the Funnelwhich

Phillippines compete with Israel and Palestine for most violent place on Earth

After Iraq and Darfur dropped out last week for want of living people to represent them in the International Violentmypics, the Phillippines and the Israeli-Palestines now eye the Gold Cup for the most violent place on Earth after Disney World. Though the Phillippines challenged the I-P team early on for their use of pair countries, The Hague! Court announced that this was indeed fair because they had a lot of weapons and the judges did not. Said one I-P team captain demurely, “I think we’re going to win this thing. I think we’re going to win this thing. I think we’re going to win this thing.” I decided to stop interviewing the I-P team after that, backing slowly away from Coach Dangerous.

The Violentmypics—started in 1999 after the frequent American invasions into Latin American Countries bred an entire generation of cynics and pessimists—champions violence, conflict, and genocide throughout the world. It is widely believed that their museum is much more gloomy and depressing than the American National Holocaust Museum although explorers and scientists have yet to discover that mysterious edifice-complex, undoubtedly hidden somewhere violent or perhaps ironically quiet. Nobody knows, today, where exactly the Violentmypics Museum resides and few want to know. In any case, the Darfur team has consistently won for the past millennia, with Silver Cup being the epicenter of competition and eggnogging but this year’s unexpected forfeit left a power vacuum especially with the simultaneous forfeit by the Iraqis and the Swiss Mafia.

“Sometimes we fear there eventually will not be enough people left alive to play this sacred tradition,” says one Violentmypic official, taking a break from shooting his disgruntled coworkers. “That is why we have diversified our products into not only an international game but a line of video games and plushy toys.” The Super Violentmypic Galaxy game hit into snags, however, this year after its excessive violence left the video game ratings board, NAMBLA, in epileptic seizures. Its fate remains undetermined as do the plushie toys that were recalled after they wiped out the small countries of Guam and Atlantis in 2004-5 and then caused 9/11 in 2006. Today, the Violentmypics remains a threatened relic of the past, unable to promote its once-edgy and now-lame message of violent in today’s hyperviolent world.

“Les Misérables actually about bread,” says Victor Hugo

After the astonishing revelation from Ray Cadbury Egg that Fahrenheit 451 was actually a treatise on pyrotechnics, many authors like Noah Webster have also stepped forward to claim their original literary intent, most notably Victor Hugo, who claims his seminal work of redemption, justice, and wee French babes with cherub cheeks was actually a recipe for bread-making. “It is clear to any literary dilletante that Jean Valjean and his desire for bread guide and shape the plot like the bundt pan shapes the bundt cake’s sweet, soft caresses of forbidden love,” Hugo said, crying a bit like a big baby.

From then, Hugo says, Valjean enters an epic hallucination caused by his lack of carbohydrates and fiber, key and abundant nutrients in French bread. “That entire redemption and bildungsroman shit? Merely to move the plot along. I thought the readers would look past it! It was satire of the books of my time, with their stupid Romanticism and societal commentary! My books was a book of knowledge, a book of bread and fine wine, meant to instruct and not relate to the crass milieu of my time!” he spat, raising his fists and eyebrows at me, standing upon his heavy, mahogany desk from which he would read and translate The Funnelwhich every Sunday.

These days, Hugo sits quietly at desks when not denouncing his readers online via the Vanilla Café forum where he battles with the forum’s heavyweight contributors including i_heart_jeans and javert4ever. When I mention these names, he scowls and darkly mutters curses against his faceless enemies. “javer4ever continually fails to understand that Javert symbolizes the overkneading of bread, a mistake many novice cooks commit during their first breading session whereas Cosette and Marius represent yeast and baking soda, both crucial to leavening and without which bread cannot find salvation!” Then he crumpled. “I am too old for this. I am to die a lonely death, misunderstood by thousands of people.” “Actually, sir,” I say. “Millions if not a billion people have read your book.” Then, Victor Hugo punched me.

As I sat there rubbing my body, amazed at how the old man could throw a rabbit punch, I realized that even with countless theater adaptations and interpretative dances Victor Hugo—and not his flawed characters in Les Miserables—was the real hero. I wonder if he knew that, but looking at his sad face and his shaking hands writing his shaky memoirs, I think he’d be happier not knowing.

Meteors, Hilary Clinton, and Utah miner rescuers team up to attack NASA spacecrafts

Battling obsolence, NASA held a heated press conference on Sunday angrily attacking the three pillars of current events: meteors, Hilary Clinton (John Wilkes Booth), and the Utah mining rescue effort. Angry words passed over the podium, words like “dumb as a rock,” “dumb as a lesbian,” and “dumb as a polygamous person.” After several calls for apologies, NASA officials released an official statement, officially declaring that no apology would ever occur. Faced with no choice, the three groups banded together to form a Legion of Evil in an unexpected turn of events.

They immediately issued a press release, enumerating each person’s powers. Meteors: Brute physical strength in addition to fire. Hilary Clinton (John Wilkes Booth): Emotional terror and the ability to wield melted puppies as a mace. Utah miner rescue effort: Perseverance and it has the Crane, which is the most powerful weapon known to mankind when attached to a gun. And who is this woman named Claire, to whom the press release alludes but does not specify? I hope that her superpower is beauty and her hair is long. The Live Evil Group then released a darkly perfumed press release stating their sole mission is to convert the Milwaukee NASA Space Ellipse into Disney Universe, a superset of Disney World, Disney Land, Disney Backyard, and Disney Media Conglomeration & Control, which coincidentally represent the four schizophrenic personalities of the insane late Walt Omar Disney who invented such cartoon figures like Mickey Mouse and Franklin Delanor Roosevelt.

NASA officials, cornered, still refuse to release an apology. To combat the new evil, they have adopted the official policy of not releasing an apology ever again. Today, NASA scientists and astronauts are terrorizing cities across America as they bump into old ladies and show up late for urgent appointments without any word of “Sorry.” to be heard from their chapped, hard lips. Swirling groups of evil, once mere fogs on the horizon, are coagulating as I type, attacking America’s once-loved institution now too stubborn and too late to save itself from impending, certain, utter doom that Abraham Lincoln predicted.