A lot of people on the Internets are linking to this short story by Desmond Warzel. I normally don’t participate in the blog equivalent of email forwarding “Fw: Re: FW: FWD: This is really funny,” but as a regular lurker in forums (fora?), I have to say that this is, in fact, the funniest thing I’ve read in awhile.

My favorite excerpt:

At 02:29:49, SilverFox316 wrote:
PS to SneakyPete: your Hitler paintings aren’t worth anything, schmuck, since you probably brought them directly here from 1907, which means the paint’s still fresh. Freaking n00b.

My good friend Gokmop recently turned me on to this, commenting:

This has all the hallmarks of a good one, because it makes me uncomfortable and it’s not immediately clear whether it’s a joke or not. 🙂

“This” is a collection of short stories, haikus, a song, and a novel dedicated to the subject of wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm (AKA plastic wrap). The original author is Ulrich Haarbürste, whose business manager is Michael Kelly (their relationship is similar to Lemony Snicket and Daniel Handler).

From the first short story:

Roy Orbison walks inside my house and sits down on my couch. We talk urbanely of various issues of the day. Presently I say, ‘Perhaps you would like to see my cling-film?’

‘By all means.’ I cannot see his eyes through his trademark dark glasses and I have no idea if he is merely being polite or if he genuinely has an interest in cling-film.

I bring it from the kitchen, all the rolls of it. ‘I have a surprising amount of clingfilm,’ I say with a nervous laugh. Roy merely nods.

And from an interview in a Canadian newspaper:

Does [your passion for writing about wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm] include other celebrities?

No, absolutely not! It must be Roy Orbison. For me, maybe it’s OK for other people, I do not judge but I find it odd. Some person sent me a story about Tom Petty in clingfilm and I deleted it. I do not get that, I try to be broad-minded but who would possibly want to wrap Tom Petty in clingfilm? There are strange people in the world.

It is yet another (albeit tongue-in-cheek) example of XKCD’s Rule 34 of the Internet, “If you can imagine it, there is porn of it.”

I found this column from the St. Charles Journal amusing. The author republishes an advertisement for a squirrel removal service, replacing the word “squirrel” with “teen”.

It took me back to Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel Scoop. In it, a provincial writer named William Boot writes a nature column called Lush Places for the Beast (a London newspaper). William writes “a lyrical, but wholly accurate account of the habits of the badger…” Subsequently, his sister Priscilla:

…in a playful mood had found the manuscript and altered it, substituting for “badger” throughout “the great crested grebe.” It was not until Saturday morning when, in this form, it appeared in the Beast that William was aware of the outrage.

His mail had been prodigious; some correspondents were sceptical, others derisive; one lady wrote to ask whether she read him aright in thinking he condoned the practice of baiting these rare and beautiful birds with terriers and deliberately destroying their earthly homes; how could this be tolerated in the so-called twentieth century? A major in Wales challenged him categorically to produce a single authenticated case of a great crested grebe attacking young rabbits.