1. Write some of your sentences with a period after every word. Example: Oh. My. God. This is extremely funny and will make people laugh uproariously. Trust. Me. On. This.

2. Drag out your punch lines, should you have any, with the riotously risible phrase “wait for it…”

3. Misspell short, common words like “its” and “their” to subliminally reassure your readers that your—that’s right, I said your—not some stuck-up grammar geek but an awesomely cool dude, just like them is.

4. Toss in the stupendously hilarious word “ass” as often as possible. Call someone you’re making fun of an asshat or an assfool or maybe even a dumb-assed asstard douche-ass.

5. Put some words in ALLCAPS to make sure readers get how really FUNNY those words are. Italics are also very funny but not as funny as allcaps. To make a word superfunny, though, write it like THIS!!!!!!

6. Another good way to stress how hysterical a word is is to put the word “seriously” or “totally” in front of it. (Technical note: They’re called “adverbs” but you don’t need to know that unless you’re a stuck-up grammar geek.) Even better is “epic.”

7. Be sure to drop in a reference to Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Vine or other websites or apps of the moment. You’ll get an epic roar of laughter from the small but crucial cadre of cutting-edge readers who know and care deeply about such things and huge respect from the slightly puzzled multitude, who’ll realize you’re cooler and more awesome than they are and give you mad love.

8. Automatic yuk-generator: any mention of bodily orifices  involving sex and/or waste elimination or commercial products associated with said orifices. And of course, adding obscenities to anything at all automatically makes it super-motherfuckin’ comical. Recent Gawker headline: “What the Fuck Is All This Benghazi Shit: An Explainer.”

9. Epically hate something—or better yet, hate on something–that nobody cares how you feel about. Go on and on about it until the reader gets that you really, totally detest it. Here’s a knee-slappingly funny example from the website thought catalog: (Wait. For. It.)

On the other hand, nothing—and I truly mean nothing—offends me as much as the existence of mayonnaise. I really don’t understand why it exists. Who decided to make it for the first time? Who thought that a white, creamy mixture made of fat and self-loathing would be a good thing to slather on sandwich bread?? My bigger concern is why do people continue eating it every day? Surely one taste should be enough to dissuade a second bite.

It continued in this vein for quite a while.

10. When you do seriously hate (on) some vile person/organization/trend, be sure to say at the end of the piece that you’re only kidding and that person, etc., is really cool. That way, the reader will know that deep down you’re a sensitive, caring dude who’s just kidding around and not some snarky, unfeeling, ironic hipster bastard who gets off on hurting people’s feelings. (I actually felt the mayonnaise writer made some awesome points and actually didn’t suck much at all.)

What is this? It’s a free sample, a chapter from

It was her wedding day and Daenisse Tarnower was all verklempt. Not so much from the fear of espousing a complete stranger who also happened to be a seven-foot-tall, painted savage, though that too was discomforting, but from her brother, Wysenhymer, who kept smacking her.

“Stand up straight,” he yelled.  Whack! “Stop slouching. Stick out your chest, what little of it there is. Smile! Why are you always weeping?” Slap!

“Discipline is a lovely thing, your graceful,” said Ehud Intaglio, their wealthy but nervous host, a macher in the exclusive Hampkins resort area of East Diaspora. “but we don’t want the bride should be black and blue.”

“I am the Cohen!” said Wysenhymer. “I know what’s best for her. Black and blue are her best colors.”

“Of course, your graceful,” said Ehud, treading carefully. “But the Horse Goyim don’t like anyone beating their women except them. Should they hear of it, they might get a little, you know, wroth, and when they get wroth, believe me, it isn’t good.”

“She is not yet theirs. Until that animal tieth the knot with her, I’m the one who gets to slap her around.”

Ehud shrugged. “You know best, your graceful.”

“Bloody straight I do,” said Wysenhymer. “And never forget it. Did you get the marriage contract signed?”

“Um, actually nay,” said Ehud. “The Horse Goyim believeth not in writing. They say it is the tool of the wily, the cunning and the slick. But the Grand Kublai Kohen vows to honor the agreement and he is a man of his word.”

“He will supply me one hundred thousand fierce warriors to take back Vaisnisht from Bobby the Usurper?”

“Soon, I am sure.”

“Soon I’m not interested in. I want now. I want right after the wedding, I want.”

The third man in the tent cleared his throat.

“The Horse Goyim cannot be noodged, your graceful,” said Sur Jordon Morganshtern. “Noodging infuriates them. Doggo the Uncircumcised will fulfill his pledge, I am sure, but only when the stars are aligned in the shape of a knish or some such barbarian mumbo-jumbo.”

Sur Jordon was a disgraced knight who had left Vaisnisht after he was discovered being overly friendly with a cow. Even though he had offered to do the honorable thing and wed the animal, eyebrows were raised, smirking ensued and Cohen Bobby had exiled him. Over here in the East, Sur Jordon had hired out as a rent-a-sword and experienced many exhausting adventures amongst the Horse Goyim, the Hums, the Babbletopians, the Gauloise, the Vichygoths the Moo Moo, the Kickapoo, the Inka Dinka Dudu and other impossibly colorful tribes and realms of Diaspora. Upon learning that Wysenhymer had arrived on these shores, Sur Jordon had sworn himself into the service of the wandering Cohen. He was now the royal security consultant.

GONNGGGGG!

“What’s that?” said Daenisse, nearly jumping out of her stunning crimson wedding gown. Tailored according to ancient Horse Goyim sacred tradition, it covered everything except her breasts and her cunthel.

“That’s the wedding bell, mine Princess,” said Ehud. “It is time.”

“Good,” said Wysenhymer. “Let’s get this mishegoss over with. Oh, wait! I must give my beloved shvester one more zetz for good luck.”

He punched Daenisse in the arm. “Ow,” she said. The one hundred slave girls provided by Ehud took up her extremely long train and the bridal party moved outside, Daenisse walking a bit unsteadily as she couldn’t see much through her heavy scarlet veil.

Waiting for them were Horse Goyim as far as other eyes could see, all of them mounted on their khsteeds. Doggo the Uncircumcised had brought his entire kublikhar with him as well as their khwives and their khidds. Man and woman alike were dressed in leathern vests and loincloths with beads and tchotchkes dangling and jangling from their ears and noses and the green ceremonial khalikoskarf wrapped around their throats. As they espied Daenisse, the horde began chanting an eerie, high-pitched warble, at the same time causing their mounts to jump straight up and down as if on springs, a trick that of all the world’s peoples only the Horse Goyim had mastered.

“Khere khomes khe khbride,” they cried in their indecipherably alien tongue.

Daenisse was terrified by the din, by the barbarous spectacle before her and by the thought of the no-doubt painful deflowering that lay ahead, which she had read about in a tourist brochure given her by Ehud. My gods, I’m being sold to sweaty savage brutes! I’m losing it. I’m getting hysterical! No, wait. As satisfying as it would be to totally freaketh out, I must not. I am Princess Daenisse of House Tarnower. I carry within me the blood and seed of the flying, fire-breathing rhino. Sounds silly, I grant, yet it be true! On my oath, I shall keep it together no matter how swinish things may get.

Ehud had rented a vast beanfield for the wedding, as the Horse Goyim believed all important occasions should be held outdoors; indoors was where gonifs and shysters practiced their foul deceptions. Now the bridal party walked through the field, the Horse Goyim parting before them, pointing and giggling. At last they reached the khuppah where waited the groom on his virile black stallion, both their fierce faces unsmiling.

She had seen Doggo but once before. He hadn’t come into Ehud’s manor the day of his party but simply sent word to Ehud to bring Daenisse out on the balcony, where she vamped in her scanties as Doggo galloped by with six hundred of his closest hordebuddies. He glanced up at the silver-haired princess and shot Ehud a thumbs up. He was a bulvon of a man with long, black, braided hair down to his pupik. His muscles, glistening with bear grease, had rippled and pippled in the sun and his primitive shwanze throbbed against his flimsy loincloth, threatening to burst it asunder.

The ceremony itself was brief. A priest wearing a horse head fashioned of papier-mâché tied the knot, using a short length of hemp. Then he got the bride and groom hitched, using a hitching post. Then the groom crushed the head of a slain enemy with his boot. Finally, the priest muttered some sacred consonants in Klothkhaki, the tongue of the Horse Goyim, and turning to Doggo the Uncircumcised, said, “Khyou khmay khnow khschtup khe khbride.”

Doggo reached down, snatched up Daenisse with one hand, tossed her on the back of his horse and galloped off with a lusty shout of “Khi Khyo Khsilver!”

Oo, thought Daenisse, he’s strong like a bull!

A few miles away from the milling, cheering crowd, Doggo abruptly halted his fiery steed in a dense grove of shadewood trees and leapt to the ground. He lifted Daenisse off the horse and flung her high in the air. When she came down, he caught her with one big hand and deftly whipped off her gown with the other. Then up and down she flew again and this time, off came her shoes. Then her silken undergarments. Now she was altogether sans raiment and naked as well.

The next time she descended, Doggo quickly moved his large but surprisingly nimble body so that she landed gently upon his broad shoulders, facing him. His long, thick tongue flicked out, took a look around and dexterously crept into her virginal cunthel, where it performed wondrous and surprising maneuvers.

“Zounds!” said Daenisse. “Also, yowzah!”

Mayhap, she reflected, barbarian life may not be as bad as I had thought. After a brisk hour of highly athletic consummation proceedings, Doggo and Daenisse galloped happily back to the reception, which was in full swing.

He liketh me, she thought. He really liketh me.

In Ehud Intaglio’s vast dining hall, the guests were feasting on a traditional Horse Goyim entree, a baked mouse inside a fried pigeon inside a poached opossum, inside a broiled warthog inside a roasted sheep, inside a steamed camel inside a barbecued elephant. Doggo led his new bride to the dais, where servers brought them chalices of honeyed wine and platters heaped with slabs of baked mouse inside fried pigeon inside…you know.

Daenisse found she suddenly had a huge appetite and was energetically tucking into the dish when Wysenhymer appeared at her side.

“Well, shvester,” he said. “Judging by the big, kaka-eating grin on the punim of the barbarian, it looketh like you’ve well slaked his primitive urges, fortunately for you.” Daenisse blushed prettily. “Now remind him of his vow to loan unto me a mighty host with which to win back mine rightful throne.”

“But brother,” she said. “Mine hot husband and I speaketh not the same tongue, except—sigh—the tongue of love. And this I do mean literally.”

“Contradicteth me not!” Wysenhymer shouted, slapping her face.

This was an epic, historic mistake, of which the minstrels would long sing.

Doggo put down the camel leg he was gnawing, pulled out his khuttyoface, the razor-sharp, hammer-and-sickle-shaped weapon carried by all male Horse Goyim over the age of two, casually disemboweled Wysenhymer with one swift, economical stroke and resumed his dining. The late Wysenhymer slumped slowly to the floor, pigeon and mouse meat seeping revoltingly out from his not very attractive kishkas. None of the Horse Goyim around them bothered to stop eating, drinking and klopping each other over the kup, which was their version of conversation.

Taking a sip of honeyed wine, Daenisse thought, I’m liking this fellow more every minute.

Every week, during season three of HBO’s

Sean: OK, this was another great G of T. The best scene by far was the one where Lord Tywin Lannister laid down the law to his kids, Tyrion and Cersei. He told them both who they’re gonna marry and when they objected, he said, “Shut the hell up; I’m the boss and you’ll do what I tell you.” You have to admire that display of strong leadership and parental authority, don’t you, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman?

Krugman: Not really, Sean. I think he’s a loathsome tyrant and I predict Tyrion will put a crossbow bolt into his belly.

Hannity: Whoa! Spoiler! Spoiler! Someone edit that out!

Krugman: Still, giving credit where it’s due, Lord Tywin was correct to authorize the funding of a big, lavish royal wedding as a stimulus to the Westeros economy. Austerity will not solve the recession that the realm is currently undergoing, not with unemployment at 26 percent and oxcart manufacturing falling below—

Hannity: As usual, you’re completely wrong, Paul. But let me ask actress Shirley MacLaine, whom we saw this season as Mrs. Levinson on Downton Abbey, where she was nowhere near as entertaining as Maggie Smith, how did you like the episode?

MacLaine: Not much, Sean. I found it a snooze. Where was Melisandre, the Red Priestess of R’hllor, the most fascinating character on the show? Her ability to give birth to shadow assassins who destroy her enemies is totally awesome. Actually, I’m pretty sure I was Melisandre in another life.

Hannity: That’s unlikely, Shirley, since she’s a fictional character.

MacLaine: Are you sure? I thought Game of Thrones was based on a true story.

Hannity: I’m sure. Let me turn now to brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad for his take on the episode.

Assad: Sean, I must strongly disagree with your positive view of Lord Tywin’s behavior. Has he forgotten there’s a war on? The Lannisters are in an all-out struggle to keep control of the Iron Throne and he’s blathering about weddings? It is ridiculous. Tywin needs to end the uprising by cracking down on his family’s enemies, slaughtering anyone who expresses the slightest sympathy for them and torturing thousands of innocents to intimidate the populace into cowed silence. That’s the only thing that works.

Hannity: Good point, Bashar. Now to shift our focus a bit, I want to ask our last panelist, famed handicapped scientist Stephen Hawking, about that terrific swordfight between the Hound and Beric Dondarrion. I was puzzled about how they brought Beric back from the dead after the Hound killed him. Can you shed some light on the how that works, Steve?

Hawking: Of course not, Sean. I don’t know anything about magic. I’m a scientist.

Hannity: Well, there’s no need to get snippy about it.

Hawking: I must confess that I, too, was puzzled during that scene. But that’s because I couldn’t remember who the devil Beric Dondarrian is. As brilliant as I am, I keep losing track of these characters. There are so bloody many of them.

Assad: I believe Beric is the man who in season one saved the life of the Blackfish, Ser Brynden Tully, the younger brother of Hoster Tully, the Lord of Riverrun; and an uncle of Catelyn Stark, Edmure Tully and Lysa Arryn, who presides over the Aerie.

Krugman: Nonsense. You’re confusing him with Davos Seaworth, commonly called the Onion Knight, who was imprisoned and tortured by Lord Bolton before being rescued by Brienne of Tarth, only to fall into the hands of Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall, and his so-called Free Folk, though I question how free they really are, when they’re harshly exploited by a primitive feudal economic system.

MacLaine: You’re all wrong. Beric is the true father of Theon Greyjoy and the lover of Lady Olenna, better known as the Queen of Thorns. He was chief legal adviser to Robert Baratheon before being raped by Gregor Klegane on the orders of the Kingslayer, which destroyed his memory.

(At this point, the panel fell to arguing, swords were drawn and a general melee ensued. Next week, not all the panelists may be back.)

Check out Lewis Grossberger’s Game of Cohens,  on sale at amazon.com

“This is a glorious day of peace and jubilation when all humanity can forget its divisions and problems and go buy my book,” said Grossberger, while gazing lovingly at his Amazon page on a computer monitor. “Doesn’t that look nice?”

By a strange coincidence, the riotously funny, 262-page, epic parody was published as HBO was showing the third season of its hit television series Game of Thrones. The show is based on George R.R. Martin’s best-selling, and very long, novels, A Song of Ice and Fire.

“To prepare for writing my parody, I read every page of all five of those books,” said Grossberger. “It’s the most heroic thing I’ve ever done.”

Game of Cohens is set in the far-off land of Vaisnisht, where the proud but nervous Shtarker family finds itself battling for its very survival when the realm is plunged into civil strife, treachery, black magic and indigestion, as powerful lords and scheming ladies haggle and bicker to see who can become the Cohen, or ruler, and sit on the fabled Porcelain Throne.

Grossberger, a notorious stickler for authenticity, revealed that for the entire eight months and five days it took him to write Game of Cohens, he stayed in character as a best-selling, medieval-fantasy author, writing on parchment with a quill pen, letting his beard grow longer, and insisting that friends and family call him Lewis R.R. Grossberger.

The exquisitely designed paperback, with a witty cover illustration by acclaimed artist Robert Grossman, will sell for $11.98 “I could have charged a full twelve dollars,” said Grossberger, “but I wanted even the poorest Jews and goyim to be able to afford this monumental, life-changing work.”

An e-book version of Game of Cohens will be available soon, said Grossberger. And if the rumors are true, a Broadway musical based on the book and titled Cohens: Turn Off the Schmaltz, may be in the works. The gossip website HTK recently hinted that Lena Dunham and Daniel Day-Lewis are interested in playing the lead roles.

Order your copy at:

https://www.createspace.com/4149448

10. Invite this kid.

OK, I’ve seen the big, Oscar-worthy movies and they all have one thing in common: they’re too damn long. On and on they roll, the audiences nodding, the directors and screenwriters having apparently misplaced the endings. So as a public service, I’ve done what Hollywood hadn’t the sense to do: condensed them all into one short, snappy story. Think how glorious a cinematic achievement might have been created, if only…

Fade in: A tall, gaunt, bearded figure in a top hat rides his horse slowly through ghastly battlefield carnage, pausing to inspect a corpse-strewn barricade, where he finds a man pinned beneath a body.

Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman): Can you ‘elp me, monsieur le président?

Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis): You’re alive?

Valjean: Hard to say. Zees slave I am rescuing, Django? He ees too heavy. I ‘ave collapsed beneath hees weight and now I am needing zee surgery of knee réplahcemawn.

Lincoln: You are valiant, sir.

Valjean: Non, I am Valjean.

Lincoln: You remind me of a fellow I knew back in Kentucky when I was splitting rails. He was a pig farmer, you see, and one day he come runnin’ into town all in a lather and—“

A small boy in a scout uniform rushes up.

Tad Lincoln (overly cute child actor): Father, father, the House is voting on the torture bill. We’ve got to get back to Washington to bribe more Congressmen so we can waterboard reb prisoners and capture Robert E. bin Laden!

A bald but beautiful woman pokes her head out of a pile of bodies and sings a haunting, soaring ballad.

Maya (Jessica Chastain): I dreamed I dreamt a dreamy dream/and though I often don’t recall what I was dreaming/this time I can and it makes me scream/No one at the fucking CIA/would let me do my terrorist screening.

Lincoln: Pretty tune, ma’am, and I do admire the way you can sing and sob at the same time. Now anyway, this pig farmer, he says, ‘Folks, I gotta warn you, some of my giant, feral hogs have got loose and—‘“

A herd of giant, feral hogs gallops across the landscape in slow motion.

Lincoln: Why, that’s downright uncanny. My compliments to the special-effects boys.

Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones): Abe, never mind the pigs, never mind bin Laden, never mind Frenchy and Django, forget the folksy anecdote. The Iranians have stormed our embassy in Tehran and taken our people hostage. We’ve got to mount a rescue operation and there’s only one man can pull it off: Benjamin Affleck of Massachusetts.

Lincoln: Well, that may be, Thad, but right now I need to go home and have a big argument with my crazy wife. She’s waitin’ up for me and she’s fit to be tied.

A rich, foppish Mississippi plantation owner gallops over and hails them.

Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio): Has anyone seen my ni**er? I have lost a ni**er and I will pay top dollar to anyone finds the ni**er. He is a very valuable ni**er, this ni**er of mine as he is bi**er than the average ni**er and is no ni**ardly ni**er, this ni**er but a smart, handsome ni**er, who never ni**les over fi**ers.

His butler Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson): You is right, massa. Oh, how right you is. (whispering to Lincoln) This cracker motherfucker don’ know what the fuck he talkin’ ‘bout.

Dr. Shultz (Christoph Waltz) pulls out a derringer and shoots Candie and Stephen. Gallons of blood fly out of their falling bodies in slo-mo.

Lincoln: These ever-mounting casualties weigh heavily upon my soul.

Dr. Schultz: Ach du lieber! Vill you bin looken at dot crazy plane up dere!

Overhead, a jetliner flips upside down and crashes onto the battlefield. The pilot staggers out. He is clearly drunk.

Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington): I swear, I’m off the sauce forever. I looked into the passenger compartment and there was some wacky kid being chased around by his pet tiger. Whoa, Betsy!

A French gendarme, Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), approaches and fires a shotgun at Whip, blowing his head clean off his body. Javert then sings.

Javert: At last my search is done/I’ve got my man/I’ve had my fun/What’s left for me now?/Nothing but the gun.

He puts the shotgun in his mouth and blows his head off. A shower of blood and brainy bits falls over everyone.

Lincoln: And now this awful conflict has spread to the great nations of Europe. How sad. How terribly sad.

A scoutmaster (Edward Norton) rushes up, and salutes President Lincoln.

Scoutmaster Ward: Sir, one of my scouts has run off with a neurotic prepubescent girl. Have you seen them?

Lincoln: What is the boy’s name?

Ward: Tad. Tad Lincoln.

Lincoln: Oh, dear. My wife will blame me for this and I won’t have a moment’s peace. Can anyone help me find him?

Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins): I can’t help you find him, Mr. President, but I can help you with Mrs. Lincoln. When does she usually shower?

Lincoln: Please, sir, put that knife away. We have had more than enough violence in this terrible conflict that has torn our great nation asunder, turning man against wife and pig against farmer.

Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman): You’re absolutely right, Mr. President. My new philosophical movement, The Process, is the only thing that can extricate us from the psychological devastation we’ve suffered as a nation. If you’ll step over to my wagon, I have a brochure that explains everything.

Lincoln: All right, sir. I am so weary and heartsick, I am ready to listen to even a charlatan like yourself.

Dodd: Right this way. Just be careful not to rile up my thuggish assistant, Freddie. Post-traumatic stress disorder, you know.

Jean Valjean: For zee love of Spielberg, would someone get me out of zis stinking pile of corpses?

The corpses burst into song and are joined by the ghosts of those who have died in the last few minutes as well as several Oscar winners from movies of previous years.

All: Do you hear the people snore/snoring the snore of tired men/It is the music of a people/who won’t shell out $12 again/When you’re sitting in your seats/so long your heart no longer beats/you know you’ll be dead/before tomorrow comes.

“Oh my God,” House Speaker John Boehner reportedly said at a secret conference of Republican legislators and governors. “It’s as though I’ve awoken from some all-encompassing mental fog. Climate change is real. Evolution is true. Big government is not a bad thing. Sometimes it’s right to raise taxes, especially on the wealthy. Most of the country wants abortion and marijuana to be legal. I tell you I’d shoot myself except that I’ve come to see the desirability of gun control.”

Similar sentiments were voiced by right-wing pundits and theoreticians, who have subjected their ideology to re-examination following the rejection at the polls of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

“It’s not that Romney was a weak candidate,” an obviously shaken Ann Coulter told stunned students at the University of Southern Alabama. “It’s that everything he said was a gigantic pile of crap. Unfortunately, the majority of voters noticed this despite the efforts of myself and other conservative commentators to obscure it. I want to apologize to all the liberals I’ve slandered and vilified over the course of a long and mendacious career.”

The mangled body of Fox News Channel pundit Bill O’Reilly was found at the base of Mount Rushmore yesterday with a note pinned to his clothing that read: “It’s all over… the lies, the stupidity, the madness. What an asshole I’ve been. Oh the shame, the ignominious shame.”

A spokesman for the Koch brothers announced that “from now on they are giving all their money to PETA.”

In a column that startled some readers, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that “though we are now completely irrelevant, and some would say useless, conservatives can still perform a valuable service to the nation by forming processions of millions of penitents who wander the countryside, scourging our naked flesh until the blood flows freely, to repent for our years of weakening America and wasting everyone’s time.”

Not all the faithful agreed, however. Actor Clint Eastwood and rock star Ted Nugent were reportedly holed up in a makeshift fortress in the High Sierras, vowing to “make a glorious last stand and go out like heroes,” according to a text message to Herman Cain sent from Eastwood’s iPhone.

“Honey, I have no choice,” Romney told his wife Ann when she pleaded with him to come to bed at 2 AM. “I’ve got to ace this thing to have any shot at all. I still haven’t memorized the state-by-state unemployment stats.”

Romney and a dozen aides camped out in their pajamas in the finished basement of one of Romney’s seven mansions. At about 4:30, they sent out for pizza and, becoming giddy from sleep deprivation, had a hysteria-fueled pillow fight before getting back to the briefing books.

At one point, Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who portrays Obama in Romney’s debate rehearsals, nodded off and had to be doused with a bucket of ice water.

Dr. Seymour Henshaw, Romney’s personal physician, said he planned to administer a shot of adrenalin directly into the candidate’s heart just before he takes the stage “to ensure he is totally alert and up to snuff.”

Meanwhile, both camps issued final statements to the media in the crucial race to lower expectations for their candidate.

Romney proclaimed, “I have no chance whatever against the fiendishly brilliant, super-articulate Barack Obama. He’s gonna mop the floor with me. Why I’m even showing up I have no idea.”

Obama responded, “Nonsense. The silver-tongued Mitt Romney is the best debater who ever lived. I just don’t see how I can score a single point against his airtight logic and the devastating ad-lib zingers he’s been rehearsing for months.”

“Reality is unfairly skewed against us conservatives,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners yesterday. “It definitely has a liberal bias. That is why Romney appears to be behind when we know in our hearts he’s way ahead.”

Romney adviser Beth Myers told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that “When Romney and Ryan say they are protectors of Medicare benefits or military veterans, their words seem to lack authenticity in the liberally slanted atmosphere of the world as it actually exists, as opposed to our delusional idea of it. If reality were in accord with Republican ideas, as it should be, Gov. Romney’s claims would be more plausible.”

Fox News Channel commentator Sean Hannity urged his viewers to go to their places of worship and “beseech God to shift the ontological locus of the universe to correct the liberal slant that has crept in and corrupted existence.” He added that he was “sick and tired of always being behind the metaphysical eight-ball.”

Hannity’s guest, columnist Dick Morris, agreed, saying that “it’s bad enough we have to overcome the liberal media, the liberal pollsters and the liberal voters in this country without also being shot down by the independent nature and existence of everything knowable, whether by logical inference, empirical observation or some other form of experience.”