How about handing out Bibles while wearing identical white T-shirts with the rest of your youth group?

Jesus-Ween, or Jesus-Win, is a contrived holiday which will attempt to reinvent Halloween into something more wholesome; or as my friend told me after looking at their Web site, something a little sadder than people who hand out pennies for Trick Or Treat.

In between singing lines like “And if the Devil Doesn’t Like it he can sit on a tack. Ouch!” with uniformity that the North Korean Army would envy and arguing whose mother gave out the sexiest purity ring, teens across the country are having a spiritual fall holiday without all the candy and toilet paper and casual drug use millions of other teens take part in every Oct. 31 without somehow summoning an elder god who drowns the planet in maggots he vomits from each of his 666 mouths.

I don’t want to make fun of these people. I don’t want to bitch about how their loyalty oaths promise to retake the holiday and turn it into World Evangelism Day. I don’t want to make fun of their website, which looks like Thomas Kinkaid threw up in my browser.

I want to shy away from forced outrage against a group of people who will never succeed in ruining Halloween for the normals. I’ve been following their Facebook updates for weeks and it’s heartwarming how they celebrate whenever there’s a news story about an elementary school in Kansas that disciplined a third grader for coming to class dressed like Ed Gein.

Halloween is going to be fine. While lesser holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and St. Patrick’s day are fatally flawed by church, interacting with your family and drunk fratboy assholes hooting at “The Boondock Saints,” Halloween retains it’s credibility. It’s the most fun you can possibly have while waiting for the natural world to rot and die for another winter marked by seasonal affective disorder, nosebleeds from forced air heating and cutting yourself with whatever’s handy as the sun goes down at four in the afternoon.

Halloween succeeds on its own merits: candy, booze, horror movies, the Great Pumpkin, urban legends about people force-feeding razor blades to children and people dressing as the walking corpse of whatever important person died that year. Its superiority is because this all happens organically. Cool is self-sustaining and it doesn’t need an evangelist.

But people need to appreciate where this all comes from. Halloween, deep in its roots, is protection. The holiday gives us a ritual with which we can interact with existential we’re-all-gonna-beat-dirt-in-the-ground drama that should be turning everyone into nihilistic serial killers. Without such release valves, society would have a tense Thanksgiving, a worse Christmas and the self-immolations would start at some point during the Super Bowl halftime show when the curtain rises to reveal one half of Smash Mouth eating the other half.

But taking the theatrics of Halloween too seriously, as Jesus-Ween would have us do, is also dangerous.

The Abyss. All of my fun ideas come from here.

Because believing in the Devil just makes it easier for Him to find you. The Abyss needs to be dealt with carefully, because It’s always looking for a foothold.

Like this:

A summer camp counselor is telling the children in her bunk a ghost story. Once upon a time, a little boy’s overbearing mother choked to death on a ham sandwich. He wasn’t around to call for help because he disobeyed his mother and was playing outside instead of doing his homework indoors like a good child. To this day, the mother’s vengeful ghost tortures her son by gagging loudly when he tries to play, when he’s making new friends and just as he’s ready to fall asleep every night. The campers, with rapt attention, are hooked on every word of the story.

But the counselor stops just before the end. She quits and flatly tells the campers she’s sorry, but the story didn’t actually happen to a cousin of her friend like she told them at the beginning. It was all made up crap, she says. She lets her campers know that there are no real ghosts, no actual monsters. In calm, paced tones, she tells the children that as they get older they’ll realize there is nothing hiding behind the basement furnace. Nothing is waiting until their back is turned to grab them around the ankle with a slender arm and drag them under the stairs.

The counselor says when the campers are older they’ll realize all the monsters they could ever handle were already inside them, in their parents’ heads and in the minds of every new person they meet.

So close.

Just like the monsters always wanted.

Enoying

every

single

bite

of you.

Nivek Ogre, a well-adjusted guy.

So much of the world is a disgusting hellhole, and that’s just the stuff that floats to the surface. An enormous demographic of people instructed by God to keep these things from happening are more concerned that “Disney’s Halloween Treat” is an initiation into a goat-worshiping, free-love LSD cult. If you contemplate it for too long you’re bound to reach the conclusion that we’re living in a universe which is indifferent to everything except its love affairs with Absolute Zero and entropy.  In the end, it would almost be pleasant to have a flesh-eating ghoul who cared enough to stalk you through your house at night.

You have to deal with this madness on your own terms or you’ll go psycho.

Horror is gift. Halloween is necessary. Gorging yourself on sixlets and candy apples and throwing up into a plastic Captain America mask is a human fucking right.

I'm Cecil the Bear Baiter and I'm madder than hell!

Don’t let anyone know I said this, but – seriously, guys – fuck bear baiting. I can’t believe it took a civil war and a foreign occupation to open my perspective enough to see new job opportunities beyond bear and dog fights. Spectacles like bear bating aren’t as exciting when there’s an actual war going on outside. It looks dull by comparison and there’s not much you can do to make it more exciting. It doesn’t matter how drunk you get the bears before the fight when rival groups of barbarian warlords are firing peasants out of 100-yard long crossbows at each other.

The war almost tore Pigsnot Marsh apart, ruining what would have been the pleasantest harvest and smallpox season on record. And it didn’t seem like the fight between King Longloins and his nobles was going to end. It was when the Northern Kingdom was at its weakest that the mysterious ships from the east started landing on our shores.

We were being invaded.

The invaders store their important information in something called "books." Pigsnot Marshers store their important information by having our slain enemies' orphans recite it from memory. Oh, that reminds me: I need to pick up another copy of "Pig Farmer's Almanac." Mine drowned in the latrine last week.

The colonialists knocked over the government in a matter of days. They ran all our aristocrats out of the castles and replaced them with mayors selected by their own government. The mayors began reforming our way of life and, even though our high priests threatened otherwise, Almighty Crom did not seek vengeance by sneezing us from his holy nose and wiping us under his celestial kitchen table.

For a while we had a very different kind of leader. He got his seat in an election, he wasn’t chosen in a contest to see who could fling his wife the farthest. He governed with help from a cabinet of scholars. He could count. He didn’t own slaves and he didn’t think he could control the weather by the amount of rat bones in his beard.

His government implemented a lot of quality-of-life reforms: crop rotations, plumbing, roads… They even took down the old diving board at Mercury-and-Molten-Lava Lake.

Within three days, they negotiated a treaty with King Longloins and his thanes. Within a week, they ended the centuries-old custom of selling your daughter to the village brothel on her 14th birthday. Our open sores all healed over time and, ever since the new government told us they scared away the troll that steals smart children, our kids been able to read and write without fear.

Shame things had to end the way they did.

About six months ago Urk the Bloodletter’s prize sow gave birth to a piglet who oinks backwards.

That kind of evil omen could only mean one thing: the colonialists were enchanted demonic blood gnomes and had to be destroyed.

"Well, professor, I find your geocentric view of the solar system simplistic and, frankly, arrogant." "Hush, Francis, who's that at the door?" "Oh, it's the Barbarians who are going to kill us because we're a pair of wussy pussy sissy pants who read books. Durr Durr Durr."

They didn’t see it coming. They were like lambs before the slaughter. Before long you could hear the lamentations of their women. “The Barbarians! The Barbarians are revolting!” Their kingdom was turned to ash. We celebrated for two months, drunkenly burning libraries and hospitals. Everyone sold his 14-year-old daughter to the brothel and open, weeping sores are a now sign of patriotism.

The bottom dropped out of the orphan market after all of this, so I was out of a job again. It was then that I had the divine inspiration to run for a job in the provisional government, which will remain in power until Longloins perfects the follow through on his wife-throwing.

Yeehaw! Church is fun again! When the invaders left, all their silly copies of "The Crom Delusion" left with them. Nice try, bloodgnomes.

This is my chance to finally have a voice in Pigsnot governance, to have real power, to finally be able to afford one of those fancypants “spoons” I keep hearing about. Once I’m close enough to the Longloins administration, I’ll move into one of the largest palaces in the Northern Kingdom and I’ll have a whole barnful of wives.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have anything to offer the subjects here. I have incredible credentials. I’ve fathered fewer stillbirths than any other proud dad in the Northern Kingdom. I come from a respectable family. My granddad burned all the gypsy women he was pretty sure gave everyone in town the plague a few years ago.

But more than anything I have sound public policy platforms.

Ogre pillages are the single greatest outside threat facing the Northern Kingdom today. If I’m hired, after dipping my noble wick into my first allowance of fresh wives, I will eradicate the Ogre menace through a brilliant system of appeasement involving the excess orphans in my orphanarium and a vat of dippin’ sauce.

Following that, I will run out of town all of the cheating and unethical street vendors who sell rat meat – Yes, common rat meat – in the village meat markets. Every citizen will be able to rest easy knowing these vendors have been replaced by franchises of Farmer Cecil’s Grade-A Health Rats.

And, so help me Crom, Literacy shall die within our lifetimes!

I look forward to serving you, the fine people of Pigsnot Marsh, as your regional warlord and slave master!

Well hello there, ma’am! Beautiful evening. Isn’t it? Gorgeous moon! Just Gorgeous. Well, yes, I guess it is a bit late… neighbors must be sound asleep by now.

Anyway, let me introduce myself. My name is Charlie Walker, but my friends call me Chuck. Anyhow, I was just taking a nice stroll around your lovely neighborhood and decided to stop by.

Well now, you got a nice house here, ma’m. Look at that parlor! You got your telephone and your combination phonograph radio and even state-of-the-art RCA television console. The wood paneling in this place is exquisite! Gee wiz! I bet with one of those singing fish on the wall, this place would look as classy as a German hunting lodge!

But do you ever feel you’re missing something? That you’re lacking that one-of-a-kind household item without which you question your lifestyle, your self-worth and your decision to not drive your children to the lake with a stomach full of Valium and release the emergency brake?

Well it just so happens that I represent a product that can fill that void.

That’s right, ma’m. I’m here to give you an opportunity to be one of the first women on your block to own a Certified, Genuine, Guaranteed 100% Authentic Rotting Corpse for the low, low price of just fifty dollars!

Whoa now! Looks like you shut that door right on my foot there, ma’m. Just hear me out, you wouldn’t want to shut old Chuck out in the cold night, would you? It’s dangerous out there, ya know. Hell, I wouldn’t even be able to call the cops. Phones lines are down. Didn’t anyone tell you?

But just think of it, ma’m: The ab-so-lute luxury of the world’s finest corpses right in comfort of your own home! Don’t want to take my word for it? You don’t need to! Why not ask the trendsetters at Better Homes and Gardens, who called Rotting Corpses, “the must-have item for every modern woman?” Or the fine ladies at Redbook who called them, “the sexiest accessory to come out of third wave feminism?”

Hell, even those stuffy old fuddy duddies down at Consumer Reports who pooh-poohed that fine asbestos insulation you got in this house just couldn’t stop clowning around with theirs in time to write the article for their summer issue!

That’s right, my good lady. I’ve got a selection of the finest quality Rotting Corpses on this side the New Jersey landfill and I want you to buy one. You got your pick, cuz I got all kinds of corpses! Young, old, male, female…hell we even got some Italians (if that’s what you’re into). Harvested by experts, dug up by hand and aged in finest barns under the Oklahoma sun, these corpses are guaranteed to change the way you live!

What do they do you ask? What don’t they do more like it! Golly, there’s no end to the ways a Rotting Corpse will enhance your quality of life.

Need a conversation starter at the next bridge club meeting? Flop one of these babies right there across the card table! It’s sure to spark off hours of conversation! Kids acting up? Try our “Tough Love” model: It scowls and points an accusatory finger at your little ones while a hidden tape recorder plays the phrase “I’m going to drag you down here with me.” Those little devils will think twice before trying to sneak their veggies under the table to the dog at dinner time!

Your husband’s in the mood but you got one of your “headaches” again? Why risk a black eye in the morning when you can just turn out the lights and let a Rotting Corpse do the work for you?

But why keep your amazing new purchase inside when you can put it outdoors for the neighbors to envy? With the right accessories, your corpse will make a swell scarecrow, perfect for keeping dogs, cats, and those pesky neighborhood Catholics off your lawn!

I can see you’re skeptical, ma’am, but just follow me here. These aren’t just any old, run-of –the-mill, cut-rate, fly-by-night corpses. No, these doozies here can and will alter the course of your life.

Still not interested, huh? Well that’s okay, because these corpses aren’t just for any Tom, Dick, Harry or other commie-loving traitor. No sir! These puppies are a symbol of status.

Look, ma’m I…I don’t want to be a gossip, but I just thought you should know. I was down at Fred and Margaret Cunningham’s the other day, and well, they just bought two more! That’s right. They got one swinging in every room in the house!

And let me tell you, it isn’t Margaret’s whipped-salmon-casserole parfaits that keep the who’s who of the John Birch Society coming back to her potlucks.

But you still don’t want one? Really? You sure, ma’m? Because I’d sure feel bad about not letting in on this once-in-a-lifetime offer.

No? Okay…that’s just too bad. A shame, really. Say, is the man of the house home? No? Well when do ya think he’ll be back?

That’s a few good hours. Say… look at you….what are you? About a size six? About five-three? Yeah, yeah well I’ve been getting some orders for the shorter ones….yeah with the brown hair and the green eyes. They love green eyes….

No ma’m. Well sorry to barge into your house like this. I won’t be but about 30 minutes. It used to take less time… Jesus! Hold still you crazy dame!… but I bought the cheapest stuff from that crooked piano-wire salesman!

God enters His launch code. Jesus and God take out identical keys and turn them in separate locks simultaneously. A plastic cover over top of an angry, red button flips open. Jesus bites his upper lip and chokes back a sob. "This is what you get for 'Magic: The Gathering,'" God mutters, His index finger extending.

That news comes to us through 89-year-old pastor Harold Camping, a former civil engineer and a part-time impersonator of the grandpa in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. According to this article, Camping found three sacred numbers using Rapture Science, multiplied them together twice and mumble mumble the Rapture happens tonight.

Don’t ask us to explain it. We’re not one of his hundreds of potato-y followers who quit their jobs at the Gay-punching factory to spread the message about this crap. We don’t listen to much AM radio and, to be truthful, even Camping has fucked up this prediction before.

But we did take one semester of Rapture Science in college. It was a choice between that, Care Bear Physics, or Voodoo Home Economics and Rapture Science was the only one that didn’t meet at 8-o’clock in the freaking morning.

So we know what Camping is saying is the 100 percent real deal. This isn’t some tacky, bullshit, pandering shill being perpetrated on a bunch of gullible sourpuss assholes. This is authentic Rapture, God’s very own “I-told-you-so.” We’re hosed, guys.

In the few remaining hours Bob and I could spend repenting or calling our family members and telling them we love them, we’ve decided instead to share some of our Rapture expertise in an update. And yes, there’s a chance we could regret this post come Sunday, when we’re in Hell, staring into the demonic eyes of Leslie Nielsen as he rubs a suspicious, anvil-sized bulge in his pants; but we value you, our three readers, far more than our immortal souls. We don’t want you to be in the dark about Rapture Science once the actual Rapture starts going down. Besides, we know that if there’s one thing God hates more than a sinner, it’s someone who pusses out at the last second.

We wanted to thank you guys for reading our blog, for sharing in the experience of our final Garbage Duck update. Any moment now the skies will open and start raining molten bedbugs on us, but we will always love you.

Rapture Science

There is a finite amount of upward force applied to each of the select Christians who will float into Heaven tonight. That said, it will take approximately 2.5 Raptures to make Jerry Falwell ascend. Please note that this estimate is for the classic Falwell, not the current, more decompose-y model.

For my thesis I used science to prove that being in the presence of divinity was like getting a hug from Ed O'Neill. C+

In 1930, a Rapture scientist created an algorithm based on the true name of God, which we can’t type here (for some reason, it makes computer processors transubstantiate). He applied that formula to the book of Exodus and discovered an 11th commandment! However, “Thou Shalt Not Fart In A Pancake Factory” was very poorly received at that year’s convention and the scientist’s career was ruined.

Those who have the bad habit of confusing the real Rapture with the Blondie song of the same name, just remember this: Debbie Harry’s rapping does not mean the world is ending outside your window. The sound of the earth being blasted with fiery rays of God’s vengeance is actually less disturbing. You can count on this, though, “The Tide Is  High” is definitely playing on repeat in Hell for eternity.

When you get to Heaven and meet Saint Paul, don’t ask him about his Letters to the Philippians. He’s not proud of his later work.

Long thought to be a beautiful sermon about ideal mercy, love, and compassion for humanity, the Beatitudes are actually coded schematics for a nuclear-powered pulse rifle. This actually explains why in non-canonical gospels Jesus exclaims, “Choke on this, imperialist scum,” and glasses Rome after the Sermon on the Mount.

Q). If God had a face what would it look like and would you want to see? A). Myron Cope and fuck no.

Will my pets join me in The Rapture? No. Since pets are incapable of prayer, your beloved animals will be forced to starve or burn in the sulfur fires of post-Rapture earth. And there’s no praying mantises allowed in Heaven because they fumigate up there every other Thursday.

We hope that clears up some questions you had about the End Times. It’s been real. If we have one regret, it’s that a handful of arrogant, self-absorbed, gay-bashing jerks will be snatched into paradise tonight, and not the billions of flawed, but otherwise good people here. Oh well. Be sure to mark your post-Rapture calendars for the pansexual-drug-fueled-no-questions-asked-outdoors-uninhibited-polyamorous-fuck fest at my place on the 23rd.

You know, when I walk the halls of my laboratory at night, listening to the noises my test subjects make as the light hits their eyes for the first time in days, I find myself wondering: Will History respect, or even note the contributions I made as a Doctor of Children’s Studies?

I must say, the thought disturbs me greatly some evenings. And when my assistants come back with a bag of fresh subjects from the Orphanarium, I can barely muster up the enthusiasm to tag them and fire at them with the vaccination cannon.

So despondent am I that one of the little monsters nearly escaped the other evening. He had nearly cleared the second fence by the time Manfred, the simpleton who cleans the cages for me, felled him with a single blow from one of the other test subjects who just happened to be handy at the moment. Disaster was averted, but I lost two test subjects and we’re running out of space in the fruit cellar.

Sometimes, I fear my career is falling apart.

But it’s when I can sit down and practice my craft, writing fear-inducing cautionary tales for evil youngsters, that I reconnect with my muse and feel better. Yes, even though the fools, the simpletons the BRAZEN JACKASSES at “Children Studies Quarterly” had the nerve to call my stories “unethical,” “abusive” and “narrative lobotomies,” I know I am doing the Lord’s work. I have a mandate from Him to purge naughty behavior from the teeming, hateful masses of the planet’s youth. I will purify the world with SCIENCE!

I’m pleased to say I’ve written one that turned Test Subject A46 into an albino. Try this one out on your treacherous little brat today! I call it:

Lipp: The Wasteful Boy who Turned Into a Greasy Splat

Copyright: Dr. Munchhausen's Adorable-est Funeral Portraits, 1898

There once was a boy named Lipp, who always was a-wasting his money on stupid things.

He would buy puzzles. He would buy toys. He would buy a piece of candy to go with his lunchtime gruel.

Such silly, frivolous things for a growing boy of 5 to have!

So wasteful was Lipp, he once pinched only two-thirds as hard as everyone else during Protestant Penny-Pinching Day.

Which made Martin Luther very cross.

But the worst thing, the absolute, most-awful very worst thing Lipp ever did was to spend his money on junk advertised in comic books.

“Lipp! Oh Lipp!” his poor Mother cried, bawling into her filthy hausfrau mop bucket. “If you keep spending our money on silly things we will get poor and die.”

But greedy Lipp didn’t pay attention, so busy was he using his new X-ray glasses to look under Martin Luther’s robes.

Lipp kept ordering things through comics and on the day he filled out an order form for sea monkey-flavored Hostess Fruit Pies, The Bank sent armed men with dogs to repossess Lipp’s home.

His mother was sent to the Hausfrau Boarding Academy, a filthy hovel of women with dirty aprons. There, she died of mecha-tuberculosis, underneath the Academy’s sad sausage tree.

Selfish Lipp did not care! He laughed at poor Mother. But – Oh!-  how he gasped when he looked into his comic and saw the most wonderful thing he could ever buy. It was the most wonderful thing he could ever buy…

A book that could teach children how to fly!

Silly Lipp filled out the order form and waited. And waited. And waited. He was standing by the mailbox on the day it arrived. It was the most wonderful thing he could ever buy. A book that taught children how to fly!

He opened the package and saw only a sad pamphlet inside.

And inside the pamphlet, only one line of advice: “Just jump off a building, you pussy.”

Stan Laughs As You Eternally Rot

Stupid Lipp took the book’s advice and climbed to the tippy top of the tallest building in Duisburg.

He jumped. He Fell. And on his way down he could see Martin Luther, pointing, laughing and high-fiving Stan Lee, who gorged himself, sensuously, on a Hostess Fruit Pie.

Lipp hit the flagstones of Duisburg Square and turned into a splat, the ugliest splat in all of Germany.

Then the Duisburg Fire Department hosed Lipp down the sewer drain.

Excelsior!

The end.

From: Bruce Roberts, Military Ret.

I am writing to express my displeasure in your recent support of repealing the military’s policy regarding homosexuals, and must say I am revolted and insulted that you would bring such disgrace to our armed forces by letting these people serve at all.

Let me first say I am repulsed by the very idea that the homosexuals would be allowed serve alongside our brave men and women in uniform, and feel personally offended both as veteran and as God-fearing, red-blooded American patriot.

I fought in World War II and did not watch my good friends and fellow soldiers die horrible deaths overseas so that a bunch of mincing nancies could dilute and weaken our armed forces. My buddies who I watched storm the beaches of Normandy- striding gracefully out of the water, droplets falling like glistening diamonds from their, young, Adonis-like bodies- would roll in their graves if they saw what you have done to our military. I fought alongside those great men as they slogged to the shore- flimsy wet uniforms clinging to their tight, sculpted physiques – and I will not stand to see their memory shamed in such a way.

Allowing gays into our glorious military is not only immoral, but dangerous. If you are going to put your life in another man’s hands you need to trust them. How can our warriors feel safe and secure when they have to rely on these creepy deviants to protect them in battle? I remember late nights in the Arden Forest when I stood watch over my brothers in arms- seeing the soft moonlight reflect off their flaxen hair, making it glow a pale and radiant blue. I watched them sleep, the slight rise and fall of their washboard stomachs, their soft lips opening and closing as they mumbled sweet nothings in their sleep while the air smelled of pine trees and daffodils . I watched them all night long, sometimes for several weeks in a row. Hell, most of the time I didn’t even have sentry duty. I hate to think of what could have happened to them on those nights under watch of some filthy pervert.

I must tell you, Mr. President, that what you are doing is a disgrace to the memory of many brave men. Men like my friend and squad mate, Private Benny J. Horowitz. We were the best of pals as we fought across the European countryside. I remember those cold nights in the German Forest, as we shared a foxhole, huddled together naked to keep warm. We would share our hopes and dreams, and Horowitz would hold me with his big, rough, hands, and whisper in my ear. I’d feel his warm breath and the prickle of his stubbled chin on my earlobe.

“We’re gonna make it out of here, Bruce,” he said. “Me and you. We’re gonna make it.”

He died in my arms in outside the village of Lagersberg three weeks later. He would never live to return home the states. Our plans to move to Santa Fe and open a small Persian rug shop were dashed on that cold winter day, but his words gave me the strength to survive. Do you think a bunch of sissies would inspire such brotherhood and bravery? I think not.

In closing, I ask you keep these homosexuals out of the Army, and return our armed services to the good old days. Days when men were men and did manly things like shoot guns, mud wrestle, wear women’s clothes and put on Broadway reviews in the mess hall and engage in the long-held and sacred tradition of playing “naked ninja” with the drill sergeants late at night in the barracks.

Sincerely

Bruce Roberts, Patriot.

As you are aware, children – mewling, sticky-faced, rude little monsters they are- are the single greatest threat facing our country today. If we are to turn them into productive members of society, we must first cleanse them from their bad behavior. Laziness, excessive sweet eating and the desire for affection must all be purged before they reach maturity or else all is lost.

Fortunately, I have my doctorate in Children and I believe I can help. Through the liberal application of cautionary, fear-inducing bedtime stories, I can excise the ill habits of naughty children and turn them into moral human beings.

All of my tales have been laboratory tested and I am happy to report that each and every one made my experimental group submissively urinate by the close of the story.

Try this one out on your son or daughter today! I call it:

“The Tale of Little Glop-Face: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Pick Up His Clothes.”

Sit your heinders down! Or the Wolves That Eat Children who Won't Listen to Story Time will get you!

Little Friedrich was a naughty boy. Everyone in Duisburg thought so. At suppertime he would never eat his sup, and at recess he would sell weaponized smallpox to all the class.

At bedtime he would never go to bed. And at church, he once stole a minor saint’s lunch money – Saint Osgood, Patron Saint of Saturated Solutions.

This made God very cross.

But the worst thing, the absolute awfulest worst thing he ever did…

Was to make his poor Mother pick up his dirty clothes.

“Friedrich! Friedrich!” Mother cried one day, into her weather-beaten hausfrau apron. “If you don’t pick up your clothes I will die and go to my grave!

“Or God will send, to visit you in your sleep; Crusty, the Gnome Who Gives Bad Children Conjunctivitis.

“One of the two.”

Little Friedrich laughed at poor Mother, tossing more clothes on the heap as he did another line of blow.

This made Mother cry and cry and wring her hands into her filthy apron.

And God shook his fist and promised to get that little snot.

So at night, as Friedrich lay in bed, he heard some uncouth singing coming from down the hall.

He screamed and screamed for mother, who didn’t hear; so exhausted was she from picking up his dirty clothes, and pruning the family’s sausage tree.

Crusty kicked in Friedrich’s door with a muddy boot.

And stuck his stumpy finger in his swollen eye.

Friedrich screamed.

Crusty laughed.

And Saint Osgood laughed even more.

The next day Friedrich awoke, eyes frosted over like they were the Ugliest Cupcakes From the Royal Bakery of Yuck.

From then on Friedrich was known as “Little Glop Face.” And during the next Oktoberfest, he was run out of town- as is the traditional Oktoberfest custom- to go live with the other Pinkeyes in the Pinkeye Colony far, far away.

The end.

Through copious amounts of research that basically boiled down to stealing a catalog from someone else’s mailbox, Garbage Duck has taken the liberty of highlighting the worst Christmas gifts from a site that dubiously claims to be for “smart” people. And we’ve posted it as close to the holiday as possible to prevent any more poor souls out there from having their remaining scraps of dignity ripped away through the simple act of opening a cardboard box. Enjoy!

Worst Use of Words on Fabric: The <sarcasm> T-Shirt

There’s no telling how these things are still being made. Did someone recently recover a sunken mall shipment vessel that originally launched from China in 1997? Whatever the case, this brand of geek apparel isn’t unique in its awfulness, but awful in its ubiquity. Who hasn’t dealt with someone whose shirt proudly snarked something their crippling social anxiety and self-loathing would never let them say? Bonus points if this happened before 2002.

Price: $18.99          Loss of Dignity: -10

Worst Use of Bacon: Every Goddamned Thing with Bacon in It

Unfunny people, did you get the memo? Bacon is the new thing you’re supposed to run into the fucking ground! Pirates, robots, and zombies had a good run, and for a while it looked like pimps were going to be the next big thing, but no; this specific pork product is beloved by everyone who lists The Big Bang Theory as one of their favorite shows. Clearly, the possession of bacon-themed items tells the world “I am a down-to-earth individual with a relaxed attitude about a delicious-yet-deadly food item. And if you use my bathroom your  hands are going to smell like a godforsaken Denny’s all day and stray dogs might attack you.”

Price(s): Various/Too Much          Loss of Dignity: -25

Worst Food-to-Mouth Delivery System: Marshmallow Guns (Various)

Be honest: how many marshmallows do you eat in a year? If you answered “more than one,” then you’ve just committed the socially-permissible act of lying to a blog. This is because marshmallows are a terrible turn-of-the century foodgoo that only serve a useful purpose as a binding agent in candy sandwiches. So why in the name of all things holy would you pay up to and including $34.99 for a device which fires this roofing industry byproduct into your mouth through what can only be described as the world’s most action-packed choking hazard? Even if you’re self-medicating with food, there has to be a better, more efficient way of doing so that doesn’t involve eating marshmallows. Garbage Duck recommends a gravy funnel or perhaps a cake tarp if Christmas ends up giving you a case of the Mondays.

Price: $19.99 – $34.99          Loss of Dignity: – 50

Worst Use of a Valuable Metal: Starfleet Academy Spork Combo

Nothing says “I will soon murder you in my personally built sex dungeon” than handing your guests Star Trek-branded sporks with their delicious pudding cup dinners. I once lived near a used bookstore that contained an entire bookcase shelved with hundreds of Star Trek novels undoubtedly obtained from the estate sales of dead shut-ins; maybe one of these tomes explains just how this KFC-popularized abomination became the standard eating utensil in Gene Roddenberry’s humanist future utopia? Finding out would cost upwards of 25 cents, which would be better spent paying the sales tax on something far more interesting, like shoe polish.

Price: $22.99 per Spork          Loss of Dignity: -100

Worst Repurposing of a Snuggie: The Slanket

I’m not quite sure how the Slanket differs from the Snuggie, except the former apparently comes with its own Suicide Girl? So you can enjoy your backwards robe together as you pretend to enjoy The Corpse Bride and later try to score some heroin or something. For some ThinkGeek customers, the slanket will be a comfortable winter retreat soon to be smeared with dust produced from the Frito-Lay company; for others, it will be the most form-fitting garment available on the market. In either case, they’re still paying three times the street value of a fucking Snuggie.

Price: $29.99          Loss of Dignity: – how do i make the infinity symbol on this

"Either this wallpaper goes or I - excuse me. Either this wallpaper goes or the Irish do." - Finneus A. GarbageDuck, dying words.

Since our great-grandfathers founded this blog way back in 1910, GarbageDuck has been all about reaching out to the youth. We’re also all about the money, but that’s hard to come by in the Internet comedy writing business. My Pap-pap came up with the promotional idea of filming pie fights with X-10 spy cameras which he advertised, but those don’t always translate into banner ad clicks, no matter how many people viewed it at the arcade nickelodeons.

His other scheme to monetize the site was through fat, evil government contracts. His idea was to pen anti-Mexicandrug propaganda and circulate it to the impressionable youth through the malt shops of rural Ohio. Imagine our surprise last week when, due to a booking error, we found out one of his grant applications was approved some 60 years ago. So, in Pap’s beloved memory, we set down the piles of Confederate script he – for a good reason, we’re sure – requested in his application and present:

MARIHUANA: BUGGERER OF YOUTH!

Haw! Haw! Well golly! I had such a good time reading Shakespeare and blacking out all the unchaste parts that I must be late for dinner! Mom will sure as shooting throw a fit if I miss another one of her famous Milk Toast Jamborees. Maybe that gentleman in the pinstripe suit and greasy mustache can tell me what time it is.

Say, sir? Could you tell me what time – Oh my! You’re that 40-year-old man who’s always throwing parties for teenagers at your apartment downtown. How the heck have you been? Sure, I guess I have a minute or two to chat with you, but I’m mighty thirsty. Where do you want to go?

The malt shop? Soda Pop? Haw! Haw! You know I can’t touch that stuff, Mister.

Hey now! Don’t get snippy just because I can’t poison my body. I know a real thrill when I see one. My friends Skip, Jasper, Mordecai and myself have had our share of heck-raising in this ‘burg. Shucks, I’ll never forget Mordecai’s pantomime of Eleanor Roosevelt trying on blue jeans, clodhoppers and a strap-on. Oh Brother! Those weenie roasts we hosted were something out of Satyricon. Hah! I hope we don’t go to Heck for that one! Anyway, Mother only smacked me across the face with the Bible twice after that and I think that was mostly because I wasn’t home by 7:30.

So I’m up for whatever hijinks you can throw at me, sir. If you want to round up three immigrants from the other side of the tracks, label them 1, 2, and 4 and set them loose inside the next Chamber of Commerce meeting, I’m your guy.

But I can’t do soda pop. Mother told me a story about a kid who drank too much soda – he grew hair all over his hands and turned into a Papist. I’m not about to mess with that stuff! It’s horrible for you. Unhealthy.

What’s that? Sure I’d love a cigarette. Like my Dr. Johnson says, “You have to make sure your T-zone doesn’t turn into a lower-case ‘T’, Billy.” Hah! Great guy, Dr. Johnson. He can trace his lineage back to Cotton Mather.

Well, here we go!

Golly…. Golly this cigarette tastes funny.

Goddamn. Goddamn I’m horny! I could fuck an Encyclopedia Britannica right now I feel so fucking horny. Hey! Hey! I have an idea! Let’s take that nifty Packard you bought with your drug dealing money down to the grade school to find ourselves some strange, eh?

No? What are you? Mormon?! Come on, man, I’m BORED.

Screw this kiddie shit, Mister. I know a guy who can get us some sherm. I feel dangerous! I feel like whistling and making off-color comments at a pregnant lady until she miscarries. You know, ALIVE! Like a… Like a communist!

Saaaaay! That’s an idea! Why don’t I call a bunch of my confused young friends over to your place, throw a bundle of this stuff in a fire and talk politics, huh? Stuff about the divide between the rich and poor, about how private property is a lie, about how church is a lie, about how money and the church and the money you give to the church is a lie. That sort of thing, you know?

Say, I think my buddy Weed Farmer Topher would have a blast with this stuff. He just got a summer internship with the State Department. Let’s call him up and start some shit! Hee! Hee! This is gonna be wild!

There was a new car wash in town. A skeleton car wash. It was called “Skeleton Car Wash” because it was a car wash run completely by skeletons.

It was Saturday. I was in the car with my stepmother, and she asked me, quite bluntly, “Would you like to go to the Skeleton Car Wash?” I asked, “You mean, the one run completely by skeletons?” She nodded. The other Skeleton Car Wash was run by the Skeleton family who were not skeletons.

We pulled up to the Skeleton Car Wash, and a skeleton in coveralls walked over to the driver’s-side window. “What’ll it be, ma’am?” My stepmother asked for a normal wash; the skeleton walked over to my window, rapped on it, and stuck the ten dollar bill my stepmother had given him right in his eye socket. It popped out of his mouth and I guess it would be scarier if we hadn’t just shopped at the Skeleton Supermarket (they have a skeleton in the back that works in the deli).

My stepmother drove into the car wash, and the lights went out. It was just like a regular car wash, except you were supposed to tune your radio to a specific frequency and they would play spooky sound effects. Except I guess the skeletons weren’t paying attention because there was just a bunch of jungle sounds.

We pulled out of the Skeleton Car Wash onto the main road. We both felt empty, somehow. Suddenly, my stepmother looked at me and asked, “Wasn’t that car wash supposed to be $8.50?” At that point I realized that my stepmother was a ghost all along, and we didn’t get our change back and things were scary.

THE END?