In Memorium

Satire1 again suspends its wit this post in memory of those individuals and their families whose sacrifice makes this blog and others like it possible. 

Don Arrup

Satire1

Coviducation

As New Jersey relaxes some of its quarantine rules this week and allows some businesses and public venues to reopen Satire1 takes to the streets of Hoboken to see how the populace is faring in the semi sorta post of most of Covidemic. 

Woman in N95 Mask

We couldn’t wait another day to open our hair salon. The police did come on Friday to shut us down but when they saw our shop filled with women in smocks with wet hair waiting for someone, anyone to try to salvage what was left of their do- the officers left us alone.

We’ve saved a lot of heads these last four days. Often at the expense of our own hair. I can’t do anything with this visor trench haloing me. But some heads couldn’t be saved. We left one woman alone in the parlor with the electric razor. Most wanted us to do it. They came in looking like they had sex with a helicopter and left looking like Popeye the Sailor Man.

Man with a Pie smeared over his Mush

I’ve been using my time off from work constructively. First, I spanked my wife for every birthday she ever had and she’s had plenty but she wanted more. Then, I opened a website where, for a fee, I help people change their nickname. They fill out a special form and send a recent photo. Ninety per cent end up with either “Liar” or “Asshole” and then recommend me on Yelp.

Middle School Marauder

Nana says I’m boy crazy. Mom calls me nympho and Dad calls me whore. I say I’m popular. They just don’t get it. And now with quarantine I’m not getting it anymore. Who you chat with, text, FaceTime and email- it doesn’t matter. It’s where you stand and who you stand with when your age- your world is together. And if we don’t get together what’s the point?

“I know what adults know if they’re honest. We’re just a pack of monkeys. We’re bigger and we can make things. Otherwise, we’re hanging from the same tree.”

I like a boy who can look me straight in the eyes and get dangerous with me. Even Juliet and Romeo had a party to hook up at. I can’t look a boy in the eye on screen and be there. He’s just not there. There is no here between screens. I need to look him in the eye until I see his fear and see he’s afraid but not going away.

I’m going all the way. You coming? I’m that girl.

High School Sophomore

They keep telling me not to touch myself. My mother, my father, my teacher, my doctor and even the President of the United States. I’m sixteen and touching myself is my whole sex life. And now it’s my whole social life too. I mean, nobody else touches me. Girls have been social distancing me like forever.

My brother tells me I could get cancer of the boner.

Middle School Marauder

You can’t get cancer of the boner.

HSS

How do you know?

MSM

I went to camp.

HSS

Which camp?

MSM

Camp Wild Oat upstate. Like three summers.

HSS

Then you’d know more than my brother. 

MSM

It’s Cyber Ninja Camp. You can get cancer of the orgasm if you aren’t getting any. My parents are riddled with it.

HSS

I knew frustration and anger can kill you but now I’m wondering if loneliness can too.

MSM

Depends on which loneliness you’re going through. Like if you’re lonely because you’re by yourself all the time it won’t kill you. It just feels like you’re dead. If you’re lonely and can’t get away from people…

HSS

What?

MSM

Cause for concern. There’s a lot of other types of loneliness.

HSS

I know. 

MSM

Don’t have to go to camp to know that.

HSS

You’re not a virgin, are you?

MSM

No.

HSS

I mean, you’re really not a virgin- not even close.

MSM

Yeah.

HSS

Why?

MSM

A lot of reasons.

HSS

To stop feeling lonely?

MSM

It doesn’t help with that. 

HSS

What does?

MSM

I don’t know. Love?

HSS

You’re just playing me because boner caner is real and you know I have it.

MSM

Just saying.

Don Arrup

Satire1

Mexican Beer Plague Strike Force

President Donald Trump

“My fellow Americans, as the pandemic spreads across the nation, globe and even my white white house here at the White House I have disbanded the Corona Virus Task Force because they couldn’t even keep themselves from getting sick.”

“Dr. Fauci and some of his colleagues had to be quarantined after being exposed to data that doesn’t support our opening of the economy which will be done incrementally over the next three to four hours depending on the spike in the death toll.”

“I admit that it is disturbing that the virus is killing off members of my Administration faster than I can fire them. It’s very disturbing.  And who fires faster and more decisively than I? I coined the phrase ‘You’re fired’ after centuries of limpy, wimpy phrases like we’ll have to let you go or you’ve been downsized or replaced.”

“In the task force’s place I am creating a better named and focused group to take on the bug: The Mexican Beer Plague Strike Force. We might need to tweak or tweet it just a bit. The Chinese Mexican Beer Plague Strike Force but it sounds too much like a declaration of war on China. Something I would never do before October if I remain behind in the polls.” 

“Using the Defense Powers Act I have instructed a number of our greatest companies to begin manufacturing Bleach Bombs, Lysol Lasers and Sun Lamp Virus Evaporators which we will need to turn this war around from being a defensive war fought in our hospitals and nursing homes to an offensive war of overwhelming force where we can attack the capitals and forward bases of the enemy in Wuhan and Mexico.”

“Americans are not cowards. We are not cowards who hide in our homes while the foreign invader takes over our public spaces, stadiums, houses of worship and tattoo parlors.”

“We have combed through the greatest hairdos of our health care system- the best- we have the best- and I have narrowed it down to a few to corner the Corona. Corner and crush the virus that has been- quite frankly- I will not lie to you- the virus that has been kicking our ass- yours and mine- I could show you scars.” 

“We’re America. Corona came too late. America again is great. You’re a couple of years late, Corona. If you hit us right after they forced Obama Care on us none of us would be here today. Pelosi wouldn’t have saved you and Obama couldn’t have saved you.”

“So now I’m going to introduce you to our bipartisan Strike Force. First, chairing the Strike Force is world renown Dr. Victor Frankenstein. A genius known the world over for his ability to bring in bodies from all over and make them function like one brain.”

“Helping out is the crack medical research team of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who’ve been able to overcome their ideological differences to solve some of the mysteries of the human soul and they’ll solve this pandemic. You’ll see. Even share the same girlfriend. This is what is possible if everyone listens to me.”

“Next is Dr. No. Asian Jew Male Dominatrix who has no qualms about controlling the population. Whatever I say goes. No dissent. No whining.”

“Tea Party favorite Dr. Phibes agreed to come out of retirement. He has a cure for everything. Most of them worse than the disease but Corona is going down even if we have to end all life in the Milky Way.”

“Got somebody for the liberals. Everybody represented in the Strike Force. Dr. Dolittle, animal rights guy, Green Party guy, will be looking into how Covid is affecting our pets and the animals we eat.”

“And finally, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, brilliant mind, fixes what ain’t broke. Just never be alone with him. Never. Gets a little handsy. Not as bad as Biden. A little grabby on the jewels. He’ll keep the Strike Force disciplined.” 

“Now it will be safe to open America again. We might have to wait all the way to Memorial Day for a vaccine. Something about supply chain or it has to be safe or some nonsense like that. But Covid will be driven out beyond our borders before the first kickoff of the NFL regular season. 

Don Arrup

Satire1

Nurses vs Zombies

When I was young nurses in the United States were angels in white. Paper boat caps, dresses with more starch than cotton, white hose and big, heavy, white shoes. For women, if you weren’t a nurse the only white dress shoes you ever wore were on your wedding day. Women could wear white tennis shoes or boaters but they weren’t fooling anybody.

Then, without warning, hospitals became pajama parties. Everybody who works there is dressed the same. And you can’t call what they’re wearing clothes. Maybe in India or some cable stoner space show. They take your clothes and give you an ass out so that they can feel “dressed” and superior. It’s all about control. They don’t have time to argue with you so they take your pants.

I know, you’re screaming “How could you forget the school nurse?” The professional who can not do anything for you except extend a bandaid or loan you a tampon. (I needed one for a nosebleed once.) At a time when gym teachers were performing hysterectomies and circumcisions in after school athletics those RNs who had signed up to be hog tied by regulations knew they were the last line of sanity in school systems that were basically functioning like diarrhea on fire. 

Slowly, again without notice, doctors offices became miniature scrub hubs. More rooms and machines and needles and god awful things that go there and god not there! And charts and farts and Smiley faces and purple rhino stickers on the bathroom doors. Paper shoes had migrated from the horror movie third floors of the castles of hope to the guy who used to have an office next to his kitchen where his nurse wife was cooking and made house calls with a little black bag. Now you walk in with a bad paper cut and they’re taking blood samples to send to NASA.

The beauties and battle-axes portrayed on TV now look like high tech fairy god mothers and prom queens from Mars. But however they attire they are dressed as warriors. 

Sunday the 10th is Mother’s Day and Nurse’s Day is Tuesday the 12th. And that is just how it should be. Where mothers care leaves off or is not enough nurses step in and stay with us all until we’re good or gone. Not all nurses are women and many, perhaps most, do not have all the training and accreditation. They’re just there. Here. Where we need them and we may have never needed them more than we do now.

Why does Superman wear a cape?

Because when he was created only the French Police and nurses everywhere wore capes.

Fuck the zombies. They never had a chance.

Don Arrup

Satire1

Stop Monkeying Around

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York

“So the preliminary trial of the Oxford vaccine has been successful. Experts around the world are believers now. We have a safe, reasonably reliable- because nothing’s perfect- but it appears to have protected a sizable majority of the monkeys. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a Covid Monkey vaccine."

"Now, what does that mean? It means that while the pandemic imprisons us in our houses if we’re lucky, in our apartments or rooms or our bunk. Some people just have a spot. Maybe with just the sky for their roof. But now all some of us have something we didn’t have before. We have the monkeys and the monkeys are going to kick Covid’s ass for us." 

"You’re probably asking yourself, What’s Cuomo talking about? Has he lost his mind? Is he going to vote for Biden? The answer is no. I haven’t lost my mind. And I know monkeys.”

“How does Cuomo know monkeys?"

“The answer is simple. My father gave me a monkey. I wanted a monkey. They looked like fun and girls liked them. You could get almost any girl- even some married women- up to your room if you could show them a monkey.”

 Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives

“Well, it appears that our friends, the British, have found at their great university of Oxford, a vaccine that is looking very promising for our primate friends who I’m sure we can arrange to take over some of our vital jobs that involve exposure to the Corona virus.”

“I’ver been talking to the pirates who run Silicon Valley about bringing over some of our closer evolutionary cousins like Chimpanzees and Orangoutangs to write computer programs and become personal masseuses since it’s obvious they would rather die than hire an American but it appears that our techno tyrants preferred monkeys all along. All they ever talk about is getting a little tail.”

Donald Trump, President of the United States

“Every American should have a monkey. I’ve been saying this since the seventies. Who doesn’t want a monkey? The Three Stooges had a monkey. That kid in The Jungle Book. He had a monkey. He didn’t even have parents. The monkeys raised him. And monkeys could be raising your kids too. Who needs schools? Get more monkeys.”

“They don’t catch Covid. They don’t unionize. When they complain it sounds like a Tarzan movie. And they won’t get your daughter pregnant. My hand to god. You can trust your daughter with a monkey.”

Joseph Biden, Presumptive Democratic Party Nominee for President

“Oh, lord, thank god. Is that you? I haven’t been able to get a word out for days. I’m being held captive in my basement by Russian monkeys. I understand they are immune to American politics and the Covid virus. They invaded my home just after we heard about the Oxford University vaccine trial. And some of them are beginning to get familiar.” 

Don Arrup

Satire1