I knew it was time to get back to some kind of comedy project when I realized my only creative outlet was arguing with other douchebags on the internet. When you care about what people on "Glock Talk" or "NorCal Blogs" think about your world view, you're spending too much time not doing anything.


Message boards, forums, letters to the editor. Futile gestures drowned in cybersludge.


Writing a letter to the editor is not the same as it used to be. Back in the last century you would type up/white out/type up your letter, mail it to the paper, and wait forever to see if it got printed. If it did, everyone you knew would say “Great letter to the editor” or (as my mom would put it) "Great article in the paper." And you’d think, “Yeah--it was pretty great wasn’t it? Maybe I should start my own newspaper...”


Nowadays you shoot out an e-mail and they print it before your hangover wears off. Then every asshat with a computer proceeds to tell you what he thinks of you.


“Aaron Standish? Whut kind of Jamestown Jew name is that? I did not evin read youre letter becuz peple like you shood be in jale. Go smoke youre mariwana and die. Whin will you libril nazi communists evir learn? save the wales? why? Babys are murdered by Obama Hussein eviry day. Go hug a tree that is beeing cut down. You had bettir watch youre back becuz I am preying for you. you are gay.
Signdd.
The Chamber of Commerce"


Someone once posted something about me on a newspaper comment page and it was deleted. I went ahead and responded to it anyway, even though I had no idea what they had written. They re-posted and were deleted again. So I responded to the second comment, again not knowing what they had said.


I was literally arguing about nothing.


This would sometimes go on for days. And I wasn't getting any credit for my filthy, slanderous, libel-riddled posts because I was using the screen name Captain Kanagroo.


I was wasting perfectly good material on people who who hated me. So I figured why not do a fake news page for people who are only annoyed by me? Soak up the love. Liz agreed, anxious to give up her own letter writing not-so-secret identity, Metsfaglady.


Hence, the birth of the Merry Standish Standard. All the laughs with twice the typos.


But this did not free us from the ghetto of the editorial section of the paper. Well-meaning friends have posted links to our fake stories in the comment sections of the Redding Record-Searchlight, the Chico Enterprise-Record, and the Red Bluff Daily News. This has resulted in our comedy reporting being quoted as real, adding a further layer of lunacy and misinformation for the dimwitted to chew without digesting before throwing it back up on the comments section.


Here is a recent example from a March 2nd story we did about former Chico city councilman David GuzzettI being attacked in the comments section of the E-R after being assaulted on the street:


"After escaping from one of The Crazies (possibly from the movie or a teabag party) who allegedly assaulted him Saturday morning over a parking space dispute and his reputation as a left wing liberal activist, former Chico City Councilman David Guzzetti was attacked a second time when the story appeared in today's Chico Enterprise-Record."


We then printed more than a dozen of the hate-filled pseudonym-signed posts and originally closed with this line:


"The diminutive KZFR radio host is used to taking a beating in the press, but not usually for taking one himself. "That what I get for not kicking him in the balls and running away," commented Guzzetti in his popular online newsletter The Guzzetti Guzzettio, "Next time I'll just shoot the bastard and be a fucking hero."


Two hours after we posted the story on our website, someone was using that fictional quote in the Enterprise-Record as if it was real. This ignited the usual stupids who had no problem believing the man they constantly deride as a pussy peacenik and a whining wimp would actually threaten to shoot someone. We changed the ending to this:


"'I forgot my training as a cowardly liberal wuss,' said Guzzetti in a made up conversation with The Standard, 'I guess I should have just hidden behind the tracks of my tears.'
Guzzetti, of course, did not make that comment and you would have to be an average reader of the E-R to think he did."


As much as we hate changing or explaining our jokes, we did both this time. Our point was that the E-R "commentators" would, judging by their tone and language, be more sympathetic towards someone who ended an argument by shooting someone than they were to David Guzzetti for getting beaten. Who wants to side with an unarmed liberal loser after all? Certainly not that group of anonymous tough talkers.


Chico's little commie crepe maker is a friend and doesn't need the added burden of denying he made violent threats in a fake news story, so we changed it. But the original is still out there in dark corners of the internet. Just like pictures of my dick. People posting links to our material on regular news websites is (hopefully) unstoppable, but we're not in this phony news game to see our jokes twisted to fit someone else's evil plan. Only our own. We reserve the right to pull our punches and punchlines when they're not funny anymore. The last thing a comedy newspaper needs is to be taken seriously.


Oh, by the way, did I mention E-R editor David Little wears women's undies while starring in man-boy bondage porn and eating cat turds spiked with crank? 100% true, you can quote me on it. Please.


Posted on March 8, 2010


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