TV Guide, 2007

The other day I heard a loud bang on my front door and I quickly ran over to see what it was. There, lying on the ground and surrounded by a thick mist, I spied a T.V. Guide. I picked it up, but it was so hot I nearly dropped it again. This seemed a little strange, because I don't subscribe to T.V. Guide. Then I came to realize, this was no ordinary T.V. Guide..........IT HAD A COUPON FOR A FREE SWANSON TV DINNER!!! Oh, and it was from the future.....

“T.V .Guide, 2007”

By

Jerry Cumberledge

Program Listings for Tuesday February 4th, 2007:

9:00 ............3........ ...The Oval Office—Reality The President goes for a jog, gets a haircut and allows cameras into his top secret homeland security briefing.

10:30 ........PBS......... Sesame Street, Cleveland—Reality A recovering heroin addict from the nearby methadone clinic shows up on Sesame Street.

11:00 .........10 ...........Friends—Reality Series Premiere; Show documents the lives of three Quakers in a rural town in Pennsylvania.

12:00......... 3 ............A Cat’s Life—Reality Smuckers the kitten wakes up, uses the litterbox, eats breakfast, and goes back to sleep.

1:00......... LIF...........Lesbian Thespian—Reality Host Rosie O’Donnell faces her toughest lesbian actress make-over yet: changing a hard-core high school lesbian into the perfect Juliet for her school play, kissing Romeo included.

1:30........TWC .........Weather Patterns—Reality Televises real weather conditions in major U.S. cities.

2:00 ..........6 .............Fraud for Financing—Reality The Burn Team helps a young couple torch their home for the insurance money.

2:30........TLC............Good Buy for the Jew Guy—Reality David gets an excellent deal on auto parts and Joseph haggles down the price of a head of lettuce at the grocery store.

3:00........FOX............Man vs Beast 16—Reality Men and animals compete again in this latest installment of the popular show. A team of four midgets attempts to wrestle a bear to the ground, a grossly obese man tries to consume more watermelon than an infant elephant, and a lactating mother tries to out-milk a fully mature cow.

4:00 ......MTV ............The Real World: Fargo—Reality The teens set out to find the Fargo night life and end up lost and frightened in a cornfield. Mike and Miranda have a heated argument in their dark bedroom, and Chad has a major crisis when his cockeyed baseball cap falls off of his head and he has to once again position the brim at a perfect 136 angle to his brow.

4:30..........6................Jeopardy: Community College Tournament—Reality Community college students face daunting new categories such as basket weaving, astronomy, and sociology.

5:00.......FOX..............Fear Factor: Extreme—Reality The contestants endure lying in a coffin filled with scorpions and radioactive black mambas, while simultaneously being injected with live anthrax cultures.

6:00.........3.................American Divorce—Reality John and Sarah Lenux decide to break their wedding vows amidst protests from their children. The proceedings get hairy when the legality of the prenuptial agreement comes into question.

7:00.........6.................Gladiators—Reality Inmates from Muncy State Correctional Facility are armed with rudimentary weapons and must battle carnivorous animals to-the-death.

8:00........10................Reality Teepee—Reality Running crow gets angry when Flying Cougar throws a tomahawk through the wickiup, and Eating Bear loses his quipu in the sacred kiva.

8:30.......HBO.............Sex in the City—Reality Pigeons, cockroaches and rats having relations.

9:00..........3...............Hard-Knock Life—Reality The transients try to steal a car.

9:30.........10..............The Viewing Public—Reality Series Premiere; The first reality shows to broadcast reactions of TV viewers to other reality shows.

10:00.......10..............Survivor: Nuclear Winter Edition—Reality The United States and Russia attack each other with nuclear warheads; two tribes, Little Boy and Fat Man, try to survive the post-apocalyptic carnage.


11:00 .......3...............No scheduled programming
12:00........6...............No scheduled programming
1:00........10...............No scheduled programming
2:00.......FOX.............No scheduled programming
3:00.......MTV............No scheduled programming
4:00.......CNN............No scheduled programming
5:00.......TWC...........No scheduled programming

The House Ten

It's HOT! And not just the burner that I set my hand down on a second ago. The temperature is, too. Heat wave after heat wave has plagued my hometown this summer. And what is the best way to cool down, aside from sitting in a meat locker? Why, going to the pool is, of course!

Top Ten Reasons Why To Go To the Public Swimming Pool:

10. You've found that chlorine does help with that rash of yours.
9. You like your life being guarded by a teenager getting paid minimum wage.
8. To test your new "Swim-Ready" hairpiece.
7. You've finally gotten over your irrational fear of childrens' arm floaties.
6. Cannonballs into your jacuzzi are less than impressive.
5. It's the one place where you can really show off your well-groomed backhair.
4. You like dropping change and pretending it's "lost pirate booty".
3. You're the inventor of Marco Polo and you want royalties, dammit!
2. They don't allow horseplay....and you hate horseplay.
1. The high dive has something to do with marijuana, right?

Where I've been....

It's been a while, but I'm finally going to update The Laughway House! You might have been thinking to yourself, why hasn't there been anything new at The Laughway House recently? Well, there are a few reasons for this. What? You expect me to tell you??? I barely even know you!!! Ok, if you insist. I was away in, umm, Mexico, ummm helping with, ummm, discovering, ummm, oil deposits in (wait do they have oil deposits in Mexico?). Ok you got me. I just have been a little late on the new House Ten. But since it's taken me so long to come up with a new list, I'll at least make it worth you're while. It's gonna be good!

The House Ten

Spring is upon us. Flowers are blooming, birds are singing and grass is growing. This week's list: The Top Ten Signs You Have to Mow Your Lawn:

10. It's more overgrown than Don King's hair.
9. Your neighbors are confusing dandelions in your yard with sunflowers.
8. A documentary crew arrives at your door, ready to film a show titled "Life on the Savanna."
7. You can only see your swimming pool from a second story window.
6. Your kids' jungle gym is actually surrounded by a jungle.
5. Bluegrass singers have dedicated your yard as the official symbol of their genre.
4. The grass is controlling the sprinklers now.
3. Crop circles have mysteriously begun forming in backyard.
2. You've hired a wilderness guide to lead you from your backdoor to your garage.
1. The EPA has declared your yard a "tick refuge."

It's About Time

It’s About Time

By Jerry Cumberledge

It has come to my attention that many of the people I know find themselves coming up short on free-time. Once they have finished all of the menial tasks and drudgery of their day, they have little time left for the activities that they truly enjoy. In light of this, I have come up with a plan to help them (and anyone else who chooses to follow my regimen) to decrease the wasted time that they spend doing chores and work, and to increase their free time.
The first step is to figure out exactly how much free-time you currently have in a typical day. You can then use that amount of free-time to set an appropriate goal for the future. To find out how much free-time you have, simply plug in your own personal values into the following equation:
Free-Time in hours per day = 24 hours – time sleeping – time eating – time defecating – time procreating (or if partnerless, time spent thinking about sex) x Pi/ Plank’s constant.
Note: If you are in law school, subtract 8 hours from “Free-time” value. If you live in the state of Iowa, add 3 hours to “Free-time” value. If you are Paris Hilton, add 10.5 hours to “Free-time” value.
Most people, after applying my formula to their daily schedule are depressed to find out that they have only 7 minutes and 43 seconds left at the end of the day to do what they want to do. That’s where my time-saving regimen comes in.
I have devised some easy time-saving tips that you can begin applying to your life immediately. Once you start using them, you’ll have enough time to sit down and watch the free-time start rolling in.
Time Saving Tip #1: Delegate
There are so many things in our daily routine that we can delegate to others. For instance, I’ve delegated washing my car to my three-year old niece, Susan. She’s so cute. I’ve also delegated my girlfriend to clean the kitchen and bathroom, replace light fixtures, clean my aquarium, make dinner, make lunch, make me those really good finger sandwiches that she is so good at, mow the yard, take out the trash, weather-proof the house, mail packages for me, knit, and any welding that we made need to do in the future. She’s really been skirting her responsibilities, though, and I haven’t seen her for three weeks. Honey, if you’re reading this, I still love you and I’m not mad at you even though you didn’t pave the driveway like I asked you to. Please come home.
Also, I’ve delegated my Uncle Lou to sleep for me on Tuesday nights. I need the time, he likes to sleep. It’s a win-win situation.
Time Saving Tip #2: Use time spent at work productively.
While at your job make sure to effectively use your time. This is a good time to pay bills, read the newspaper, eat, call family members who you don’t like to talk to, clip fingernails/toenails, or design that new breakfast nook that the wife’s been wanting.
Time Saving Tip #3: Take amphetamines.
I can’t stress this tip enough. Amphetamines are like nature’s coupons that are redeemable for at least half an hour of free time each day. They help you do just about everything faster, from walking the dog to doing the laundry to tutoring the neighborhood children on the horrors of drug abuse.
Time Saving Tip #4: Look only right and left at intersections before proceeding.
In schools these days, children are being taught to look left, then right, then left again before crossing the street. That is nonsense. Looking left only once, then right once, saves 0.4 seconds each time. Over the course of the day that could add up to over 8 seconds of free time if you live in a metropolitan area. That’s free time being wasted!
Time Saving Tip #5: Harness the power of compounding.
Saving a small amount of time now means that in the future, when you are ready to retire, you’ll have plenty of time to fall back on.
Time Saving Tip #6: Run.
Now by run, I don’t mean go for a jog every now and then. I mean run. All the time. Don’t ever walk. Running is at least twice as fast as walking and you will get to your destinations twice as fast as you normally would. You’re also killing two birds with one stone, because now you can remove exercise from your daily to-do-list. This could mean big time savings. If you get really good at it, you could do what I do, and run and eat at the same time.
Time Saving Tip #7: Don’t file your federal income taxes.
This one is a no-brainer. Federal income taxes take way to much time to fill out. Have you ever tried to? In the time you take to fill out all of those little boxes you could have gone skiing in the Alps or cultivated your own spice garden.
Some of you “law abiding citizens” might be thinking to yourself won’t the IRS come after me, disrobe me, spray me with a fire hose, and lock me in a federal penitentiary for the rest of my life here on planet Earth if I don’t pay my taxes?
I say to you DON”T WORRY! Have no fear, my friends! If you are already following Time Saving Tip #6 you should be running anyway, and let me tell you, those guys at the IRS are fat, last old men. Trust me. I visited the IRS headquarters on a field trip when I was in the third grade and I have a terrific memory for things like that. The only thing those guys will be running to is a local donut shop, so if you stay out of them, you should be fine. Hey, I didn’t say freeing up time wouldn’t mean some sacrifices.

The House Ten

This is the first of my weekly top ten lists that I'm calling The House Ten . This weeks title:
The Top Ten Reasons I Love Scotch Tape .

10. It's duct tape's little brother.
9. Tastes great on rye.
8. It never married Camilla Parker Bowles.
7. It disappears when used, just like all of my girlfriends did.
6. It's not designed by Isaac Mizrahi.
5. It's on a roll.
4. Recently voted state adhesive strip of Wyoming.
3. It's transparent, just like all your lies.
2. It's dressed in plaid.
1. It's actually made with scotch.

Gas Prices

This is something I wrote that I think most of us can relate to right now, with the price of gas skyrocketing all across the country. Let me know what you think about the gas prices and the story.

"Pipeline Dreams"
by
Jerry Cumberledge
A few months ago I started taking a stress management class. For people living in Philadelphia like me, or any other large city, I’m sure this comes as no surprise, what with all the noise and people and the smell and the traffic and the bums and the roadwork and the cranes and the stupid, stupid pigeons. God I hate the pigeons.
As I was driving home from this course last Tuesday night, I realized that I was running low on fuel, so I pulled into a Mobil gas station that I happened to pass. I was in New Jersey (or the Fifth Circle of Hell, whichever you prefer) at the time, and you can’t pump your own gas there - you have to get it pumped by a surly attendant. I pulled my ‘93 Grand Am into the station, stopped by the pump, and rolled down my window to talk to the
attendant, who was walking towards my car.
"Hi," I said, smiling. The attendant, a tall, skinny, unshaven Indian man wearing a nametag that said Cheveme, gave me a hearty blank stare. "So how much is unleaded per gallon?" I asked.
"Can’t you read?" Cheveme said, pointing to the sign that displayed the prices and I scanned it for unleaded. $2.22 per gallon! I was shocked and appalled. Shocked because the price had actually come down two cents, appalled because it was still above $2.00.
"Do you have anything cheaper than unleaded? I’d settle even for leaded by now," I joked. Or at least tried to. Cheveme the attendant gave me another one of his now trademark stares. "Ummm.....could you just fill up the tank with unleaded?" I asked. He walked away and I heard him mumble douschbag or asshole under under his breath. I’m not sure which one.
$2.22 a gallon I contemplated as the attendant began to fill up the tank. I could remember back in 2001, when the price was less than a dollar per gallon. Unbeknownst to me at that time, in a few short years the price for gasoline would skyrocket, rising so quickly that the owners of service stations couldn’t change the prices on their signs fast enough. I guess the world was just an awful place, and it would always be terrible: Cher would keep singing, Texans would keep reproducing and the price of gas would keep rising.
No! I couldn’t think like that. That was self-destructive negative projecting. I had to think of this in a positive light, put a positive spin on the situation. What had my teacher said earlier? Even a nuclear mushroom cloud had a silver lining. I tried to think up some way, one single way that rising gas prices could be good, but I couldn’t. All this inflation was doing was robbing me of money that I could spend in another more enjoyable way, like Cheetos or possibly anime. Maybe both.
I eventually gave up on it, and as I sat in the car I looked around at my surroundings. My eyes came across a sign that said Free Super Gulp With Every Fill Up! So if I pay $21.00 to fill up my gas tank, they’ll give me a free soda that cost them $0.04! The audacity! I felt my heart begin to pound, my blood vessels constrict, and my hands begin to tremble. I started to breath faster. I spend $21.00 on a tank of gas, and all they can do to say thank you is give me a free soft drink! I want at least a Slim Jim! Maybe a hotdog. And they call it free!
I began to take soothing, deep breaths, like I had practiced in class earlier that evening. Breath in two....three..... four .... breath out..... two three..... four..... breath in ....... two ..... three ..... four.... breath out two ....... three ..... four ..... What was that smell? ...... two ...... three ....... four ........ It was gasoline fumes you idiot ........ two ....three .... four ...... Should I stop breathing? ......two..... three ..... four ...... In class we never talked about how to deal with fumes ......... two ...... three ...... four ..... Feeling .... a ....little .... dizzy ...... two ...... three....
I didn’t make it to four before I began to lose my stream of consciousness. My body began to go numb and I lost control of it. I started to sway to the left and right. I fell forward and my head hit the steering wheel with a thwack! The last thought I had was I hope I didn’t die in my car, in this gas station. I’m catholic and I was pretty sure Cheveme wasn’t qualified to perform my last rights. Then everything went black.
While I was in my gasoline induced coma, I began to have some sort of dream or vision. A torrent of images poured through my brain. I saw gas stations increasing prices, higher and higher. The patrons at the pumps became angrier with each price jump. Eventually, the cost became too high I guess, because people stopped buying gasoline altogether and refrained from using automobiles. The stations themselves ran into disrepair and closed. Americans had essentially given the nations of OPEC an economic middle finger.
Flashes of this gasless, carless America exploded in my mind. The first thing I noticed was that the environment was much healthier. The air was crisp and clean. Smog did not exist. The acid rain that flowed from the sky was now markedly less acidic, and only killed the weakest plants, pansies mostly. The sky even seemed a little bluer: less cyan more azure. There were no more incidents like the Valdez oil spill, since there was no need to import foreign crude that people weren’t going to buy. Coastal animals thrived. Pictures in newspapers and magazines no longer had pictures of seals, seagulls and blue-footed boobies covered in oil being cleaned by volunteers. They could now devote their space to other more bankable illustrations, like photos of womens’ boobies covered in oil.
Other animals also flourished. Opossums, deer, skunks, moles, voles - all could cross the street without getting mauled by automobiles and flattened. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he no longer had to fear a well-to-do pharmaceutical businessman driving 20 miles-per-hour over the speed limit in his new Jaguar S-Type and running his ass over. Roadkill Café shirts all but disappeared.
Road rage levels were at an all-time low. There were a few cases reported every now and again, mostly involving near-collisions between the elderly in crosswalks and children with Radio Flyers.
Rollerbladers, bikers and skaters were thrilled there were now no cars on the road, and they took to the streets in droves. Exercise using these forms of transportation increased dramatically, and America was no longer the fattest nation. That dubious honor now went to the borscht loving nation of The Ukraine. Street-hockey players found themselves able to play an entire three periods without a single interruption from traffic.
Guys who didn’t own fast cars were suddenly promoted in the social world. Girls who normally would have dated only guys called Bruiser who owned mustangs or men named Brock who owned a BMW, now found themselves dating guys named Stew who owned only an unfinished model of a Pinto sitting in a box in their basements. Teen pregnancies showed sharp declines. Americans really found it amazing how many children used to be conceived in the backs of Subarus. Sex-deprived teenagers became depressed, but no one cared. Who pays any serious attention to teenagers problems and emotions?
Furthermore, there was no trucking without diesel, and large department stores and supermarkets which relied on this form of transportation went bankrupt. As a consequence people had to learn how to be self-sufficient and live off the fat of the land. Native Americans left behind their reservations, alcoholism and semi-lucrative casinos and once again taught Americans how to hunt, fish, grow vegetables, make clothing from the hides of animals and the age-old skill of craps. Americans existed now in perfect balance with nature. It was a beautiful sight, and I wept openly.
I came back to the real world to the sound of myself crying and the gas attendant yelling "Hey, pussy! You alright?" I wiped away my tears and got my bearings. I looked at the attendant and asked him how much it would be, while I reached for my wallet. "Nineteen dollars and seventy-four cents," he growled.
I was in a much better mood now that I had had this vision. I’ve never had a dream with boobies in it that put me in a bad mood, and this was no exception. The world would be a better place once gasoline prices increased enough, I thought. I happily handed the attendant a twenty and told him to keep the change.
"Don’t I get a free Super Gulp with this fill-up?" I asked Cheveme before I left.
Looking at the twenty he said, "That doesn’t start until next Thursday, dickwipe."
I rolled my window up, turned the ignition, put my car in drive and angrily screeched out of the service station. I couldn’t wait for the price of gasoline to go up even more.

The Start

Hi everyone and welcome to The Laughway House! This site is going to be dedicated to making people laugh, smile, or at the least smirk. I'm going to start by posting some of my own humorous pieces of writing in the next few days, so make sure to check them out and let me know what you think.