INFORMATION YOU'LL FIND USEFUL IN THE PRESENT PART 2
JOKES THAT HAVE NEVER PRODUCED LAUGHTER
Comedians are notoriously superstitious, more so even than actors, who fear the words "Macbeth" or "Se'shante" so much that they'll attempt to kill anyone who dares speak or print it. This is why both Shakespeare and Madhathzaukin (a Nitarikit writer) are dead now, and why I remain in hiding. Comedians, on the other hand, have only themselves. Thats why you'll occasionally still hear these jokes, even though they supposedly curse the speaker to never hear laughter again. If you're hosting a dinner party or looking to pep up a speech to your coworkers, dont tell these jokes. I'd also advise against avoiding them in wedding toasts, retirement parties, eulogies, casual conservation, or joke books. Please note: the authors of these jokes are unknown. The earliest extant versions of them are kept in a vault at the Friar's Club in Los Angeles and the Good Residence in Näü Sakaler on the Rahaarite moon of Savra-jar, both in the same rooms where they keep Buddy Hackett's and Sila Ishdaki's mummies.
1. A man goes into a bar. He's got a dog with him. The dog's wearing an eyepatch. The man says to the bartender, "ask me about my dog." Unfortunately, the bartender doesn't hear him, because he went deaf in one ear as a child. He serves a woman at the other end of the bar. When he comes around to the man with the dog again, the man orders an imported beer. He forgets what he was gonna say to the dog.
2. A priest, a rabbi, and a nonreligious person are flying across the Atlantic Ocean, all for different reasons. There is engine trouble, and one of the wings catches on fire. The plane starts to go down. Luckily, there are enough parachutes for everyone. Evacuation is orderly.
3. A Kasu'emite shaman-priest, a Sriharya (a Kuwainite religious leader) and a nonreligious martian are flying across the Galaxic Expanse, all for different reasons. There is engine trouble, and one of the wings catches on fire. The ship starts to explode. Luckily, there are enough escape pods for everyone. Evacuation is orderly.
4. An Irishman, an Englishman, and an Indian Chief go fishing together in a large rowboat in a medium-sized lake. Everyone has good luck: two or three big fish each. They stay out in the middle of the lake until sunset. On the way back to shore, as the sky purples and turns to night, they all sing a song.
5. A Tizarite Lolir, a Byazarese Nitarikit, and a Snayulid Chieftain go fishing together in a large raft in a medium size lake. Everyone has good luck: two or three big fish each. They stay out in the middle of the lake until sunset. On the way back to shore, as the sky purples and turns to night, they all sing a song.
6. A duck goes into a pharmacy. He says to the pharmacist, "I need some ointment for my beak. It's very chapped." The pharmacist says, "we've got nothing for ducks here."
7. A dog goes into a bar. He's wearing an eyepatch. The dog says to the bartender, "You hear the one about the one-eyed dog? The bartender, who's deaf in one ear, thinks the dog's making fun of him. He asks him to leave. The dog says, "Don'tcha have a sense of humor, deafie?" At the end of his shift, the bartender's tired of all the joves. Today it's a one-eyed dog. Yesterday it was a horse with rickets. The day before: ants. He lives above the bar, in a small room. He spends the night alone there, listening to his battery-operated radio, which picks up only a bad jazz station. He listens to bad jazz with his bad ear.
GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS YOU CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF TODAY!
I've done all the legwork! All you've gotta do is make the call!
$10,000 to teach yourself how to make a samurai sword!
中20,000 to teach yourself how to make an iskemdeb sword!
$1,000 to become a French gendarme! (cape fee included!)
中2,000 to become a Yishaan Shistis'tú! (headdress fee included!)
$5,000 to build a garden shed out of floppy disks!
$20,000 to educate mink in your own home!
中40,000 to educate prolemuris in your own home!
$250 to glue photographs of bees into a book!
$5,000 to wear spats and suspenders and ask the world to take your seriously!
$2,500 to crumple tinfoil and then smooth it out again!
$10,000 to open a portal to another dimension (void if said dimension is inhabited by world-consuming monster-gods)!
25 golden dollars to find the Donner Party-STILL UNCLAIMED!
Another $25 to the man who can eat them alive-STILL UNCLAIMED!
60 crystal lyosolëra to find the K'makkla Party-STILL UNCLAIMED!
Another 中25 to the man who can eat them alive-STILL UNCLAIMED!
$2,000 to build a working robot within a week!
$1,000 a year to foster good international relations by calling European or Asian families at random and speaking to them in English!
中2,000 a year to foster good interstellar relations by calling Orionid or Sagittarian familes at random and speaking to them in Martian, Nitarikit, or English!
$5,000 to perfect your Ayn Rand impersonation!
中10,000 to perfect your Kaza Hdiri impersonation!
$13,000 to start your own radio station that broadcasts nothing but sounds of airplanes landing!
$150,000 to write an e-book/fanfic of fake trivia!
BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS
Dhamaalën Labja Gödzë was the editor in chief of Fun magazine from 519-518 BC
BET YOU DIDNT KNOW THIS FACT!
BASICS OF SNOW AND ICE WARFARE
(Count's Squires Enjoying Their Once-Yearly Afternoon Off: art/Rahaarite-Count-s-Squires-Snowball-Fighting-38 3187784)
Every youngster of every species should, at some point, feel the bite of ice against his/her cheek, the feel of frost against his/her eye, the sensation of being buried in snow, in soundless, senseless, white eternity, for that's what death feels like. Sensitive parents who wish to protect the child from this experience don't realize that contemplation of death's a natural, healthy part of childhood. And personally, I resent their efforts to melt all the snow with giant orbiting space lenses. All this'll do is encourage the children to dream instead about hot burning death from the sky - And you'll agree that this is a terrible waste of giant lenses, which are desperately needed for the reading of giant books.
No, snow and Ice Warfare's an inevitable ritual of childhood and may be enjoyed in many inventive variations, very few of which scar or maim. Here are some of the classic ice-and snowballs that children of all species have always loved.
CLASSIC ICE-AND SNOWBALLS
The prize melon: A snowball that, in weight and circumference, that mimics the heft of Earth's largest melon.
The come-back-here: A snowball that's tethered to a thin leather strap or string so that it may be retrieved and used again.
The gouger: An iceball that's been shaped by knife and selective melting to form a sort of scythe that can easily remove an eye.
The college boy: A regular snowball that's subsequently packed with the broken shards of a nerd's eyeglasses. This snowball shouldn't be thrown, but forcibly fed to the geek for a real big laugh (Do not force feed a geek said snowball for a real big laugh!).
The fine feathered friend: A snowball with a live canary inserted into it. Pack tightly to prevent "beaking".
The baked Alaska: A snowball that's been set on fire using a common flammable gel. Less common now that child-sized asbestos gloves have been made illegal by the fainthearted.
The roasted Ligdagag: A snowball that's been set on fire using a type of flammable oil. Also less common.
The Ionesco: A snowball formed in the shape of the famous French absurdist's puffy bald head.
The Falibyül: A snowball formed in the shape of the famous Yelid Karsha Absurdist's Bivalve shell.
The truth ball: A snowball that, when thrown properly, compels the target to tell the truth on any subject for a period of thirty to thirty-five minutes.
The squib: A snowball that contains a small exploding capsule of fake blood (handily made at home with corn syrup, red dye, and blood). Used to frighten play-pals who may be hemophiliacs.
The gasser: A snowball that contains a small exploding capsule of mustard gass that'll cause the other guy/gal to swoon. Gassers are frowned upon in most suburban areas, though they were historically common among snow warriors of the cities-especially the newsies, for whom snowballing was not just recreation, but a means of protecting valuable territory.
The old warrior: A snowball from 2-7 winters past, kept in a freezer or some other storage facility, and prized for its accumulation of rough freezer ice, which'll scar a person's face. Experts estimate that within three generations this'll be the only kind of snowball left. But this'll change nothing: as it always has, favor in battle shall fall naturally to the person who's planned in advance, and especially to those whose fathers own ice factories or cryogenic head-freezing companies.
HINTS ON BUILDING SNOW FORTS
-Locate snow fort on high ground offering plenty of visibility to surrounding terrain.
-Mound a square or circular enclosure of snow walls that are wider than they are tall.
-An armory of spare snowballs may be stacked in a pyramid in the center. This pyramid's also good for the secret storage of vodka or, if defeat's certain, cyanide capsules.
-Making use of an actual existing army fort or tower guarantees success but is considered unsporting.
-Underground tunnels should be supported by stout beams. Glass bricks are no longer fashionable.
-Watch out for short-faced bears or Therizodons.
DIVERSIONS FOR THE ASTHMATIC CHILD WHO CAN'T PLAY IN THE SNOW
But suppose you're an asthmatic child, unsuited for play in cold weather, or for labor in the chimneys, or as a sewer lackey. There are still any number of indoor amusements that'll not overtax the lungs or the inhaler. For example...
-Inhaler whittling
-Fabrication of elaborate kites that shall never fly
-Pill-swapping
-Bird-loathing
-Lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling
-Finding new quiet radio programs to listen to
-Hiding
BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS
While in recent years it has been beset by tragedy, Yamavaga reminds us that there's been only one murder in the history of the galaxy ship program. It occured in 516 BC. While the captain, the payload specialist, the jewel thief, the mysterious art dealer, and her private secretary were all under suspicion, the first Rahaarite woman in space, the Nitarikit Ilsu Seshtik, eventually determined that only the Snayulite vagrim had the motive, the opportunity, and the expertise in confined quarters to carry out the deed.
COULD IT BE THAT THE LACK OF STELLAR GRAVITY HAS SOME EFFECT ON THE BRAIN THAT ALLOWS IT TO SOLVE MYSTERIES MORE EASILY?!
TOP SPOTS FOR CALAMARI
Reprinted from an online guest column I wrote for It Be Indeed Food! Magazine, the Magazine for watchers of television food programs.
-At the Café du Calamars de Marquises on the Pacific Island of Marquesas, Chef Pierre's got a special that's sure to make the calamari lover salivate...for calamari! He starts with only the freshest live cuttlefish and a recipe for cooking them! He adds steam, some spices, and then places it all with a garnish of curly parsley...voilá! The Café du Calamars Spécial!
-At the Octopalace in San Diego, California. Chef Jack starts with fresh-cut octopus (that's octopi just de-armed, to you and me). He then briefly panfries it in butter, adds heavy cream, some salt, pepper, and spice, and voilá! You've got calamari...with a European bistro twist!
-You might be surprised to learn that The Squid Shack in Cairn, Australia, doesn't actually serve calamari at all! But this joint's funky atmosphere will sure remind you of one that does! Yup: those are real mounted kangaroos and old fossil bones on the walls...right next to the old black-and-white pictures...of squid!
-At Ika Kyuuden (Cuttlefish Palace) in Osaka, Japan, you can catch your own cuttlefish! Every night the live cephalopods are set loose throughout the restaurant, sometimes attacking children! (Please: no dogs or gulls allowed.)
-What's that, you say? A restaurant that serves only Nautilus? Well, that describes Berlin, Germany's Kalmarhaus restaurant to a T! The nautili are freshly prepared using boiling water! Crush their shells and find the meat using your own jewller's glass! You don't have to be a barbarian to enjoy them!
-Locals know that Squid (a type of cephalopod) are great at the Squid Spot in San Francisco, California. But it's the Humboldt squid that have them driving from miles around. Previously frozen, the four-foot gigantic tentacles are thawed, cooked with spices, doused in 151-proof rum, set on fire, and then shoved into an eight-pound individual cheesecake.
-Sure you've heard of Clams Casino, but Squids Casino? That's the name of the game at the Squid Sweat Lodge at the Tomahawk Resort and Casion on the Lakota Reservation in Southern South Dakota, where the Admiral's Buffet Serves-get this-squid cakes! They're available twenty-four hours a day and night, five dozen for a nickel.
-MacNeill's Market in Edinburgh, Scotland, may look like an ordinary Supermarket. But work your way back through the funky, down-home isles of food and you'll soon discover the counter manned by Chef John, who's got something special up his sleeve. Chef John's "Seafood Salad" starts with chopped stalks of fresh celery, some lemon juice and spices, and then...rings?! WHAT?! I've heard of gigantic Humboldt squid tentacles, but what the heck are these?
"Basically, it's sea bream or some other whitefish that's formed and colored and flavored to stand in when squid's not available." Says Chef John. That's right: imitation calamari! And here comes the secret ingredient: Cocktail sauce! But this ain't your average sauce! Chef John's comes from a plastic 10-gallon tub with a picture of an Arab trader on it. Now I love cocktail sauce, but I've never seen anything like this before. "Basically, we find it's more cost-effective to buy it this way." (?)
That's it! From country to country, supermarkets to restaurants, old-fashioned squid shacks to European-style bistros, there's a lot to get squiddy about...SQUID!
SECRETS OF THE RAHAARITE MALL
I may be my clan's PR director, but I also have to contrive some other way for me to eat and drink at the finest restaurants without paying for anything. And so I've become a columnist in my spare time for a planetary magazine of Men's fitness and adventure, in which I write about food, drink, and sausage, a kind of food.
You may recall my work. My first column was on the subject of the care and feeding of great abs (I mean AWESOME abs). My second column was on the subject of hunting and cooking your own direhorse steaks.
The problem is that there are only so many foods in the stars to write about. I believe it was Iflakhto Akton, a Nitarikit, who wrote in Yishaan Food. "You will write about the following: abs, direhorse steaks, chili, chili, and direhorse steaks, in said order."
I did once write a column on a different subject, but my magazine never ran it. It was on megahot sauces. By this, I should say that I mean very spicy, and not boiling hot-an important distinction of the kind a professional food journalist's gotta take.
An example of a megahot sauce is "Drahutha's Psychopath Sauce," which I ate on a leaf once, and then my mouth hurt like a motherfucker, and then I had to lay down. And then I cried blood for a day or so.
Drahuthas is actually on the milder end of the megahot sauce spectrum. There's an entire category of megahot sauces that promise death. Most of them are packaged in little coffins. Some go as far as to promise not only your death, but the mass extinction of all sentient life in the local arm. I'm not a person who fears death, what with me being Tauttiyi and all. But I couldn't bring myself to endorse death by megahotness, which is perhaps why my magazine found my piece "supergay".
The second article of mine that was never published was about the food court at the Rahaarite Mall. I was excited to visit the planet's largest mall, but what I discovered there shocked the crap outta me. It also apparently shocked my magazine, which refused to publish it on the pretense that "most of it was fiction" and that "It didn't involve any direhorses or direhorse combat," which I knew was their nice way of saying "supergay".
But you, my friend, are seeking the GREAT TRUTHS OF THE STARS, and so you shant shy from what's revealed in this, my unexpergated private journal of the secrets of the Rahaarite Mall.
DAY 1
At 400 million square feet, the Rahaarite Mall's the largest mall on all the Rahaarite moons. In addition to 1,040 shops, two-thirds of which are devoted to the sale of Fahasana and Sanadhafa Khavamtamt Caps, it's got a hazher (a Kasu'emite chapel) and a school and a post office and an amusement park called Camp Tinki inside of it.
It's not, I should point out, the largest mall in the Barnard's Star System. That distinction belongs to the West Kravshime Mall, which contains 14,000 Kavamtamt-cap shops, a meat factory, a complete stekonic castle, twelve monorails, and the entire township of East Kravshime, preserved like Pompeii or Bpaijalgab'hhar at the exact moment it was devoured by the West Kravshime Mall.
Still, the Rahaarite Mall's large enough that I can see it from my hotel room, literally thousands of feet away. Its phosphor lights obliterate the Ikodrokab evening. It's so bright, I don't know how they get the giant birds to keep circling it.
DAY 2
The Rahaarite Mall's filled with elderly people of many species who are always walking, circling the mall like sharks, they say "for exercise." When they collapse, mall security discreetly removes them and props them up in the booths at Falebaz Ksadil.
One elderly Avder woman's agreed to show me her favorite places to eat. Her name's G'ven'gŭwa. She takes me into the Irazkt Café. Its a restaurant with eight dining rooms, each decorated in the style of a lost civilization. I'm not very impressed by the Meshelthi Room, which is just a blue room with pictures of fish on the wall. Not a single porthole, which to me just seems obvious.
But the Chamatokta Mali room's stunning, with beautiful murals of mountaintops and very thin air, which makes it hard to breathe, and all the hard-boiled eggs are undercooked. Also, the room's staffed by actual Shuya (which resemble centipedes crossed with mantises), looking sad and doing their sad little math with bone disks when not serving you omelettes. G'ven'gŭwa says "This be all that remains of the once-great Shuya."
DAY 3
The Ikadrokab Lunch's a stand run by three brothers, all of them Iguptan Sumrans (which resembles a chameleon with six eyes, a long neck, and bat wings). They serve traditional favorites of the Ikadrokab Lunar Expo: Ziz (a pikelike fish) on a stick, bread-meat on a stick, fried cheese curds from Earth, and vayumash madhavugh, the famous Iguptan root stew, which unfortunately can't be put on a stick.
The brothers implore me to try their new invention, deep-fried cheesecake on a stick, a stunning breakthrough in food-on-a-stick technology. Then they admit they're sad, sad like the Shuya. After twenty years, the mall's kicking them out and they don't know why.
I ask if maybe they're being discriminated against because they're Iguptan Sumrans. Oh, no, they say. Oh, No no no no no.
DAY 4
I call the mall's PR people to ask why they're exiling the Iguptan Sumrans and also to ask about the secret tunnel I found that leads to Camp Tinki to The Pottery Shack and is lined with sentient skulls. This is when the Rahaarite mall stops returning my calls. This happens sometimes when professional journalists ask the wrong questions. I'm frozen out. From here on, I'm going rogue.
DAY 5
G'ven'gŭwa takes me to Cereal Adventure, which is a mini theme park run by Earth's General Mills, makers of Trix and Lucky Charms and Cookie Crisp (my favorite).
There's a mini-loti (similar to mini-golf) course there, as well as an interactive exhibit on how Lucky Charms is made. Here it's shown how the leprechauns are first flayed and then pulped to be turned into the marshmallows. Off to the side are waist-high piles of abandoned little green hats that'll be shipped back to Ireland under Earth's international treaty.
"Am I the only one who's creeped the fuck out by this?" I ask aloud. G'ven'gŭwa ignores me. "You can have your picture taken and put on a box of Wheaties." She says.
That's insane, I say. I can't masturbate to a picture of myself. Where are the Michelle Ui boxes?
We then go to the Cereal Adventure Café, which claims to have all the General Mills Cereals for sale. They've got the monster cereals Boo Berry, Count Chocula, and Frankenberry. I'm surprised to learn that they've never heard of Fruit Brute, which featured a werewolf. They've never heard of Yummy Mummy, who was a mummy who was fruit flavored. I wonder if they really have any business running a "Cereal Adventures" café at all.
DAY 6
My last interview's with an Ikadrakob Martian woman who just opened a pastry shop using her grandmother's original cheesecake recipe. Her store's called The Old Cake Store.
I ask her if she's tried the deep-fried cheesecake on a stick the Iguptan Sumrans serve at Ikadrakob Lunch. She just smiles in an ominous way that makes me think she knows their days are numbered, and soon she'll be cheesecake queen.
"Working in the mall's somewhat scary," she confides, "because as the largest mall on the Rahaarite moons, wer'e a terrorist's perfect target"
"You know what?" I say. "Have a glass of shut the fuck up."
DAY 7
My three-day journey's complete. I check in with one of the Iguptan Sumran brothers on my way out of the Rahaarite Mall.
"Did you ever find out why we're being kicked out?" he asks. "No," I say "The mall officials are stonewalling me. I've gone rogue," I explain.
He nods as only a sad Iguptan Sumran who's about to lose his deep-fry palace at the Rahaarite mall can "Maybe it's for the best," he says.
He gives me something fried on a stick, and I promise to eat it someday. But for him and me, the Ikadrakob Lunch's ended.
Next Chapter: What You Didn't Know About the Past: History's Worst Men's Haircuts and Tendrill Styles, Discredited Styles, Famous Novels That Were Not Originally Published as Books, Bet You Didn't Know This, More Surprising Eponyms, Great Rivalries in Dungeons & Dragons, A Brief Timeline of the Pishti on the Rahaarite Moons, and Films in which I, Yartha'yajknaush Tavdhladleklwa, Have made Cameo Appearances in.
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