Newsflash: Attack on U.N. Day Camp Traced to Rival Camp Northstar

The nighttime raid on a U.N.-run children’s camp in the Gaza Strip this week puzzled investigators until recently, when evidence emerged linking the attack to a scrappy band of militant misfits known only by the mysterious codename “Camp Northstar.” Led by the enigmatic mastermind “Al-Muri,” the group has been active in Gaza for years, orchestrating such attacks as 2003’s Peeing In Jerusalem’s Pools and the firebombing of the Fatah Rec Center.

One of the few images of the terrorist group at their training ground.

In a statement released to Al-Jazeera, Al-Muri crowed about the attack as “a glorious strike against the rich kids across the lake,” his typical epithet for the United States. “We shall never be defeated, for we shall win the Camp Olympiad for Allah and feast well upon the attendant pizza party!”

Al-Muri indoctrinates a young suicide wedgier.

U.N. officials downplayed the damage wrought by the attack, noting that all the lost equipment was easily replaceable and that their dad could afford it easy. Said Camp Director Chad Maxwell, “Those dumb Northstar militants think they can compete with this? They don’t even have a heated pool. Believe me, there’s nothing they can do to stop us from winning next month’s Camp Field Day.” Unbeknownst to Maxwell, his boxer shorts waved ominously from the flagpole behind him.

BELOW: Northstar militants sing one of their trademark anti-Western hate chants.

Trailer RoundUp With Brett and David

Get it?? Get it!!??!?!

Hey everyone, it’s your old friends Brett and David.  As you all well know, we here at the Sqlog love movies, but if there’s anything that we love more, it’s making snarky comments about those movies from the relative safety of our laptops.  That’s why we decided to take a bunch of trailers for movies that will be coming out and write down our impressions in a way that will be amusing to any hypothetical reader!  Not sure what I’m talking about?  Neither are we!  Click the link to see what the hubbub is all about.

Issue 19-6 Now on Web!

So get your asses over to squelched.com for a hit of the good stuff! Oh yeah!

Issue Title: etrayal

Divestment: An Alternative Viewpoint

Let me say up front that this is not a polemic. I come here today not to demonize anyone, nor to call into question the righteousness of anybody’s cause. I merely feel that in all the hullabaloo about the proposed divestment from Israel, some perspective has been lost. I understand that those in favor feel that we should do all we can to pressure the Israeli government to moderate its policies toward the Palestinians in order to facilitate the peace process, and I understand that opponents feel that divestment would unfairly punish Israelis for the deeds of their leaders. The debate has been rigorous, to say the least. But in the end I  must side with opponents of divestment, for this reason:

Israelis need their vests.

I don’t think the proponents of divestment are unfeeling towards Israelis. They just haven’t stopped to think about the sartorial damage the action would cause to the nation’s fashionable citizenry. Israelis use vests for numerous occasions: black tie galas, chilly days, Wacky Vest Day at Jerusalem High. Do we really want to take all that away from them for the sake of making a political point?

Do we really want Israelis never to look this badass? (If you can't see the picture, it's a guy in a great vest.)

Vests serve many important functions in society, not just in Israel but everywhere. They keep our police officers safe from bandits, our dress shirts unstained, and our cabaret singers dapper. No society should be deprived of its vests, no matter how much we may dislike its foreign policy. Therefore, instead of divestment from Israel, I propose a revestment of Palestine.

Isn't this Palestinian vest nice?

Let us send more vests to the Palestinian people. Let us shower them with comfortably-fitting three-piece suits and jaunty old-timey wear. We cannot let Hamas be the group people depend on for their vest supply. Even better, why not convince Israel to begin a program of vest exchange? A people who would share their vests are clearly a people who can be negotiated with in confidence. I look forward to a world in which Israelis and Palestinians can live as neighbors in peace and harmony, secure in the knowledge that they will never again be under fire, underfed, or underdressed.

Hmm, that’s a pretty good joke, New Yorker!

Many of you out there probably remembers the scandal that rocked the webcomic world when it was revealed that the venerable institution of the medium, Penny Arcade, had shockingly copied one of our jokes. Oh, there was weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth. But now it is my sad duty to inform you all that plagiarism has reared its ugly head yet again, in the form of a magazine that was published last year. Behold!

Exhibit A: The November 2008 issue of the Heuristic Squelch, featuring a lovely drawn cover depicting Lemuel Gulliver in his classic “tied down by Lilliputians” pose, discovering to his consternation that the little folk seem to be S&M enthusiasts.

Damn, that's some good comedy magazine coverin' right there.

Hi-larious, am I right? Yes, yes I am right. Fast forward to now, then rewind again back to August of 2009, when The New Yorker, evidently some sort of non-college-humor magazine, displayed this amusing image in its Caption Contest section, appealing to its readers for an appropriately droll caption:

J'accuse!

BUM BUM BUM! Oh, they thought us mad when we put a picture of a butt farting on the Snooty New Yorker Guy on our back cover! They said we were just being self-deprecatingly juvenile! But look at it now! Seems pretty prescient, hmm? Clearly, The New Yorker intentionally ripped off our poor, defenseless magazine, thinking that just because we’re a college humor publication on the other side of the country where most New Yorker writers would never see it, we wouldn’t notice this egregious act of joke-stealery! But just you wait, New Yorker! HEADS WILL ROLL!

The Squelch Guide to Political Humor

Politics are funny. This is a fact. The constant dance of politicians, pundits, and activists mixing ideology, pragmatism, and pandering to the lowest common denominator, and the clashes that derive from their interactions, produce such a wealth of absurdity and contradiction that humor is really the only way to deal with it without losing your mind. Yet somehow most attempts at political humor are terrible. So as a public service, the Squelch hereby offers a simple outline of the Dos and Don’ts of political humor. No one’s guaranteeing that this is 10 Steps To Becoming Jon Stewart, but hopefully it’ll help people improve their game.

Issue 19-5 Now On Internet!

Yeah, you heard me right. For those poor souls who failed to procure a genuine copy of our latest comedy masterpiece, get your poor souls over to www.squelched.com to bathe in the electronic goodness. Get to it!

The French Fry Revolution

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Deputy Creative Editor Erik Krasner-Karpen spotted this little gem in the FSM bathroom:

It's good to be loved.

Good try, anonymous Squelch copycat. You might not have nailed the drawing, or the spelling, but we appreciate the thought.

IRL News: In Which We Publicly Distance Ourselves From An Embarassment To Our Craft

It seems the time has come to address the elephant in the comedy-magazine room. Those who follow the news, particularly the depressing news, are surely aware of the baffling brouhaha brewing at UC San Diego. For those who haven’t: some frat or other decided to throw a “Compton Cookout” party at which guests were encouraged to dress and act like black people. Evidently it was on behalf of a rapper who uses racist imagery in his act, but in any event actual black students were understandably upset. Shoe number two dropped when our counterpart at UCSD, the Koala, performed a segment on the university TV station about the incident that was, shall we say, less than tactful. I belive a phrase that rhymes with “inflateful chiggers” was used. Again, anger and befuddlement followed, and they got booted off the air. Now, when a comedian is accused of racism, he or she faces a choice of how to respond: one might earnestly explain why the joke in question was not really racist, which may not be funny but clears one’s name quickly. Or one might do the same in a humorous manner, using one’s comedic talents to both prove one’s innocence and earn some goodwill. The Koala chose, well, neither. Instead, they followed up their apparently racist skit with a jaw-droppingly racist special issue, filled almost exclusively with attacks on the Black Student Union and UCSD’s Chancellor.  I’ve read it, but I’m not linking to it because I don’t like linking to awful things. You can find it yourself if you really want to. Suffice to say it does nothing to improve their reputation.

Why Did You Send Us This? – Sarcasm, Inc.

Welcome back to our ongoing exploration of useless shit we get in the mail. This week, a sales pitch for an unusual new product.

What It Is: A stack of Post-Its from Sarcasm, Inc.

Wait, What?: Fortunately, we got a letter explaining this one. Sarcasm, Inc. is a company from Michigan, apparently composed entirely of just two guys, that proudly announces their invention of the SarcMark™, a punctuation mark designed to indicate that a sentence is sarcastic. In order to share this invention with the world, they sent us a package of Post-Its with their website and symbol prominently displayed on every sheet.

Why Did You Send Us This?: Verbatim: “While writing articles, you may have found yourself wondering if the reader would understand the sarcastic remark you made. Because you’re unsure, you may have opted to leave that sarcastic remark out. That is a shame, but doesn’t need to be the case anymore. The time has come for the SarcMark.” So in order to save us from our sad state of sincerity, Sarcasm Inc. generously provided free login codes to download software that would allow us to print their spirally brainchild whenever and wherever we desire.

Why We Don’t Want It: To begin with, there’s the manner in which we received it. The address reads, and I quote:

David Hollingswort

Heuristic Squelched

Berkley University

That’s an accumulation of errors so egregious that it almost comes off as, well, sarcasm. If you can’t be bothered to even get the name of a large public university right, I can’t help but think your expressions of concern for our ability to make our authorial voice clear are a bit disingenuous. Beyond that, marketing a sarcasm mark to a comedy writer is just a tad insulting. You know what it means if a reader can’t understand that you’re being sarcastic? It means YOU ARE BAD AT SARCASM. The English language is flexible enough that anyone with a good working knowledge of it can manage to make their tone apparent, even in print, with a little effort. If you need a punctuation mark to indicate tone, you’re admitting defeat. We’re college students who make a comedy magazine. We don’t need an excuse to be lazier than we already are.

In Conclusion: