Inspired by a teacher-librarian I know, I will present you with a comprehensive list of career fair booths that are rarely ever seen.

• Enjoy an Exiting Career in Phrenology!
• There’s a Career for you in Pig Training
• Manually Masturbate Animals for Scientific Research, and Profit
• Discover an Exciting Career as a FORTRAN programmer
• SCIENCE, BITCHES!
• Video Game Expert: Canceled Due to Lack of Interest
• There’s Money to be Made in Extortion!
• BEETS AND TURNIPS! They Don’t Just Grow Themselves!
• Hey you! Sewer Urchin? YEAH!
• Ever Considered a Career in Mill Grinding?
• CARDBOARD BOXES! Make them in your own home!
• Start a Career in Career Fair Organization!
• Web Designer
• Who. Can. It’s. Man. The. Beat Poetry. Dig?
• Get Good Wit Editing.
• Want to Wear a CHEF’S HAT? Become a Chef’s Hat Manufacturer!
• Now Taking Resumes for Third Level Lug-nut and Wing-nut Bolt Inspectors.

The theatre started running their famous plays from 1898, showing shocked Parisian audiences whores, beggars and thieves on stage. They gauged their success by the amount of people that fainted while watching. Many plays were shut down in the name of decency. It was a constant fight with censorship to keep the plays going. One play included a necrophiliac based on a real person caught molesting bodies 10 years earlier, others had nannies that strangled children and characters that sported every disease known to man. Though the characters were famous, the theatre was remembered fondly for the amount of blood and gore they used in their act.

One actress was the subject of multiple on set deaths. Paula Maxa, who soon became known as “the Sarah Bernhardt of the impasse Chaptal.” During her career at the Grand-Guignol, Maxa, “the most assassinated woman in the world,” was subjected to a range of tortures unique in theatrical history: she was shot with a rifle and with a revolver, scalped, strangled, disemboweled, raped, guillotined, hanged, quartered, burned, cut apart with surgical tools and lancets, cut into eighty-three pieces by an invisible Spanish dagger, stung by a scorpion, poisoned with arsenic, devoured by a puma, strangled by a pearl necklace, and whipped; she was also put to sleep by a bouquet of roses, kissed by a leper, and subjected to a very unusual metamorphosis, which was described by one theater critic: “Two hundred nights in a row, she simply decomposed on stage in front of an audience which wouldn’t have exchanged its seats for all the gold in the Americas. The operation lasted a good two minutes during which the young woman transformed little by little into an abominable corpse.”

The actors played to the fears of the common French man; fear of foreigners, diseases, and fear of the proletariat. No fear escaped their blood soaked plays, and the actors played in to every nuance taking cues form their audience’s reactions. The audiences loved it and came in droves to see the mixture of bloody special effects, gripping drama and comedy. For the pre world war 2 years, Paris horror theatre was alive and hopping (or dead and twitching).

Unfortunately due to the excessive amount of violence in their plays, stricter censorship guidelines, and the gaining tolerance of more modern audiences, they became a parody of themselves. In 1962 the Grand Guignol shut it’s doors for the last time. People lost interest, and this form of gore theatre was lost. Or was it?

Thirty years ago I was brought on to this earth date women.

In the time since, my mission statement has been updated and changed time and time again. The constant struggle to sell my services to the female public has been difficult at times, but never has a dull day passed or opportunity missed.

One thing hasn’t changed. I still am just who I am. The world will never view Joel as I do. Where others see cool, I see character. Where they see odd, I see creativity. Where the world sees me hanging around the house naked, drinking beers, through their high powered telescope, because I’ve left the curtains open again, I see a man, ready for a challenge. When the world is in doubt about my ability to date women, is when I am most certain of my ability to compete and to win.

After thirty years I have come to realize that I should not expect this to change. So, instead of continuing with the failed efforts of the past, I will just search out those areas where I have some chance of persuasion.

This past year has offered crushing hurdles: some broken hearts and a few failed romances.

These are problems indeed, ones that any dating corporation, such as myself faces. Where others fail to move on and learn from mistakes, I am striving forward, learning to adapt to an ever changing and complex market of dating the ladies.

This fiscal year promises to be a grand year for me. Research into new and improved dating techniques has allowed me to compete and be at an advantage to other daters.

I’ve got exciting news for my investors. This is the year research and development has released a top secret report on proper techniques to the dinner and a movie date. I won’t go into detail here, suffice to say “she doesn’t always have to pay for everything.”

So, it is possible to conclude that management is getting its arms around this beast.

My main source of potential, behind wit and charm, is product. The “park picnic” redefines performance on the third or fourth date. “Talking under the stars” is entering its first decade of successful strategic deployment as a post date activity. The two-year-old “Casual Conversation” technology is now hard to keep fresh, with demand at it’s highest since its conception.

I see advertising as the second source of potential. To give a high quality product to the world, you have to let the world know about a high quality product. Since entering the dating scene I have increased expenditures on advertising 214%

Projects such as “online dating” have opened up entire fields that were, up till now, totally ignored. I have increased personal appearances in dating activities such as “the pub”. Meeting one on one with potential clients has increased the likelihood of acquiring dates. “Personal ads” have helped to increase awareness in me by allowing the casual reading demographic, become aware of my traits. The literate demographic is a great target market for me and one that shouldn’t be over looked.

Finally, behind it all is the person behind the company; Joel Friesen, the man of this company who has never accepted failure, who consider this dating corporation a growth company, even when rejections are on the rise. It is people like me and you that believe in this corporation and strive to see it doing better, growing as a person, developing as a human being.

Joel Friesen
Chairman of the Board,
Chief Executive Office

When you pick up the phone, and it’s a sales person, I want to start the application When the apps running the sales call is now talking to it. The app will wait for pauses in the conversation and inject one of a few random phrases:

• Sorry, can you repeat that?
• This is really exciting, please tell me more!
• What an offer!
• Go on…

During this whole process it will record and time the phone call and you can keep scores as to who stays on the line the longest. If you like you can review the call later for your amusement.

There could be a mode that slips a few random non-sequiturs in there like:

• I once had a dog named Bruce
• My mother is very well, thank you
• I don’t understand French, can you speak up?

It may be in the voice of a confused old man or an old woman, maybe a rude loud talker, or an exasperated business man in a train station, etc.

To find out if he is right, I have taken a dozen comics at random from today’s paper and removed the final panel.

Please allow me to present: American Comic Laugh Fest!

Born Loser

Well, shit who doesn’t?

Cow and Boy

I actually like how this turned out. It’s an admirable quest to make a calendar of cats dressed as synth-pop superstars. Definitely the feel good comic of the bunch.

Flo and Friends

I guess you’ll never learn the secret of Grandpa-Granddaughter conversations, MOM!

Grandave (?)

Looks like someone wants to get rid of grandma!

Herb and Jammal

The funniest of them all, because it is so very very sad.

Nancy

Nancy finally takes up reading! I also like to think it’s some sort of jab at Mark Twain being fat.

Red Rover

Bodies!

Sunshine Club

I think I saw that on Iron Chef

Wizard of ID

Answer: Very big!

So this is just an example of a single day. Imagine how funny comics could be if this happened every day. Do you think this improves them?

• The clock is indicating that the present time is optimum for the ingestion of Miller brand malted beverage.
• Gillette shaving implement is far superior to any other shaving implements acquirable to males.
• Though it is not spatially defined, there is an Intel brand computer chip within the confines of this hypothetical space.
• Budweiser is monarch to all malted beverages. Not democratically elected but assigned to the title at birth.
• A diamond will out last all else.
• One complete solar cycle without the ingestion of squeezed nectar derived from oranges, is compared to that same solar cycle without the sun itself, thus causing a paradox.
• I am finding it a difficult concept to accept in my belief system: I ingested everything that was given to me. Pepto-Bismol.
• Duracell: a product that continues on a trajectory, uninterrupted.
• Compared to a person living in close proximity, who is of good character, State Farm exists.
• AT&T: stretch out your feeling or grasping appendage and make contact through touch, with a human that is not you.
• VISA is omnipotent and follows you where you may desire to go.

Normally I wouldn’t admit that I even know what the site is, but I realize no one cares. In this day and age I think we could all use something to make dating a little easier.

Even if it means having to pretend I am a 6’2″ helicopter pilot with a scar.

Lavalife has been pretty decent. I’ve had a few dates because of it, found out that no one wants someone who claims to be a 6’2″ helicopter pilot with a scar and has a PhD in socisexyology, when in fact they are a 5’ 8″ web-geek, with only a BA in socisexyology. I always wind up paying for somebody’s dinner.

Maybe I’m looking for the wrong women. Maybe it’s time to refine the search. Narrow down the field some. Let’s take a look at some of the more unique searches on lavalife, shall we?

Vegetarians who Love to Hunt This is a very small group of women driven by their love of killing, and hatred for meat. Some are here because they checked every single box in the activities portion of the sign in. Some are just plain weird.

Investors with no Money They earn less than 20k per year, but they love to invest. There isn’t a check box for gambling, but I suspect that’s what the investments are from.

Habitual Smoking Fitness Freaks Working out between cigarettes is tough, running is best. They avoid swimming because the lighters don’t work underwater.

3 Foot Tall Basketball Players I couldn’t believe the amount of women online who claim to be 3’ tall. From the photos I can tell some are taller, unless they live in a tiny scale replica of our world. I think that it’s great these women are challenging the social norms and participating in a sport that favors the taller player. More power to them!

Those that prefer not to say what their ethnic background and body type is, but include a photo Very mysterious.

Old White Ladies who Love Rap If you refine a search down to it’s most basic elements you can find some pretty unique people. I looked for anyone over the age of 70 who lists rap music as their main source of inspiration. Oddly enough there is a bunch. But most seem to have accidentally filled in their age wrong, or they have incredible skin for a 103 year old gangsta.

Though fun, some of these searches can lead to scarred brain tissue. There are some mental images that are hard to shake. Use caution on Lavalife and be sure to fill in your form correctly. Unless you are a woman that’s attracted to a man that’s attracted to these kind of women. Then whatever floats your boat.

I am looking for a unique girl, but seeing what I have here, kind of makes me glad I can appreciate someone who is pretty normal (to some degree). If you want to find me on Lavalive I am the 3 foot tall buddhist that speaks Javanese and likes seal hunting.

Today I’m going to put together some of my favorite sites on the net that show old medical illustrations. These are a great inspiration to me, and I hope you might appreciate them too.

Digatal Clendening Shows us a small selection of high quality images of skeletons, operating theatres and other assorted weirdness. One of the most comprehensive sections is this one. An assortment of categories with chronologically sorted images. For the ephemera i love I can’t seem to get away from this bit: Chinese Public Health Posters. Piles of weird images in there.

Dream Anatomy Has a giant collection of the more surreal side of the art of medical illustration. Made by the National Library of medicine, the collection is professional and unique. The images are broken down in to categories. One of my favorite is Body Part as Art showing cadavers playing instruments and dancing. You can see the entire gallery here.

There is more to see from them here as well. They have catalogued dozens of books and scanned in the images. This book is one of my favorites. It shows skeletons in a band as well as this hauntingly strange etching.