6 Appalling Pop Cultural Trends of the Last Decade:

There were some awful events in the Oughties, environmental disasters, natural disasters, terrorist acts, wars, economic crises, need I go on? Genuinely sad.

Here at The Correctness though, we thought we would take a look at some insidious pop cultural trends which we have been collectively asked to accept. If we don’t acknowledge them now, we will be force fed these horrors for the rest of our natural lives. Now is the time to recognize that we hate these things, and stop them. You may also notice a theme developing with a certain demographic who is most responsible for the problems we are having. See if you can spot who it is.

1. Calling this decade the Oughties

Far too late. Far, far too late. Needed that ten years ago. And what are these, the Teenies? Worse.

2. Emo

Who foisted this torture upon us? Why did we have to take the kinds of people we used to call “fans of The Cure” and then subtract from that equation enjoyable music, leaving a meaningless string of power chords on which to build an entire culture? What kind of suffering are teenagers familiar with? At least teenage laments in the 50’s were obviously stupid. Is there anything worse than a 15 year old who tries to tell you what pain is? Approximately 1% of teenagers know what pain is, and they likely can’t afford the haircut, and don’t want to stand out at all, or advertise their genuine misfortune. And what is that thing where you prove how different you are by being exactly the same? Ugh, I did it as a teen, it’s just sad.

3. Twilight

Vampires are a symbolic substitute for sex. This is why they are seductive and dangerous to innocent young women. Just as virtually every fairy tale is a coming of age story, vampires serve a narrative purpose too.
How the gods allowed vampires to become sensitive emo kids (EMO!) that- you know what? I haven’t read the books or watched the films. Honestly. The premise is too stupid. If, and I place heavy emphasis on the hypothetical nature of if, IF I had a girlfriend when I was 15 and she had wanted to drink my blood, she could have gone right ahead- and if she had been hesitant so that she didn’t kill me, I would have started slipping my blood into her drinks and showing up at her house bleeding. A suitable horny teen will do anything, including betray their humanity, to get some action.

4. The Return of Eighties Fashion

Oh God, I lived through it the first time, it looked stupid then, it still looks stupid now, and no legion of teenagers, gangly and retarded, will convince me that these things should come back. The neon! The tights! The rubber bracelets, the glasses, the skinny jeans, the HORROR!
Since the mid eighties we have cycled through all of the fashion of the last half decade, and some of it is fun. Most of it however, is abhorrent eye-abrasive mind rape, especially the Eighties. Why is it back? What’s left to bring back? Khaki cargo pants from ‘97? Or is it back to the fifties again. Can I wear boot cut jeans and a white t-shirt, or will I just look rockabilly?
Fashion is a snake eating its own tail. The noose grows tighter, and I need not revisit my Vuarnet sunglasses and my Cosby sweaters.

5. The Return of Eighties Music, but not the good stuff

Oh, you kids love the kitsch don’t you. Look, their was some excellent music in the Eighties, but I lived through it, and this music, categorically, was not on the radio.
New Order, not on the radio, Echo and the Bunnymen, not on the radio, Elvis Costello, not on the radio, The Cure, not on the radio, the Psychedelic Furs, The Clash, The Smiths, The Cocteau Twins, REM, essentially not on the radio.
Look, obviously these artists got some radio play, but they were drowned out by a sea of shit deeper than the Navy’s finest shit-sub could ever fathom.
REO Speedwagon? Hair Metal? What Peter Cetera did to Chicago?
Here’s one for you to remember: Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” Is not a good song. It is popular because it is hilarious. Don’t forget the irony built in to enjoying this song and start just enjoying it as is. It is not a good song. It is ridiculous. You like it because it is ridiculous. You might also like it because you never had to deal with it the first time around. I’m blaming you teens again.

6. The Triumph of Teen Culture

Get off my lawn, it is all your fault. You weren’t alive in the eighties, you don’t understand how godawful they were. Hollywood sells to you, TV markets to you, Radio is dying for you, newspapers were murdered by you, fashion weeps for you, politicians are terrified of you. You are mindless automatons, and you wear what the marketers tell you, you dance like we demand you do, you have no work ethic, you believe you are entitled, you are largely more obese than we ever were.
Teens, you know what? Keep doing what you are doing, because when it is time for my revolutionary army to rise up, I will be able to brainwash you so easily it will make psychiatrists cry.
We are sorry. We are sorry that we made you dress like tramps at 11 years old, we’re sorry we told Disney the formula for selling you music and television (subcategory: Things Disney did to music and television), we’re sorry we market products towards you, we didn’t know you were so weak and shitty. I don’t even think we can save you. Not only are you hormonal and obnoxious (this would be fine, it is natural) but now you get to tell us what movies and music we are going to get sold. I don’t even get why you get to tell us what is popular! You don’t have any money! I have all the expendable income in the world now, and they don’t make stuff for me anymore, because they are designing it for you! I don’t spend my money because I don’t want to buy anything that has been designed for a bunch of retarded hump-monkeys!

The Oughties were awful, and the worst thing about them was what became of teenagers. You poor, hapless, pimply bastards.

You kids today don’t know what it’s really like. When I was young, things were different. We had different stuff that had fewer things on it, and it made more sense and took fewer batteries- or more to the point, no batteries at all, and that means it was WHOLESOME (TM). Yes, we even ate foods that were more wholesome, though actually we were all eating the same 20 commercially distributed things, and no one had heard the word organic, but everyone had heard the word “DDT”, and we used to have games like “Lick the DDT” and “What fits in my anus”, and it was a simpler time.

I used to have to walk to a place, and it was far, and you are too lazy to understand the effort involved. People used to care more about stuff, and make their own stuff, and it was better and less expensive, and it used to come with free blow jobs- And the hookers for some reason didn’t have diseases, even though sexually transmitted diseases have been around since time immemorial, but not as I recall it, and certainly not that I would tell your mother, and you should be proud of your spinal hump and skin herpes.

We weren’t terrified of crime the way that you are terrified of crime, or maybe we were, and we have forgotten, but now we’re really terrified of crime even though crime rates are dropping in a provable way. In fact, we still talk about random crime a lot, because we find it less distasteful than discussing the real problems, like the crimes that happened in the privacy of our own homes with the lights off. Behind closed doors, no matter how traumatizing, it didn’t count, because it was in private, and because we didn’t have the word “traumatizing”, so we lacked the concepts necessary to discuss it. This may be why we were so homophobic, or racist, or got into so many bar fights, and killed so many of the local “questionables” and then covered the murders up as traffic accidents. That’s not wrong, that’s just practical local government.

In any case, I don’t know who THEY are, but THEY are just waiting for THEIR chance to bugger me and steal my shoes. They would, because of their religion, likely.

In those golden years of mine, everything was good. I don’t recall when everything got bad, but there was a definite slide towards bad, and I can’t be racist or sexist at the grocery store now and still get a laugh. I need to moisturize parts of me, and other parts of me are oilier than necessary.

Waitresses don’t think it is charming when I flirt with them anymore, even though I’m certain there was a point when they did find it charming. Certain. In fact, there was a time when you could bring a waitress back to your house and do unspeakable things to her because she agreed to go through your front door, and there was no such word as “traumatizing” or “date rape”.

Yes, times were better when I was younger. Things were simpler. And before you get off being all haughty and trying to tell me we simply weren’t acknowledging the awful, insensitive, violent things we considered to be acceptable, you should come over here and imagine how we used to live.

That’s right Sonny Jim, because it wasn’t all good times. No, there were wars, which I may or may not have been involved in, and there was also great difficulty and suffering that you are incapable of understanding. How can I reconcile that those were better times? Because they were! The light was brighter, the spring weather was more mild, and the hookers had no diseases. NO DISEASES!

In any case, you kids don’t remember the eighties, or sixties, or forties, or medieval times, or Ancient Sumer, and that’s why you are a bunch retarded ass fags.

Everyone hates bureaucracy. Everyone except for The Phone Company. By “The Phone Company” I mean the people who provide you land line, cell, cable and are your internet service provider. Those people. Oh, and I guess there could be a few people who like bureaucracy- I don’t mean to appropriate the voice of a group of paperwork fetishists who love to be on hold while they make love to a stamp pad, or some such. The point is that most people hate bureaucracy, except weirdos, and The Phone Company.  By the way, The Correctness  recommends you wait for the ink to dry so you don’t leave ball-marks on your underwear.

Worldwide, TPC is legendary for their inefficiency. More people are required to do fewer things than any other type of business or government agency, even the much maligned Postal Service, or Chicago circa Peter Cetera. TPC’s illogical business practice goes right back to the beginning of the invention of the phone.

Alexander Graham Bell, upon the first successful test of the telephone started the trend. The story goes that Bell spoke into his transmitter and said “Watson, come here, I want to see you.” . Keep in mind that Bell was testing a telephone, a device used to make 2 way communication possible over great distances. An alternative conversation might have gone something like this:

Bell: Watson, can you hear me?

Watson: Yes I can! This thing works!

Bell: Oh, good, well, I was going to ask you to come here, but there is no reason to do that, because we could talk all day like this, efficiently.

Watson: Yes, it would be weird if you said “I want you” anyhow.

Bell: I was going to say that, but this call is being recorded.

Watson: Astonishing! How?

Bell: I don’t know.  In any case, you go ahead and stay there instead of making a purposeless trip over here. Let’s head over the patent office, ensuring some controversy about who invented this thing.

Watson: Agreed. Do you have time to take a brief survey about the quality of your service?

Bell: Strangely enough, I do. I was just masturbating furiosly here alone, and it amuses me to continue this conversation while I am jackin’ it on a stamp pad.

Watson: Wonderful. When would you say you make most of your calls?

Bell: I’d say right around now.

Watson: And to which locations do you make most of your calls?

Bell: Primarily next door in the lab

And so on.

So, from the very first phrase ever uttered on a telephone  was born a tradition of purposelessness. Of course, as the technology has improved, the bureaucracy has also improved.  In any industrialized culture, winning a fight with The Phone Company, in which you are right and they are wrong, is one of  the last rites of passage. Where once there were ritual hunts and sundance circles, now we have explaining that you are being incorrectly billed to 4 levels of managers. Once you hold aloft the sullied stamp pad of a regional customer ombudsman, your Jedi training is complete.

(Keep in mind, the reason British Telecom specifically are such scrotumstamps is because a bunch of filthy lower class colonists invented a moneymaking technology, and the jealous bourgeois saw a chance to really make a bunch of underpaid proles stick it to a bunch of other underpaid proles, just to show ‘em for trying to be something better than stable hands.)

If you have a sympathetic soul, you could feel a bit sorry for the drones that occupy the chairs at TPC. Their primary task is to say “no” to you. It’s not their fault. They are trained to deal with people who haven’t paid their bills, and nobody got a BA in medieval poetry to be a  corporately sanctioned collections agent. The people who got their BFA are expecting to do such work, and they see it as an acting exercise. You can spot the BFA ones because they buckle under pressure and hand you off to a manager first, due to their constant theatre-school existential crisis. When the next revolution comes, The Correctness is staring the firing squad at drama schools.

TPC is  going to be defensive with you when you call. The aren’t angry, they are defensive. First, everyone hates them, and they don’t understand why. They don’t understand why everyone hates them because they are retarded. Second, they have had literally weeks of training in the art of the closed ended rhetorical paradigm. Not only are they entirely untrained in the unimaginable possibility that you may have a point, but they are also exclusively trained to respond to questions for which they receive only yes or no answers. Consequently, they have absolutely not the first nutstamp of a clue as to what to do if you ask them questions off the approved list. If you thought the Pope was slow on the progress, the Catholic church looks comparatively responsive (and non-rapey) next to TPC.

So, when you have finally managed to convince someone that you have a problem which can’t be answered by changing your long distance plan, you will be transferred. Be patient, write down everyone’s names as you hear them. This will not be useful, it is only more hilarious to speak derisively about what “Barry said”. Plus, if you catch anyone bullshitting you, which I assure you, they sometimes do to get rid of you, they look much worse.

Don’t get transferred to technical support. technical support is an entire service area that was created to distract you from you actual problem. Technical service will be able to tell you what your ping time is, but they can not tell you why you have paid for 3 months of service without so much a s a dial tone.

At some point, you are going to have to withhold payment from TPC. This is not as bad as you think. This is actually good. This is good because The Phone Company will start calling you. Then, a series of low level functionaries will politely remind you that you owe them money, and you can remind them that you are contractually paying for a service, and if the service is not provided, TPC is in default of the contract in a legally binding way.  This usually gets the gears turning.

One more thing you might be interested in knowing. Those of you on cell phone contracts might observe that TPC never seems to admit to network problems. They would rather give you a new phone than admit to network problems. This is that nasty contractual obligation thing again. The network is their end of the bargain, so if they admit that is the issue, they are admitting they owe you a cheque. That is the kind of thing that gets people out of ink pads to dangle their testicles on.

We hope that clarifies a few things about The Phone Company. Soon to follow are some specific tips for making those phone calls to them more productive for you, more expensive for them, and more hilarious to your family.

LASER SLUTS FROM MARS:

PART VI: THE SEXY WRATH OF THE SPACE TITS UNDERGARMENTS

Juliette set her tea cup down onto the saucer. What had motivated her to use her grandmother’s good china for tea today was beyond simple explanation. Nonetheless, she had been drawn to the good china, and she felt a slight sense of coy scandalousness for having selected it.

She stepped out onto the balcony of the house she could somehow afford, and looked across the lawn to the waterfront . The wind whipped up and pressed coldly against her chest, leaving her with a familiar wistful feeling. Her wavy hair was lightly buffeted by the wind, somehow, because her hair really should have been blowing around quite a bit harder, but that’s bad for the audio.

The Atlantic lapped gently up against the shore, belying the wrath of her water spirit which was usually reserved for cruelest winter. That’s the Atlantic’s water spirit, not Juliette’s. Because, Juliette was a pisces, so she might have a water spirit, but the water spirit of Mother Atlantic is key for the Oprah demographic.

From the wood shed just out of frame- sorry, just at the edge of the water, emerged Daniel. Daniel tugged at the threadbare waistband of his caravan sweater, and pulled it over his head, revealing his impossibly hairless underwear-model body. He cast a sullen and mysterious glance back at Juliette. Was Juliette wrong to have seduced this younger man? Daniel cast his deep blue eyes back upon his axe, and he continued laboriously chopping wood. He worked up a sweat that smelled of sagebrush and cedar, and not at all of ass stench and skanky cheese. The cold wind hardened his nipples to a terrifying diamond sharpness, and the utter lack of body fat on his twenty-something frame only deepened his sullen mysteriousness. Some would argue that an older woman might have some difficulty finding any mysteriousness in a man this young, but Juliette knew the depths of his soul, and knew that this biochemist had only returned to his small hometown to care for the orphaned sea otter cubs.

Daniel put down his axe, and walked in implausible slow motion towards Juliette. Juliette dropped her eyes, and drew her wrap more tightly around her slender frame- A frame which showed no obvious signs of extensive personal trainer effort, largely because she was caked in make up that most preternaturally thin women require to disguise their lack of pleasing curvature.

Daniel drew close to her, flipping his hair out of his face, only to have it fall back again. He stood a head taller than her, except during the kissing scenes, when he was somehow the same height as her.

“Talk to me like the wind”, he said to her, homosexually.

“I have daddy issues.”, she said, truthfully.

For a moment they stood in silence. There was time for that, because this was a Wednesday, or possibly Thursday, but in this place, in this moment, in this burgeoning love, neither one of them had anything better to do, and yet both could still afford to live and eat.

Daniel departed tenderly, like a beef tenderloin might depart, and then he repaired the leak under the bathroom sink without using the appropriate tools. Likely, he would emerge from beneath the sink with a greasy rag in his hands, which he would set on the counter in a motion that would mimic casualness. His shirt would also likely remain off, unless he needed to seem mysterious for some reason, perhaps disguising the scar on his back caused by some childhood abuse from a stranger, and not at all by a family member like the way those sorts of abuses actually occur.

Juliette would later prepare a meal for the two of them, which would end up hilariously wrong. Then, she would dance with Daniel to the sound of some Motown tune that she was inexplicably fond of, despite her so clearly having been raised in the seventies. One thing was certain, the two of them would dance to a song that you used to enjoy until just a moment ago, and they would fall about the floor laughing with youthful abandon. In any case, you will never want to hear that perfectly good Motown song again.

Later still, as the film draws to a close- or the novel- whatever, later still, I will shit blood unceasingly from having experienced this. If I am unlucky, I will return to my apartment and Manswers will be on TV, and the double edged sexist stereotype blade will disembowel me.

The Correctness is working on cracking into the Hollywood market. We’ve been busy coming up with film ideas. Here are a few that we’ve pitched and, for reasons we can’t fathom, have been rejected.

HOLOCAUST DOLPHINS (Working Title)

The touching and troubling story of a pod of dolphins that are captured by Nazis and placed in a seaside internment camp in July 1940.Will the beauty of these majestic creatures overcome the cruelty of man? Can the dolphins find warmth and love in the midst of cold, unrelenting fascism?

CONSTANT ENCOUNTER

Shia LeBeouf to star in the story of an ordinary man who is placed in a series of strange, action filled encounters, while trying to discover the reason why he is being… we haven’t actually figured out the rest, but Shia, action, encounters!!!! Look, if Spielberg and Lucas don’t need to make sense in their screenplays these days, we don’t see why we should.

TO THE MANOR BOURNE

The story of a proper English butler and the house he tends. Trouble comes in the form of a young American maid and her uncouth ways, which sparks a forbidden and burning desire between them. Add a secret agent with amnesia to the mix, and we have a film guaranteed to please both men and women. Think Die Hard meets Howard’s End.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SENSELESS VIOLENCE

When the Mr. Dashwood dies, the Dashwood women are left in reduced circumstances. As they make their way to a cottage in the country, they succumb to rabies (or perhaps the ancient evil of vampirism?) and bite each other to death- though not before they feast on the flesh of half the innocent citizens of Upper Wickforderstecheshire. Come for the biting, stay for the lesbian vampire blood orgy.

LOW BUDGET VIRAL HORROR THING II: RETURN OF THAT THING: THE REBUDGETINATING

After the runaway success of Low Budget Viral Horror Thing, and their innovative ad campaign which was web based, or on youtube, or scrawled inside a downtown telephone booth, or some such, millions upon millions of dollars have been thrown at the production of a sequel. The original writer and director were sold up the river by the original producer, who accepted a check to pay off the original production costs, and green-lit a script for the sequel that barely resembles the original. Megan Fox takes her top off. Twice.

June 15:
Those cult guys came around again today. I know they are in a cult because of the nametags, photocopied literature, and matching discount suits from Tip Top. I pretended I wasn’t home. I hate those cult guys.

June 16:
Cult guys are back, they knocked, and knocked, and knocked. They must have waited on the porch for twenty minutes. I think they stole my newspaper. I would never be an asshole like those newspaper thieving cult assholes. Do they know I’m home?

June 17:
Cult guys are back again. If I open the door naked, would they just be all weird and enjoy it? Or rape me? Or, even if I’m not naked. I mean, should I invite them in? They sure are persistent.

June 18:
Okay, I’m thinking of inviting the cult guys in, but not with the house like this, I mean, look at this place?

June 19:
No cult guys today. First day I received newspaper this week. Also, all my mail was open.

June 20th:
This time they sent girls! This might be one of those cults where they try to bait you with the cheap sex. I like the cheap sex, I’m gonna finish cleaning and invite the cult ladies in tomorrow.

June 21:
What sort of appetizers do you serve cult ladies? I guess I’ll put out what I have here.

Wait, have I been out of the house this week? I guess not since the 15th. Do I even have a job? Maybe I should join this cult. Joke’s on them if I do, I rent this apartment.

June 22:
Well, I guess I can have as many kinky threesomes with hot cult chicks as I want as long as I give the Supreme Love Over-Watcher all my money and worldly possessions. Also, I have to eat a diet entirely of celery and bean curd. The diet seems to foster some indifference in the ladies to the threesome thing- Are all threesomes so quiet and bored?

June 23:
Well, The cult ladies came by again today, but I’m a bit full of bean curd and celery to do anything too sexy. We mostly just talked about the splendour of The Supreme Love Over-Watcher.

August 17:
Sorry it’s been a while, I’ve moved to the compound. The girls made me a uniform out of all the newspapers these guys have been liberating for the greater good. I sold my blood to buy a discount suit from tip top, and every day is like a sexy slumber party that smells like celery bean curd fart, and that also isn’t sexy at all.

August 19:
Busy yesterday, cut off my own balls to please The Supreme Love Over-Watcher.

September 19:
Woke up in hospital. Apparently, the bean curd and celery diet made me somewhat anemic, which is only problematic if you do something like cut your own balls off. Evidently I am also allergic to certain types of common antibiotics. I miss The Supreme Love Over-Watcher, I know he’d know just what to say through his discount-suited emissaries.

October 20:
Well, My lawyer helped patch things up with my landlord, and now that I am eating regular food again, I’m having a hard time remembering what I enjoyed about cult life so much.

Oct 21:
It was the threesomes.

Oct 22:
No, maybe it was something about The Supreme Love Over-Watcher. Pass the bean curd please.

Dear Reader:

Some of you have been wondering what exactly has been going on with Canadian cable television? What is this argument between the large cable providers and the networks in Canada? Likely you have seen the advertisements with the sincere looking broadcast school graduates doing their best to represent either side of this issue, whilst also gamely trying to disguise the knowledge they surely must have that, because they accepted the work as the spokespeople for said companies, they will never work in Canada again, for either cable or network television.

Basically, what is happening is this:

Canada is a vast nation that is sparsely populated. Really, to comprehend just how vast is difficult, because so many of us live along the US border, anxiously awaiting an invasion because we still have some clean water. This, by the way, is the reason that we are actively using up all the water we can in the oilsands. If you Americans come for our water, and we have already poisoned it all, first point goes to us. We’ll burn the crops all the way to Moscow, this is just preemptive.

In any case, Canada is huge, and there are literally only 12 advertising dollars to go around, and not that many companies willing to maintain the infrastructure required to build, oh, say, cable towers, or transmitters, or amusing scripts. Canada is a the proud nation of the monopoly. How many phone companies are there really? Well, essentially three, and they also provide cable. Ask about our airlines.

Meanwhile, these telephone companies which also provide cable have bought, sold, and traded ownership of the original Canadian television networks dozens of times over. Evidence of this is in the logos displayed the end of our local news broadcasts, but also in the naming of many sports arenas.

Consequently, some of the monopolies want to blame the other monopolies for costing them money to do things like stuff and things. For this reason, they are running low-production-value attack ads about each other, and have set up tedious websites about how correct their monopoly is compared to how incorrect the other fellow’s monopoly is. These ads are intentionally low-production-value so that you won’t get the impression they could afford do better ads with more sincere spokespeople, and sexier actors pretending to be real people on the street. Who doesn’t trust the man on the street? Only an asshole, they hope! Caveat Vox Populi.

Now, I know strictly speaking, these are not technically monopolies, more like oligarchies, or, if you prefer, a retarded cartel, or “retardtel” which is another telephone company name.

Some of the issues stem around the purchase of American television shows, which all Canadians prefer to watch, because you cats throw crazy dollars at your sit coms, and we have 75 cents. Quality is subjective everywhere, some Americans liked Degrassi, and some Canadians can watch “The Hills” and still sleep at night. Personally, I believe The Hills is responsible for my chronic diarrhea.

Other issues surround the creation of local content, which actually should read “news” because all that hilarious cable-access-local-tv has long since gone by the wayside. So, they say “local content” but they really mean “local news” and having local news gives some broadcasters and some cable networks a chance to redistribute the $12 advertising dollars in Canada somewhat more regionally. There was a time that Canadian television looked a lot like SCTV, and now, it looks a lot like everything else. Oh, and the local news is full of syndicated packages from other stations.

In any case, the CEOs of both the networks who provide “local programming” and the CEOs of the cable companies both have a problem. The $12 in advertising is not enough to pay for the hookers and blow they purchased before the recent financial issues, and now they have already booked appointments for said hookers, and said blow, and being blown by said hookers while sniffing said blow off of said hookers, and this has brought about a moderate financial crunch.

Once the hookers have been hooked, and the blow has been blown, and the TV executives have been blown, they will need to find places to hide the bodies, because they have killed the hookers-This is simply what television executives do. Consequently, they will have to dump the hookers in the ENG vans, or the cable vans, or whatever, and drive them out to the rural site of some kind of transmitting infrastructure, and pay everyone slightly less than $12 to shut up about the whole thing. This makes regionalization a real concern, because if I only have $3 in western Canada to shut up the police, farmers and cell phone tower maintenance guys about my dead hookers and obvious severe coke habit, it is simply not enough.

Luckily, the Canadian taxpayer is being asked to take it up the ass on taxes, or to pay more on their cable bill. Wait, did I say luckily? Oh, I meant “retardtelly”. Fortunately, no matter which side wins, taxes will inevitably go up, and my cable bill will inevitably go up.

Oh, and on a final note, I’m not paying an additional $2 a month for a digital cable box, because you are obligated to provide this service by law in the upcoming years, so it shouldn’t cost me $2. Improve your analogue service first, or, credit me for the shitty analogue service.

I hope that clarifies the Canadian TV issues for you.

This excerpt from a Lovecraftian “Choose Your Own Adventure” story, unpublished and partially complete, was submitted to The Correctness anonymously.

You are an intrepid adventurer! You are Dr. Louise Klimt, Professor of Antiquities at the Miskatonic University near Arkham. You are well respected, and you have an impressive knowledge of arcane matters and the occult. You are also a sincere looking brunette woman with knowing doe-eyes. Maybe you are a red head, but most likely you are a brunette. Whatever the case, you are an implausible knockout babe. Just to be really clear, you are not a blonde. Oh, and you paid your way through grad school by being a dancer- a legitimate one- maybe not- no, definitely not. Yeah, actually, you were a stripper, but in a self- actualized kind of way, you know, like you were really comfortable with your sexuality, so you could strip and still not get caught up in the awful culture of that trade. Only once or twice did you seduce one of your fellow strippers, and it was all in good fun.

Today a letter arrived at your door. It was an urgent missive from a friend who had journeyed to the deepest heart of the Amazon. It contained a dire warning.

“Dear Dr. Klimt:

I fear things here have gone horribly awry. Half of the archaeological team is missing, and Jenkins seems possessed by some ancient spirit- it’s hard to say if he stumbled upon some jungle hallucinogen or not, but he keeps repeating “h’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” and I fear that means our team is in great peril. Please send assistance as soon as humanly possible, we will need your expertise most urgently!

Sincerely,

Jonothan Buckmueller”

What do you do?

If you would like to hastily arrange travel to the Amazon, flip to page 17.

If you would like to reminisce about your lesbian experiences in college, flip to page 29.

Page 29:

Terrified for your Friend Jonothan Buckmueller, you arrive at your home in the historic Klimt Manor and make your way to the library. There, you will have the privacy to think and consider your options.

To take your mind off things, you slip into something more comfortable than your fitted academic garb, opting instead to change into your favourite costume piece from your days at the club, and elaborate and lacy French maid ensemble.

Able to relax for a moment, you find yourself in a meditative state, able to recall in precise detail the night you delicately seduced a new young dancer with your wiles, wanting, in a way, to both punish and sensually reward her for the charm of her naivete.  She was fresh from a small town, and had no idea how to cope with the overwhelming sexual authority you exuded. So easily you unlaced her corset and ran your other silk gloved hand up the soft skin of her inner thigh, kissing the side of her neck.

If you want to rush to the amazon now, flip to page 27.

If you want to become visibly aroused, and be interrupted by the milk maid who, alarmed by your saucy attire, spills cold, fresh milk all over herself, flip to page 18.

Arlene Patterson was new to teaching in an inner city school- brand new- but she knew, after her extensive teacher training, that she could reach out to these kids and make a difference. The fact that she was a white, hardline mormon from a middle-class suburban middle-America made no difference in her mind. She knew, right through her very soul, that she was the one who could teach these delinquent kids- the ones the Principle of PS 101 had called “unteachable”, “hopeless” and even “Seriously dangerous, and not at all stereotypically gang members, but actually gang members.”. Arlene knew when “the Man” was talking, and she knew she didn’t have to accept anyone else’s  prejudices or “written warnings from the city police force”.

As she walked down the litter-coated hallways that were covered in graffiti, she readied herself for what she had to do. She ignored the jeers of the students as she passed them- her pressed white blouse in stark contrast to their bloodstained correctional facility hand-me-down coveralls. The school had no money to buy textbooks, and had spent most of this year’s capital budget on a dubiously functional metal detector. Arlene knew she was walking into a bare, stark, brick and mortar room with no support materials, no new media, no fashionable means of engaging the stuents. Only her wits, and her unflappable sense of self respect. These kids were going to learn, and she would open their minds like spring flowers open their petals.

She paused briefly outside the door of her class, and nodded a polite and casual “thanks” to the military escort assigned to walk teachers down the hall. She gathered herself and strode into the room.

As she entered into the classroom. some of the students, shocked by her audacity, briefly stopped test-stabbing a side of beef with homemade shanks. Not beef shanks, steel shanks. There would be no suppleness to these shanks.

Arlene slammed a copy of “Romeo and Juliet” hard down on the front desk, disturbing a small colony of cockroaches, who scuttled to safer territory.

“Alright, students, listen up!”

30 pairs of eyes swivelled forward in abject shock. Who was this woman?

Arlene started rhythmically stomping her heeled shoe on the floor and clapping her hands creating a beat.

“Yo, My name is Mrs P and i’m here to say,

I’m gonna be yo’ teacher every day,

gonna learn about Shakespeare, who isn’t gay,

and get you educated in the old school way!”

She finished her carefully crafted “rap”.

At first, there was only stillness and silence.

Then, one student moved. He stood up from the very back of the room, and approached the front. No one moved, and Arlene stood proudly, but stone faced, waiting.

The student took millenia to reach the front. He looked Arlene straight in the eye. He inched closer to her. Their noses nearly touched. Arlene Patterson didn’t flinch, or blink, or give way in the slightest. She knew that she had reached this child.

The student stood silently like that, eye to eye with her for ages more. Finally, he removed an automatic weapon from his pocket and shot Arlene 7 times in the chest, and twice in the nethers.

Then, because of what she had done to Hip Hop, NWA burst in and shot Arlene’s now nearly bloodless corpse 18 more times. Then Tupac’s ghost shat ghost poop on Ms. Arlene Patterson, and then released four more never before heard tracks, one of which was suspiciously called “dead teacher I ghost pooped on”.

Randolph Holstershire the Third arrived in a coach precisely on time. He stepped out and tipped the driver ten percent to the penny- an amount which he had calculated using the abacus he was so rarely parted from. The abacus had been given to him as a gift by a Chinaman he had kept in his employ whilst he was on sabbatical in the Eastern Lands.  Randolph couldn’t recall the name of his servant, but he did recall how best to use the abacus- for tipping. He also recalled a torrid night in Afghanistan, just he and his servant, naked and clinging to each other to create enough body heat to survive a mountain storm. It was that night he’d learned the secrets of the abacus,  and more he would rarely say. Calculating a square root by hand takes dextrous fingers and delicate instruction to say the least, but thoughts of this kind were not relevant to his visit to Petticoat Manor.

He was ushered into the drawing room of Petticoat Manor by a grim looking butler named Hensley. Hensley had the marks of years of service, but also the marks of severe third degree burns he received whilst attempting to give his lover, and several others, a Londonderry Kazoo. It was, in fact, Hensly’s own grotesque scarification which caused the manouvre to be banned by Her Majesty, who could only remark “Some things are best left to the Gauls”.

Randolph was announced to Lady Petticoat, and she curtsied politely in a well practiced fashion. She was obviously a woman of some sophistication which fell just short of distracting from a cloying zephyr of scent Randolph couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Lord Holstershire,” said Lady Petticoat, “I’d like to keep formalities to a minimum, these are busy times in Her Majesty’s Empire, and I see no need to dwell on the intricacies of etiquette.”.

“Hardly worth mentioning.” Said Holstershire, seating himself in a leather covered wingback chair opposite an identical chair occupied by Lady Petticoat.

For a moment their eyes locked, and the unspeakable acts they had engaged in together spoke for them through the silence like a speaking lion might speak if he were not speaking, but then decided rather suddenly to do so. It was very much like that lion thing indeed, only with two souls not speaking but having their speech spoken for them by their history in a sort of non verbal way, but lionesque.

Hensley arived with their tea and served it gingerly, with the deft and practiced hand of a faithful butler, but also the deft and practiced hand of a man who had been injured rigging the necessary ropes and pulleys to accomplish a full Londonderry Kazoo. It was the boiling cauldron of lubricant from the very Londonderry Kazoo in which Hensley had overseen for the participation of Lady Petticoat, Lord Holstershire and himself, as well as all the boatswains of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, and the denizens of prison ship for the mentally unstable headed for the colonies that had been the cause of Hensley’s burns.

Hensley left the two alone in the room to consider their history together.

Randolph sipped his tea, and sat long in silence before he offered this: “Lovely weather.” he managed.

Lady Petticoat swallowed her sip of tea delicately and replied: “Indeed, the farmers at the market tell me there will be more cucumbers than ever this year.”

Randolph waited. “Indeed?”

“Indeed.” Lady Petticoat replied.

Suddenly the full heat of Randoph’s Victorian passion overwhelmed him. Such was the life in Victorian England, with so much hidden in the emotional cellars, and with such careful constructions of society atop them.

Randolph, without warning, stood up. “My Lady,” he said “Thank you for the tea, I must be going.”

Lady Petticoat rose as well. “By all means, it has been a pleasure”.

The two burning suns of passion that could be extinguished only with the height of civility, and also the very heights of Wuthering, were contained within a moment of their emergence.

Randolph Holstershire departed swiftly, wishing only that he had mustered the courage to ask what it was that smelled like cunt in there.