Understanding Your Beef, A Helpful Guide

I have prepared the following chart for your continued improvement in all matters medico-metaphysical. I do hope it helps (although, in your case, I doubt it will do any good).

Sincerely, your dearest friend,
Mrs. Charming Thoroughgood

A Word of Caution Regarding Antitoxines and Word Usage

I would hope that most of you would have developed the sense to avoid wasting your money and health on worthless cures ubiquitously advertised, but my recent volume of mail has told me otherwise. If you do indeed lack sense and discernment, then you can at least (I can only hope) follow this one rule: Stay clear of remedies that attempt to reel in the consumer via puns and “jokes.”

Disease is not a joke. Also not a joke: death. What these malevolent, miserable, peddling humbugs fail to mention is that illness can be exacerbated by symptoms induced by laughing (hiccoughs, mild piles, rapid diaphragm contractions) and that when you most assuredly die a short time later, you will find that there is no laughter in hell.

Not a joker

You probably recall recently reading about the forced closure of L.D. Trimms Correspondence College for Therapeutic Laughology on the basis of false advertising. These same venomous hacks also appear to be advertising the falsity that “laughter is the best medicine.” In fact, in true fact, laughter is no sort of medicine at all.

The following are some commonly advertised remedies which you’ve undoubtedly seen. Please note that many of these have been formally warned or summoned to court in correlation with the US Food and Drug Act for false advertising, namely marketing a drug as a form of entertainment or joke.

Doctor Chubb’s Nose Salts

"Happily Ether After"

Famous Chicago Cold and Flu Liquid

"Look What the Catarrh Dragged In"

Quicker Hydro-Breath Improved System

"Aqua Lung, My Friend "

Rost Thridge Guaranteed Gout Remedy

"Shoo! Gout of here! "

Beckley’s Permanent Endocrine Problem Cure

"This Gland is Your Gland"

The Taming of John the Baptist, A Critical Review

Last evening, dear Mr. Thoroughgood and I had the unfortunate experience of viewing The Taming of John the Baptist, the most abhorrent piece of theatrical dreck that has ever existed.

Worse than last year's Ring my Bell! The Many Loves of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and more offensive than the Battle Creek Family Players' recent dramatization of Stryper's 1986 album To Hell with the Devil, last evening's entertainments have left me with the desire to fumigate my eyes. (Yes, it was even worse than Comstock! The Musical.)

Unfortunately, the director did not understand the subtle differences between Baptists and Boaters.

Charmed by the description of this "playful romantic romp with just a hint of religion," Mr. Thoroughgood and I trotted gullibly off to the playhouse. Idiots! We were idiots!

Local Medium and Battle Creek's single largest producer of ectoplasmic jellies, Mr. Barrabas Scrivener's portrayal of the title character might have been somewhat tolerable had he not spent the entire first act swimming in a shark tank. All of his lines had to be overdubbed by Charlie the Prop Boy from backstage.

Miss Vidalia Orpheum was quite stunning as Pansy Tankett, the fast-talking cabaret dancer, but her otherwise flawless performance was woefully impaired by the fact that she was stinking drunk. Mr. Thoroughgood counted seventeen times she fell of the stage. But what really tipped us off was her impromptu striptease in the middle of Sir Lancelot's pivotal "To kill myself or not to kill myself" speech, culminating in a wardrobe so tangled it took five stagehands to put her to rights.

The divine Miss Vidalia Orpheum mistaking Mr. Blinkums the Horse for her love interest.

The coup de grace, however, was director's fatal decision to move the setting of the play from Biblical Jerusalem to Colonial Jamestown. I don't know about you, but I was certainly not aware that there were so many cabarets and auto mechanics in Colonial America, not to mention several Knights of the Round Table! But who am I to deny others their breathtaking stupidity?

The Taming of John the Baptist will be playing Thursday through Sunday at 9pm and 11:30pm until the end of the month. I urge you all to avoid this monstrosity as though it were the most virulent consumption. In fact, I would rather you caught consumption that be subjected to this offal.

Gruel Recipes for the Infirm

Everyone knows that the best remedy for moderate in-home ills is gruel. An incredibly diverse food, knowing how to thriftily craft a few different gruels can also be handy if and when a certain whisky drinking husband has "accidentally" misplaced the children's lunch money whilst placing his fortnightly order of liquor growlers.

By far the most popular gruel (and tastiest, some would argue) uses pickled sweetbreads and alfalfa flour often combined with a fatty base, allowed to congeal, and eaten on a stick.

Healthful choice: a streetside gruel vendor

.

Medicated PEAS Porridge (hot or cold)

.

Unlike familiar pea porridges, this recipe does not actually use peas, but is a formula for a fail-safe and healthful gruel that can be made with common household herbs and chemicals found in any proper medicine hamper.

Simply select one each whose name corresponds with PEAS and mix into a pan of soaked and fermented oats, like so:

.

P: pennyroyal, phosphorus (granulated), powdered ipecac, etc.

E: extract of quassia, ether, emetic agent, etc.

A: antifungals, ash powder, acetone, etc.

S: sugar of milk, strychnin sulphate, spartein, etc.

.

For example, a popular mix for babies combines paraffin oil, egg powder, alkaline, and sour milk. Serve with a ramekin of Adler's Laudanum Soothing Syrup on the side for a complete worry-free morning meal.

Schoolhouse gruel tastings are always popular

Other well-loved gruels can be made with a base of sprouted rye soaked in camphor, then rinsed and mixed with sulfides and other desired ingredients.

Why I Hate Imaginary Friends

Did you know that over 43% of children today have an Imaginary Friend? This astounding figure is a sizable increase from the Middle Ages, when only 12% of children reported Imaginary Friends (this small number presumably due to the high mortality rates of the Imaginary Plague).

Studies have shown that most Imaginary Friends carry far less germs and bacteria than Actual Friends, and almost never have jelly on their faces. In fact, Imaginary Friends are physically unable to track dirt through a freshly steamed carpet, as they have no footprints!

But despite their obvious hygienic benefits, Imaginary Friends come with one significant drawback: they are (every single one of them!) unbelievably annoying. To illustrate this point, I have included several children's drawings of their irritating friends:

This Imaginary Friend had many special powers, including the ability to stay up all night singing London Bridge is Falling Down at the top of his lungs whilst simultaneously covering all the toilet seats in the house with peanut butter.

This Imaginary Friend enjoyed picking up garishly dressed, heavily-rouged girls in railway stations, and when they left in the morning, it was invariably discovered that they had used the last of the milk and stolen all the towels.

This Imaginary Friend once belonged to my nephew, Henry.
Le Mustash was an Imaginary Friend of French extraction who spent most of his time lecturing young Henry (then 4) on the finer points of Derrida and Proust, and then surprising the entire family with 8 am pop quizzes.

Ode to Jimmy Olsen, Superman's Best Pal

I would now like to recount for you (with 73% precision!) my recollection of the events which take place inside my favorite installment of the adventures of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, the greatest pal of a superhero known to modern literature (or anyone):

There is an evil genius who is angry at Superman. In a fit of evil, he gives Jimmy Olsen (cub reporter) Aquaman's powers! Jimmy Olsen becomes Jimmy Olsen, King of the Sea, and he swims around in a little furry bathing suit with all the maritime creatures who are now his friends.

Jimmy Olsen, King of the Sea (official royal portrait)

But disaster strikes! Jimmy is marooned on a desert island. Now that he has Aquaman's powers, he needs water to breathe! Jimmy might die!

Fortunately, his best friend Superman hears his desperate cries from hundreds of miles away and he flies over to save him. Conveniently, Superman flies through some clouds on his way, and the only water anywhere is the droplets of condensation dripping down Superman's boots.

This is an example of a very compromising position for our young hero

In order to survive, Jimmy is forced to lick the water off Superman's boots! Then they fly away somewhere and are best friends forever.

The End.

A Short Essay Outlining the Causes of the Anti-Astronaut Riots of 1957

It is common knowledge that astronauts are the laziest people ever (except, of course, for babies, whose laziness outweighs that of astronauts by 1700%, which is a very large number). That is why we send them into space. They are too lazy to stay on earth, but not cute enough to charm hard-working adults into caring for them.

As you surely remember, or at least learned in school, before the inception of the Space Program, people used to have to care for astronauts in their homes: brushing their teeth, rolling them daily to avoid bedsores, and worst of all, reading the newspaper out loud.

An unfortunate family burdened with the care of four Astronauts, 1955.

All of this changed during the Anti-Astronaut Riots of 1957, when ordinary people all across the nation got really fed up all at the same time and all the astronauts were summarily rounded up and shot into space. Thus coining the term "astronaut."