Gene Laughton – Page 5 – The Canard Press

Umberto Eco Leaves Behind Will Nobody Can Understand

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Noted author and scholar Umberto Eco, who passed away from a hermeneutic dysfunction, has left behind yet another text which nobody can understand. Unlike his novels and monographs, however, the final mysterious text is his last will and testament, which several people are strongly motivated to decipher.

“It’s some kind of amalgam of Latin, Sanskrit, and eighteenth-century Turkish thieves’ cant,” said a frustrated attorney at the firm handling Eco’s estate. “It’s quite lovely actually. Won the Viareggio Prize when it was first written. But as a legal document, it leaves something to be desired.”

Eco was known for pioneering the field of interpretive semiotics, as part of the Italian academic reform movement of the 1970s. Interpretive semiotics was intended as a means of providing employment for disenfranchised graduate students incapable of speaking clearly or navigating the world outside a university campus. As such, it was a remarkable success; by 2015, more than forty percent of all graduate students in Italy were engaged in attempting to figure out what the hell semiotics was about.

Eco accidentally earned international fame in 1984 when one of his novels, The Name of the Rose, inexplicably became a best-seller. The dense text, full of convoluted conspiracies set in a medieval monastery, looked perfectly lovely on coffee tables around the world.

Eco’s heirs are anxious to figure out what his will means, but experts say it will be many years before a true understanding may be reached.

“It’s analogous to sequencing the human genome, although Professor Eco’s theories are far more intricate than mere human DNA,” said Professor Maria Strega, of the University of Milan. “We think that with another twenty years and thirty billion euros we might be able to figure out who gets his stamp collection.”

Harper Lee’s Death Spells Trouble for Upcoming DC Universe Movies

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The death of noted author Harper Lee has thrown DC Entertainment into a panic as apparently the struggling comics behemoth had just signed a $50 million contract with Lee’s representative to plot out the next six DC movies.

“Every book Lee wrote became a classic,” said visibly frustrated DC vice president Harmon Greene. “For Christ’s sake, we just wired the goddamn money on Monday. She couldn’t have stuck around for at least the first draft?”

DC has been struggling to turn its iconic comic book characters into a profitable multi-film ‘extended universe’, delaying projects for years, making questionable casting and creative decisions, and generally failing to impress anyone. DC has also announced that the recent “New 52” overhaul, in which they rebooted virtually every comic title they publish, has been a “mistake” and that the company is seeking to re-reboot again. Harper Lee was an integral part of this strategy.

“She was gonna write the script for the Justice League movie, get the project out of development hell,” said Greene, slamming back a shot of bourbon. “Where else are we gonna find a writer with the chops to bring this together? I hear Hemingway’s good. Is he still around?”

DC has floundered as rival comic company Marvel has soared in recent years. With every record-breaking movie Marvel released, from Iron Man to Guardians of the Galaxy, DC executives tore their hair out and tried to reverse-engineer Marvel’s success.

“Iron Man was a D-level hero, and a fucking alcoholic to boot,” fumed Greene. “And so was Robert Downey Jr. for that matter. What the fuck happened? How are they making money off this? Did they make a deal with the devil? Cause we’re ready to deal, man. Lucifer, my door is always open to you.”

Critics have argued that DC’s real problems are limited creative vision and a total lack of understanding on the company executives’ part of what makes their heroes popular.

“Hiring Harper Lee is sort of an example of just how much DC doesn’t get it,” said noted film critic Jeffrey Toobin. “Ten to one someone in the DC offices thought she was related to Stan Lee.”

“She’s not?” said Greene, his mouth agape. “Oh, fuck. Maybe it’s a good thing she died.”

Snow Day Activities When You’re Out of F***ing Riesling

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Ladies, you know the drill. You weather report calls for snow, you get the dreaded call at 6 fucking o’clock in the morning. Yes, the district has wimped out again and closed the schools because of “inclement weather.” Your two (three? four? who can count?) little darlings are yours.

All. Day. Long.

Well, you’ve been proposing that they buy some goddamned school buses with four wheel drive at every PTA meeting all year, so it’s not like you didn’t try. To the point: the day stretches out ahead of you, golden with opportunity, the city plowed your driveway in again, and you’re out of the most important parenting tool of all. That’s right, your goddamned sister drank the last bottle of fucking Riesling when she came by last weekend.

Don’t panic! There are many things you can do to make the day educational, fun, and tolerable. The key is optimism and planning!

First: feed your lovely offspring. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, because it will distract the little fuckers while you scour the cabinets for something besides Riesling. For a fun breakfast activity, try the following recipe:

A one-pound bag of M&Ms (or marshmallows, or a box of Lucky Charms)
A large bag of frozen peas (Legos will work if you don’t have peas, or nails. Be creative! Anything small and numerous will do)

Mix together in a big pile on the kitchen table. Tell the kids they can eat all the candy they can pick out of the pile. (Be sure to mix well!) This will buy you a good thirty minutes. (If your kids are too good at this, slow them down by requiring them to use chopsticks.) Meanwhile, you can break out the Merlot, because this early in the morning your taste buds are still asleep and you can still stand the cloying crap.

Now you’ve survived the early morning, and your kids are gazing with shining sugar-hyped eyes out the window at the magical white stuff covering the world. Share in the beauty of the moment while you quickly stuff them into their snowsuits! Vicariously participate in their wonder as you shove them out the door! The next hour will be an excellent time to work on the Zinfandel while you keep an eye on things through the window. (Be sure to lock the doors so your children don’t get tempted to cut short their outdoor time!)

After that, it’s time to pop Frozen into the DVD player. Which is a failsafe plan because 1) as a parent of children under the age of 10 there is 100% chance you have at least one copy of this movie, and 2) Elsa has magical powers which compel even the most jaded of young video addicts to more or less watch the movie no matter how many times they’ve seen it. There isn’t really a good wine that goes with Frozen, but by this point you’re down to the Shiraz, and let’s face it, you’ll be too busy trying to get “Let It Go” out of your brain to pay attention to what you’re drinking. This is serious business, so let it go and bottoms up!

You may notice that a few hours of your afternoon may disappear somehow, but that’s not a problem, it’s a goal. When you wake up, count the kids. All there? Terrific! Celebrate with a little Two Buck Chuck. You normally use this stuff to clean the grill, but you’re in hour nine thousand of the day and it’s either that or drink the vanilla extract. (Which you may do anyway. Go ahead. We won’t judge you.)

All good things must come to an end! Twilight twinkles on the frost-covered earth, the children are stuffed with chicken nuggets and tucked into bed, and you can settle in for a relaxing cozy evening with your hubby.

Unless the bastard forgot to pick up more Riesling, in which case send the fucker back out into the snow for more. There are limits, after all.

Reince Priebus Can’t Believe He Wasted Third Wish On Sandwich

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With the unexpected death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus is dismayed at having wasted his last wish from that genie on a sandwich.

“I’d already wished for wealth and power,” lamented Priebus, desperately polishing the lamp containing the genie. “A sandwich handmade by Cleopatra and Hillary Clinton seemed like the logical choice for my third wish! Who could have foreseen the loss of a conservative justice so soon?”

Scalia, a reliably conservative justice with a sharp intellect and scathing wit, was the vocal cornerstone of the Supreme Court’s conservative half. Without that third wish to bring Scalia back from the dead, or maybe turn Ruth Ginsburg into a Libertarian or something, Priebus has realized that his party is royally screwed.

“My hotline from the Koch Brothers’ office lit up the minute Scalia’s death was announced,” Priebus whispered, rubbing the lamp even harder and peering desperately out the door of his office. “They’re the ones who gave me the lamp, you know. I haven’t had the nerve to answer yet. I buried the hotline phone out back. It won’t stop ringing!”

Priebus declined to comment on whether the sandwich was worth it or not.

Feds Raid Illegal Meme Factory, Nine Dead in Funny Ways

Cats-wear-watermelons-for-hats — Victims of a cruel and primitive manufacturing process.

The ATF conducted a raid on an illegal meme factory operating out of Boise, Idaho, killing nine and releasing hundreds of animals with ironic expressions and headgear into the wild.

“Memes have become so profitable that even Mexican drug cartels are getting in on the act,” said ATF spokesperson Claude Owens. “It’s brutal.”

Meme production used to be essentially a cottage industry, with individuals attaching ironic or charmingly misspelled taglines to compelling pictures of their pets or favorite stills from movies or TV shows. In 2015, however, memes were a $540 million business in the US alone.

“The real money’s overseas,” said Owens. “Haz cheezburger is old news now. But as soon as unscrupulous memists realized that the damn cat could also haz chips, or curry, or dagashi, all bets were off.”

Humanocentric memes are more difficult to police, especially as they often involve identify theft as a money-making caption is added in Impact to a casual picture grabbed off someone’s inadequately protected Facebook page without their knowledge. But an estimated 60% of memes are still animal-based, with half of those being cats.

“Cats are cheap and easy to get,” said Owens. “You get a thousand cats, stick a thousand bits of fruit on their heads and take pictures, something’s bound to be funny.”

The animals in the meme factory are being shipped to Guantanamo Bay, where the cute ones will be separated and sold to Jimmy Fallon and the others will be eaten.

Pharma-Bro Shkreli Announces Presidential Bid During Super Bowl

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The most reviled person in America demonstrated both balls and the existence of hidden offshore bank accounts when he dropped $5 million on a Super Bowl ad in which he announced his candidacy for President.

“You want a leader who can stand up to Washington?” said the smarmy sociopath in the ad. “C’mon. I just spent two hours giving Congress the middle finger to its face. Literally. I make Trump look like an amateur.”

Shkreli came to the public’s attention last year for notoriously hiking the price of a long-established drug by five thousand percent “because.” Since then he’s stayed in the limelight for first offering a half-hearted promise to lower the price, then reneging on that promise, then getting indicted for fraud, then blowing $2 million on a Wu Tang Clan album.

“He’s like a living click-bait generator,” grinned Carmine Frankowski, politics editor at BuzzFeed. “It’s marvelous. He keeps topping himself with new feats of dickery. The only thing this story doesn’t have is a hot girlfriend, maybe a porn star or something, you know, a hot ass we can put up next to Shkreli’s punchable face. Then the story would achieve maximum internet gravity.”

Shkreli’s announcement came as a surprise to everyone, not least because the entirety of his campaign organization seems to consist of the Super Bowl ad. Nonetheless, he immediately rocketed up in the polls past every Republican candidate and is projected to win New Hampshire by 30 points, despite not actually being on the ballot.

Democratic hopefuls Clinton and Sanders declined to comment on Shkreli’s candidacy, though Sanders offered to “punch the putz in the face” as a public service.

“On the one hand, he doesn’t have any policy positions, other than just being a dick,” said statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com. “On the other hand, that’s sort of become the main qualification for being a Republican candidate this election cycle.”

“My Gun is Voting for Bernie Sanders: I Want a Divorce”

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The heated tone of the primary season has claimed another casualty as a Maine man seeks to divorce his partner after learning that she plans to vote Democratic, and for Bernie Sanders at that.

“Talk about betrayal,” fumed Prescott Harris, of Eastport, Maine. “Clarissa promised to love, honor, and obey, not vote for some socialist Jew.”

Prescott Harris made headlines last year when he was the first man in New Hampshire granted a license to marry Clarissa, his AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle. Although not the first person to wed his firearm, his was the first officially sanctioned by a sitting governor. According to sources at the time, Governor Paul LePage approved nineteen unconventional marriage licenses in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. “I figure everything’s up for grabs,” growled LePage. “What’s the difference. Might as well let people marry their goddammed Chevy Tahoes.”

Harris and Clarissa were married in a small church service attended by close friends, family, and a hundred and five firearms. He told the press that Clarissa “hadn’t left his side for years” and that he planned to spend the rest of his life with her.

Until, that is, he found out that she was a registered Democrat.

“Sanders’ position on gun control is much more moderate,” said Clarissa. “He understands the differences between rural and urban environments. His approach just seems to make more sense than the Republican ticket. They’re tripping over each other to promise everyone can be with their guns all the time. I mean, sometimes I just wanna be left alone, you know?”

Harris was particularly upset because his normal reaction to things that make him angry is to go shoot trees in the woods with Clarissa.

“I had to use one of the kids, goddamn it,” he said, brandishing a Glock that he and Clarissa adopted last fall. “Had to take him right outta school. But I couldn’t wait.”

It is the first time anyone has tried to divorce a gun, and the NRA is watching the case closely.

“Didn’t know they got a vote,” said NRA executive Wayne LaPierre, casting a nervous sidelong glance at the Magnum 357 who serves as his secretary. “Maybe there’s a few things we oughta rethink here.”

Man Afraid of Iowa Caucus Conclusion, “Can’t Remember Life Before It”

Terrence Haston, 32, has been campaigning for a variety of Republican candidates nearly all his adult life. Now that the 2016 Iowa Caucuses are finally here, he is finding that life after the Caucus consists of a terrifying and unknown future.

“We’ve been focusing on Iowa forever,” lamented Haston, who lit a cigarette with shaking hands as he stood outside the Ted Cruz campaign headquarters in Urbandale. “All our efforts have been focused on this single moment. Nothing else has mattered. But it never occurred to me to wonder what would come next.”

Unlike in many countries, where election season is limited to a period of weeks or months, American election seasons are virtually limitless. The main limitation on campaigns has traditionally been a lack of funds, but thanks to the Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court, spending is now no object and legions of unknown corporate cabals are feverishly pumping millions into the coffers of anyone whose agenda is remotely compatible with theirs, or who seems especially corruptible.

“They punish us for watching shows that aren’t on Fox,” Haston whispered. “They ripped out all the pages from my Far Side calendar after February 1. I left my wife and sold my house to pay for these flyers,” he said, showing a set of fear mongering mailers which threaten jail time and eternal damnation, or both, for people who don’t participate in the Caucuses. “It was all worth it, Ted said. He promised me!”

It is unlikely, in point of fact, that Haston has been campaigning for the Iowa Caucuses his entire life, as he is only ten years younger than Ted Cruz. However, like most millennials, he has the attention span of a goldfish and relies on Fox reruns and Google for his long-term memory.

When asked whether he considered that Ted Cruz might go on to win the election, Haston scoffed.

“C’mon. I’m not delusional.”

Rubio Shoots at Megyn Kelly, Still Loses Debate

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Marco Rubio, in a bid to establish himself as the toughest guy on the podium, shot the moderator six times at the most recent Republican debate.

“Her questions about immigration reform were out of line,” Rubio said. “I was standing my ground, per accepted Florida law. She had it coming.”

Moderator Megyn Kelly, who was wearing body armor underneath her blouse and tight skirt, was largely unharmed and continued to moderate the debate after Rubio’s attack.

“Roger Ailes has us all wear body armor,” said Kelly after the debate. “It’s the same stuff he wears himself. You can never be too paranoid, Roger says. But I was surprised Rubio was the first to shoot. I’ve been waiting for Trump to pull a gun on me for months.”

The other candidates on stage condemned Rubio for jumping the gun, so to speak.

“It was widely known that I was planning to shoot Megyn at the halfway mark,” sniffed Cruz. “Rubio doesn’t have an original idea in his head. And I was gonna use armor-piercing bullets with an automatic weapon, like the kind you cook bacon with.”

Despite being the first to shoot, Rubio was widely considered to have lost the debate, as pundits called his shooting both ineffective and in poor taste.

“Rand Paul was the real winner,” said Washington Post political affairs correspondent Maria Green. “He took out his six-shooters, spun them around like Annie Oakley, and spelled out ‘USA’ with bullets in the ceiling. That’s patriotic showmanship. Next to Paul, Rubio just looked like a thug.”

Lackluster underdog Jeb Bush muttered something about responsible gun use while he fumbled with a pearl-handled Derringer, which was apparently stuck in its holster.

British Tourist Faces American Burger Challenge, Dies

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Alan Stimpson, 37, of Leeds, UK, perished after valiantly attempting to down an 8 pound cheeseburger at Hungry Hal’s House of Beef in Stanton, PA.

“It’s both magnificent and horrifying,” tweeted Stimpson as the waitress placed the enormous burger before him. “Much like America, truth be told.” He live tweeted the meal until just before passing out from acute beef poisoning.

The House of Beef Burger Challenge includes 8 pounds of meat on a specially baked 18-inch bun, topped with a half-pound of cheddar, six tomatoes, and an entire jar of mayonnaise; the burger is served with a side of a pound of fries and two cups of macaroni and cheese. Any customer who eats the whole thing in 60 minutes or less gets the meal free.

Stimpson and his wife, Lucille, are minor Twitter celebrities in the UK, where they routinely live-tweet meals at restaurants throughout England. Their tweets, peppered with wry descriptions and plenty of pictures, have garnered more than 500 thousand followers.

“Coming to the US was like our Mount Everest,” said Lucille sadly. “Years of bangers and mash in the most unwholesome pubs, we thought we were ready. But there’s just no preparing for this.”

When it became clear that her husband was flagging and turning odd colors as he hesitantly forked mouthful after mouthful of the burger into his mouth, Lucille tried valiantly to help him by eating the macaroni, even though this violates the Hungry Hal’s terms of service.

“Don’t really know what the big deal is,” said Hal, owner of the restaurant. “Normally at least four or five people a week finish this challenge. Some stay for dessert as well. Brits can’t handle their beef I guess.”