heavily on manifestation, which is the entire premise of the 2006 self-help book The Secret, with the critical caveat that The Secret still allows you to orgasm as much as you want.

So, overall I think I would recommend doing almost anything other than this to improve your life. Putting this much importance on any bodily fluid isn’t good for anyone. The idea that your life force is somehow contained by erectoplasm will not in any way help you. It will only keep you trapped in a weirdly dick-centric world. You can find a better hobby! Maybe try reading! (Sean, don’t make that link to Dick Fight Island).

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Burrito who can lift a car straight over his head. We’re not saying anything about why he can do that, we’re just saying he can do that.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Yogi Bear Visits the U.N.

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

Learning Day: The Tomima Edmark Academic Study on Creative Bankruptcy

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

Learning Day: Ligertown 🌭

I never watched that Tigerking show because out of respect for some dear cousins o mine what lived through a period of trauma that makes a show like that just hit to close too home. Them of you what also have lived in the south-eastern area of Idaho or perhaps bought or purr oozed certain issues of the National Enguierer probly also know what im talkin about which is:

Some of you might be askin ‘did you really spend a hunnerd dollars on that one Sissyneck!’ and no i didn’t thats like almost a whole year of Tubi Premium even tho i have a special discount from a email I got. I did make up to two inner libary loan requests and none of them panned out or even apologized so i have made due with less primaty sources but I endeavour to tell the truth of this historical experience within my actual household budget. This writin is gonna be about a hotdog artifact which has alluded us or maybe we held it breefly but then Belloq took it from our exhausted hands on account of because we dint speak Hovitos. Which is sad to me because i did learn that The Author Tom wrote many books and seemed like a pretty interestin guy, here take a look at how he was membered when he died a couple years back:

Hahaa I bet those new york ones believed it to!

And here is a memry from a close friend:

Well i still chuckle about that one too and here’s his writer biology which i can only asspire to, its in the form of a poem which was untitled but I choose to believe is probly called: ‘’He”:

Yes tho we never met I will miss you dearly Tom.

Here is what I bet is in the book Ligertown by fallin brother Tom who tryed to do good ideas even if they dint end up that way in the end.

What even is a Liger? Some of you at home are probably sayin I know I know I saw napoleon dynamite the movie or that one episode of the cartoon series (which wasnt terrible actually). Anyway no your wrong and shame on you for thinkin a cartoon is real: a Liger is not just any old Lion and Tiger blend it is only if a MALE Lion impregrenades a FEMALE Tigress like this:

Yes it is buteaufil in image alone but i will recommend this time that you click on a non-hotdog link to the original film because Whoever married sound and vision in this manner i would buy them a hotdog patreon if that were possible. (it is not)

But dont think its just that easy, that what you see up there is the a moor us fruits of many months of patience…

…and/or personal alchemo experments applied in a zoo environment:

At first i was thinking maybe Bill from Canada would be mad about being dockeds like this but somethin tells me no he was probly proud of his part in gettin a lion to put it in a tiger right away.

And yes i know some of you eager ones are raising your hands and stretching your fingers sayin: but what about, what about if… and yes yes here you go:

The real Gifted n Talented among us are probly ex-strapolatin even a ‘nother Algernon level so here’s for them:

Which i already knew about one a those i had a titigon south bout as soon as i turned 40 hawhawhaw.

OK but lets get serious for a moment because as a four shadow these are beasts never nintended to exist by our heavenly father did you ever hear of Jonah lettin a Liger on the ark? Nope and here’s why:

Observe:

And that might look really fun but there is hysterical evidence of folks gettin actually pretty fucked-up by a liger even one they thought was there friend:

I can just magine the zoo staff meetin the next day, some of em maybe with chocolate still on their faces from sneakin there kids trickertreat candy, an probly the head zookeeper said: settle in everyone, now it is real sad what happened to Peter, he was my friend to, hell i still got his post-hole-digger at my place, but folks? I hope this can remind us all that our Liger policies and proseedure binder wasnt just put together for no reason and thats a hard truth but it is a truth.

Ok so thats probly the first part of the book aka ‘’Liger” now lets move on the second one: ‘`Town`’

Momma was a census taker, the years when they had em. Not a bad job, except some of the dogs, but they werent cared for right: that rudeness aint on them. An she knew that! Course she did. But what she did tell me was that even tho Dad’s libatarian hero and hers, L.T. Col, Bo Gritz, was right about most government wastery and sin, the U.S. Census was a Powerful Force for Knowledge and the Truth of a Nations’ People. Also we could use the money too. And wasnt she right? For without the Census who of us would ever know that way back in about 1939, there was a 29 year old Oregan gal, name of Lurena Feiber, gave birth to a baby boy what she named…Rob.

Isnt that neat how that makes the words seem kinda once-upon-a-timey?

So Rob grew up in Oregon and, like a certain other Special Son, we dont hear much about him until hes grownup an upsettin the status kwoah. You see Rob had a special dream: to enstablish the kingdom of heaven hear on earth by breeding the very first White Liger.

But then the SYSTEM stuck its nose in for pretty much no reason:

But then for circumstands totally outside of Robs control something DID happen again:

So Rob observed that Oregone was not ready to recieve his message and vision so he fled east to another promise land:

But yep Idaho is pretty big and no one knew where he was hard at work perfectin his beast breedins in a very special place:

And its not just called that for no reason:

Huh thats interesting they began to stay mostly on the reservation instead of at the free hot water all year round spot i wonder what happened.

So it was in this steamin land of manyfold destinys and maybe god himself liked to bathe n soake there that Rob had the unbinded freedom to construct his faunal dream:

And he would not be bound by the laws of men, no he knew he was to answer only to a higher up power:

And by the sweat of his brow and the kindness of his high mountain neighbors what maybe had some dead lambs they werent usin he would fourge his path…

Yes the meat drop is a big curiosity for me. damn these used book scalpers! that keep me from gettin the whole story instead I must scrape an beg at the Amazon reviews for informationful leavins:

Well thats a little small-minded to me. When you pay your tithin do you complain about God not payin you back right away? And anyway Rob was puttin his money savings to good work by expandin and growin a beyautiful and safe environmint to receive the comin of White Liger the First:

Chicken wire and lumber aint free folks. Well chicken wire aint free anyway, most people said Rob used just whatever wood he could find.

But once again the Secular World here it comes intrudin’ because Rob wasnt perfect and some of you sharp-eyeds out there might already have seen it:

Yep some of them darn cats got out one night and when Rob was workin to get em back in, well:

They messed him up pretty good and then even more got out and the neighbors was callin 911 sayin “Hey i’m Bruce Hansen and my ex-mother in law Lavina Long come up to feed her goats but we got a African Lion in the driveway’ and then a special type of Idaho hero showed up:

Bannock County Chief Deputy Lorin Nielsen and well he made what some might call a bold decision but some say it was a good idea:

But he knew he coudnt do it alone he called in the best snipers and sharp-shooters in all of South-east Idaho and then even some from Salt Lake just lookit this tictacal show of force and lethal meens:

And yes them cats didnt stand a chance against them Caprices and windbreakers and scopes it was a unchristlike mass occur what followed:

But not all of em was causalities o war there was some civilans got involved too for example a Idaho gentleman name of Woney Peters…

Lotta good Idaho names hear today, Woney took one liger out from his back porch. His wife Laurie took some vhs ghost and the darkness footage of him on that faithful day:

Laurie said later on: “Woney? He is a expert shooter.’’ and you can tell by how he takes cover to reduce the Liger’s ability to return fire that she is right. So another noble liger, perhaps we might call it in death: “Shasta”, was felled to death by rifle fire.

An Fieber came to except the cold truth that, even in Idaho, he would not to see his Liger Destiny to fruiting:

You can just kinda tell the spirit an lifes gone outta him, although he does get up n chase the reporter out of his house right after this part. An he did have to go to court cuz they said they looked and he wasnt taking good care of the lions anyway and he said well yeah maybe it got a little untidy:

(I blurred up one downed Liger i dont know if its snipered or close-quarter-combat-casualtied or just tranked but we dont need that kinda upsettin in here)

But i guess nobody wanted to clean and fix ‘er up ‘er so they just went ahead and burnt it all down:

BUT: Idaho didnt have many laws against stuff back then so Rob just left Lava and Idaho and about 50 mistymeeners behind and some say he went back to Oregone and well a part of me still hopes that…

Hell. Could be maybe hes out their still, toilin still, and that one day he might arrive, triumfat, back to a heart of civilization, like Pocatello maybe, and there unveil to the world the completion of his Fate and Behold unto us: WHITE LIGER is born! and its coat and fur and hair and its stripes are exceedingly white yea even as blinding as the su-

Oh hey somebody in South Careolina already made some! Look at Yeti you can tell hes a troublemaker, nobody let him in Idaho.

And thats’ not the only good thing to come outta this:

I did buy this one.

Lets perhaps end with the words of them what lived through this: themselves the citizenries of Lava Hot Springs and Surrounding Bannock County (suggested musical accompniment and also that you scroll real slow and somber):

In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Greg Cunningham, who has the unstoppable virility of a gogorilla, which is a gorilla spliced with another gorilla.