Introduction to the Correctness Classics Version

Joseph Campbell tells us the hero’s journey is sacred, something that is indelibly stamped in to our consciousness. We love tales of great heroes overcoming odds, journeying miles away from home, and overcoming monstrous adversaries. Late in the 20th century, an anonymous epic poet captured the struggles of just such a hero, who struggles to win the love of fair Joanie, a hero who can undo bras and sweaters with the power of his mind, and who ultimately ends up “In Charge” But the decline of the hero is equally important. What would Arthurian legend be without Arthur’s final journey with the handmaidens? Robin Hood would feel incomplete without him shooting his final arrow to show his men where to lay him to rest. And so it must be with Scott Baoiwulf, who ultimately ends up 45…and single. No hero can be truly great without a great fall, and by those criteria, Scott Baiowulf is one of our greatest. He truly deserves his place in the literary canon, and to be shoved down the throats of bored high school English students for generations to come. In the tradition of boring the young and feckless, the Correctness proudly presents excerpts from the epic…Scott Baiowulf.

A Note about Pronunciation

The poem is written in Slightly Older English, and is part of an oral tradition* that dates back decades. As such the pronunciations may sound strange to the modern ear. For instance, the name “Joanie” is pronounced “Yownie”.In many translations it is actually spelled Ionie, a small inconsistency that has caused many a tedious term paper. Archaic pronunciations such as these are important when considering meter…the one syllable “Zapped” becomes the two syllable “Zapp-ED”

*(The oral tradition stems from people of decades past having no text capabilities, and therefore having to actually talk to people on their rotary phones.)

Scott Baiowulf

Part one- Haeppy Days

Sun’s Day, Moon’s Day, Haeppy Dayes
Tewes’s Day, Wednes Day, Haeppy Dayes
Thor’s Day, Freya’s Day, Haeppy Dayes
Saturn’s Day, Whaet a day
Gruven awl week with you
These days are Awl
Haeppy and Free
These days are Awl
Shaer them with me
These days are yurs and maen
Haeppy Days

Ael commanded an even greater hall
Be built upon the ashes of the last
So Feasting could continyew…
“Ya, Ya, Ya Ya,” ** Ael spake

* The catchphrase is very important in late 20th century televised prose. A good catchphrase meant your character was recurring. A Catchphrase and an applause break meant you got a spin off

** Nope, sorry Al. Lame catchphrase, no spin off for you

Editor’s note:It goes on like this for some time. Actually about 3 or 4 seasons longer than it should have. So we are skipping Scott Baiowulf’s famed Battle with Cunningham’s Mother, his battle against the word destroying Ted McGinley, and his tedious marriage to the Maid Joanie in the “Joanie Loves Chachi” stanzas to focus on a less oft discussed episode. Here our Hero faces a more egregious foe…unexposed breasts. Here is a sample of Episode three..called by scholars the “Zapped” Stanzas

With power newfound,Scott Baiowulf
of the Geeks wrestled
Struggling with his nubile foe
Striking with mighty foerce
He raises his hand

Trae as she maey,
To hide her tittae shaeme
Her breasts exposed
For Biaowulf’s gaen

Many scholars argue for different authorship here, with the Zapped Stanzas bearing many of the traits that are more common with early eighties story telling. The bullying tribe of Jocks who war with Biouwulfs tribe of Geeks, The Bloends of the Chaerleader tribe getting their breasts exposed against their will, and a triumphant hero, who, after defeating the jocks and seeing as many bloende breasts as he can, settling down with a nerdy brunette who looks amazing when her glasses come off. Even the grand finale at the Feast of Prom has all the hallmarks of the decade. This does argue for a shared authorship, with the work being embellished by subsequent tellings.

Finally, we take a look at the penultimate chapter in our Hero’s journey, when he was rightly given leadership of his own tribe, utterly in charge…with his steadfast sidekick from the Zapped Stanzas “Guey frome Ete is Enouff” at his side. But his restlessness, and subsequent fall remind us that it is the journey, not the rewards that make us great.

Chearles ine Chaerge
Of owr days and owr naets
Chearles in Chearge
Of our rawngs and our riaets

He Waenders now
in Memory still
how once was greate
a Rebublican shill

There were many who wanted Chearles in Chearge of them

Also Available in the Correctness Illustrated Classic’s Series

The Epic of Gilgerard
The classic tale of a warrior with a hot space colonel and annoying robot sidekicks

The Jilliad
A Seafaring Captain finds he has a daughter, who grows to learn about Love on the Lido deck

The Toddysey
It takes different strokes and a massive coke habit to break the hero of this epic tale

It’s Robbie Robtown’s Birthday today.

Totes! For Reals! Golly Wonkers!

If you are looking for a gift ideas, he lieks chocolate milk. And redheads.

If someone could stuff her in a cake and send her over to the Correctness head office right away it would be appreciated.

Or if looking for shopping ideas…you can check out this article here.

Happy Birthday RRT! The set of ankle wings I bought you are in the mail.

The above photo is of myself and my new son, Daniel Harrison Binns. On the whole, fatherhood suits me. He shares many of my facial features, yet somehow he manages to make them work for him on a level that I have yet to master. What I have found in my limited time in Daddy’s chair is that the miracle of birth is not actually in birth itself. Rather it lies in the fact that this small creature does everything in its power to make you hate it, screaming, defecating, depriving you of sleep and yet it has the complete opposite effect. In fact, you love it more. I found myself congratulating him on the sizable fart he let go right on top of my hand. I have a LOT of close friends, but the first one who farts on my hand gets a punch in the mouth. Yet, I was weirdly proud.

Now as a comedian recently turned father I feel I must make a solemn promise…NEVER to resort to easy diaper jokes to get cheap laughs. It is a vow I intend to keep…

Right after this…

Two days after birth, my son shat something from an H.P. Lovecraft novel. To look at it directly would cause madness. This tiny little man unleashed the Elder gods from his bowels, pitch black, devoid of hope. Wipe one section, and more would come creeping back.

Cthpooloo.

The Diaperwhich Horror.

It was like the Venom Symbiote, (only it had more charisma than Topher Grace. ZING POW!!!) The very same primordial ooze, I’m sure that caused many a dinosaur to become hopelessly mired and eventually fuel my Hyundai accent.

Shit was black and sticky, and full of unholy milk curds, and should I ever see that again I will consider trading him in for another model.

But on the whole, we are having a good time I think… his whistling lessons are going well…

And in an effort to establish a routine I have begun reading to him. I am aware his comprehension level is about the same as a sentient cloud that everybody always tries to make friends with on some of the more annoying Star Trek episodes. However he knows my voice, and it’s never too early…you never know what will stick with him.

That’s how I came to read “Goodnight Moon” for the first time….which is simply RIVITING by the way. I’m like “Oh my God…who is he going to say goodnight to next?” This is also how I came to discover that Curious George is a metaphor for the American slave trade.

Think about it . A little brown African, happily living his life in his country is lured out into the open by a white man…then STUFFED IN A SACK and sent to America on a SHIP against his will.

He is even referred to as THE MAN at several points in the book. Curious George was captured by THE MAN…his shenanigans, merely a way of trying to gain his freedom back before being sent to rot in a zoo. Repressed. By THE MAN. The only way it could be more clear is if the Man in the Yellow Hat Hobbled George after the Fire truck incident. Curious George…putting the “H.A. RAY” in “Racism.”

And that Correctness faithful is why you have heard so little of me. That and the fact that I have NO IDEA where to put him down.

I’ve been holding him like this for three weeks.

I hate to be the guy to bring this up, I really do, but there is an elephant in the room and it needs to be addressed.

So here goes.

How long will it take for someone who, after receiving a Kinect for their X-box on Christmas morning, gets the idea to jerk off in front of it just to watch the video game character do it with him?

I’m guessing somewhere around mid afternoon on Boxing Day.

A Correctness State of the Union

First, a bit of history.

About a year and a half ago, after some social function or another (I believe it may well have been an evening of Settlers of Catan) just as the man/boy who would become known as Robbie Robtown was heading out my front door, I said to him…

“Hey, we should start an online humor magazine.”

This would be a repository of bits of humorous fiction and general weirdness that wouldn’t adapt easily to performance, and was better served in prose. I would have added “Like Cracked” at the time, had I known of the sites existence, and known it had evolved WAAAYY past being a shitty Mad magazine rip off

“Definitely” he replied heading home to silently ruminate on his singleness, as he often does.

A few days later, the question of what to call it came up Rob said “I always wanted to call a sketch troupe or an improv team THE CORRECTNESS”

That was the ENTIRE name discussion. I liked it right away. It had just the right tone of over the top self importance with just a dash of buffoonery. I went and got the domain registration.

Mere days later, Rob mentioned bringing Dave in as he was wise in the ways of website, and neither Rob nor I were. I had known Dave off and on for some time, I had done some Star trek based improv with him, and played Velma to his wife’s Daphne in a Scooby Doo play I wrote and performed with my sketch troupe. The comedy community here in Calgary is pretty small, we knew each other mostly by reputation. Plus, he had a habit of showing up in my vicinity for pretty much every geeky event that came through town.

Thanks to Dave and his single minded sense of purpose and fast Lego building reflexes, he site was up and running, complete with its first article on June 30th 2009. It was an Article on whether or not Indiana Jones deserved another sequel.

That added a layer I wasn’t thinking of, a kind of repository of pop culture punditry. But I liked it. I liked that it could be one of Rob’s weird and wonderful essays one day, some sort of acidly opinionated (in a good way) top ten list by Dave the next, and some obscure bit of microfiction, or a self made motivational poster by me the day after. I highly recommend taking a look at some of those early articles in the archives, there is some really good stuff in there, and I really dug the direction it was heading in. It was shitloads of fun, and it shows in the writing.

Robbie Robtown, Tbinns, and Admin Rock were rockin the internetz

Well, kind of. Nobody was reading us except friends and family, and a few obscure outsiders. We didn’t care.

Then, one day, an argument starts about who would win in a fight between Batman and Wolverine in a talkback. A topic my wife instigated, surprisingly enough. She suggested we turn it into a series of articles. Dave, being a) the only guy among us who like sports and b) the only guy with even the faintest hint of an organized mind started drawing up brackets to make it into a tournament.

Then, on a whim, he figured “ehhhh what the hell” and submitted it to Fark.

Well, I didn’t even know what Fark WAS when we made the main page. I don’t think I even realized it was a big deal until I saw the numbers. When people I hadn’t seen in years were sending me messages congratulating me on the green light I started to get the idea that this was not an easy thing to achieve and we were VERY lucky. So lucky in fact it shut our server down. (Or “Farked” it, as they would say, those board posting scallywags!) Somebody over at Fark liked us.

Many of the fark readers however, did not. I knew people were passionate about their favourite superheroes, and I knew the anonymity of the web community could create some really hostile characters but I don’t think ANY of us were prepared for the sheer amount of piss and venom in the comments section

That changed our game significantly. Or at least mine…I can’t speak for the others. I think Rob REALLY stuck to his guns and is to be commended for it. But as for me? Well…if I didn’t crave the approval of complete strangers for no good reason, I never would have gone into comedy. And here they were, 20, 0000 hits and more all streaming in to read the article, waiting to pounce on every bit of missed continuity. I felt tremendous pressure to do what I had done for YEARS in my stand up act…cave to the audience. Give them what they want, WORRY about what they want.

The Smackdown became strictly regimented, every Friday, hopefully before noon, we get the Smackdown up and Fark ready, submit it and wallow in abuse and adulation. The point, we thought, was to get people in with the Smackdown, then hopefully a handful of them would enjoy the site, and stick around for the stuff we REALLY wanted to do. ( It’s the same reason I do impressions in my act.) And to a certain extent, it worked. I think we have some regular readers who came over from Fark. And thanks for coming and sticking with us, and once again a huge thanks to Fark for the coveted greenlights. Unfortunately The Smackdown quickly became THE thing on the site, with all of the other little bits of wonderful weirdness falling to the wayside.

But this last go round, with the super team smack down something changed. We still got greenlights, but rather on the less traveled geek page. That was just fine by us, we are still grateful to get the nod at all..but even some of our most ardent defenders were starting to get bored. Telling us we were not even trying anymore. And to a certain extent, I think that was true.

For myself, anyway…I was trapped in a tight box of public opinion… having to really comb over who could do what to whom, and catch up on long lines of continuity, just to please an un-pleasable audience. My heart wasn’t in it … I just wasn’t having fun with it anymore, and it showed in the writing. Only when I said “Fuck it, screw continuity, screw everything else, I just want to have fun with this.” did I start enjoying it again. (See my entry in the X-men vs. Avengers finals)

As of right now, and for whatever reason, the finals of our latest tournament has not been greenlit, and after the initial disappointment I began to feel something like relief. Like I am free of this giant responsibility to please people I haven’t even met, and hopefully never will.

So ideally this means that The Correctness, or at least my part of it will take this opportunity to return to its roots. Just be a goofy little comedy website that occasionally comes up with gold, sometimes falls a tad short but almost always entertains on some level or another.

That said, it’s not the end of the smackdown, but I think we’ll stay away from comic books for a little while. And if the council of the wise at Fark deem us worthy of a link once again on something non tournament related, well that would be just fine too.

Nor does this mean you can no longer insult us, in an artful fashion. We kind of dig it. We’re weird like that. And as for that last insult contest, personally I think it’s a tie between spcMIKE and Iron Patriot.

So go to it you two…insult us like you’ve never insulted anyone before in the comment section…it might be the last competition you see on here for awhile.

A Glossary of Terms that have yet to, but ought to come into everyday usage. Today’s Correctness Glossary term:

Nicklebackery (Nikl-bak-ery) n..pl. 1.) the act of enabling or encouraging mediocrity .

Example: The canceling of Arrested Development was a heinous act of Nicklebackery.

Our society is rife with Nicklebackery, everything being whitewashed for mass consumption, poured over endlessly by suits and every last ounce of creativity is squeezed out of it and what is left is the artistic equivalent of gruel. And we, a nation of abused Dickensian orphans line up and ask for more. Image is calculated, prefabrication no longer anathema but rather standard operating procedure. People go to concerts and talk about what the performers wore instead of what they sang. The press covers the latest Lady Gaga outfit not as if it were relevant, but rather as if it was VITAL.

Personally, I blame Nicklebackery for :

Scott Pilgrim’s poor box office showing
The proliferation of cop shows with initials in them
Two and a Half Men
Keys to the VIP
Katy Perry
The careers of Megan Fox AND Michael Bay

And a whole host of societal ills that are poisoning pop culture and making it every bit as disposable as its critics say it is.

So your job, dear reader is to take this term and use it to label every boring, bland, committee based piece of pop culture garbage there is.

I hope you have a few weeks vacation…it’s going to take awhile.

I’m sure many of you know the video which I am referring to, if not, take a moment and have a look at this.

Now, personally, I wouldn’t say that Ray Bradbury is a Sci Fi writer per se, much less the greatest one in history, but she is prancing around in (and nearly falling out of )a school girl outfit so, as they say on the internet, my argument is invalid.

So instead, I’d like to suggest a few follow ups she could pursue for that all important “Second single.”

(Feel free to join in)

1. Get Me Off, Isaac Asimov

2. Meet Me in The Shower, Robert E. Howard

3. Gimme Your Shaft, H.P. Lovecraft

4. Do Me Quick, with your Philip K. Dick

5. Ruffle my Trellis, Warren Ellis

6. Stick it in, J.R.R. Tolkien

7.In My Back Door, eh, R.A Salvatore

8. Do me Hard, Orson Scott Card

9. Come on and Fux me, Aldous Huxley

10. Be my Pervert, Frank Herbert

11. I am your Madame, Douglas Adam’s

12. Do me in my Robert A. Heiney lein

13. Fuck me in the Park, Arthur C Clarke