Category: LEARNING DAY

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Cursed Lore of Southpaw 🌭

Hi! I’d like to introduce you to “Southpaw.” He is the mascot of the Chicago White Sox.

He is also a gateway to 125+ years of cursed lore.

A little housekeeping up top: I like Southpaw just fine. He is green and besnouted and joyful. The lady inside the suit seems nice. Also I mean it both ways when I say I like Southpaw just fine. He’s unmemorable. He’s derivative. He’s not a pioneering weird mascot (San Diego Chicken, 1974) or avant garde mascot (Phillie Phanatic, 1978) or ironic “anti-mascot” (San Francisco Giants “Crazy Crab”, 1984). Southpaw premiered in 2004, long after the era of mainstream mascot innovation. He also premiered before the era of proletarian mascot revolution (Philadelphia Flyers “Gritty”, 2018) and dystopian mascot annihilation (see below).

Southpaw lacks those ambitions/ammunitions. He is here to make a few kids happy. That’s all most mascots want…I hope. I did google “yiffing” once, because somebody said that word around me once and I’m compelled to understand all things. Why did I look into it? Because I love discovering why things are, to pull a random phrase, “secretly incredibly fascinating.” Anyway I’ve now grokked “yiff”. And I don’t know every mascot’s heart. But Southpaw seems like he’s on the “Muppets (Tame Division)” end of the Sexual Fabric-Being spectrum.

And for most people, that’s all there is to Southpaw. They think that set of thoughts about him (that ENTIRE EXACT set of thoughts about him) and move on. But if you’re me, you self-impose a quest of pointless discovery. You learn Southpaw is a doorway into these four astounding tales of accursed baseball mascots.

I’m a lifelong Chicago White Sox fan. When I lived in the region, I went to games in person. And when Southpaw came onto the scene, he gently gaslit every adult I knew. Here’s why: the Chicago White Sox began existing in 1901. People got used to a certain White Sox routine over that century. 2004 was also a much different media time from today. Newspapers and television had bigger, Bush-ier fish to fry. “The Facebook” was Ivy Co-eds Exclusive. Phone camera resolution was on the “Grainy Bigfoot Photo” step of the tech tree.

So most adults I knew weren’t forewarned about the White Sox marketing department’s new schemes. They got no warning. A sudden green weirdo up and Kool Aid Man’d their ball games. And they grappled with questions: Who was this mascot? Why was this mascot? And most terrifying: had this mascot always been there? Like in that famous psychology experiment where subjects watched a video where a gorilla walks through the frame and most subjects missed the gorilla? Grown White Sox fans wondered that. They wondered if green mascots were always there, throughout their lives, surrounding them like endless fuzzy ‘The Matrix’ code.

By the way, I handled this fine. In 2004, I was a child. I felt barraged with new characters/experiences/Iraq Wars every day. But for adults discovering him, Southpaw sparked at least a few questions about memory and reality. Which rules. Because – in case anyone forgot – Southpaw is a mascot. A trifle. A sports clown.

Speaking of sports clowns, do you wonder why Southpaw could become the White Sox mascot? Why was the gig open? Why wasn’t there a fuzzy incumbent? Admittedly, there’s one good reason you might not have wondered this. You might know many baseball teams lack mascots, for old-fashioned crust-assedness reasons. Pre-20th century America lacked a fursona industrial complex, and that’s when many baseball teams began.

But the 20th century White Sox’s asses were the most crust-free. They strapped their scoreboard full of fireworks. They created the most radical Sports Illustrated cover of all time. They even tried wearing shorts (a HUGE baseball no-no, and an impossible garment if one’s ass is becrusted). The White Sox tried to be more fun than every other team in the league. Naturally, they attracted a team mascot. In fact, they attracted… [ominous voice] …too many team mascots. [ominous ballpark pipe organ]

From their beginnings to the 1970s, the White Sox had no official mascot. And nature abhors a mascot vacuum. So a kind fan named “Andy The Clown” started showing up to games, dressed as a clown, to bring children joy for free. SouthSideSox.com documents what happened next: ballpark ticket takers let Andy The Clown enter without paying. Andy’s legend grew.

At one game, Andy sat in the Mayor Of Chicago’s lap, as a joke – a joke I also assume made him Temporary Super Mayor. And then in 1980 (Peak Andy), White Sox team ownership launched a multi-front war against him. They ordered ballpark staff to start charging Andy for game tickets. And they introduced two official mascots, specifically to supersede Andy. Their chosen fuzz-thugs were “Ribbie” and “Roobarb”, a pair of Phillie Phanatic Phnock-offs.

Between the cruelty to Andy, and the Pinkerton-icity of Ribbie and Roobarb, the fanbase revolted. Fans protested. And this was an era when you could only contact someone by calling their corded phone, writing them a letter, or running into them at your local music-burning rally. Despite those Stone Age communication limitations, White Sox fans ran a protest on behalf of a gentle clown. The team buckled. The team temporarily let Andy back in. Then they reneged in 1991. Andy opted to purchase tickets, and continue clowning at his own expense, until 1995…when he died. Fans also never liked Ribbie and Roobarb, regardless of their motivations. They hounded & harassed those two until the team junked them in 1988. And remember: this entire conflict happened in the field of sports mascoting. There was a fans versus team, David versus Goliath power struggle to determine who waved at children from out-of-bounds. And the winner…was death.

This story is quick. Also not a White Sox story. But it’s another “W” for the reaper. 

The New York Yankees lack a mascot. That’s partly due to crust-ass-itude. (See also: the Yankees’ love of force-shaving grown men.) Here is the main reason the New York Yankees lack a mascot: they tried one, named “Dandy”. And it became the biggest tragedy in mascot history.

Dandy was an initial hit, mostly because he resembled Yankees star Thurman Munson (see human above). Then, within months of Dandy’s introduction, Munson died in a plane crash. The team tried to keep Dandy going, but Dandy reminded everyone of that tragic dead guy too much. It turns out a fun sports mascot can feel like the Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy. And that’s not the only way it can all fall apart…

…because in a more fundamental sense, a team’s mascot is its name. Names are a risk. Names change meanings! You can be minding your own business, in 1890, naming your team “the Cincinnati Reds”. And then boom: international communism happens. By 1953 you’re changing names to “the Redlegs”, even though it makes your players sound like they need Group Ointment Therapy.

Most teams do a direct 1:1 name-to-mascot. The Eagles put a guy in an eagle costume. The Bulldogs put a guy in a bulldog costume. Also the Yale University sports teams are fancy (duh) and breed real bulldogs (cute) as their puppy mascots (yikes child labor much?), complete with king-style Roman numeral’d names (a constitutional dogarchy).

So how did the White Sox get their name? In 1901, so many good animals were not taken yet! Also, a sock cannot be a mascot. Oh sure, it can be a wrestling sidekick slash caregiver. It can be a television host… in Canada. But the “White Sox” name isn’t sparked by wanting to put a guy in a sock outfit. Instead, it’s at least partly sparked by a turn-of-the-century death scare. 

Colorful socks became popular uniform gear in the late 1860s. Cleats became popular baseball gear too. Baseball cleats have metal spikes. A sliding runner can stab a defender’s legs. And in the 1900s/1910s, a false medical concern started going around the league. People worried sock dye could get into a cleat wound, and cause an infection, and kill the player. No players died of this false belief. But people panicked anyway. As a result, “sanitary” white socks became popular league-wide. The White Sox uniforms emphasized theirs. And because of that celebration of a solution to a fake problem, the team lacks an easy-to-mascotify name. 

Which brings us to today. Southpaw is the shrug at the end of more than a century of wondering what cartoon character best represents placebo safety laundry. And honestly? That makes him more fun to me. I’m actually finally interested in Southpaw now. Because while others dismiss him on websites like Reddit.com:

…you and I are here, on the best website, knowing Southpaw is [the title of Alex’s podcast].

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Jason Pargin’s Alpha Success Method 🌭

In all 50 American states, asking someone to read your novel is considered a form of assault, an act that can legally be responded to with force. Approaching a stranger to request they consume 150,000 words of your awkwardly creepy fantasies is a great way to wind up in the emergency room with a rolled-up manuscript wedged all the way up your ass (and in 31 American states, hospital staff legally would not have to treat you). 

So for me to show up here and ask you to not just read, but pay money for, the brand new novel I have up for pre-order on Amazon, B&N and Bookshop would literally be considered a cybercrime in some jurisdictions. Yes, this is the latest from the New York Times bestselling John Dies at the End franchise. Yes, the previous three books have almost perfect customer ratings on Amazon across some 7,000 reviews and no, you don’t have to have read any of them to understand this new one. None of that matters, since only a piece of shit would even bring it up. 

Instead, I’m here to offer something that many of you have been requesting for months, if not years. I don’t normally like to flaunt my success, but strangers can’t help noticing my lifestyle. They see my kitchen and say, “What is that on the counter? Can I have one?”

Friends, that is a Cuisinart Digital AirFryer Toaster Oven and no, you can’t have one, unless you emulate the Jason Pargin Alpha Success Method. See, this website has had a grand old time mocking self-help books, which are either A) lazy cash grabs by writers who’re remarkable only for their grotesquely low opinion of the book-buying public or B) the deranged rantings of mediocre zealots who lack the charisma to start a cult. But as a demonstrably successful person who owns a Ninja blender with the smoothie attachment (not shown)…

…I will walk you through the steps to attain the Jason Pargin Alpha Lifestyle Mentality for free, with no obligations, as long as you pre-order a copy of If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop). The 1,001 Steps are below, but DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN’T ORDERED THE BOOK. It would be literally against the law for you to do so. “But the novel doesn’t come out for like nine months!” you say. I know, but authors like me depend on pre-orders, so just think of it like a pregnancy: We’ll have this encounter that you’ll quickly forget, then this fall, a stranger will arrive at your door with a beautiful bundle that will ruin your sleep for years after.

Here’s your last chance to say goodbye to your old, beta life.

Alright, buckle in:

Steps 1-5: Accept That All of Your Heroes Are Full of Shit

Your heroes aren’t gods, they’re just regular people who probably got good at one thing by neglecting literally everything else. Sure, Elon Musk is a genius at Twitter, but have you seen his shitty cars? So if you’re intimidated because you can’t live up to the standards set by your heroes, try looking up their most hilarious flaws. Then compare yourself to that, instead.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet but I’m an author, so as an example, I’ve assembled five indisputably great writers and the silliest facts I know about them:

1. In Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, there is, no-shit, an entire subplot about a love affair between a man with a gigantic penis and a woman with an equally large vagina. When the man with the massive hog (Sonny Corleone) dies, the woman (Lucy Mancini) hooks up with a doctor who arranges for her to have vagina-shrinking surgery to accommodate his normal-sized dong. None of this is a joke; go grab a copy of the book and read Chapter 22. 

Can I write anything on the level of The Godfather, in any medium? Fuck, no. Can I slam the brakes on a novel’s plot to talk about a character’s impractically giant tallywacker? I can, and I have.

2. James Joyce, author of masterful “So good they’re almost impossible to read” classics like Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, also wrote a series of fart festish letters to his wife, Nora, which included such passages as,

“You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.”

And signed off one letter with,

“Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird!” 

I haven’t read any of Joyce’s novels, but I assume they’re basically just the above, only longer. Could I write such a novel? I can, and I have.

3. Literary giant and Nobel prize-winner John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and other works considered to be the finest ever produced in this country, also wrote an unpublished novel called Murder at Full Moon that is straight up about a detective on the trail of a werewolf. It was a young Steinbeck’s desperate attempt to sell a mainstream thriller, one he was so ashamed of that he had his agent submit it under the pseudonym Peter Pym (no publisher wanted it). The novel won’t appear on shelves because Steinbeck’s estate is honoring the author’s wishes to never let the masses view his embarrassing secret (the few critics who’ve seen a copy have mostly just mocked it). 

Could I write my own The Grapes of Wrath? It doesn’t seem likely. Could I write a monster transformation novel under a pseudonym so as not to bring shame to my family, then spend years failing to find a publisher before discovering other ways to get readers on my side? I can, and I have.

4. Raymond Chandler, one of the inventors of the “hard boiled” detective genre, created the character Philip Marlowe and, along with him, a whole bunch of tropes you’ve definitely seen parodied even if you never read the thing they’re parodying. 

Chandler also totally lost track of his plots while writing. The Big Sleep (the first Marlowe novel) was created by mashing together four unrelated stories he had lying around and just swapping the character names to make them match. When the book was adapted for film, the screenwriting team noticed that one central mystery was never actually solved in the novel (the murder of chauffeur Owen Taylor) and they wired Chandler to ask who killed him. The author admitted he had no fucking idea. 

Could I write novels so filthy with attitude and atmosphere that they help define a genre for generations after? I doubt it. Can I have entire books make it to print, and even get turned into films, without noticing glaring plot inconsistencies until months or years later? I can, and I have.

5. Author Anthony Burgess said his groundbreaking masterpiece A Clockwork Orange was, “…a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three weeks.” He mostly just seemed pissed that this “less famous than the film” novel was the only thing he’d ever be remembered for, but by far my favorite work of Burgess was his increasingly elaborate lies about the novel’s nonsense title. 

As this hilarious summary on Wikipedia demonstrates, Burgess gave at least half a dozen completely different, contradictory explanations for what a “clockwork orange” was, because he couldn’t just admit that it was either a random pairing of words he thought sounded cool, or that he had copied a misheard phrase and nobody noticed that it wasn’t a real thing people said until it was too late (I think something similar happened with Breaking Bad). Instead, each explanation doubled down on the supposed profound symbolism behind those two nonsense words. If you think about it, human free will is like… a machine… made of… fruit.

Could I build a fictional world that still resonates a half-century later, inspiring a blockbuster film worthy of four Academy Award nominations? Who knows? Can I make up a bunch of bullshit in interviews to justify creative decisions I barely remember? I can, and I have.

Now that you’ve seen the technique, you can apply it to the greats in your chosen field. Remember, if you are as good as a person at their absolute worst, then you are also as good as them at their absolute best. This is irrefutable logic and, once embraced, will allow you to march forward with Total Alpha Confidence.

Steps 6-10: Let Your Haters Motivate You

People like an underdog story. The Jason Pargin Alpha Life Achievement Technique is not just about overcoming your opposition, but about exaggerating your opposition so that your achievements sound even more Alpha. Just to be clear: All that matters in today’s world is making yourself sound as besieged as possible, even if you’re the CEO of a company with your father’s name etched above the door. You should wake up every day looking to spite your haters and if you don’t have any haters, then buddy, you’d better fucking find some. Here are the five ways my detractors have driven me to Alpha Success:

6. I was born in an economically depressed small town in Illinois in which there were exactly two pastimes: 1) Kicking ass and 2) Getting your ass kicked. When I was born, the nurses all gathered around. “This baby is different,” they said, “and we hate anything that’s different. Let’s throw it in the parking lot and hit it with a rake.” That’s when I realized I’d been born into a beta world that was full of haters who fear the Alpha.

Soon, at an age when other children were playing with blocks, I was reading novels. “That’s nice,” say my haters, “but surely any signs of intelligence at that age were purely due to genetics. You can’t claim something you did as a toddler was a credit to your own grit and determination.” Translation: “We betas fear what you may become if we do not undermine your confidence.”

7. I attended elementary school in the 1980s, which was exactly like Stranger Things in that it sucked. While other kids were doing normal kid stuff like running around their yards playing Piss Tag, I liked exotic “nerd” stuff they could never understand, like Star Wars and Nintendo. “We didn’t hate you for liking those things,” say my haters, lying. “It’s just that most of us couldn’t afford an NES because in 1987 they were really expensive, when you adjust for inflation. Piss Tag was our Metroid.” In other words, they wanted me to conform. But Alphas do not conform to anything other than advice given by fellow Alphas.

8. My childhood was rough. Poverty was rampant in our town; my father was an alcoholic. “That must have been hard,” say my haters, sneering, “but in that town, it would have been weird if he wasn’t an alcoholic. And the sheer fact that both of your parents worked full time, and are still alive, means you were more well-off than probably 80% of your classmates.” Translation: “We are jealous, because your Alphaness is a form of riches that we will never possess.”

9. In high school, I once got a D in English class. “I’m going to be a published author someday!” I said to the teacher, an elderly hater. “That wouldn’t surprise me,” she replied. “Millions of people write books. It isn’t that hard, if you have literally nothing else to do with your time. But right now, you need to actually turn in your homework if you want to improve your grade.” For you see, she may have mastered English, but she could not speak the language of the Alpha, which is mostly a series of refusals to do as told. 

10. Twenty years after graduation, my dream came true. “Look!” I said to the haters. “My book got turned into a movie and put me on the bestseller list! I bet you regret excluding me from your little reindeer games!” 

“We constantly invited you to things,” they’d respond, through their jealous scowls. “You just rarely showed up and when you did, you acted like a dick. And to be frank, the world needs more healthcare workers than authors, so if anything, you should be ashamed of every dollar you make.” Translation: “We wish that we, too, had pursued the Jason Pargin Methodology For Alpha Goal Accomplishment.”

Steps 11-15: Learn To See Your World From An Alpha Viewpoint

11. The Alpha remains cool at all times. Emotions are weakness. Whenever someone else becomes frustrated or distraught, make it a point to tell them how calm you’re being in comparison, and how this proves that you are operating via pure logic, like a cool robot, instead of via irrational emotions, like a whiny triggered crybaby. This will make them even more upset, further proving your point.

12. Alphas must also establish at all times that they are not to be challenged. You must therefore never let an insult or disagreement go without an overly aggressive response (note: disagreement is simply another form of insult). Everyone should be walking on eggshells the moment they enter the room. Existing in the same space as an alpha should make them feel like they’re in a cage with an enraged gorilla, which is scientifically nature’s most Alpha animal, feeling nature’s most Alpha emotion. 

13. If it sounds like Rule #12 contradicts with Rule #11, that means you are still approaching this list with a beta mindset. The rule is that Alphas must remain cool compared to other people. This is easily accomplished by constantly making everyone you encounter angrier than you are, then pointing this out to them as a sign of your superiority. Hey, do you want to know how I feel about vaccines? It’s whatever would make you angriest. “Wow, that kind of makes me hate you!” you reply. Exactly. Hate is nothing more than the sensation created when a beta encounters an Alpha.

14. The Alpha must simultaneously have total confidence while also always striving to improve, which means you must believe in your greatness while also hating everything about yourself. The most efficient method is to loathe yourself while loathing other people even more. If you and another person fail in the exact same way, you can establish your Alphaness by reassuring yourself that your failure resulted in more self-loathing than theirs. Anyone who seems to feel better about themselves than you is, by default, inferior.

15. Find the thing you are already naturally good at, and declare it to be the one trait by which all humans are to be judged. Do you enjoy working out and keeping fit? Then spend all of your time thinking about how what’s really wrong with society is that everyone has become fat, lazy slobs. Do you take pride in your sense of humor? Then endlessly ponder how everyone these days has become either humorless scolds or easily-amused barking seals. Remember: You are the ideal  person and everyone else is just trying and failing to be exactly like you to varying degrees.

Steps 16-25: Follow The Jason Pargin Daily Alpha Schedule for Total Alpha Life Domination:

4:00 AM: Wake up, because you have to piss. 

4:01-4:59 AM: Lie in bed because you are too exhausted to get up but have to piss too badly to get back to sleep.

5:00 AM: Go to the bathroom, then go back to bed.

8:00 AM: Wake up again because your wife is making noise in the kitchen. 

8:30 AM: BREAKFAST. Maximize your time by eating whatever is within arm’s reach of where you happen to sit down. This morning I ate four miniature Reese’s peanut butter cups and a handful of tortilla chips, along with an Ultra Sunrise Monster Energy Drink.  

9:00 AM: ALPHA WORKOUT: Maximize your time by exercising your brain and body simultaneously, so look for a podcast you can use to distract yourself on the treadmill. Spend 30 minutes searching for one while you lean on said treadmill. Once you’ve found a suitable podcast, run for 8 minutes until the bouncing makes your airpods fall out of your ears.

10:00 AM: GET IN TUNE WITH YOUR WORLD by scrolling through Twitter and Reddit until you find something that makes you extremely angry. Remember: If you’re not Angry, you’re not Alpha. 

1:00 PM: Look up from your phone to realize you still have not taken a shower. 

1:30-2:30 PM: Take a shower using the Alpha Shower Method of staring at the tiles and dissociating until the hot water runs out.

3:00 PM: Eat a sandwich using the Alpha method of standing over the trash can in the kitchen.

4:00 PM Until Whenever You Are Too Sleepy To Sit Upright: Do work that will make you extremely successful and financially independent. Drink caffeinated liquids the whole time to keep your brain operating at maximum Alpha levels.

4:00 AM: Wake up, because you have to piss. 

Steps 26-1,001: 

Repeat the above until you have achieved your dreams or died. 

Congratulations, and you’re welcome. Here’s another chance to pre-order my next novel (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop) or to buy the previous ones. Goodnight, my farting, dirty little fuckbirds.

Follow Jason on his Twitter or get his more serious columns at his Substack blog/newsletter. 

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: WikiHow to Live in a Haunted House

Supernatural WikiHow is a huge part of the site, which I understand even less than Normie WikiHow. It is Normie Wikihow’s job to teach you how to tie a Double Windsor, and they do it so poorly they’re liable in the hanging deaths of 18 children. When you follow a Normie WikiHow guide, you start out with no stakes and wind up screaming in the wreckage of your old life – with Supernatural WikiHow you’re coming into this with your immortal soul already on the line and asking a guy with his head stuck in a paintcan to be your lawyer against the devil. 

Here, I’ll show you what I mean…

Right here, this is a softball question. It’s impossible for WikiHow to whiff this one. 

“How to live in a haunted house?” 

Don’t. 

Every horror movie ever made answered this question for you. 

“How do I survive the night in a haunted house?” 

Don’t. 

“How do I cleanse a haunted house left to me by a sinister uncle?” 

Don’t. 

“How do I timeshare with thousands of murderous Native American spirits?” 

Fuckin’ don’t! 

It’s the only sound advice to give in this scenario, so by having a guide with more than one step, WikiHow has already betrayed you. 

And listen, I know it’s poor sportsmanship to criticize the writing in a WikiHow guide. A war refugee is writing these in bulk for 8 cents a ton, and WikiHows do not weigh a lot. 

But it drives my point home: If somebody can barely string two words together, I think twice about whether or not they really know the chillest Chuck E. Cheese in town, much less how to get my daughter back from closet wraiths.

There’s nothing in here about how the dog is a ghost already, yeah? Because that dog is a ghost. 

Step 1: Spot the ghost dog.

Done. I did it. He’s right up there, missing eyeballs and phasing out of reality.

Please listen to me: I have spin-kicked every single undead dog in every single game that allowed me that option and that makes me an undead dog expert. I am telling you: Don’t bring extra ghosts to the ghost fight.

This entire article is a trap and WikiHow is in the pocket of Big Ghost. Don’t listen to any of this, don’t help them make their Q1 Possession Quota on internet dipshits.

God, this is starting from such a place of weakness. Your very first move and you’re supplicating to the spirit world – just backing into the house ass-first in case ghosts mount to show dominance. 

No ghost will ever respect you after a first impression like this. This is the ghost equivalent of those sushi restaurants with the little conveyor belt, and your best case scenario is to come off like that egg one that nobody wants. 

Okay, you know what these are, right? 

These are housewarming gifts you’re giving to the ghost. You know, the one that’s going to use your wife’s mouth to tear out your throat later? You’re bringing it picture frames and coasters. 

You may as well fill the boxes with ancient daggers, guns from the hands of unsatisfied duelists, and pieces of your dog that it can put back together like a fun puzzle.

You see this? You see this quisling shit? 

WikiHow had you write a declaration of war on a white flag. 

If you need a ghost’s permission to place your ottoman you are not living with a ghost, you’re delivering a ghost’s furniture. 

Do all the things the ghosts used to love? 

You are putting on a one-man show about how delicious it would be to possess you. 

I get it: Teasing a ghost with life energy feels like a psychological power move, all “sure is nice feeling stuff and having a tongue that can taste steak!” and then just mowing through a prime rib while touching velvet. 

But that kind of boss posturing comes after you smash through the front window with a flamethrower and a box of its remains, not after you meekly set your underwear in the foyer for a week so the ghost can acclimate to your scent.

Okay, so you’ve brought the vengeful spirit a spectral hound, you’ve gussied up the house in mid-century Ghost Deco, you’ve performed a burlesque of the living to tempt it, and now you’re gonna sit there and talk about the most fucked up shit that ever happened to it. 

I’m actually starting to change my mind. This article might rule. This might be a guide about how to taunt the undead into breaking Stand Your Ground laws.

Hahaha okay, I was definitely off about the tone here. 

What is this article about, really? 

Is it how to gaslight a ghost? How to recruit a ghost into a cult? Wait, is this guide ‘how to break a ghost for the ghost-fighting pits?’ 

Now that you’re primed to be in complete psychic sync with this furious ghost, go to sleep so you can fight it in dreams. This is badass. 

WikiHow, I forgive you for everything: You god damn wrote a guide about how to give yourself a handicap while shootfighting a ghost on the metaphysical plane. 

This author should write every WikiHow. Write me a guide on how to tell if a bear is aggressive where half of the steps are about which taunts work on grizzlies. Write me one on making the perfect cup of coffee that ends with me wrestling the president. 

Fuck!

We were so close to greatness here, WikiHow. 

You want people to entice a ghost, infuriate it, construct a dream world to the unhappy spirit’s liking, enter it, and then surrender? 

This is ghost propaganda. You need to include a line in the intro that lists you as a spirit affiliate who gets 10% of all life energy stolen by the wraiths sponsoring this post.

Yep, you got the bad ending. You lost this game. This is the one where the camera backs out of the house as you slowly close the door from the inside, because you’re finally home now. 

We get it. 

It’s not ambiguous, you were always a walking flesh unitard waiting for a ghost to wear you to Jazzercise. 

Yeah, sweet image to end on. When that fucking ghoul drags itself out of the television just tell it you love it. Take off your pants and dance around a little, ask if it has to possess the whole body or can it just possess an orifice.

The only people worse than WikiHow writers are WikiHow readers. At the very bottom of this totem pole which is all bottom, there’s a question and answer section. Actual people have read this entire terrible guide on how to be hollowed out by angry phantoms and they still have questions.

If this is just your standard WikiHow user, then telling them that smiling keeps ghosts away probably counts as a good lie. Like selling a magnet bracelet to an unsteady idiot. But if this was an earnest 4 year-old who forgot the word for graveyard, you just taught them that ghosts attack when you’re sad and that’s how we wind up with scientologists.

Combine turkey seasonings with water to make demon spray! Haha okay, WikiHow. Bring all of your dumb hot friends together and practice seasoning each other!

Motherfucker you are being attacked by spirits and the very first place you thought to seek help was the questions section of a WikiHow? Just show the ghost what you did here, there are special spirit rules about possessing simple meat.

This is the dilemma of a WikiHow community manager: The question asker left out a key detail, so it’s up to the manager to guess – are they really seeing spirits, or do they think that people disappear when they leave the room?

If there was any doubt that this guide was written by furious ghosts looking for a skinboat to ferry them back to mortal shores, just check out all the dipshits who asked if being friends with a ghost was a good idea, or a best good idea…

And every single answer that said “ghosts love friends! Scrub all salt from your body and walk backwards into the basement!”

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Divine Masculine Initiation 🌭

It’s 2022, a time to improve yourself or pretend that you want to improve yourself, or finally announce this is as good as it gets and you’re giving up. So many options! When I was considering how to kick off 2022, the universe sent me inspiration in the form of a photo of a bunch of men who look like their contract has a line item that says no one is allowed to be taller than them. 

Twitter has taken this poster apart thoroughly, and perfectly, so I won’t dive into it, except to say that it inspired me to look these guys up and see what they do for a living. What products and services do these alpha males actually offer? It turns out most of them are selling classes in some way related to being an alpha male, whether it’s being successful in business or helping men “win back their wife’s attraction so she will want to initiate sex again” AND he specifies that you don’t have to “become a pussy” so, definitely check that guy out. 

I decided this is what I could do with 2022. I will take a class to become an alpha male! I’ll bring that alpha male energy into 2022 and use it to…crush something or dominate…my plants? Ok, maybe I won’t actually use it for anything, but I’ll definitely have it, which seems like the most important part. I searched high and low for the best alpha male class and what I learned was, being an alpha male is expensive!

I saw a 50% OFF Black Friday Sale on The Alpha Male Program (only $248/month!), but I missed it by 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds.

I was tempted by this $68 CHARISMATIC BADASS course…

… but then saw I could Skype with actual, definitely insufferable, alpha men for 14 hours for only $1450:

I decided I was looking for a more economical way to alpha male, so I took to a learning platform called Udemy. It’s a place where anyone can upload a class on anything from drawing to communicating with extraterrestrials to being an alpha male! They were having a new year’s sale, so I got my pick of classes for only ten bucks! The exact amount I was willing to pay for a certificate that says I’m a big strong boy.

They even had a class on how to be a Sigma Male, the newest and coolest of strong boy personalities. The preview for it was a man explaining how Sigma Males are lone wolves and thought leaders from a tiny room in front of a bunk bed. This guy thinks he’s a lone wolf, but he doesn’t even sleep alone? He goes to bed to the sound of his little brother’s farts? Maybe there’s a hot lady in the top bunk, but somehow I doubt it. The same guy that teaches the sigma male class also teaches one on how to become a professional Super Smash Brothers Player, so I’m just not sure that’s the 2022 vibe I’m looking for? I’m going for something mor– wait, what’s this?

Maturity and wizards you say? I’m interested…

Oh, hell yes. This is my alpha male. He’s got everything I want in a man, sword, magic wand, fur coat, crown, so many crystals. I need drama. I need backdrops. I need not to not feel actively frightened of my teacher, and this guy gave it all. I immediately enrolled in Divine Masculine Initiation: A Man’s Journey Into Maturity. It’s taught by Mark Keane, a man who is probably the only shaman named Mark. I graduated with flying colors, even earning a certificate. 

The main thing I learned is that if a man talks to me long enough and authoritatively enough, I can be brainwashed into thinking he’s smart– even if he’s holding a magic wand. I’m genuinely a little bit worried about myself. I don’t think it would be very hard to initiate me into a cult. At one point, this guy said, “Evil is just live spelled backward,” and I was like WOAH. After about two hours, my brain meat just goes soft and absorbs whatever bullshit is going on. I think it might be a defense mechanism I’ve developed from years of stoned guys talking to me at parties?

Anyway, let me tell you all the one hundred percent accurate things I know about manhood now. Men have four aspects to their personalities. Each aspect has a unique backdrop and costume change. The four aspects of a man, together called the quaternity, are the king, the warrior, the wizard, and the lover. They do pretty much what the name says. The king is about being in charge, the warrior is fighting, the wizard is wisdom, the lover is love, and all of them appreciate a good costume. 

Beyond that, there’s a lot of stuff about Game Of Thrones. Seriously, Game Of Thrones is critical to masculinity. There’s no powerpoint presentation or anything in this class. It’s just one man talking at you and one single title card that appears on the screen. It’s the one note I took in the entire class.

Yes, this three-and-a-half-hour class has one note, and it’s the name of the most despicable Game Of Thrones character who didn’t even make it to the end (spoilers)! Mark mentions and discusses his opinions on a few other characters, but he liked Joffrey so much that he got a title card. After that I’m guessing Mark got tired of making title cards and gave up. 

You can tell that if Mark ever had to give this presentation again in exactly the same way, he couldn’t. He winged this. There were a few notes, and then he’ll drift off for a while and start talking about Game Of Thrones again, or starting ranting about COVID; that was a surprise, or less surprisingly, start talking about how toxic masculinity doesn’t exist. Then you look down at your very blank notebook, and when you look up again, Mark is suddenly dressed like a wizard, complete with a Jafar staff and a crystal wand. It’s the best class anyone has ever taken.

This is what being an alpha male should be. How many classes on alpha behavior are just a man sitting in front of his bunk bed telling you the least sanitary ways to make your own beef jerky? That’s what I thought I was getting into, and this is so much better. When Mark starts getting all, “COVID lockdowns are suggesting that there’s a higher authority than the individual and the individual isn’t trusted to make decisions for himself so there’s a sense, there’s a risk at the moment for civil liberty to be hijacked under the guise of an emergency situation.” I can completely ignore him and appreciate the craftsmanship on his snake staff. 

It does get a little painful at times, like when he starts describing the plot of Brave New World and he’s getting it completely wrong. He says that Brave New World depicts a future where people don’t have sex, and there are so many orgies in that book. Maybe that’s part of my journey into maturity? Perhaps Mark is teaching us to say things really confidently even if they are devastatingly wrong. It’s a secret stepping stone on my path to man!

I could tell you more about the actual contents of Mark’s class, but I have to say I spent the entire section where he talked about The Warrior aspect of men trying to pinpoint what year he worked at Medieval Times. I remember that in this section, he started to talk about all the things people will say to bring you down, and it got weirdly specific and started to feel like he was targeting things a particular person in his life had said.

It’s sort of like if I were to say, “People will try to get you down. They’ll say, you’re weird, they’ll say your writing sucks, they’ll say your X-Men fanfiction is terrible. They’ll say, why would Rogue and Papa Smurf hook up? They’ll say Papa Smurf isn’t even an X-Man. What is he doing here? And why is he six feet tall and shredded now, Lydia?” You know, that sort of general stuff people say when they put another person down.

While I wasn’t paying attention, Mark did another quick change. And it was really something. This outfit represents the lover aspect of men. In this section, he goes on a rant about how men have “gotten a bit of a bad reputation,” and all of humanity has created the problems in our society, not just men. So to recap so far: be very wrong, share the blame with women, Joffrey Baratheon.

Mark says, “For every CEO there’s a wife. For every world leader, there’s a wife, and that makes sense because masculine energy is directional. So, where the man is quite happy to be out there seemingly making all the decisions in the world, the woman is quite happy to be, um, indirectly dropping those seeds of ideas into her husband. And the man might not even know where those ideas come from. So, the idea that men single-handedly orchestrated society, I would say, is not true. It’s that women, um, actually always sought to influence the world indirectly.” I can’t argue with that! CEOs are married sometimes. Irrefutable evidence that women are also bad. As a woman and Sigma Male I both owe men an apology and will never give them one.

Each section ends with a meditation that allows Mark to stretch the class a little longer without adding much material. At one point, he starts blessing everything in your body, your bones, your blood, your solar plexus, your pelvis, your potency,  your third eye, and this goes on for about three minutes. After talking about The King, you picture yourself being crowned king by God. After The Wizard, you’re looking into a big cauldron of fire; basically, Mark describes metal album covers to you, and it’s pretty peaceful, until the drum comes out.

The drum is present for the last fifteen minutes of the class. You go on a shamanic journey to align your King, Warrior, Wizard, and Lover aspects. It involves listening to a lot of drums, and then finally Mark says, “You’ve been initiated. You are now a man!”

Even though I have been initiated into this off-brand version of alpha manhood and have a sweet certificate for it and everything, I don’t think I have everything it takes to be a real alpha man yet. I feel like I’m missing something. I’m confused yet confident, a dominant leader yet responsible for nothing… what is the last ingredient? Oh! I need that snake staff!

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Hot Dog Year in Review: The Very Best Learning Days of 2021 🌭

It’s time for our Great Annual Hot Dog Performance Review, where we look back on the year’s articles and try to gauge exactly how much we ruled this year. We scratched out the ‘weaknesses’ section on our evaluation sheet, and instead drew a picture of a lion with a mullet. Everything here kicks at least ass. At least. There was so much fine comedy in 2021 it’ll take us two weeks to get through it all. And remember, everything here has been made free! If you are trying to recruit folks into this little Hot Dog Cult, here are your weapons. 

First up, it’s Learning Day! We learned so much this year: We learned of heroes and villains, the tragic sacrifices of children and the tragic sacrifices of garage sales. We learned of the devil! We learned a lot about the devil! 

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Adventurer’s Club

“Kids, do you like trading cards? Oh, they’re fine? Well, what about pogs? What are po– well, I guess they’re little paper coins for knocking over! Okay, how do you feel about Canadian farming superheroes? Wait, let me finish: Based on the crops themselves? Well, there’s no need for that kind of language. No, fuck YOU! Maybe you’re the pervert!”

– The most successful Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Adventurer’s Club focus group

Beezbo

From Danny Bonaduce(‘s sister), Beezbo is about an alien with impossible powers and no capacity for reason who refuses to learn several lessons on manners over the course of a supernatural rampage. “Educational,” says the box. “We have no memory of this,” says everyone involved.

The Novelization of Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen’s Navy Propaganda Film

With the full cooperation of the United States armed services, two unlicensed identical child detectives and their less qualified brother, Trent, are given full access to a weapon system that could destroy a small country. Their sister is there also! “I wish she wasn’t,” sing Mary Kate & Ashley.

How to Have a Moneymaking GARAGE SALE Starring Phyllis Diller

Setting up a yard sale can be as stressful as getting Phyllis Diller’s husband, Fang, to help with the dishes, honk! But with this tape, your garage sale will run tighter than Phyllis Diller’s last eye lift, voowooop! In no time at all you’ll turn a better profit than Phyllis Diller’s plastic surgeon, arrooga! Follow these instructions to turn old into gold like Phyllis Diller’s plastic surgeon, eewooweeeooo!

Lost Without a Compass: Neo-Paganism

Yoga and Captain Planet. Autonomy and board games. It’s up to us, Christian soldiers, to stop them all. Oh, an explanation? Well, yoga is training you for death and Captain Planet is training the children in Paganism. Choice demands a sacrifice of your babies, and board games have sharp cor– look, do you really want to hear all this or are you ready to write God a check?

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Avengers Kill Santa 🌭

I love the many festive holiday comics wherein Santa gets his ass handed to him by a superhero. For some reason, there’s nothing comic book writers love more than taking a beloved icon from childhood, giving him a buff monkey sidekick to fight with, and then having Lobo cut his head off. Over the years, comics have found plenty of great motivations for their protagonists to punch Santa… he’s Dr. Doom in disguise, he’s possessed by a demon, he’s standing in front of Lobo, etc. My personal favorite instance of Santa getting beaten up by superheroes is a short story in the 2005 Marvel Holiday Special called Yes, Virginia There is a Santron.

It’s the only thing I’ve ever enjoyed that has The Fantastic Four on the cover. And one thing I like about it is how it takes place at an Avengers Christmas party that feels like it was written as an HR training scenario of what not to do at an office Christmas party.

The story opens with a girl named Virgie building a Santa robot as a psychiatrist, and one of her parents discusses in overlapping dialogue how she was scarred for life by some classmates telling her Santa wasn’t real as a child. She’s now an adult woman and has never recovered from this experience. Now, for some Marvel universe context, you should know that if someone is building something, it’s probably Ulton. Tony Stark got a new IKEA bed frame? ULTRON. Spiderman got Mary Jane a Roomba for Christmas? NOPE, that’s Ultron baby. Wolverine’s new high-tech Japanese toilet is… my God, is there no line Ultron will not cross? So, if you know The Avengers, you don’t need the title to know who that Santa robot is. 

We go from the birth of Santron to Spider-Man, who is running late for The Avengers Christmas party and is concerned Mary Jane will be mad at him. Luckily, he arrives at the most dangerous possible place for a Christmas party, Doctor Strange’s mansion, to find all of his coworkers hitting on his hot wife, and she’s loving it. 

Tony Stark’s best shot is just mentioning that he’s rich and Wolverine’s is an offer for contracted murder. Both are perfectly in character, and I love them. Mary Jane then contorts her body into a completely impossible shape as she greets her husband where her butt and boobs are going in fully opposite directions of each other like Peter interrupted her mid-body roll.

Spidey takes Mary Jane around the party and promptly drops her off with Jessica Jones and her baby so that he can join the other Avengers in sexually harassing Spider-Woman. It’s, as Luke Cage might tell Aunt May, “the bomb!“

You see, when two people stand under the mistletoe together at Christmas time, the woman cannot say no to a kiss! It’s a joyous tradition dating back to the Dickensian days when women couldn’t say no anyways because they’d get thrown in a Christmas Asylum for Christmas hysteria. Spider-Woman reluctantly kisses Iron Man and Captain America under the mistletoe, but when Wolverine also wants his kiss, she quickly becomes very concerned with where all of this mistletoe is coming from?

It turns out Tony Stark has created a mistletoe drone to follow her around all night. The entire male half of crime-fighting adventurers is helping him use it to coerce her into making out with Wolverine. This is both characteristically dickish of him and uncharacteristically kind. I can’t believe he decided to share his Spider-Woman kissing trick with the other Avengers! I guess in the Christmas spirit, he’s giving free Spider-Woman kisses to all of her co-workers, aww!

After the three literal geniuses arguing over the sex assault bot in Spider-Woman’s eyeline and two feet away from her ears are discovered, they each form a cover story. Wolverine doesn’t even bother. He’s more angry that the woman licking scheme failed than he is sorry about it. “WAY TO BOTCH IT BEFORE MY TURN, IDJITS!” he screams at the billion dollar superhero properties written by a real 40-year-old man in 2005.

Spider-Woman starts beating up her co-workers, and fair enough, but is rudely interrupted by the villain of this comic, Santa Claus. See, when Virgie completed her Santa bot, she vowed no one would ever laugh at a child for believing in him again and unshackled its Christmas AI. It immediately screamed it was going to kill The Avengers in the second-best comic book panel ever, after Cat Man cooking egg. I love a single panel that tells you everything you need to know about a character and his goals. 

Virgie screams, “Ah! WHAT– NO! NO!” She’s shocked that her Santa made from Ultron parts is acting a hell of a lot more like Ultron than Santa. Who could have known this was coming? Luckily, Wolverine is automatically down to knife punch and weight shame the Santa robot when it arrives at the Avengers Christmas party. He barely waits for Santa to attack. I think Wolverine would have punched Santa even if he wasn’t evil. He probably killed a few Santas on the way here.

Wolverine punches Santa’s face off and reveals him as Ultron. As the Avengers take turns pounding on Santron, Peter Parker comes up with the idea of using the sexual harassment drone Tony Stark made for fighting crime. He figures he and Hank Pym can MacGyver the free kiss machine into a bomb and then get Ultron to eat it in a cookie because of his Santa programming. All this, even though outwardly Ultron hasn’t yet done anything super Santaish, unless Peter thinks that murdering all of the Avengers was a child’s Christmas wish. 

Peter goes into the kitchen to get a cookie and finds all of the non-costumed ladies and manservants are having none of this nonsense. Mary Jane is like, “Please kill Ultron quietly. We’re doing actual work in here,” and Spider-Man rightfully responds, “Sure thing.”   

Santron pauses the battle to eat the Christmas cookie bomb and promptly explodes, dooming Ultron to reform ten issues later in Hank Pym’s Fitbit. They disassemble what’s left of the robot’s corpse and find… I’m not clear on this, but apparently, Ultron has psychic powers in this and has absorbed Virgie’s memories enough that we can put together a quick pamphlet about why she’s evil? It’s not because her parents got most of the way through naming her Virginia and gave up. It’s just the thing about her getting upset about Santa not being real. That’s her entire villain origin story.

Part of Ultron’s consciousness uploaded itself into a prototype Ultron skeleton that sought out Virgie and used its “Encephalo-Overrider” to convince her it was a great idea to turn a suspiciously free robot skeleton into a machine for interacting with children. The Avengers decide trying to kill the Avengers isn’t such a big deal, and not only do they forgive Virgie, but they take their party to her house, assuming correctly that she’s alone on Christmas Eve. Spider-Man even says, “You did nothing wrong,” which seems way too kind unless, I again have to suggest Spider-Man thinks the Avengers deserve this. They did conspire on multiple sex crimes tonight alone.

Hank Pym tells Virgie that having a robot psychically manipulate her mind might have been good for her somehow? I guess it’s true what they say: sometimes the best therapy is trying to kill the Avengers. Galactus is one of the most mentally healthy beings in the multiverse. 

The comic book ends with a speech from Captain America about how superheroes inspire childlike faith and wonder and are therefore better than Santa Claus. Virgie and the Avengers happily gather around a mutant Christmas tree that Doctor Strange created from an extremely deadly plant he had lying around. It tries to eat She-Hulk at one point and probably shouldn’t have been hauled across town and given as a gift to a mad scientist who already tried to kill the Avengers once. I hope Virgie isn’t also angry at Christmas trees, or next year’s Avengers Christmas party is also going to rule.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, ND: who has armed their mistletoe drone with AGM-114 Hellfire mistles.