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 March 29, 2012 |
Pyongyang Lions Gate/Lion’s Cock Photog. Fictional teenagers Katniss Everdeen and Kim Jong-un (inset).
"Once again a Hollywood movie has made a mockery of the glorious North Korean lifestyle," griped Kim. "Same thing happen in Dark City and Mad Max."
Kim Jong-un, back in power after the nation’s failed experiment with Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was rapidly abandoned due to Dotcom being jailed for paying to see The Smurfs, violating North Korea’s longstanding policy regarding the mandatory pirating of Hollywood ...
he gonzo box office success of Lions Gate Entertainment’s new film The Hunger Games has drawn criticism from North Korea’s beloved madman Kim Jong-un this week, as the diminutive leader called bullshit on the killing of teenagers in ritualized sport suddenly becoming cool after his country had been doing it for decades.
"Once again a Hollywood movie has made a mockery of the glorious North Korean lifestyle," griped Kim. "Same thing happen in Dark City and Mad Max."
Kim Jong-un, back in power after the nation’s failed experiment with Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was rapidly abandoned due to Dotcom being jailed for paying to see The Smurfs, violating North Korea’s longstanding policy regarding the mandatory pirating of Hollywood films, added that The Hunger Games was "popcorn bullshit" and that unlike Westerners, the fortunate citizens of North Korea don’t have to pay exorbitant movie theater prices to see that kind of thing every day.
The insular nation, which subjects its citizens to harrowing games of life and death on a daily basis, is no stranger to televised competitions that would probably be called The Hunger Games if they’d thought of that first. These include the capital city’s weekly "Fight For Your Food Fun Fight" events, which critics have condemned as a natural result of the state’s failed economy and collapsed chain of food production disguised as a trumped-up game show where regular citizens punch each other to death over the last canned ham in the entire city. Regardless, the North Korean tourism board has been quick to capitalize on the success of the Hunger Games film, already advertising tourism packages where Hunger Games fans can tour the Pyongyang Deathdrome and kill an actual North Korean teenager with their bare hands for less than the average New Yorker spends on "Whoops, I ran over another homeless person" insurance.
The Hunger Games opened to a gangbusters $155 million in its first weekend in theaters, a figure described by Hollywood pundits as "fucking bananas" and "bigger than $154 million," and representing the biggest box-office opening in history for a non-sequel film. Critics dispute the importance of this claim, however, since it was also the first non-sequel film to be released since 2007.
Based on the first of a berserkly popular series of young adult novels by writer Suzanne Collins, the books and film alike have been criticized for being heavily derivative of previous source materials, such as the Japanese film Battle Royale, the American films The Running Man, Series 7, The Condemned, The Most Dangerous Game, Lord of the Files, The Truman Show, Spartacus and Death Race 2000, the Italian film The 10th Victim, the Stephen King story The Long Walk and the Shirley Jackson novel The Lottery. In honor of this long chain of shit being ripped off, the CW has already begun filming the pilot for their own Hunger Games knock-off television series, The Selection, which involves a cast of lesser-known actors rehashing the plot of The Hunger Games on a weekly basis.
When asked recently if she thought her novels were derivative of these previous works, Collins responded "What? I can’t hear you because of the noise from all the money I’m drowning in over here," before literally drowning in an avalanche of hundred dollar bills. Funeral services will be held Tuesday at the cash landfill in North Hollywood where rich people are buried.
In spite of the author’s death, the white-hot success of the first film all but guarantees that Lions Gate will return to Collins’ grave at least twice more to adapt the other two books in the series, 2009’s Catching Fire and 2010’s Oxycute ’em! in hopes of sating the bloodlust of twelve-year-old American girls. Stars Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson have reportedly already signed on for three sequels, with a uniquely ironic clause in their contracts stating that if they back out of the sequels for any reason, they’ll be hunted by hordes of teenaged fans out for blood.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s Jong-un has demanded that Hollywood filmmakers stop ripping off ideas from his country for their dystopian sci-fi visions.
"You get your own ideas," the beloved "Supreme Tall Sunshine Man" spat into a microphone shaped like a hamburger. "I don’t want to see any more movie with robots that look like humans but are spies for government, or people with clocks stuck in their arms ticking down to time when they die, or genetic-engineered battle giraffes, or desalination plant that run on dead babies."
"In closing," Jong-un decreed, while eating a roll of Fruit-by-the-Foot, "I also downloaded bittorrent of The Smurfs, and there’s not goddamned thing you people can do about it." the commune news is no stranger to these kinds of life and death games. For proof, reference our frequent mid-2006 inter-office games of The Biggest Loser, when commune staffers would match wits and vie for who could come up with the most cutting way to tell Boner Cunningham he was the biggest loser in the world. commune fans likely already realize Ivana Folger-Balzac never lost at this game. Raoul Dunkin is the commune’s douchiest nozzle, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
 |  March 28, 2012 |
New York, NY Courtesy JetBlue JetBlue: When you absolutely, positively need to get there eventually.
"We had to do something," explained stewardess Theresa Bower. "The scheduled movie for the flight was supposed to be Ides of March but I accidentally sent that disc back to Netflix instead of the Bumfights DVD I was supposed to put in the envelope, and the only other DVD we had on the plane was Space Jam. And nobody wanted to subject people to that. Thankfully Captain Dave came through when the chips were down. We had no idea he w...
iscount quasi-airline JetBlue has announced that in-flight movies will be cancelled for all future flights and replaced with a live variety show put on by the flight crew, in response to the glowing praise the airline received for an improvised show put on by the crew of JetBlue flight 191 from New York to Las Vegas this morning.
"We had to do something," explained stewardess Theresa Bower. "The scheduled movie for the flight was supposed to be Ides of March but I accidentally sent that disc back to Netflix instead of the Bumfights DVD I was supposed to put in the envelope, and the only other DVD we had on the plane was Space Jam. And nobody wanted to subject people to that. Thankfully Captain Dave came through when the chips were down. We had no idea he was such an electric performer."
The show began with Captain Dave Westman "accidentally" locking himself out of the cockpit after getting up and wandering around the plane for several minutes, at one point standing in the middle of the aisle and eating the lunch meat out of several sandwiches from the stewardess’ service cart and loudly complaining that they didn’t have any bologna. The captain was later seen trying to insert his car keys into the doorknob of one of the plane’s unoccupied lavatories, then arguing with a pregnant woman in coach that she was sitting in his seat. Upon returning to the cockpit and finding the door locked, the uproarious comedy began.
"It was like the best Flintstones episode ever," raved passenger Laura Styles of Brooklyn. "The way he was whining in that sing-songy voice about being let back into the cockpit, I pulled a Bush and totally almost choked on a pretzel."
"It was Laurel and Hardy with air marshals," agreed Styles’ seatmate, Sandra Pullium. "Nobody expected him to drop his pants like that. I was laughing so hard when he tried to knock down the cockpit door with his dick that I didn’t even know what was going on."
"We gotta pull the throttle back, we’re gonna fucking die!" screamed the captain, while furiously pounding on the cockpit door. According to witnesses, the co-pilot responded "Dave’s not here, man," to a raucous round of applause and wolf-whistles from the flight’s passengers.
A hilarious slapstick routine followed, with flight attendants attempting to wrap the irate captain in a comically clichéd straight-jacket, then ending up accidentally whipping off their tops instead and dancing atop the first row of seats to the theme song from Austin Powers.
While the stewardesses were dancing, the captain screamed "There is a bomb on this plane and all you motherless fucks will die in the cleansing fire if we don’t land in downtown Chicago right fucking now! Say your fucking prayers!" before unleashing a fearsomely awkward karate kick to the cockpit door.
"Oh my God," reminisced passenger Todd Franklin of Carson City, Nevada. "When he did that karate thing I almost shit my pants. I had to stick my face in the air sickness bag because I was hyperventilating from laughing so hard."
The flight suddenly plummeted 10,000 feet after the captain bashed down the cockpit door with a fire extinguisher and began comically wrestling the co-pilot for the plane’s controls, resulting in a sissy slap fight that had all the children on the plane calling out for more.
The show proved so popular the flight had to be diverted to Rick Husband International Airport in Amarillo, Texas, so more passengers could be let on for the sold-out evening show.
"When those strippers dressed as cops led the captain off the plane in fake handcuffs, we just all stood up and applauded," explained passenger Lisa Redgraves. "We all wanted an encore but they never came back."
"I hope JetBlue realizes what they have here," mused passenger Roger Trenton of Nardswallow, Nevada. "This show could run for years. I guarantee you the other airlines are going to have copycat shows before the month is out. I only hope they do it right. I could see room for a hilarious inept terrorist character or something like that being worked into other airlines’ shows, but you’ve got to do it right and not just play the smoking bomb underwear for cheap laughs." the commune news has only been on one hilarious flight before, but we’ll still never forget the look on that big, doofy duck’s face right before it flew into the engine. Ivan Nacutchacokov was sadly unharmed in the reporting of this story, but it did bring back memories of the time his Comedy Traffic School class was attacked by terrorists, and that gratifying emotional damage has to count for something.
|  New Heart Rejects Cheney  Zimmerman: "Jesus Christ, you act like this is the first time I've shot a black kid."  New iPad Screen Has One Pixel for Every Douchebag Waiting in Line Somewhere  Liam Neeson Totally Fucks Up Some Wolves For Your Entertainment |
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 March 26, 2012 Return to Zender (Week 50)Greetings, communistas. First and foremost, I must apologize for my absence and the hellish disrepair this site has fallen into in said absence. I had an unfortunate run-in with a Taco Bell Volcano Box and have spent the past few months in the loving care of the Shanesly/Rupert Valley Regional Memorial Hospital. Some might argue that four months is a longer than necessary stay for a common case of food poisoning, but just like the anti-drowning safety labels on all the bottled water sold in town say, we like to be careful here in Shanesly. And really there was no harm done, as I’m sure my birthday party magician’s guild insurance will more than cover the expenses.
The story of how all of this happened is far too graphic for young and impressionable readers, but suffice it ...
º Last Column: Return to Zender (Week 24)
º more columns
Greetings, communistas. First and foremost, I must apologize for my absence and the hellish disrepair this site has fallen into in said absence. I had an unfortunate run-in with a Taco Bell Volcano Box and have spent the past few months in the loving care of the Shanesly/Rupert Valley Regional Memorial Hospital. Some might argue that four months is a longer than necessary stay for a common case of food poisoning, but just like the anti-drowning safety labels on all the bottled water sold in town say, we like to be careful here in Shanesly. And really there was no harm done, as I’m sure my birthday party magician’s guild insurance will more than cover the expenses.
The story of how all of this happened is far too graphic for young and impressionable readers, but suffice it to say that Volcano box lived up to its name and turned my box into a veritable volcano, overflowing with flaming human effluvia, if by box you understand I mean my asshole. I realize the term is usually reserved for a woman’s vaginal area, but I imagine gay guys or somebody somewhere calls a man’s ass a box as well, so there you go. Here at the commune headquarters, the inmates were left to run the asylum while I was gone, and I suppose it comes as no great shock that the inmates did a real half-assed job of asylum running. It doesn’t look like we’ve published much, but the staff somewhat made up for that by adding a wet, rotting Nerf refrigerator to my back yard, which apparently has a pack of ferrets living inside of it. I’m afraid to ask where that thing came from, or why Nerf ever made flexible, spongy refrigerators. Whatever the reason, now it’s a collapsed floppy mess in the back yard that squeaks menacingly whenever you walk near it.
On the bright side, several more commune regulars wandered blindly back into the fray during my absence. Vernon Hooper accosted Raoul Dunkin at a local Denny’s, mistaking him inexplicably for Rick Santorum. Freelance freeballers Ella Dipthong and Chals Woodland both sent in columns via the teletype system for deaf people that Mitch Kroeger stole from the old folks’ home he had been pretending to be old to live in, rent-free, for the last few years. In other words, we’ve got all your old non-favorites. When it comes to re-configuring the commune, corralling the old staff has proved to be much easier than expected, since they all seem to be drawn to no pay and ill repute like fat, juicy moths to a house-sized bug zapper. Getting them to do their goddamned moth jobs once they’re incapacitated and twitching on the ground is another story entirely. But at least they’re fumbling their way through the door, even when I’m not here to explain that the doggie door is for dogs only and that Mountain Dew Code Red in the fridge is most certainly not for the dog, as evidenced by the jittery red sprays of dog urine everywhere.
I even received a telegram from Red Bagel the other day, which simply read "HE’S COMING." That’s literally what it said, apparently Red still believes in the power of referring to himself in the third person. The telegram was most impressive for the fact that no telegraph services exist any more in modern times, apparently Bagel had to email the message to some local chunkhead, who then typed it out on some telegraph paper he bought at a garage sale.
The excitement around here would be even more palpable if I wasn’t the only one who remembers who Red Bagel is.
Anyway, it’s great to be back. I’d love to say this will never happen again, but Taco Bell has recently added a Dorito-shell taco to their menu, and we both know it’s only a matter of time before that thing is making babies in my stomach. Until then, we here at the commune will endeavor to provide the high degree of timely journalism you are in no way accustomed to from the commune. Set your eyeballs to "stunned"!
Zincerely,
Emil Zender º Last Column: Return to Zender (Week 24)º more columns | 
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Quote of the Day“I can't quit you babe… you got me locked into a 24-month exclusive contraaaaact… oh yes you do oh yes you do… your early termination fees are givin' me the blues… I been on hold so long baby now so long now ba-by yeah… I know you're on the line with a-nother man and it's breakin my heeeeart in two…”
-Naked Mole Rat JeffersonFortune 500 CookieYou will find true love this week, but you'll return it because it smells funny. Try using words like "adage" and "usage" less frequently; you think it makes you sound smart, everybody else thinks you're turning into Pauly Shore. Don't hesitate to fire blindly into a crowd of strangers this week: hesitation can be deadly. This week's lucky trucks: ice cream, any variety being washed by bikini babes, Gaelic Motors' 4WD Clover, any whose manufacturers don't run commercials claiming they're "like Iraq."
Try again later.Top Scientific Discoveries, Week of 5/21/07| 1. | People hoarding "Forever" stamps deficient in inflation-understanding genes | | 2. | Long middle fingers connected to aggressive tendencies in men | | 3. | Fish oil aids in weight loss by grossing you all the fuck out | | 4. | Most effective beauty tip for women: Get men drunk | | 5. | Gay animals choose homosexual lifestyle | |
|   the commune Reviews: Hot New Apps BY stefan myer-wiener 1/27/2012 TweenightIt had been the world's most boring flight to Big, Oregon and I hated every minute of it. The old lady sitting next to me wouldn't even listen to me telling her about my stamp collection, all she wanted to do was watch gay porn on her laptop. It would be another super-dull summer in Sporks. I've been coming to Sporks ever since I was the world's most naĂŻve five-year-old. My dad and my mom split up when I was just a baby, and unlike most kids, I have a lot of sadness over it.
Dad picked me up at the airport, after bringing back the hot chick he thought was me and apologizing several times. Lawsuits are the worst. We talked about stupid stuff on the way to drive out to Sporks, the weather, how I liked school, how he lost both arms and his nose when a bomb went off in his face....
It had been the world's most boring flight to Big, Oregon and I hated every minute of it. The old lady sitting next to me wouldn't even listen to me telling her about my stamp collection, all she wanted to do was watch gay porn on her laptop. It would be another super-dull summer in Sporks. I've been coming to Sporks ever since I was the world's most naĂŻve five-year-old. My dad and my mom split up when I was just a baby, and unlike most kids, I have a lot of sadness over it.
Dad picked me up at the airport, after bringing back the hot chick he thought was me and apologizing several times. Lawsuits are the worst. We talked about stupid stuff on the way to drive out to Sporks, the weather, how I liked school, how he lost both arms and his nose when a bomb went off in his face. I kept trying to tell him about the things that were bothering me, like the tag on inside of my shirt that keeps scratching that soft skin around my neck. Same old dad. He just didn't show any interest in anything I said.
When school started, it was even worse. All of the girls didn't want anything to do with me. I guess they all have money, all of them carry designer Trapper Keepers and wear the newest clogs. Mine are from last year. Mom makes a lot of money but she makes me wear second-hand clothes and get my hair done at the Dollar Salon because she says girls without money are much easier to relate to. Dad told me I can't go to the Dollar Salon anymore, unless my rich mother wants to pay for it, I'll have to cut my own hair in the car mirror.
So I was all alone, without a friend in the world, a virtual outcast in a brand new high school. I tried to tell mom I didn't like it here in Sporks, that I wanted to come home, and she just kept asking why school was in session during the summer. I can't talk to her. I'm all alone.
Or I was alone—until I met the new boy, Tedwin.
From the first time we saw each other in the cafeteria I was drawn to him. None of the other kids want anything to do with him. It's like he's an outcast, just like me. Everyone is turned off by the fact that he's so quiet, and that he looks like a male supermodel. Between that strange pale color and the fact all the girls and a lot of the guys want to have sex with him, he's got to be the most enigmatic outsider in all of this school, and this school is about 95% outsiders, you know. Oh, I forgot about Bleedin' Tits Pete. That guys like a super-outsider, but no one is drawn to him.
My dad forgot to pick me up at school one afternoon, sometimes I slip his mind when he finished having sex with my art teacher. So I was stuck walking home. I was heading down Puberty Road and most of the cars were passing me, but to my surprise, Tedwin pulled up on a sleek motorcycle, the kind all the cool mysterious outsiders drive.
"You're Bona… aren't you?" he said enigmatically. I nodded shyly, because I really got nothing else in my arsenal. He looked into the sky, in the distance, where they keep it, and noticed the sun was going down. It seemed to kind of worry him. "Are you… going home?"
I told him about my dad's forgetting to pick me up, and how my fish sometimes eats the whole leaf of lettuce but yesterday she didn't, and he gave me a smile. He asked where I lived, and I told him, and then I told him most people like Miracle Whip, but I think mayonnaise is actually better. He agreed—I've never had someone who listened to me before. And he was oddly beautiful, for a male supermodel outsider.
"I'll give you a ride, Bona." I got on the back of his motorcycle, hugging extra close to him for sexiness. It felt good to have another heart beating so close to mine. Other hearts feel best when they're inside finely carved pecs.
When we got to my house, we stayed up for hours, sitting on the porch. His family seemed just as screwed up as mind, all they ever did was nitpick and bite on each other. Both of his parents were dead, he told me, but he said they still tried to make time to see him now and then. I told him about my talent for counting words in sentences that are spoken to me (we used six-hundred and forty-two!) and my entire set of Suddenly Susan on DVD. He eventually looked outside and saw it was night, then got up to leave in a hurry. I noticed he was kind of… glowing.
"Bona… you're the most fascinating person I've ever met," he said, and I noticed he was nibbling at something in his hand. "I want to see you again… but I can't."
"You can't leave me without telling me why, Tedwin," I told him. "Even though we've only known each other for two hours, I've fallen in love with you. I think you love me, too. Tedwin— listen to me! Stop eating while I'm talking to you…!"
I smacked his hand and his food fell to the floor. It looked like… but I wasn't completely sure… brains?
"Tedwin," I said with a little gasp. "Are you… a zombie?"   |
