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It was a tri-state area disaster. The 14 ton Butterscotch Retriever swallowed gallons and gallons of water from the city's reservoir. Three F-11's swooped overhead and fired missiles at the dog, but amazingly, instead its instant annihilation, the dog kept getting bigger and bigger. And it kept on drinking. The mayor had to do something – and fast.
“I want a team of Vets up there to check out its collar - maybe we can get a twenty on the owner” shouted the mayor, climbing into a helicopter.
“Yes fucking sir!” said the young hot-headed comptroller.
“Also, make sure that dog’s got plenty of dry food up there – I’m sure he’ll want something hard and crunchy after all that water”
“But sir”, protested the comptroller, “We’re trying to take out that thing, aren’t we?”
“No – that’s what the president tried to do – I’m gonna give this animal something it’s never gotten before - love!”
“But sir” the rookie comptroller persisted, but was cut off when the Mayor slammed the helicopter door in his face. The chopper lifted, but didn’t get too far - just after take off, the giant retriever came bounding over the horizon line, totaling the chopper with its glossy tail. The comptroller was now in charge of the future well-being of the city, and possibly the nation as well. Yet even at such a moment of pentultimate crisis, he had to stand back and admire the dog-monster's beautiful sheen - its hi-pro glow - as it frolicked amongst mid-town Manhattan's skyscrapers.
Date Written: March 05, 2004
Author: Benny Maniacs
Average Vote: 3.8889
Comments:
03/10/2004 Jon Matza (5): First rate through and through!
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: What the hell is a "comptroller" doing in this combat role? What's he going to do: go sick and start spraying the giant dog with budget appropriations? Crunch some numbers on his ass? Also: what's up with this "moment of penultimate crisis"? When's the ultimate crisis? Does precision and meaning in language matter at all? Or is this another example of ingenious surrealism lost on Literalist Lewis?
03/10/2004 Benny Maniacs (1): Comptroller Vs. Dog Monster in a Chinese downhill/tractor chicken-fight will be ultimate crisis. This is merely the prologue to confrontation.
03/10/2004 scoop (4): A heartening, bracing and penultimately glossy tail in a post-sept. 11th world. There's a little bit of the rookie comptroller in all of us, I think. Don't let the terrorists win!
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko (4): I enjoyed "penultimate crisis" and I've always had a fondness for butterscotch retrievers.
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis (2): Surely a crisis like this -- "pentultimate" [sic] or not -- calls for the steady hand of a seasoned comptroller, like Alan Hevesi. The Retriever's glow won't be quite so fucking hi-pro by the time Hevesi gets through with his motherfucking snout and hindquarters audit!
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow (4): Yes, "penultimate" was misused. Not mention that it was spelled "penTultimate." (By the way, because of that I thought it was by Matza when I first read it; I believe he recently misspelled, or mistyped, that word the same way, and also seemed to use it as if it meant ultimate; I'll look for the comment later, though I could be wrong.) By the time I got to that, however, I had already laughed twice. This one is pretty funny, butterscotch retriever as mega monster. And Craig, yes, this is an example of you being a literal minded twat. “Why’s the comptroller there? That's not the real function of a comptroller! Shouldn't it have been the dog catcher? Wouldn't he be more responsible for catching dogs?” And no, Craig, it isn’t surreal. (Why do you keep thinking things are trying to be surreal?) It’s just funny.
03/10/2004 qualcomm (4): i believe penultimate is used correctly. the sentence right before that says the dog is heading toward the city. that would be the ultimate crisis. the mayor's death that just occurred is the penultimate one. assholes.
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: Okay, I can see that, though I didn't read it that way. It also says that he's now "among the midtown skyscrapers," but as I said, it didn't influence my vote in any case.
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: Misspelling/typo aside, it's not clear to me that the author misused penultimate. The ulimate crisis obviously comes when dog-monster covers a city block in hi-pro doggy doo.
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: except that shouldn't have been in quotes
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: beaten to the fucking punch!
03/10/2004 qualcomm: lewis, your comments/vote are going into my well-documented, trapperkeepered research report.
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: But the point is that this is funny, no?
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: NKOTB trapperkeeper?
03/10/2004 qualcomm: NKOTB = New Kornish Off Track Betting?
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: Snow: the author may well have known what a comptroller is, but there's no evidence in the short that this is the case, so I doubt it. If he/she did know what a comptroller does, perhaps he/she might have done a teeny bit more with this? The use of the term comptroller here does not in and of itself strike me as funny, anymore than "young hot-headed accountant" or "bus driver" or "sales clerk" would have, ok? Is this really so funny to you? You're very easy to please.
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: Feldspar: I make shite on your trapperkeeper. And fling it into The Field.
03/10/2004 qualcomm: this is scoop all the way, by the way.
03/10/2004 scoop: The Field, The Field! Yes!
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: By the way, you fellers are overthinking the penultimate. Clearly the author thought the term meant something like "earth-shattering" or "epochal" or whatever. In any case, the phrase "at such a moment of penultimate crisis" is a fucking godawful clunker should offend the tender sensibilities of anyone who values the Queen's English.
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: but what if it's a joke?
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: No, Feldy, to the Kornish thing.
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: Caraig, I love the way you end your sentences with ok, ok? It underscores your smugness. Comptroller is a sort of funny word on its own, certainly funnier than the other choices you gave. But the fact that it is out of context is the main joke there. The Comptroller being the last one you’d expect to be in that role. Yes, it is somewhat arbitrary, and no it doesn't make any sense, hence the joke. This is why you didn't get it and point it out as a flaw, as you only seem to understand the most conventional jokes (and this one isn't even that unconventional). You have the sense of humor of an old lady. And I'm easy to please, huh? I thought you said I had very NARROW tastes. Which is it? Are Matza, Danko, and Feldspar also easy to please? Or is this just more cronyism? Or is it possible that your sense of humor is weak, and you just don't get it?
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: um...who wants to see my penis?
03/10/2004 Mr. Pony: Your actual penis, or the one you place on your mantelpiece during parties?
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: which ever one is used to prevent the possible flare-up of controversies.
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: Dylan's penis preventing a controversy. That would be a first.
03/10/2004 Jon Matza: To me there's a lot more interest and comedy going on here than mere surrealism and the use/misuse of language, e.g:
- the spectacle of a goofy, healthy dog terrorizing the city (sort of like Stay Puf Marshmallow man in Ghostbusters);
- that the dog's size results from drinking lots of water;
-the use of, and importance to the short of, dog-food commercial jargon;
-the send-up of the disaster flick cliche of whether the menace should be dealt with through force or diplomacy;
-the dry food gag.
In an "action" short like this it seems sort of beside the point to scrutinize language/usage too closely, kind of like getting frustrated by the dialogue in the Mummy Returns, say. The plot moves along nicely - what more do you want from a genre short? It'd be different if it were the type of short that's based on linguistic japery and calls attention to the very words it's misusing, a la Texxx. But there's enough originality/ imagination/ comedy going on here that I was won over early on and could blessedly ignore matters of pedantry.
That is to say, Lewis, Snow, Feldspar, and especially Danko you are all way off the mark here.
Korn? Great band.
03/10/2004 Jimson S. Sorghum (4): Protein helps to keep him strong. Glow with health the whole day long. This butterscotch retriever is on the Atkins plan, apparently.
Ewan and Lewis: What the frick, already? Stop it or I might have to go Comptroller on your asses.
I have no comments about Dylan's controversial penis.
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: what the fuck did i do, you cunt?
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: that was for Matza
03/10/2004 Jon Matza: You curtsied when you should have genuflected, brother.
03/10/2004 Dylan Danko: But i had me cap in me hand, Guvna!
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: Sorry, pumpkin. I'll play nice. Matza I agree with each of your points, except the pentultimate one about Danko, Feldspar and me being off the mark.
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: Snow: no matter how many times, or how loudly and ineloquently you bleat about my conventionality -- and smugness and the fact that I "just don't get it" (again!) -- I'm still not going to agree that the goddamn comptroller thing is funny (ok, ok, ok, ok)? Your anti-Lewis ire continually forces you into the absurd position of defending the hilarity of jokes that are at best middling. And there's nothing contradictory about having narrow taste and being easily pleased within those narrow parameters. And what in God's name do you have against old ladies? Matza: I just disagree with your opinion on this one, although it is nice to read a reasoned defense of a position rather than a string of sub-literate insults (and I'm happy to know that Snow agrees with your argument -- the one he was apparently incapable of articulating himself). The dog food jargon is reasonably funny, I guess; but the premise here -- Dog King Kong terrorizing City -- doesn't tickle my funny bone, and the execution is, for me, sub-par. I violently disagree about making genre short exceptions for cruddy writing. What's wrong with holding pulp to an exacting standard? There are reasons why American Pie is better than American Wedding and Dumb and Dumber is better than Dumber and Dumberer. I'm seriously not trying to come on like a pedantic dick, but stuff like "Yet even at such a moment of penultimate crisis" ("Yet even at such a moment of next to last crisis"?) actually drives me to distraction: the joy goes out of the reading when I feel I'm in bad hands. Finally, I thank Jimson for interceding to stop the feud that Snow just had to go and revive. I don't have a lot of time for a pissing match today, and I'm sure Snow has a lot of IT work he needs to get done.
03/10/2004 qualcomm: maybe the doggie shoulda humped lady liberty's leg? play up that angle!
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: Or taken a dump on Tweed Hall! Right!
03/10/2004 qualcomm: yeah, you could have made it a period piece with a giant dog. holy crap.
03/10/2004 Jimson S. Sorghum: I don't need your stinking thanks, Lewis. Thanks.
03/10/2004 Mr. Pony (4): One star off for the comptroller not growing to gigantic proportions and fighting the dog. Kinda hard to wade through the comments, though. If only there was a place they could go to settle their argument...
03/10/2004 Will Disney: the mayor's last line is pretty funny.
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: Craig, I don't doubt that you will never find this short funny, considering it is funny. But I never said the Comptroller thing is why it’s funny, or defended its hilarity; it’s just one tiny detail joke, after all. You criticized it because you thought that the Comptroller needed to do things that related to being a Comptroller, or that the writer didn't know what one was, or used the word by accident. I merely pointed out that your criticism missed the point. But you missed the point again. See, just because I say you don’t get a joke, doesn’t mean I think it’s hilarious. It just means you don’t get it. And if I say you don't get it repeatedly, it's only because you repeatedly don't get it.
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: Thanks for clearing things up.
03/10/2004 anonymous: I hate all you morons. I hearby fucking resign from AcNeshorts.
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: Then why are you still anonymous? In any case, I'll miss you, whoever you are. Your short's funny.
03/10/2004 Mr. Pony: Don't resign! And don't change Acme's name for the sake of making fun of it! And don't be anonymous! And don't call us morons! And you misspelled "hereby"! Don't do that!
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: It's Maniacs, I think.
03/10/2004 qualcomm: yeah, maniacs, you only got one bad vote, not counting the one you gave yourself, so why leave?
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: Jon, you fool, it's not just about votes!
03/10/2004 Craig Lewis: Please don't resign! I repent! Was wrong about the comptroller! Dead wrong!
03/10/2004 Ewan Snow: mulp
03/10/2004 scoop: 3/10/[censored] 10:33:10 AM - Jon Feldspar: this is scoop all the way, by the way. Ass Hole.
03/10/2004 John Slocum (4): I enjoyed this short a great deal. Very creative. One star off because there's no mention of wine anywhere. Anyone else notice this?