The History of Satire
3761 BC - God gets bored one Saturday evening and decides to create �The Universe� (working title). On one planet dubbed �Earth,� he first tells everybody how old the world is, then when civilization becomes more advanced, he plants evidence that it�s billions of years older. He still laughs about it every day while he kills millions of African children with AIDS.c. 1500 BC - In an attempt to comment on the absurdity of budding religious practices of the era, an early Hebrew satirist detailed his works with stories of a magical, omniscient being that both endlessly loves people (its creation) and is willing to punish them eternally for not believing in him. This hilarious contradiction is accented with stories of incest, genital mutilation, and talking lizards giving forbidden fruits to nudists.
33 A.D. - Romans mock a soon-to-be-crucified Jesus by calling him �King of the Jews� and anointing him with a crown of thorns. Obviously, they aren�t serious, and they all have a good laugh about it later at the pub.
1440 A.D. - Gutenberg invents the printing press to gently rib all those who had never read the Bible.
1912 A.D. - British ship makers construct a ship with no lifeboats and then proceed to call it �unsinkable.� This satirical effort to wake society from its mindless slumber succeeds when the Titanic sinks and hundreds of lives are lost.
1930s-40s- Disgruntled researchers in universities over the world join together for one of the biggest pranks in history. Abusing research grants, they create gigantic calculating machines that can only understand the numbers 1 and 0. In the 1950s, these same researchers go on to create the next big joke in computing when they spawned Microsoft CEO Bill Gates by mating a vacuum tube and a herd of sheep.
1939 A.D. - Hitler invades Poland as part of a performance art piece that satirizes the difficult history of the Jewish people. In what can only be called a masterpiece of Horatian satire, he actually adds a chapter to that history.
1988 A.D. � The Onion is founded in Madison, Wisconsin. Ten years later, Every Three Weekly founders have brilliant, innovative idea to mercilessly rip them off.
1997 A.D. - Joel Hoard, God�s gift to satire, masturbates for the first time -- to a picture of himself. He later proclaims, �The Messiah is come!�
1999 A.D. - Former writer and filmmaker George Lucas releases a parody of his beloved �Star Wars� movies. Merchandising records across the world are broken when engineers and table-top gamers buy life-sized Natalie Portman dolls with which they will attain manhood.
2000 A.D. - Political satirist George W. Bush stages a faux presidential campaign aimed at destabilizing the status quo in voting and government by offering a bumbling, fundamentalist caricature of himself to the American populace. The Republican Party, failing to get the joke, nominates him as their candidate. Unfortunately, Bush�s satire grew stale for many over the course of his terms by his relentless effort to stay in character.
2005 A.D. � A disgruntled CNN parodies low-brow competitor Fox News by covering nothing but Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart for two weeks. When their market share doubles, they elect to permanently forego covering actual news. Viewers fail to notice the difference until, inspired by Bill O�Rielly, Wolf Blitzer announces his desire to �titty-fuck� Paula Zahn.
2005 A.D. � Every Three Weekly editor Benjamin Stein uses his life savings to purchase Hoard�s semen-stained picture on eBay. It is immediately framed and then worshipped. No, no. Licked, framed, then worshipped. The picture produces a rift in E3W leadership when editors Joe Ferrentino and Megan Ganz leave to form an alternate sect of Hoard-worship. The divide stems from Ferrentino and Ganz�s belief that Hoard�s columns are the literal word of God, as opposed to Stein�s insistence that the articles are parables for strong satirical writing. This inevitably leads to the gruesome, if brief, Hoard Crusades.
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