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 February 7, 2005 |
Washington, D.C. Courtesy S’nooze The offending web site, shown here in miniature as a part of the commune’s efforts to reduce world suffering
“S’nooze is some funny shit,” explained uncharacteristically laid-back DoD worker Pvt.Thom Vogelsang, who was soon afterward court-marshaled for unruly facial hair. “I don’t care what anybody says. That piece we did on giving pacifists rat-poison enchiladas was da bomb.”
“Nobody reads our site,” complained S’noo...
he U.S. Department of Defense has come under fire this week after launching S’nooze, a news parody web site featuring a lighthearted look at the day’s events through the prism of the Pentagon’s unique brand of humor. Liberal watchdogs have criticized the site as a potentially dangerous outlet for government propaganda, while everyone else has been complaining that it’s not nearly as funny as The Onion.
“ S’nooze is some funny shit,” explained uncharacteristically laid-back DoD worker Pvt.Thom Vogelsang, who was soon afterward court-marshaled for unruly facial hair. “I don’t care what anybody says. That piece we did on giving pacifists rat-poison enchiladas was da bomb.”
“Nobody reads our site,” complained S’nooze head writer Lt. Col. Danish Marks. “Our site stats suck. The Onion’s got more ads on it than a NASCAR stock car and they’ve still got hits like Usher. I’d love to be within smelling distance of that kind of traffic. But just because we’re the Pentagon, everybody thinks we can’t have a hilariously irreverent take on the news.”
Concerned citizens with too much time on their hands have pointed out the potential propagandic dangers of the site, referring to the fact that S’nooze is run by U.S. military troops trained in “information warfare.” Other, less politically-paranoid citizens have alternately pointed out the failed-humor dangers of the site, being that it is run by U.S. military troops trained in “information warfare.”
Complaints to Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz recently initiated a thorough review of the site’s contents, which Schmitz summarized as “amusingish.”
“Jesus. Did you see their first issue?” blasphemed freelance media critic Rutherford B. Goods. “They had a feature where you could add ‘funny’ captions to the Abu Ghraib photos, and an essay contest about how pacifism is for fags. I didn’t laugh so hard my sides didn’t hurt.”
Yet another wave of criticism has come at the Pentagon from humorless Americans who were tricked by the site’s lack of successful humor into regarding S’nooze as a legitimate news source. The site’s recent headline of “Iraqis Demand Recount—Not Enough Civilians Killed” sparked a flood of angry emails from readers who had missed the Pentagon’s tiny-type disclaimer of “Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense: You been punk’d, bitch!” at the bottom of the page, therefore missing the “joke.” No one is quite sure what to make of the fact that most of the angry readers were in favor of a tragic recount.
“Sure, everybody can make fun of the government all the live-long day, but now that we want to get in on the fun, it’s a crime against humanity,” complained project head Maj. Dean Veiner. “ Entertainment Weekly actually said that, ‘a crime against humanity.’ I liked them better when they didn’t do web site reviews.”
commune media critics Roland McShyster and Orson Welch were both asked to review the site for this article, but the results were unfortunately deemed unsuitable for publication. For one, McShyster seems to have reviewed the similarly-named www.s’mores.com web site instead, and Welch’s review was so bitter that commune lawyers feared it would violate the state’s Hate Crimes Act of 2000. the commune news has always loved a good party. Wait, parody? Fuck that shit. Lil Duncan is the commune’s Washington correspondent and originator of the joke about how many mice it takes to screw in a light bulb. Two, but don’t ask us how they got in there.
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 January 7, 2002
Airplane"I remember it just like it was yesterday, the summer that my brother Goose and I spent trying to build our own airplane. We had it on good authority that none other than the Great Gildersleeve himself would be making a public appearance in St Louis in a month's time, and we weren't about to consider the option of not being there. We begged mom and dad for weeks, but they failed to realize the importance of this event, or the relative insignificance of the 36-hour drive to St Louis. Perhaps if we'd had Stephanie on our side we could have turned the tides, but she was strictly a Fibber McGee girl and she distanced herself from the negotiations, most likely because she was angling for a new bike for her birthday. So it remained for Goose and I to find our own means of transportation to St Louis, and a homemade airplane sounded as good as any.
Our first prototype was a simple model consisting of an old mattress we found in the garage with a red racing stripe painted up the side. And it may have gotten the job done if it weren't for Goose, who was scared by a bee when we were hoisting it up onto the roof and let go of the mattress-plane early, which slid off the roof and into our neighbor's pool. Similar was the fate of prototype number two, an old garbage can tied to a pogo stick, which slid down the roof while Goose was climbing in and ended up putting a big dent in the hood of Dad's car. Goose caught pure hell for that mishap, and I had to join the 4H Club just...
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"I remember it just like it was yesterday, the summer that my brother Goose and I spent trying to build our own airplane. We had it on good authority that none other than the Great Gildersleeve himself would be making a public appearance in St Louis in a month's time, and we weren't about to consider the option of not being there. We begged mom and dad for weeks, but they failed to realize the importance of this event, or the relative insignificance of the 36-hour drive to St Louis. Perhaps if we'd had Stephanie on our side we could have turned the tides, but she was strictly a Fibber McGee girl and she distanced herself from the negotiations, most likely because she was angling for a new bike for her birthday. So it remained for Goose and I to find our own means of transportation to St Louis, and a homemade airplane sounded as good as any.
Our first prototype was a simple model consisting of an old mattress we found in the garage with a red racing stripe painted up the side. And it may have gotten the job done if it weren't for Goose, who was scared by a bee when we were hoisting it up onto the roof and let go of the mattress-plane early, which slid off the roof and into our neighbor's pool. Similar was the fate of prototype number two, an old garbage can tied to a pogo stick, which slid down the roof while Goose was climbing in and ended up putting a big dent in the hood of Dad's car. Goose caught pure hell for that mishap, and I had to join the 4H Club just to provide an alibi as to where I was that afternoon.
Goose thought we should go with one of his designs for our third prototype, and I humored him although I was doubtful because of Goose's well-documented lack of imagination. Prototype three ended up being a big cardboard box with a picture of an airplane taped to the side, and all I have to say about that is I'm glad Goose broke my fall. He's probably lucky he sprained his ankle as well since Mom was pretty steamed at Goose for cutting up the "A" volume of the family encyclopedias the way he did.
After that mom and dad both forbade us from attempting any more flights to St Louis, and we ended up having to listen to the Great Gildersleeve on the radio instead while Goose was propped up on icepacks. It probably would have been more fun to be there in person, but I imagine then we would have missed the fun that night when we heard that great crash outside and all ran out to find dad in the driveway amidst a mangled pile of homemade airplane parts." º Last Column: Christmasº more columns
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|  November 24, 2003
Curriculum VitaeI've spent more than a few years climbing the corporate ladder, ladies and gentleproles. Not meaning I'm no good at it. It's common to spend 16 years to reach an Office Manager position at a low-traffic website. I believe I still am Office Manager, I have to check with Monsieur Bagel about that. He was a little pissed about the whole "re-imagining" of the commune thing I did in his absence—not quite ready to accept my vision yet.
There. We've established my superiority as a ladder-climber. Now let's talk turkey: Resume. That's French, if you don't know. A lot of you probably believe "resume" is an option when you pause your Tony Hawk video game. See? Funny and upwardly-mobile. They don't call me "prize pig" around here for nothing.
Some people will tell you a resume is where you tell potential employers exactly what you're capable of and any possible limitations that might interfere with your job. We call these people the unemployed. I've known a handful of people over the years who have told the truth on their resumes, and admitted they don't have all the necessary skills for certain jobs—I usually give them cans of clam chowder or split pea soup when they come nosing around my door around the holidays. Here's a simple equation: Truth = no job. See if you can work that mathematical formula out, Einstein.
I'm not telling you to lie. Bend the truth. Stretch the truth. Break the truth off in half against a hard surface like a Kit Kat...
º Last Column: The Acting-Editor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
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I've spent more than a few years climbing the corporate ladder, ladies and gentleproles. Not meaning I'm no good at it. It's common to spend 16 years to reach an Office Manager position at a low-traffic website. I believe I still am Office Manager, I have to check with Monsieur Bagel about that. He was a little pissed about the whole "re-imagining" of the commune thing I did in his absence—not quite ready to accept my vision yet.
There. We've established my superiority as a ladder-climber. Now let's talk turkey: Resume. That's French, if you don't know. A lot of you probably believe "resume" is an option when you pause your Tony Hawk video game. See? Funny and upwardly-mobile. They don't call me "prize pig" around here for nothing.
Some people will tell you a resume is where you tell potential employers exactly what you're capable of and any possible limitations that might interfere with your job. We call these people the unemployed. I've known a handful of people over the years who have told the truth on their resumes, and admitted they don't have all the necessary skills for certain jobs—I usually give them cans of clam chowder or split pea soup when they come nosing around my door around the holidays. Here's a simple equation: Truth = no job. See if you can work that mathematical formula out, Einstein.
I'm not telling you to lie. Bend the truth. Stretch the truth. Break the truth off in half against a hard surface like a Kit Kat bar. Exaggerate. You know the old saying: An exaggeration is a lie they have yet to catch you in. That's what an old white collar criminal friend of mine said once during a visit, and I still hold it to be true.
This has never been more important in the age of computers. After all, who can figure them out? No one. Which is to say me and a small handful of other people. In truth, when you strip away the ominous looking monitor and daunting color schemes of Windows XP, computers aren't really so bad. But, and here's the important part: They scare the shit out of monied people. People who can manage accounts by the barrelful and measure interest rates in their head soil their underpants and hurl themselves out of a window when confront with an intimidating DOS prompt. Consequently, a modicum of computer talent (which I have in spades) makes them think you're Jesus 2.0.
Basically, if you can open a spreadsheet, they'll hire you as their IT lord and savior. Take me, for instance. I was catering a lunch at the commune when Bagel's Windows recycle bin filled up and he demanded I fix it—part of my job, taking out the trash. I did so and Bagel has yet to shut his gape-mouthed jaw. I was hired on as computer consultant, then moved into reporting when I convinced him to hire a guy who could change the screensaver to replace me. In this case, no resume required. But my point is solid. If I had a resume, I would have mentioned my experience in Sims, Civilization, and Quake 2. I know those are games, but dollars to donuts your future sucker-employer doesn't.
Once you're hired you can write your own ticket. I'm not sure what's happening on the outside, but if everything is like the commune offices I believe it's a federal law you can no longer fire people. There must be a Statue of Bagel on our front stoop, with a plaque reading, "Give me your shitheads, your slack-offs, your inbred mentally deficient yearning to rake in a cool $200 a week, and I'll put them on staff immediately without a probationary period and give them lifetime job security."
No wonder everyone else hates me. It's like having Michael Jordan playing for the Generals. º Last Column: The Acting-Editor Who Fell From Grace With the Seaº more columns
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Quote of the Day“Fight back, men! It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of the ocean!”
-Capt. William Thomas Turner of the LusitaniaFortune 500 CookieLooks like your lawyers have kept those topless photos out of the magazine; that and the fact you're 89 years old. Tonight, conquer life's mystery: Find out what that Alpo tastes like. Today is great week to give the gift of peanut brittle. Shaved or unshaved? Your dogs will love you either way. Today's lucky charms: Pink hearts, blue moons, green clovers, virtually any of them.
Try again later.Top Other Inventions by the Crash Test Dummy Creator| 1. | Self-ejecting canned corn | | 2. | 5-string bass | | 3. | Hot Hands®, the cheapest, safest, easiest way to light your hands on fire | | 4. | Crash Test Dummy Secret Base Playset (Figures sold separately) | | 5. | Freshomatic, battery-powered freshness-testing meter | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY Jordan Artwell 1/30/2006 Fraternity of PigsThe animals of the Gaswell farm decided to do away with people entirely. No more oppression of the whip, the sustaining of an entire system of government with the single purpose of raising and selling crops for the benefit of the human. The whole thing was done away with, Farmer John, and his lovely daughter, were murdered in their beds (in his daughter's case, six traveling salesman had to be done in as well). The time of the whip and yolk was gone, the old pig had told them. Now was a time of equality.
Sure, that was all well and good when it happened, three hours ago. But the realistic concerns of a world market that needed crops and animals who needed feed made things infinitely more complicated. Should the animals just eat the crops as they grew in the field? Not a very...
The animals of the Gaswell farm decided to do away with people entirely. No more oppression of the whip, the sustaining of an entire system of government with the single purpose of raising and selling crops for the benefit of the human. The whole thing was done away with, Farmer John, and his lovely daughter, were murdered in their beds (in his daughter's case, six traveling salesman had to be done in as well). The time of the whip and yolk was gone, the old pig had told them. Now was a time of equality. Sure, that was all well and good when it happened, three hours ago. But the realistic concerns of a world market that needed crops and animals who needed feed made things infinitely more complicated. Should the animals just eat the crops as they grew in the field? Not a very good idea. Some animals would eat more than others; some animals might not even get to eat at all. Not to mention that not one of them had the foggiest notion of how to farm, or what to do if the crops they didn't have were destroyed by an early frost. All of that was of no concern during the wide-eyed, naïve revolutionary days of three hours ago. But now they had bigger concerns, concerns that wouldn't answered simply by a deregulated system of farming. It was the pigs who first came up with the idea of pigs being in charge. Along with the founding heifers, the horse Broccoli, the donkey Pat, and the various other animals of the farm, they came up with the original solid idea of the two-species system of government. Pigs would form one party, and the litany of barn cats would form the other. They considered a parliamentary system, where each possessed the amount of power proportionate to their votes among the population, but that sounded like an awful lot of math to do. The two-species system gave them a chance to practice representative farming and not have to count as much. The pigs won the first election in the first-ever landslide, running on a platform of feed for everyone, lower taxes, and safer pens. The cats bungled it all by disagreements within the species, as some cats promoted the idea of de-micing the barn and a few outsider cats ran with the single principle of finding the can-opener. The donkey, Pat, didn't help matters by running on a third-species ticket and taking away significant votes from the ducks and geese. Once the pigs were in power, things changed almost instantly. They changed their focus from domestic issues, like feeding the populous, to foreign issues like securing more tractors from neighboring farms and spreading Animalocracy to animals everywhere, even the ones who didn't have a strong feeling about it one way or another. The pigs instituted longer work days and reduced the minimum feed wage per hour. Chickens were required to produce more eggs under pig rule than they had under humans, partially because eggs were needed for the war effort against the zoo, but also because pigs had learned to work the frying pans. This succeeded largely because the chickens were too disenfranchised to participate in the elections, but also because the pigs smartly controlled the dogs, the main source for the spread of information on the farm, and called them unpatriotic anytime they were critical of the pig administration. The pigs were just about to unleash their most insidious advance yet—the establishment of corporations for privatized control of the feed—when the whole farm was torn down to make way for a Republican National Campaign headquarters for humans. Everything was demolished, including every trace of irony.   |
