You see, Korzybski was a linguist. A real cunning linguist, if you know what I mean – woff woff woff, arooo? Actually, what I mean is, he realized that the word “to be” is all wrong. He realized that you can’t say what something “is”. Like, say you hire a contractor – ’cause the old lady won’t let you sleep at night until that kitchen counter is installed, y’know? Like her life is depending on it – which, if you’re doing things right, it should – so you call the guy up, he comes over and say, “yeah, that’s gonna be about $1800″. And then he and his dumb klutz nephews show up and run you $2500 and any beer you had left in the fridge!

Heck, I’m guilty of that too. On my show, I’ve given estimates that got more queered up than my youngest. Hell, you’ve seen the show, you know what I’m talking about. Thing is, at the time, the job definitely did seem to “be” about $1800. Later on, it only made sense that it was $2500 and some Budweiser, woff woff woff. So when you say I “was” doing 90 in a school zone, and when that machine says I “am” twice over the limit, you just think about what you and the machine’ll say in eight hours.

And then, on top of that, you got a bunch of eggheads who talk in E Prime! You know the types: big, thick glasses; high, rounded skulls; absent, Canadian girlfriends? Yeah, I used to rough ‘em up too – but cut ‘em some slack, ’cause while we’re working on that new porch, they’re doing renovations on the space shuttle! Also, those guys realize that since you can’t say that anything is anything, or that Tim Allen is picking his kids up drunk at 4 PM, you shouldn’t use the verb “to be”! They wouldn’t say “Tim, you are due in court three months from now,” they’d say “Tim, you look great!”

Officer, officer! Think about this: the bonds between atoms are so weird, and so wacky, that you can’t even say that that ticket isn’t already ripped up! Officer, did you know that through spooky action at a distance, and quantum entanglement, no one who sees me put these folded bills into your pocket can say that they saw it, or that I actually put it there? What’s to say this sixty simoleons wasn’t in your uniform all along?

Officer, what’s the point in these handcuffs? You can trust me! And odds are that the atoms will all line up, and they’ll just fall right off!

Officer, come on! Just take the cash, let me out of here, we’ll get some shooters and walk through some locker room walls! I am immortal! Kings have knelt to kiss my rings! Have you ever heard of Count St. Germain?

A-woff woff woff! Aroooah!

THE END

It’s like a scene out of a movie: A big downtown firm is interviewing candidates for a top sales position. It’s been a long and draining day full of dull questions and even duller responses. The fat cats are getting ready to call it a day, when suddenly they hear a knock on the door.

“Gentlemen, I’m here about the new position. I think I may just be the man you’ve been looking for!”

“Sorry. We’ve finished interviewing people, you can pass your resume on to Jenny out front and she’ll contact you when we have another opening.”

THHUUDDDD!

The door topples onto the floor like a giant domino, and in it’s wake a man stands tall, Royce Leather briefcase in hand, dressed to his neck in Brooks Brothers, his left foot embedded deep within the oak hardwood.

“Well I’ve already got my foot in the door!”

Amazement, laughter, applause. “You’ve got the job sir! Cheers! Well done!”

This fantastic scenario might very well be reality for 29 year old Eliot Ness of Chicago, the first human ever to have his foot successfully removed and replaced by a wooden door.

“I guess you could say I’ll be getting my foot in the door of a lot of places,” Ness quipped to us as he slowly and loudly shuffled his way down the hospital staircase and into the flatbed of the company pickup for a photo shoot.

“Needless to say, after the operation I now have a hard time fitting myself into elevators. Ever heard of a door getting caught…in another door?”

I can honestly say never have, but then again this was all unfamiliar territory for me. I’d never even heard of a foot transplant, let alone a foot-door transplant. Luckily I had Dr. Igott, chief surgeon and spearhead of the entire operation at my side to assure me, “it just go to show you, if you can’t get your foot in a door, at de least you can get your door in a foot. Hay! dat’s a good headline for your article.”

The success of the operation has sent shock waves rippling through the scientific community. “Talk about your doorman, this guy gives an entirely new meaning to the word a-door-able,” stated Osteopathologist Lance Slawson. Bone physiologist Erik Deforge went on the record with the following statement: “we’ve all heard the phrase, ‘don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.’  Now it’s more like, ‘Shut up! And don’t let my foot go up your ass on the way out…cause it’s a door!’”

Dr. Igott, however, considers Deforge’s evaluation “a bit of a stretch. Iz important dat we are conservative in de way we interpret de jokes—I mean de results, oderwise we run risk of alienating de scientific community.”

Eliot, for his part, is taking his new-found status as scientific marvel in stride: “All smiles here. I’ve got my health, my youth, and my foot in a door. I’m on a literal pathway to success! Hmmm…you know what? It’s kind of like I’m a d—” just then Ness’ door landed on the tail of an alley cat, which launched itself in a horrified scream. Ness stumbled back and tumbled into a dumpster, his door catching like a lid on the open top.

“If you tink he’s messed up you should see de doorframe!” exclaimed Igott with a slap to the thigh. “But seriously I kidding. You alright door-guy. You too notepad, I mean jeez, how many notes you take for a stupid article, you want I should give you my life story? Seriously, if I wanted a guy to sit around make notes and do nothing I would go to de Psychoanalysis! Help me get dis poor fuck out of de dumspter.

“Hey buddy, knock knock…”

“Who’s there?”

“Igott”

“Igott who?”

“I got shit to do so let’s make dis fast! Ha ha! Just kidding, I’ll be here all night!”

The D20 Conference is an annual event held between the world’s highest-leveled Dungeons & Dragons characters, and a magnet of media interest in the often-clandestine world of fantasy power playing. The characters and their roleplayers convene in an agreed-upon location that must be properly supplied by the host. Ringolos, Orange Crush and progressive rock (or, alternately, fantasy film soundtracks complete with incidental cues) must be provided, and the venue must be secured from possible intrusions such as doting mothers and sunlight. However, problems with the Toronto venue plagued this years conference to the point of calamity.

The leadup to the Toronto D20 Conference was full of bad portents. Host and dungeon master (DM) Stephen Harper’s older brother Blake was hosting a beer pong tournament in the garage on the same weekend, forcing the D20 to be held in the dining room where, according to inside sources, the illusion of fantasy was shattered by occasional family meals and repeated humpings by the family dog Terry.

“We complained to Stephen, but he didn’t listen,” said Barry “Elrendel” Moresly, representative of the Sword Coast. “He refused to break character even when the pizza guy got there. If we had a problem, he’d just say something like ‘in what manner of devilrous tongue speakest thou?’. You can’t quest with a guy like that, and you darn sure don’t want him DMing.”

The problems didn’t stop at the setting. DM Harper’s totalitarian tactics and self-centredness created rifts between the D20 organizer and those who adventured therein. One of the first roadbumps would become emblematic of DMing and hosting problems throughout the conference: the artificial lake fiasco, or Aquagate.

“I’d walked into a tavern and ordered a steak,” recounted Dmitri “Thal-Ghash” Brisov. “Thal-Gash is a half-orc, but he’s got the appetite of a troll, obviously. So I order a giant steak, and Steve must’ve misheard, because he rolls a die and says ‘very well – you are now at the bottom of a lake.’ I say I ordered a steak, not a lake, but he doesn’t care.”

The uproar was immediate. Barry, in particular, was livid. “How, by the Four Winds, could the lake have gotten there? The tavern was on a hill, Thal-Ghash isn’t a spell caster, and if the tavern wench could cast spells like that, why in Thoth’s name would she be working in a tavern on the farthest edges of Halruaa?”

Complaints to the DM were met with silence, denials, and in-game reprisals. Recounts Dmitri, “I complained about my order – in character, to the wench, mind you – and Stephen friggin’ drops a bunch of giant squids in the water for no reason! They ate up Thal-Ghash! I had to get Twiglam to cast a Recall spell on my paladin, but he’s only level 8. I mean, it’s a world-class dungeon I’ve got to crawl!”

DM Harper strongly objected to being referred to as "Gargamel's Sissy Little Brother"

Complaints of the artificial, illusion-shattering effect of the lake’s creation would dog Harper for the next two days. Adventurers argued that the time expended on describing the lake would have been better spent describing the environment of the underground passage they were supposed to explore, as previous D20s had seen their respective DMs fail to mention the dangerous thickness of their dungeons’ cobwebs in time for the adventurers to avoid them.

DM Harper, perhaps flustered by repressed embarrassment, and irritated at all the complaints (however valid), steamrolled over these and other protests at his lack of dungeon mastery. A list, compiled by disgruntled conference critics, details his failings in full, and includes such cardinal D&D sins as die rolls falling off tables, treasure troves being paltry for the effort required to unlock them, making dungeon layouts spell “Stephen Rules” from above, and refusing to play any album other than King Crimson’s Lark’s Tongue in Aspic for the duration of the conference. “It’s a decent album, even without Greg Lake,” commented Theodore “High Shaman Triffletrop” Smith, “but it’s just really grating – even during the first listen-through.”

As the game progressed, adventurers who protested these ridiculous conditions grew increasingly frustrated with DM Harper’s inability to adequately address their complaints. The descent into the underground passage grew slower and slower, dogged by more and more problems and irritations, until finally Harper arbitrarily transported all the most visible complainers to small cages in the Netherrealms. Inventory-less, cramped, unable to rest, and denied access to even Light Cure Wounds tonics, these prisoners were informed that they were to be held without use of spells until the DM decided to release them.

Adventurers thus subjected eventually rebelled, denying the DM’s authority and magically magically transporting themselves out of these cages, despite the vexed insistence of DM Harper that they could not do that. While many of the attendees simply left the conference after being freed from detention, some mutineers then further flouted roleplaying conventions and teleported their characters into a place they described as “the DM’s mom’s vagina,” laying waste to its elegantly described environs.

A furious DM Harper unleashed an impossibly large horde of orcs in response. The adventurers laughed at the DM spawning orcs in “his mom’s vagina”, but their laughter ended when he declared that the orcs had killed all their hard-leveled characters. “The keen-eared and Listening Elrendel should have heard them a mile off, had they existed before stupid Stephen just made them up ’cause he’s a crybaby,” reported Barry.

Harper's mother Karen and her unscathed vagina after an uneventful traffic stop on the weekend of the conference

The conference then devolved into shouting and namecalling, until Stephen’s brother Blake and his hockey buddies happened upon it and mocked it until it was abruptly brought to a formal close by a teary-eyed and thoroughly humiliated DM.

“The thing was, beforehand, Stephen was bragging about how much he’d spent on the whole thing,” recounts Yoshi “Yoshi” Takamoto, Stygian representative. “He was saying he’d gotten the chairs reupholstered, he’d gotten name brand snack mix, Stewart’s fizzy pop, and all this stuff. If you believed him, he must’ve spent ten times what Joey spent last time. But I didn’t see any of it there. The way he’d been carrying on, you’d think it should’ve been the best D20 ever. I think he just wanted to host for hosting’s sake.”

DM Harper could not be reached for comment, as he was grounded for throwing the remote at the TV in the aftermath of the conference.

I am a middle-aged, second-generation immigrant to your land looking to find an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. I am an extremely sturdy worker, whose size betrays a strong, working-class back/ethic. I should add that when I work, I do not wear a shirt. Instead, I prefer to wear trousers held up buy a set of high-duty suspenders. I also do not wear CSA approved steel toe safety boots, but rather a pair of dirty tennis shoes I’ve owned since 1982. I do not carry a wallet.

The following are some manual labour jobs for which I am well suited…
Painting outdoor banisters: If you have a steel banister that is one colour and you would like to change it to another colour (or—why not?—rust proof it) using paint, I’m your man. I am able to paint a banister of average length, width, and grade in a period of an afternoon, accounting for two bagged lunch breaks and the time it takes me to search for the pack of cigarettes that was in my back pocket the whole time. Unlike many banister painters in this town, I am not worried about getting paint on my shirt. (I won’t be wearing one.)

Manhole cover adjustment: If you are a mayor of town or city who has a make-work project involving adjusting the position of manhole covers or anything concealing street access to a sewer, give me a call. I can adjust the manhole covers anywhere from 45-80 degrees in any direction. I can also switch manhole covers from one manhole to another, or just stand there and stare at them intently, so that passerby will think I’m planning to do something with them. My presence there may also deter people selling manhole covers for scrap. Also, if you are looking to steal manhole covers and sell them for scrap, I am willing to work on a ten-percent commission.

Security: If you are hosting a stag and doe or other event at a local Legion, Polish Combatants Hall, Italo-Canadian Cultural Centre, or Victoria Edelweiss Club, I am available to stand outside the door and keep out the riff-raff who lack the ethnic background required for entry. Will work for 50/50 draw tickets.

Botched car interior reupholstering: I don’t have much experience reupholstering the interiors of cars, but if you’re looking for a big guy to get inside of your automobile and just mess around with a linoleum knife, look no further. If your interior is leather, don’t bother calling: I’d only resent you and not even bother attempting to competently finish the job. (Note: As I do not wear a shirt, there may be some perspiration stains left on your new interior.)

Install a screen door: I like this job because sometimes the fine mesh steel of the screen grates against my bare gut and it feels good. You may like this job because I do not have to enter your home and my grappling with the screen door itself will create a physical barrier between me and you/your children/your pets.

Chest freezer reassignment: I’m pretty good at moving whole chest freezers around: up or down stairs, etc. The leather suspenders I wear provide solid back support and I can usually just haul the thing around for a few minutes without pulling or tearing anything.

Hammer dummy: If you just need a guy who is wearing suspenders (but no shirt) to swing a claw or ball-pein hammer against a brick wall for a while for some reason, I can handle that. I can’t drive an actual nail for love or money, though, so don’t even ask.

Child rearing assistant: Gimmie a call if you’re looking for a guy to sit on the edge of your son or daughter’s bed breathing heavily. When they eventually wake up, panicked, they will see my sunburned, smiling face as well as my all-purpose work suspenders and calloused labourer’s hands, and realize the value of a college education. For jobs like this, I will generally leave your house at my own pace and treat myself to one item from your chest freezer.

General labour: If you have any unskilled labour tasks (i.e. no plumbing, grout, wiring, rolling up loose change, or duct work), fitting for a man with no particular skill set or shirt who smells like capers and the case of OV he drank last night, I am open to hearing about it. I also know a guy who makes a bad habit of leaving the keys to his truck in the driver’s side visor, so if you have any tasks that require a truck, I can help with those too (no driver’s license, though: wouldn’t let me pose for the photo shirtless). I prefer to work for cash or trade my services for items you own, though I can maybe make arrangements to accept major credit cards, if I ask my nephew about how to do it.

If you have any work at all for me, please contact me. I can usually be found admiring fence post diggers in back alleys around town, dusting dry cement mix off my bare chest in front of independently-owned submarine sandwich shops, and can also be reached by e-mail: gravedigger_fan@mindspring.com.

We’re putting our quarter-life crises behind us, and getting ready for our third-life crises. We’re long enough out of school and far enough from a real job that our parents just tell our grandparents that we’re “doing fine” in the city we’re in. Time was, all our free time was party time. We’ve still got the free time – we just don’t really party. We’re learning about food allergies instead. We wouldn’t know where to get pot if we tried. We haven’t seen shrooms since that guy with the stupid jacket went to do his master’s at Queen’s. We’re completely out of the mind-blowing loop. But we’ve got a hookup for Miller Chill. We’ve got a hookup for Bud Light Lime.

We’re hitting a stride, an ontological groove. To wit, we haven’t really cared about ontology since we last found pot. But our Facebook profiles are getting sleek, lean, and efficient – no overshares, decent privacy, and distinct tones, voices and types of links posted. We chit chat on Facebook, but we get real on Gmail chat – we know to keep that Gchat box exclusive. We know our sites, we’ve got our morning log-on routines, and we haven’t been caught off-guard by the news in five years. We haven’t had the great epiphanies we hoped would set us on our paths and get us up in the morning. But we’ve stayed up ’til 6 at a friend’s parents’ cottage, bonding over that. We were drunk on Miller Chill. We were drunk on Bud Light Lime.

We don’t own homes. We don’t see ourselves owning homes for another decade at least. We don’t even have a driver’s license. But we’ve accumulated enough bargain furniture to fill most of a bedroom and one third of a living room. Our DVD and record collections are now comprehensive enough to speak for our personalities, so our personalities don’t have to speak for themselves. We’ve thrown out the band posters that aren’t aesthetically justified in hanging on our walls, and when we find a ratty old soft-core porn poster at a garage sale, we only put it up for a week before quietly putting it in storage. When we sit drinking in our barely-tasteful, mostly empty apartments, we don’t want tasteful beer to throw them in stark relief. We want Miller Chill. We want Bud Light Lime.

We’re more stylish than we were five years ago, but we’re fatter too. If we can grow a beard, we’ve got one. If we can’t, we’ve deleted the pictures of our attempts. Yeah, we still troll for sex, but it’s getting to be a bit of a chore. We’re not scared of girls, but we’re dismissively misanthropic in the wake of undergrad. We’re horny, but we recognize the value of a good night’s sleep. We’ve taken “A Man Needs A Maid” at face value once or twice. But in spite of all our creeping curmudgeonliness, we know we’ll get fed up with trolling soon enough and want a girlfriend again before winter comes. And when we groan our way out of our roommate’s La-Z-Boy to look for her, we’ll steel ourselves with Miller Chill. We’ll steel ourselves with Bud Light Lime.

We’ve found our faults, we know where our weaknesses lie, we know what we’ll work on, and we know what we just won’t be bothered to change. We’re through bettering ourselves for betterment’s own sake and we’re taking virtue on an issue by issue basis. We know that life is short and grows shorter every day, and if someone wants to call us out for drinking a light lime beer, they can go right the fuck ahead. We know what single malt tastes like and we’ve seen the bottom of a Big 10%. We’ve followed bro drinking rules, we’ve comported ourselves to snob drinking traditions, and we’ve seen what those pettinesses do to people who follow them too long or too far. If we want a drink brewed a mile underground by straight-edge scientists who dispassionately engineered a beer that, on paper, is all you want in a beer if you could only bring yourself to drink it, then we’re gonna get it. If we’re not too broke, natch. We know ourselves well enough that, at long last, we can really, truly tell other people to fuck off. We’re not dads, and odds are good that we never will be, but life has brewed us full of dad flavour without the bitter parenthood aftertaste. So say your peace, you jackass, and let us watch Cops reruns in peace. We’re dead in fifty years anyways. Forty if we drink Miller Chill. Forty if we drink Bud Light Lime.

What's he building in there?

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens can’t have a desk because Ray Stevens has managed to accidentally burn down every house he’s owned since 1964 because he keeps trying to light a grill in a carpeted rumpus room.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

False. Ray Stevens lives in a modest hovel below America’s biggest ball of mud off Highway 66 en route to San Antone.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens is still trying to buy back his childhood shed after accidentally losing all his money to a man claiming to be a genie during the Jordanian leg of his Ahab the Arab tour.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is the embodiment of the ancient evil that loomed across America before Columbus even brought cholera and genocide from the Old World. Every 27 years Ray Stevens appears in the form of fear incarnate and lures a child into a sewer where he devours their innocence, leaving only their velcro shoes outside a storm grate as evidence.

Lee Tipton to Edward, me

Ray Stevens is wearing a rice hat, pulling another instance of himself across the Great Wall of China on a rickshaw, as the two of him rhyme “wang” with “mang.”

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens just confused having an idea with rhyming “Guantanamo” with “yo-ho-ho” and then that with his digitally-modified baritone singing “da-dope-do-do.”

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens is currently wearing a referee’s uniform, standing next to a “Illegal Immigrant Olympic Long Jump Event” sand pit he set up that starts on the US side of the border and ends on the Mexican side, firing a starter pistol wildly into the air, then dejectedly rhyming “hopeless” with “George Lopez.”

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens is reticulating the final splines on his “Americasville” in Sim City 3000.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is filming his Krautrock single Trans(nationals), which is a static shot of him playing a Mexican homebrew of Dig Dug. He is shrugging playfully as he loses on purpose.

Lee Tipton to me

Blog post: “Ray Stevens: What is He Doing?”?

John Semley to Lee

Ray Stevens is trying to Google his name into significance and happens upon a blog post that he doesn’t get is making fun of him. In the adjacent room, a breakfast steak sizzles knowingly in a flat iron pan.

Edward Petrenko to Lee, me

Ray Stevens is pointing to a chart that shows one large taco at the top with arrows pointing to dozens of smaller tacos below it, then pointing to another chart that is just an American flag with tiny tacos instead of stars. He then folds his arms, looks at the camera, shakes his head, purses his lips, and shrugs his shoulders.

Lee Tipton to Edward, me

Ray Stevens is superimposing his own head over every instance of Wile E Coyote riding a rocket.

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens is on ancestry.com, trying to trace back his lineage to an oak tree that predates the Iroquois.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens is shamelessly asking an Asian friend of his if it would be possible to “reprogram” Pac Man to make him look like Carlos Slim, and to “reprogram” the dots to look like American jobs. His Asian friend then reveals himself to be Ray Stevens. Their magic carpet then takes them far, far away, to a land without race, where all Ray Stevenses can live in honky-tonk harmony.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is in his Texarkana ranch house, reinforced athletic socks kicked up on a coffee table book of compiled Elvis Sightings; drifting into a mid-afternoon siesta he not only doesn’t deserve but resents the name of.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is taking all 13 of his flat-faced, softball-playing daughters to Olive Garden, to steal fake grapes as pre-emptive props for when Sarkozy loses an election.

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens is regaling a total stranger with an anecdote about drinking Barbisol on a dare.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is watching Airplane! on a TV with spoilers.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is trying to twist all the yellow and green blocks off a rubicks cube.

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens is having it out with the 3rd generation Latino contractor who is trying to rationally explain why putting Maserati doors on Ray Stevens’ bedroom is going to be tricky.

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens just keeps on driving south down the I-90, knowing this string of Waffle Houses will give way to an IHOP eventually.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens’ fourth marriage has fallen apart, upon his discovery that Jo-Anne was two transsexual Democrats in a trenchcoat.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is ceremonially burning his Culpepper flag comforter, because its laundry day at the Stevens Compound.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

I’m supposed to do my TL post tomorrow and have nothing. Can I use these? Credit all around obviously.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Yeah man that’s what I’m feeling.

Ray Stevens is branding his name into the federal building

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

that federal thing was a half finished thought. let me think on it

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Go nuts – stealin’ our jokes, like a regular Carlos Mencia, or generic sillygal Jimmy Grant!

Lee Tipton to Edward, me

Ray Stevens is distributing the last 32 minutes of Bad Boys 2 on so many CD-Rs

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens is alive and well and living inside anyone who has ever purchased a hot dog at a ballpark. Ray Stevens got Johnsonville Brauts.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

I’m actually really quite pleased with us

Edward Petrenko to Lee, me

Ray Stevens is writing his fifth frantic complaint to the makers of Wooly Willy, demanding they send him enough iron filings to be sculpted into both a beard and a turban on the same Willy.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens just signed a multi-hundred dollar endorsement deal with Spitz and Ray Stevens is regretting not grabbing another handful of Spitz from the loose bag on the CEO’s desk.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens just figured out a way to absorb smokeless tobacco through his eye by plopping two Skoal Bandits under each lid and making himself cry a little bit.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens just remembered that his jail sentence ended two years ago, and he doesn’t need to hide cigarettes in his butt anymore.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is wondering if he can make himself disappear by tucking his denim shirt into his blue jeans and leaning against his Ford F450.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens just used a Gator to tow his golf cart to a lawn mower repair shop to have a kegerator installed in the trunk.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is watching “wrasslin’” on the tee vee and don’t you goddamn dare bother telling him to pronounce it any different.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is hosing Ozzie’s piss off the Alamo with a shaken up tall boy of Billy Beer

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens is drinking a 2 litre of Mountain Dew: Code Red out of the bottle, sitting in a lawn chair at the bottom of an empty swimming pool.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is the first and only Jungian Archetype discovered by the Butthole Surfers

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens just accidentally signed his anonymous petition for a Ray Stevens U.S. postal stamp “Ray Stevens.”

John Semley to Lee, Edward

Ray Stevens just yelled “yee-haw” as he drunkenly dove out of the way of a Conestoga wagon barreling down on him at speeds of seven furlongs/fortnight.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens just woke up from a bender in a silo that had been welded shut from the outside, and had to carefully talk himself out of panicking by reminding himself that, in spite of it all, this is still America.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens has ruined his last eight meals because he has refused to admit to his live-in stepdaughter that the leafblower has no place in the kitchen.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is mixing sugar into the gas tank of his riding mower with a wooden serving spoon, prepping a few Oklahoma juleps for the greyhound racetrack tailgate party.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens puts on a Washingtonian powdered wig before he addresses a Tea Party rally, while he grudgingly plunks down eighty-five cents in full view of a toll road’s security camera, and in the afterglow of times he believes himself to have sired another child.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is…WASHTUB BASS SOLO!!!!

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens just threw up on the front yard, in full view of the neighbours, then proceeded to clean it up by lighting a trash fire on top of it.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens is inconsolably incapable of making love to his wife in the wake of Jimmy Dean’s passing.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens just got red in the face for the first time since 1974 after trying to chip a golf ball over the roof of his bungalow and driving it right through the bay windows.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is lying to the Associated Press about how close he was with Jimmy Dean.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens, despite countless attempts to remind him not to, still responds out loud to any question a radio commercial asks him.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is trying real hard not to think about the outboard motor he found sitting in his sunroom when he snapped into consciousness this afternoon.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens has returned to touring after spending fifteen months recovering from eating fried baloney straight out of the pan, as all his plates had been destroyed shortly after his discovery of skeet shooting.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is writing the dictionary people to try and get a cross-hatched illustration of his 3/4 profile next to the phrase “Fuck A Duck,” which he may have known wasn’t in the dictionary, had he ever read or seen a dictionary.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens’ back pain has reached a new all-time high and his comedic confidence an all-time low after alienating every masseuse in the phone book with excessive “towelhead” jokes, deliberate farting, and using a slide whistle to draw attention to his gathering erections.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is wiping his tears with instructions for setting off a Roman Candle after sleeping through the annual 9/11 Memorial Fish Fry at the local firehall.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens gives ninety percent of all his income to his local Methodist church in a frantic attempt to atone for walking into a synagogue one time, after mistaking it for the trampoline store he was looking for.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is standing by the microwave, watching the 7-11 ham & cheese log warm from the inside out, ‘cos baby, that’s America to Ray Stevens.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Had to leave on account of work, but this is my favourite email chain ever.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is responding to the nacho sombrero by joylessly eating 65 sliders off the brim of a Stetson.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is slated to play every role in a pop-up book about the Federal Reserve.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is more conflicted about Israel than anyone else in America.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens is shocked to find out there’s 15,000 battered housewives in America and he’s still eating his plain.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is dabbing at the brownface makeup on his collar with a denim serviette

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens has flushed all his elastic bands down the toilet, now that he’s realized you can castrate a bull with a bolo tie.

Lee Tipton to me, Edward

Ray Stevens is gunning a Dodge Charger through the screen of a drive-in playing Frida in slow motion.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

Ray Stevens isn’t engaged in any sort of high-speed pursuit, but he still smirks every time he crosses county lines.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens doesn’t need no police constable telling him that wife surfing isn’t a sport, godgummit.

Edward Petrenko to me, Lee

Ray Stevens doesn’t believe in global warming, but he still blames it when his stills burn down.

John Semley to Edward, Lee

I am putting these on terminal laughter now.

-Carlos Mencia

John here. I know, I know. I haven’t uploaded one of these in a while. Sue me! But if you saw the last one, then you know how things with my Cera Cast co-host and lifelong friend Matt went, while, a little south, let’s say. Anyways, I moved back into my folks’ garage, and I’ve been Cera Casting religiously, but just haven’t had a chance to upload ‘em (‘net connection back here is spotty & too lazy to go to library). Anyways guys, did a special one Monday nite in honour of Michael Cera’s big 2-2 and thought I’d share it. Make sure to watch the whole thing as it features a very special guest….

….Michael Cera!

This one is brought to you by Miller Chilled, the light lime taste of summer that is better than Bud Lite Lime.

Fans around the world were shocked last month when allegations of impropriety and narcissistic negligence were leveled against Canadian actor/haircut Michael Cera.  Specifically, a Hamilton waitress accused the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World star of leaving an insufficient tip, despite excellent service and a free refill coffee (not normally a standard feature at that particular Boston Pizza).

The fiasco, dubbed “Tip-pot Dome” for lack of any reasonable means of attaching the “-gate” suffix, came as a severe blow to Cera’s public image – especially at a time when the promotion campaign for Pilgrim (in theatres worldwide August 13^th, “Great” – Kevin Smith) can ill afford any negativity.  Beyond the to-be-expected bad press, the scandal reflects especially poorly on Cera, whose persona for nearly a decade has been anchored by polite uncertainty, a paralyzing eagerness to please, and a near-flagellant self-admonishment for even the slightest social trepidation.

“For Cera to be accused of callousness is as shocking as the Pope being accused of first-degree kiddie fiddling,” remarked user WereHereWereCera on the michaelcera.biz messageboards, summing up the outrage of Ceraheads worldwide at these accusations.  This outrage has only been amplified by the release of a study that indicates that as many as 95% of Michael Cera improprieties, uncoutheries, and faux pas (plural) are reported.

“Cera’s reputation has a way of baffling and intimidating the victims of his aggression,” reports Dr. Dryer of the Cerological Institute of Bethesda, Maryland.  “Many will overlook, forgive, or simply fail to notice the many minor mistakes and social disgraces he perpetrates.  But don’t be fooled by his aw-shucks stammer and non-athletic hunch – beneath them beats the heart of an all-too-comfortable human.”

Dr. Dryer’s research team admits that it is impossible to tell exactly how many affronts Cera commits, but if their recent field investigation is any indication, the number could range anywhere from 20 to 50 a week – nearly as many as the notably less-endearing David Cross or, possibly, Michael McKean.

“We’re talking the whole gamut of missteps: bad tips, dandruff, parking too far from the curb, not holding the door for someone, returning a phone call with a text, taking someone’s laundry out of the dryer to do his own, belching in an ethnic restaurant and claiming that the culture appreciates it, calling Lebanese cuisine ‘ethnic’, and, of course, farts.”

Elias was careful to note that this is a tally of farts not reported by Cera himself – to say nothing of those not reported by the mainstream media.  “We are talking about farts that Cera himself refuses to publicize.  The media is left with nothing but speculation, and even then, only on the audible farts.”

“Our shotgun microphones detected an average daily output of 82.8 farts above 40 dB.  For reference, 40 dB is nearly as loud as Javier Bardem’s speaking voice in No Country For Old Men, played at a reasonable volume.”

“Assuming a normal sphincter size and constriction, and assuming that he is making no secret effort to dampen the volume of the farts, we can estimate that this is nearly 6.5 litres of fart that is belching out of the rectum of a celebrity whose bread and butter is gentle self-effacement and meekness to the point of pathology.  There is a silent crime being committed here, and it comes in the form of pounds of aerosol Bramptonian feces that unsuspecting mumblefans have been breathing in since 2003.”

Michael Cera was reached for comment, but due to the poor reception of his cell phone, could issue no comment other than curse words directed at the number of bars it displayed.  However, on his behalf, Cera defenders have decried the study as baseless muckraking and dogpiling designed to heap scorn upon an already-embattled celebrity.

“Michael Cera has had to endure box office ennui, typecasting, imposters, the brutal underratedness of Paper Heart, and now this,” lamented Michael Cera, a Michael Cera fan who changed his name to reflect his taste in actors.  “This is just backstabbing from fairweather fans who feel alienated by an unassuming young actor’s enduring success in limited roles.  It’s called the Savage effect, and it can be very difficult – the Savage brothers all but put their careers on hold to escape it.”

The study has met with informal acclaim from the Cerological community, but due to the controversy surrounding it, will remain unpublished by leading Cera periodical Cera-Focused American until a peer review process has been completed.  Until then, Cera week celebrations will continue, including the traditional burning of the Wicker Cera and assorted virgins on Friday.

See, really, even though today is Michael Austin Cera’s birthday, isn’t it really all of our birthdays? Because isn’t there a little Michael Cera in all of us? We’d like to think so.

Which of has hasn’t suffered as a wallflower, awkwardly wringing our hands at the high school dance, wondering when was the best time to ask that nebbish-but-still-cute AV girl to slow dance to “Don’t Wanna Misss A Thing”? Which of us hasn’t holstered our teenage thumbs through the straps of our knapsacks, rocked back and forth on the balls of our adorable feet, and whistled choice cuts from Weezer’s Pinkerton while we wait for our mom to finish with her daily banking? Which of us hasn’t consistently palled around with a brash, loud-mouthed, likely chubby comic foil, our shenanigans outmatched only by the very chemistry of our camaraderie?

And if you haven’t managed to seduce the best looking girl in your high school or post-high school friend circle through charming hemming and hawing punctuated by a few well-placed compliments about her hair or band t-shirts then, well, you’re hardly the sort of reader Terminal Laughter Cera cares to court.

So celebrate: for the voice and svelte body of a generation is 22 today. Which means we are all 22 today. We here at Terminal Laughter Cera raise a cold Miller Chilled (or Bud Light Lime) in tribute, Mike. For we are all Michael Ceras, one and all. We are all Michael Ceras. We are all Michael. We are all. We are. We.

All hail.

Senator Benedict McLincoln feared communist influence so much that he remained incognito, in hiding, and virtually inaccessible for the duration of his single senatorial term, from 1950 to 1952.  Believing the majority of American politicians to be under the sway of Soviet hypno-rays, he almost never attended senate hearings or sessions.  Believing the majority of cars to be propelled by “teams of eight to twelve communists, hunched under the hood, running in unison, always turning left towards Moscow,” he rarely exited his house, the political orientation of which he was relatively uncertain.

Bob Jones Medical School Journal, Vol. 21 #2:

…test, devised by Sen. McLincoln, stipulates that the man is shown two films: one in which an attractive heterosexual couple is shown engaging in the sexual act, and another in which two fat men are engaged in heavy petting.  The heterosexual couple are communists, as indicated by a small red tattoo visible on the ankle of either, while the fat men are proud Americans. The true patriotic male will only be aroused by the fat men. If the subject displays significant tumescence during the heterosexual film, he is to be imprisoned.

King Grill-Up Barbecue Revue, March 1951:

KGUBR: Tell us about your favorite grillables.

Senator: I don’t barbecue as much as I used to.  Red meat or white meat, it’s still red blood.  You drain the blood, but it just flows into the ground then, doesn’t it?  Then you got commie grass.

KGUBR: You’re looking a little anemic, I must say.

Senator: Ain’t much iron in parrots.

KGUBR: You grill parrots?

Senator: Military Macaws.  Jabbery birds, but their heads are in the right place.

Stinker Thinkers: Science’s Goofiest Blunderheads!:

Everybody knows that light from receding stars shifts towards the red spectrum. But when Senator Benedict McLincoln heard this in 1950, he tried to submit a bill to fire faster-than-light rockets filled with copies of the Constitution at these “godless heavenly bodies”. However, during the proposition, he realized that rockets, even American ones, have a red glare – “like the eyes of Stalin.”  His next bill, a proposition to invade the USSR using only “un-tread-upon snakes,” failed to pass, by a vote of 42-58.

American Flag Round-Up, Vol. 2:

Senator McLincoln, who has repeatedly called for the removal of the colour red from the American flag and state institutions, was ejected from the United Nations building grounds last week, as he had attempted to remove the American flag from its pole in the plaza.  He was remanded to medical care shortly thereafter, as it became apparent he had recently attempted to bleach all pigment out of his skin.

Washington Post, March 5, 1953:

Former Senator Benedict McLincoln died tragically yesterday in a traffic accident. The police report describes him as having been fatally injured while riding a white stallion through a high-speed intersection. Senator McLincoln’s lifelong disregard for visibly red stop signs is believed to be a factor. He is survived by his wife, Janet (nee Wolczinkszsky) and a stockpile of guns. At the request of his last will and testament, there will be no viewing, and his body fed to officers presiding over court-martials.