The Urkel Shirt!

The Urkel Shirt

There comes a time in every man's life when you realize you have to do the "right thing" and take the next responsible step in manhood. A time when you have to sit down, examine where you currently are and where you ultimately want to end up in your life. A period of time that really defines what being a "man" is all about.

I am of course talking about doing laundry.

For all three of the women who read this page, let me take a couple minutes to explain something about men to you: we lack the critical "laundry" gene that is necessary to function properly in society. When God was handing out DNA that reminds humans to wash their clothes, he ended up accidentally skipping men and heaping it all on women. To compensate, he gave us 450% the recommended amount of the "Wanting to See Car Chases" gene, which the female gender was sadly denied. This is why, more often that not, you will see men watching "COPS" on television rather than washing their pants; it's simply in our genetic code.

Thanks to this deficiency, men have the innate ability to casually ignore all traces of bodily odor and stains for months, just to get out of doing laundry. It's not that the process of shoveling our filth-encrusted shirts into a cold war-era washing machine is a particularly grueling act -- it's simply that we lack the laundry DNA and we'll do anything to get out of washing clothes. One day when all our wire hangers are empty, we'll dig our favorite shirt from the laundry basket and realize that, hell, it still has a few good days left on it! We must've carelessly tossed it into the hamper by mistake! A week later, after our spreading armpit stains have thoroughly consumed the entire shirt so it smells like one humongous plaid onion, it will go back into the hamper where it came from, only to replaced by yet another shirt which has a few critical hours of lifespan left in it. It's really pathetic and disturbing to see a grown man recklessly dig through his dirty laundry pile, yank out a yellow tank top which has countless ketchup and relish stains streaked across the front of it, and begin to cradle it against his chest while muttering, "it's okay, you're still fine, you'll look better than ever on me tonight when I attend father's funeral." Besides whiskey and the WWF, it's hard to find another source of inspiration that can motivate men as much as dirty laundry.

Since men cannot control the actions of their laundry-lacking gene code, capitalism has come through to rescue the ignorant, sweaty, filthy guys of the world. The clothing industry, sensing an imbalance in the sexes and gene pool, began to produce what would ultimately act as the "cold shower" for men's infinite laundry procrastination -- the Urkel Shirt.

Now keep in mind that when I refer to the Urkel shirt, I'm not just referring to "The Urkel Shirt." This may seem confusing at first, and will probably remain so until you have a chance to inhale sufficient quantities of paint varnish fumes in your poorly ventilated hobby shop, but the Urkel Shirt is essentially any t-shirt that you've got crumpled away in your closet, resting underneath a 15-year old Adidas gym bag. This is the one article of clothing that you dig out of the dark recesses of your storage closet after every single other shirt of yours is hopelessly filthy and 110% un-wearable. You'll hold the wrinkled, mothball-ridden, tribute to the 1970's in front of your face, shake it to knock off all the stray millipedes and spiders clinging to it, and think for a brief second that hey, maybe you could wear this for a day or two. I mean, it's not THAT bad; you can hardly see the stains from when you wiped off the dog crap from your hands back during that nasty summer of '71.

Immediately after catching this thought racing through their brain, men will suddenly see the entire situation in perspective. Here they are, seriously contemplating wearing a shirt that saw its last printing run over four decades ago, and 99% of the male population will instantly break down and haul their dirty clothing to the nearest laundromat. The Urkel Shirt is the ultimate wake-up call, demanding that men right their laundry wrongs and do what should've been done a long time ago; their laundry.

Many fine Urkel Shirts can be found in the suitcases of friends and family members who have recently returned from a trip to South America. This region of the world has created a near monopoly of Urkel Shirt production for various reasons:

These two factors work well with each other, causing the fat, bloated American tourists weighed down by their wallets and the 400 pounds of McRib sandwiches digesting in their guts to purchase over $21 billion a year in tasteless t-shirts for their friends. In case you aren't as worldly as I am, let me present you with some of the more famous Urkel Shirt examples, imported from some of the more horrible Mexican sweatshops and plastered across various South American tourist traps.

Now you and I, who are both reading this webpage and experiencing a fairly good percentage of correctly firing brain neurons, would never spend $16 on such a stupid purchase. However, tourists have a distinctly different mindset when buying things. I can't really explain how or why they act the way they do, but you can recreate the same situation by handing your wallet to a monkey, bashing his skull against a desk for two hours, and then letting him go into an Eddie Bauer store. It's basically a money-spending free-for-all where the tourist attempts to throw cash at anything composed of cotton with more than two English letters printed across it.

However, it's not my place to ask why these awful articles of clothing are purchased. It's my job to make every single male out there realize and fully appreciate how valued these seemingly worthless articles of clothing are. Think about it; if your best friend never went to Tiajuana and bought you the "DRINKING BEER MAKES YOUR PENIS LARGER" shirt which was hidden on the top shelf of your closet behind the Stratego box, you might've lived in a permanent cloud of putrid stench for the rest of your life. Do not shun the Urkel Shirt -- embrace it.

Welcome Planet Sandy!

We here at Something Awful are simply ecstatic. Why? Well we finally landed ourselves a real live Internet journalist! Yes, that's right, we've gotten ahold of a no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is, not-afriad-to-pull-any-punches-and-use-a-lot-of-hyphens writer who will comb the channels of the Internet, fighting for your rights and exposing all the horrible secrets of online industry leaders. Sandy Smith, a British freelance journalist who has been "telling it like it is" online for years now, has opened up his hosted site, Planet Sandy. Inside you'll find some of the most controversial articles ever printed in the history of the Queen's fair countryside. Today's launch sports three exciting and Earth-shattering new topics, each one more explosive than the previous... and if you read it on the Internet, it MUST be true!

The articles are accompanied with forums that allow you to post your followup replies commenting on the article and all previous responses, thanks to the stunning technology of Awfulrama v.0.0.7! Please head over, check out the articles, and post your thoughts on our newest site, Planet Sandy, your one-stop source for the most stunning and 100% true news on the Internet! If only there were more pure and untainted journalists like Sandy Smith, the Internet would be a much safer and wonderful place. Look for more groundbreaking exposes as the month rolls on! God save you, Sandy Smith!

The Lost Child

Since Ed Baker is going to be present and recording the upcoming Jeff K. / FBI trial, I thought it would be appropriate to promote his hosted site for a bit, which was accidentally lost during the server move. So now, without further ado, I present Ed Baker's world famous Christian comic book, "Ed Baker's Christian Decision, Episode One: A Party With SATAN!" This is some good stuff which will make you laugh, cry, and maybe learn a few important lessons about Jesus along the way.

We're Cranky Again!

...and you thought Cranky Steve had gone away forever! We wouldn't leave you hanging! No siree! Cranky Steve's Haunted Whorehouse is back with a brand new review of a shitty Half-Life map entitled "MAVTOWN." Here's a little taste of the pain, scarecrow:

Cranky indeed... see for yourself!