Reach For the SARS!

Hey! Get back to work on researching SARS you daffy broad! I don't pay you to sit here and look pretty for Google's image search!

We're in the midst of a crisis; our country (the United States of Whatever It Is) and its glorious SUV-driving citizens are currently being transformed, and I'm not talking about like when those faggy dinosaurs from Transformers changed and turned into retarded robots whose main battle strategy consisted of hitting something with a large rock. We're being transformed by panic, fear, and possibly acid reflux, eating away at the soul of mankind and spraying pesticides on the beetle larvae of our humanity. America, as well as the rest of the world and possibly isolated colonies on Jupiter, has found itself at the mercy of one of the deadliest and most deadly killing forces ever since Team Rocket was able to catch that one Pokemon who was able to shit out flaming pieces of corn at its enemies. No, I'm not referring to Madonna's "American Life" CD, I'm talking about SARS, the invisible, tasteless, odorless killer which can suffocate any of us in our homes while we sleep. Wait, I think that's actually natural gas or maybe a murderous ghost with a ghost pillow. SARS is an acronym for "severe acute respiratory syndrome," which doesn't make too much sense because the terms "severe" and "acute" kind of cancel each other out, therefore technically making it "normal respiratory syndrome." Unfortunately, NRS doesn't sounds nearly as cool as SARS, so the scientists in the CNN marketing department decided to stick with the new and improved acronym which looks a hell of a lot better when scrolling horizontally below the face of that one poof-haired female news anchor who always mispronounces the names of state capitols.

Like many nefarious things such as communism and those plastic fake spider rings you get at the pediatrician's office after he's given you a complimentary oil change and spinal tap, SARS originally came from China, a rogue country with nuclear missiles and a really silly looking national flag. Just as Santana has baffled the medical community by refusing to die within the past 600 years, SARS has equally mystified the scientific community. Although the first case of SARS was diagnosed in November 2002, little is known about this mysterious and deadly disease which contains properties that make it simultaneously mysterious and deadly. I have used The Internet ™ to collect and list all the known facts about SARS so you, the reader, could look at them while you contract the disease and begin dying in an ironic twist of events:

FACT #1: Nobody knows how SARS originated.
FACT #2: Nobody knows how SARS is transmitted.
FACT #3: Nobody knows how SARS can be stopped.
FACT #4: The Kansas City Chiefs were retarded to choose Larry Johnson in the first round of the NFL draft.

There hasn't been one confirmed case of a fish getting SARS. Coincidence or a conspiracy involving the Lost City of Atlantis?

I hope you copied and pasted all that important information to the Notepad document of your choice, as this knowledge may save your life. Well, I mean it won't save you from contracting SARS obviously, but if some fat guy comes up to you on the street and says "tell me three facts about SARS or else I'll shoot you in the face," then I might just have saved your life, assuming you don't bring up fact #4 (although he obviously wouldn't be able to argue with you). As you can tell from the previous checklist of important information, SARS is a mysterious and deadly disease that is so highly mysterious and deadly that you could probably drive a train over it and it wouldn't even die or flinch. For all we know, SARS may travel through computer monitors and you could be contracting it right now as you read this literary disasterpiece! Wouldn't that be an embarrassing way to die? Your tombstone would read "Got SARS by looking at a shitty website when he probably should've been working or downloading porn" and when somebody would ask your family members how you died, they would shamefully lie and claim you were blown up when you selflessly leapt on a Nazi grenade in WWII, thereby saving the lives of your fellow soldiers, all of which were of uniquely different races and religions.

Now I don't want anybody out there to become depressed and suicidal after reading today's update; after all, that's Zack "Geist Editor" Parson's job (remark used courtesy of the American Shitty Joke Recycling Program). However, SARS is a highly contagious and evil respiratory illness which we know nothing about and have no idea how to cure or prevent it. Also, it's quite mysterious and deadly, as I may have previously mentioned. As I write this, scientists and jerks wearing medical masks across the globe are using various metallic machines to spin around chemicals while saying scientific crap like "mitosis," all in a never-say-die race against the clock to research and defeat the SARS menace, where the hunter becomes the hunted and nothing is as what it seems and he's a good cop gone bad, framed for crimes he didn't commit. It's like a NASCAR competition, only except instead of racecars there are scientists, and instead of a finish line there is the cure for SARS, and instead of few thousand rednecks in the audience there are a bunch of short Chinese people wearing white masks in an attempt to emulate their hero, Michael Jackson. While many scientists lack the skill to figure out where the hell SARS originated, the hive-mind of "Coast to Coast AM" listeners have devised their own list of probable suspects, and I have every reason to believe them because if you read it on the Internet, then it must be true:

I don't know what the hell is going on here, but I don't approve of it.

THE US GOVERNMENT - It's a proven fact that many insane nutjobs believe it's a proven fact that the US government is behind some of the most evil conspiracies since that one magician who beat his wife made the Statue of Liberty disappear on national television. Our government dips their rusty ladle in the honey pot of every horrifying scheme in the history of the galaxy. More than likely, the US government developed SARS in Area 52 (a military installation secretly located behind the Citgo gas station near Roswell) as an anti-communism nerve agent which would simultaneously wipe out the red / yellow menace of China while producing a lot of great news stories that would take public pressure off the fact the the current US economy can be measured with Monopoly money. Specifics are not known at the time, but floating rods and chemtrails are probably involved.

THE UFO PEOPLE - The insidious UFO people have been unsuccessfully attempting to take over our planet for like, I don't know, at least a few weeks now. Maybe even longer if you measure time in dog years. Their previous attack strategies of "pushing down rows of corn in the form of a circle" and "touching peoples' asses" somehow didn't pan out the way they wanted them to, so they decided to create a megavirus which would wipe us all out. I believe it's only a matter of time before farmers throughout the world find their corn crops are contracting a rare disease which causes entire circles of them to fall down for no readily apparent reason. Specifics are not known at the time, but floating rods and chemtrails are probably involved.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER / ILLUMINATI - I'll be the first to admit that I don't really know how the New World Order (NWO) or Illuminati (Illuminati) operate or what motivated them to do the things they do, but one thing is clear with these two groups: they're up to no good. I think the NWO / Illuminati are aligned with the UFO people and the US government in some weird, highly stupid triangle of misfiring neurons, but I can't really sketch out how they function together at this time. I blame my current lack of an Eddie Bauer brand tinfoil helmet. Whenever I think of the NWO / Illuminati, I conjure up this mental image of all these old white guys in suits sitting inside an antique library, smoking cigars and sipping brandy all day. I don't know how they could organize anything like SARS or coordinate the intense UFO anal probing schedule, but maybe there's something happening behind the scenes that I don't know about. Specifics are not known at the time, but floating rods and chemtrails are probably involved.

Hahaha, that check weights 9,000 pounds! It must've had one hell of a breakfast! Ahaha! Also, the guy on the left is ugly. So is the one on the right.

With the so-called "Triangle of Terror" out of the way (I just so-called it that, I'm hoping the name will catch on and I'll be able to trademark the phrase and sell it to Sony for a few million), we must now concentrate our efforts on failing to contract this deadly virus. SARS prevention is highly tricky and difficult, mainly because we're battling an unseen enemy, like if the Invisible Man were to break into your house and start raping your wife. You could shout, "hey man, stop raping my wife," but he probably wouldn't stop because as Kevin Bacon proved in the movie "Hollow Man," the process of becoming invisible turns you into a real jerk. Here are some helpful tips and techniques you may try in your futile attempt to avoid getting SARS, although they probably won't work and I haven't bothered testing them in any fashion whatsoever.

TIP #1: Never ever ever ever leave your house. Although nobody knows how SARS is spread, they do know how it is not spread: by staying isolated inside your home and crying yourself to sleep every night. If you follow this strict procedure every day then there's a good chance you might not get SARS. To make sure no infected assholes attempt to breach the security of your home, hire somebody to erect an electrified fence around your property. Oh, and a moat too. If you can find a swamp monster to put in the moat, then that would help even more. Just make sure the swamp monster doesn't have SARS, and if he does, avoid making out with him.

TIP #2: Do not make out with swamp monsters that have SARS. If, for some inexplicable reason, you find yourself unable to avoid making out with a swamp monster infected with SARS, then try not to give him / her any lip and tongue action.

TIP #3: Shoot any suspected SARS victims with a high powered rifle. Some nit-picking authorities may claim this is "wrong" or "illegal," but they don't see the big picture here: by sticking a hole of sunshine through some poor sap's head, you're helping the world slow down the spread of SARS! I mean, if the asshole was infected, then he could've spread it to you, and if he wasn't infected then he could've gotten the disease from somebody else and therefore would've contributed to the epidemic! If you want to take this tip one step further, then I guess you could go on a shooting spree, mowing down all those that stand before you in the Great Mall of America, but I personally wouldn't recommend that, as my strict Mormon upbringing feels mass murder is wrong (I think).

TIP #4: Avoid suspicious-looking molecules. I'm no scientist, but I think SARS has something to do with molecules or atoms or some crazy shit like that. You know, electrons and crap. If you see an odd-looking molecule floating around your neighborhood, call the authorities at once, as it may be "casing the joint" and looking for "soft targets" to hit. If you are driving down a residential street and see some shady molecules following in a rust-colored Chevy behind you, tracking your every move, then accelerate to 90 miles an hour and head to the nearest Police station. Don't bother stopping when you get there, as that will only give the SARS a chance to catch up.

TIP #5: Become a silicon-based life form. As far as I know, only carbon-based life forms have succumbed to the sweet siren-song of SARS. I can't recall a single time that Nahraht the Horta ever got SARS in the entire "Star Trek" series of novels, but then again that guy regularly ate rocks, so maybe this wouldn't really be the best lifestyle for you unless you want to be shown on some HBO special.

TIP #6: Die before you have a chance to be infected. My grandfather is dead and he's never gotten SARS. I can name many dead people who don't have SARS and will (probably) never get it, but I'm not going to because I'm a fucking lazy slob who would rather drink Steel Reserve beer and eat Sun Chips.

Like most Something Awful updates, I feel these tips and suggestions can just help save your life, assuming you're stupid enough to actually try them out. If you do, please send me an email and notify me of the results. Make sure to give it some catchy subject line which will really grab my attention, like "Ñîòîâûå òåëåôîíû. Ðîçíè÷íàÿ ïðîäàæà è äîñòàâêà," because quite honestly, I can't get enough of that shit. SARS may be sweeping the world by storm, or storming the world with sweeping, but if you stay smart and think on your feet, you may just possibly survive without contracting this horrible disease from a gumball machine or wherever the hell it comes from. It's probably errant skin flakes from Santana's decaying face floating around. God, that guy's old.

Time again for the Comedy Goldmine!

Ryan "OMGWTFBBQ" Adams here again folks. You know, I've had a few people e-mail me about the "Zoo Tales" stories we've been running these past few weeks. Some of you have asked me, "Mr. Ryan "OMGWTFBBQ" Adams, are these Zoo Tales the real deal? And where can I go for a quick skinny dip in Simoniz Car Washing solution?" My answers are as follows:

1. I make no claims that these stories are true or false. I'm just posting the accounts of one Forums Goon,"Bigpeeler".

2. That's gross, stop asking me about things like that.

Anyhow, in today’s Comedy Goldmine we continue on with part three of "Tales from the Zoo", a series of zoo-related stories. This week, we deal with a frozen cobra and a very big case of Tuberculosis.

We had and old cow (female) elephant named Marie. She was very docile, but very old. We noticed that she started to slow down on her feed. We kept very accurate records on these animals because they were expensive and increasingly endangered. Anyway, she started to get sick.

One morning I come to work, unlock the Elephant House and before I could round the corner to the elephant cages, I could hear something was wrong. The other 5 cows were hysterical. They were trumpeting like crazy and inside this huge old concrete building, it was deafening.

I rounded the corner and froze in my tracks. Marie was down. By down I mean she was laying on her side, which is unusual for an older elephant. They get weak as they age and it gets increasingly difficult for them to get up. That's why you'll see older elephants sleeping while leaning against a tree or a rock.

I called #42, which was Zoo Emergency. Everyone came running and the building was shut down. We let the other elephants out in the yard, but they wouldn't go because one of their own was sick. They just stood, huddled together and watched. We eventually got them to the adjacent cage. Believe me, elephants are so fucking smart and intuitive, it's spooky. You'd die if I told you some of the stories I experienced.

Well, long story short, Marie died. There she lay, inside her cage. We all just stood there trying to grasp the situation. Then someone asked, "How in the hell are we going to get her out of there?"

Let me tell you, real or not, it's an interesting read. If you’d like to hear the rest of the story, and I'm sure you do, then click here!

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)