Since Trump’s election, protests are everywhere. From the Women’s March on Washington to airport demonstrations over the Muslim ban to Let’s All Chase John Legend, loud passionate demonstrations have become the new normal in American life.
For many Americans, these are the first real protests they’ve participated in. Sure, back in college, we all picketed a dean’s funeral or two, but now, protesting means facing real danger.
Cops will arrest you, the media will slander you, and counter-protestors will seduce you to their side with their honeyed words and many-breasted bodies.
Without training, your neck can and will get melted by police horse spit, or ripped to gravelly bits as a cop car drags you by your ankle to the local Dissident Lagoon.
So before you hit the streets, train on this Protest Safety Simulator: a safe, controlled environment to learn the right way to become illegal with yelling!
What do you want to know?
Why, protesting is as American as a kindly mule electrocuted by a neon sign in a swimming pool, for charity!
Protests even kicked off America’s war for independence, when every Founding Father got their wigs tangled together and refused to stop shrieking at British ships about how they’d become ”a beloved neighborhood pet.”
As the world-famous First Amendment says, “Trouble in paradise? Wipe the piss off your thighs and go shout a rhyme by a building.”
Well, what do you think it is?
Yes and no! In addition to swallowing pills, the wondrous human throat is capable of a form of illegal yelling that alters reality. When several people get scared enough to go outside and try to scream the president’s brain different, that’s a protest!
Protests happen because our universe is the decaying mind of a diseased god, and man, in his folly, is doomed to rage perpetually against that truth!
Protests tend to form like this:
- The government makes a Marine execute an unruly elephant seal with Krav Maga on Facebook Live.
- Thousands of Americans see the footage and start silently stamping their feet in fury.
- Hearing the stamps, a rabbi goes to city hall and blasts two firm toots on a shofar to ask the mayor for permission to scream. The mayor consents by tooting back.
- Riled-up citizens start jogging toward the toots, gulping down cough drops to lubricate their screams and leaving a wrapper trail for other citizens to follow.
- Hearing the illegal yelling, the police ride on over, hoping to finally sate the cravings of their flesh-addicted horses.
- Once the police arrive, everyone swallows their cough drops, and the protest begins.
Great! Let’s load the simulation and begin.
Welcome to the protest!
The air is crisp, and the sun is high. In the town square, protestors laugh, chant, and pass unopened thermoses back and forth to hear the sloshing.
The gathering has brought the usual suspects out of the woodwork: rowdy counter-protestors, cops to keep order, a hairless gym teacher hoisting a rotisserie chicken on his shoulders like it’s his goddamn child, and reporters and bystanders to watch it all play out.
During this simulation, you will be protesting that Yogurt Should Be Hot. You believe this with your whole heart.
Would you like to be a Peaceful Protestor or a Violent Protestor?
Ahh, peaceful protest, the protest where there’s babies!
Pioneered by Gandhi to force the world to call India a subcontinent, peaceful protests are the perfect combo of medium rudeness and arts and crafts.
Instead of pummeling the system into submission with violence, peaceful protest wins hearts and minds by contrasting your nonviolence with the violence used against you. And if no one cares that you got beat up? Well, then it just wasn’t meant to be!
What would you like to simulate?
What would you like to simulate?
You’ve been cornered by the press!
Journalists swarm over a juicy protest like babies swarming a weaker baby, on the hunt for inflammatory footage and spicy quotes. As a protestor, a good interview could help you bring attention to your cause and win over the public, or even be a fun viral Auto-Tune song.
On the other hand, your words could be spun to make your cause seem childish and pathetic, or worse, you could trip and swallow the camera, giving all America a tour of your awful, Lego-studded guts.
Think you can handle yourself?
“Nadia Pearson, the Stanford Plum-Sentinel. Why are you out here demonstrating today?”
Nothing’s fun if you don’t take it seriously. Lose the attitude or take a hike.
Well done! You chose your words carefully and got your cause some positive press!
Oh no. Alert the air traffic control tower at your mouth, because your foot’s coming in for a landing!
Your careless words were spun way out of context, and you made the whole protest seem like a summoning ritual for a dairy plague. Do better!
“Berman Reese, DailyZizzle.biz, dairy and dairy byproducts vertical. What would you say to critics who claim hot yogurt makes the bowl too hot for their dimpled little child-skin fingies?”
Nailed it! What a media coup for the Hot Yogurt movement. Keep this up and you might just become the next Alan Colmes!
Well, fuck. You’re on record sounding like a warlock. People are going to find that when they Google you, and they’ll think you’re in concert with fell gremlins.
“Angelo Dawes, INFP News Network. If you really like hot yogurt so much, why aren’t you shoveling it into your mouth right now?”
Hey, nice! Great job knowing about delayed gratification! Reporters love delayed gratification because it’s the only type of pleasure available to them, apart from calling themselves “journos” and occasionally demonstrating that they have opinions. You’re doing great!
Yikes. Maybe you should stop talking to the press altogether, before you get branded a celery-fucker, the media’s favorite smear. There’s nothing wrong with fucking celery, but it just doesn’t play well in the court of public opinion.
“Ari Ditchdweller, News I Yell To My Children From The Front Seat Of My Parked Car News. Let’s end on a fun one: What’s your favorite thing about hot yogurt?”
Okay! You talked to a lot of media! Let’s see what tomorrow’s front-page headline is to see if you moved the needle:
Okay, well, you can’t always drive the news cycle. But you fended off a swarm of reporters, and that means something. Probably ultimately very little, but that’s still an amount that qualifies as “something!”
A cop comes sauntering over, fondling his baton.
“Hi there! I’m Officer Pemmmmb.
I couldn’t help but notice your neck. I’d really just love to throw you to the ground and grind my knee into it while I handcuff you. Mind if I indulge?”
Looks like you’re getting arrested! Keep a cool head, and you might make it out okay.
You’re bluffing, but Pemmmmb doesn’t know that. Keep it that way.
“No shit? We were hatchlings together? What are you doing out protesting, then?”
“All right. What’s every cop’s first memory?”
“Ah, my apologies, ‘citizen!’” says Officer Pemmmmb with a wink, “I didn’t mean to blow your cover.
“Keep up the good work, and I’ll see you at the next Mating Frenzy!”
He saunters off, casually knocking a protestor’s head off with a swing of his baton as he goes.
Well done! You successfully avoided getting arrested! Try it at your next protest.
“Heck, I’m more crooked than ever! Just the other day, I made a family cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner and watch me eat it, in exchange for taking the boot off their minivan. I must’ve puked turkey bones onto their carpet half a dozen times before I got it all down. Nothing beats being a crooked cop!”
Well, what do you know! He’ll take it!
“I’m not stupid,” says Officer Pemmmmb, “I know when someone’s sizing me up to see if I’m crooked.”
“But with a great bribe like this, I can’t stay mad at you. Now get back in there, and have a great time protesting!”
He strolls off, whistling the “Crooked Cop’s Waltz.”
Well done! You successfully avoided getting arrested! Try it at your next protest.
The leash wraps tight around Officer Pemmmmb’s neck and cinches. Looks like your nine years of rodeo college are finally paying for themselves!
Officer Pemmmmb screams, clawing at his neck as his body buckles and twists. The leash around his neck has activated long-dormant Cop Genes, plunging him down the ancient genetic waterslide from Police Man to Police Dog. He looks up at you pleadingly, past the pulsing flesh of his lengthening muzzle, but there’s no stopping the transformation.
As he falls onto all fours, human intelligence dims from his eyes, leaving only animal instinct and the swiftly fading memory that he was once more than beast. Officer Pemmmmb is gone, leaving a panting K-9 where he stood.
Well done! You successfully avoided getting arrested! Try it at your next protest.
“Hey, thanks a million,” says Officer Plemmmmb, cracking your face against the pavement with enough force to knock your tongue into your brain, giving you a permanent case of Licked Brain. He wastes no time cuffing you.
“Say, while I have you down here, mind if I feed you to my horse?”
“More’s the pity, then!”
Officer Plemmmmb hauls you into the air by your neck and belt, gives a few practice heaves, and hurls you toward a nearby police horse.
Catching your airborne scent, the animal whips itself into a blood frenzy, spitting huge gobs of acidic saliva that sear your skin into drippy jelly. You’re confit before you hit the ground. Then the horse is all over you, powerful jaws ripping you to bits, until all that’s left is hair, handcuffs, and your still-alive brain, which Officer Plemmmmb tucks into his glove compartment with all the others he’s collected.
Oof, looks like you didn’t do so great. Better luck next time!
“I really could not agree with you more!”
Officer Plemmmmb hauls you into the air by your neck and belt, gives a few practice heaves, and hurls you toward a nearby police horse.
Catching your airborne scent, the animal whips itself into a blood frenzy, spitting huge gobs of acidic saliva that sear your skin into drippy jelly. You’re confit before you hit the ground. Then the horse is all over you, powerful jaws ripping you to bits, until all that’s left is hair, handcuffs, and your still-alive brain, which Officer Plemmmmb tucks into his glove compartment with all the others he’s collected.
Oof, looks like you got devoured by a police horse. Better luck next time!
Chanting is essential to any protest. Without chanting, protests are technically just crappy block parties, and the government can legally crush the crowd with unsecured bounce castles.
On the other hand, chanting along with a crowd is energizing, loud, and believed to aid in digestion.
We’ll set chants, you spike them. Ready?
SCORCHED THROAT! BURNT TONGUE!
HEY HEY! HO HO!
GREEK, TZATZIKI, KEFIR TOO!
ONE MORE TIME ’CAUSE WE FORGOT!
HOT BOWL! HOT SPOON!
HOT SPOON, HOT BOWL!
BREAKFAST, LUNCH, OR LATE-NIGHT TREAT!
Wasn’t that great? Now cool down with a lozenge. You don’t want a vocal polyp, or god forbid, a nodule. Your throat is your instrument, and your instrument is so precious!
Yes! Yes!!
Violent protests are controversial but sexually thrilling in a way sex can never be. The air of a violent protest is electric with the cracks of bullwhips, the clacks of protest castanets, the shrieks of police falcons, and the whiz of hurled bodies.
In a full froth, violent protestors can strip a gorgeous marble statue down to a single penis in a matter of minutes. But they won’t show you that on the news.
What would you like to simulate?
What would you like to simulate?
Basic medical skills are crucial at dangerous protests.
Without proper attention, a wound sustained at a protest can become larger and larger until someone just wriggles right into it. Then you’ve got two people in one messed-up body, and then it’s a slippery slope to having several in there. No thank you!
Don’t let that happen. Sharpen your first-aid skills with this series of scenarios.
SCENARIO 1: A fellow protestor is being pepper-sprayed by a police officer.
The police officer continues to pepper-spray him for the entire rest of the protest, then sits in the passenger seat of the protester’s car to pepper-spray him as he drives home. He continues to pepper-spray the protestor as he heats up lasagna for his daughters, and spends the whole night pepper-spraying him while the protestor gets eight good hours of sleep.
In the morning, the protestor wakes to find the cop gone, leaving a note taped to a bottle of pepper spray reading “KEEP IT UP!”
What do you do?
Correct!
SCENARIO 2: A counter-protestor has used a terrible Santería ritual to turn your genitals to beetles.
A Cold Yogurt zealot has tapped into forbidden Caribbean blood magic and placed a hex on you, and now your gentle parts are a swarming mass of gorgeous opalescent green beetles. Even worse, the beetles seem to be dispersing, scurrying off to find crumbs and dew drops, leaving you without even provisional genitals.
What do you do?
Correct!
SCENARIO 3: A protestor is unconscious and unresponsive, probably because they’re having an extremely nice dream about Jane’s Addiction.
A diabetic protestor has gone unconscious from hypoglycemia, and it seems like he might be having one of those perfect dreams where he’s floating on an inner tube down a lazy river with Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro, just laughing about how gorgeous life can be and swapping road stories. His pulse is weak, he isn’t responding to stimulus, and for all you know, he could just be getting to the part where Jane’s Addiction invites him on stage at Lollapalooza to fill in on bass, and then they let him keep the bass.
What do you do?
Correct!
SCENARIO 4: Living is dying.
Every step you take is a step toward the grave. Death begins at the instant the life-giving cord is severed; your umbilicus is the furrow where the seed of oblivion takes root. Your DNA is a self-destruct sequence, repeated over eons to the same futile end. Society is nothing more than a glorified death cult, and its worship shapes our every institution, our every relation, twisting joy, light, and life itself into a funnel to nothingness. Acts of defiance simply hasten the curtain’s fall; the clown rages and stumbles, but the crowd only laughs louder, and louder still.
What do you do?
Correct!
Congratulations, you’ve successfully completed our entire first-aid training simulator! You are now officially First-Aid Certified!
Please print out this certificate and bring it with you to your next protest so they let you touch a corpse!
This guy comes lumbering toward you all piss and vinegar, bunching his pants into fightin’ capris.
“Eeaugh!” he howls. “Your tactics! Who cares if yogurt’s hot or solid or what? Quit it!”
Violence freaks the common pedestrian out. Most people fear change; they just want peace and quiet to suck thoughtfully on Tide laundry pods and let onions rot in the bottom of their fridge. This guy, for example, has put on his Fearful Kangol and is spraying Coward’s Ichor.
Can you convince him you’re doing the right thing, or at least to back off?
“Aaaeeiiigh!” he screams. “Someone help! This protestor’s gonna use me as a hive! They’re gonna pump me full of eggs, and in a few weeks they’ll hatch, and their squirming young will devour me for their first meal! I don’t recognize America anymore! I have no yogurt temperature preference!”
His screaming will get the cops’ attention soon.
“You trying to trick me? Like how JFK’s rogue Soviet clone lured JFK to a peace talk at a derelict oil rig, only to steal his helicopter, gouge himself a bellybutton, and make love to Mrs. Kennedy? You trying to steal my life and fuck my wife, you sneaky Hot Yogurt bastard?”
Uh-oh, you’re losing him.
“Oh, so now you’re talking down to me? Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I’m some idiot who carves dolls out of bar soap? Do you think my wife and I carve soap dolls and dress them up because we can’t figure out how to get our bodies to make children? Do you think we carve them secondary sexual characteristics to put them through puberty? Do you think we melt them when they disobey us, and sometimes just to be cruel?”
“Well, so what! Fuck you!”
He’s not listening anymore.
You deliver a blistering gourd donk à la brick to the galoot’s noodle.
The blow smashes the part of his brain that distinguishes between people and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. A placid expression stretches over his face as the violent protests that got him so riled now appear to him as a festive protest-themed balloon romp. He silently staggers away, gazing with childlike awe at his endless November wonderland.
Well done! You successfully gave a bystander permanent brain damage, and now he could give a hoot about your protest tactics.
If society is a symphony, violence is the goblin holding the conductor hostage with a gaudy plastic crossbow, screaming “VIOLINS…FOR ME!”
Today, you are a throbbing vein in that goblin’s meaty leg. Try out some violence, for the good cause of making all yogurt hot.
If society is a symphony, violence is the goblin holding the conductor hostage with a gaudy plastic crossbow, screaming “VIOLINS…FOR ME!”
Today, you are a throbbing vein in that goblin’s meaty leg. Try out some violence, for the good cause of making all yogurt hot.
Tsunami! Nature’s fury unbound! God’s wet judgment scrubs the wicked and blessed alike from the Earth’s weeping face! This is expert-level violence, S-rank only! Not even Noam Chomsky has a quote about a damn tsunami!
Society trembles as a colossal wall of water engulfs the horizon, seething with displaced crabs and shrimp. Then, it descends.
Well, you did it. Your violent activism made society too drowned to even function. Mankind has been smeared across the pavement and dragged out to sea, yourself included. You’ve ripped the skeleton of humanity out of the body politic, leaving only the slick, loose meat of some leftover buildings. Voting is over.
In some ways, this protest was incredibly effective. In others, it’s more debatable.
Looting is a time-honored way of throwing society’s sick fetishization of property ownership over human life back in its face, while also getting more stuff. This is a win-win, or in protestor lingo, a “perfo bitzy-botsy.”
At the zoo, they have the good animals, and normally it’s a total fucking hassle to get your hands on those. When looting’s on, though, it’s everyone’s animals.
So quick, while there’s chaos, go get some livestock!
You loot, loot, and third loot. You loot like it’s going to be more illegal tomorrow than it already is.
While most law enforcement’s dealing with the protest, you smash a terrarium and slide an African rock python down your pant leg, stun a Dorcas gazelle with a 64-ounce souvenir gulp trough and tie it to your belt, and toss a plastic bag over a western lowland gorilla so you have it now.
And who’s going to stop you? The Mexican redknee tarantulas?!
“Sorry, I can’t let you do that.”
Ah jeez, it’s zoo security. They must have been alerted by the screams of the animals you’re dragging behind you. Looting a zoo can be thrilling and lucrative, but it can also end with you getting tasered and added to the zoo’s permanent collection with a placard calling you a “BEAST WHICH FUCKS DRY PASTA” and insisting you reproduce with spores, like fungus.
This is a thing that can happen at a protest! Be warned!
Hyyyuhgh!!
The man you just punched made billions carving custom jack-o’-lanterns showing Dustin Diamond getting hickies from different Snoopy characters, and selling them to war criminals’ wives to save their marriages.
Your knuckles are his righteous reward for a life of sucking from the wolf teat that dollars come out of.
You just made jaw salsa. Tableside, baby!
It’s kick, great kick.
Huuuuaaagh!! Gaaahh!!
You just punched a hole through the wall of the room where the corrupt governor keeps an entire deer population he declared extinct, just so he can slake his sick craving for Half-Of-A-Deer Tea.
Two kicks, very strong! Very strong kicks! Great two kicks.
GYAAAAH!! GYAAAAAAAAHHH!!
Thanks to your fist, this ambassador will think twice before she squirts milky fluid out of an eyedropper labeled “PISS OF RACISM” into the Dalai Lama’s sleep apnea machine again.
Violence works!
Yes, kick and kicking, 100 percent the kick.
Finally, it’s kicking.
No, that’s enough. Don’t cause a scene.
Violent protestors just pack a few essentials, but they can be absolute lifesavers. First, you’ve got fire.
Fire’s not just a wood disease that ruins raw chicken, it’s also an extremely versatile tool. Protestors use it to distract policemen with camp memories, destroy hot-dog carts owned by rapists, or to briefly become The Human Torch. It’s easily made at home and lasts as long as you feed it pictures of fire.
Some protestors prefer electrical fire, but any kind works.
Next, you have five gallons of olive oil.
As soon as the shit hits the fan, policemen will immediately start trying to hurl you toward their ravenous horses’ mouths. Dousing yourself slippery with five gallons of olive oil makes you un-grabbable, devastatingly fragrant, and technically Italian, a.k.a. the Policeman’s Nightmare.
Olive oil may also stop bullets? This could well be true.
Next, you have a cutlass cursed with a conquistador’s soul.
This is a no-brainer: an ancient rusty cutlass containing the screaming spirit of a 16th-century Portuguese murderer bound by a Nagasaki shinsoku is the perfect tool to jimmy open a stubborn tin of Altoids or Bubble Tape clamshell for that much-needed mid-protest pick-me-up.
In a pinch, it can also be used to cut a hot-air balloon loose for a quick getaway.
No violent protestor leaves home without a pound or two of human jerky.
While an unthinkable snack for you or even him, a fistful of cured human meat will save your bacon when a carnivorous police horse comes clomping at you with the blood hunger up. Get caught short and get eaten by a state-sanctioned horse!
Human jerky is available off-shelf at most major supermarkets, and gives you their worst memories and some of their vocal tics.
Finally, your outfit: a worn muslin nightgown.
When it’s time to make a quick getaway, close your eyes, and bam! In your nightgown and stocking feet, you’ve faded into the crowd as a run-of-the-mill sleepwalker, out for some lawful somnambulism.
Nightgowns also offer a wide range of motion, and can be pulled up over your face to block out tear gas, or whatever kind of gas, who cares.
A smart protestor packs light. Here are the essentials you brought today:
First, you have a landline phone.
Never count on cell service at protests. Like at a music festival, cell networks quickly get overloaded, making it impossible to get a call or text out. Instead, forego your smartphone for a good old-fashioned landline. Instruct your friends to do the same, and you’ll have no trouble coordinating your meet-up. Or just have them follow your cord!
Next, you’ve got a copy of 1001 Gutbusting Goofs And Riddles, For Boys!
Protests, marches, and sit-ins can be all-day affairs, and that means keeping your spirits up. Enter the good people at Belly Laugh Publications, whose 1001 Gutbusting Goofs And Riddles, For Boys! is a treasure trove of positive chuckles, overflowing with bonafide snickerdoodles like this instant classic:
Q: How does an octopus clean his grandfather?
A: He gives him a sea-sponge bath!
Don’t be fooled by the title. These jokes (and riddles!) aren’t just for boys. They’re truly for anyone with a ticklish soul, ages 9 to 109.
Next, you have Father’s Fitbit.
Father is feeble, but he must reach his step goals. On his own, Father tops out at about 75 steps, and it puts him in such a foul temper. If Father’s step goals aren’t reached, he will refuse his white borscht and spit in the eyes of his caretakers, whose patience is positively saintly. Oh, but he must see his step goals reached!
Please, won’t you be the picture of filial devotion and take Father’s Fitbit with you as you march about?
You’ve also got tentacles instead of arms.
Tentacles are in most ways much better than arms. They’re flexible. They’ve got suction cups for grasping a protest sign or a bullhorn. They make you stand out, and they’re a conversation starter. Anyway, they’re not octopus tentacles, they’re just tentacles, okay? Instead of human’s arms, it’s tentacles for you.
Even if you weren’t at a protest, wouldn’t you rather have tentacles than arms? Your arms are tentacles.
Finally, you have your outfit: 30 feet of loose silk.
Thirty feet of loose silk is standard wear for the experienced protestor. Airy and versatile, 30 feet of loose silk allows for a full range of motion while creating a loose, indistinct silhouette impossible to identify after the fact. Bystanders won’t be able to describe you as anything but “blue” or “royal blue,” giving you free rein to protest as you please.
In a pinch, your 30 feet of loose silk can also be traded to a merchant for a slender mother-of-pearl-inlaid dagger, or baubles.