Ben Johnson
Trying to Make Friends Over Blind Text Messages
In what I’m sure is a stupid move, I agreed to join this service. The idea of it is they set you up with a text-message pen pal, but really they probably just want to sell your cell phone number to whoever wants it. So I’m looking forward to getting...
TXTPAL Has My Identity Now
In what I’m sure is a stupid move, I agreed to join TXTPALS. The idea of it is they set you up with a text-message pen pal, but really they probably just want to sell your cell phone number to whoever wants it. So I’m looking forward to getting text...
Why Non-Alcoholic Beer Is the Best Kind
I haven’t had any alcohol for a year. I’m not sure I can recommend sobriety for everybody, but it did OK things for me. I don’t blame my problems on other people as much. I can finish a higher percentage of the things I start. If I don’t like something...
My New Favorite Website on the Internet About the Internet
There is a Tumblr somebody set up for capturing ignorant Twitter responses to the announcement of this year’s Coachella lineup’s headliner: the Stone Roses. They are professions of ignorance. That is an objective fact. These people don’t know who the...
Dear Kelly McClure, My Name Is Penis, I'm Not New Here
So yesterday I (Kelly McClure) wrote a thing about how guys piss on restroom floors because they don't know how to work their dicks and it made a lot of people upset in some way or another. One random guy wrote me a five paragraph email about it, and...
Television’s Last President
Before we finally give up the ghost on the idea of a group of people being bound together by anything like a “nation,” our collective unconscious is firing its neurons at a decelerating pace. The internet is currently teaching us that our mass culture...
So Far Inside We’re Already Dead
The other night I hosted a comedy show booked last minute from a roaming cell phone in the passenger seat of a 1996 Honda Accord with Maryland plates. The venue was an abandoned Polish bar rumored to have previously been used by human traffickers in an...
That's One Way to Get A(head)
For every zany local news story there’s an unreported human side. For example: when 18 improperly documented human heads arrived at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago in December, packed into blue coolers that had been a part of the cargo of a...
Science Fiction Is Sapping My Will to Live
So not too long ago I decided to get really into science fiction books because I hate leaving the house because there’s people out there, and they scare me, and it’s January in Chicago where I live. I cannot recommend enough that you avoid this entire...
I Am Brimming With Enthusiasm!!!!!
Thanks so much!!!! Your prompt response is appreciated!!!! I am glad you responded so quickly!! I’m sure this year’s event will be even better than last year’s!!!!!! I hope you’re ready for some PIZZA and KARAOKE!!! I know you are!! LOLOLOL!!!!!!
We Are Drunken Idiot Morons and We Demand to Be Heard
Controversy is brewing on the internet because Nina Metz of the Chicago Tribune successfully trolled the entire universe by publishing a stupid, rambling diatribe about how properly heckling a stand-up comedy show makes the show more memorable and fun...
Robert Griffin III, Teenaged Runaway
Robert Griffin III is a suburban teenage girl wandering around the city at dusk with no bra. He is too naïve to be scared. He believes in himself too much. This can’t end well, The gap in knowledge is too great. The lessons won’t stick if they come any...