I have two things I would like to say to the youth of today. First, kiss my blue-veined hiney! You’re not fit to carry my coat, you insolent little bastards. Second, here is how to make a newspaper hat. I’m only going to tell you this once, so clean the wool out of your ears and listen up.
Nurse! There’s an enor-mous spider in my room! Back, you devil’s harbinger, back I say! Where is that hideous mammal-beast of a nurse?
She’s probably jabbering upon the telephone device, I wager, frittering away my fortune on telephone bills while she arranges her sweaty midnight trysts with her debauched paramour.
I can see those two wriggling away like two fat eels while I suffer unmentionable agonies in my cold and lonely chamber! Wretched nurse, come and kill this spider!
Wait. Never mind, it’s my catheter.
Anyhow, to make a newspaper hat, first obtain a newspaper. For the newspaper, may I suggest the Brickton Atlas-Trumpet. I suggest the Brickton Atlas-Trumpet, because it certainly does not do as reading material. In fact, the Trumpet is not even suitable for wrapping fish!
Curse you, Brickton Atlas-Trumpet, and its editor, P. Oliver Gummidge! You think you’re so smart because you scooped us with your muckraking exposé of the Beef Trust! As God is my witness, I’ll ruin you!
Take a section of the paper and fold it lengthwise. Then fold it again. Then take the corners and fold them back to create triangles. Then fold it in half. Fold once again, bend back, score the edges you have just folded, then take some airplane glue and affix the scored edges to the top of the hat’s crown. Then fold once again.
Are you following me? There’s 14 more steps to go. No, no, you’re doing it all wrong! Don’t score the corners, score the edges! The edges!
You damn kids today can’t do anything right! You spend all your time idly listening to that consarned Amos and Andy on the wireless and refuse to learn a trade! To hell with you all!
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
