Recently, I posted an article in which I name dropped and jpeg dropped Peter Weller. Peter Weller, of course, is Robocop. That is to say you think he is an actor who portrayed Robocop while I assume he underwent the full cyborg surgery for the role and is, in fact, Robocop at this very moment. I would dare you to prove me wrong, but I already know you can’t.

Anyway, Mr. Weller apparently spends his days Googling himself and I was surprised, delighted and shamefully aroused to be contacted by Mr. Cop himself (I shant be calling him Robo until we’ve spent more time canoodling) as something of a courtesy/query regarding my using him in a feature article on the world renowned website you are currently renownding in whatever part of the world you’re at.

Now, you’re probably thinking “Wow, this chicken is spicy” if you’re eating spicy chicken, and I would hasten to agree. But you may also be thinking it unusual that a major movie star (from 1987) like Peter Weller would simply e-mail me, a major internet comedy writer (from late 2007 until the present). Well, the fact is us celebutants stick together. I masturbate to photos of Paris Hilton at least once a month and I can’t even stand her. But it’s part of the business so I do my part. On the downside, I’m getting aroused by praying mantises as a result, but oh well, that’s another therapy session for later in life.

Anyway, Mr. Weller, who got my contact info from my little slug line at the top of the page there where I give an hilarious yet brief bio of myself and quite a humorous picture of a Siamese cat eating a Vienna sausage, emailed me to say he’d read the article and found it “interesting” and thanked me for being a fan (though to be fair I didn’t mention I was a fan in the article. But I so am!). It was brief and didn’t offer up much, so I smiled and printed it off and put it on my fridge. I live alone, so that’s sad, but oh well. Not like anyone will ever know, because I am alone. When I eat pasta, if a piece falls on my crotch, I’ll just pick it up and eat it. I can do that.

A day later, I received another e-mail from Mr. Weller asking if I had received his previous e-mail. Turns out I simply mistook his clipped and efficient Robocop manner of speaking as a marked disinterest in engaging me in any form of discourse when in fact he had actually wanted me to write back. I was flabbergasted. My flabber was literally dripping with thick, buttery gast.

As we all know, when Mr. Weller comes a-calling, you have to do your duty, so I sent him a short but courteous e-mailing thanking him for his interest, for Robocop and asking him why he’s never made any other movies. He replied within the hour that he has, in fact, been in over 50 movies. There was no “lol” typed after this, but I assume his wit is dry. He then asked more about me and where I lived, as he could see from my writing that I was a Canadian and he was in Toronto working on a film. Again, no “lol.”

As it happens, I live within two hours of Toronto, or one hour if I demonstrate less concern for the safety of others on the road than is entirely proper. Could I have been on the verge of meeting Robocop himself? The answer may surprise you.

The answer is yes. I assume you thought no. Fool. Also, surprise! Anyway, I have been meaning to head to Toronto (or “The Sweet and Low Taint” as most of us Canadians call it) to visit some friends and figured the opportunity to meet Peter Weller at the same time, and thus have some fodder for what would have to be my magnum opus article (that means it’s as cool as Tom Selleck’s moustache) was too much to resist.

I made plans to head to the Taint and agreed to meet Mr. Weller at a restaurant near the set of his “movie.” Still no “lol.” The drive to Toronto was uneventful, save for an unplanned stop at a Country Style donut shop on the highway. For those who don’t know, Country Style are donut shops. Sometimes found on highways.

Anyway, as can happen from time to time, midway through my journey my bowels became feisty and sought to immediately expunge any and all evidence that I had eaten anything that day. Long story short, I wind sprinted through the dining area of the Country Style and quickly wind sprinted back again shortly after I realized the water level in the toilet I had befouled was rising at an ominously fast pace rather than draining as is the custom with most toilets. I felt a sense of pride that I had caused some manner of plumbing mayhem on my way to visit Mr. Weller.

Finding a parking spot near the restaurant proved to be a more difficult task than I had planned and as a result I was forced to park some 10 blocks away. The neighbourhood was non-descript but I was hoping the hobo I had parked next to would serve as a decent landmark to find my vehicle later on, as it didn’t appear that he’d be moving any time soon. He may also have had a pet rat. Or he was being eaten by just a random wild rat. It’s not my business to meddle.

I arrived at the restaurant about 15 minutes before we had agreed to meet, but was surprised to see Mr. Weller already there. He was wearing a blue turtleneck and had a large jacket bundle over the chair behind him. He of course didn’t recognize me, as I am not an hilarious Siamese cat eating a Vienna sausage. I approached his table with some trepidation as my stomach was rolling. Despite my cool demeanor, I am still star struck at times when I meet celebrities. I know, I’m a big, famous writer who eats lobster on the toilet (except at that Country Style, I had no time) and showers with the cast of 227, but hey, I’m still a man. I’m still flesh and bone and lots of solid gold shoes and pants made from leather taken from animals you’ve never even heard of, like the Mysticapotamus and the Yellow Twatter.

Mr. Weller was eating a piece of blueberry pie and drinking a black coffee. He invited me to sit, which I did, and waved over a waitress. I wasn’t particularly hungry as my stomach was still threatening to toss out any intruders that made their way to the colon, but Mr. Weller didn’t give me the option. He ordered a tiramisu and a water.

Apparently, as he explained, after working on a film (at this point I attempted a laugh which netted me a confused yet scornful look while he continued his story) he liked to unwind with some dessert. It was a ritual he had been doing since his third or fourth film. Again I laughed, knowing that a different man planned Robocop in Robocop 3. Third film indeed.

Pie, he said, was his usual favourite, and he had taken to trying pies in all the cities he has visited if they were homemade. I was pleased to learn Canada had offered him a good blueberry pie, but not the best he’d ever had, which he said was made in New Hampshire by an elderly woman who had hit on him mercilessly.

It was at this point, presented with a rare opportunity I knew I may never get again, I had to ask the question I swore I would ask the first real celebrity I ever got a chance to sit down with. “What’s Pat Sajak like?”

“Queer.”

Mr. Weller then returned to his pie and I nodded. Pat Sajak was queer. Just like I had always figured.

Some highlights from the interview:

-A disgusting (and completely true) story about a fast food restaurant shake machine and a rag used to clean the bathroom.

-An unapologetic confession of my love for the Mandy Moore movie “A Walk To Remember.”

-Tips on how you can write for Cracked (hint: be funny, don’t be a dick)

-Chain smoking!  Power drinking!

To check out the interview, click the ugly mug below.  Or, head to http://primetimeandonline.com to view other, far less awesome, interviews.

Pictured above: Jagermeister, weak hairline, Kurt Cobain, random internet douchebag

Little People, Big World – This show is not about midgets, it’s about little people. Little people in a big world. And not the little people from the Small World ride, as those may be children or just tiny hellspawn. Just regular little people in our world that is, to them, big. You see how size is important here? It really is. Big time.

Because reality TV has no guidelines whatsoever and any shit that can be framed by a camera is fair game for being put on air, it’s hard to fault the little folks for taking advantage of this. They just live their day to day lives and someone films it. If you’re not riveted yet, welcome to the party. It takes about five minutes to realize the life of a little person is the same as the life of billions of other people, just a couple feet lower to the ground. So as interesting as it would be to watch your neighbor fill a pot with water, this show lets you see the added step of someone getting on a footstool so they can reach the tap first. Holy shit, it’s amazing! Now it’s clear why midget porn is such a huge industry, they do everything more awesome!

What was learned here? Watching a small man drive to work, watching his wife making dinner, watching the kids kick a ball; the accumulated knowledge couldn’t choke a midget into unconsciousness if it was forced down his windpipe by some vindictive attacker crouched down over their tiny frame, hell bent to leather on seeing them pass out with legs and arms all hilariously Munchkin-like and akimbo. However, the “who gives a shit” ratio is way up there.

Miami Ink – Notable for giving the world Kat Von D, and allowing me to use not one but two photos of her in this article which is a good and wonderful thing, and also showcasing some talented artists, it’s hard to besmirch the good name of Miami Ink. But we’re gonna do it anyway.

For all the coolness, it’s hard not to notice that every douche hole who ambles into the studio has to have a story about their tattoo. And frankly it’s rather sickening to listen to some collar popped ass hat prattle on about how his Uncle Jim saved him from a pack of wild dogs when he was younger and taught him how to kiss with tongues and then died in a tragic accident down at the taco meat plant so now he’s getting a Darth Maul tattoo on his back to remember him.

What was learned here? More than anything Miami Ink teaches us to keep our loved ones away from Miami, as it seems everyone who goes to this shop is there to remember a dead relative or friend. Worse yet, it seems as a result of losing this person, good taste has a 50/50 shot of being lost with them resulting in an epically stupid memorial tattoo that causes home audiences to get misty eyed.

Trading Spaces – This show may have spawned every other half-assed home décor show that has come since in which upper middle class Kenny G fans redecorate the home of a friend of neighbor who returns the favor in what amounts to the most cramp-inducing drooling borefest of television since CSPAN stopped airing wet T-shirt contests.

Left in the hands of some manner of decorator who employs the “real folks” like slave laborers as their fashionable changes are slapped on walls like feces in the monkey cage, whole teams of scientists with equipment borrowed from NASA would be hard pressed to find the educational value of anything presented here. Trading Spaces teaches viewers about two things, jack and shit, neither of which require a degree to fully comprehend under normal circumstances.

What was learned here? That your best friend has shitty carpeting. Or you do. Or your bedroom looks like it is the illicit spawn of a 70’s porno and a Denny’s dining room and needs some throw rugs and candles. Is any of this considered actual knowledge? It’s really hard to say, but the fact remains the show has gone on for 8 seasons of doing the exact same thing over and over again. Apparently the audience for this just really fuckin’ loves to learn.  That aside, the host of the show, Paige Davis, can apparently be caught on camera showing her ass at charity events, so that ain’t bad.

What Not to Wear – Taking learning to depths not often plumbed by the average human, this show basically takes the entire populace of people who keep the sweat pant market in business and tells them they look like shit. So really, there’s the learning aspect in a nutshell. If you look like the people on this show, you look like shit. So you just learned something, didn’t you, shitty?

An effete man who looks like he may have been created in a Starbucks lab and a shrill harpy of a woman who apparently have PhDs in how to dress make fun of the way a new, random stranger dresses every week. First on hidden camera then to their face. Then they throw all their clothes away and explain why they look like a bag of mangled anus and how they can improve on that look, and set them free in some stores to fix their fashion woes.

What was learned here? There’s something potentially satisfying in knowing all the world’s major problems have been solved such that, week to week, this show can drop thousands of dollars on new wardrobes for people whose appearance just doesn’t meet the standards of two people they’ve never met before. What’s that? We still have cancer and hunger and herpes? Well fuck.

10 Years Younger – Another show that wants you to know you probably look like shit, this one takes some poor sap and puts them in an actual box in front of strangers so they can be criticized for how they look. Like an actual, real fucking box. They’ll set it up right in the middle of an airport and invite people over to look at how crusty and pathetic you are and guess how old you are. And you know what they guess? They guess you’re fucking old. Old and decrepit. And if you have a penis, it probably doesn’t work. You suck.

The general idea here is that if you’re 30 and look 40, this kick ass show will give you some health and fashion tips to make you look a stunning 10 years younger. Which is to say they’ll stop the wizening process that has turned you into the heinous, shriveled scrotum of a human everyone else sees you as.

What was learned here? People in airports, when confronted with a stranger in a box, can be so cruel. Really, the actual message is horribly lost in here to all amongst us who have never found us in that natural circumstance that happens from time to time when we’re in the airport, about to enjoy a Toblerone, when just out of the blue we get trapped in that fuckin sound proof booth and all these people start guessing we’re octogenarians. For the rest of us this show, like so many others, is about as educational as the FOX network.

As usual, the meeting took place at the sordid arrangement of stolen lawn furniture arranged in the cement and weed-strewn patch of landfill that serves as Glenn’s backyard that he refuses to refer to as anything but a terrace. Glenn served Thunderbird in collectible Star Wars: Episode 1 cups from Taco Bell and we all got down to business. We call these editorial meetings but really we mostly get shitfaced and talk about how we want to do each others’ moms. Adam Brown’s mom is one hot tamale and by that I mean fine piece of ass and by that I mean charming lady of upstanding character. With wicked guns.

Anyway, as Glenn and Grady argued over whose hair was in the sour cream (we were eating sour cream. Glenn pretty much only has shit he stole from Taco Bell to serve us. Glenn works at Taco Bell) and Adam was busy funneling the Thunderbird, I thought to myself “I need better friends.” I also thought, if I were to do a blog post, I should really impart some useful info. Some wisdom I have achieved in life. And really, I do have wisdom. I have a degree in Philosophy, man.

I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking you want to see pics of Adam’s mom. But you’re also thinking that if I have a degree in Philosophy, I should be living on a solid gold, lobster-plated yacht anchored off the coast of Wicked Hot Sex Island. And true, I could have taken that path, but that’s far too predictable. Besides, Wicked Hot Sex Island is full of ass hat philosophy majors these days all drinking their fuckin’ mocha lattes talking about Wittgenstein and ontological prostate exams and other shit I never cared about. Posers.

Anyways, after finishing my own Thunderbird and moving on to some Olde English, I was inspired to share my own knowledge of writing internet comedy for fame and fortune, neither of which I have. But I have written internet comedy. Just look at this blog post, it’s 34% hilarious and at most 50% retarded, which in and of itself is already 15% hilarious. This is why retards are funny. (Ed. – Please note we don’t mean that the mentally handicapped are deserving of mockery, we just mean retarded shit is funny. You know what we mean, don’t be retarded.)

So what have I learned about writing online? First of all, don’t write about your cat. Even if you have a cat named Weiner Dog which is the best name ever for a cat and it’s all fat like a little hairy sausage, no one will ever care. The internet is not for writing about your fat cat, no matter what this site tells you. http://www.fatcatblog.com/. What you should write about is stuff so ball blastingly awesome that people become immediately aroused or horrified just by looking at the title of your piece. I need not tell you what that means as I’m sure you too carry a list of words in your wallet that either cause you to become denim-shatteringly erect or lose bowel control. Or both. We call those words double whammies. Use those words in your title.

Now that you have a title, you need to write the whole thing. So if you’re writing an article called How to Grow 48GGG Boobs at Home Overnight by Listening to ZZ Top, which is an awesome and eye catching title, you should fill in the rest of the page with more words that capitalize on the interest generated by your title. Elitist pricks will tell you it’s best to write about something related to your title as well, but playing by other people’s rules isn’t for everyone and if you want to instead write about how you jammed with Hendrix in this dream you had when you were stoned once, you go right ahead. Probably no one will publish it because it’s stupid, but you can say you stayed true to you, and that’s something you can be proud of, especially if you’re deluded.

Finding a venue for your awesome writing is the hardest part. Where do you fit in? Do you want to write for Maxim? Cracked? Scenic Anemia? LolCats? How the hell should I know? I write for this website and I can prove it because you’re reading these words right now, which I originally wrote. Did I just freak your mind? I thought as much. Take a breath if you need to, I won’t go anywhere because I am not really here, just these words are. Did I just freak your mind again? Check and mate.

Basically, if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that an afternoon in the sun with nothing but copious amounts of alcohol that’s barely more palpable than varnish and expired sour cream in your belly is friggin’ awesome. And I don’t say friggin’ lightly.

This likely wasn’t my second job ever, I just can’t remember where it fit in. I think I was in high school when I had it. Now, for those who read of my adventures at Best Value Restaurant and recall I said it was my first job, and I was in college, you’ll have to accept a sad, weird truth. I dropped out of college to go to high school again. Don’t ask why, just trust that it made sense at the time and it was totally worth it as it lead to an incident in which I saw some boob.

Anyway, Starmail is a company that delivers flyers for grocery stores. The bundle you get in your mail box every week with your coupons for clam chowder and so on that are most likely delivered by some 11 year old who lives in your neighborhood. A step up (or down) from that 11 year old’s job was mine, working at the warehouse that bundles those flyers before the 11 year old gets them. The job had two parts. For the paper boys, we had to count out bundles of each kind of flyer and put them in garbage bags, then slap on an address label for little Billy or Susie or Carl or who the fuck ever. The other part was preparing bagged bundles for delivery to apartment buildings. Each little bag gets one of each kind of flyer folded and stuffed inside. Fun! Now repeat it 2,000 times.

To begin with, the work at Starmail was piece work. That’s a fun way for saying you get paid for how bad you suck. Suck large, get paid small. Suck small, get paid still small, but not as humiliatingly so. I sucked at a level that paid me roughly $7.50 an hour.

The warehouse was next to some train tracks and an open, uncut field. It was the sort of place where people get murdered in horror movies. Murdered then sodomized then partially eaten then resodomized. Inexplicably more noteworthy than the location were the coworkers. I worked with hobos. If you know anything about me, you know I’m not comfortable with hobos. Nonetheless, I was their peer. Life was really looking up for me.

Not everyone was a hobo, my friend Wizo worked there (who you may remember from my last hobo posting), some vaguely goth girl with a large rack worked there and then hobos. One man resembled Jason Statham if he were malnourished and perhaps had been a POW for some years. He wore the same pair of multi-color vomit Hammer pants on every shift, with a wife beater tucked into it and a fake leather fanny pack. Every day. I like to think the fanny pack held flavored tobacco, rolling papers and unwrapped butterscotch candies.

Another resembled a grizzled mountain-man trucker. His uniform was generally a t shirt and jeans, a trucker hat and a mangy, wild, grey and white beard the likes of which you’d expect to see creeping from the edges of Bea Arthur’s panties.

And finally, there was one man we’ll call Ned. Ned looked like he’d been kicked out of ZZ Top about three decades earlier for reasons of mental unwellness. His beard hung to mid chest and was snow white. Ned did not bathe and he talked to himself.

My work here was in the warmer months and the big bay doors were often open out onto the field to allow for air flow and so groundhogs and transients who didn’t work with me could bear witnesses to any of the aforementioned murder-sodomy. I was placed at a table next to Wizo to begin folding papers to be bagged for apartment buildings. Across from us was Ned. In the summery heat, Ned had been stewing pretty impressively that day. When I say Ned didn’t bathe, I really mean it. You could often smell him before you saw him. The infernal stench of old man BO preceded him like the town crier, bellowing out funk to alert all in the room.

So I’d stand there for hours at a time, folding my papers and stuffing them into plastic bags while Ned did the same across from me, his bouquet never quite settling enough for you to get used to it. And then, out of nowhere, the warehouse would get treated to “Go fuck yourself!” or “Fuckin cocksucker!” followed by some incoherent muttering. Ned and his invisible friend were apparently having a spat.

I appreciate the seriousness of mental illness and it’s not something to be made fun of. Unless it’s super hilarious. This, in a working environment, was completely ridiculous. Ned would speak at length with someone who wasn’t there and 9 times out of 10, whoever this mystery guest was would piss that man off no end. Ned would curse him like a trucker while the rest of the warehouse went about their work. If Ned got especially carried away, someone might tell him to keep it down. This happened if he managed to belt out the word “fuck” loud enough to be heard outside more than 10 times in a minute. Keep it down. An insane, virulent smelling man shouting obscenities at invisible entities just got “keep it down.” I couldn’t understand it at all. Until I noticed he hadn’t missed a beat in his work and, shamefully, he was beating me by a New York mile. This rabid, incoherent geriatric had time to yell at people who didn’t even exist and was still showing me up. Life was looking up for me, indeed.

Every day, hundreds and thousands of flyers got stuffed into bags. If you’ve never counted out a stack of 437 pizza ads and 437 grocery flyers and 437 coupons for control top panty hose and 437 of like 10 other things and jammed them into a trash bag and then did the same thing again and again and again while you’re serenaded by foul mouthed ranting, you’re missing one of life’s exquisite awkward and horrible situations.

On lunch break, Wizo and I would cross the tracks and go up a few blocks to a Taco Bell, as our desire to make our insides smell as fresh as the place in which we worked was strong. The locals would often brown bag it for lunch, which occasionally included little more than two warm cans of beer or a sandwich that I assume was macaroni and cheese loaf with relish or caulk or whatever was handy. Ned would eat and curse.

Unlike Best Value, I wasn’t put in my place by this job. Despite the vast number of employers I have had, I don’t get fired that often. This would be no exception. No, pride actually had to put an end to this job. Or the illusion of it. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t bring myself to return day after day to this little warehouse of newsprint and breathe through my mouth while Ned continued to get paid more than me by virtue of him being a better employee than me. Rather than quit outright, I decided my best course of action would be to simply make up a story of a better job I had just been hired for, to surely leave them reeling at my absence. I’ll show you, suckers, I’m moving on to something much more awesome while you stay here with your caulk and cock and whatnot.

I had no other job and I’m sure no one cared. I like to think, in the weeks and months that followed, maybe a little foul mouthed gremlin with my face showed up and had a curse war with Ned, though.

I had pondered the idea of maybe doing a sequel, because sequels are awesome, just ask City Slickers II. Jack Palance ruled like nobody’s business, am I right? I’m right. The idea was just that though, an idea. A fertile dream, like those I have about flying or sodomy or Adam. The promise of a truth on another day, but no more.

Or was it? The answer us no. It wasn’t. As some of you are not aware, I sometimes sell my crap on Facebook. Once I put up an hilarious fake ad for my grandmother, until some uptight twat complained and Facebook removed the ad and sent me a message threatening to ban me if I didn’t respect the rules of serious social networking classified ads. My grandmother is dead though, so the joke’s on them. Anyway, recently I listed some action figures online. Yes, I have action figures, no i have never touched a girl’s forbidden zone. They were Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures in fact, so I don’t need to touch real girls. I had 6 inch plastic Willow and she goes where real girls can’t. But I digress.

I was all a-twitter with greedy anticipatory delight when I received an e-mail that someone was interested in purchasing my item. Until I read it.

Hello,
I am interested in immediate purchase of your item,but before i proceed on this transaction i will like to ask some question as follow. i can only raise cashier check or money order for the payment of your item so i will like to know if the item is still available and also if is in good condition?Please your answer on this, will enable me to issue your payment to you asap

1. Do you accept a ( Cashier Check / Money Order)as a mode of payment?

2. What is the firm price of the item?

3. Will you let a shipping company to come to your house for the pick up of the item?

4. Do get back to me with your contact info where you want the payment to address to

5. I will like you to contact me to my personal email address which is douchebucket@cockrag.com*

You may notice this person has issues with the English language, which isn’t in and of itself a crime, even though it should be. They also offer me the curious payments of money order or cashier check. Immediately my “you’re a sack of shit-dar” went off. Why not cash? Why is a shipping company coming? Why do you suck.

A quick Google search confirmed this was a dirty scam that people often pull on Craigslist and other sites where lonely gents like myself sell their slightly soiled Buffy figures for cold, hard cash. The basic idea is I get sent a fake cashier’s check with an extra amount added on to pay the shipping company and for my own troubles. I wire transfer the money to the shipping company and then no one ever shows up and when the check finally doesn’t clear because it’s as fake as Glenn’s wooden leg that I know he pees in on long car rides I’m on the hook for the whole amount and my English as a second language friend is laughing and probably masturbating all over my money. All over it.

Just to confirm I had a real person and not a bot, I exchanged some e-mails that were mundane and not hilarious in the least. Like this:

Hi again,

I think it would be easier and save some time if I just met you some place and delivered the items to you and you pay me on the spot. That way you don’t have to worry about whether you can trust me with the money and it will save you money on shipping as well.

Also, I have some additional figures as well if you’d be interested in buying them. It’s a duplicate of everything I have listed. Let me know if this sounds good to you, or if you would still like to have them shipped.

This got me a response that pretty much says the same shit over and over, asking for my address and phone number. They also went out of their way to ask if they can trust me with this money. They don’t want to be ripped off. A few more mundane e-mails and I agree we have a deal so I get this:

Hello,thanks for your quick response,the check will be mailout as soon as possible and i want you to understand that some amount have been place on the check which is meant for the item and the shipping company that will come for the pick up so as soon as you receive it just go to any cashing point around you or your bank and get it cash and deduct the amount of your item and also deduct the amount of $30 for your time and effort and wire transfer the excess fund via western union money transfer to the shipping company the same day so kindly consider the item sold to me so that another person will not buy it from you as i so much count on you.

They count of me. They need these Buffy figures. Maybe for a voodoo ritual, maybe to boil for soup. I don’t know, but this shit sounds important. I must reassure them that I am reliable. So I say this:

OK, sounds good. I will wire the money the same day I receive it. You should know that this item is cursed, however. Ever since I received the item, I have had terrible flatulence and a non-stop erection. My local priest told me he could not speak about it and would not allow me in the church but an Indian shaman told me it was possessed by the spirit of Christopher Reeve, who you may recognize as Superman. I suppose I should charge more for something possessed by Superman, but I feel the price I asked is fair.

How will you be sending the payment? I prefer in the mail or a strip-o-gram, but whatever works best for you. You do not need to add any extra for my time but it is very nice to offer. If you like, you can merely send me photos of you on a bearskin rug or peeing in a can of Mountain Dew. If you could do both in the same photo, even better.

I love you

This seems quite over the top, but since my friend keeps sending me the same vaguely idiotic requests for my address, I have to take the risk that they won’t even pay attention. I am not disappointed.

Okay….kindly gt back to me with the name you and on the payment and the address to send out the payment to and your valid phone number to contact you.

Clearly no one on the other end cares, they just want that fat cash. I’m starting to wonder how much they’ll send me for shipping to make this worth their while. Should I give them my contact info? Hard to say. For now, i say this:

Currently I am in the bathroom and thus do not have access to my address or phone number, both of which I keep written inside a secret set of pants under my bed. In 3 hours when I am done on the toilet I will e-mail you the information and then we can commence with you sending me payment. If possible, send the money order in a tube sock with the words “Gary Busey tickled Mother’s Taint on Tuesday” written on it in green Sharpie marker. If this is not doable, I understand. You can’t be too careful with all those looky loos, am I right? I’m right, don’t answer that.

Your faithful wife

This was maybe too much as it didn’t get a response.  My friend is getting impatient.  I have to give in and give them what they want.  They need an address and I am nothing if not accommodating.

WHY ALL THIS QUESTION CAUSE I WANT TO PURCHASE YOUR ITEM AND YOU ARE ASKING ME TO GET BACK TO YOU WITH MY PICTURE?PLEASE IF YOU ARE NOT SERIOUS GET BACK TO ME.

A valid if grammatically incorrect question, my friend.  Why am I asking all these damn questions?  I’ll have to explain in another e-mail.

I just want to know that my stuff is going to be loved and cared for and made to feel like a woman.  If you do not want to buy it that is fine, I have 17 other people very interested in purchasing this item but I saved it for you because I feel like we are soul mates and I would shave you if I could.

I gave you my address and everything, I just want to see you and thought maybe after the deal we can have an internet romance or something and I could slap your picture on my monitor with the head of my unit and pretend I was giving you love bruises.  Sometimes I call it the Loch Ness Monster and pretend my sack and balls are like humps on its back, like a prehistoric, aquatic camel with a loooooon neck, you know?

Anyway, here is my address again

*blah blah blah*

Please send the money right away…how much extra will you send for shipping?  Should I send you a bundt cake as well?  I make sensual bundt cakes.

Stickily yours,

Nedrick

I like to think that explained everything.  But 14 hours pass and I get no response.  I assume they were put off by my offer of sensual bundt cake.  Time for a hail mary play.

Darling,

I am so scared because I have not heard from you.  Is the deal off?  Are the Germans onto us?  I am hoping your payment arrives very quickly so that I might send you my delightful toys.  I think you will love them the way I love beef.  I love beef.  I love beef.  No, you don’t understand.  No!  I love it.

I will wire you the money when I get it and I think later I will have a bath with your photos, if you don’t mind, if you have any to send.  I hope you are not annoyed by my request.  I have cramps.  Sometimes I engage in non-sequitors.  Possums make me anxious.  Like really anxious.

Do you have any relatives in St. Louis?  I never want to go there because I bet it smells like a restroom, but if you have family there I will cowboy up and ride that shit to the moon.

Anyway, I await your response and will be watching the Food Network until I hear back from you.  I may also eat a muffin.  Daddy likes muffin, ya dig?

Love and kisses,

Gerald

The savvy readers amongst you may have noticed that I have now gone by the names Ian, Glenn, Nedrick and Gerald in these e-mails.  Also, if these were real, they would be some solid grounds for a mental health evaluation.  Gerald there sounds about as mad as a hatter.  My friends responds thusly:

Hello….Please want to known the rease why you said you scare?

Ahh, poking the bear, are we?  A single line e-mail, and it’s a question.  Indicating they desire a response.  I can’t let them down now, they’re counting on me.  But I’m also getting bored since I gave them a fake address and obviously I’ll never see any check, and I don’t want to wait for themt o realize this is going nowhere.  It’s time to send the “party like it’s 1999″ e-mail.  The Omega-Mail.  You may have heard of it.  But have you seen it?  Here it is.  Brace yourselves, it’s absolutely retarded.

BALLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the Feds are on to the game, man!!  Oh shit, you don’t even want to know what’s stirring in this pot, sweet pea.  Lycra pants, peanut buttered scrotums and Labrador retrievers, fuckin Ramen Noodles…RAMEN NOODLES?!?!?!?!  I CAN’T GO DOWN LIKE THIS!!!

Listen, I’m attaching some files to this e-mail, for the love of God don’t lose them or give them to anyone with ties to General Motors.  It’s just you and me on this pony and we’re doing it Butch and Sundance style, you dig?  Once we ride that bicycle, you pay me $1,000,000 to bang my wife (or Demi Moore, whoever’s skankier) and I eat a bunch of hard boiled eggs we’re gonna need a wicked soak in the tub, but that’s not gonna be for days yet.  DAYS!!

Are you in this for the long haul?  My ass is bleeding right now and you would not believe how much stuff I have hidden in there.  I’m making my way to the train station to meet you but walking is really hard right now and sitting is, frankly, suicidal.  I have a spare t-shirt in there but in retrospect ironing and folding it is going to prove useless by the time I retrieve it.

I can’t explain everything right now, but it has more to do with Jesus Jones than I would have thought, I’ll tell you that much for free.  Or a bagel.  Have bagels ready when I arrive, I’m dying here.  I need sesame.

If you see anyone who resembles Oprah with a 5 o’clock shadow, you run like Forresst Gump and you don’t stop.  Meet me at the tree where we first kissed, I’ll be the one in the rubber boots planting acorns.  In the event there are two of us planting acorns, I’ll be the one who is me.

When your check arrives I will not be there to retrieve it.  I have built a robot out of old mason jars and reduced fat yogurt containers to assist me in the maintenance of my mail, however, as I would simply die if I could not keep up to date on my correspondence.  Sir Killington-2000 (the robot, obviously) will forward your mail to me if I am able to retrieve it or, if I am unable, he will go on an unstoppable rampage of madness and bloodshed.

I have to shave my pubic hair and replace it with an organic fibre.

Excelsior!

Arnold H. Montgomery esq.

I also attached the following three photos.

That is, in fact, Peter Weller of Robocop fame.

As you might expect, this netted me no response.  The Omega E-Mail is powerful indeed.  I wasn’t going to stop here mind you.  Not when it was within my power to send numerous single line e-mails that said things like “I drew a picture of us riding a donkey and put it on my fridge.  It makes me so wet,” and “Oh shit!  Someone stole the donkey pic!”

Some 12 e-mails later I gave up and sent an e-mail that says “i LOVE YOU” over and over again, about 100 times.  Thus we have reached the present and my friend no longer e-mails me.  I’m wistful, yet feel as though I have grown as a human.

*not actual e-mail

I thought I’d share some random tidbits today, things that in and of themselves don’t make a whole blog and yet they’re worthy of a good retelling in some online forum because future generations are going to want to know what kind of pointless shit was clogging up the tubes of the internet way back when.  I like to think a Moon Man will read this blog one day and be all “Bitches back in 2008 sure were full of themselves.  This one handsome bastard named Fortey wrote all kinds of crap that probably no one cared about and yet he kept going.  I bet he was touched himself a lot.  Oh good, my Moon cab is here to take me to the Moon market.” Fuckin judgemental Moon Men and their damn markets.

Anyways, here’s some highlights from the universe at large.

This week at work I had my hand in feces.  No word of a lie.  I do not work in a feces related industry, making this little tale somewhat more interesting, or at least hair raising.  See, some days at work I’ll be all “wow, feels like that burrito wants to get back to his family” so I’ll get someone to cover me for a good 12 minutes (no more no less if done right) and mosey on back to the lavatory or “shitter” if you will.

On my last outing to the dump, I was chagrined to discover the handle to the toilet had mysteriously vanished and the last patron had neglected to flush.  Also of note was that this person neglected to wipe.  You can tell when they’re just a lone floater.  Unless he took the paper with him, what the hell do I know?

Anyway, I laid down a nest of toilet paper in a furious hurry on the seat so my ass wouldn’t have to touch anything unseemly.  You should know by now I have issues with public restrooms.  But anyway, I was in a hurry and my 12 minutes was counting down so I added my deposit to the last fellows and then trumped him by actually wiping my ass.  Can you believe I am actually writing this online?  Like I thought this was worth your attention?  What the fuck is my problem?

I’ll tell you what my problem is.  Once I was rear sanitized, I was going to remove the lid to the tank and flush by yanking the handle inside.  To do this I needed to lower the lid of the toilet.  Which, I soon learned, was covered in actual poo.  Feces.  Shit.  Some unwholesome individual had lowered that lid and shat upon it, then flipped it up again.  This was no smear of poo caused by an errant finger tearing through oru low quality paper and getting stained, this was a full on bowel movement and I had my hand right in it.

At this point I cursed loudly and proceeded to wash my hand for the several minutes.  Was this an omen of the rest of the week?  You tell me.

Today, as I sat at a bus stop waiting to get home, an SUV pulled to a stop at the light in front of me.  Inside were four university looking chicks who were about as interchangeable as the pieces of a Mr. Potato Head.  They all looked exactly like each other, it was very odd.  Blondes, with big sunglasses and probably wearing sweat pants with something clever like “Juicy” written on the ass.

The passenger girl looks at me with her window down and says, quite unprovoked “Nice shirt, Minimum Wage.  Did you go to school to learn how to bag groceries?”  For the record, I do not work in a grocery store nor do I bag groceries.

Inexplicably, my mouth and brain formed a pact to blow not only this random girl’s mind but my own at the very same instant.  With nary a pause, I replied “I bet your cunt tastes like brine shrimp.”

I have no idea what brine shrimp taste like.  They’re sea monkeys, who the hell eats those?  To be honest, I think I meant pickle brine, but brine shrimp is what came out.  I dropped the C bomb on a total stranger, albeit a bitch, and then that follow up.  I think I’ve never said anything more awesome to another human ever.

Briney (that’s what we’ll call her now) was somewhat more taken aback by this retort than I was.  Her friends seemed disgusted, and I heard muted rumbling of distaste from within.  The main reply was from Briney, who simply exclaimed “what?” And honestly, there was nothing more for her to say at that point.

The light turned green and Briney was whisked away t parts unknown.  I like to think that now, for the rest of her life, whenever someone gets close to her nether regions she’s going to pause and wonder if there is a seafood-esque quality to what’s going on down there and then she’ll think of me.

It happened while watching one of the seventy or so MTV channels that one gets stricken with upon signing up for digital cable.  I was watching a countdown of some sort, perhaps of the Sucka Free variety, when I noticed something.  Of the top 10 songs on the countdown, a whopping nine of them featured guest artists.  And just like that, it hit me.  Eureka!  All we need around here are some damn guests.  After that, people will read whatever the fuck we write!  So, by way of initiating the explosion in traffic that this site so desperately needs, today’s post will feature several guests.  But not just any guests, there is a formula, and we’re going to follow it.  

First off, we’re going to need a big name producer.  See that picture?  You’re damn right that’s Timbaland.  We do not fuck around here at ScenicAnemia.  So, bask in the musclebound awesomeness that is Timbaland (aka Thomas Crown) while I take a moment to discuss something that’s been on my mind.  I was in Canada recently, and I have a question.  What the fuck is a VLT?  Every billboard I drove past seemed to be touting “VLT’s.”  Would it have killed them to spell it out just once for the benefit of foreigners like myself?  Apparently, yes, it would.  Fucking Canada.  So, before I lower myself to asking Fortey or Glenn and thereby destroying the image they must surely have of me as an all-knowing King of America, I figured I would do some research on my own.

Yes, that is John Mayer, you see there.  Every good song these days features a friendly mix of producer/rapper/hot singer/guest rapper/white-but-still-palatable-to-black-people rock musician.  Because I refuse to include a picture of that douche from Coldplay in this post, John Mayer is the guy.  Anyway, back to the VLT’s.  After a quick search on acronymfinder.com, I was presented with far more options than I expected.  Let’s take a look at a few of the possibilities.  Up first, Vermont Land Trust.  While it is certainly a long shot, we can’t rule it out.  Why would so much of Canada be interested in a state like Vermont?  Simple, it’s central location on the East Coast of the United States makes it the perfect location from which to launch some sort of strike.  Is Canada planning to invade the United States?  If all of those ominous Vermont Land Trust signs are any indication, then yeah, maybe.  Could Al-Canada operatives already be setting up shop in the sleepy locale that is Vermont?  I can’t prove it, but rest assured, the all-seeing eye of suspicion is upon you, Canada.  No sudden moves, eh?

Filling the spot of “mandatory guest rapper of the day” is Lil’ Wayne.  Is there anywhere that he is not right now?  If your mom invites you to dinner, expect “Weezy fuckin’ Baby” to pop up at some point.  But, to his credit, people don’t seem to be tiring of him in the least.  Quite the opposite really.  This paragraph feels a bit more awesome just having him in it, right?  Of course it does.  Now, back to the VLT’s.  The next acronym possibility that caught my eye?  Very Large Telescope.  Probably not the answer I’m looking for, but hilarious nonetheless, mostly because “Very Large Telescope” is actually a proper name for a real life scientific project.  Some of the brightest minds roaming planet Earth, when tasked with what to call their big telescope project, settled on “Very Large Telescope.”  Brilliant!  In case you’re wondering where it’s located, the “Very Large Telescope” project is located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.  Ha!  They said “anal.”  South American scientists are, like, so gay.

Where would this post be without a hot R&B singer?  That’s Cassie.  She can’t sing.  So far, nobody has noticed.  That’s what computers are for.  Why is her picture so much bigger than the others?  No idea what you’re talking about.  Anyway, the VLT search has turned frustrating.  What can it be?  Variable List Table?  Visible Light Transmittance?  Very Long Term?  How about Very Little Text?  Is any of this really worth advertising on billboards?  Probably not.  That leaves one last possibility…video lottery terminals.  That seems like a logical choice.  By the way, if this all seems a little boring, keep in mind, this post is jam packed with guests, which makes it hot by default.  Scenic Anemia, we run the streets!  But yeah, video lottery terminals.  That has to be it.  We have video lottery all over the damn place here in South Dakota.  Is it so unrealistic to believe that it’s migrated north?  Or maybe it migrated south to us, where we then perfected the practice by actually telling people what it is rather than shrouding it in some mysterious acronym.  Whatever the case, it doesn’t much matter.  Because we got guests!

eHarmony.com - I’ve never been to this website and I hate it, that oughtta be worth something. I am online right now, I could easily open a new window and go look at eHarmony but I fucking won’t, because I refuse to support that librarian looking asshat who cranks out a new commercial for his asinine website every other week. You know who visits this site for their “scientific” method of meeting total strangers? People who have tongue kissed dogs before and who collect Hummel figurines. People who listen to the Bangles to cheer themselves up.

Everyone on an eHarmony commercial comes across as some kind of insipid non-person who was so bumbling in life that they had previously been dating hobos, piles of trash assembled to resemble people and cardboard cutouts of celebrities. Why are we helping these people meet each other based on matching up personality traits? Isn’t this the equivalent of cyber-age moron eugenics? eHarmony’s ultimate goal may be, in fact, to breed an entire new generation of dipshits. Certifiable dipshits who can’t assemble Ikea furniture and drink Zima. God damn you, eHarmony.

Hotmail.com - I don’t use hotmail so much anymore, I’m a gmail kind of guy these days. But, on occasion, when I am not thinking and want to harass someone anonymously I venture to make a new e-mail account from which I can send shemale porn to guys I went to university with. Ya know, because we’re friends and not because his new wife is an unbearable shrew who won’t find the humor in a chick with 36DD boobs packing a 9 inch wang pointed directly at them when they open the e-mail. So what the hell is Hotmail’s problem? Why do they change the hotmail layout every couple of days now? Why does it take me 20 minutes to sign up for a new fake account? And for the rare times I do make use of the one hotmail account I actually keep, why do I get 100 spam e-mails every day? Did Microsoft sign a deal with people selling mortgages and cock enlargement pills or something? Why must you frustrate me so?

YouTube.com - Don’t get me wrong, I love hilarious videos of accidents as much as the next guy. I also love videos of bum fights and internet memes being exploited well past their prime. Hilarious, I tells ya! But what the hell is happening on YouTube from day to day? Have you ever looked at the most viewed video section? And then have you ever managed to stop yourself from shaking in under 5 minutes?

Why does Chocolate Rain have 28 million views? What the fuck is Chocolate Rain?

Why have almost 100,000,000 people viewed Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne? One hundred million? That’s like 3 times the population of the very country that spawned Avril Lavigne. That’s 1 in 3 Americans.

Why have 48 million people watched Crank Dat Soulja Boy Spongebob? What I just typed doesn’t even make sense. And Souljah Boy sucks. And has nothing to do with Spongebob.

MySpace.com - Realistically, there’s no need for me to explain this. If you can read that I, and many others, hate MySpace and not understand why, I have something terrible to tell you. You’re why. MySpace is the web equivalent of a friend vomiting on you in a bar. It’s quite the mess and everyone is there to see it, plus there’s awful music in the background. Near as I can tell, half the people who use MySpace suffer from some kind of sensory retardation issue that prevents them from noticing all the hideous backgrounds and animated gif files and and terrible embedded sound files make their page into an incoherent glimpse into the mind of the completely insane.

Kleenex.com - I pick on Kleenex for no good reason here as I am using them as a placeholder for every product in your home that you have never looked at and thought “Man, I’d like to learn more about this.” No one wants to see the story of Kleenex online. I don’t want to see a website for my toothbrush, my dish soap, my vacuum, my vitamins, my crackers, my lint brush, my soup or any of the other dozens upon dozens of mundane things that no one int heir right mind should care enough about to look up online. Which brings me to…

Tampax.com - Don’t ask why I was on this website, the reason will chill and disturb you. All you need to concern yourself with is the fact that you can’t even navigate this site unless you tell them what country you’re from. What the hell is Tampax hiding from foreigners? Or from us in favor of foreigners? What the hell does geography have to do with feminine hygiene? Is the site drastically different if you’re in Antigua? I bet I don’t want to know any of the answers.

Foreign Porn Sites - Have you ever found yourself on some Guatemalan mature ladies website and stayed long enough to look at a few pics because you were only mildly disgusted and then noticed the text on the side of the page that read something like this - “I mets Janice on the streets at a club. She lookeds hot so I ask her come home and she says OK! We get to mys place and she is being too much hornys for me so I say get it good! and she shows me giant boobs like eggs of condor only made from soft goat cheese and we have many of the sex all night, she is insatiable horny!”

Maybe I’m the only guy in the English speaking world who found that particular foreign porn site, but come on. Come on!

Amazon.com - Generally I enjoy Amazon for being a mighty repository of all kinds of things I don’t need but will waste my money on anyway. The reason I have hundreds of DVDs and books is because of Amazon.com. You’d figure that means I like the website and I almost do. I so totally almost do. Except for the “Recommended for You” part of the site. I bought Old School so they recommend all 3 Mission: Impossible movies. I bought Harold and Kumar and they recommend the Sixth Sense. I bought Lord of the Rings widescreen, they recommend Lord of the Rings fullscreen. Really? Really, Amazon?

SmileyCentral.com - I think this may be the giant, queen alien of spam sites, pumping out little spamlets across the globe in the form of pop up windows and shitty ad banners that screech through my speakers whenever I carelessly move my mouse on some other shitty webpage. But how is this website in business? Are there seriously legions of asshats out there paying money to get these awful smileys on their own computers so they can laugh to themselves while they shovel Cheezits and ice cream down their Jabba-esque, shut-in maws, firmly rooted in their no-longer-able-to-swivel-due-to-physics swivel chairs?

KFC.com - This entry is mostly because I ate some KFC the other day and then promptly and explosively shot it back out of my body in a virulent roar of salty, watery puke. That aside, the KFC website has a link that says “nutrition” right there at the top of the page, which makes me question humanity as a whole. Are KFC customers idiots or are the KFC marketing people idiots? Cuz believe it, someone here is an idiot. No one should be going to KFC if they have a remote concern about the nutritional value of what they’re eating and the people at KFC should know this. It’s a fried chicken place. If you want to eat healthy, maybe you should, you know, not go to a fried chicken place.

The nutrition page goes on to insult people by letting us know that they have no trans fats. So what? So my heart is going to expand to the size of a small dog and explode because of the cholesterol and regular fat and sodium then? Fuckin fantastic, Colonel, thanks. They also let you know that one of their delicious bowls has 800 calories, which is close to half what you need in a day if you’re not an epic fatty or planning on doing any decathlons any time soon. Clearly KFC really does care about nutrition.

I assume there are many more terrible websites out there, but I either haven’t been to them or, ya know, just don’t remember them off the top of my head. This is a blog, not a research paper.

Booze - The origin of the term shit faced may have more literal meanings than any of us ever guessed. A few thousand years ago, our desperately thirsty ancestors on the Orkney Islands decided to make beer. Technology being what it was at the time, it wasn’t really an option to go pick up a 6-pack of Pabst, so they made their own kiln. And they made it out of shit. Probably other stuff too, but when you get down to it, if you’re making drinks in something made of shit, that’s the stand out ingredient.

In 2001, some researchers discovered what they called an ancient brewery and made some of the beer themselves. In a fun German shizer video twist, they said the beer was absolutely fantastic. We’re not suggesting you go sculpt a poop kiln and brew your own just to see if it’s true, but we’re not not suggesting it.

Housing – Building things out of shit leaves no end of hilarious jokes you can make when you’re done. “What a shitty house” or “Something smells like shit in here” or “This wall tastes funny” are probably favorites in India and various other places around Asia and Africa where people build homes out of dung. When it’s caught fresh from the turd cutter (and who would want old poop, that’s disgusting), it can be worked into a stone-like plaster that’s pretty decent at holding a building together. So decent, in fact, that during apocalyptic earthquakes the crap houses shift around a little bit but don’t fall down. And while standing up to earthquakes is pretty awesome, we suspect that some sort on monsoon would really make for a terrible turn of events as your poo house melts around you while the fury of nature flings tangy bits of seeds and nut matter into your eyes until you’re swallowed whole by the quicksandy mass that was once your living room wall.

Water Purification – Our good friends in Bolivia have some issues with their water supply. The local water, polluted with waste from nearby mines, is unsafe to drink as it is. What’s a boy to do? Strain it through llama poop. Filters made from llama dung are able to strain out bacteria and contaminants. The same sort of technology is used elsewhere with cow dung and, presumably if you’re in a pinch when you’re camping by the lake, you could crap in a bucket and work up something on your own if you knew all the ins and outs. The process is more complicated than simply shitting in a glass of water, of course, and involves microbes in the dung removing the dissolved metals and neutralizing the acids. Water is filtered through large pools of the droppings until all the contaminants are cleaned out and the locals are left with clean, slightly assish water to drink.

Biogas – The big news in shit is that it could change the world. Fossil fuel is all fine and good for causing us all to waste money, pollution and angering the ghosts of a bajillion dinosaurs who will one day come to claim their rich, oily remains. But the real deal for the next generation is your ass. Your ass, cow ass, goat ass, all kinds of ass.

In India, Gober gas generators which run on cow dung are keeping more than 2 million homes lit up at the cost of homeowners’ eyes constantly watering and not being invited out to many parties. Pig shit runs street lights in some parts of China. Similar projects are under way in a number of Asian countries and smaller versions are also going in the US and Europe.

Also in Europe there are plans underway to make a car that runs on biogas. Clearly if the project works, it’s only a matter of time before it comes fully equipped with its own on-board “fuel receptacle” which the rest of us will recognize as a shitter in the backseat. This in turn will lead to the elimination of the scourge of highway rest stops and the befoulment of our nation’s corn fields.

Toothpaste – In many parts of India, the cow is a sacred animal. For some reason, this sanctity extends to the cow’s colon and what passes on through, at least for some people. Since cows are sacred and can’t be slaughtered, whatever drops off a cow is generally considered fair game and good times. Dung is a surprisingly large industry with people using it to make detergents, obesity cures, lotions, skin whiteners and pills that claim to cure cancer, diabetes and various other illness that we don’t even need to Google to know they aren’t cured by cow shit. It’s debatable which is more bizarre, a cancer cure made from poo or toothpaste, but the toothpaste really seems a lot more like a lame prank from a National Lampoon movie. There’s no word online anywhere about how people like it but one wonders if the local alternatives to breath freshening include eating garbage or choking on your own vomit.

Paper – Paper made from elephant dung has inexplicably become popular lately, perhaps in tree hugging circles where things made from crap are probably awesome. According to www.elephantdungpaper.com, which is a real website, an elephant will eat up to 250kg of food per day and then crap out 50kg of that. From that, 115 sheets of paper can be made because elephants do a piss poor job of digesting fiber.

The man who came up with the idea actually took some crap home one day, put it in the food processor to make pulp and attempted to make paper, which apparently annoyed his wife but goes to show a truly batshit crazy idea has a lot of strange and unpredictable facets. In any event, his idea worked out and now the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre sells elephant dung paper while other places around the world produce paper from the poop of horses, llamas, sheep and pretty much anything that craps a lot of fiber, which could include grandma.

Gun Powder – If you plan on shooting someone and really making it sting, figuratively and literally, you need crap. Gun powder is made from charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter and saltpeter traditionally comes from

the asses of horses and chickens and such. Back in the day, shit collectors were pretty important people and were organized under nobles on direct authority from the Crown. It’s entirely likely that there was also a black market run by turd burglars as well. In any event, the poo had to go through a complex refining process that involved a big shithole in order to extract the potassium nitrate, which was saltpeter. From there you need the right amounts of charcoal and sulfur, mix them up with a little love and murderous desire and then you’re on your way to blowing things up or shooting your enemies with your fecally musket.

As the process of making gunpowder became more reliable, other sources of crap became more important to various war efforts. During the Civil War, the South scraped as many bat caves they could find dry of guano to get the saltpeter so they could continue shooting at the Yankees and losing the war.