This blog post is called "This Week in Satire" and we shall be exploring two pieces of satire created this week (or close enough to this week, anyway) by satirists. One case of satire is extraordinarily well done whilst the second case of satire is a hunk of bull crap.
You should read this article while listening to the "This Week In..." theme song linked to in the link above....because it is one of the greatest musical arrangements known to human man and it has no words so it won't bugger up your mental faculties while reading because it's just instrumental. It goes on for 8 minutes in that video linked above so it should last the whole read-through.
Case 1: Legends bein' Legends
I watched an episode of South Park the other week that I thought was a masterpiece in the satire genre. That show is in its 18th season now and it's still cranking out the good shit.
It was entitled "Gluten-Free Ebola" and it detailed the small town's hysteria in regards to a "gluten" epidemic.
It starts with that guidance counselor Mackey (mmmm-kay) bustin' into a teacher's lounge meeting and bragging about how his bitch ass is "gluten-free" to the dismay of the other teachers who can't stand hearing this piece of bitch talk about this bitch ass shit any more. Apparently, Mackey feels wonderful after cutting gluten out of his diet and urges others to do the same.
A few scenes down the line, a nice scientist man from the USDA politely explains what exactly gluten is and the statements within are correct. Gluten indeed is protein condensed from wheat, barley, or rye. That's it, that's all it is and it is not bad for you.
In almost Fortean nature...wait...I don't want to compare it to Charles Fort...no one knows who that is and it makes me look like some kind of hipster weirdo if I commend their style by comparing it to some writer from the fucking 1910s.
 |
| Oh No! His Dick flew off! |
In wake of everyone's dick flying off (I wonder what happened if a female South Parkian ate gluten), the USDA sends out guys in hazmat suits to quarantine and contain any instances of gluten. Sadly, many people weren't aware just how many common food items contain grains in them, such as bagels n' beer for example, and many South Park residents failed to remove all gluten from their residences. These unlucky fools were quarantined off at the local Papa John's pizza hut.
Fortunately, After Cartman is visited in a cottage-esque dreamscape by Aunt Jamima and given the solution to solve this terrible gluten problem...all becomes well again in South Park. Yay.
Key Quote - USDA official: "If it wasn't for us telling people what to eat...people'd be eating chairs and dirt!"
Ok so if you're wondering about gluten, the very bottom line with gluten is actually this:
1. If you have been diagnosed with coeliac's disease: Limit or cut out gluten.
2. If you HAVE NOT been diagnosed with coeliac's disease: Eat all the grains you want.
Before you go jump off the deep end you should know that less than 1% of North Americans have coeliac's disease. Yes, more people are allergic to peanuts than there are people allergic to grains...it is not very common at all. In fact, more than 99% of humans in North America can eat grains and enjoy them, yet if you'd ask a person who is on a gluten-free diet you'd think grains were some sort of damned helll-fire poison which is waiting to destroy your innards...and make your dick fly off.
This is literally what happens in society almost every week now, some made up problem is blown out of proportion and sends everyone into a mass hysteria. Thankfully, the legends over at the South Park studio know how to satire this shit properly and make us all laugh.
Case 2: Jabronies bein' Jabronies
Movin' along in our next segment of This Week in Satire, we shall be looking into a bit on the newly formed "Last Week Tonight" hosted by foreigner John Oliver. If you haven't seen this show yet, Oliver, takes subjects in the news and satires them....sometimes they are cute but sometimes they are the asinine babblings of a heavily inbred outlander.
In the wake of the release of that horrible Sociological Horror Film entitled "Fed Up" narrated by jabroni-extraordinaire Katie Couric, it looks like all of society is in a big ol' fashion hysteria over sugar. In one of Oliver's latest opinion pieces (likely written for him by a gang of pasty-faced nerds for him to read on air), this man from an obscure island nation in Europe which stills practices Monarchy as its official form of government, weighed in on the whole Sugar Hysteria.
Unlike a hilarious romp of masterful comedic story-telling that you'd find on South Park, it appears John Oliver's satirical style leaves much to be desired. Instead of laughing at society's unrational fear of sugar...Oliver totally embraces the hysteria and jumps on the bandwagon.
In the coup de gras of his diatribe, he orders all food manufacturers and retailers to put a "circus peanut" sticker on the food item's label for each 5 grams of sugar contained in the foodstuff. So, if the item has 15 grams of sugar...it would have 3 big circus peanuts on the label for all the retarded people to know that this item has sugar in it.
For example, if I were to sell an apple picked right off any old tree....
Average apple = 5 ounces or 100 grams
Sugar in average 100 gram apple = 10 grams
Every 5 grams apparently needs one stupid circus peanut on the label...So if I, theoretically, sold 1 apple to 1 human.....I'd need to stick a sticker with 2 circus peanuts onto the apple. Wow, what a good idea.
 |
| 1 Apple = 2 Circus Peanuts. Okay...... |
Is it polite to talk about common things like apples in this manner? Not really, but it's fun and it scares stupid people. Here watch this, I'm gonna write a paragraph in the style of your average organic food bozo about apples, you ready? Here goes...
"My heart, body, mind, and soul want only natural god-loved essences to touch it. That's why I avoid eating dangerous toxic chemicals. I have replaced all chemicals with non-threatening nourishment. I once bit into something which almost ruined my qi flow...
This monstrosity of an abomination contained the chemical compound C6H12O6! It held that series of letters and numbers that I can't even understand deep within it's skin and flesh. It even contained IRON! YES IRON! The same iron they use to make the bars of prison cells. It was this iron that I ate when I bit into this abomination of nourishment! I felt that iron in my body! I felt that heavy metal in my bones! I even felt it in my blood! I felt the iron...the same iron they use to imprison people...I felt that iron imprisoning my own blood. I quickly vomited, de-toxed myself with a wire-brush, and cast the vile C6H12O6 and heavy metals out of my body. Can you imagine eating a food that contains the same metal they use to hold humans confined in cells? What world is this that we live in where someone would eat food like this?
I implore all my HeartMind children...please STOP EATING APPLES!"
-(Me, Doing an Impression of a Silly Hippy)
You could scare people about anything using this method, you really could. The dumbest version of this shtick I can recall was done by another British clown named Oliver, that jabroni Jamie Oliver, who used to always do a bit on talk shows where he compared ice cream to human hair and beaver anuses. He'd make an ice-cream sundae and then he'd fill up another bowl with hair, shit, and anus...and he'd tell the talk show host..."hey, you know ice cream is hair n' anuses, right...here have some hair and anus!" and then the talk show host would wimper away and vow never to eat ice cream ever again.
If I was hosting a talk show and Jamie Oliver made me two bowls of ice cream...one which was real ice cream and one which was a bowl of human hair and anus...and he asked me if I'd still eat the ice cream...I'd throw the hair n' anus all over his stupid face and then gladly eat every single last bit of the delicious ice cream! Why? Because I'm smart enough to know the difference between a bowl of ice cream and a damned bowl of hair and anus!
As for the other British Oliver, that John Oliver, if he thinks I need two circus peanut stickers on an apple to let me know there's some fucking sugar in it before I bite into it...then there's another British guy who needs a face full of anus.
Bottom line with sugar...
1. If you have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes: Extremely limit intake of all forms of sugars.
2. If you HAVE NOT been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes: Enjoy eating sugar....but don't go crazy.
Unlike coeliac's disease that we mentioned above, type 2 diabetes is far more common and almost 10% of people have it in varying forms of severity. One out of every ten people has to extremely limit their intake of sugars (glucose, fructose, sucrose) and regularly test their blood to see if their blood sugar level went out of whack after that bowl of Lucky Charms they just ate. Still, 90% of people in North America do not have blood sugar levels that will fly off the charts if they eat even a large amount of sugars due to their pancreas' ability to create insulin to meld with the sugars and turn it into energy for their human bodies. One thing to still look out for is cavities though...anyone who goes buck overboard with their sugar and does not regularly brush their teeth may develop holes in their teeth. Also, when your insulin converts sugar to energy you'll get pretty pumped...so if you're a parent and you have kids who won't sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up then you might want to take the Pixie Stix out of their lunch.
Honestly, the worst thing about this attempt at satire is it comes almost a week before All Hallow's Ween, the fucking festival of fucking candy. This is not at all what we need right now, we do not need a big sugar hysteria. I guarantee this ill-advised bit ran by foreigner John Oliver's program will lead to more soccer-moms giving out fucking plastic bags full of carrots this coming Halla-Ween.
Back in my day, "Trick or Treat" used to mean "give me some fucking candy or me and my friends are gonna throw rotten eggs at your dumb house," yet kids these days are lackluster and lame...if they get a bag of broccoli from some Oprah-watcher's house they won't even do shit. I think it's up to the parents to teach their kids how to be cool and how to not suck. Parents of the modern age, you should take some rotten eggs with you this Hallow's Ween as you chaperone your spawns around the suburbs and if your kid gets a plastic baggie full of cauliflower then you best teach your sweaty kids how to egg a fucking house.
Gimme Candy or Fuck Off. Oh, and while we're at it...I got a bone to pick with that Sesame Street too...why is my man Cookie Monster eating a bunch of fucking vegetables now? He's the COOKIE MONSTER for crying out loud. He eats cookies for goodness sakes! That's the guy's whole prerogative, that's what the dude does, he eats cookies, that's his thing...if he's not eating cookies anymore then he's not The Cookie Monster.
Conclusion
A big thumbs up to the Legends who make South Park...that show knows how to run a satire down the middle for some big yards. No one can hold a candle to these guys when it comes to making fun of dumb shit. Still got great material even after 18 friggin' years, my word, this show blows me away sometimes. Props.
A big thumbs down to This Week Tonight and foreign gaijin John Oliver for delivering one of the most sucky things I've seen in a while. I think he's running out of ideas though. If you watch the other two guys who run this shtick, Johnny Stewart and Stevie Colbert, you'll notice that they just read weird news items (usually about dumb politicians) and then make a couple jokes about it, it's all bing-bam-boom, which is a more sustainable shtick. Oliver, with his show, always has to make these huge long-winded fusses about something, and there really just isn't something every week that you can make an over-the-top long-winded fuss about and eventually you'll simply run out of material for these bits.
Look at Doctor Oz, (who Oliver did a good job making fun of after Oz's brush with senate over his green coffee bullcrap, by the way)...Oz used to have quite a normal show in the fist season, which dealt with actual health issues, but after he ran out of material he devolved into being a total non-functional retarded asshole. I think the structure of Oliver's show will lead him down the same path...I think he's destined to wind up being a sack of crap with the way he's taking this show...I believe this recent sugar fuss is a shark-jump point that is unrecoverable from and it is sad because his show has only been on for like half a year...not even one season yet.
For the the crime of trying to ruin Halla-Ween, foreigner John Oliver should be successively suplexed in the modulation of 10....that means someone should suplex him over and over ten times in a row, yo.
(End Note: Too hard on John Oliver, his show's actually pretty good but that sugar bit was pretty crap)
(End Note II: Don't egg houses, I never actually egged a house, it was a joke)
(End Note III: John Oliver doesn't really deserve successive suplexes in modulo 10...he's a cool guy...plus he couldn't sustain SSM3 let alone SSM10. Jamie Oliver on the other hand...that guys needs successive suplexes in modulo 12)
No comments:
Post a Comment