Not sure where I found this site, but they collect funny ads. I enjoyed this one about commuting from work via a giant waterslide. It made me think of Futurama, and then wonder, how does he GET to work?

Now, the site is called VERY funny ads, but I’d have to say this is a dangerous use of that particular word. I’d say the four that I looked at were funny, but very funny? That is rare adverbial territory. Nevertheless, worth a look.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to embed these, so you’ll have to go with the link. I like the subtlety of the ad placement in this one:

Alltop and humor-blogs.com both enjoy their half-naked commutes too.

As readers of The Skwib, you may be aware that I am also a novelist releasing his second work, Marvellous Hairy – a novel in five fractals. It’s available direct from the publisher now, and in stores in October.

But I’m also podcasting this bad boy, and they are well underway. I’ll be listing them all here, at iTunes, at Podiobooks.com (released soon) or you could check out the episodes on my writer’s blog:

Part One, The Cult of the Claw

Episode One (chapters one and two)
Episode Two (chapters three to five)
Episode Three (chapters six to eight)

Part Two – The Human Ideal

Episode Four (chapters one to thee)
Episode Five (chapters four and five)

Buy Marvellous Hairy directly from the publisher. Released in stores this October!

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are also easy listening humor monkeys.

This story has been published a few times: first in Trunk Stories #2 (Dec. 2004), and then it was reprinted in Broken Pencil #29 (2005) and most recently in Yareah Magazine, (Feb. 2009). I thought I would repost it here in it’s entirety and add this is audio version, as a bona fide of my long obsession with monkey-related fiction.

Here’s the audio:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And a link to the file if the embedded player doesn’t work properly — The Monkey’s Tail … by Mark A. Rayner

The Monkey’s Tail, as Told by Marcel Duchamp the Day After Charles Lindbergh Landed at Le Bourget Field

by Mark A. Rayner

I had this friend who was obsessed with having a monkey tail grafted to his ass. Actually, to call him a The Monkey’s Tail….friend is stretching the truth. Toulouse was more of a colleague. An ex-colleague, if you get my meaning.

He went to great lengths to achieve his ends. At first, he was convinced that it would be possible to grow a tail. After all, we used to have them: they are part of our vestigial anatomy. He knew a biologist from Pigalle who was willing to help pull out his tail bone. Not literally. No, he would attempt to stretch it outwards by digitally manipulation.

Oh yes, it was quite painful, but Toulouse was bent on it. He was mad for the monkey tail, wasn’t he?

Eventually, Toulouse accepted the anatomist’s ministrations were not going to work, and went in search of other answers. He tried occult methods: spells, potions and unguents. It was about this time people started to avoid him. The unguents were too pungent by far. Yes, even for Paris in summertime.

Finally, Doctor V moved into town. You must know him. The one who grafts primate glands into the body cavity. Yes, for men unable to … I see you’ve heard of him. His cure was often worse than the disease, if being unable to . . . could be called a disease. It could be restful. Several flaccid gentlemen died, but septicemia did not frighten Toulouse.

He asked the surgeon to graft a tail to him. The tail? It came from a monkey — a Barbary Ape, if you must know the details.

Yes. Yes. It did come from Gibralter. Normally Dr. V. worked with chimps, which have no tails, so he had to find a species with a tail, no matter how underdeveloped. The poor beast had been living with Madame Sélavy, the noted philatelist and prodigious eater of *cerveaux de chèvre*. Hmm. Yes, nasty, I agree. Cow brains are better. In a fit of whimsy she had named the creature “Alonsy.” The little beast was adept at licking stamps and quite useful. So Dr. V. returned the creature to its mistress after he’d removed the small, pathetic vestigial tail. Covered with wiry brown hair it was.

Oh, yes, Toulouse was ecstatic when Dr. V showed him the new appendage prior to the operation. I imagine the Russian must have looked like some demented maître d’, presenting the severed appurtenance on a silver platter. Yes. Yes! The ether was the wine and the surgical tools the cutlery!

By all accounts the monkey was happier after this interlude. (Though they are called Barbary Apes, they are really monkeys you know.) Yes. Yes. Alonsy flew into paroxysms of monkey song, chattering gleefully; he moistened postage with aplomb and joy thereafter. He was much improved.

My ex-colleague did not fare as well, but such is the price of progress.

The End

Originally published: Trunk Stories #2, Dec. 2004
Reprinted: Broken Pencil #29, 2005, Yareah Magazine, February Issue

© 2004, Mark A. Rayner

Alltop and humor-blogs.com find blue pills more effective than chimp bits. Thanks to R@PP for the monkey pic!

As readers of The Skwib, you may be aware that I am also a novelist releasing his second work, Marvellous Hairy – a novel in five fractals. It’s available online from the publisher now, and in stores in the Fall.

But I’m also podcasting this bad boy, and they are well underway. I’ll be listing them all here, at iTunes, or you could check out the episodes on my writer’s blog:

Part One, The Cult of the Claw

Episode One (chapters one and two)
Episode Two (chapters three to five)
Episode Three (chapters six to eight)

Alltop and humor-blogs.com are also easy listening humor monkeys.

Warning: while this post may be about comedy, don’t expect it to be comic.

I would consider the quote “comedy is tragedy plus time” an old saw, but it’s still an interesting idea. Could every tragedy become funny, given enough time? The British comedian David Mitchell seems to think so. (I’ll link to his video rant, which tries to explain why Vikings raping and pillaging in the Dark Ages is funny, but the Soviet takeover of Berlin in 1945 isn’t yet, below.)

The quote should really be, tragedy plus time allows comedy. Depending on how you portray events, you can still achieve either a laugh or tears, and sometimes both. That’s what art is all about, right? But can you imagine taking a scene say, Schindler’s List, and turning that into a rip-roaring farce? Wait, no! Don’t even try to imagine it, because, as they say in another cliché: “it’s too soon. ” You can make jokes about Nazis (not much fun in Stalingrad), but please, no jokes about their atrocities. Personally, genocide strikes me as one of those events that is impossible to turn into comedy, no matter how long ago it happened. (But perhaps I’m not really trying. Maybe there is some good humor to be had in the Church’s elimination of the Cathars, for example.)

Proto-goth and journeyman of the bon mot, Horace Walpole once wrote to a friend, “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”

I think I like that quote even more, because it gets to the heart of the difference between the two. Of course, it may be that I remember the quote: “Comedy is tragedy plus time” as coming out of the pie-hole of Alan Alda’s character (the abrasive Lester) in Crimes and Misdemeanors, and not from Carol Burnett, as the Wikiquote would have us believe. (Crimes & Misdemeanors was a 1989 Woody Allen film, and Burnett’s quote is attributed in 2004 in Wikiquote. I’ll let wiser heads sort the provenance out.)

I definitely don’t agree with Lenny Bruce, who said: “Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.” The beauty of satire is that you can go for it right away. It might not get any laughs if it’s too early though.
Of course, none of these sharp observations are as funny as Mel Brook’s 2000-Year-Old Man (1961): “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

If you’re still looking for help on this one, you may find the tragedy-to-comedy conversion chart useful:

(via Comics vs Audience)

Now, as promised, here’s Mitchell on why the Vikings aren’t funny. I do agree with him on one thing for sure: the Vikings didn’t wear horns on the helmets. [You can find it here if the embedded video doesn't work.]

It would be tragic if you didn’t enjoy the comedy at Alltop and humor-blogs.com. HT to Renal Failure and Unfinished Rambler for helping me waste time on a Saturday morning. Thanks to Xoxé Tétano for the vintage viking.

Isn’t it wonderful living in interesting times? This month’s edition of the Carnival of Satire demonstrates how even dire news has its satiric side:

Lobo kicks things off with this useful advice on how to prepare for the biohazard finale.

Rickey has equally helpful hints in his (un)Official Guide to Swine Flu.

Up until this swine flu thing, the media seemed pretty excited about Twitter. Little did they know that Kneon has been making webcomics with his Tweets. You can jump straight to the comic here.

You may also want to check out the Twitterpocalypse, which we related last week.

Sticking with the web, Juliet Chase has A new approach to SEO .

And yes, the economy is still a worry. Generation Bubble puts it in perspective with Yakk in the USSR, or How I Learned to Love the Bubble .

Clearly, Diesel’s strategy for coping with the recession is to try and ride it out in prison. Or perhaps this is just a cry for help. He is trying to sell a novel, after all: I Got Yer Inconsistent Use Right Here. Decide for yourself, then go sign his book thingy so he’ll stop harassing nice people on Facebook. It’s literally the least you can do.

Mike Sowden has his own creative project on the go, and it looks like Fox might be interested — Stellar Quest 1: The Beginning .

Madeleine Begun Kane is still waxing poetic, but this time her limerick has gone to the dogs.

And we’re all not obsessed by current events. Ellis imagines what Elvis would be like if he were an elderly Jewish man.

You know, I had some of the same thoughts when I saw that picture of the five presidents together. Tim Slowikowski has a warning about Jimmy Carter, a bad muthaf*cka.

steven germain presents Rough Fractals: Blog Bail-Out.

Satire Patch presents NRA Releases Message On Recent Shootings .

In in our one non-satire slot: Vanessa Wolf has an intriguing tale about British PM, Gordon Brown: Confucius say: When glass eye fall in soup, remove with spoon .

And that’s it for the 113th edition. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, Ferdy’s permanent floating ping festival, and for the listings at the Blog Carnival too. Also, you may find some satire here if you poke around a bit. Here too. Thanks to Hobbit90 from Freaking News.com for the pic.

It is a quiet Welsh neighbourhood. Children play in the streets. An ice cream truck does a desultory business while parents chat in the foreground. This calm of this suburban street is rudely disturbed by the distant mellifluous sound of a Welsh choir singing, “four naked men, five naked men, and six naked men…”

The sound gets louder: “… and … seven naked men, and eight naked men,” the singing is nearly here. Everyone looks frightened. And then then we hear: “and nine naked men just walking down the road would cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.”

This is a brilliant (multi-award winning) short by Steve Sullivan, filmmaker, Welshman, composed of trillions of atoms bound together by the miracle of nature and perry.

Warning: Not Safe for Work if your co-workers are uncomfortable with brief shots of sausage and/or Welsh singing.

You can find the full film, A Heap of Trouble, here. More about Mr. Sullivan here.

Thanks to Spencer Evans for point this out. Humor-blogs and Alltop are also a heap of trouble.

The Battle of Waterloo

Napoleon Bonaparte is an iconic character, not only because he was short, wore a silly hat, and had enough pirate brothers to conquer most of Europe, but because he is the only person in history to meet his Waterloo actually at Waterloo. (The rest of us tend to meet it in boardrooms, law courts, amateur beard-growing competitions, and if you’re English, in Surrey.) Had Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo, civilization would be quite different. For starters, there wouldn’t be 2,050,000 results on Google for the term “French surrender” (there would only be 2,049,999.) Also, we would all eat a lot more snails.

But Napoleon did not win the battle. Later his opponent, the Duke of Wellington (also famed for rendering beef completely inedible and known as “Sally” to his friends), described the fighting as: “The nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,” which was Sally’s way of saying Napoleon almost won. To add insult to injury, Napoleon’s famed Imperial Guard — the closest thing the French Army had to crack assault pirates — ran away:

My pirate brothers and sisters include Captain Stanky and Rank Ol’ Pete.

Update:

This little Venn Diagram satire was noticed by Sheila at Gawker yesterday, and some self-satisfied, sanctimonious, humorless dork took it upon himself (I’m assuming MisterHippity is male) to correct the “inaccuracy” of my diagram. I’ll admit to not being an expert at creating Venn diagrams, and I sometimes get stumped on those little math quizzes you find when you need to verify you are a human being. However, I can read. And this is a powerful tool.

Having a look through the comments, it’s actually quite funny. He clearly understands the diagram I drew, yet was unable to perceive its humorous intent. You, dear alert readers, will also notice that MrHippity (who clearly isn’t) did not actually recreate the original diagram, because the original third (tiny, anguish-inducing circle) reads: “People who buy books written by bloggers.” (Not “read” as his diagram indicates.)

Here’s his “correct” version:


Of course, if this was more truthy, there would be no need for despair, because then promoting a book with a blog would be no problem. I think my version is way funnier. (Plus it has pretty colors and a nice font.)

I will let you be the judge.

Neither this source of humor, nor this one are sanctimonious, though there may be some self-satisfaction going on.

Happy International Worker’s Day everyone! Yep, it’s May Day, the traditional day to celebrate the worker, to dance around Maypoles, and if you’re really into it, you may even want to do some Morris Dancing. Alas, the hoopla falls on this, the 99th edition of the Carnival of Satire, but we will press forward with our cynicism anyhow:

We start with this news of recent scientific research. Dr. Tundra was very upset to read Will’s report that the Tinfoil Hat Brain Firewall Not So Secure After All.

Now, this busy worker isn’t dancing around a Maypole exactly, but she is very excited about something. And frankly, it’s kind of worryng. You’ll find the whole image at Fengtastic!, or click on the thumbnail.

Speaking of Maypoles, Swann has learned The Real Reason Hillary is Running.

While on the subject of poles with ears, Barbara Diamond informs us that Dick is obsessed with Nothin but Ass.

Ian Bowman has begun a promising list of defaults, starting with the default hobby for gainfully employed guys who are not in the habit of doing something even remotely interesting: photography.

Madeleine Begun Kane has nya, nya with: Hey Obama Sycophants, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You.

Sammy Benoit piles on with his terrifying dream: Barack Obama Was At The Exodus.

Huck Finn learns how Putin will save American democracy: by sending Chastity Belts to politicians.

This submission by Michael Fowke just freaked Thag out, but it was strangely compelling: Invesco Perpetual: Neil Woodford the star manager.

Greg Merrick has more financial doings with this primer on How to Completely Ruin Your Life Trying to Start Your Own Business.

While celebrating May Day, you may want to keep this news from Bloggledoggle that the Swamp Thing Actually a Hippie. Also there are indications that Batman is psychotic and Woody Woodpecker is an instigator. You heard me, an instigator.

And to finish off with some non-satire: Davexplorer made us laugh with this list of Dog Look Alike Celebrities.

And that’s it for the 99th edition! For our 100th edition, we’d like to do something a little different. We’d like you to find an example of some great satire that is not your own, and share it with us. We’ll credit both the finders and the findees. And what is satire? Someone wrote something about it once, we think. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, Ferdy’s permanent floating ping festival, and for the listings at the Blog Carnival too. Also, you may find some satire here if you dance around a bit. Warning: Alltop may cut in.

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