Hi, everybody! I’m T. Herman Zweibel! I’m old and stupid! I wet myself a lot! I live in a big, stupid mansion! Listen to me talk about a lot of old stuff! I think it’s actually 1907! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!
Hey, you damned kids, what are you doing in my study? Get away from that linotype-machine! How the devil did these juveniles breach the walls of my estate and elude my Swiss Guard? Go on, clear out, you gutter-snipes! Hey, I told you to keep away from that linotype-machine!
I am T. Herman Zweibel, the world’s most boring person! I am older than Jesus! Remember the War Of 1812? I do, because I’m so old! Hey, Standish, give me an enema!
What? Why, you rat bastards! You churlish reprobates, you ought to be soundly thrashed with a length of barbed-wire! Ah, Standish, there you are! Get these unsanitary adolescents out of here! No, I don’t want an enema! Those cocky little street-arabs were merely impersonating me!
I have hundreds of diseases! I yell at people a lot! I hyphenate compound words for no reason! Blah, blah, blah, blah!
Stop it! Stop it! You’re wearing out the italics! Standish, look what these youths are doing! Oh! They just spilled India ink all over my precious codicils! And look at that one over there, wearing that beautiful waste-paper basket on his head like a pickelhaube! This is all so humiliating! What’s that, Standish? You say I should read aloud from this piece of paper? Drat it, man, I don’t want to read these brats a bed-time story! You say it may get them out of here? Well, I do not have my lorgnette on me, but I will try any-way:
“Hey, you teen-agers! You are all a bunch of faggots, and I question your sexuality! You wear the same stupid sweat-shirts every day, and no-one will ever have sex with you, ever! Your faces are clotted with pimples, and your hair is oily, and you cannot control your erections! You are all worth-less, ugly, and stupid!”
Look, Standish, they’re running away, weeping! Huzzah! I forgot how emotionally vulnerable adolescents are, and that even the most callow insult is their Achilles’ heel! A brilliant idea, Standish, turning the tables like that! Quick, alert the Swiss Guard to intercept them as they approach the front gate, and yank their under-trousers up into the chasm ’twixt their buttocks!
No, let’s the keep the column transcribed as is. I want all teen-agers to see this, and know that they cannot get the best of T. Herman Zweibel, no matter how they try!
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.
