Tag Archives: outright lies

75 Years Ago In Promethean Times: Sorry About Your Blimp, Fritz!

12 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in History, Politics

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By T. Bagg

Look At It This Way: It Would Be Hard To Stomach Seeing This Thing Flying Over The Super Bowl Every Year.

Friday, May 7th, 1937

In our coverage of yesterday’s Hindenburg tragedy in New Jersey, Promethean Times’ writer Irving Smaktakulawcyz  made several explosive statements which, given the scope of the horrific disaster, were at the very least ill-advised. Readers shocked by Mr. Smaktakulawcyz ‘s course language and indecent speech can rest assured that the scoundrel has been disciplined in accordance with the policies of this 150-year-old publication.

Mr. Smaktakulawcyz ‘s views do not represent those of Promethean Times. It is never acceptable, on or off the editorial page, to write such indecencies as “Burn, Fritz! Burn!” or “There’s sure to be several sauerkrauts back in the Fatherland tonight!” Moreover, under no circumstances do we find either appropriate or amusing Mr. Smaktakulawcyz ‘s repeated injunction, “Break out the buns, folks, ’cause we’ve got 35 char-broiled Frankfurters here!”

Irving Smaktakulawcyz: “Although It Would Later Be Determined That Thirty-Five Individuals Perished In The Disaster, Initial Estimates Were Much Lower. Witnesses At The Scene Recalled Hearing Several Victims Screaming ‘NINE!'”

Gentle readers, please believe that we are every bit as offended as yourselves by the inflammatory statements of this rogue reporter. We consider it a black eye upon Promethean Times‘ heretofore unblemished reputation for sober dignity in journalism. We assure our readers that in the future this publication shall never again cast aspersions at our European cousins and brethren in white Christendom.

Moreover, we wish to quell those rumors which currently abound, purporting that our wholehearted and abject apology to you, the reader, is something less than genuine. Let us be clear: this apology is not the result of German threats. As you know, it is the opinion of Promethean Times that while Herr Hitler talks a good game, the German Führer lacks the stomach to back up his empty saber-rattling.

On a final note, while we deplore some of the more caustic statements made by Mr.  Smaktakulawcyz, we are proud  of his first-rate reporting. We believe that long after the passage of time dulls the sting of the teutonophobic reporter’s badly chosen words, his accomplishments yesterday in Lakehurst, New Jersey will ring out through posterity. When future generations think upon this terrible event, they will be unlikely to remember the tepid bleating of Herbert “Oh, the humanity!” Morrison, but rather recall the stirring words of Irving Smaktakulawcyz: “Holy Fuck!  The fat dude in the lederhosen just went up like a Roman candle!”

What Do You Call It When A Bunch Of Nazi-Era Germans Get Burned To A Crisp? A *Tragedy*? We Suppose, But We Were Going For *Irony.*

Earwig Tunes

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Entertainment, Stupidity

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By Smaktakula

How Could This Godawful Thing NOT Want To Seek Shelter Deep Within The Moist, Dark Environs Of Your Grey Matter?

Despite being one of God’s fuglier creations, the earwig is relatively harmless. Nonetheless, because it is such a nasty critter, it has earned a horrifying (but sadly apocryphal) reputation as an ear-seeking parasite which gnaws deep into soft, pink brain tissue to birth its numberless and hungry young. The victim, his brain resembling a wedge of well-aged Emmental, quickly loses even the barest trace of culture or refinement, finding himself enthralled by the latest Tom Clancy thriller and drawn like a moth a flame to retard-cinema flicks like Dumb & Dumber.

It Makes As Much Sense As Anything Else.

Some songs are like that, too. If even one of these classic tunes follows you into the workweek, we’ll know we’ve done our job.

Enjoy!

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And lastly, this musical abortion:

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Hey, you’re welcome, folks!

And since San Francisco was largely rebuilt following the cataclysmic 1906 earthquake, long before the Jefferson Airplane could devolve into the odious Starship!, we find their claims to have participated in the city’s construction to be, at best, dubious. ∞ T.

True Facts: Audiobooks

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Culture, Entertainment

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By Smaktakula

Few Works Of Literature Have Had Such A Profound Effect Upon Our Development. We're Not Kidding About This One.

Rapid advances in technology and the world’s ever-burgeoning “Stupid Factor” are both contributing to the incipient extinction of the book in its traditional form. That portion of the public which still wastes its time reading now has a broad spectrum of media from which to choose, including traditional books, e-books and, frighteningly, audiobooks.

Okay, This Doesn't Even Make Sense. To Start With, Books Don't Have Ears.

Reading is a personal, and often private activity. Yet increasingly, the public is abrogating its own reading responsibility, leaving the heavy lifting to an anonymous reader. Most people would feel uncomfortable letting a complete stranger blow their nose or unzip their fly, but have not even a second thought about inviting some stranger into their most personal space–their heads.

'Book Of Losers?' We Imagine That Included Among Its Pages Are People Who Actually Read Books.

Given the recent increase in the popularity of audiobooks, it is somewhat surprising that there is so little concern among the public regarding who–or what–is whispering in its collective ear. It’s no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that the mellifluous voice coming through your headphones belongs to a pot-addled, potty-mouthed degenerate with at least one arrest for arson. It could be someone even worse.

Is This The Kind Of Dangerous Creepo You Want Reading To Your Kids?

Lastly, there’s the well-documented fact that listening to audiobooks causes bladder cancer.

Audiobooks: For Degenerates, By Degenerates.

Here’s some other 100% true stuff:

Seriously, would we lie to you? ∞ T.

The Mexican-American Conflict: A Pretty Good War

02 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in History

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By Smaktakula

Maybe You're Just Not Looking Hard Enough.

You’ve probably heard more than once that there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ war. The sentiment driving this notion is noble, and easy enough to understand: it’s hard to take any joy from a victory when even one life has been needlessly cut short. Moreover, there is also the sad legacy of war’s victims who survive the conflict only to return to shattered, empty lives.

The "Good War": Grandpa Liked WWII So Much, He's Still There.

World War II is sometimes considered a ‘good war’ in that it very literally halted the extinction of an entire people. This view necessarily tends to discount the ugly reality that the war cost the lives of just as many people and a great deal more, but was more egalitarian in that it distributed the horrors among a variety of nations. Others consider the US’s ill-fated War of 1812 among this select group of noble atrocities, because the dream of liberating Canada from her tyrannical British masters was a righteous and Heaven-sanctioned one, despite the ingratitude and surprising unhelpfulness of the Canadian people.¹

It's Just Like What Happened To Us When We Tried To Help Out In Somalia--You Try To Bring Light To A Wretched And Abject People, Only To Get Kicked In The Teeth For Your Troubles.

But the little known Mexican-American War is something everyone can get behind. Having recently acquired the Independent Republic of Texas, the United States under President James Knox Polk was looking for a little more real estate. Polk had long prized such material assets as the Napa Wine Country, Camp Pendleton Marine Base and California Adventures, so America’s 11th President–and by any estimate its most effective One-Termer–set his sights on wresting the Golden State from Mexico.²

YOINK!!!!

Polk was initially stymied in his efforts by that age-old bugbear of democratic republics, the notion that you can’t just go starting a war for no reason. But when it was determined that Mexico’s General Antonio López de Santa Anna (an early forerunner of future bad-guy, Adolf Hitler) was stockpiling Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the Sonora Desert, America was left with little choice but to act.

There Came A Point At Which The US Could No Longer Tolerate General Santa Anna's Shenanigans.

Although no WMD were ever found, the story did end happily, with the Mexicans chased all the way to Tijuana by the victorious gringos, and the Stars & Stripes lofted over the golden, rolling hills of California. However, it has so often been said that ‘a lawn does not cut itself,’ and like the storied swallows of Capistrano, in a final righting of history, the descendants of those long-ago Californios have since returned to California, bringing with them a great many friends whose ancestors had previously never been north of Michoacan.

¡Gracias, Amigo! Eso Fue Muy Amable Por Tu!

¹ It can sometimes be so difficult to resist playing historical “What If?”. Can you imagine what a powerhouse US Hockey would be today if the Canadians had only been a little cooler in 1812? ∞ T.
² Although California was far and away the most worthwhile of the Mexican lands prized by the Americans, Manifest Destiny also demanded an expanse of lesser real estate comprising the modern states of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah as well as parts of Texas and Colorado. ∞ T.

Promethea Culpa Culpa: More Retractions

16 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Celebrity, Culture, News, Stupidity

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By Tardsie

Occasionally, You May Read Something In These Pages That Just Isn't True.

Readers of Promethean Times know how very seriously we take our journalistic responsibility to keep the public informed. Throughout its nearly two-hundred years of publication, Promethean Times has striven to justify our readership’s trust by providing only the most accurate and thoroughly-vetted information. Although we have been exceptionally successful in this endeavor, we do from time to time make mistakes. It is vital to our mission that, when on those infrequent occasions when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly.

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See? It's Not Just Us.

Mickey Rooney does not have late-stage syphilis. A representative of the nonagenarian actor and insurance pitchman told Promethean Times that Rooney was healthy and that his nose has not ‘rotted away to a blackened stump’ as previously reported.

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We extend a heartfelt and abject apology not only to the wife and infant daughter of Scoutmaster Daniel “Flip” Plevins and the parents of Billy Wilkins, Shane Green and Cody McPhereson, but to all of Cub Scout Pack 492 and to the intrepid park rangers who were first upon the grisly scene. Further, we apologize to any readers unknown to us who may have suffered injury after relying on erroneous information provided by this publication. We regret our error. As it turns out, grizzly bears are not, in fact, ‘more scared of you than you are of them.’

On The Plus Side, You've Gotten Your Nature Badge Out Of The Way.

The sound you hear when a spoon falls in the garbage disposal is NOT the wailing spirit of the child you aborted the summer after your sophomore year in college. In retrospect, saying so seems unnecessarily cruel.

"Why, Mommy? Why?"

Contrary to what was printed on this site, sprinkling your breakfast cereal with the finely ground toes of Irish babies will not cure leprosy.

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We reported that a kitten frozen in a block of ice for a period of up to three months will revive if properly thawed. While this advice has proven to be cruelly incorrect, we submit that it was still a really cool notion.

But Don't Simply Take Our Word For It.

We were sorely off the mark when we told parents that flame-retardant toys would impair their children’s cognitive abilities. This is not the case. However, in our ongoing commitment to child safety, we urge parents to make sure that each of their children’s toys is clearly marked “INFLAMMABLE.’

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Legalizing gay marriage will apparently not cause the universe to collapse in upon itself. Sorry, we thought it would.

If You Can Guarantee That You Won't Be There, We'll Take It.

Some previous retractions:

Promethea Culpa

74 Years Ago In Promethean Times: Sorry About Your Blimp, Hans

Bad Advice: That Which Doesn’t Kill You…

06 Monday Feb 2012

Posted by in Science, Stupidity

≈ 8 Comments

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By Smaktakula

When circumstances have turned dire and life is putting the squeeze on you, folks will hit you will a piece of unsolicited ‘wisdom’ which, although it has gained a veneer of truth through years of mindless repetition, is no less false or dangerous because of it.  “Whatever doesn’t kill you,” some well-meaning jackass will solemnly intone, “only makes you stronger.”

Yeah? What about a massive stroke?

"I've Never Felt Better In My Life. Don't Worry, Sarge--I'll Be Ready For The Attack. Charlie Won't Know What Hit Him."

This Day In Alternate History: Yoko Ono Slain

03 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Celebrity, Crime, Entertainment, History, Music, News

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By Smaktakula

You're Just Giving Us Ideas, Yoko.

Some call it ‘The Day the Music Didn’t Die,’ and for others it is simply ‘Ononacht.’ In Germany the holiday is known as Tag der toten Hexe, and goes by Tiempo de Quietud in Mexico. In Chad it’s a complicated series of clicks. This auspicious date is known by myriad names throughout the world: regardless of what it is called, nearly everyone remembers the event through the same blood-hued image of a deranged, frozen-fish wielding John Lennon beating to death a wailing Yoko Ono.

Proof That No Matter How Powerful Or Talented, When Drugs Enter The Picture, A Man Will Fuck A Tree-Sloth.

New Yorkers will recall how the biting cold which had settled over the city on that December day in 1980 was almost magically dispelled as the happy news began to spread throughout the city: Despised succubus Yoko Ono was dead, beaten about the head and face with some kind of fish–possibly a cod or grouper, and then stabbed twenty-eight times with a glass chrysanthemum. The news that John Lennon was the sole suspect in the slaying was met with little surprise, but much empathy.

The Assault Was Vicious And Unprovoked.

Initially, authorities were reluctant to pursue charges against the legendary singer.  Said a police representative, “We scoured the scene looking for any shred of evidence that Ms. Ono’s demise was simply a happy accident; we had our best men on it. I may have my own feelings on this matter, but the law is very clear: if there’s a dead body, we’re required to find a perp. And since Mr. Lennon was discovered at the scene crouched weeping over Ono’s battered carcass and bathed in her eerie greenish blood, there wasn’t much I could do.”

The Reaction To The News Of Yoko's Death Was Immediate And Unanimous.

Lennon was acquitted after a two-month trial, his legal team having mounted a spirited and successful justifiable homicide defense. Although this verdict proved only slightly controversial in 1981, it is unanimously heralded today, as Ono’s death removed the final obstacle preventing a long-awaited Beatles reunion. Sadly, the Beatles’ comeback album, Still Lettin’ It Be, proved a commercial and critical failure, the majority of which was attributed to Ringo Starr’s drum playing. Today, however, the album is remembered more fondly, particularly as only two of the Beatles remain alive–Ringo died along with Cyndi Lauper in a 1986 murder-suicide pact, and George Harrison was slain two years later by crazed fan Ross Perot.

Banging Yoko Ono When You're A Rock Star Is Like A Rich Dude Buying A Chevy Lumina. Why Would You Do It?

Yoko Ono is  a relic of a horrible and best-forgotten past, who, if she is remembered at all, is known as the Delilah who nearly destroyed the greatest rock & roll group of all time. We can be grateful, however, that she did not succeed, and imagine instead a world where it was Lennon rather than Ono who was slain, and where the shrieking, talentless howler monkey lived on leech-like upon the great man’s legacy. Such a possibility is too depressingly horrible to even contemplate.

That's Just Not A World In Which We Want To Live.

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

16 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in Celebrity, Culture, History, News, Politics

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By Smaktakula

"Everything That We See Is A Shadow Cast By That Which We Do Not See."

Forty-plus years after his slaying in Memphis, Tennessee,  Martin Luther King, Jr. remains a beloved figure not only in the United States of America, but throughout the entire world.  His courage, moral example and dedication to non-violence catalyzed the civil rights movement  to a degree that cannot be underestimated, and proved stronger even than the will of governments.  The lives of millions were transformed through Dr. King’s efforts.

He should not, however, be confused with the similarly-named German priest whose protest against the Catholic Church catapulted Protestantism to its current position among the great religions of the world.  That was King’s father, Martin Luther King, Sr.

No, It Doesn't Make Much Sense To Us, Either. But You Can't Argue With History.

This Day In Alternate History: Casey Anthony Killed In Prison

29 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Crime, History

≈ 4 Comments

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By Smaktakula

She's The Only One Shedding Tears.

Lowell Correctional Institute, Florida: The news of Casey Anthony’s death has been met with worldwide jubilation.  This morning, guards found the 25-year-old murderess lying unconscious in the showers, face down in a rapidly spreading pool of her own blood.  She was later pronounced dead at the prison infirmary.

Anthony was convicted by a Florida court earlier this year for killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, and was serving the first of eight consecutive life sentences.  Anthony’s crimes were thought especially heinous due to her complete lack of remorse.  The young skank continued her hedonistic partygirl lifestyle long after dumping her daughter’s lifeless body into a shallow grave and then forgetting she ever existed.

Somber Crowds React To The News Of The Murderess' Death.

Investigators have recovered what they believe is the weapon used to murder Anthony, a crude shiv fashioned from a Hello Kitty barrette.  She was stabbed at least 37 times.

Prison officials say they have identified a suspect in the killing.  The accused killer, Joanna “Larry” Belkins, is serving a fifteen-year sentence for armed robbery, and has been placed into solitary confinement while authorities conduct their investigation.

The As-Yet-Unpunished Killer.

Prison representatives contend that their primary focus is swift justice for Casey Anthony.  Said one official who asked not to be named, “We’re making this a top priority.  Of course, with the holidays coming up, we’re a little understaffed, so we’ll probably have to wait until after the New Year.”  When another worker added that there were two guards’ retirement parties planned for January, the representative added, “It’ll probably have to wait until after Valentine’s Day.”

Casey's In A Better Place Now.

‘Alternate History’ means it’s made up, so don’t go calling your girlfriends with the good news just yet. ∞ T.

Raping Justin Bieber

04 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Celebrity, Crime, Entertainment, News

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By Smaktakula

We're Not Saying He Was Asking For It, But Did Justin Really Have To Dress Like That?

I can prove to you that rape is funny.  Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.

George Carlin

By her own admission, Mariah Yeater is a predator.  She has repeatedly boasted to anyone who will listen about the events of October 25, 2010, when Yeater says she snatched away a young boy’s innocence, trampling it beneath her Crocs.  Just another San Diego statistic.

Okay, Maybe After A Couple Drinks. We're Not Too Proud To Admit It.

But what happens when the rape victim is hairless hit factory Justin Bieber?  According to Yeater, who was nineteen at the time, she had her way with the underage popstar on “some sort of shelf” backstage, engaging in unprotected sex.  Although the attack lasted only thirty seconds, the damage left in its wake will not be quick in disappearing.  Adding a further layer of pathos to this tragedy, the rapist boasts that prior to the assault, Bieber had been a virgin.

Mariah Yeater: Apparently Justin Bieber Thinks He Can Do Better.

However, more egregious than Yeater’s crime itself is the way the unrepentant skank has behaved in the months following the attack.  By asserting that Bieber’s handlers chose her, plucking Yeater from the crowd and ushering her backstage, the callow hussy is essentially blaming the victim for her crime–the old ‘he was asking for it’ canard.  Moreover, Yeater has apparently produced an offspring, claiming improbably that Bieber’s body is somehow able to produce seminal fluid, and that some portion of that fluid was exchanged to produce the aforementioned child.  Bieber, for whom puberty is still a handful of years away, denies the charges.

michael jackson 6

Like Bieber, This Ancient Egyptian Mummy Knows The Pain Of False Paternity Accusations. Billie Jean Was Not His Lover, But Rather Just A Girl Who Claimed He Was The One. To His Grave He Steadfastly Maintained That The Kid Was Not His Son. SHAMON!

What will happen next is anyone’s guess.  Perhaps Yeater’s claims will be proven correct, and it will be revealed that by some unfathomable combination of perverted science and unholy witchcraft Bieber was able to produce a child through sexual intercourse with a human female, and if so, we pray that Yeater will be charged as a rapist.  Or, as is a lot more likely, Yeater’s justice will come not from the courts, but rather at the end of a rope, a warning to other floozies not to mess with the Beliebers’ beloved.

"Bitch, You Are So Fucking Dead!"

Porky-Pig-Concerned.jpg image by brewsben8