After watching his native brethren dominate the industry for years and years, the Pope himself has finally decided to throw his own holy hat into the ring with a new line of active wear that has believers reeling with anticipation. Appropriately titled “Pope Tracks,” the new collection created by His Holiness features a full array of jogging gear, exercise suits, and warm-ups designed with the truly active religious enthusiast in mind.

“You would think that the man has enough on his hands already, what with being God’s chosen spokesman of all mankind and whatnot,” said Molly McMasters, a close, personal friend of the Pope, “but we have a saying around here – ‘The Pope works in mysterious ways…’ and that’s just what you’ve got in this case.” Nonetheless, McMasters declined to comment when asked if she would be purchasing any of the Pope’s items for herself.

“It’s just something that I’ve always wanted to do,” the Pope himself told Just Laugh in an exclusive interview. “You know, like climbing Mount Everest or having sex with an actual woman – I finally decided that I’m certainly not getting any younger, so what the hell!” He continued to explain that, “…and with all of the turmoil that the world faces today, I think it’s my duty to influence their lives in a positive manner, whatever it takes – prayers, sermons, or yes, even a collection of quality apparel for the sacramental athletic enthusiast, available at an affordable price wherever fine clothing is sold.”

While the Pope wasn’t able to predict whether or not his entrepreneurial ventures would continue on to other product lines, it is rumored that, pending the success of his new active wear, we could be finding such labeled items as seraphic running shoes, catching gloves, and even a special “Divine Pope Edition Wheaties” box collection, featuring the his Holiness in a variety of action poses. With this kind of merchandising, all that’s left will be the action figures themselves (not due to hit stores until Christmas 2004…)!

The post New Line of “Pope Active Wear” Just in Time for Fall! appeared first on Just Laugh.

“Eat it,” said my father, taunting me.

“You eat it,” I replied. “ I double dare you.”

“Well I quadruple dare you,” interjected my uncle, who summarily received an octagonal dare by my aunt.

We sat outside increasing our dare levels by consecutive exponents of two until my mother stood up, yelled to the heavens that the gods had forsaken us, and stormed into the house.

Before someone could dare me to eat the silky slab of poultry by two to the 14^th power, Mom, in her infinite wisdom, turned the stereo volume up to migraine-level and drowned out our squabbling with the high-pitched harmony of the Beach Boys. Even though the sun continued to beat down on us, the songs froze our tempers like a yuletide blizzard and we quickly realized that we were listening to the album that served as a tribute to the Surf Board Savior (blessed be He), The Beach Boy’s Ultimate Christmas Collection.

By the second chorus of “Merry Christmas, Baby,” I was possessed by the holiday spirit and had fully regained my acute reasoning skills.

“No one’s going to eat that raw meat, not on my watch,” I said. “What we’re going to do is find Santa and make him get us a new barbeque grill.”

My proposed solution was greeted by a round of applause and Arsenio Hall-esque “hoo-hooing.” Papa then handed me a long stick with a canvas bag on the end of it and wished me luck on my journey. As there was no E-saver to the North Pole, I set sail for the mall: Santa’s last known whereabouts.

Upon entering the mall, I exchanged a twenty-dollar bill and the raw chicken breast for a hot tip from the lady operating the Aqua Massager. Apparently, during the summer, Santa goes by the name Pierre, and frequents the Le Nez Rouge Day Spa.

Like Dancer and Prancer flying to a gay reindeer bar, I sprung into action and bolted towards the aforementioned boutique health ranch. I crashed through the frosted glass doors of the spa, then jumped onto the lap of the first slippery fat man I could find. Unfortunately, his bare legs acted like a greased-up, fleshy slip-n-slide (with curly white hair all over it) and I immediately slide off his lap and landed on the floor.

“Give it up Claus, cause unless you want a thousand screaming kids and one guy with a Polaroid on you like maggots on a dead Elf’s liver, I better get a new Barbeque!”

Before I knew what was happening the rest of clientele, all of whom were diminutive in stature and conspicuously wearing green, hopped out of the mud pool and put me in a mass choke hold. Pierre stood up from the pedicure recliner, removed the cucumbers from his eyelids and explained that I had ruined the exfoliation process. Some of the green-clad customers quickly re-applied more exfoliating gel rub to his legs and Pierre stood over me to light a cigar.

“Was it Lowita?” Pierre asked.

I was confused.

“The aqua massage vixen at the front of the mall, did she tell you about me?”

When the midgets putting me in the choke hold loosened their grips, I conceded to Pierre that it was Lowita. He then asked if I’d said anything to his wife.

“No, of course not, this is between you and me, guys don’t do that to each other.”

At that, Pierre flipped open his cell phone and spoke into the receiver in the most un-jolliest of ways.

“Tell Blitzin that I’ll wire him the money,” he said. “And Dasher,” he added, “tell him I want it to be a clean job…no accidents this time.”

Pierre clapped his phone closed and remarked to himself that he’d do anything for some Vanilla Wafers and a glass of 2% milk.

“You’re looking rather healthy,” I remarked.

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s a combination of Atkins diet and low-impact aerobics”

With the cigar in his mouth, Pierre examined himself in the mirror and used both hands to stroke the sides of his large, but hardly obese, torso.

“Okay Bradley, for your silence on this matter, you’re getting a Ducane Stainless-Steel, Meridian MDBQ-42 Natural Gas Grill. It’s the one with their patented open flame Rotissing System, storage cabinet and side-order cooking shelf. It’s the bomb.”

I thanked Pierre by groveling at his greasy legs and kissing the patches of white gauze in between his toes, successfully neglecting to smudge his pedicure.

When I got home, the elves quietly snuck around to my backyard and installed the new grilling machine to the existing gas lines. As they left I offered the 11 short gentlemen a $20 tip, which they thanked me for but kindly refused to take.

Apparently, Santa had instituted a profit sharing system a few years back, and since the Man-in-Red has little-to-no competition (Hanukah Harry is the Apple Computer of the gift giving industry) the elfish compensation package is substantially large.

On the other side of the deck, the peace on earth and goodwill towards man had degenerated into a frenzied argument over whether “Flame-Broiled” was a way to cook or just a registered trademark of Burger King.

“Mama, Papa, stop menacingly brandishing your spatula and aluminum tongs…Santa came!”
They sprang to the grill, hugged, and went ape shit
And the elves stuck around to help get the grill lit
Then we drew forth the flames, let the skirt steaks get cremated,
“Happy Summer to all, I’ll have my meat exfoliated!”

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…and I’d be willing to bet that many of you, in fact, are envying squirrels yourselves, too…except those of you who happen to work in high-rises – maybe you’re resenting a flock of nearby birds or something? Whatever your grievance, however, one thing remains certain – it seems like we’d all rather be just about anywhere else than work, and not just in the normal, “I hate my job because my boss is a jerk”-manner! The weather is absolutely beautiful outside, enough to entice even the pastiest of us computer geeks to trek beyond the warm, reassuring glow of our monitors and check out this whole outdoors-thing for ourselves, so the big question remains – how do we get us a piece of that fantastic summer excitement?

Fortunately for all of you stuck behind a desk in desperate search of the answer, I have literally hours upon hours each and every day to spend contemplating such quandaries while I’m at work myself, so it seemed only fitting that I share some of the better ideas that I came up with here today. Now mind you, I take no responsibility for anything that may happen to your employment status by trying any of these ideas on your own, so play at your own risk! Of course, any boss that doesn’t allow you to have even just a little bitof fun, especially during this time of year, is a gigantic wiener who doesn’t deserve your services anyways, but we won’t even venture down that road as it’s no doubt seen plenty of traffic already! So without further a due, Scott’s Ultimate List of Ways to Beat the Heat and Enjoy Some Fun in the Sun at Work…Hopefully Without Getting Fired… (in no particular order)

1. Take casual Friday and kick it up a notch – considering just how much more productive wearing jeans to work really makes everyone, simply get together with everyone else and adapt the dress code to include flip-flops, goofy hats, and Hawaiian print shirts. What are they going to do – fire all of you?!
2. Host a no-holds-barred, garbage can basketball tournament – depending on the skill level of your players, this could last for days or even weeks. Encourage spectators to get in on the action by starting gambling pools, spirit rallies, and post-game victory parties!
3. Redecorate the office to resemble someplace you’d rather be – palm trees and shrubberies, maybe a fountain or even a waterfall, and don’t forget the wildlife…all wonderful distractions from the regularly chaotic hell that beckons your presence for fifty hours a week. (TIP: cover anything that you don’t want to end up cleaning later – bird shit is a mess to get out of carpet…)
4. Hone your skills in the art of origami, feng shui, bonsai, or any other fancy Japanese word – we’ve yet to note any actual benefits from incorporating any of these bizarre hobbies, but just mentioning the name is sure to sound impressive at parties, right?
5. Two words: bug ranch – you’ve probably already got all sorts of pests crawling around the place anyways, so why not have a little fun with them? Give ‘em all names, design challenges and games for them to compete in, and don’t forget to charge admission! Wasn’t this how Walt Disney got his start?
6. Just don’t bother going to work altogether – back in high school we called it hookey, but even today everybody deserves an unannounced day off now and then, right?! It’ll be good for the boss to actually have to do something for a change and the beach never looks as good as when you’re not technically allowed to be there…

Of course, there is one last option, but I’ve gotta tell you that even the most ambitious of squirrels get boring after a while! Nothing against the Sciuridae family, nor any of the other related mammals for that matter, but there’s just nothing like actually enjoying it yourself, so put the phone down, step away from the computer, and go outside, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes – I’ll cover for ya!

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While the final bid for lunch with Mr. Buffett cost the winner a whopping $250,000, the slapstick comedian’s auction has yet to break into the triple digits, or even attract a single bidder for that matter. Nonetheless, there is little worry that the entire auction will pass without receiving at least one bid because people will bid on just about anything on the Internet, even if the final bid does end up going to the comedian’s mother…

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• In most areas, the summer implies that there will be some heat. And what better way to use that heat than to have ice races with friends! Simply go outside with a friend and at least two ice cubes of the same size. Then place your ice cubes on the ground or a flat surface and watch whose melts first. Yes, ice is exciting. Who would have thought that “fun” could be spelled with three letters?
• Nothing says summer like a talking Slip ‘n’ Slide. So why not… Oh never mind, if it talks, then it can tell you the rest…
• It’s time to take the cover off of the grill, grab a bag of marshmallows and create your own Peeps. Yours will look nothing like the Easter variety at first, but you have a couple of months to work on it, assuming the fun doesn’t overwhelm you…
• You don’t need a swimming pool to swim. Simply put on your swimming clothes and wait outside on the street for an open invitation. Wearing scuba gear and goggles will increase the odds of this occurring, or — at the very least — will make you a greater target for water balloons, which is pretty much the same as swimming anyway…
• Do birds really need those baths set out for them? If the answer to this question is “no” — and I am not really sure of this one — then simply kick them out and take their spots. If anyone questions this activity, tell him/her it’s a hockey game and you’re playing left wing. If a hockey player asks you, tell him/her your game is for the birds, which is basically accurate, even though you kicked them out earlier…
• Lemonade stands are a hassle to create. So why not take over someone else’s stand and negotiate that you will take a certain percentage of the profit, simply because you made the declaration to do so. To make this more fun, put your name on the sign and give all of your friends a free cup. If you are above the age of 30, quit your day job in order to run this business more successfully. Make sure your old high school classmates see your success. Send them e-cards if possible…

But I digress.

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Needless to say, I was surprised to hear this. I thought the world’s problems stemmed from something far worse: men wearing dresses. It can cause a lot of pain and embarrassment. At least that’s what the guy who tried to pick me up said.

But what if the king is right? What if we could solve the world’s problems by getting women to stop wearing trousers and instead wear, say, miniskirts and bikinis? Are you with me on this, guys?

It’s certainly worth a try. Nothing else seems to be curing the world’s ills, not the peace talks in the Middle East, not the adopt-a-child food programs, not the send-Britney-to-the-moon effort.

I, for one, have always been envious that women can wear anything they want — pants, suits, even ties — whereas I can’t even wear pantyhose. My wife often borrows my clothes, but if I so much as touch hers, I’m on my way to a shrink. (Guess who wears the pants in our household.)

I used to wear a cross on my neck, but I stopped doing that, afraid that someone might call me a cross-dresser. That’s a label usually given to a man who wears women’s clothes, when he isn’t being called a deviant. And what do we call a woman who wears men’s clothes? Liberated.

Give the king some credit: his solution is fairly easy. All we have to do, for starters, is give every married man a pair of scissors and send him into his wife’s wardrobe. A few hours later, we can send a truck to his home to collect his body. And just like that, we’d solve one of the world’s biggest problems: overpopulation.

With fewer men in the world, we’d also solve several other problems, including hunger, poverty, and baldness.

In the next phase of the plan, we’d give every bachelor a can of red paint and send him into his mother’s or sister’s wardrobe. Only a few of these men would come out alive and, as a bonus, they’d all be the same color. That would help solve the problem of racism.

The streets, of course, would soon be filled with distraught women.

Woman: “Oh no, what am I going to do? How am I going to manage?”

Daughter: “It was self-defense, Mom. You didn’t mean to kill Dad.”

Woman: “Yes, I know. But how am I going to manage without my favorite jeans?”

Many women would rush to buy new pants, boosting the economy, creating more jobs in the clothing industry and solving the unemployment problem, particularly in China.

Yes, King Mswati’s solution is not only easy, it’s fairly effective. He’s a smart man. That’s why he didn’t suggest a radical solution such as promoting democracy throughout the world or treating women as equals. That would mean giving up his monarchy, not to mention his nine wives, none of whom, incidentally, wear pants.

The post No Pants, No Problems appeared first on Just Laugh.

On a family picnic, don’t bring the nuts. You brought Uncle Ed and Aunt Dottie? Are you into compassion or is it really the joy of upcoming disaster you crave? Aunt Dottie will be of no help. She’ll eat all of the chips, lie in a lounge chair and read a romance novel the entire time. Uncle Ed, on the other hand, will be the center of attention and not the kind that attracts. After one, two, ten or fifteen drinks, Uncle Ed will begin to talk. You will not be able to get a word in edgewise and he will go on and on about what happened in Vietnam.

He was never there.

Keep this in mind: If you have children and you do indeed take them along on the picnic or any other outing, do not have drummed up fantasies about everything going smoothly. Children begin every sentence with ‘I want’. If you think everything will go according to plan, well, you’ll make a good chapter for my next book.

When lunch is ready the kids want to swim. When you want to rest the kids want to eat. For the entire day consider yourself the bringer of fun – not the receiver. They say giving is receiving. Yeah, right. Remember your visions of being the best parent in the world? Here is your golden opportunity and there aren’t any options.

Your job is to unpack, set out, prepare, pop and pour, watch, scamper, yell, run, scream, clap your hands in warning, count 1, 2, 3, holler, spray insect repellent, apply sunscreen, recover lost items, fly-swat, deep dive for a one-dollar necklace, clean, pack-up, tote and listen to the kids whine and moan when it is time to leave.

Is it worth it? If you bring your own parents along, yes. Then you are, in fact, doing a good deed. Your parents will get more joy watching you lose your mind in one afternoon than they had the entire time they raised you. They will offer an occasional, “Need some help, dear?” You are to answer, “No, thank you,” as they snuggle deeper into their lounge chairs with protective sun umbrellas and books in hand. They have already completed their part and rightly so. The reward of justice has shone down from the sky and they can spend the rest of their lives in utter joy and satisfaction.

When you get home, after you unpack and are ready to relax, the first words you will hear as you fall into the recliner are, “Mom, I’m bored.”

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Appearing on such popular mainstream media outlets as VH1 and MTV, along with several online services including America Online and Prodigy, a new series of “persuasive advertisements” produced in a partnership between the RIAA and various concerned recording artists depicts the brutal truths about prison life and the severity of doing things that piss off those who have a lot more money than you do.

Short clips with such titles as “Rest in peace, my sweet pirate…” and “Who’s the bitch now?!” display for viewers an uncensored visualization of what truly happens behind the walls of most prisons and penitentiaries. It was known from the beginning that most violators would never be able to afford the massive fines involved with their illegal trading, but the resulting consequences were never made completely clear, until now.

Even more blunt messages have been created for late night and premium cable channels, sporting terrifying names like “You’ll have to bathe sometime…” and “Is stealing my music really worth the violation of your cornhole?” thus establishing an abrupt and unpolished ultimatum that, one way or another, the piracy of music over the Internet is going to be brought to a halt.

After witnessing firsthand several of these new commercials on their favorite cable music station, Jane Roper, a sophomore at the University of California, commented, “Well sure, it’s kind of disturbing, but I guess these kids are just getting what they’ve got coming to them. They can’t expect to break the law forever – eventually somebody was bound to get busted…” Her roommate, who requested anonymity for this report, remained glued to her Grape iMac throughout the interview, oblivious to the fact that she would be spending the following weekend in a less than compromising position at nearby Orange County Penitentiary.

A spokesman for the RIAA told us only that, “…it’s about time that these college punks realize just who they’re dealing with. This isn’t high school anymore, where you can steal the dorky kid’s lunch money day after day and get away with it; this is the real world, and although you may still be able to beat our dorky kids up, they’ve got enough money now that it doesn’t really matter anymore…”

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