HUMOR

Published in: Fake Gay News
The online Onion of the gay community.*

Tom of Finland Confronts Wimp, Carson Kressley

MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA — Well-known bully, Tom of Finland, attacked Carson Kressley, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s fashion maven, last week on a Florida beach. What began as a simple disagreement about style turned into a violent nightmare of flying sand — much of which ended up in Kressley’s face.

Kressley had been relaxing with friends at a minimal-yet-chic, South Beach boutique hotel, and generally minding his own business, when the well-built Finland first approached.

“Naturally, none of us recognized him. Carson thought he was just another fan looking for a free make-over,” said Poppy Darling, who witnessed the event. “So Carson says to the guy, “’Mister, that outfit is so mid-twentieth century. If you want my advice, next time you’re at the beach, drop the all-black, macho man get-up and change into some bright, vibrant stripes. And what’s up with the hair?  It has no texture whatsoever. You know, highlights is not just a kids’ waiting-room magazine anymore.’”

According to Darling, while Kressley’s friends laughed, Finland “got a real mad look on his face and yelled something about how there was a time when real men like him were the important gay icons and not ‘modern metrosexual scarecrows’ like Carson. Then he had like a fit, and started kicking sand in Carson’s face.”

Another witness to the event, Randy Overman, claims that Kressley, egged on by his friends, stood up to confront Finland. When he did, Finland grabbed him by the arm and said, “I’d smash your face, but you have so much sand already embedded in your Total Daily Protector SPF15 sunblock, that it’s going to take an esthetician hours to get it out. There might even be permanent pore damage. My work here is done.”

Finland then left the group to pick up the pieces of their shattered afternoon.

Speaking later at The Copa disco — the hottest spot North of Havana — Finland claimed he had merely wanted to talk to the TV personality about rethinking what he called, Kressley’s  “dangerous dilution of gay culture,” but lost his temper when Kressley attacked “my timeless, virile look.”

“Back when the only way we could identify each other was by the color of our bandanas, gay culture used to mean something special. People like me were part of the underground vanguard, wearing leather, art directing major motion pictures or just listening to Liza Minnelli albums in peaceful, back-alley bars. We knew who belonged to our group and who didn’t because we shared similar tastes in music and dress.

“Now with all these queer guys on television, like Kressley, sharing the secrets of gay style with every straight Tom, Dick or Harry, it’s hard to figure out anyone’s sexuality anymore. Plus, it’s no longer fun to stay at the YMCA, and I, for one, am sick of it.”

Kressley, who spent the last week sequestered in a Miami Beach medical spa, receiving daily laser correction procedures on his sandblasted skin, could not be reached for comment.

His publicist issued a statement assuring Kressley’s fans that he would be back for another season of Queer Eye. He also wondered if anyone had Finland’s phone number.


Merriam Webster Throws “Pride” to Gays and Lions

Each year, the venerable Merriam Webster dictionary adds a few words to its alphabetical tome that have become part of common parlance. Seldom, however, does it change the meaning of an existing term. Yet, last month, in deference to American slang, the wordsmiths at M-W removed all references to heterosexuals from the definition of the workmanlike noun, “pride”, forcing many to find another way to express a sense of self-esteem.

“Let’s face it,” said Horace Smith, head lexicographer for the publishing giant, “almost any mention of pride these days is just an abbreviation for the phrase “gay pride,” or “GLBT pride” — which is more than a mouthful. We decided to make it easy on everyone and just omit any definitions of the word that didn’t refer to rousing parades, GLBT events or basic rainbow consciousness. The only exception was made for lions, who will still be able to use the term to talk about themselves in the plural.”

While this change makes it clear what is meant by phrases like: “Should I get a spray-on tan for pride next week?” or “Over my dead body are you wearing that to pride,” it has left a hole in the language for the general public when attempting to make reference to feelings of self-worth.

Smith suggests a possible new word, “proudiness,” to fill the gap. “For instance, one could say, ‘Despite repeatedly dropping her son on his head, Britney Spears feels proudiness over her accomplishments as a mother.’ Or, ‘President Bush thinks Barbara and Jenna are a disappointment, but his dog Barney, is his proudiness and joy.’”

While, the switch will be simple for most to make during daily conversation, publishers will have a harder time excising “pride” from books, magazines and other previously published works. The already besieged Catholic Church will feel the most pressure when having to modify all mentions of the first Deadly Sin in its Catechism. In a statement issued by the Vatican press office, church officials said, “We don’t have the financial resources to fight the “Da Vinci Code” and this, too.”

For others, however, the change is an unexpected boon. Freelance copy editor Zoe Wright, already has more work than she can handle correcting books about Cardinal baseball great, Dizzy Dean, the “Proudiness of St. Louis,” and Jane Austen’s novel “Proudiness and Prejudice”.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Wright. “Once I’m done with historical works, there are all the self-help titles. I’ve even got my eye on a sweet, little condo I thought I could never afford.”

Merriam Webster’s Smith, answered publishers’ outcries by asserting that, “Any costs or confusion our decision generates will be mitigated by the long-awaited streamlining that will occur within the English language in reference to GLBT celebrations. The only way to change our decision will be through an act of Congress, and they’re too busy trying to redefine marriage to bother with this.”

(*Sadly defunct since LOGO bought the website.)

Published in: Boy Are My Arms Tired!


Greetings from the New Millennium

Hother mothers dayeather’s other Mommy is about to get her due. Yes, this long-suffering half of the modern lesbian couple — you know, the one who didn’t get turkey basted — is being honored in 2007 with a new holiday. Invented by the American Greeting Card Consortium (AGCC), a coalition of U.S. card manufacturers, Other Mother’s Day® is just one of a rash of new, patented celebrations — and the paraphernalia to go with them — being unveiled this year to offset the financial bite that e-greeting cards have been taking out of their, once unassailable, profits. Aimed at modern obsessions and interests, like gay lifestyles, tween culture, the aging of the baby boomers and even foreign markets, the AGCC is betting these novel celebrations will become as vital during this century as Sweetest Day was during the last.

come outDebuting in June to coincide with the birth of Mary Cheney and her partner’s first baby, Other Mother’s Day®, celebrates the woman who is not biologically a mother, and not even a father, but who must still coach months of soccer practices, defer real vacations in favor of Rosie O’Donnell’s cruises and endlessly explain why neither Mommy is Chinese.

In another bid for gay-related dollars, the coalition has also created a line of Coming Out Day cards. With punchlines like “Everyone already knows,” and “We know you’re not roomates,” they hope to take some of the personal drama out of, what is for many, a momentous decision. As AGCC spokesperson, Mark Hall, quipped, “Gaydar is not just for homos anymore. If we can’t laugh about someone’s deepest secrets at the office, what’s the point of equality?”

viagra

Another demographic card companies hope to capitalize on is the aging baby boomers. Though Boomers hail from various ethnic and economic groups, they have a number of things in common — like Type II Diabetes and liver spots. The card consortium’s catalog boasts: “With a whole generation obsessed with the vicissitudes of aging and weight gain, our companies have developed a line of greetings with taglines like, ‘Congratulations on losing that 10 pound… again,’ and ”Scratch and smell the Botox (for women) and I Love the Smell of Viagra in the Mornings (for men).”

“We are also working on a character called Ms. Captain Crunch, a cross between the beloved breakfast cereal icon and Suzanne Sommers, who eschews sugar in favor of washboard abs and firm thighs,” says Hall. The Captain will preside over AGCC’s first National Boomer Day® which dog birthdaywill be celebrated in tandem with the old VE day, “because that’s when the whole boom began.”

One passion all Boomers share is their love of pets. The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA) estimates that pet owners spent $38.4 billion on pet-related products in 2006. According to the organization Charity Navigator, that’s ten times as much as was donated to the needy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. So,cat birthday it was only natural for the greeting card industry to reduce their reliance on sales of sympathy cards —where do you send them when these people don’t have addresses anyway — and introduce a pet-oriented line.

The bulk of AGCC’s 2007 pet cards will focus on dog and cat birthdays, because, as they say “what’s more important?” However, next February, in conjunction with the new, Fuzzy Friends Appreciation Day@, they plan to expand the array to include obedience school graduation cards, puppy’s first “number two” on the rug greetings and, the inevitable condolences that will be needed at the end of “that most important person’s”, all-too-short, life.

While the Boomers cling to their pets and their strikingly undiminished egos, those latchkey kids they produced, and then ignored, are finally having kids of their own. They certainly took their time about it, and many of them are going to be in their sixties when their offspring finish high school. Luckily, it looks like Generation X princess periodmight not have to live through the alarming mood swings of their kids’ adolescence combined with their own hot flashes after all. It seems that, as a result of too many hormones in those Big Macs, a remarkable evolution has occurred and children are maturing faster than ever before.

Yes, a condition called Central Precocious Puberty, which causes freakishly early sexual maturation, is beginning to show up kids as young as four-years-old. For some this would seem like a medical nightmare. For the greeting card consortium, it should be a boon in marketing their new Princess Period® cards. These witty greetings feature all of the most popular princesses — from Cinderella (I have to get home by midnight to change my tampon) to Snow (doesn’t it always happen when you’re wearing) White. Depicted in full-pink-hued regalia, doubled over with cramps, or trying to shoo dwarves out of the bathroom to get a moment of privacy, all the cards bear the positive message: “You’re never too young to celebrate becoming a woman.”

burka birthday

Those are just some of the new ideas the AGCC is promoting for the domestic market. Still, as we’re all too aware, America is part of a global economy now. To remain profitable, companies need to reach beyond their borders to sell goods to any country that can’t keep our military at bay. “After all,” says Hall, “Americans are losing their jobs to offshore corporations every day. So we can’t rely on them to keep us in business. After they buy that first “So you got downsized card,” they’re, pretty much, tapped out.” So, AGCC is taking a cue from global-marketing forerunners like cigarette and pesticide manufacturers in looking for foreign customers who are not yet inundated with locally produced products or who live in areas with growing economies. .

One under-served market they are betting will take off — as soon as the car bombs stop maiming everyone—is in Iraq. The AGCC is just waiting to be able to get their trucks safely from the airport and into Baghdad to introduce their Burka Birthday® line. They hope that pictures of women swaddled from head to toe in sectarians dayblack garments accompanied by catchphrases like, “You never looked better,” and “40? Who knew?” will help to promote Middle-Eastern girl power as well as drive sales.

They are also poised to promote a new Iraqi holiday, tentatively called, Sectarian’s Day®. The greeting cards designed for this celebration are strikingly like valentines except that they and are rigged with tiny smoke bombs that explode when opened. Once the smoke clears, the recipient can re-enter their home and approach the card to read one of a number of pretty-darn-funny, anti-American slogans — reminding Sunnis and Shiites alike, on this one special day, who they really hate.identity theft

“This is just the beginning,” says AGCC’s Hall. “The field is wide open for innovation. In the next few years we plan to promote more modern holidays, like African Baby Adoption Day® which will feature the likenesses of a number of movie and pop stars. We haven’t given up on e-cards either.” In fact, one of AGCC’s most popular online greetings is their Identity Theft@ line of cyber-postcards which wittily inform recipients that their credit information has been stolen. These fun e-posts can be sent anonymously from anywhere on the globe with an Internet connection.

The modern world is rife with events yet to be celebrated — like hunger, war, global warming, pandemic disease, rising poverty and genocide. And while politicians argue about how to address these sour subjects, the greeting card industry is poised to squeeze lemonade from each and every one — with a spoon full of sugar, a 39-cent stamp and a heartfelt smile.


Laura’s Story**

Click on cartoon to see larger version.

Zooloft

**Not based on an actual First Lady.


To Maria With Love

Memo: Buck up and Bulk Up!
From: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
To: Maria Shriver
Date: October 1, 2003

Dear Maria,

If anyone understands what you’re going through with all the sexual misconduct allegations against that big, stupid, lug, Arnold, it’s me. So, from one woman to another, I’m taking a few minutes out of my incredibly hectic day — normally filled with representing the interests of campaign-contributors and overseeing my staff of ghostwriters — to offer a little unsolicited advice. Remember, what I tell you here I say only as a “sister” who has more experience with public, marital humiliation than you and the rest of the Kennedy women combined. So, listen up!

First of all, no one’s proven anything. Until there’s an Austrian-love-juice-soaked dress, that’s been examined by Marg Helgenberger under a microscope and then waved around on Larry King’s show, I wouldn’t get my panties in a twist. Arnold will probably shake off the whole scandal like a hundred pound barbell in a Mr. Universe competition. God knows, there are only, what, 15 accusers so far? In comparison to my husband and his women, that amount doesn’t even register as competition. Though I will say, with some pride, that Bill was a bit smoother. I mean, grabbing a woman and spanking her while telling her “This is what should happen at your house every morning,” is a little on the gauche side, don’t you think? Of course, if that’s what actually goes on at your house, I say, as an elected defender of the Bill of Rights, it’s a free county.

Second, it’s not like groping and fondling are the same as getting a blowjob. The only hummers you’re certain about, for now, are those eight gas-guzzlers parked in your driveway. Even that crazy, neo-feminist Camille Paglia, will back up the idea that women who get in the way of powerful men should expect a little hanky panky. After all, she built her whole career on the concept that date rape is a given, and women who don’t expect it are asking to find someone’s tongue up their anus when they least expect it. Maybe you can get her to write one of those editorials in Salon in which she calls women, who are victims of sexual aggression, “blithering whiners”.

So what if Arnold grabbed a few tits and ass here and there on movie sets or in parking garages? So what if he publicly exposed a woman’s breasts in a crowded bar? So what if he told a sixteen year old he was going to rape her? Maybe those women should have stayed off the Universal Studios lot — or the city streets for that matter — if they didn’t want some harmless flirtation to come their way. Besides, what do people expect from a guy who’s pumped up on steroids? In fact, has he thought of using that as a defense: Insanity by reason of hormonal toxicity? In the end, the is, is, that if he didn’t get “all up in there” — as the kids say on those rap albums that Tipper had the parental warning labels slapped on — there is no is.

Third, between you and me, it’s not like you didn’t already know about this stuff. Everyone else did. Come on, you must have walked in on a few disheveled upstairs maids by now. It’s a good thing most of those Central Americans you hire in Los Angeles “no speak very good English”. Hey, I know you have to play dumb as part of the bread and circus tent show. If anyone understands how to keep her mouth shut during a campaign, it’s me. I even know that if they ever CSI his handprints off of a pointy, California, silicone-enhanced, boob somewhere, you are going to have to play up the aggrieved, but long-suffering wife thing. I say from experience, it’s always better to keep your mouth shut while you can.

However, you do live in a state where everyone seems to have a video camera with him or her at all times — or at least when some black guy is getting beaten half comatose in South Central. Therefore, you never know when explicit footage of Arnold with his hands down some intern’s pantyhose will surface. I advise you now, that when making a statement can no longer be avoided, being prepared always saves the day. In your spare time, I would consider practicing lines like, “That’s not the Arnold I know,” “If all that were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offense. That is not going to be proven true,” and “I believe in him so strongly and I love him very much.” Say them in the mirror. Try different expressions when repeating the words. I can’t stress enough that practice makes perfect and it is imperative to gain mastery over your emotions and to look sincere.

Speaking of looks, you live in Hollywood, so I don’t have to tell you, they are everything. That’s why I’m suggesting that you try putting on a couple of pounds — and pronto. Judy Mazel might call it the “Beverly Hills Diet,” but to the Lifetime-TV-loving heartland (I’m talking Fresno, here) emaciation still looks like the eating disorder that it is. The anorexia thing you have going on, it was creepy enough a couple of years ago when the Enquirer was reporting that your marriage was on the rocks. But right now it’s imperative that you present an image that says, happy, happy, happy, not starving, starving, starving.

The public might believe that one can never be “too rich,” but you are living evidence for overturning the “too thin,” portion of the axiom. Since nothing goes better with happy, than fat, I suggest that you consider that a few lumps added to your ass now will save a lot of public grief later. Even during the worst of the Monica Lewinsky business, Bill still had his daily Big Mac. I know Arnold’s a fitness freak, and you’re probably afraid to eat. Still, try to gag down some of that bulk-building powder, the kind I’m sure he has lying around the home gym somewhere. It’s not the best-tasting stuff, but now that he’s in politics, you’re going to have to get used to swallowing a lot worse. Besides, who knows, another layer of fat might come in handy with the spankings.

Getting a bit philosophical for a moment, I think it was Dr. Phil who said, we all relive our family experiences through our marriages. This is not a set up to reveal anything about myself that I haven’t already said in my book, Living History. By the way, have you gotten a chance to read it yet? It was a bestseller. I’d offer to mail you one, but I figure you’ve already snagged the press copy from the NBC studios. If not, it’s only $16.80 from Amazon.com and you can get free shipping if you also buy It Takes a Village. What I was going to say, was that it is certainly ironic that you thought you were marrying a movie star, but you ended up with, “can’t keep his pants on” uncle Jack (or Bobby or Teddy). Let me say it again, practicing benign facial expressions now, will come in handy for that inevitable day you’ll be asked to confront your very own, “Happy Birthday, Mr. Terminator,” moment. Honestly, can it be far off?

Last, I just want to remind you that if you want to make it in politics yourself one day, and who doesn’t, you’re going to have to stay in this marriage no matter what. (I’m sure your Grandma Rose already told you this, but it’s always nice to have a refresher course.) That “journalist” routine is okay for now, while he’s in office. But later, it’ll be your turn. Just think how you’ll be able to build on your face recognition then, when running for Congress or whatever.

Look, I still don’t even know what happened between Bill and Babs, but do you think I care about that? If I’d been looking for grounds for divorce, I had a long list before she came shuffling along smelling of “Evergreen”. Nope, I’m running for president one of these days, and I intend to hold on to my husband as long as necessary to stave off the muff-diver rumors.

In conclusion, you have my deepest sympathies and I’m here for you if you need a shoulder to cry on — or just someone to remind you that men are pigs. Now, paste on that big, toothy smile, and start picking out the new drapes for the governor’s mansion.

Sincerely,
Hillary

P.S. I’m sure it goes without saying, that if asked, I will officially deny this.

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