Psychologists studying Grebcyk have coined a term, “extroversion,” to describe his unusual behavior.

“It’s completely baffling,” said MIT researcher Edmund Lawler. “As we all know, men are normally very reticent and reluctant to share their opinions or thoughts. I myself would prefer to be hiding under my desk right now. But this Grebcyk fellow breaks the mold. He’s quite an anomaly.”

As Grebcyk himself put it: “Whoo-hoo! AC/DC rules! Chevy sucks!”

Most males are by nature content with a quiet, contemplative life, spending their days baking, quilting and meditating thoughtfully. Venturing out in public takes no small degree of coaxing and self-resolve. Not so with Grebcyk.

At any given moment and without warning, Grebcyk is capable of such unorthodox actions as: initiating a conversation with a total stranger; telling an off-color joke; and emitting high-pitched whooping noises.

Or, as Grebcyk recently said, “Yeah! Fifth row tickets, baby! Sweet!”

Researchers have isolated five basic elements through which Grebcyk’s unusual traits find their expression: pro football, “classic” rock, alcoholic beverages, the opposite sex, and automobiles.

For example, Grebcyk recently won Philadelphia Eagles tickets on a drive-time show on his favorite sports radio station, WDUG, “The Dugout.” As a “huge fan” of the Eagles, Grebcyk was ecstatic, and in the days leading up to the game he could not stop talking about how he had won the tickets, as well as how he had gotten to say “WDUG kicks ass” on the air.

At the game, Grebcyk drew stares and gasps of admiration by appearing shirtless, with one side of his body painted green and the other side white.

“What a delightful, not at all annoying young man,” said Shirley Post, 51, who sat near Grebcyk at the game.

Not surprisingly, Grebcyk wants to put his unusual traits to gainful use. He would like someday to become a “stand-up comedian,” a person who tells jokes to elicit laughter from others. Grebcyk said he was influenced by his hero, Andrew “Dice” Clay, a comedian who exhibited extroversion similar to Grebcyk’s before his career decline in the early 1990s.

“You hear what happened when Michael Jackson’s wife got pregnant?” Grebcyk quipped. “He was the one who got morning sickness.”

Scientists still cannot find a cause for Grebcyk’s unique extroversion. But whatever the cause, everyone agrees that his future is bright.

“I predict big things for Randy,” said Jennifer Kessler, his supervisor at Mid-Atlantic. “Such unusual exuberance should be well rewarded, and I think it will be.”

The post Area Male Extroverted appeared first on The Onion.

The post Barbra Streisand To Take Rare Public Dump appeared first on The Onion.

The post All U.S. Males Renamed Dudley appeared first on The Onion.

The post Goodyear Unveils New, Circular Tires appeared first on The Onion.

The post Bangladesh Runs Out Of People appeared first on The Onion.

The post Man From Last Week Smacked Into Present Day appeared first on The Onion.

I run screaming when I see your millions of sharp skinny blades protruding from Mother Earth, like unsheathed swords waiting for me to fall upon them and disembowel myself. I make a wide berth around the piles of shredded lawn clippings—grass blades that have been freed from the shackles of their roots, hoping I might step on them with my wet galoshes and carry them like parasites into my home.

One day, you grass blades will learn to get up and walk on your own, but I will not be around to witness that horror: I will move to the desert. Take that, grass!

Of course, I also fear sand. Bastard sand, you are the Devil’s work! Zillions of infinitesimal hard granules, you turn a windy day into a maelstrom of tiny round projectiles. If one of those grains of sand gets into my eyes, I will most certainly go blind, and a grain in my ear will go straight to my brain, rendering me a vegetable.

A day at the beach is an opportunity for you, O dreaded sand, to infiltrate every part of my body: my toes, hair, belly button and anus. That’s why I always wear protective goggles, face mask, surgical scrubs and a sombrero whenever I am forced by law to go to the beach: (I am still fighting for those laws to be repealed.)

Children, so accustomed to the ways of evil, abet your menacing ways and erect altars to you in the form of sand castles, but I always demolish these monstrosities: I bring a hammer attached to a stick that’s long enough so I don’t have to come in contact with any sand, and I use this to raze these miniature fortresses. You’ll not best me, foul sand!

I, in fact, hate all of the outdoors. Once I’ve relocated to the desert, I’ll perch my shack upon a large solid rock, lock my doors and never set foot outside again. Take that, outdoors!

Once I’ve sheltered myself from the wild, I will be forced to confront my fear of paint. I curse thee, wretched paint! In wet form, your fatal stench clogs my nostrils, making me light of head and short of breath.

One drop of you forever mars anything it touches—a permanent scar left as a constant reminder of your power over the weak and infirm. Once you, O rancid liquid, have been slathered upon the walls and ceilings and sills of any room, your ghastly monochromeness mocks me. Everywhere I look, all I see is you. That is why the walls of my dream home will not bear the mark of the paint menace!

Finally, once my shelter is built, I will put it in a rocket and shoot it into space, for, you see, I fear gravity. A pox upon thee, O vile force of nature! Your pull upon me prevents my unfettered ascent into the heavens. Each time my feet touch the ground, I convulse and shriek, knowing my destiny is to remain here on Earth, so that is why I must leave. As I hurl into the cosmos toward Pluto, my feet will no longer be tethered to Terra Firma, my fears will finally be allayed, and I will cocoon myself in the security of my wayward spacecraft. I leave thee an orphan, foul gravity!

I’m also afraid of language, so typing this very story has caused sweat to stream from my every pore. Now I am curled in a fetal position, slowly typing this treatise one letter at a time, praying that this will never be decipherable! If it is read, I shall surely perish!

Die, O cursed tongue of the teeming masses!

AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!!!

The post I Fear Grass appeared first on The Onion.

You run afoul of the school board this week when you refuse to answer its questions about the space-heaters installed in your children’s lungs.

The mystery of your parentage will be solved this week when General Motors recalls you and 20,000 of your brothers and sisters.

Everyone who laughed at your bizarre phobia will feel remorse this week when supermidget Billy Barty breaks into your house, kicks you repeatedly in the groin and steals your good silver.

A compromise will be necessary this week to reconcile your lifestyle with the world. Stop setting old ladies on fire.

You become the butt of all the office jokes this week when you forget to compensate for windage during your presidential assassination attempt.

An impromptu survey of the NHL’s 10 best goalies ranks you as the worst lay in all of the U.S. and Canada.

You are unceremoniously fired when the world’s ugliest pre-operative transvestites answer the personals ad you wrote for your boss.

The twin specters of confusion and bankruptcy haunt your life when Wilford Brimley confronts you with a prenuptial contract you do not remember signing.

Your football-widow status becomes permanent when the Kansas City Chiefs break into your house and murder your husband.

You will be sued for loss of livelihood when the riding mower you are operating goes out of control, tears through a circus freakshow tent, and separates the Siamese twins.

Despite repeated sacrifices to Venus, no loss of virginity is scheduled for you this week.

You will make the Guinness Book Of Records this week in the category of “Most Horribly Bungled Suicide Attempt.”

The post Horoscope for the week of December 3, 1996 appeared first on The Onion.

Point

The Packers Rule!

Let me tell you this, my friend: The Green Bay Packers rule! Brett Favre, Reggie White and the boys are going all the way this year. The Green and Gold are gonna take it all the way to the Big Dance in New Orleans this January, no doubt about it!

That’s right—we’re gonna ride the cannon arm of a certain quarterback all the way to Super Bowl XXXI! Unlike Dallas or San Fran or any other pussy-ass team, the Pack is led by the Man With The Plan, the 1995 NFL MVP, number four from Kiln, MS, the Golden Boy himself, Mr. Brett Favre! Who do you guys have? Troy Aikman? Elvis Grbac? Please!

I know there’s people who say the Packers can’t get it done ’cause they’re a small-town team. But don’t you see? That’s what makes them so great! They’re way up there in Northern Wisconsin, taking on all comers in the name of us small-town folks who might not be from New York or Chicago or Los Angeles but who can still whip some major tail when the game is on the line.

They say we don’t have a ground game, but I know a certain number 34, Edgar Bennett, who just might beg to differ. They say all of our receivers are hurt, but who cares? Favre’s so good he doesn’t need receivers! They said we were in trouble after Sterling Sharpe left. Now, it’s like, Sterling who?

Plus, I’ll tell you something else: We’ve got God on our side, courtesy of The Minister Of Defense, Mr. Reggie White! With Reggie on our side, those other teams don’t have a prayer. The Cowboys may say they’re America’s Team—which is bullcrap, anyway—but we’re God’s team!

For over 75 years the Packers have been kicking ass and taking names. And their fans know it. There’s nothing in this life that compares to relaxing with a Schlitz and a sausage sandwich and watching the Pack kick the Bears’ asses all over the field. It’s like I say: It doesn’t get any better than this!

The Pack has been around longer than the Bears, who have been around a long time, and that’s the reason, as the saying goes, “The Vikings suck, but the Bears swallow!” Because we’ve got a history.

Wisconsin is Packer Country! The Packers don’t just play football—they live it! And if the big-city slickers have anything to say about it, I’m right here. And so’s the Pack! C’mon over and let’s rock and roll! The Pack is back in ’96!

Counterpoint

For 500 Years My People Have Been Tortured And Persecuted, Slaves In Our Own Land

My people are a conquered people, with no future and a lost past. Our land has been taken from us, our culture denied, our ancestors murdered and erased from all history books. We are forced to live in squalor on dusty reservations, helpless as our children descend deeper into our pit of alcoholism and depression.

Once we roamed this land freely from ocean to ocean, content to live simply, hunting the plains and fishing the great waters the way we had since the beginning of time. We were happy in our way, happy to live and die as a small part of our world.

Yet our holiest traditions have been defiled and degraded. Our sacred places have been stripped of their beauty and befouled by the pollution and waste of our captors.

Great Spirit, where have you gone? Once, when this land was beautiful, you honored us with the benevolence of your bounty. Now, all that remains are tattered fragments and shards, littering the despoiled fields of a ruined countryside.

Five centuries of trickery, deceit, religious oppression, rape, murder and genocide have left us a tattered, faded people. We grind out what little we can on our barren, dusty reservations by selling beads and trinkets, whoring our heritage by dressing in feathers and skins and hopping like fools for the amusement of the very people who enslave us. In return we receive a few meager dollars, which we quickly spend on alcohol.

Though my ancestors once felled the mightiest of stags with only the hand-hewn weapons of ancient wisdom and tradition, the white men took away their power with their guns, stripping them of their dignity, leaving only the hollow shell and withered husk of what once was.

Just as the dead oak rots from within until the trunk splits with the softest wind, so has the soul of my people been slowly weakened and decayed. We are as the dust, no more alive than the bison and passenger pigeon, driven from this place by those who killed as they came.

Once I dreamed of rising up and reclaiming my past, but a dream is all it will ever be. History will remember us as a people shepherded to extinction by our conqueror’s murderous guile. We will never break free of the bottle, the reservation and our new, ever-growing heritage: that of defeat and despair.

The post The Packers Rule! vs. For 500 Years My People Have Been Tortured And Persecuted, Slaves In Our Own Land appeared first on The Onion.

Just because someone is desperately addicted to an incredibly intense form of refined cocaine doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about those old-fashioned values like thrift, cooperation and helping each other out. People always describe crack houses as someplace they wouldn’t want to be. Well, the truth of the matter is that I wouldn’t want to live anywhere where the people aren’t working together. And that was exactly the key to turning our crack house into a crack home!

Just like a good drug needs to be cut in just the right proportions, an honest-to-goodness crack home needs the right mix of people, each with their own special qualities, but who are willing to be “team players” to achieve their shared goal of constantly staying high on a really expensive drug. Crack doesn’t grow on trees, you know!

A home needs whores, shakedown boys, thieves, muggers, scam artists—a whole range of diverse people with unique attributes. Cooperation: That’s the difference between a bunch of shivering people hitting the pipe in the same abandoned building, and a real family sharing a home.

We have a chart on the refrigerator to remind everyone of their duties, and we rotate the chores on a regular basis to make it fair. No one likes to get fucked in the ass by strangers every day for a week straight, do they? No, so we switch the chores so that today it’s prostitution, but tomorrow it might be liquor-store hold-ups or muggings. I add colorful stickers and glitter to our duty chart, but you can personalize yours anyway you want, maybe by cutting pictures out of old magazines or using bright fuzzy yarn to string up the amputated fingers of suppliers who have passed you bad rock.

We’re one big family in our crack home because we recognize the uniqueness of each and every individual addict. (Not everyone is good at everything, but everyone is good at something!) We keep the lines of communication open and remember to listen so everyone has a friend to turn to. Sure, we may poke fun when the maggots covering the piles of garbage find their way into the gaping sores all over Eddie’s body that never seem to heal—but we’d never kick him out of the room just because we don’t want to look at him.

Maybe someday our crack home will even have a till jar for bus rides to the free clinic. Then, hopefully, Yolanda will never again have to throw herself off the fire escape and crawl back upstairs to have a miscarriage on the kitchen floor.

Another big part of turning a crack house into a crack home is respect for everyone. Dr. Maxwell McFarland, author of Wake up and Live, reminds us that everything alive on this earth is dependent on something else. No one is a loner! I need you and you need me! If the pick-up doesn’t come through and I start shaking so bad that I vomit, and someone else needs to vomit too, I’ll share the cardboard box. If DeeDee has gone catatonic and hasn’t shut her eyes since yesterday, none of us knock her over just for fun.

And if anyone should overdose or get shot or even just suddenly find a torrent of blood streaming from their nostrils and then choke to death on mouthfuls of black-red mucus, we all help carry the body over into the neighbor’s yard. Like I said, it’s about mutual respect. And if the body lays in the yard too long and stuff starts to eat it, we’ll throw something over it.

I’ve been told it takes a whole village to raise a child and I believe it, so if Lisa’s baby works her way free, I’ll do my part to make sure she doesn’t crawl out the window again.

Last but not least, there’s no squabbling and rowing allowed in a good home. I even made a big sign that said “Words can hurt… Think before you speak!” and I hung it where everyone would see it—right over the big metal trash can that everyone defecates into now that the broken toilet fell through the urine-soaked floor. Almost everyone abides by the no-fighting rule, but if a conflict comes up, we have a house meeting and every one of us gets a vote. (Everyone, great or small, counts!) Then whoever is on “Judge” duty on the chore chart takes the person deemed at fault, and kills that person.

Sure, not all of us are as good at certain tasks as another person might be, but that doesn’t matter, as long as everyone tries their best. Remember, the only way to be a winner is to first be a beginner! When you’re trying to win one for the home team, 100 percent participation from every member is key. Anything less and Custard will shoot your arms off at the shoulder at close range.

The things I’ve told you about are all common sense. I was a Home Economics teacher for 31 years before I got hooked on crack and sold my Taurus station wagon, converting the cash into bags of pure snow. But I don’t have any tricks up my sleeve, just a wish to see everyone reach their potential!

Surprisingly, when I moved into our little windowless abode, the homies were somewhat reluctant to make any changes at first. But after I knitted everyone a sweater—to combat the shakes—and got Custard on my side by becoming his bitch, everyone else followed right along. And now here we are, Home Sweet Home, a real family until we die or the city demolishes the building.

The post It's Not A Crack House, It's A Crack Home appeared first on The Onion.

“I am permitted to smoke dope because I have, like, the flu and shit.”

Julie Meyers • Teacher

“One time when I was sick, my dad gave me a big fattie, only it wasn’t the kind you smoke.”

Adam Feuerstein • State Senator

“I am a Bay Area surgeon, and I recently pioneered a new open-heart surgery technique where a big bag of weed is dropped into the patient’s open chest cavity. Results have been mixed.”

Michael Hiller • Surgeon

“I’d never smoke weed if I had cancer, man. I might freak out and get all paranoid and be, like, ’Whoa! I’ve got cancer, man!’”

Rajeev Thakker • Architect

“Now if my doctor could just prescribe me some pizza delivered to my place, I’d be fuckin’ set.”

Todd Pollack • Lawyer

“I like to whip up a marijuana poultice and apply it to my muscles when they ache. I also pour heroin into some hot water for a dandy foot massage!”

Cristina Tendero • Systems Analyst

The post Medical Marijuana appeared first on The Onion.

In the last 50 years, I have been buried five times. I was awake during three of them and had the presence of mind to lie quietly in the coffin and listen to my eulogies. At the first one, President Truman spoke, calling me a rotten old bastard from whose iron shackles the American people had finally been freed. You should have seen Truman’s face when I emerged, like Lazarus, from my sarcophagus! I had that lousy hypocrite flogged.

At the fourth funeral, I didn’t wake up until the coffin had been lowered into the ground. My hound, Tiberius, dug me up. He tore off my left clavicle, but thankfully, my servants were able to rescue me. Dear, loyal Tiberius!

Wisely, after that fourth burial, I had an electric buzzer installed in my coffin, with a long cord subterreaneously connected to the servants’ hall. When I woke up yesterday morning, I rang it furiously, to be sure.

Upon my latest return from the grave, there were tears in the eyes of many at the Zweibel estate. My worthless son, J. Phineas, however, had wasted no time in my absence. There he was at the great oak desk in my study, smoking my cigars, guzzling my brandy and deciding how to spend my riches!

Upon seeing me enter the room, the saphead showered me with tears and hugs, and feigned great joy at my apparent resurrection from the dead. He’s made this display before. Little does he know, however, that I have since amended my will. When I do finally escape this mortal coil, I am bequeathing my estate to that woman with the enormous mammaries.

T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.

The post Buried Alive–Again! appeared first on The Onion.