Congratulations
on your purchase of “Stumbling Forward,” version 1.02. As our valued customer,
we have included this instruction manual to insure that your SF experience is
safe and rewarding.
And when we say you are our valued customer, we really mean it, unlike those weasels
you call for customer service at other companies. You know who you are! If we
really are “valued customers” and our “calls are important to you,” have a real
human pick up the dang phone and stop making us listen to that endless song for
an “estimated 21 minutes.”
We here at SF will pick up the phone in a
prompt manner, unless we’re mowing the yard or something, then we’ll get back
to you after supper.
We’d also like to remind our valued customers who
are both litigious and dumb to read the warnings carefully. We’ve noticed that
there are a lot of dumb people out there hurting themselves doing dumb things
and then suing the living daylights out of folks. Dumb, litigious people, please
just continue spilling hot coffee on yourselves and eating medicine that is for
topical use only and refrain from suing us. We thank you in advance.
Proper Use –
Stumbling Forward 1.02 is a German engineered, cutting
edge technology that must be handled by sure and knowing hands if it’s to be operated
at maximum efficiency. This being the case, please do not attempt to read SF while
driving, operating heavy equipment, line dancing, learning Finnish, performing
in a kabuki opera, bee keeping, doing the JUMBLE, or any other cognitive activity.
But, it is safe to read SF while performing associative, or as we say in my country,
“non-thinking” activities such as breathing, television viewing, voting, hearing
the latest gossip about Brad Pitt, Jennifer Anniston, that skinny, creepy Hilton
girl and/or the skinny, creepy Olson twins, or anyone else who is famous for no
apparent reason.
For those whose SF experience and expertise require a
higher level of difficulty in order to fully enjoy it, our engineers have determined
that blunt head trauma and/or psychological insecurities accentuate the experience.
If you fall into this category, repeatedly hit yourself in the face with an oar
and remember that your mother liked your siblings more, thus explaining why she
always dressed you in those hideous little jumpsuits with the oversized buttons.
Following these instructions will allow you to get that “special place” where
this drivel actually makes a little sense.
Improvements –
You
will find, valued customer, several improvements in SF 1.02. First of all, we’re
going to piggyback on Dan Brown selling a gazillion copies of his “The De Vinci
Code” and such, where the entire story is “the Masons have all the secrets about
religion and control the world, and like to leave little clues, riddles, and knock-knock
jokes around so anyone paying the least amount of attention would be able to figure
them out.”
“Knock-Knock. Who’s there? Gail. Gail who? The Holy Gail is
buried under a elevator in The Louvre!” Uhh, I don’t get it.
Since folks
really seem to like this nonsense, each column will include an encoded riddle
that will lead them to a treasure of unlimited power and wealth. Okay, so the
answer is just my locker combination when I was a sophomore in high school, and
the treasure is a petrified cheese sandwich and a really overdue library book,
but the thrill is in the hunt, our valued customer!
This week’s clue –
Oprah’s dress size, circa 1993.
Another exciting feature in SF1.02 is
the use of recurring characters. Each week, you’ll follow the exploits of Jo-Jo,
the crime fighting howler monkey; Mrs. Jamison, the rapping grandmother; and Ernest
Borgnine, as himself. Just seeing what these three are up to is in and of itself
a reason to read every week.
This week’s adventure – Jo-Jo and Mrs. Jamison
are afraid Ernest has been kidnapped by the dastardly, bent-on-world-domination
organization EVEL, but come to find out Ernest had just been spending a leisurely
afternoon in the buffet line of the Golden Corral.
Warnings of
possible side effects –
Though rare, takers of SF 1.02 occasionally suffer
from incontinence, incomprehension, incredulity, and incongruous arrangement of
furniture; as well as impotence, immaturity, immovable objects meeting an irresistible
force, and, in extreme cases, immolation.
If you are pregnant, thinking
of becoming pregnant, or running against the residual Soviet oligarchy for the
Presidency of the Ukraine, SF 1.02 may make your face look like Boris Yeltsin
and a cabbage’s love child. Sorry about that, Yushchenko.
By following
these instructions, you are now prepared to safely enjoy the Stumbling Forward
experience. Okay, it’s not so much an “experience,” more like an “episode” or
“fit.” But you know what we mean. So enjoy and remember, we’re not kidding about
that not suing us thing. |
