This Is: Indian Territory, 13 Minute Director’s Cut from Adam Wright on Vimeo.

Turns out a bunch of Mormon girls were handing them out on the street and he just couldn’t tell them no. (You know how it is with Mormon girls.)

But for some reason, the other thing he couldn’t refrain from giving them was my phone number. They asked him for his, he gave them mine. Apparently this made sense because “when they call and ask for The Surgeon, you can honestly tell them it’s a wrong number.” Why didn’t he just give them a completely bogus number? Maybe he thinks I really DO need to be saved.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not the worst thing in the world when girls have my phone number (even when I am HAPPILY ATTACHED, yes, thank you, farkle-farkle). But this numerical exchange wasn’t for pillowtalk. It’s for talkin’ bout Jesus. Well, golly gee, that sounds like fun for the whole polygamous family! …No.

Hindsight, as always, is 20/20. It’s obvious to both of us that he should have tried to convert THEM too.

You see, my life has been changed by premarital sex. It’s so much more fulfilling now than it was before. I find meaning and joy in my undying commitment to vaginal penetration. It’s so wonderful to spend my entire life devoted to the service of others, 15 minutes at a time. We agree that these girls could finally find what they’re looking for, in premarital sex… with us.

This story is the origin of the common phrase, “Never accept the Book of Mormon as a Christmas present from a Jew.”

The cause of these sounds mystifies me. What are they doing up there? Sometimes it sounds like they corralled a herd of fat people and sent them stampeding across the room. I do not know where they got the idea to race fat people. Our apartments are much too small to be conducive to contact sports, and apparently, fat people do not come with brakes. The collisions seem to entertain my neighbors, who continue to send wave after wave of fat people crashing into their walls. It’s all in the name of science that they perform these experiments.

Other times, they enjoy a good game of Roll the Polyhedron. It sounds as if they have purchased or built a boulder-sized iron polyhedron with irregular sides, and are thrilled by rolling it around the room. Nothing else could explain the patterns to the noises I hear. I attempted to replicate them by repeatedly stumbling over a fallen chair, but it just wasn’t the same. I won’t rule out the possibility that they have set up an obstacle course of chairs that they constantly fail to pass, but this would be in addition to polyhedron-rolling and not instead of it.

When they’re not falling over their furnishings or playing frisbee with pipes, they’re making loud bodily noises. The “clunk” that ends a victorious round of polyhedron-rolling is often followed by the obnoxious drunken classic, “Oooooooh!” You know that sound. It grates against eardrums in a way that nothing else short of a baby’s screech can. Nobody who has ever heard this sound has ever enjoyed it, unless you’re someone like Charles Manson, and your idea of a good time is hacking up Roman Polanski with a machete.

Their apartment is also home to the most hilarious vomiting I’ve ever heard. It’s impossible for me to explain in writing what is so satisfying about hearing a burp turn into a fountain of puke shortly after one of their games concludes. Maybe it’s the way it’s oddly muffled. Maybe it’s the spontaneity–the unexpectedness–of the barf, because I can’t see any of the drinking or gut-punching that leads up to it. Maybe it’s just simply schadenfreude. Either way, the only thing that could make it less funny would be if my ceiling starts dripping.

And about two times each day, I hear them pee off their balcony. Our balconies overlook a high-traffic four-lane road, a church, a children’s hospital, and a nursing home.

Lastly, they host orgies with multiple people who finish pathetically quickly. (HINT—to the question “what the hell are they doing”, this is the actual answer.)

One time after I heard them having sex, within 30 seconds they bounded down the stairs and ran outside like late retards running after the short bus. I did not check to see if they were clothed. But my point is, obviously they’re bad enough at sex that it does not tire them at all. They’ll go for 3 minutes, stop, and then 10 minutes later they’ll go again for 3 minutes. This is a TERRIBLE way to attempt sex.

Every time we hear sex, there are clearly more than two people in the room. The Surgeon General and I have discussed the possibility of making bets about what position they’re in, busting down their doors, and settling the score. “Eiffel Tower, baby! I knew I heard a high-five! You owe me $20!” And then turning to the only girl, “…and you owe me a blowjob.”

But what I know about my apartment building prevents me from ever doing anything that might resolve the mystery. We would never barge into their room and see what they’re doing, because a few years back, there was a small furry convention in this apartment building. We don’t know what apartments were involved, or if the perpetrators were ever brought to justice. But suffice it to say that this is enough to quell my curiosity.

That’s about as much as I can stand to write… any more will send me into an uncontrollable rampage, and The Surgeon General still hasn’t recovered from that time I watched Dougie Howser and stuffed an extra set of vertebrae up his ass. Next time, instead of discussing how the noises of my upstairs neighbors permeate through the walls, I’ll be doing an exposé on how the smell of my next-door neighbors permeates through the walls. Ta-ta for now!

That’s why today, The Surgeon is taking it upon himself to re-vitalize, re-invigorate, and re-furbish the joke form (just when you thought you were as furbished as you could be!). Now, a new generation of storytellers may arise and give us something to fill the awkward silence at dinner after your brother has come out to your parents, and you know… your dad starts to pour gasoline all over his own loins for producing his children. (Speaking of where the matches are, dad, I heard a great one the other day…) So without further ado, I give you… JOKE LESSONS!

*Applause*:*Tears*:*Flowers*:*Baboon holds up a lion cub on pride rock*:*Michael Moore farted*

The lessons today will more take on the form of definitions, and once the types of jokes you can tell are defined, you will better able to understand what kinds of jokes you want to tell, and how to tell them. We’ve broken the following down by categories.

CATEGORY: Priest and a Rabbi jokes
This category is certainly an old favorite of many, because religion is a very controversial topic, and to bring it up exhibits balls. The prospect of being funny and being ballsy in the same token is more than most people can resist, because nothing makes you popular like showing your balls. Let us provide an example:

A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender says a prophet came by earlier, and told him that God had laid his hand on the bar, and made it a holy place, and that were anybody to commit a sin within it, they would immediately disappear. The priest and the rabbi scoff, but as they do, somebody at the bar drops a quarter. The rabbi, in an act of greed, bends over to pick the quarter up, and poof, he and the priest disappear.

Because the priest is gay, you get it? No? Yeah, me either. Moving on.

CATEGORY: The Racist Joke
Racist jokes are not funny, and so you should not tell them. In fact, you should be so opposed to them that you repress the fact that they exist, like I do. So when someone asks you “What’s the worst part about living in Detroit?” you should say ‘what?’ with genuine curiosity, and when the answer comes “That you’re black!” you should be visibly offended…

…Oh, I got another one!

Two farmers are standing in a field, shoveling hay. Meanwhile, on the hills above, a truck full of bowling balls rounds the corner too sharply. A dozen or so bowling balls spill out and land a few feet from the farmers. One of the farmers runs up to the bowling balls and starts stabbing it with a pitchfork. The other one says “Bill, what on earth are you doing?” and the farmer responds “Quick, we gotta kill these darkies before they hatch!”

Hahahaha, oh man! Hahaha, ah…What? Don’t look at me like that. I’m not racist, the farmer is racist…

CATEGORY: The edgy joke.
As Terry Schiavo will tell you, extremely controversial topics are funny on their own. These things are practically punchlines to begin with – people are just dying to laugh about them because it’s so hideously inappropriate to do so. And what’s good about edgy jokes also is that you can take old jokes and recycle them into edgy jokes. Let’s take our Priest and a Rabbi joke from the earlier example:

A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar…

AIDS!

It’s just that simple.

Well I’m exhausted. There are more categories that we will get to at later dates. Hope that today was helpful kids, and that you start crafting some world-class zingers. You stick around your buddy The Surgeon, you’ll be splitting sides in no time. I’ll be back later for your betterment, but for today, that’ll do pig, that’ll do.