The Whiskey Journal

By Ross Kelly, @stupidrosskelly on Twitter

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — The Landry family has been pushing for a finished basement for seven years. They say putting drywall and insulation down there would greatly reduce their utility bills. It would also allow them to put a little ambiance around their pool table such as a wet bar and a flat-screen TV with a Nintendo Wii. “This pool table was given to us by my father-in-law three years ago. But it looks terrible sitting in an unfinished basement. I want to be able to relax down there, or have a party, or watch a game,” says Bill Landry, the primary sponsor of the initiative. 

The Landry family’s proposal was stalled twice over the last seven years due to the house expressing concern that “these ‘improvements’ will likely involve compromising the structural integrity of an already unstable foundation.” 

The house agreed to Bill’s renovations Monday on the condition that the house will have the ultimate say on which contractor is used. “I’ve dealt with Bills like this before,” says the house. “What this Bill wants to do is make life more convenient with no consideration for the future of the house.”

(Above: Bill Landry standing with house to be renovated)

Pending the selection of a reputable contractor, the Landry family hopes to begin renovations by mid-May, and have everything completed by the end of June. “This is going to be better for everyone, especially the house. We already have color schemes picked out and everything,” claims Landry.

Ross Kelly is The Whiskey Journal’s foremost authority on government

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By Ross Kelly, @stupidrosskelly on Twitter

FORT WORTH, TX - The NRA sponsored its first NASCAR race Saturday at the Texas Motor Speedway, during which a man apparently shot himself in the head near his pickup truck in the infield. Local police have ruled the death a suicide, but NRA officials have argued that, not only is it beyond a reasonable doubt that the fatal wound was self-inflicted, they are not convinced the death is gun-related at all. 

NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre conceded that a gun was found in the hand of deceased, but claims that it is purely circumstantial. “Any number of objects could have entered the victim’s head from the right and exited through the left, killing him instantly and humanely while he coincidentally held a gun,” said LaPierre. “Rocks, meteor fragments, arrows, a piece of the track that got kicked up during the race, a lug nut, there are air compressors all over the place here. And, that’s just a few things it could have been off the top of my head… Spontaneous combustion, maybe.”

The man was seen engaged in an altercation with other spectators early on in the race, a fact which LaPierre claims means nothing. “Two of my wives were heard arguing with me shortly before each was killed by probably not a gun,” said the spokesman. 

Kyle Busch won the race.

Ross has been shot over 100 times, and hated all of them.   

By Ross Kelly @stupidrosskelly on Twitter

St. Louis, MO - Recently unemployed Bryan Kim (30) was stressed for a couple of days after he lost his job until he found that he was much happier not having to get up and go to work every day. Kim was employed with Real Estate firm in the West County area of St. Louis, and was laid off two weeks ago due to a massive drop off in homes going up for sale. 

“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. The firm I worked for isn’t the only one making cutbacks. The entire field is suffering, and this is all I know how to do,” says Kim. But on day three of Kim’s alarm not going off, another alarm didn’t go off. “I wasn’t worried about something I had forgotten. When my phone rang, I didn’t assume was going to be bad. I don’t even have to answer it any more, really. So, I think I’m just going to be a this from now on.”

Until two weeks ago, Kim had to get up at 8:00am in order to be at work by 9:00am. He then had to stay at work for literally hours on end, sometimes as many as eight or nine. While at work, there were, as Kim puts it, “dozens” of tasks with which he had to deal. Rarely was there a break, often as little as two per day. Kim had to do this every single day except for two designated days per week. In Kim’s particular case, he was permitted to stay home on Saturdays and Sundays. “It got to the point where when Monday came, I didn’t like it,” laments Kim. “So why would I want to go back to that? This is better. I could read all day if I wanted to. I don’t read very much, but I could if I wanted to.”

Kim plans to collect unemployment for as long as possible, and then look at Craigslist. For now, he intends to continue his mission to see every movie nominated a Best Picture Oscar, and create the illusion of adulthood for his live-in girlfriend.

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By Ross Kelly, @stupidrosskelly on Twitter

Long Beach, CA - Brandon Tippes (31) grinned in the shower for nearly an hour early yesterday afternoon, wondering what he had done to deserve Netflix adding the third season of the animated sitcom Archer. Tippes, having believed in karma for weeks now, has been keeping diligent track of transgressions and good deeds. But, he just cannot seem to come up with what he did that would warrant such a reward. 

“I know that everything happens for a reason,” says Tippes. “I read that in Richard Lawrence’s Little Book of Karma, which I got at my old work’s holiday party. I wish I had started reading it when I first got it, because it changes my life every page. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m going to for sure.”

Having already attributed getting change for $20 instead of the $10 bill he paid with at the convenience store to his initiating a phone call to his parents, happening upon a half-off sale at the thrift store to letting a car merge in front of him, and a recent sexual experience to him educating his friends on what he learned from watching the documentary Tapped, which is about bottled water and its effects on our reliance on oil, the young man is at a loss. 

“I love Archer so much. I just don’t know if Karma is messing with me, or what,” says Tippes, starting to tear up.

Tippes plans to continue “being stellar, and doing stellar things,” knowing that things will even out. “I guess I should be on the look-out for some sort of Karma punishment. I don’t really know how that works,” Tippes. 

Ross Kelly had a really hard time relating to this story.

By: Ross Kelly, @stupidrosskelly on twitter

Albany, NY - The home of the largest Walmart in the U.S. is now the home of the largest Walmart in the world. Walmart has just unveiled the new-and-improved Super-Duper Walmart, and the previously-existing Walmarts are not happy about it. 

Sitting on six acres of land, the Super-Duper Walmart contains everything one would find in a Super Walmart while being able to house dozens new additions to the Walmart model. “They are going to run us out of business. What are we supposed to do? We can’t compete with those prices. We can’t offer that many options under our roofs,” Martin Reeves, General Manager of the Albany Walmart Super-Center. 

“We had one customer  about a week in who bought a case of soda, but it turned out he thought he was going to the Super-Duper Center and returned it a couple of days later,” says Reeves. 

If the Walmart Supercenter closes, an estimated 400 employees would lose their jobs. “I’ve already applied at the Super-Duper Center, and got hired. I’m going to be doing the same job for the same pay. But, at what cost?,” says Mitchell Grovers, who has worked at the Walmart Supercenter since it opened in 2008. 

The new additions to the Walmart Super-Duper Center include:

• Adoption Center
• Abortion Clinic
• Police Station
• Marriage Councelor
• Wedding Chapel
• Divorce Court
• Small-Claims Court
• Welfare Services
• Pawn Shop
• Glamor Shots
• Narcotics/Alcoholics Anonymous
• Paintball Arena
• Dermatologist
• Two Casinos
• In-Door Waterpark
• Time-Share Sales Offices
• Helicopter Museum
• A Learning Annex, Offering Workshops In:
•      How To Collect Disability
•      Cellphone Decoration
•      How To Tell Your Fiancee That You Have A New Fiancee 
•      Settlement Checks: What This Means
•      Cashing Your Settlement Checks At Walmart
•      Walking In Parking Lots
•      How Many Is Too Many Kids To Bring To Walmart
•      How To Deal With Cashiers In A Timely Fashion
•      How To Have A Phone Conversation In Public

Ross Kelly is an award-winning contributor for The Whiskey Journal, including a blue ribbon in the Amber Ale category at the 2011 Murphysboro Beer Festival.

By: Ross Kelly @stupidrosskelly                                    

Nevada - About three hours north of Las Vegas is a desert mountain called Shingle Peak. There are no towns or cities for miles in all directions. NV-318 is about five miles to the west, and is the closest road. It is at the crest of this mountain where the world’s first time travelers took the maiden leap.

Although written about and fabled for centuries, it is only until now that it has become a reality. Devoting their lives to physics, and specifically time travel, German-born physicists Dr. Gottfried Lameirschleig and Dr. Kristof Blureg cracked the mystery in 2005. “It was very important that we kept very tight lips on the matter,” says Dr. Lameirschleig, “Everyone knew that we were working very hard on time travel, but no one knew we were making progress. We had been written off so absolutely that no one even bothered to check, which was good. It is much safer that way.”

The last eight years were spent building and perfecting and rebuilding Kakudmi, the craft that would deliver them throughout time. The ship is named after a Hindu King, written about in Puranic texts dating back to the beginning of the Common Era. “Kakudmi had the power to visit Brahma’s plane of existence (Brahma being an important deity in Hinduism). However, not knowing that time runs differently on different planes of existence, Kakudmi had missed centuries on Earth while with Brahma. Being the first time traveler from a literary standpoint,we saw it fit for his name to adorn their vessel,” says Lameirschleig.

Having Kakudmi ready for travel, the two physicists took their leave, not even alerting their wives. “We figured that if everything went swell, no one would ever know we had gone,” laughed Dr. Blureg.

(Pictured above: Dr. Gottfried Lameirschleig)

The next step for the doctors was to tell the public. They held an invitation-only press conference and demonstration at their laboratory in Nevada. With broken English, and the help of a translator, the Dr. Blureg, the better English speaker, had this to say:

“On our journey, we visited 18 major eras in human history, and saw monumental events. We were gone, by our watches, anyway, for five months. As far as you would be concerned, we were gone for 90 seconds. We traveled across centuries in the bat of an eye. Everyone smelled like shit. I used to think about how in movies, sometimes a couple would wake up in the morning and make love. I would think that their breath must be terrible. Why don’t they go and get some mouthwash first and enjoy each others’ bodies after, and better? But, for some reason, I never thought twice about a period film, taking place during the French Revolution, for example, which was disgusting. Imagine the couple I was just talking about. Now, imagine them waking up in the early 1800s, before there is even toothpaste. Now, imagine that they had slept all night with their mouths full of rotten blueberry muffins. And, finally, imagine living inside their mouths, and that is how everything smelled in 19th century France.

(Pictured above: Anne Hathaway acting like she smells terrible in The Miserables)

Along with the French Revolution, we also traveled to Jerusalem and met Jesus Christ. This was probably the most memorable leg of our journey because you don’t think of Jesus Christ smelling of absolute rot. But, he did. It was as though he only ate farts that came from eggs’ assholes. Thank Christ it was a dry heat. I’m not sure if you just get used to it, or if you just don’t know any better. If that is the case, it takes longer than five months to get used to it.

We also saw the birth of civilization in Sumer, where the first practices of year-round agriculture, and oldest examples of written language on earth were found. And, it smelled like birth. It smelled like 50 women were giving birth in a tiny room with walls made of sweaty Italian chests.

We saw the invention of electricity in America when Benjamin Franklin was struck by lightning. It was very funny, at first. But, have you ever baked something already smelling of shit, which subsequently, due to the baking, shit itself?

No matter how dressed up they were, they just smelled terrible. I could go on and on about the wonders we experienced, and how bad they smelled. And, so that is what I will do.

We traveled on one of Marco Polo’s ships to Asia. If Polo hadn’t smelled worse than the Asians, I doubt he would have bought any of those spices. If I could have re-written Martin Luther’s note, I would have renamed it “95 feces” and it just would have said, “I am going to the bathroom to smear poop all over my body just like everyone else does here in 16th-century Germany.”

We skipped the Bubonic Plague.

We saw the the Aztecs at the height of their civilization, just as the Spanish arrived. Have you ever seen The Perfect Storm with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg? It smelled as though the crew of that boat had been having sex in the tiny bathroom for six months while the commode was perpetually spewing cat’s vomit and shit all over them. 

Genghis Khan seemed to be doing pretty well.”

When asked about their next trip through time, the doctors offered to sell the machine for a very reasonable price.

Ross Kelly is an officer and a gentleman, having qualities of both Richard Gere and Louis Gossett Jr.

Newport, RI — Will Armstrong (17), a junior at Rogers High School, had rehearsed an announcement every spare moment for the past month, preparing for the backlash at his upcoming family reunion. Everyone would be in attendance: Aunt Linda, Cousin Brian and his wife, Brother Michael, who he hasn’t seen in almost a year, Grandma and Grandpa. 

Dinner would be country ham, braised cabbage, roasted fingerling potatoes and a simple salad. For dessert, Aunt Marla was baking her famous banana bread pudding. This is where Will was planning to make his move; right in between Cousin Russ’ fart and Uncle Ray’s “What’s for dessert?”. 

Will anxiously sat through dinner, waiting for an his worst nightmare and his greatest relief. Will’s moment came. Russ farted, the children laughed, Mom threw her napkin, Will inched out his chair and began to stand up. Just as Will began to utter the first syllable of his practiced speech, Dad shot up from his seat. 

“I’m gaaaaaay!” he yelled while fiercely maintaining eye contact with his father and, somehow simultaneously, his wife. “I… am… the… gay. Gaaaaaaaaaay!!!… Meeeee!!!… Gay me. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. Deal.” In a fit of triumph, Keith Armstrong, the father of three, mimed dropping a microphone, sat back down in his chair, and asked, “What’s for dessert?”

The entire room went completely silent. Then kids’ table even had a comprehending hush about it. Keith’s wife, Julie Winford-Armstrong, ran to the kitchen. She had been briefed on the matter nights before. But, much like the way you don’t feel married until you start saying things like, “Excuse me, ma’am, my husband has those same pants,” it had never really sank in until she heard her husband say, “Gay me.” 

All at once, nearly every member of the extended family erupted. It was an unintelligible mess of “What the fuck?!” and “Since when?” and “Prove it!” Kieth just sat there wearing a satisfied grin, reveling in the uproar. 

After ten, or so, minutes of sobbing, berating, and grinning, Will leaned forward in his chair, raised his glass and proclaimed, “I’m gay, too.” Will’s little sister, Shayliegh (12), leaned toward Will to say that she had imagined his speech going over differently when she heard it rehearsed in the hallway for the past several weeks. Will snapped back, “Shut up!” His mother reprimanded, “Will! Don’t talk to your sister like that!”

Will asked to be excused and went back his bedroom to rehearse round two. After 45 minutes of pacing and ranting under his breath, Will trounced down the stairs triumphantly beginning his new speech only to find a note at the bottom of the stairs that read, “Will, we’ve gone clubbing. Please watch the youngsters.”

Story by Ross Kelly — Follow @stupidrosskelly on Twitter

Detroit, MI - The premonition of so many movies and books nearly came true last Monday, when a virus broke out in South Detroit. The virus, a mutation of rabies, was immediately identified and traced to a farm near Dundee, Michigan, which is about 60 miles southwest of Detroit.

The owner of the farm, Cedric Bowler (52), began seeing abnormally aggressive behavior in his livestock. The farmer immediately contacted the CDC, and then drove a sample of the feed to a Detroit laboratory. There, it was found that the feed contained ground pig bones, which had traces of the mutated rabies virus. It is presumed that some of the bones used in the feed were from the skull. If not treated properly prior to grinding, these skull bones would still have traces of brain matter which would have the highest concentration of a rabies virus. 

Having come into such intimate contact with his livestock, Bowler was quarantined immediately. Within the day, Bowler began showing symptoms of the rabies virus. Normally, the rabies incubation period is anywhere from a month to three months, which alarmed the doctors observing the farmer. The CDC, without hesitation, set up a liberal perimeter around Bowler’s farm. The animals were euthanized, and the land was scorched along with the carcasses. 

Meanwhile, as news of the “outbreak” hit the wires, thousands of zombie enthusiasts hit the road. It was not unlike the pilgrimage to Bethel, NY in 1969 for Woodstock. Detroit-bound flights from nearly every corner of the United States were booked solid. Highways were lousy with machete-laden motorcycles and automobiles with uninspired soap-written messages in the rear windshields. “Go for the head!”, “You don’t have to reload an axe”, “The Lord’s Work”, they read.

Diners and gas stations everywhere between Dundee and Detroit boomed with enthusiasts, debating strategies and comparing artillery. But now, these would-be saviors and killers are now having to come to terms with their hasty decisions. Most have quit their jobs and sunk their savings into what they believed to be “a no-brainer.” 

“This is what I’ve been preparing for my whole life; well, a few years, anyway,” says Brandon Miller (28 - pictured below). Miller drove in from Houston, TX last week upon hearing of the infectious disease. “I have read everything that’s out there, watched every episode of Surviving the Cut (a documentary/reality series on the Discovery Channel about the training programs of elite forces of the U.S. military), So, I’ve basically been to basic training. This is survival. I always new it would come down to this. I always new that the movies and shows that I like so much were how it would end up. What now. I spent everything I have on this dirt bike, dirt bike trailer, M.R.E.s, sword, sniper rifle, pistols, dual machetes, and holsters for all that stuff,” Miller pleads. 

Another dejected participant, Marlon Davees (35), flew from St. Louis, MO, where he is an assistant manager at a PetSmart. He was a little more irate. “This is bullshit,” Davees whined.

Pictured above, Marlon Davees

There is currently a Grapes-of-Wrath-esque camp lining streams and highways between Dundee and Detroit. The circumstances have resulted in over 200 injuries and 28 deaths in trigger-happy cases of mistaken identity. One man, Francis Godard (33) lost an arm when he was mistaken for one of the infected. He explains: 

“There was a game of touch football going on in a field along Route 23. I’d had about 13 or 14 beers, so I went to take a leak in the ditch right along the highway. When I headed back toward the game, I tripped and almost fell on my face. Then I heard someone yell, ‘WALKER!!’ And then it was mass chaos. It was maos. A little bit panicked, I guess, I looked all around for a zombie. It turned out that I was the one they were yelling about. Before I knew it, my older brother had swung his hatchet right into my shoulder. I think I’m lucky I only lost an arm.”

Local police have made over 500 arrests in the past week for everything from looting to arson to public to intoxication to murder. But, the police are overwhelmed. Chief of Police, Belinda Williams lamented, “There is just nowhere to put these guys. The National Guard really needs to step in, and do something. These morons flocked here to hunt and fight an ever-growing mass of mindless zombies who do nothing but harm. Ironic, huh?”

By Ross Kelly - Lonely Reporter 

San Francisco, CA - A father found himself behind bars over seven years ago when he was found guilty on 28 counts of Aggravated Child Abuse. Thursday, he walked free. 

Thomas Charles was serving a life sentence while a documentary was being filmed about his case and conviction. The documentary, titled Punished for Gravity, is not unlike the film Paradise Lost, which follows the trial of three wrongly-convicted murderers and had a hand in triggering their freedom. 

Charles’ defense was an unusual one: the single father of a boy, Ronald Charles (now 15), claimed that his son was not the victim of child abuse, but that he was “just fucking clumsy.”

“You should see this fucking kid go down the stairs,” says Charles. “I swear to God, he hits his goddamn face on every single step. And somehow, he finds time to find the wall and the banister a few times on his way down, too. Just when his lips finally start to heal, he has an accident on his bike, which has four fucking wheels, by the way. Somehow, he got his shirt caught in the pedals and the chain… dragged his nose through the spokes and ripped out both of his cock-sucking eyebrows… Unreal, this kid. Meanwhile, he’s going to school, explaining that he got his hair caught in the car door again, and that’s somehow why he can’t see out of his left eye.”

Charles was initially questioned by a school counselor at St. Mathias in 2004, when Ronald was 7 years old. Belinda Charles, Thomas’ wife and Ronald’s mother, had just passed away from kidney disease six months prior, and it was suspected that the hard-luck father was taking it out on 7-year old Ronald.

Above: Ronald Charles after sustaining injuries while reading a globe.

“What would you think,” asks Marla Carlisle of St. Mathias, “if a child in your charge was showing up day after day with new bruises and scrapes and burns after being home alone with his newly-widowed father? You would think he was being abused, not that he has six times missed school due to alarm clock-related hospital visits. And that’s exactly what a jury thought, too.”

No one thought anything of Charles’ defense, other than its originality. Subsequently, no one thought much of his conviction either. That is, until Ronald, living with Ted and Nancy Subhue, his state-appointed foster parents, continued to show up to school appearing to be beaten and tortured.

“You should have seen this goddamn kid,” says Nancy Subhue. “We have three other foster children and two of our own living with us. Somehow, Ronald managed to keep his accidents to himself, but we were seriously afraid.” 

“We had seen pictures of Ronald’s old house when he lived with his father,” says Ted Subhue. “It was part of his defense. Everything was padded… Everything. We didn’t buy into it at first. Eventually, we had to give in. It was like suddenly standing face-to-face with Bigfoot. At some point, you just have to believe. I think the turning point was when Ronald’s first golf lesson ended with him having his stomach pumped.”

Two years ago, film makers Brian LeFue and Christopher Bonwell approached the Subhues about their idea for a film. The Subhues were immediately on board. The finished product, though not finding any commercial success, did serve its purpose. Punished by Gravity convinced an appellate judge to overturn Thomas Charles’ guilty verdict. The film was never taken seriously by audiences due to the comedic value of its content.

Thomas plans to eventually go back to work as a day trader, but would like to relax as a free man for a while first. He has yet to pick up his son.

Story by Ross Kelly - Handsome Reporter 

Papa John’s founder and CEO John Schnatter chimed in again, taking umbrage at the way his statements on Obamacare were reported shortly after the president’s re-election. “I am going to cut jobs and close stores because of Obamacare, but that was only a part of what I said,” pleaded Schnatter.

Schnatter, who was a major supporter for Mitt Romney in the recent election, and raised millions of dollars for Romney’s campaign, held a press conference on Tuesday to clear the air. The press conference was held behind his house where he was shooting guns with the winner of his Yosemite Sam Look-a-Like, and Be My Best Friend Contest.

Schnatter had this to say:
“Mr. Obama has bound my actions. I thought the American people would make a smarter decision in 2012. I guess I was wrong. I would love to continue exploiting the regular loopholes to avoid paying employee benefits, but Obamacare has put a target on my back. Do you know that after four more years of Obamacare, this and my Vail home will be my only vacation homes, if you don’t count the ones in Europe and Mexico? Did you know that? So, as I said before, my hand has been forced; I will be forced to buy air time on every major network on Thursday nights, right in the middle of Parks and Recreation, during which time I will strangle two puppies. Do I want to strangle puppies on national television? Of course I don’t. But this is what you, the American voter has left me with. I am the victim here, and you are the villains. This is on you! Every one of you who voted for Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama have blood on your hands… Puppy blood.”

Schnatter ended the press conference by injecting a Papa John’s manager with an AIDS-infected needle and saying, “Good thing you have health care.”

Main Writing Person for Pizza-Related Stories in Florida: Ross Kelly       Follow @stupidrosskelly on twitter