Modern Life

Failure Camp
Release Your Child’s Inner Loser

By Max Rankin

When your children are young, you have lofty aspirations for them. You envision them becoming life-saving doctors, world-renowned scientists and even national leaders. By the time they’re teenagers, however, you just hope they don’t end up in a maximum-security prison.

So while it’s fine to encourage your offspring to work hard and become successful, you also have to prepare them for reality. And the harsh reality is that there are a lot more failures than successes, and a lot more losers than winners.

That’s why you should consider sending your children to the Bonehead Youth Ranch. The Ranch, aka Failure Camp, has a highly trained staff who will transform your child from a depressed, dysfunctional loser to a happy, well-adjusted loser.

We will give your kids the skills and confidence they need to muddle through life, exploring such topics as:

1. Excuses and Sob Stories. It’s easy to fail, but to be a successful failure, your child will need to be prepared with a host of heart-wrenching excuses.
2. Incompetence as an Asset. One of our mottos at the Ranch is, “If you screw up everything you do, people will stop asking you to do anything at all.”
3. The Art of Mooching. There’s a pretty good chance that your kids will end up sponging off of friends and relatives. We’ll teach them how to do so in a way that doesn’t involve alienation and restraining orders.

So parents, save yourself years of frustration and disappointment and start preparing your kids to be failures today. Enroll them at the Bonehead Youth Ranch, where we believe that deep inside every child beats the heart of a total loser.

  “To Tat Or Not To Tat”
 Suburban Man Tries To Recapture His Cool

By Max Rankin

If you haven’t been to a health club recently, you’re missing quite a show. For one thing, a lot of the younger women are wearing skin-tight micro-shorts. Unfortunately, so are some of the older men so it’s a mixed bag, if you get my drift.

However, the real show is the dazzling array of skin art, or “tats” as the cool people say. These tats range from the small and tasteful to―ten years from now―“What the hell was I thinking?”

Then one fateful day, I asked myself, “Am I cool enough for a tattoo? In fact, am I cool at all?”

I used to be cool, y’know… well, at least semi-cool. In high school I sat one table away from the cool table. In college I could drink my weight in beer on a long weekend. And at Spring Break I was on the rules committee for the Wet T-Shirt Contests.

So what happened? A wife, two kids and a life insurance policy that makes me worth more dead than alive―a very sobering realization for a man.  Still, I believe that somewhere inside is a vestige of “cool dude.” And maybe all he needs is a little skin art to come bursting forth.

So I headed for the web to do some tattoo research, and I decided to create a spreadsheet to zero in on the perfect tat to recapture my coolness. As I was working on it, my wife happened by and asked what I was up to.

When I explained it to her, she said, “Listen, hon, if you need a spreadsheet to decide which tat you’re cool enough for, then you’re not.”

So what did I learn from all this? Two things:

1. Once you transition from cool dude to responsible adult, you can’t go back.
2.  I need looser gym shorts.

  Recalculate This!
 A GPS Relationship Goes Terribly Wrong

By Wesley Michelson

They say you never forget your first time with a GPS. I know I certainly haven’t. At this point you’re probably thinking, “Dude, this sounds a little creepy.” But before you bail, let me ask you a few questions…

Is it creepy that, whenever I told her where I wanted to go, she’d tell me exactly how to get there, no questions asked? I think not.

Is it creepy that my loins were enflamed whenever she said “recalculating” in her sultry, seductive voice? Maybe a little.

Is it creepy that sometimes I like to wear lacy lingerie and prance around the… Okay, that’s creepy.

Still, for about six months, things were great between us. Then one day it all began to change. Her directional voice became cold and distant, and her “recalculating” message had a distinct edge to it.

I figured that the puppy love stage had ended, and we would move on to a deeper relationship. But it wasn’t to be. As time passed, her voice became snippier and her attitude surlier.

Hurt and angry, I began to strike back. I would intentionally make wrong turns faster than she could recalculate. In addition, I would input faraway destinations such as Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Ketchikan, Alaska, only to cancel them after she’d mapped out the routes.

She retaliated by giving me wrong directions and getting me hopelessly lost. Then, one cold, rainy night, she directed me to a very dangerous part of town and stopped communicating. “My God,” I thought, “she’s trying to get me killed!” Luckily, I was able to find my way to safety, but it was the final nail in the coffin.

When I got home, I yanked her out of the car, tossed her in a box, and posted her on eBay with the following description: “For sale. Female GPS with evil intentions and homicidal streak. Make offer.” Within an hour, I received a bid from a woman who said it sounded like the perfect gift for her husband.

So I sealed up the box and brought the GPS to the post office. As I watched the postal worker put her on the conveyor belt and disappear from my life, there was a tug at my heartstrings and a tear in my eye. “Sorry we couldn’t make it work, sweetheart,” I said, “but we were just going in different directions.”