satire

We’re running a contest. The idea is to find a vintage ads (the one pictured above is from an 1975 USPS stamp ad), and then insert a product (or service) from a fictional future (or past) — it can be from a book, movie, TV, etc. The only proviso is that it has to have been written by someone else, so none of your own bizarre fictional futures. It doesn’t have to be as grim (or unlikely) as THE POSTMAN, by the way. If you’re more of an optimistic Star Trek kind of person, then I’m happy to see Oil of Olay ads featuring Warf, or ear-hair trimming systems endorsed by Quark. Or you may be interested in zombies.

Original image. More info about The Postman [wiki]

The Rules:

1. create your masterpiece
2. post it to your blog
3. link to this post (or let me know where it is via email)
4. wait for the aplomb and/or ridicule of your peers.

What, pray tell is the prize? Well, if you win, you can choose from:

• a prominent walk-on role in my next novel
• a copy of THE AMADEUS NET
• a “mystery” item from within the bowels of my desk.

The second-place winner will choose from the remaining prizes, and the bronze winner gets whatever is left. Worth playing for? The contest will run until (Sunday, April 20).

For more information, you can check out the original contest here. I fully expect most of the wackaloons at humor-blogs.com to enjoy this one, especially the zombiephiles. Note this is not a meme. There are prizes; that makes this a contest, so I don’t want any sword-wielding, hobbit-torturing, cubicle ghosts coming after me.

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I spotted a Photoshop contest that looked like fun, so I thought I’d have a go at it (with a Skwibbish twist, of course.) You can see the results to the right. (Original ad here. Synopsis of THE ROAD here. [wiki]

In the original contest, the idea was to take modern products and display them in a vintage advertising light. (You could reverse that too, but boring.) So, find some vintage ads, and then insert a product from a fictional future — it can be from a book, movie, TV, etc. The only proviso is that it has to have been written by someone else, so none of your own bizarre fictional futures. It doesn’t have to be as grim as THE ROAD, by the way. If you’re more of an optimistic Star Trek kind of person, then I’m happy to see Oil of Olay ads featuring Warf, or ear-hair trimming systems endorsed by Quark.

The Rules:

1. create your masterpiece
2. post it to your blog
3. link to this post (or let me know where it is via email)
4. wait for the aplomb and/or ridicule of your peers.

What, pray tell is the prize? Well, if you win, you can choose from:

• a prominent walk-on role in my next novel
• a copy of THE AMADEUS NET
• a “mystery” item from within the bowels of my desk.

The second-place winner will choose from the remaining prizes, and the bronze winner gets whatever is left. Worth playing for? The contest will run until (Sunday, April 20).

For more information, you can check out the original contest here. I’ll post a few more ads like THE ROAD baby food in the next week. I fully expect most of the wackaloons at humor-blogs.com to enjoy this one, but just to be sure, I’m going to tag a number of them, just to get the word out. Note this is not a meme. There are prizes, so that makes it a contest, so I don’t want any sword-wielding, hobbit-torturing, cubicle ghosts coming after me. Let the tagging begin, in no particular order: Bagel, Chelle, The Frogster, Brent, Rickey, Diesel, Don, Lobo, Quelqoth, Ellison, Rachel, Jon, Hurty, Alenja, Fiar, Bob, Mr. Snitch!. Finally, thanks to exnovo for the original baby food ad.

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Readers who’ve only discovered The Skwib in the past couple of years may have missed the series we’ve done on the Beijing Olympic Mascots, and a number of demonstration sports planned for Beijing this summer. As we can see from the news, the Chinese government has really started training hard for the first sport:

Tibetan Dissident Biathlon

50-Meter Land Requisition Event

Organ Relay

Hu Flung Falongong

Forced Sterilization Footy

Press Clubbing

Amnesty International has more (less satirical) information on human rights in China and the Beijing Olympics. This group of humor athletes is training hard for the new demonstration sport: “causing beverage to shoot through the nose”.

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Onga was always asking him to cut his toenails, and it made Thag crazy.

If he cut them too close, then he had nothing to protect the end of his toes. Good nails were especially important when you jumped on the back of an auroch during a hunt. If you didn’t have long enough nails, you might not be able to hold on.

Then again, he had to admit it was not auroch hunting season.

She could get really insistent, making veiled references to how well-groomed Weasel-Scratch-Face-Brother’s toenails were. (The shaman was always trying to one-up Thag in any way he could.)

In fact, it was the shaman’s adroitness with cave art that got Thag started on it.

He couldn’t help it that all he could draw well were aurochs — which were an important religious symbol, of course, and the representation of which got under Weasel’s skin — and toenails.

Actually, it had taken him a while to perfect the representation of toenails, but eventually he got it down, and filled an entire cave with them (and aurochs).

“What?” he asked Onga. “I cut them off; I can’t paint them either?”

More about the discovery of Lascaux cave paintings. Other long-nailed auroch-lovers.

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Anaxagoras of Ionia presents “Hot metal, man” (circa 450 BC) –>slide 6

• sun is not Helios riding a chariot in the sky
• it is a blazing ball of metal
• hot metal, man, hot metal
• hey, it makes as much sense!

Diagoras the Atheist presents “Miracle, my ass” (circa 415 BC) –> slide 3

• so this wooden statue prevented ship from sinking?
• throw it (Herakles) on fire
• if it can perform miracles, then it should have no problem
• otherwise, his thirteenth labour shall be to boil my turnips!

Democritus presents “Ungulate theory” (circa 400 BC) –> slide two

• all things made of atoma (atoms)
• soul is just an exceedingly fine and spherical kind of atom
• or perhaps superstition
• in any case, it’s not that different from a goat.

Socrates presents “Method to my madness” (circa 399 BC) –> last slide

• you have accused me of atheos (refusing to acknowledge the state gods) and corrupting the youth of Athens
• it’s a fair cop
• you should know I’ve been inspired by divine voice, Daemon
• also, enjoy a nice pint of hemlock.

Epicurus presents “It’s all good — not God — baby” (circa 300 BC) –>slide 12

• if gods exist (if!) then they’re not interested in humans
• death is the end of body and soul (if it exists)
• not to be feared
• what is good is pleasure, baby, but not too much pleasure
• why I let women into my philosophy school.

More about the History of Atheism here [wiki] and more ungodly humor here. The disembodied floating head of Epicurus (who rocked) is based on a photo by dithie.

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The O’Reilly Boys finally caught up with Old Judge Turgid at the Annual Pecos River Ride and Chili Jamboree. Salathial had hung their older brother Seamus “The Tinkle” O’Reilly just the year before and they were plum angry.

But Old Judge Turgid, he didn’t mind none. In addition to having a giant noggin’ that made his ten-gallon hat look like a Boston dandy’s bowler, Salathial Turgid had a legendary intestinal track capable of containing the very vapors of Hell.

He knew it. The O’Reilly Boys knew it. And the terrified denizens of Pecos knew it.

So when they put the Colt up against his temple, he laughed and said, “Boys, the only thing keeping my sphincter shut is my continued vo-lition. I’d give you the count of ten to va-moose but I suspect one of the town-folk will kill you first.”

Thanks to Michelle Jones for her creative photo and to the Hole-in-the-Mattress Gang.

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Welcome to the first Carnival of Satire for 2008, the Light-Year of the Alien. Basically, the blogosphere is like Manhattan in the Men in Black movies. Sure, we pretend that we’re normal people, but bloggers everywhere are freaks, exhibitionists, and certainly extraterrestrial in nature. Sometimes, we’re even satirical.

Daniel Brenton blows the lid off Operation Majestic Twelve in the second episode of The Round Files: The George W. Bush MJ-12 Briefing

David Mills makes good use of his audio editing software and presents this anti-Semitic rant from Ann Coulter. (I mean, come on, for sure she’s an alien.)

Madeleine Begun Kane believes there is an alien conspiracy in Arkansas, and she Won’t Graciously Submit To Mike Huckabee.

Brent Diggs and the good people at Ominous Comma Industries have a new product for us meta-galactic mutants looking for love, promising: Copious Comments - Guaranteed.

Thomas K presents MUTE Politics. Surely there’s an Earth drinking game somewhere in here?

Sammy Benoit is channeling some kind of Ambrose Bierce-like ET in this Middle East Peace RAW SEX TALK.

gameguy presents the news that Cheney’s Biscuits Are Burning.

Usiku presents an alien’s perspective on Understanding Underwriting

Keith_R tackles the surreal (off-world) language of the business world in: The Top 12 Phrases I Hate in 2007.

And while the jet warms up, Dan Johnson figures that Gift Cards are Ruining The Holidays and has reasons why. (Just replace the word “gas” with the word “space” in this post, and you’ll see he’s an alien too.)

And that’s it for the alien edition! If you have some satire to share, please consider submitting next time. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, the Blog Carnival, and the good denizens of Planet Humor-Blogs too. A special thanks to Garrette for his toothy alien.

Technorati tags:
carnival of satire, satire, humor.

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HAMILTON, Ontario (The Skwib) — The blogosphere is still reeling from the revelation that a blogger has been pondering things instead of musing about them.

“Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time musing, in fact, the tagline from my blog used to be ‘muted musings from Jeff’s tasty trumpet” — clever, eh? But . . . I don’t know, it just seemed like it was time to, you know, start pondering instead,” Jeffrey Trumpeter told The Skwib in an early morning phone interview.

Trumpeter runs “Assorted Cream Fillings (pudding-like ponderings from Jeffrey’s pastry pan),” a blog devoted to his interest in cats, Boston Cream Donuts, hockey, politics and humor he describes as either “quirky” or “explosive”.

read the rest of this article in The Skwib archives …>

Or try humor-blogs.com, but you won’t find it there.

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Sir Thomas More presents “The Religions of Utopia” (circa 1515) –> slide three

• several religions
• sun-worshipers, moon-worshipers, Uranus-worshipers (the worst of them)
• but the best religion worships an incomprehensible Deity.

Sir Thomas More presents “The Religions of Utopia” (circa 1515) –> slide five

their most ancient law:

• no man ought to be punished for his religion
• not even the evil-smelling Uranus-worshipers.

Sir Thomas More presents “The Religions of Utopia” (circa 1515) –> slide six

• liberty needed so they can decide:
• which religion is true and which is false
• also, dignity of human values more important than religious dogma.

Sir Thomas More presents “Burning Lutherans” (circa 1530) –> slide 5

• heresy against Church is a disease
• started with burning Protestant books
• now onto followers of Martin Luther
• (but I only burned six).

Sir Thomas More:

“A man of an angel’s wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.” ~ Robert Whittington (1520, before More’s “pyro” phase)

In addition to being an all-weather dude, More also was burner of heretics, or Lutherans as we know them now. (Both may also be found at humor-blogs.com.)

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And is he wearing one of those rainbow clown wigs?

One of the premises of my first novel is that Mozart is alive and well. (And living in the future, where clown wigs, political posturing, and human stupidity have been eradicated.)

In the book, Mozart spends a lot of his time playing jazz piano, considering sex-change operations, and falling in love with lesbian nurses, but how does he support these diverting hobbies? By selling “lost” Mozart manuscripts through auctioneers such as Sotheby’s.

Kinda like the one they sold yesterday:

A leaf in Mozart’s hand with cadenzas written for the Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, one of his first masterpieces, sold Tuesday for £110,900 ($230,550) at auction in London.

The full story is on the CBC.ca site. You can get the book directly from the ENC Press site, or at Alibris.

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I bet you weren’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition! Now, send in those nuns!

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s trouble at mill:

And if that wasn’t sufficiently frightening, get the soft cushions:

Now, will this appear on humor-blogs.com?

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Welcome to the gobbler version of the Carnival of Satire. We didn’t receive many submissions this week, so we have stuffed this issue with a mix of the few submitted bits of satire, parody from the nuts on our blogroll and a few tasty nuggets of irony from bloggers at humor blogs.

We begin with this savory piece by the Electric Writer about the dangers of writing while drinking copious amounts of coffee. By the way, beer can also cause one to be toilet enraged.

If you haven’t graced your palette with some of the exotic fare at Ration Reality, then you are in for a treat, especially if you also think that Shirley Temple is Creepy.

Over at Point Five, they were shocked — shocked — to discover a dude enjoying a chick flick, but this is just a sign of the crisis of gynemovia sweeping North America.

And if you needed further proof of this crisis, look no farther than Hurty Elbow, who blows the lid off Phireblanks, the male contraceptive.

Mental Mosaic is convinced that James Watson has had a big scoop of jungle fever.

The Prezel has breaking news about the Hollywood Writers’ strike that you should not miss on this day of thanks.

This demonstration of a Venn Diagram, by Mr. Sun, while not holiday-related, is quite helpful.

And while on the topic of diagrams, you may find the wedgie-vs-fashion Venn at the brilliant blog, Indexed, a pinch.

What are those kids up to? Have they found makeup?

Blog D’Ellison has a satirical tour of art history with this 100-word take on Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory”.

And finally, we hope you have a much less harrowing feast than these folks: Dinner Guests Survive Unsolicited Tour of House.

And that’s it for the gobbler edition! If you have some satire to share, please consider submitting to the next edition. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, and at the Blog Carnival too.

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