Death Awaits Us All!

So today I was just hanging out
you know
contemplating my mortality
and I was like man
it sure would be cool if I could cheat death
I wonder if there are any stories about that.
It turns out there are
there are a ton of stories about that
but this one is better so here it is:

One time in Baghdad
like, before it was shitty
there was this merchant with loads of dough
(I am using dough here to refer to money
although maybe he traded in actual dough too
I dunno
I’m a storyteller, not an economist)
and one day he is feeling pretty chill
so he tells his servant to go out to the market and get some brews.
The servant goes to the market alright
but he comes back WOEFULLY UN-BREWED
plus he is flipping the hell out
he is like “BOSS
BOSS
I just saw DEATH.
Like, the actual personification of death was walking through the market.
I ran into her
and she turned and saw me
and she was like ‘WHOA!
YOU!’
which is NOT A THING YOU WANT TO HEAR DEATH SAY
in fact I am pretty sure there is NOTHING I WANT TO HEAR DEATH SAY
I would MUCH PREFER if death was too far away for me to hear.
Boss, please
lemme borrow one of your horses
I am gonna ride all night to Samarra
which is really far away
so death will totally not find me.”
Now, this is a pretty bullshitty story
plus the servant’s endgame here isn’t clear
like, is he gonna come back to Baghdad once he’s no longer worried about death?
is he gonna hole up in a little cottage with “NO DETH ALLOWED” scrawled on a sign out front?
but the merchant is an economist, not a sorcerer
he doesn’t think about these obvious problems.
Instead he’s just like “Sure dude, I have a ton of horses
borrow one, I don’t care.
You’ve got some saved up PTO anyway.
Technically this might even count as medical leave.
Go nuts.”
and the servant is like “WAY AHEAD OF YOU”
and then he grabs a horse and rides as fast as he can to Samarra.

So once his servant is gone
along with his fastest horse
it finally occurs to the merchant that maybe he should check out the servant’s story
so he goes down to the marketplace
just kind of searching for somebody who looks like death
and what do you know, death’s still hanging out in the marketplace
having a burger
and the merchant is like “yo, death
what the fuck
why’d you threaten my employee?”
and death is like “lol
what?
You mean that dude from earlier?
I didn’t threaten him
I was just surprised to see him
BECAUSE I’M SUPPOSED TO MEET UP WITH HIM TONIGHT IN SAMARRA.”
and the merchant is like “Oh DAAAAAAAAAMN.”
and then he never gets his horse back.

The moral of the story is don’t lend your horses to people
horses are valuable and people are idiots.

The end.

Where Was This Little Dutch Boy During Katrina?

A dutch person emailed me today
and it reminded me of this story
which is a dutch story
in the same way that “pocahontas” is a native american story
but it’s the first thing I think of when I hear “dutch”
other than “good weed”
and I am already so high I’m nearing government controlled air space
so THE LITTLE DUTCH BOY IT IS

okay so there’s this kid
he lives in a misspelled version of Harlem called Haarlem
and his parents are so neglectful
they send him off alone with a bunch of baked goods
which he is supposed to give to some random blind dude across town
he is like a blond male Little Red Riding Hood
except instead of grandma it’s a TOTAL FUCKING STRANGER
but anyway this kid makes it out of the blindhaus
totally molestation free
and starts wandering back towards his house
wasting time like little kids do
picking flowers and making airplane noises and pooping himself
when all of a sudden
he hears water
TRICKLING

now in order for you to understand how terrifying this noise is
I have to tell you something about Holland:
Holland is not a place where people are supposed to live
it is a place where fish are supposed to live
but a long time ago some people were like “hey
fuck fish”
and they forcibly removed all the water from a bunch of land
and then built there houses there
below sea level.
this is widely known as
“a bad idea”
because all that water is pretty pissed about being exiled
so it’s just hanging out on the outside of these huge dykes
(which is a really offensive term for walls that keep water out)
just WAITING for a hole to open up
so it can pour roll in and piss on everybody’s beds.
So when Little Blond Walking Hood hears water trickling
it’s like when you’re on a nearly abandoned spaceship by yourself
and you hear a faint dripping noise
and you immediately know that it is either your friend’s blood
or alien saliva

So this kid looks over at the dyke
and he sees a little trickle of water coming out of it
and since he doesn’t just carry caulk around with him
(and also dykes don’t really like caulk)
he does the only sensible thing for a young boy to do:
he shoves his finger in that hole.
This is a great plan
this kid is a fucking hero
except there is literally NOBODY ELSE OUT HERE
and it is rapidly getting dark
so this little numbnuts is stuck outside
in the dark
in the cold
with a city-destroying amount of water
gently lapping at his fingertip.
This is a form of torture
the CIA uses this on all their dutch prisoners to this day.
the boy’s mind is utterly destroyed
his muscles seize up
he begins to hallucinate from sleep deprivation
ironically, he becomes dehydrated

by the morning, there is nothing left of the boy’s once bright personality
he stands shackled to the uncaring dyke by his one numb finger
convulsing with cold, thirst and exhaustion
he longs for nothing more than the sweet release of death
at which point a priest walks by
ON TOP of the dyke
because apparently that’s also an option
and he sees the kid and he’s like WHOA WHAT THE FUCK
and the kid is like “k-k-k-kill me
or send people to fix this dyke i guess.”

So then they fix the dyke
the child is never the same again
the accolades of the town fall on deaf ears
his development is arrested
and he goes through his life a mere shell of a human
but at least his town is saved, right?

This boy’s eternal suffering
brings us to the moral of this story
which is that sometimes
to quote the Geto Boys
“you gotta let a hole be a hole.”

Thank you.

William Cole Buys a Lot of Poop

Today’s story was brought to my attention
by professional wastoid/Patreon backer Jay “Jagermeister” Drunkboy.
It is the story of one of history’s most pointless people.

This dude’s full name is William Horace De Vere Cole.
He lived around the turn of the 20th century
yes, the same century that ended with the internet and boy bands
began with a dude name William lying his way onto a war boat for no reason.

You see, unlike other famous Williams of British history
Cole doesn’t seem to have any ulterior motives for his wily bullshit
he’s born rich
he has no political aspirations
literally his sole purpose in life is to fuck with people.
Some people make sculptures
William Horace De Vere Cole impersonated foreign royalty.

Lemme backtrack a little:
back when Cole was at Cambridge
(because of course he went to Cambridge)
he heard that the Sultan of Zanzibar was in London
so he called up the heads of Cambridge
like “Yeah, I’m that Sultan
come pick me up at the train station.”
So he gets some of his bros together
and they all pretend to be the sultan and his entourage
which the heads of one of britain’s leading academic institution
TOTALLY BELIEVE.
THEY GIVE EVERYBODY A GRAND TOUR
A WOMAN TRIES TO TALK TO THE SULTAN IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE
AND WILLIAM TELLS HER SHE CAN ONLY TALK TO HIM IF SHE JOINS HIS HAREM.

So this prank goes amazingly
Cole goes on to get a degree in What the Fuck Ever
and then a few years later
he and his pals bluff their way onto a FUCKING BATTLESHIP
by pretending to be king of Abyssinia and his entourage.
They put on BLACKFACE for this
because apparently nobody in the british navy
has ever seen an actual black person
and they speak a language called Not Actually Swahili
which is really just badly pronounced greek and latin
mixed with the word “Bunga” whenever they don’t now what else to say
and oh yeah
one of the members of the royal entourage
is actually VIRGINIA FUCKING WOOLF
which makes me respect everybody involved so much fucking more.

It takes the Navy weeks to figure out what happened
and when they finally do they are too sad to press charges
so William Cole is free to keep being an asshole until he dies.
He takes advantage of this freedom.
One time he puts his gold watch in the pocket of the prime minister
and then is like “HEY MAN LET’S RACE”
and the prime minister is like “YEAAAAAAAAH”
and then he starts beating William
and they’re racing in the street
they are street-racing
so William just starts yelling STOP THIEF
and then the police arrest him and find William’s watch
which, okay, that’s a pretty good prank
but really the best part
is just that he convinced the prime minister to RACE HIM
ON FOOT.

He also does shit like dress up as a construction worker
and get all his friends to just dig a huge trench
in the middle of a crowded intersection
and then leave.
Again, the real prank here
is that he got his friends to waste a day digging a hole.
He also buys all the tickets for a play one time
and then passes them out to bald guys
so that when the lights come out
THEIR HEADS SPELL OUT A BAD WORD
THE PLAY IS RUINED.
None of the sources say what the bad word is
but one sourceclaims that the letter “i” in the word is dotted
so i’m pretty sure it’s “tits”
I’m pretty sure William Cole spent a bunch of money
to spell out “tits” in a theater with bald people.
He also throws a party one time
where every guest has the word “bottom” somewhere in their name
because he is like five years old.

William gets married somehow
and goes to Venice
and promptly ditches his fiancee
to buy a boatload of horse manure
literally a boatload, because everything travels by boat in venice
which is why people are so confused
when they wake up in the morning and find horse poop everywhere
because like
there are no horses.
Again, I think historians are missing the point of this prank
which really had nothing to do with horses
and everything to do with throwing poop everywhere.
Obviously his marriage does not last very long.

But William Cole’s best prank in my opinion
is also his simplest
what he would do is take a piece of string
dress up as a construction worker
and ask some random dude to hold one end of the string
then he would take the other end around a corner
find another dude
and ask him to hold that end of the string
and then he would leave them there
just holding some string
for however long it took them to figure shit out.
I like to imagine that in some forgotten corner of London
there is still a pair of ancient british gentlemen
gamely holding onto two ends of a piece of string
waiting for that construction worker to come back
and that my friends
is true immortality.

The moral of the story is an old one
oft echoed in the mythology of our time:
do unto others
whatever you think is really fucking funny.

The end.