OP-ED: Hey, Everybody Just Chillax For A Second. Okay?

What is up, everybody?  One of the C.H.U.D.s here.  You can call me Gary.  Just wanted to touch base and clarify a few things.

Let me start by addressing some frequently asked questions. Yes, we’ve overrun the town.  Yes, we are eating people left and right.  Yes, we are reproducing at an alarming rate.  No, life will never be the same.  But can we just cool off for a bit?

Let’s tone down all this “the C.H.U.D.s are eating my family” rhetoric.  It’s a little reactionary.  I mean, last summer when we tried to rise up from the sewers and eat everybody and the town banded together to successfully defeat us, you didn’t hear us bitching and moaning about how the humans are so cunning and violent.  We took our lumps.  Now sack the fuck up and take your lumps.

Also, there’s been a lot of criticism about how we’re eating babies and the elderly.  Well, yeah, of course we are.  If we start trying to draw up some list of who we will and will not eat that’s just going to lead to a lot of heated discussions and leave precious little time for actual cannibalism.

When you’re eating a town, you have to go balls out.  You can’t start being an overly sensitive pussy and saying, okay we’re not going to eat babies or old people.  If you employ a limited strategy like that, before you know it the babies and elderly will adapt and start fighting back.

I mean, these are not people in their prime.  If you’re a baby, you don’t know what the fuck is going on and you have not lived anything close to a fulfilled life.  If you’re old as hell, you may have lived a pretty good life, but all that’s slipping away and you’re gonna drop sooner than the babies.  Consider it a favor, old people.  You’re going down in a blaze of glory, like Young Guns 2.

If anything, you’d think we should focus on eating babies and seniors and leave everyone else alone.  They’re the ones still living actual lives.  Well, that’s a no-brainer.  These are the people that could effectively fight us off, so ya know, sorry, they’re gonna get featured prominently on the menu.

Anyway, that’s about all I had to say.  If you’re reading this it means we haven’t eaten you yet.  Congratulations on that.  But make no mistake.  We are going to eat you.  You will be eaten.  So just accept it and it will make things easier for everyone involved.  Cool?  Thanks.

OP-ED: THE C.H.U.D.S!!! GOD HELP US! THE C.H.U.D.S!!!

The C.H.U.D.s!!!  They’re everywhere!  Oh my God!  OOOOOHHH MY GAAAAWD!! The C.H.U.D.s have risen up from the sewers and are eating everyone!  They are eating everyone!  Everyone!!!

I’m only 16.  I shouldn’t have to watch people being eaten.  That’s super gross!  C’mon!

I must be the first one to get to a working computer since the uprising.  Please, someone, anyone, if you are within the sound of this post, send help!  Please help us!!!

On Christmas day the C.H.U.D.s attacked.  Before, they were a mere nuisance. An inconvenience.  But early on Christmas morning, as families gathered unsuspecting, the C.H.U.D.s rose up; organized, militarized, with a swiftness and agility no one ever conceived or expected.

Where are my parents?  Where are my grandparents?  Has anyone seen my sister Beth?  I fear they have been eaten!  The C.H.U.D.s have eaten my family!  Mom! Dad! Beth! Gammy! NimNom!  Noooo!

Yes, I call my grandfather “NimNom”.  It’s a long story and I don’t really want to get into it now.  Ok, fine.  It’s how I pronounced “granddad” when I was a baby.  When I was a baby!!!  NimNom, no!

I’ve found temporary shelter in my friend Brian’s house.  We were kinda dating before all this happened.  You know, the C.H.U.D.s and all.  I mean, things were just kinda casual, ya know, but now he’s pressuring me to repopulate the species, which I think is a little much.  I mean, it’s only been a few weeks and we’re not even sure of the severity and scope of the C.H.U.D. attack.  I mean, one state over everything could be cool, with hot single guys (who don’t spend half the day scribbling ‘World of Warcaft’ fan fiction into a well worn marble notebook) just waiting for someone like me to come along.

God, I miss my NimNom.

OP-ED: Keeping the “Christ” in Everything

Greetings, my fine Christian fellows.  My name is Dr. Ronald Jefferies and it is a blessing to speak to you today.  I am the pastor of First Baptist Updegraff and have recently launched a website that lists local businesses and organizations that are willingly substituting the seasonal Christian greeting of “Merry Christmas” with the more politically correct secular slang “Happy Holidays”.

Well, it’s not enough that the people working at these establishments are obviously going to roast for all eternity in a vast ocean of hellfire.  They must be publicly outed and shamed for their insidious acts of casual inclusion.  On a website.  As posted by random, overly sensitive Christians who have nothing better to do than get upset when people do not share their same set of core values and beliefs.

So saith the Word of the Lamb of the Lord of the Blood of the Saviour.

Here’s just a sampling of the user reviews you will find at our site, thechristmasshitlist.org:

• Updegraff Drug & Gun “After bagging up my NASCAR beach towels, titanium cock rings and white pride magazines, the clerk at the counter wished me ‘Merry Christmas’.  Blessings be upon her.” – Shirlene Grubbins, homemaker
• The Pox-Infected Injun – “The staff at my favorite western wear outlet made sure to wish me a ‘Very Merry Christmas’ as I purchased a new collar for my wife.  What a blessed event!” – Earl Durbur, crossbow enthusiast
• Darla’s Delicious Diner – “The waitresses at Updegraff’s finest eatery always make a point to wish you a ‘Merry Christmas’ before handling your food with their scabies-riddled hands. May the Lord bless them and heal their terrible parasitic infections!” – Bebe Barnswallow, homemaker
• The Candle Outhouse – “A greeting of ‘Merry Christmas’ and a nauseating mixture of uncomplimentary aromas welcome your every visit to this good old fashioned candle shop.  Blessings!”  – Tonya Schurthwine, homemaker
• Updegraff County Mosque – “Good luck getting a ‘Merry Christmas’ out of these Grinches!  Yeesh.  Thumbs down.” – Geraldine Twiddledings, homemaker

So, have yourself a blessed and merry Christmas full of Christ and free of things that don’t have the word “Christ” in them.  Because piously demanding that everyone in your immediate vicinity does what you want them to do regardless of their own beliefs and faith is what Christmas is all about. So saith the Word of the Blood of the Lamb of the Saviour of the Cross of the Spirit of the Master of the Universe, He-Man.

Coming soon: First Baptist Updegraff’s summer movie preview “Keeping the ‘Christ’ in X-Men”.

MARKETPLACE: Hollywood’s Golden Age – In Heat and On Sale!

Hey, everybodies.  It’s me, Bippy VonVino, President, CEO, and Founder of Varicose Videos and have I got a sweet deal for you!

This weekend only, we are offering deep discounts and unprecedented sales incentives on our entire inventory of geriatric celebrity sex tapes.  You read that correctly, my friend.  Every single title in our extensive catalog of very old actors and even older actresses videotaping themselves having extremely dusty sex is on sale for 50% off.

Here are just a few of the films we have in stock:

• Wilford Brimley’s Wild Wild Mustache Rides
• Hume Cronyn’s Huge Bonin’
• Olympia Does Cock-Ass
• Sir Ian McKellen in Gandalf the Splayed
• Jessica Tandy Giving Out Handies
• Ernest Borgsixtynine
• Do McClanahan starring Rue McClanahan
• Don Ameche’s Balls: A Retrospective

So stop by VonVino’s Varicose Video Vault (located in the South Updegraff Mall between Cat Barn and Bitches Be Scrapbookin’) and take advantage of these incredible savings!

OP-ED: Enough Already With the Prank Phone Calls!

I have lived in Updegraff my entire life.  76 years.  You’d think that after all that time the novelty of my given surname would have worn off.  Oh, but you’d be wrong if that is what you thought.

Day after day, night after night, I am harassed by telephone pranksters who think there’s something funny about my name.  Well, laugh all you want, chuckle hounds.  I am proud to be a Thunderfart.

I was born William Phineus Thunderfart.  That is my name and I am honored to bear it.  I have always been a Thunderfart, I will always be a Thunderfart and, by God, I will die a Thunderfart.

Stifle your giggles, you insufferable little puke bags!  The Thunderfarts have done more for this town than you will ever know.  My great great grandfather Thelonious Punderton Thunderfart invented the suspension bridge and could eat railroad spikes.  My grandfather Pooter Jay Thunderfart helped pave over Updegraff Gulch and was one of three men who dug the glorious Updegraff Canyon.  My grandmother Estelle Thunderfart rode a horse once.  And my father Simon Melville Thunderfart is a legend in the field of medicinal leeching.

But you brats don’t care about any of that.  You just can’t get over the fact that our last name has such hilarious potential for ribbing.  Oh, so hilarious.  You’ll please excuse me if I don’t wet my pants over how funny it is to make jokes about my last name, you braying jackasses!

Well, this Thunderfart is drawing a line in the sand.  That’s right, you blathering herd of yackity-yacks.  I just got the Caller ID.  And on top of that, I’m considering installing a —

One moment, please. Someone’s at my front door.

What?  I didn’t call for a delivery food order!  Away with you and your piping hot pizza pies!!!

I don’t care if it comes out of your paycheck!  You’ve been had!!!

No!  It’s Thunderfart!  Thunderfart!!! Not “Fun-to-fuck!”  My name is Thunderfart.  Tell your friends and tell them to tell their friends.

My name is Thunderfart!!!

HEALTHY HINTS FOR A HEALTHFUL LIFE: Canine Substance Abuse

Hello, everyone. It’s your friendly neighborhood dentist, eye, nose and throat specialist, veterinarian, OBGYN, herbalist, voodoo priest, Internet minister, and general family health practitioner, Dr. Theo Scrumpets with some more Healthy Hints for a Healthful Life!

Did you know that the Christmas season – that is, the most wonderful time of the year – is often accompanied by a spike in attempted suicides?  Did you know this?  I’m sure you do because people say it a lot.  I haven’t even looked it up or anything.  Like you, I just assume it is true because people say it all the time.  Just like when they say that Thanksgiving is the busiest travel season of the year or that there are massive contagious outbreaks of Toyotathon fever during President’s Day weekend.  Who knows if that shit is actually true.  But people run their gums and everybody accepts it as fact. Bop bop-bop, bop bop bop bop-bop, you’re looking at Planet Earth, Duran Duran.

But there is another little-known health issue that is overlooked each and every December.  Whether you’ve noticed it or not, Christmastime is a psychosomatic trigger for drug addicted dogs.

Scientists, doctors, and gross pet owners who live in houses that smell like pee-pee all the time have yet to come up with a cause for this tragic annual event.  Still, every year dogs all across the country drown their holiday sorrows in daily narcotic intake.

Sure, I’m a highly respected member of the medical community, as well as a practitioner of the dark arts.  But even my household is not immune to the scourge of doggy drug abuse. This year, my hunting dog Biscuits got hooked on cheese.

Oh, the irony.  We used to wrap his heartworm medicine in a slice of cheddar or bury it in a hunk of some soft brie.  That was the kind of cheese he loved as a pup.  Now he’s taken to snorting dangerous mixtures of Tylenol PM and heroin.  And, aside from the extreme amnount of damage he’s doing to his body, it also makes him act like a total dick-jerk.  A very sleepy dick-jerk.

Luckily, the makers of Tylenol offer a an alternate “safe drug” that safely mimics the effects of cheese while chemically neutralizing the deadlier effects of heroin.  It’s available only by prescription and no you can’t have any.  It’s called Tylenol PM Dawn.  Just like regular Tylenol, it relieves pain, reduces fever, and relieves the symptoms of allergies, cold, cough, and flu.  But it also soothes the body using the dulcet mellow tones of PM Dawn’s 1991 hit single “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss”.

That’s all the time we have for now, folks.  Tune in next time when I’ll be discussing a growing epidemic within the bird community: avian auto-erotic asphyxiation.

MUSIC NOTES: It’s “Everybody” Walk the Dinosaur, Not Just Some People.

Hey, rock and rollers!  It’s me, Dirty Denim Denny, proprietor of Fun-Go-Round Records & Tapes, located in the West Updegraff Mall across the street from Grandpa Ernie’s Erotic Accoutrements.

Not only am I a local business owner, I’m also a professor of rock and roll.  And guess what, kids?  Class is in session!

Was (Not Was) released their hit single “Everybody Walk the Dinosaur” in 1987.  That was 23 years ago, ample time for every single person on Earth to open the door, get on the floor, and subsequently walk the dinosaur.  Still, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people who have yet to walk the dinosaur.

Some people may not have heard the song.  Maybe they were born after the song came out or maybe they died before it was released.  Maybe they live in a mountaintop cave.  Maybe they are in a part of the world where infectious mid-80s pop-funk is banned by Sharia Law. But these are just excuses.

Music is my master.  And guess what, buttercup?  It’s your master, too.  So when a song instructs everybody – not just a select group of willing participants – to open the door, get on the floor, and walk the dinosaur, then everybody must do so accordingly.

Everybody!

That’s all for now, rock and rolling music lovers.  Tune in next time when I will try to figure out why everybody is not Wang Chunging tonight.