Angry Seafood

A while back I had a strange thing happen to me. I was checking out a local yard sale and there it was, a living, breathing monkey smoking a cigarette with a post-it note on its forehead that read: “$20”.

“Excuse me are you really selling a monkey?” I asked the old man that was in charge of the second-hand sale.

“That’s right.” He replied as he spit a wad of tobacco on the grass. “You wanna buy it or what?”
“I’m not sure my lease allows it. And it has a smoking habit.”
“He has a job, he buys his own smokes.”

I woke up the next day noticing something was odd about my monkey. He looked different. I mean he was the same just that something wasn’t quite right.

The third day I figured out what it was: my monkey was growing and the change has suddenly become exponential. He also required more and more food, which was becoming a big problem, especially with rent due soon.

After a week, my monkey was huge, and I had to keep him outside. He also was becoming an attraction. I became worried about what would happen. The feeling wouldn’t last long.

In the middle of the night I awoke to the sound of the roof of my house being ripped off. The monkey stared at me and roared.

“Calm down monkey!” I yelled hoping to settle his fears. Something was getting him riled up.

I put on my smoking jacket and as I stepped out the front door, a crown of onlookers with pitches and torches were yelling at him. This wasn’t good. My monkey was very agitated now.

Suddenly a woman came forward from the crowd and got the monkey’s attention. He roared again and grabbed her, taking off down the street.

I ran downtown with the rest of the angry mob. Well, we walked fast because of the torches and pitchforks. When we got there, we saw a path of destruction and mayhem. Cars were turned over. Fire hydrants were shooting geysers of water. A man was running around on fire. There always seems to be one in every disaster.

Part of me was in shock, but another side of me was like “Wow!! I spent twenty bucks for a rampaging monkey!”

When we got to the tallest building in town, my monkey had already climbed to the top. Planes were shooting at him and he lost his balance, tumbling to the street below and shaking me out of slumber.

It was all a dream.

But I awoke sitting in that same yard sale, clutching a copy of the ‘King Kong’ DVD with a post-it note on my forehead that read: “$20”. I was also surrounded by chimps and apes.

(Reprinted from former blog)

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Welcome to our first edition of ‘Humor Bloggers Speak’, the bi-weekly exclusive interviews of humor blogs. We are joined today by Diesel from Mattress Police. He is webmaster for the highly-successful Humor-Blogs directory as well as the author of a very funny book ‘Antisocial Commentary’.

Chris: Welcome Diesel. How’s everything going?

Diesel: Visibility is only about 300 yards right now, but I’d say that everything within that range looks ok. I think there might be some bad shit going down behind me though.

C: What really popular blog do you hate the most and why?

D: This is going to sound like a cop-out, but I really don’t hate any blogs. In the introduction to Antisocial Commentary (which I noticed you have a link to on your site, so thanks!), I originally had a slam on Dooce, but when I was editing it I thought, “Why am I slamming Dooce? The only thing I have against her is that she’s way more popular than me.” I don’t want people slamming me just for being popular (in the unlikely event my blog is ever that popular).

I will say that Dooce.com is way more popular than it has any right to be, and there are a lot of other blogs that deserve to be way more popular than they are. That’s the main reason I started humor blogs.com. I wanted to create a site that objectively ranked funny blogs, rather than just listing the most popular blogs, which is what most blog directories do.

C: Your thoughts on Arbor Day

D: It seems rather arbitrary to me. Why trees? Why can’t there be a Shrubbery Day? Or Cat Day? I think this country would be a better place if each of us would take one day out of the year to plant a cat in the ground.

C: Great taste or less filling?

D: I find that this is a sliding scale that tracks my slowing metabolism. You know those little plastic cups of non-dairy creamer that you get in restaurants? (By the way, does it scare anyone else that that stuff is identified by what it’s NOT? What other kind of food do you know of that does that? Would you eat something called “Not Chicken”?) Anyway, I used to DRINK that stuff. When I was in my 20s I could eat ANYTHING and I was so skinny that my anatomy professor used to make me take off my shirt so he could point out where the spleen was. At least, that was the reason that he gave me. Anyway, now that I’m getting older I’m finding that I have to drink diet soda and other disgusting crap so that I don’t have to buy new pants every six months.

C: Who do you think is the funniest US presidential candidate and why?

D: I’m going to have to go with Hillary on this one. I like the idea of feminists getting excited about a woman who is only in the public eye because she was married to the most famous womanizing creep ever. She’s like irony incarnate. Makes me think that we need to run Larry Craig’s wife for something.

C: What is it like trying to get a book published?

D: The main thing that I’ve learned about publishing is that it’s SLOW. While I was still working on Antisocial Commentary, a friend put me in touch with the acquisitions editor for a publishing company that is pretty well known for its humor books. I’m a relatively unknown writer, so they weren’t really interested in a book filled with my random musings. They basically just wanted a hack to put together a book about 100 Ways to Kill a Penguin With a Banana or something. You know, the kind of books you find in the Humor section of Barnes and Noble. Which is fine, I don’t mind being a hack. So I put together a proposal for them about a humor book having to do with vampires. She liked it, and told me they’d get back to me. In the mean time, I finished editing Antisocial Commentary, designed the cover, published it through Lulu.com, and began selling copies from my site.

The point is that I was able to self-publish Antisocial Commentary in less time than it took for a “real” publishing company to even give me a response to my proposal. And I’m really glad I did it, because now I’ve got a book that I can show people — and looking at it you’d never know that I published it myself. I’m hoping to generate enough buzz with it so that when I finish my NEXT book — which is a humorous novel sort of in the vein of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — I’ll be able to get it published before I’m eligible for Social Security.

C: The Pony Express leaves with shipments of your book from California. How long does it take for it to reach New York?

D: Dude, I simply cannot explain how long it took my book to get to your house. Those ponies must have been seriously sick or something. I mean, I sent out like 70 books that day, and the one I sent to SPAIN arrived 3 days before you got yours. Do you live in an underground bunker or something?

(Editor’s note: Mail is very very slow around here.)

C: I would like to breed some fire-bellied toads. How do I?

D: I really don’t think it’s any of my business who you want to breed with.

C: What is Grundir the Implacable’s taste in music?

D: He’s not really big into music. I know he really misses the screams of Orcs being worked to death in the infernal factories of Mordor. Also Bjork.

C:Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this interview Diesel. Any last words for the readers?

D: Last words? Don’t I even get a cigarette? Buy my book! It’s funny! Even Chris thinks so!

Diesel’s question for the readers:

“Is it just me, or is this the worst season ever for Last Comic Standing? These guys make Ant look funny.”

Answer now in the comments section!

(Reprinted from former blog)

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So I am building a deck. I know, some of you right now are thinking: “Chris, you live in an apartment”. Oh so I can’t build one?

Anyways, I go to the Super Hardware Store Megaplex to look at the wonderful advantage of this new-fangled plastic desk surfacing that lasts much longer then wood I have been hearing so much about. No staining, no sanding. If you chip the ‘wood’ anywhere, it’s the same color under the surface.

But then the decision gets difficult. A saleswoman asks me what color I want.

“What are my choices?”
“Well, there’s grey…” She pointed to a cheery lady with a clipboard at a desk in a well-lit area of the store.
“Grey? Sounds like a lame color.”
“Sir, it’s the most popular.”
“What about brown?”
“You want brown?”
“Yes, you know, like the color decks are usually stained in?”
“But grey is what everyone else wants.”
“Except me, I’d like brown please.”
“Fine, Come with me.” She huffed away annoyed but at least I was getting a brown deck.

I followed her as we traversed the back of the store, down the stairs, and into the underground labyrinth of the building. Working around pipes, mice, and homeless vagrants, we arrived at what looked like the boiler room.

“This is for brown.” She said, opening the door and shoving me inside where I faced a crotchety old man standing behind a desk. The door slammed shut behind me.

“So, you want brown eh?” He stared me up and down. “Who sent you here?”
“Um, I’m just buying a deck.” I sensed his sense of mistrust. “I didn’t like the idea of a grey colored deck, so I guess here I am.” This convinced him I assumed.
“Good to hear!” The old man smiled. “Let me get the Tome.”
“Um, do you mean tome as in a book with a lot of pages?”
“Precisely!” he replied with glee slamming the book to the desk, causing a cloud of dust to burst out in all directions. “This is the Tome of Brown. It holds all the possible choices of tones of the color for your deck. Choose wisely.”
“Don’t you carry the normal brown color?”
“We don’t have JUST brown, there are many shades. There is light brown, medium brown, maple, sorta-dark brown, medium-but-also-light brown, chestnut brown, light…”

This patio-themed reenactment of the classis shrimp scene in ‘Forrest Gump’ went on for about six minutes until finally I had enough. “I think maybe, I want gray after all.”

“You’ll be sorry!” The curmudgeon shook his aged fist and arm at me as I hastily made my exit.

I arrived back at the surface and there was Ms. Grey, ready to set me up with my patio surfacing needs.

“Ok, I’ll take the hot, popular color.” I said, accepting my fate.
“That is an excellent choice Mr. Cameron if I do say so myself.” she said as she pointed to the Tome of Grey. “Now, what shade would you like? We have many to choose from.”

(Reprinted from former blog)

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Hello everyone, I am Doctor N.C. Heere and I am back with another fine edition of my advice column. So many people go to Yahoo Answers but few are given good counsel. Chris hired me to be that voice, that beacon of hope for the readers.

Today I dispense my wonderful and useful advice from the lovely city of Detroit. But once again my travel agent feels the need to play cruel jokes on me with travel arrangements that are sub-par. I have never heard of the “Motel No-Tell” chain but I seriously question its four-star rating as assured to me by said agent.

The room is full of these bugs that scatter when the lights come on. I also am not aware that a blinking neon sign is a good thing next to a bedroom window. But at least it is not this place.

The family who stayed there truly took their life into their own hands. Here in this hotel that only happens if you leave the property.

This month, along with the advice I will be commenting on a few actual responses to the questions. Mark Twain surely was correct when he said people are idiots. Let’s get started shall we?

1. You probably have seen the green and white USDA Organic symbol on foods at your grocery store. What do you expect from products that bear this label?

Since this is a government entity I expect overspending on the look and color of the label. I expect someone to be paid $100,000 to be in charge of the labeling, yet the staff below them gets crapola wages. I expect this to result in careless oversight of the industry accompanied by kickbacks in exchange for looking the other way.

Oh, yes well I would expect it to be grown in some kind of soil or liquid also.

2. Have you ever thought about what our human lives would be like, if we left nature alone?

I would imagine there would be less of us with a complete set of extremities. If we left nature on its own it would just build massive societies that encroached our land. This would cause us to forage through their dumpsters and eat their pet dogs and cats. The shoe would clearly be on the other hand.

The question my friend is, would nature leave us alone?

This is one of the actual responses to this question: “If nobody ever trimmed the bottom branches off trees, they would probably never fall over, even in most hurricanes, and we would live in a root system, wouldn’t we ? Think how different it would be !”

I disagree. I think it would be good. This way, when you fall out of the stupid tree you will hit less branches on the way down.

3. Disney going down the tubes? agree or disagree?

Like many of you, I can not wait for the day that dreaded mouse dies. There have been many times when I wished I had the fortitude to do the deed myself. If this world trip of mine takes me to California, I shall think about it. Every Disney cartoon is the same plot and it always starts with dead parents. Awful, awful, awful.

So to answer this question I would have to say I am on the fence on this one.

4. Libra female and Gemini male, what’s that like?

Well, I would have to say, that in my professional medical opinion it would involve a lot of heavy petting, grunting, motion, sweat, other bodily fluids, and a cigarette three minutes later.

Watch out for the Scorpios, they like to tie people up.

5. Is it true that NASA are planning a manned space mission to the sun?

An actual response: “my friend told me this i thought it would be impossible but he says its not cos they are going at night..anybody else know of this?”

Those NASA scientists are so clever. The response, not so much.

I think the following statement sums up my answer on this one: If the person from #5 and the person from #2 were in a stupidity contest it would probably end in a stalemate. #6 comes in a close second.

6. Did he say i love you cause i’m pregnant?

No, he said that a few months earlier, thus leading to your current situation. I would also deduce that your boyfriend’s ‘I love you’ sounds like a desperate cry for help. If I was seventeen and my pinnacle of career success to date was being able to man the grill and the fryer simultaneously at Burger King, I’d probably stab myself.

That is just me though.

7. What is the most important thing for you to consider when choosing a prostitute?

One of the easiest questions I will possibly field ever. I think that, oh wait a minute. Is this a human or an animal prostitute?

Doctor N.C. Heere is a noted practitioner of unsolicited consultation. His advice column is published monthly.

If you would like to ask the good doctor a question, send your letters to: thetuna666@yahoo.com

(Reprinted from former blog)

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