A lot of newfunny readers are curious to learn more about Ertok. For those of you who are new to the site, Ertok is an Evil Alien Overlord that oversees my work on the newfunny web site. The Evil Alien Overlords are planning to enslave the human race and create a planetary network of mining slave camps. Here are some questions I asked Ertok during a recent interview:

O: So what part of the Galaxy are you from?
E: We come from a planet known in your scientific community as BETA-MX-1974. For those less technically inclined humanoids, our home world is on a planet that orbits a star which, from this point in the time/space continuum of the galaxy, looks like an ear of a little bunny rabbit. Or the front headlight of a 1984 Pontiac Fiero, depending on your sociological upbringing.

O: How are you able to speak English so well?
E: You might suspect we have a complex computer system that provides real time bi-directional language translation or that we insert some mythical cold blooded sea dwelling life form into our aurial chamber. One of our long range listening posts detected patterned electromagnetic waves radiating from your planet. We were quickly able to decipher them into their respective audio and video signals. Once the invasion force was dispatched from the home world we assimilated your culture through what you refer to as television and radio. While not perfect, our understanding of your language should be adequate for our needs. For example, we still haven’t decoded what your television signals refer to as the, “ancient Chinese Secret”. But from what we do know, we consider this to be of minimal strategic military importance.

O: So why have you chosen me to be the spokesman for your Invasion Force?
E: Well, we examined several factors when choosing a candidate. First of all, you posses the computer skills needed to convey our message to a large audience through your planetary digital packet distribution system. We also noted your wildly overactive imagination will most likely cause disbelief when conveying this message.

O: I’m a little bit confused now. So you want me to tell the world about your plans, but you don’t want anyone to believe what I’m saying. What purpose does that serve?
E: One thing we learned about your culture is that humans seem to enjoy the idea of irony. This way, after all humanoids are toiling away in the mining camps, we can post a big sign saying “We told you our plans, but nobody took it seriously. Now you and countless generations of your offspring will pay for this insolence. Oh, and please wear eye protection when operating heavy machinery.”

O: Being your cooperative spokesman by devoting my time and energy to your cause, will I be allowed to have a cushy administrative position in your new world order?
E: No.

O: Do I get anything for my efforts?
E: Yes-we have noticed you are trying to solve a mathematical problem your race refers to as the Non Polynomial Complete Set Theory Conjecture. (Our species calls it the “Traveling Mining Camp Equipment Sales Humanoid” problem). We plan on giving you the mathematical proof, which is small enough to fit in the margin of a single piece of paper, right as we assign you to the most dangerous mining camp.

O: We are almost out of time, so would you like to say anything to all the faithful newfunny readers?
E: If any humanoids are curious, your future will be similar to the movie “Superman 2”. Except instead of three escaped convicts from planet Krypton, there will be several thousand of us, and there will be no Superman. To paraphrase your human expression: “May the more advanced life form bring cruelty and mining camps along with their victory”. Ertok out.

Well, hopefully this interview will help keep you informed about Ertok and the Evil Alien Overlords. If you have any more questions, please send them to the “Letters to the Editor” section of the newfunny web site.

If you happen to be familiar with my annual Christmas letter you may be scratching your head thinking, “But Omar, it’s not anywhere near the end of the year– how can you already be posting your Christmas letter?” I decided that publishing my Christmas letter only once a year is not consistent with my idiom of working on “Internet Time.” I’m not exactly sure how to define “Internet Time,” but for the purposes of this letter it is me being up at 3 in the morning in my boxers and a T-shirt surfing the web because I got tired of watching infomercials on the television.

What do women want? This question has plagued mankind since God kicked us out of the Garden of Eden (which I believed contained no menstrual cycles, beauty magazine quizzes, or clothes that made Eve look fat). When contemplating what women want, I prefer to approach the problem from a different perspective. It is possible to list all the things that men could possibly do, take out the things that woman don’t want, and what is left, by the process of deduction, is what women want. While creating a list of all possible actions mankind can take is well beyond my attention span, I am willing to add a few items to the “don’t do” list.

First of all, women like compliments. There are, however, some important issues to consider when telling a woman “I love you.” Fellow men out there, I cannot stress this enough: only say this to a wife or established girlfriend. In general, a woman you have met for lunch once or twice and exchanged a few E-mail messages with does not meet these criterion. If you are invited to a party, it is generally considered bad taste to repeatedly yell out to the woman hosting the party “Angie, I love you. I know you don’t love me back, but that’s OK.” For whatever reason you may think it’s a good idea at the time (i.e. EXCESSIVE ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION), it will ultimately do more damage than good.

Secondly, trying to hit on women after excessive alcohol consumption is generally not a good idea. For example, you may think that going around at a party after downing a few drinks telling women you have never met they have a nice tail and a blouse full of goodies is an example of your witty banter, but in reality they usually just smile politely, leave the room for some reason or another, and strangely enough you never see them again.

And last of all, it is a good idea to stay after the party has died down and help clean up the mess. It is a bad idea to stay after the party has died down and repeatedly throw up in the sink before you pass out on the couch until the next afternoon. No further explanation is needed for this point.

I really can’t continue until I confess something here. I didn’t just use my overactive imagination to create three random activities women don’t like. I attended Angie’s Christmas party, got drunk, professed my unrequited love to her, told several other women they had nice tails and blouses full of goodies, threw up several times (for history’s sake, I remember it being once in the sink, and three times in the toilet), and passed out on their couch. Around eleven in the morning, on what I think was my last trip to bow down to the porcelain God, I looked down at my boxer shorts and bare legs and commented to Angie, “I’m not wearing any pants” in a somewhat matter-of-fact tone of voice. It was well past noon when I finally thought I could make it home without blowing chunks in my car.

I can’t say that I’m really proud of what I did, but I have to admit that it’s pretty amusing despite the fact that I am the ass in the story. In general I like to write stories where other people look stupid– it makes me feel better about my shortcomings in life. While I could have altered the facts of the story to make me look better, I don’t think it would have made for a funny story. Since I put (slightly) more importance on being funny than being truthful, I recorded the events as accurately as my impaired brain recalled them.

For reasons that I greatly appreciate yet do not totally comprehend, Angie doesn’t seem to hate me. I suspect it is analogous to the episode of “Cops” where the guy in the beat up old pickup truck gets caught with the prostitute only to realize SHE was really a HE while handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car. Sure, you can send him down to the station to be booked, but in all reality everything that happened before the police and television crew arrived will torture his soul a lot longer than any consequences of legal proceedings. As far as Angie goes, I think it is safe to assume that her name will not come up in future letters any time soon. If I manage to get invited to next year’s party, I think I’ll be the designated driver.

And, just in case you are wondering, I took that line from the movie “Hot Shots.” The actual quote is “Not playing to win is like sleeping with your sister. Sure she’s a great piece of tail with a blouse full of goodies, but it’s just illegal.”

Thanks for subscribing to the newfunny.com newsletter. I created this site as a moderated showcase for the talents of up-and-coming comedy writers. So if you like to write and believe that you are the next Dave Berry or Douglas Adams, please feel free to submit your work. If you can’t write, but like to read what other people write when they are trying to be funny, please enjoy this site. If you can’t read or write and for some strange reason have e-mail, have someone read the newsletter out loud every issue.

Newfunny.com is the first web site to officially acknowledge being run by Evil Alien Overlords in an attempt to distract humanity from their future invasion and enslavement plans. My name is Omar and I host the site and shamelessly bow down to our future masters in a “Locutus Of Borg” capacity. I am controlled by one of the Evil Alien Overlords via a XR-2300 neural interface. Everyone else has the less painful option of submitting material through the newfunny.com web site [ERTOK: we can’t go around equipping every humanoid with an XR-2300 BEFORE the mass landing of the replicator vessels, now can we? HA HA HA]

Oh yes, I forgot to mention Ertok the Evil Alien Overlord who oversees this web site. He has a keen– if somewhat twisted– interest in humanity and occasionally likes to add his own thoughts to the web site. It is in my best interest to indulge Ertok since he has led me to believe that one of the features of the XR-2300 is the ability to make my head explode.