I’ve written a lot of stuff for a lot of outlets. Here are my favorites; the ones that really show off what I’m capable of. I’ve added some context for a few of them. I’m looking for a full-time writing job. Does your video game need a writer? Hire me! Does your TV series writer’s room need a new writer? Hire me! Want to give me a book deal? Sign me up! Does your website need an editor/writer in a full-time salaried position? Hire me! You can DM me here, or find me on Twitter @Luis_Prada. My email is Luisrafaelprada@gmail.com. 

Cracked - I wrote for Cracked on and off for over 15 years. Eventually, I became a columnist and a member of the columns editorial team. I wrote hundreds of articles and wrote a few video scripts. 

3 Recipes For The Perfect Last Minute Mother’s Day Brunch - Don’t let the title mislead you. This was the first time Cracked let me write an article that was pure fiction disguised as a helpful, fact-based recipe article. If you like this, I have a whole podcast that’s basically this article in audio form. Links at the bottom of this post!

10 Very Dumb Questions You Should Answer Right Now - This is part 1 of a survey of the Cracked readership. Part two, below, is where it gets fun. Posting this one for full context.

10 Dumb Questions I Asked You Guys (And Your Dumb Answers) – And here’s Part 2! Never got to do this survey again for another column but of everything I’ve ever written, it’s one of the ones I’m most proud of. 

Amazon Thinks I’m Some Sort Of Serial Killer In Training

This Article Will Explode In 5 Points

The Hoax You Didn’t Realize Dominated The 80s - The Cracked article I’m most proud of. 

The Most Weirdly Specific, Lazy Spam Email I Ever Received

How I Tried (And Failed) To Stop Snoring With A Didgeridoo

Why Don’t We Have Flying Cars Yet? Well, Here’s The Thing…

4 Spam Emails That Deserve To Be Movies

I Ate At The World’s Best Sushi Restaurant

4 Ways I Realize I’ve Changed (Thanks To The New Zelda Game)

The 6 Most Useless Features Found in Flashlight Apps

5 Creepy Things People Say About Sex When Granted Anonymity

4 Recipes That Came From The Mind Of A Child (Taste Tested)

4 Things That Shock You About Dogs (If You Never Had One)

4 Creepy Unspoken Agreements We All Make With Public Places

4 Terrible Golf Tips For Beginners (By a Beginner)

Drones: The Movie Pixar Doesn’t have the Balls to Make - The first time I was ever allowed to break the traditional listicle mold. Still can’t believe they let me do this.

5 Random Questions You Didn’t Know You Wanted Answered

5 Newspaper Articles From History You’ll Swear I’m Making Up

Taco Bell’s Website Is Absolutely Insane (No, Seriously)

Papa John’s TikTok Has Intense Divorced Dad Energy

Bunny Ears - The site, which was owned and operated by actor Macaulay Culkin, gave me the chance to do something I’d wanted to do for years: get paid to write the silliest stuff I could imagine. The site was a satire of celebrity lifestyle sites like Goop but started sprinkling in some broader pop-cultural stuff toward the end. 

6 Bathrobes Perfect For Doing Coked-Up Naked Karate

I’ve Been Holding In A Tantric Orgasm For 22 Years. Please Don’t Touch Me

My Secret Ingredient Is Love, Which Has Been Recalled Due To Fecal Contamination

For The Last Time, I’m An Electrician, Not An Energy Healer

3 School Lunches Your Child’s Bully Will Love

We Just Tried Western Medicine, And Holy Shit Is It Effective!

I Traveled The World And Didn’t Learn A Fucking Thing About Myself

Lavish Vacation Spots To Visit When You’re On The Run From The Securities and Exchange Commission

I’m An Introvert And I Need Every Person On Earth To Know It

These 5 Posh Hotels Have One Thing in Common: You’re Banned from Them

Our Article Ideas Algorithm Says You Should Marinate Chicken In Piss

I Climbed Everest And Still Can’t Maintain An Erection

Funko Pop! Used My Likeness Without My Consent

A Good Night’s Sleep Made Me A Much More Efficient Asshole

My Restaurant Will Proudly Fuck Up Your Culture’s Signature Dish

I’m Trying Really Hard To Not Turn Your Vitamin D Deficiency Into A Dick Joke

I’m Totally Okay Being Trapped Under This Weighted Blanket

Reminder: Don’t Fuck Up This Turkey, Because You Can Really Use A Win Right Now

Marvelous Meat: This Plant-Based Burger Not Only Bleeds, It Screams

We Can’t Get Enough Of These 5 Celebrity-Recommended Tax Havens

Grounding: Connecting To The Natural Energies of Your Home By Sticking Metal Rods In Power Outlets

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency 

Click “No” If You’d Like Us To Guilt Trip You For Not Subscribing To Our Newsletter

The Inaudible Podcast Network - My time at Bunny Ears led to the development of a short recurring segment on the official Bunny Ears podcast called “Meditation Minute with Luis Prada”, a parody of guided meditation podcasts and Youtube channels. When Bunny Ears closed down, I was able to keep Meditation Minute. I spun it into my own podcast. The Inaudible Podcast Network is an audio sketch comedy series about four podcasts on a fake podcast network. Those shows are Meditation Minute, Truest Crime (a true crime podcast hosted by two serial killers), The Feed (a food culture podcast), and Three Indistinguishable Guys Talking About Movies (a movie podcast). I’ve completed two seasons so far, totaling 80 episodes, 20 of each podcast. Here are direct links to my favorite episodes so far. But first, here’s a link to the Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/InaudiblePod

I can use the money! Season two just ended. I’m writing season three now. Anyway, onto the links…

TRAILER/Ep. 1 - Meditation Minute - Midroll Meditation

Ep. 2 - The Feed - Fleeing Flavortown

Ep. 4 - Three Indistinguishable Guys Talking About Movies - Review: The Family Circus Movie

Ep. 5 - Meditation Minute - Building a Happy Place

Ep. 28 - Truest Crime - Where Are They Now?

Ep. 33 - Meditation Minute - Breakout

Ep. 41 - Meditation Minute With Luis Prada - A Meditation for Those In A Rush

Ep. 42 - The Feed - The Indiana Sausage Wars

Ep. 47 - Three Indistinguishable Guys Talking About Movies - I See Myself In Luke Skywalker Despite HisGross Alien Genitals

Ep. 48 - Truest Crime - Riddles For Pestering The Cops

Ep. 58 - The Feed - Apologies To Canned Ham

Ep. 62 - The Feed - The Fight To Save Bees

Ep. 69 - Meditation Minute With Luis Prada - Corrections and Retractions

Ep. 78 - The Feed - Our Fascinating World of High-End Cheeses

Ep. 80 - Truest Crime - Most Truest Crime with Host FBI Agent Antonio Rodriguez

It was a long, hard road, but I did it. I won. I won therapy. After all those years of my therapist asking probing questions about my most private thoughts and feelings, I’ve been rewarded with a gold trophy that says “Therapy #1 Champion”.

Some say that’s impossible, and that even if it was, bettering your mental health shouldn’t be viewed through a binary lens. The doubters said the bettering of one’s mental health is a much more nuanced experience that rarely, if ever, results in a defined endpoint. But I defied the odds and won it. I am the winner of therapy; the undisputed champion of mental health.

I’d like to thank my parents. Without their daily screaming matches laying a foundation of instability when I was a child, I wouldn’t have even needed therapy in the first place. The refusal to divorce despite their contempt for one another gave me a mountain to climb, a star to reach. Thank you for never instilling in me the tools necessary to not be like you. Without your severe damage, I wouldn’t have received this gleaming trophy as a testament to my triumph over your failures.

I may be the one being honored, but I’m nothing without my opponent – and I don’t mean my litany of debilitating insecurities. I’m talking about Dr. Ramona Martinez, my therapist of over 15 years. Without her letting me ramble for 20 minutes and then asking “why do you think that is?”, I would never have had my breakthrough moment: when I realized my abandonment issues prevent me from fostering potentially meaningful long-term relationships. She challenged me to elevate my understanding of self to championship levels.

I realize this victory has opened the floodgates. Now everyone knows it’s possible to become the absolute champion of therapy and the king of mental health. Broken people from all over the world will be working even harder now to resolve their major psychological issues, hoping they can hoist this trophy above their heads, just as I have. I wish them the best of luck in their pursuit of total domination over their personal demons – but I won’t be dethroned so easily.

Winning therapy doesn’t mean I’m canceling my weekly sessions. In fact, I’m working even harder now to reach a state of mental perfection. I’m doing two sessions a day, six days a week. I call emergency therapy hotlines on my lunch break just to keep myself on my toes. I meditate and exercise, so my mind is clear and my endorphins are pumping like a broken fire hydrant on a hot summer day. I’m in better mental health than when I won therapy. So, a word of warning to all of you hoping to become well-adjusted adults: you better make sure your daddy issues are worked out before you step up to the king.

Welcome to The Museum of Childhood, my art event that’s just an elaborate playground where you can farm Instagram likes. I appreciate you coming out to this desolate strip mall to rediscover the whimsy of childhood here in the heart of the worst neighborhood in the city, where the high homicide rate is less concerning than the number of unsolved homicides. The danger is only a small price to pay to be a part of the single most obnoxiously Instagrammable event of the season. The actual price to pay is $45.

The Museum of Childhood features multiple rooms that visitors can roam freely to re-experience the wonders of their youth. Reviewers in local alt-newspapers have called it, “what it would feel like if Disney Imagineers made a jungle gym based on a Buzzfeed listicle about things only ’90s kids will remember.”

You can start by taking a dip in the Summer Pool Party room, built to look like a backyard pool where the “water” is a blue ball pit and a “Grilling Dad” complements guests on their high jumps off the diving board. Keep your eyes peeled for when “Grilling Dad” passive-aggressively scolds “Wife of Grilling Dad” when she reminds her “children” (you) to be careful. Yes, the nostalgic glee of each room will be undercut with a stark dose of reality that weirds everybody out.

You can race to the top of a 35-foot-tall foam-padded “dirt mound” in the King Of The Hill room. The hill’s base is surrounded by another one of my signature ball pits, this one designed to look like grass, which you’ll recognize immediately since the balls are green this time. Don’t forget to immerse yourself in the room’s reality by ignoring the EMTs in the corner panicking every time a hyper-competitive 230-pound man shoves a 125-pound woman off the top of the hill with no remorse.

Don’t forget to rack up upwards of 3,000 likes with a picture in the Pizza Party room. Snap a selfie on the large scalable plush pizza and interact with a man dressed like a pizza who’s so rude you’ll wonder if it’s a comment on how something we loved so much as children can ultimately be so bad for us, or if he’s just an asshole.

Maybe you’ll think the whole event is a comment on the superficiality of childhood as you enter the Boob Tube room. It’s a living room straight from a 1950s black-and-white sitcom, that is until you pass through a doorway painted like a TV to find a colorful world where local actors cosplaying as classic cartoon characters serve guests sugary children’s cereals.

You would be wrong. All of this is just an elaborate ploy to create a perpetually self-advertising money-making machine. Good guess, though.

As you’ll see painted on every wall, I have preferred hashtags I’d like you to include on all of your posts. They are:

“#GrillingDadCanGetIt”

“#CrappedMyPants@MoC”

“#Ballpit”

If you have fun today, be sure to catch my next Instagram-bait event, “Meat,” where we’ll celebrate the world of animal butchery by zip-lining on a foam slab of “beef” into a pool of “blood” (a ball pit). It’ll be held in an abandoned refinery on the outskirts of town, where industry once thrived but is now where adults celebrate abstract concepts via playgrounds that are surrounded by bullet casings and hypodermic needles.

1977

A young, slender George Lucas watches an early cut of Star Wars with his editor and producers. He struggles to speak through his own raucous laughter.

“He’s a fat guy,” George says during gasps for air, “so I named him Porkins!”

The others exchange awkward glares as George is nearly killed by the hilarity of his own joke.

Today

George lets his Jar Jar Binks silk robe fall to the floor revealing his bloated naked frame to the mirror before him. Turning away in shame isn’t an option as the jiggle of his Boss Nass neck flab would be just as effective a reminder. He stares at what he’s become. 

“I am the Porkins now,” he whispers. 

Over four seasons, Star Wars Rebels cemented itself as one of the best Star Wars things ever made. Probably better than more than half of the movies. It’s well written and full of that patented Star Wars heart that adds an emotional core to a story where our scrappy underdog heroes are straight up killing thousands of people. In that vein, Rebels might be the most Star Wars-y the thing ever produced. For as great as it is, one of its biggest faults is in how it wants you to believe this crew is a ragtag group up against the insurmountable odds of the Galactic Empire at its peak of power when, really, the band of misfits might be the most deadly force the galaxy has ever seen. The numbers prove it.

As you’d imagine, the crew gets into a lot of situations they have no business getting out of when up against the Empire’s capital ships. It seems like every other episode they find themselves facing imminent annihilation at the hands of Star Destroyers and the like.

The opening shot of A New Hope establishes that Star Destroyers are massive, imposing space behemoths that, as Leia’s blockade runner proves, are as terrifying in the field of battle as their look suggests. The opening shot tells us to be afraid of the ship and especially of the power-wielding it.

We don’t see many Star Destroyers getting blown apart by rebels in the movies. There’s that one A-wing pilot who takes out the Super Star Destroyer (the Executor) by crashing into its bridge after it shields were taken down. And then there’s that scene in The Last Jedi where, without spoiling it, one character single-handedly takes out at least a half-dozen-plus capital ships with one of the single craziest maneuvers ever seen a galaxy far, far away.

Getting an idea of how many lives the Rebels crew has taken when they destroy a capital ship is tricky. It’s kind of a Schrodinger’s Star Destroyer situation. We don’t ever get the full story of how many escaped on pods, for example. For all I know, 100% of each ship’s crew survived it’s respective attack. So I can only choose “all lived” or “all died.” I’ll go with “all died.” With that established, now we can tally up the deaths from all the times they’ve taken out massive ships:

Using an imperial droid to blow up a Star Destroyer (46,803 people)

Destroyed an Interdictor-class cruiser, plus two smaller capital cruisers (Interdictor crew size: 37,085; Arquintens command cruisers hold 202 people each, so 404 total dead, for a total of 37,489)

Sabine blew up a Star Destroyer (46,803 people dead)

Ezra and Sabine destroy another Interdictor (another 37,085 people dead)

They blow up a Star Destroyer with a Kyber crystal intended for use on the Death Star plus a Freighter  (Freighter supposedly holds 3 to 6 crew, but in the ep it looks like a little more, so let’s round it up to 10; the Start destroyer holds 46,803 people dead. A total of 46,813 dead)

Blow up an Arquintens command cruiser with a single B-wing. (202 people dead)

Sato kamikazes an Interdictor (Another 37,085 people dead; Sato did it, but Rebels crew was a part of the battle, so I’m counting it.)

When Saw Garrera destroys an Arquintens cruiser by getting it caught in the destruction of a nearby satellite relay station (202 people dead, plus who knows how many in the relay station)

That brings us to a grand total of 252,482 people on capital ships alone, all killed by a scrappy band of misfits.

Now, for perspective: the first Death Star had an estimated 1.7 million people on it when Luke blew it up in the Battle of Yavin at the end of A New Hope. That means this one little crew killed the equivalent of 14.85% of the people on the Death Star. That’s not counting all the random Stormtroopers they’ve shot, bases they’ve blown up, imperial walkers they’ve destroyed, and the countless TIE fighters they’ve blown up.

I’d like to thank you all for being here today as we honor the life of my sister, Valentina. She was taken from us too soon. My family thanks you for your support through this difficult time.

To sum up what Val meant to me in a few short paragraphs is impossible. Words fail to describe her – but numbers will do just fine. See, data ruled her life. Her favorite hobby was the exhaustive statistical study of herself. She told me it was called “Self-quantification.” She turned her life into data, and the data into charts, and the charts into family dinners that felt like corporate offsite meetings at the Honolulu Marriot. Oh, I suggested plenty more exciting hobbies she might consider instead but she never listened. She rated her enthusiasm for each of my suggestions on a scale of 1 to 100 as a part of a multi-year study. “Gator wrestling” topped the list with a commanding score of 22.

Her will stipulated that I be entrusted with her volumes of research about herself so I could better understand who she was. I’ve made a series of fascinating discoveries about my sister as I poured over ream after ream of statistical analysis. She’d kept an exhaustive record of every sneeze. Hers were a machine gun of balloon squeaks. Growing up, I imagined the sneezing fits echoing down the halls as a pair of spies trying to take each other out with silenced pistols. According to her spreadsheets, she averaged 27.8 sneezes a week, with most happening on Tuesdays, and usually in bursts of six. She fired snot all over herself 12% of the time.

She averaged over 12,000 steps a day. Only once in her step counter’s four-year record did she fail to meet her goal: Thursday, December 17th, 2015, when she jogged backward seven miles for a total of negative-12,842 steps. A cryptic note attached to that day’s entry read, “Time advanced inexorably in spite of best efforts. Experiment a failure.”

For as much maddening calculation as the documents contained, there was a beauty to the meticulousness. The spreadsheets Val produced during the 14-hour passive-aggressive argument she got into with her best friend, Andrea, in a Facebook group chat were stunning. The layout, the formulas – I could feel Andrea being kind of a dick about the restaurant Val chose for her own birthday party through the data. The statistically-sound conclusion to Val’s treatise titled “On The Attitude of An Asshole: The Statistical Unraveling of Andrea’s Shittiness,” is mathematically inarguable: “Andrea is a huge piece of shit for besmirching the great name of JoJo’s Pizzeria and Ball Pit Palace.”

She was convinced self-quantification was the key to unlocking some kind of deeper understanding of not only her life but all of life. She kept combining her studies – three, four, five data sets at a time! The combined results of four studies showed that if she scored a 6 or higher on her sleep quality scale (“Sleep: A Quantified Search For Unconscious Perfection) she’d be 52% more alert that day, but there was no score high enough for her to pay attention to someone’s Game of Thrones fan theories (“Stuff I’m Willing To Stand, Rated From ‘Yes’ to ‘GTFO’”), unless she was able to muscle through the monologue of speculation about a fictional world by silently passing gas throughout to gain the upper hand (“Social Dominance Through Spiteful Flatulence: A Datafied Case Study”), once when she and friends ate on the outdoor patio of her favorite restaurant within two blocks (“Quality Restaurants Nearby But Far Enough That I Can Consider It A Night Out: An Imperative Statistical Investigation”) which led to this, just one of her many grand conclusions about life: “When someone’s killing your buzz, rip some choice stinkers.”

But then she pushed it too far. She passed away during a non-stop three-day data-crunching binge as she attempted a meta-data analysis of every study she had ever performed. After crossing her findings with a cost/benefit analysis of her time spent studying herself, the idea of self-quantification exploded. In her final moments, she claims in her report, she experienced spreadsheet spaghettification and had her data visualizations astral projected across the expanse of the universe, “like a cosmic PowerPoint presentation,” she noted.

We mourn her death today, but at the time of her passing, she was convinced the numerical totality of her earthly life exploding across the expanse of space meant she had achieved immortality. She eagerly anticipated what people across the stars would make of her. “I can feel it,” she wrote. “My data-energy seeping away from my flimsy mortal flesh vessel and zipping across the stars as signals that will one day reach planets in distant galaxies so that intelligent civilizations may wonder if the hourly log of my pit-stain circumference was perhaps a bit much.”

She was thrilled to wonder what new revelations aliens could draw from her data with their comprehension of pan-dimensional mathematics, assuming aliens had harder math. She immediately accepted the honor of being the Earth’s unofficial ambassador. It was a heavy responsibility to bear, but she had so many Excel files proving how charming she was that it was impossible to argue otherwise.

After days of parsing through her findings (the more advanced of which had evolved into a glowing orb of number vapor), I found what appeared to be a final all-encompassing result hastily scribbled before her death, or what she called her “ascension.”

It read, “Tell Andrea to suck farts – I’m an immortal statistical cosmonaut.” I’ve also been instructed to open this jar labeled, “Farts for Andrea.”

Thank you all for attending. The service will continue at JoJo’s Pizzeria and Ball Pit Palace, where the first ten minutes in the ball pit are free with purchase of a combo meal.

Director: So you’re a bartender, and then you hear the music and you dance. Maybe throw in some spins, wipe down the counter a little – whatever feels right. But, like, be happy about it. “Woo dancing! It’s fun!” that kind of thing. Sound good?

Dancer: Uh…

Director: What’s wrong?

Dancer: That’s it? What’s the story here? Why do I go from washing a glass to dancing, and so quickly? Is the song that good? I haven’t heard it yet.

Director: It’s okay. I mean, it’s fun, but when it’s over, it’s like it never happened.

Dancer: So, why am I dancing so much then?

Director: You really need direction for this? Just dance. It’ll be in the video and you’ll get paid. Easy.

Dancer: Mister Director, I am an artist. I speak through dance. It is not just movement. It is an expression of my soul. As such, I cannot physically articulate the complexities of this bartender’s emotions if I don’t know what they are.

Director: Goddamn it.

Dancer: …

Director: Alright, look – you’re a bartender out of options. Your wife is libel to pack and leave you at any second. Every whiskey sour your serve up to some morose local drunk reminds you of the heartbreaks and failures that kept you behind that bar instead of spreading your wings to soar. Sometimes you think if you just had one path out of this life, you’d take it. No questions asked, no idea where you’d land. It’s that bleak. But then, Rick Astley starts performing “Never Gonna Give You Up.”  

At first, you’re intrigued. Is this a black person singing? Sounds like it, but there’s a vague…whiteness to it. It’s almost cool but not quite. Maybe express that with a curious look over to the stage, like you’re not sure if one of your customers is stealing a napkin holder. They’re not. But for a second there, boy, did it look like it.

Dancer: Hmm. How’s this?

Director: That’s…good, actually. Didn’t expect you to nail that. Um…so, anyway – the music. It’s an intoxicating rhythm. It bursts through your emotional wall. You’re amped up. Your problems are still there. But the lingering trauma that’s coiled itself around every synapse, influencing every word and action, is numbed. The pain, it…it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. It can’t, not while Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” is playing. So your neck bobs to the beat, your eyelids shut. You’re not going to need eyes to see where you’re headed – to an awakening.

Dancer: Right. Okay. So, you mean like this…

Director: My God…exactly like that! Astonishing! Sir, your soul radiates through every move.

Dancer: Thank you. I think I can do this. What do I do next?

Director: You’re entranced. You dance, unaware of place, time, and your customer’s growing concern for your mental health. This isn’t a small nod to a beat anymore. Each pulse of your hips is a tug at the chain that binds you to your sorrows. Your shoulders and arms dip and sway in an intrepid battle against a tenacious tide unseen to all but you.

Dancer: Mmph. Mmph. Can I do something with the towel?

Director: Like wha–

Director: Heavens above.

The Director shakes his head in disbelief. The Dancer points to his heart.

Dancer: It comes from here. I’m simply its vessel.

Director: Well, it’s perfect! Rick’s song has woken something inside of you, a sense of possibility you haven’t felt in years, the sudden opening of the door you’ve been pushing against for as long as you can remember. With a toss of a towel and a handspring, you’re breaking free of the bar’s constraints.

Dancer: I love it.

Director: As do I, but what if we harnessed this creative breakthrough and spun it into something even greater? Follow me here: what if we get some shots with you further expressing your newfound lease on life brought on by Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”? It’s just you alone, away from the bar, dancing with abandon, feeling joy for the first time.

The Director becomes crestfallen.

Director: But…no. It’ll never work.

Dancer: But why, Mister Director?

Director: To do something like that, we’d need a feat of dancing unlike any we’ve seen before. A move so spectacular, so daring, no other physical expression could match it. But I’m afraid a move like that would be impossible to pull off, deadly even. I’m not even sure if one exists.

Dancer: I see what you mean.

Director: Oh, damn it all! We were so close! We had lightning in the bottle but could not contain it! Maybe we were never meant to. We tried and we failed. There’s no shame in that. We’ll film what we came up with and then try to live with ourselves knowing what we could’ve accomplished here today if it were even possible to touch what lies beyond mankind’s reach.

Dancer: Mister Director, if I may be so presumptuous, I might have something. It might not be exactly what we need, but like my father always said, “Do what you can with what you have.”

Director: Those are wise words. Your father was a smart man. But wisdom has its limits.

Dancer: Please, Mister Director. Just give me the chance to show you what I can do.

Director: I don’t kn—

Dancer: Please.  

The Director sighs.

Director: Fine. But should anything happen to you, I will disavow all knowledge of this conversation. It was a maneuver you attempted on your own in defiance of my directorial will. Do you understand?  

Dancer: I understand.

Director: Then Godspeed.

Dancer: Thank you. Here we go. On three…two…one…

Dancer: What did you thi–Mister Director, is everything okay?

Tears stream down the Director’s cheeks.

Director: Oh, quite, yes. Come, let’s roll camera – and change the world.

                                                   ******

                                       400 Years Later

The line extended for a quarter of a mile. Some in the queue wore white shirts with rolled sleeves, red suspenders, and loose black slacks; others in a black and white-striped long sleeve with black short-shorts and ankle socks. The ones at the front had been waiting since before dawn to be the first allowed in. With patience and grace, the ones at the back waited hours for their turn. A few thousand more would arrive as the day went on.

They were all there to pay respects to the man and the maneuver that elevated the human race to unprecedented heights of thought, empathy, and courage. They had come to watch the Dancer spring off the chain-link fence again and again in mega-HD clarity as his image projected out of a hologram-emitting cube. The cube itself obscured by a lush bed of flowers, making it look like he’s leaping way from a dreary parking lot fence and into a psychedelic sea. Surrounding the flower bed is hundreds of plain white towels laid there by visitors signifying a pilgrimage that has reached its end.

An inscription atop a pedestal among the flowers reads: “This memorial is dedicated to the Dancer, who, in this very spot, leaped onto a fence and sprang into our hearts. We never gave him up.”  

The traditions we honor are what make our holidays special. Everybody knows the classics. Leaving out cookies and milk for Santa. Leaving your list under the tree. Sneaking into your parents closet too catch a glimpse at what they bought you. But there are so many more out there that aren’t as popular that deserve a little recognition.

Finding a good spot to set up my rifle so I can blast Santa out of the sky

It just isn’t Christmas until I’ve found a spot with plenty of visibility of the open sky so that I may shoot one or all of Santa’s reindeer. I’m not interested in the reindeer themselves, though I’m sure biologists would be interested in studying how they’re able to fly with no discernible mechanism for propulsion. I’m more interested in the big game that is Santa. His head would look mighty fine on my wall. And I’m sure I can make use of a bag that seemingly has no bottom. I’d never need a closet again.

Spiking the nog

“Spiking the nog” is, of course, a crass sexual euphemism much too graphic to fully explain in a public forum such as this. But it is a fun tradition many around the world celebrate around this time of year - and some of them don’t even get arrested for it! Police officers are known to cut “noggers” some slack, oftentimes literally as they have to slacken the nooses tied around a nogger’s genitals. But, I fear I’ve said too much already.

Remembering those we lost in the War On Christmas

May we never forget the loved ones who died during the Battle of Rockefeller Center, when the blood of pro-christmas forces was spilled in their valiant defense of the world’s most holy of Christmas symbols. I lost two brothers to candy candy shrapnel grenades and my best friend was bludgeoned by a Yule Log. Cruse these blasted bons spurs for holding me back from slaying some pro-Holiday forces! So, this Christmas day, lay a wreath on the grave of the those who made the ultimate sacrifice so the rest of us don’t have to acknowledge the faiths and traditions of others.