MonkeyBicycle

So! Here is a thing I had in the new issue of Monkeybicycle. It's their dirty humor issue, and there are so many funny things in it, especially a very funny contribution by the famous famous guy Patton Oswalt.

So, enjoy mine below, and consider picking up a copy. Independent press thanks you!

Timmy Fenmore, Gifted Third Grader, Answers Your Questions About Sex

by Wendy Molyneux

Dear Timmy,

When I met my wife she was a real firecracker in the sack, but now that we’ve been married for three years, she just rolls over at night and goes right to sleep. Any suggestions as to how I could get her in the mood?

Thanks,
R. R.

Dear R.R.,

I never tried setting off a firecracker in a sack before, but one time I stole a firecracker from my dad’s shed. My friend Laura and I went down by the creek and lit it. My mom found out and said that when my dad got back from his business trip I would be in trouble. But then my dad never came home from his business trip because he met a nice Phillipina lady in Los Angeles. I don’t know if you know this, but the primary exports of the Philippines are electronic components and apparel, but according to my mom it’s also crawling with whores. Anyway, I don’t know how you can get your wife in a mood. Low serotonin levels in the brain can alter moods for the worse. So you could try to expose her to stimuli that would raise her serotonin levels, like ice cream or reruns of Farscape. I used to be able to stay up and watch that at nine, but now Mom sends me to my room so she can have a special grown-up soda. My favorite soda is Mountain Dew Code Red, but I can only have one glass or I’ll never get to sleep.

Stay Cool,
Timmy

* * *

Dear Timmy,

I am a thirty-five year old woman with a steady boyfriend. But lately I’ve found myself attracted to other women, and even made out with a female co-worker at the office Christmas party. I love my boyfriend and I don’t think I’m a lesbian, but is there anything wrong with this kind of experimentation?

Confused,
L.T.

Dear L.T.,

I love experiments, and experimentation is how we find out about the world and come up with our most basic scientific principles. Now that dad is gone, my mom said I could use his shed as my own laboratory, as long as I don’t use any fire or corrosive chemicals. I found some magazines hidden behind a board in there that had a lot of pictures of ladies kissing and hugging each other. If you want to kiss another lady, it seems okay, especially if you are both nurses or lonely farm-girls. According to the magazines, sometimes girls just can’t help it, especially if there are no men around. I guess now that my dad is gone my mom might start kissing other ladies. I just hope that she doesn’t start kissing Mrs. Benkelman from next door. She smells like onions and cats, and if my model airplane accidentally lands in her yard, I won’t get it back.

Sincerely,
Timmy

* * *

Dear Timmy,

I’m an old fashioned guy with old-fashioned values. I married my wife because I knew she’d be happy staying home with the kids and making me a hot meal every night. But then she took a class at the Learning Annex about female sexuality, and now she wants us to try all kinds of fancy stuff in bed. I don’t know why things just can’t be the way they used to be. Is there any way to talk her out of this crazy business?

Desperate,
B.G.

Dear B.G.,

Have you ever heard of entropy? Entropy is the principle that says that any isolated system will tend toward disorder and chaos. Any attempt to control the universe and keep it the way it is will be fruitless in the face of this tendency. But sometimes the best things happen because of accidents, like when my mom fell asleep on the front lawn after her girls night out and when I was waking her up I found a snapping turtle in the grass. Or like when Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin.

Besides, would it kill you to eat your wife’s pussy once in a while?

All the Best,
Timmy

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Censorship

So, it must have been like two years ago that I submitted a comedy piece to the dirty humor issue of Monkeybicycle, and I always wondered what happened to the issue.

Well, a lot.

Read below, and learn a little bit about how an issue of a literary magazine is deemed too obscene to even be printed.

From the editor, Eric Spitznagel:

Hello, my disturbingly talented and oh-so-patient contributor.

Doesn't it seem like just yesterday that I was writing to you and announcing that the Monkeybicycle Dirty Comedy Issue, which includes your brilliant and spit-coffee-onto-my-computer-screen hilarious story, was getting published? Well, that was almost six months ago. What, you must reasonably be wondering, is the meaning of this?

Funny story. It turns out we've created something that, according to a few very reliable sources, is unprintable.

That's right, un-print-able.

In my last report, I told you that the issue was being published by Dzanc Books. That much remains true. However, when we sent the issue to a printer, it was promptly returned to us. Did our check bounce? Not at all. Did we deliver it in an improper format? Nope. The issue was rejected because the printer considered the content too obscene.


Take a moment and let that really sink in.

The printer, who is the publishing equivalent of a xerox machine, refused to accept money from us because they found our little collection of naughty humor to be morally objectionable. Apparently they believed that simply providing the ink to reproduce your words, and then putting it on paper and attaching everything with staples, would lead to their eternal damnation in a Judeo-Christian hell.

"Huh, that's weird," we thought. "Well, no cause for alarm. We'll just send it to another printer." Which we did. But again, it was rejected for content. So we tried another printer, and and another, and another. Every time, they said, "Thanks but no thanks." Actually, they weren't always so gracious. Remember that scene in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (the 1978 version) when Veronica Cartwright runs over to Donald Sutherland, thinking he hasn't been infected yet, and he points a yellow finger at her and lets out a ululating cry, alerting the other pod-people? That's kinda what it was like.

We eventually figured out what was happening. In addition to your fine stories, the dirty comedy issue also includes several cartoons. One of these cartoons was created by the inimitable Jeffrey Brown. I'm not going to get into specifics about exactly what transpires within the panels of Mr. Brown's offering, whose title is "Not Tonight", but I will say this: there's a LOT of menstrual blood. And perhaps unwisely, Monkeybicycle Ubermensch Steven Seighman and I decided to publish this cartoon in color. Okay, not
full-color, but featuring at least one notable, biologically accurate color.

Long story short, the printer's employees inevitably noticed this cartoon - it's kinda hard to miss - which led them to investigate the rest of the book. And I'll admit, you don't really have to read the entire issue to stumble upon something that'll offend just about everyone. We've got stories about anal masturbation with cucumbers and Penthouse letters from Samuel Beckett and the bukkake cultural appropriation police and Sarah Silverman's poop being carried to heaven by the Baby Jesus. I'm honestly not surprised that these printers - which, I can only assume, are operated by god-fearing Americans who think Jim Belushi is a comedy genius - don't think very highly of us. I just didn't think they'd actually censor us.

Seriously, what exactly is going on? Is Monkeybicycle the funny version of Ulysses and it's the 1920s? I don't understand.

I do have some good news. We've finally found a printer with the cajones to work with us, and to the best of our knowledge, they're not connected to the mob. There is, however, a small catch. That Jeffrey Brown comic that caused us so much trouble in the past? It's being published in black-and-white. In other words, without a certain crimson color that might remind anybody of a lady's hoo-haw during an unmentionable time of the month.


I think we've learned something today, my friends. We've learned that the printing industry is afraid of menstruation.

If all goes as planned (i.e. the printer doesn't catch a whiff of menstrual blood in any of the other stories), you should have a copy of the long-awaited comedy issue in the next 2-3 weeks. Which of course, given our history of trying (and failing) to get this thing published, means early 2011.

See you in prison!

Hugs,

Eric Spitznagel
Your bewildered editor


CRAZY, right. And my suggestion is that every copy come with a red marker to restore the comic to its full menstrual glory!