Third anniversary of doom

In 1882, we rocked out with our pox out.

by Dave McAwesome

Four score and seven years ago, this Web site didn't exist. One score ago it didn't either. This is but the third anniversary. Three years of vomiting robot dinosaurs, questionable advice and yet no 'your mom' jokes. Here's our first, "Yo mama's so fat she can't jump to conclusions." Not so funny, is it? That's why we stay away from that crap.

I've complained to people that I didn't work on a website earlier, say in the late 90s. I think it would've been cool to do it while the Internet was new and exciting and had no sense of jadedness one feels watching yet another viral video of lesbian panda bears burping a chorus of that Carrie Underwood song while floating in a sea of kittens.

I got to thinking...why the late 90s? Why not the 1890s? It'd be the rootenist, tootenist humour-orientated paper-applied ink book. Hot joy! What a rush! It'd have to be renamed, of course, in the vernacular of the day, but it'd be worth it.

The Highest Order of Awe

Your #1 source for infirmed, dragon-fossil automatons

Welcome back, fonde reader, to the latest incremental installment of this devilish paperbook. Volume 3, as it were. To your favour, please enjoye the exciting, ravishing and, dare I say, titillating parchments within. They're so nutty, they'd scare the crazy out of Andrew Jackson.

My 19th Century Childhoode

When I was a wee lad, there was no finer toy than Percival Harvingtown's Lead-based Self-articulated Puppet Machine. The 80s, you see, were ideally situated for such an amusement to take over the national zeitgeist--I mean this, of course, in the strictest Hegelian sense of historical postmortems. High times were had by our own home-spun hand shadows on the wall. But lanterns need entrails and whale blubber to run. The entrail and whale blubber shortage of '82 put that practice to the rod. Instead, we made due with a hoop and stick. Let's get this out in the open (like Miss Ashleigh Moundstone's ankle on a blustery, windswept day--ah, Ashleigh Moundstone...there's a V.I.L.F. if there ever was one (Victorian I'd Like to Fornicate with)), the hoop and stick is the worst toy in the history of toys. It's been around forever, and us kids were dying for a toy that our Irish-hating generation could call its own.

Enter Percival Harvingtown's Lead-based Self-articulated Puppet Machine. It was revolutionary for those of us who couldn't put together a decent sock puppet (who could afford buttons?!?). You stuck your hand inside, careful not to cut yourself on the roughly soldered metal pieces, and could move the puppet's mouth or right eye (depending on which fingernails you wanted to lose). Percival Harvingtown's Lead-based Self-articulated Puppet Machine was not a cheap toy. It had a lead alloy frame, asbestos lining dry-washed in mercury vapour, uranium baguettes for eyes, gold-plated nose, and an optional 17-layer lead paint coating that came in orange and cherry flavors. It cost 49 cents.

This was a lot of money back then. What would normally happen is a group of neighborhood kids would pool their money and then each take the toy home for a day. The kid who splurged the extra two cents for expedited 'next month guaranteed' shipping got to keep the bottle of arsenic that came with every order. (In the 80s, arsenic was bigger than the Mark Twain syphilis rumors. I must commend its public relations firm, because everywhere you went, arsenic arsenic arsenic.) We had a lot of fun with the Puppet Machine. After all our fingernails had been torn off, we played a new game until they grew back. This new game was Mumblety-Peg, which was far, far knifier than Hoop and Stick because it involved a knife. 'Knifty' we described it (this later became bastardized as 'nifty' by those filthy Micks). The first person drops or tosses the knife in a prescribed manner in the hopes that it stick in the ground. If successful, the next person must do the same. If you failed, the knife was subsequently dropped as close as possible to your eyeball. Blinking was construed as weakness and earned a free stabbing. We played this for a while until there were no longer enough kids left in the neighborhood for a proper rounde of Mumblety-Peg, and we went back to Hoop and Stick.

George Washington Facts

George Washington, general of our glorious revolution and former president, has been overshadowed lately by Abraham Lincoln. Sure, preserving the Union was dandy, but ol' George kicks arse. We've compiled a list of how much arse George "I am the American Sun Tzu" Washington kicks on a fortnightly basis.

• When George Washington does a push up, he isn't lifting himself up. He's pushing the Earth down.
• As we learned from Valley Forge, George Washington does not get frostbite. He bites frost.
• Before Washington's death and the need for Darwin's curious Theory of Evolution, Nature was molded simply by the creatures George allowed to live.

Discuss in the tavern on Potato-eater Street and Shanty Avenue where we'll commiserate over a pipe of opium after indulging in a bowl of this fantastic new cure-all, cocaine. It will double your productivity and combat melancholia without any side effects whatsoever. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian doctor of psychology, says as much, so it must be true.