SA Discovery: Childhood Entertainment Disappointment Syndrome (CEDS)

Yeah, you might remember computer labs like this as being "cool," but I dare you to drop your current system and go back to them now, jerkass.

Although many conspiracy-minded government agents may deny it, each and every one of us is suffering from an incurable disease which rots our collective minds like a single apple Jolly Rancher floating in a vat of Pepsi Cola's Diet Sierra Mist "soda." Most of these public figures will claim they possess no knowledge of today's article, even though I gave them plenty of time in advance to read my mind by temporarily taking off my tinfoil helmet and sleeping on my non-Art Bell approved box spring mattress. This is because the American government has been bought off by the Big Oil industry, Big Tobacco industry, Big Bird industry, and that one big industry that is made up of smaller industries who fly up and join together to form a giant robot when their home city falls under attack by a mysterious evil alien threat that takes the form of a 500-foot tall penis slug. Our highly trained research specialists here in majestic Something Awful Headquarters located underneath the equally-or-slightly-less-majestic Mount Doom have recently used many complex math equations and bubbling green liquids to prove what I have known for at least days now: our childhoods consist of a thick, chunky stew of lies and false memories and also maybe carrots which are slightly past their expiration dates.

Now I don't want anybody out there to become depressed and suicidal after reading today's update; after all, that's Reid "Frolixo" Paskiewicz's job. By the way, did you know that Reid "Frolixo" Paskiewicz inherited his last name from a mysterious gypsy family after he agreed to spend one night in a haunted mansion in exchange for a million dollars? It's true. He also got AIDS from them, but that's a different story, one Ben "Greasnin" Platt will be more than willing to tell you in between his Sunday updates about Jews or potatoes or whatever the hell he writes about. However, my point still stands; all our pleasant childhood memories are simply gold-colored chemical coverups layered upon heaps of steaming turds rotting in the bowels of a cold Manhattan park. Hey guys, you know what? Transformers, GI Joes, breakdancing, and "New" Coke aren't as cool as you remember them as. In fact, the only thing less "radical" than vague, distorted memories of the 1980s are sentences ending with prepositions like in the previous example, so let me point out that those elements of the 1980s aren't as cool as you remember them as, motherfuckers.

I used to be a big fan of the 1980s, proclaiming their greatness in glorious epic novels which existed only inside my head and reverberated throughout rest stops along America's most famous highways. For example, if some guy were to approach me and say something along the lines of "the 1980s sucked," I would reply with something along the lines of "you know something? Having a pen stuck in your eye socket sucks even worse" and then I'd stick a pen in their eye socket as I just alluded to, motherfucker. I used that response to counter the arguments of many anti-1980s sentiments until my court-appointed attorney informed me why the state was making me wear the blue jumpsuit and sit in a concrete cell for months. Next to Matt Cara's X-Entertainment and not-as-Matt Cara's Robert Berry's Retrocrush, I considered myself to be a fairly adamant supporter of the 1980s. One of my favorite memories revolved around my unstoppable desire to rent the movie "The Stuff" which starred such memorable actors as Michael Moriarty (TV's "Law and Order," "Hitler Meets Christ"), Paul Sorvino (TV's "Law and Order," "Backstreet Justice"), and Danny Aiello (I don't know, I'm assuming he was in either TV's "Law and Order" or is currently dead for the foreseeable future). Not many people entered the movie "The Stuff" and left with a career, maybe due to the fact that they never had one to begin with, motherfucker. "The Stuff" is one half of my two-part theory that explains in excruciatingly convoluted detail how some of the best childhood memories of my life are crudely constructed mansions of lies and therefore, by process of insemination, so are yours. This disease, which I and Dr. Amanda "Ball Detonator" Lyons call "Childhood Entertainment Disappointment Syndrome, or "CEDS" for short, infects approximately 100% of the civilian population, at least according to my target research group which consisted of myself and a large, diverse, multi-racial group of no people. Allow me to explain:

EXAMPLE #1: "THE STUFF"

The tag line of the movie was "Are You Eating It, Or Is It Eating You?" As you can clearly tell, it was eating you, so I don't know why they bothered asking in the first place.

FALSE CHILDHOOD MEMORIES: I recall myself entranced by this work of cinematic genius. Since I was hatched in the year 1976, the movie was released when I was a scant nine years old, therefore prohibiting me from seeing it in the movie theaters (I was too young to afford a fake ID). However, the local video store proudly displayed a relatively large poster promoting "The Stuff" by showing an image of somebody screaming in pain while covered in white ooze. And no, this movie was not a Japanese fetish film, it was labeled as a "horror" movie by people who couldn't spell "crappy" correctly. I asked my parents each and every day we visited the video store if we could rent "The Stuff" and they turned me down each and every day we visited the movie store, probably due to the fact that they lacked the ability to be as retarded as a nine year old kid with puffy hair and a red Izod shirt. My yearning and lust for this movie was unquenchable at the time, rivaling my current prayers for a quick and merciful death. When I finally managed to sneak over to my friend David Williams' house and view the movie there, it was like I had somehow aged an extra 20 years or so, finally entered puberty, and mentally ejaculated all over myself. The film had everything I expected it to have: exciting action scenes, scary monsters, and an unbeatable plotline with more twists and turns than your average post-Mexican-food knot of excrement, which coincidentally seems to have been the inspiration for this movie.

IN REALITY: "The Stuff" is not a movie that many people willingly consider "above average" or "not painful." In fact, many people might claim the film is "bad" and "not good at all," and they'd probably be correct because "The Stuff" is bad and not good at all. This is mostly because the film revolves around the human population randomly deciding to start consuming white goo discovered by some miners / homeless people in the ground. Er, the white goo was in the ground; the miners / homeless people were slightly above the ground at the time of discovery. The stuff, which some vague global corporation shrewdly elects to market as "the stuff," catches on by storm and soon people across the globe (or at least three slightly different shot locations) are consuming it, well, by storm. Unfortunately for most of the people involved, the Stuff makes you suffer from slight side effects such as suddenly dying or becoming a zombie. To the best of my knowledge, this information was not printed on the side of the canister nor required to display by the FDA, unlike cigarettes which ultimately produce the same effect. Michael Moriarty plays the role of David "Mo" Rutherford, an industrial saboteur / spy who repeatedly explains to random idiots that people call him "Mo" because "whenever somebody gives me money, I always want 'mo'." That should sum up how terrible this movie is, and if it somehow failed to imprint that upon your brain, let me additionally throw in the fact that ol' Mo teams up with a black gentleman named "Chocolate Chip Charlie." Allow me to provide you with a few minutes so you may mull that over: CHOCOLATE CHIP CHARLIE.

Despite the fact that I've watched "The Stuff" multiple times in the last few weeks, I still do not understand key elements of the movie, such as where the Stuff came from, why it came from there, what it wanted to do, and who agreed to produce such a film unless it was the direct result of losing a bet. Most of the plot seems to have been lifted from a mistranslated Vietnamese medicine bottle label. The "special effects," a term I use in the absolute most liberal way possible, included turning the camera to the side and making the tape somehow travel in reverse for a small period of time. Both of these features were compliments of the most cutting edge technology 1984 had to offer, most of which probably involved vacuum tubes and that big fan which killed the floating fat kid in Willy Wonka's death factory.

THE VERDICT: "The Stuff," much like the Stuff featured in the movie "The Stuff," should not be ingested orally or through any other orifice.

EXAMPLE #2: SHONEY'S BREAKFAST BAR

These people are enjoying the Shoney's breakfast bar. Why? Because they are all disgusting or weird. Also they appear to be floating in a featureless void.

FALSE CHILDHOOD MEMORIES: I used to play basketball back in junior high school, despite the fact that I was physically unable to play basketball back in junior high school. I couldn't catch any passes, I wasn't able to shoot the ball, and I rivaled many household appliances on both the height and talent comparison charts. If I could get through an hour-long practice without crying, I considered myself to come out on top. The highlight of each weekend for me was not the game, but the post-game celebration at Shoney's breakfast bar. In case if you couldn't tell, we celebrated regardless of if we won or loss, and if I remember correctly, many of the teams I were on racked up enough losses to become a minor league franchise for any Detroit club. I loved the all-you-could-eat aspect of the magical Shoney's breakfast bar, a veritable cornucopia of sugars, sweets, and delicacies from around the globe. I mean, just think about the concept of UNLIMITED BACON. You could pay $6.99 and just sit there for hours eating plate after plate of bacon, leaving your chair only to fill up a new tray with swineariffic pleasures which you wouldn't have to worry about directly killing you for at least 10 more years.

IN REALITY: "Unlimited bacon" may look great on paper, but somehow it just doesn't pan out in real life. Doctor Marie Peccia recently alerted me to this fact while I was asking her how she managed to get a medical school doctorate in mid-wifing. The Shoney's breakfast bar can best be described as "all the food which falls off the grill while regular breakfasts are being prepared." Magical red lights heat up day-old eggs by cramming Satan-powered radiation into them, plaster pancakes take up valuable space inside filth-encrusted tins which could be housing medical waste for the government, and the "fresh fruits" are a lie in the aspect that they are neither fresh nor fruit. I think they were ceramics or at least complex polymers. I cannot think of many things more repulsive than the Shoney's breakfast bar, which currently requires new alphabet letters to be created by the sanitation department to accurate describe it. The only redeeming quality of the breakfast bar is the fact that it's probably entirely vegan, as I doubt any real animals were cheap enough for Shoney's to kill and ultimately serve in some form. Studies have conclusively proven that Shoney's ham is composed of 100% man-made chemicals such as "polyeusterrithromyacin" and "cooldudeium."

THE VERDICT: There's a reason many Shoney's have ceased to exist since the mid-1980s. I'd like to think this was because they were blown up in a series of abortion clinic-type attacks, but I know Shoney's went bankrupt after I ceased playing basketball and lost my ability to digest things which are routinely found inside sealed titanium biohazard barrels.

CEDS is a disease which affects each and every one of us, from the tallest white man in Alabama to the shortest black woman in some place that begins with the letter "Z" like "Zambonia" or something. While the government spends so much time, energy, and money blowing up dirty people in some other country somewhere else, we are all suffering or will suffer from this seemingly incurable disease. Take a look back at your most precious childhood memories and attempt to experience them again, I dare you. You'll undoubtedly soon discover that you're experiencing a major case of CEDS, a disease that you cannot be cured of. Er, I mean, a disease that you cannot be cured of, motherfucker.

Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care

Ryan "OMGWTFBBQ" Adams here true believers! Seeing as today is again Tuesday, I need to update the Comedy Goldmine. In today’s Goldmine we rehash an old idea: Twisting innocent children's books. 17 pages (I counted) full of demented delight, right out of the oven from the loving SA Forum Goons.

I'd buy that for a dollar! Click here to see all the images, every last one of them!

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)