the Funnelwhich

Jesus complains that John McCain is talking down to him.

[SITAPUR, INDIA] “He never saw me as a friend,” Jesus says as he begins the long, sordid tale of John McCain. “I was his tagalong, his subordinate, or his resource.” “But never his—his friend.”

As a child, Christ was an outcast. He asked too many questions and claimed he talked to God. His nickname was “Jesus d’Arc.” There was one other boy like him, John McCain. Nobody would play with McCain because he was eighty years old at the time. And he slept a lot. And sometimes his heart medication would fall into other people’s food. He was never a blast to be around. He was voted “Most Old” by his admittedly uncreative second grade.

Christ and McCain became friends, bonded by the glue of exclusion. But, unlike McCain, Christ only became a superstar whereas his friend became a political sensation. Jesus had only begun to learn wiffleball when McCain cancelled their lessons. Then John McCain stopped showing up at the Jane Austen book club. And slowly he faded out of Christ’s life. Christ, embittered by his return to the limits of society, committed suicide by violating the Roman Empire’s most sacred law—the one against jaywalking.

Jesus rebounded from his death, but he was never the same.

The two men eventually reconciliated during a 2007 meeting in which McCain made a pact with the Savior in return for a chance at being president, a long-time dream of his. Little is known of the details, but election staff close to McCain report a lot of crying, a lot hugging, a lot of transubstantiation. Thus, Christ’s recent revelation of a rough relationship in an intimate Larry King’s Still Alive interview surprised everybody who was not a religious scholar.

“He’s condescending. He thinks I’m one person. Hasn’t he ever read the Bible? Just because he’s mortal doesn’t make him better than me,” Christ said shortly before throwing a camel at a wealthy person. Ultimately, he said unaware to an open mike, “I just want to shave his arms.” In a statement released to the press amid the resulting confusion, Christ would only say, “You’d all know what I mean if Peter had included the Book of Hygiene. You’d all know.” And he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

John Wilkes Booth remains at large.

Penguins storm Palestine churches

[BIDAR, INDIA] Today, an armory of tropical penguins stormed Palestinian mosques and temples after a long march from the Ural Sea. Unfortunately, they had bought fetching fez hats in Lebanon previously. Nervous Palestinians, expecting another bomb attack, mistook the penguins for walking, swimming bombs. Palestinians ran outside the church only to find actual suicide bombers. Later, everyone gathered to joke and laugh about the day except the penguins, who had been mercilessly trampled by the mob rush.

Believed margins of error for a recent poll about 9/11

We polled Americans to see what they thought caused 9/11 and sorted below from least to most popular. Then we polled them to see what margin of error they thought the poll had, which is presented below sorted from least to most popular.

5%, 7%, 2%, 3%, and 1%. The margin of error for this poll will be decided in the next edition if America somehow gets more interesting between this Sunday and next Sunday.

Terry Zhivago whimpered softly and rolled over

In Heaven today, Terry Zhivago slept soundly in her bed. She’s snuggled in her bed covers now, dreaming of beautiful things. If you were to open her bedroom and peek your head inside, you would hear the soft snores of a person who’s at better times now and the contented rustle of a person sleeping like a log. And you would be touched, if you knew the whole story, and you would probably cry a little.

Jesus wipes his eyes and leaves the bedroom corridor.

Mahdi Army soldiers’ manlinesses are in doubt tonight

In light of their allegiance to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army have been thrown into an existential crisis of virility and general manliness. “We’re, like, being controlled by a nerd sitting up on his high throne while we risk our necks,” proclaims anti-al-Sadrist Josh Fighter, who hands me a brightly colored pamphlet calling for democracy among the Mahdi Army so that they may impose a Shi’ite theocracy upon others. “We have been long oppressed!” the pamphlet exclaims. “It is time we brought democracy upon ourselves! No fights without representation! No anger without recognition!”

In his room, al-Sadr paces nervously as he attempts to resolve this crisis. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” he mutters to himself every now as if to reassure his demons away. Still, al-Sadr sweats profusely, and now his desk is bathed in the brackish water like a Red Sea, pre-Moses who in the 18th century severely disrupted the aquatic ecosystem by parting it. “I always thought my army liked me, you know,” al-Sadr says. “Where did this resentment come from? Why doesn’t anybody talk to me rationally like an adult? Can’t we just discuss this?” al-Sadr has attempted to enroll in a sword-fighting class in case any of his guerrilla army is a feudal knight. He tells me he wishes he could write a computer program or a thesis to magic away this anger.

Mean while, Josh Fighter prepares to wage a long and unfathomable war to bring democracy to the Mahdi Army hoping that one day, he too can spread something nobody wants to a region nobody understands.