Don’t forget, tonight is your last chance to vote in this week’s PUNCHLINE POLL! The more voters we have, the stronger our mandate for change!

Winning punchline advances to next week’s joke!

Thanks from your humble and devoted servant,
David Rees

Check out this completely authentic, un-edited footage of Turkmenistan president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov leading his cabinet meeting! (Yes, it’s almost impossible to hear … but the visuals are what’s important.)

“This is what democracy looks like!” I grew up in the Episcopal church, so I know what it’s like to constantly stand up and sit down all while holding your hymnal, but these guys take the cake! It’s like whack-a-mole-ocracy!

Please note 0:42 and 1:29, LOL!

Global Witness even translated my comics about the EU/Turkmenistan gas deal into Russian.

LOOK AT THIS:

I was hired by Global Witness to make some cartoons about the pending Turkmenistan-EU gas deal. (Global Witness is a vicious international oil cartel that stops at nothing to draw natural resources out of the ground and maximize profits … or maybe it’s a human rights organization, I can’t remember which.)

Anyway, the cartoons are part of a report being distributed to members of the European Parliament.

LOOK AT THIS:

That’s what my comics look like if you read Turkmen!

Obama’s about to escalate the drama in Afghanistan! Hooray, I can’t wait. To celebrate, please participate in this week’s PUNCHLINE POLL. This week’s joke is called “The Afghan Classroom.”

Remember, it only takes a minute to read the joke and vote on your favorite punchline! And the winning punchline advances to next week’s joke! Take a friend to the polls! (ie, please forward to your friends.)

Polls close Thursday evening.

From reader BML, a tumultuous tale of Turkmenistan:

my friend was in the peace corps there. one time he got arrested for “being outside after 7 pm without paying for a taxi” which was/is one of the random laws there. they kept him and the other people he was with in one police station for a while but then decided they needed to go somewhere else. but the paddy wagon wouldn’t start. so they asked my friend and his fellow peace corps “prisoners” to run behind the wagon pushing it until the engine turned over, then jump into the back and close the doors on themselves. which they did, mostly because it was funny. I think at some point they were hooked up to a “lie detector” that was clearly, like, an old overhead projector.

I’m an expert on overhead projectors. I’ve used every kind of overhead projector you could possibly imagine, from one end of this great nation to the other. I’ve even used those newfangled overhead video-projectors where there’s some kind of movie camera projecting stuff onto a screen. (Not to brag, but I used one at Harvard, the famous college, and at the HBO Comedy Festival too.) Anyway, if someone knows the hack to turn an overhead projector into a lie detector, let me know and I’ll do a video demonstration and post it on youtube and then we can all run our own overhead-projector-based autocracies!

I have more great things to share with you about Turkmenistan, and about the project I worked on that involves Turkmenistan, but I’m at the library using a free public computer so I can’t upload the stuff I want to show you. But you’ll be hearing more from me soon!

For those of you on the edge of your seats … no, I did not dream about Sharon Stone again last night. I searched but could not find her.

In college I got into lucid dreaming for awhile and learned how to control my dreams. Maybe I’ll get back into that and then go into dream-world and find Sharon Stone and talk to her about China and whatever other stuff she likes to talk about.

I don’t like to brag, but I have the best dreams about celebrities of anyone I know. Close friends know about my infamous Pamela Anderson dream of a few years ago (trust me, it was intense) … others have heard me talk about my recent Lil Wayne dream (yes, I was hanging out with Lil Wayne, yes it was great).

And now, I’m pleased to report a new addition to the canon: Last night’s amazing dream about Hollywood superstar Sharon Stone!!!

Okay, so in the dream I had just finished mowing the yard. Sharon Stone helped me carry the lawn mower into my parents’ basement in North Carolina. No biggie, right? Then … umm … not sure how to put this … but Sharon Stone and I started KISSING ON THE LIPS in my parents’ basement!

After a few moments of ECSTASY, she said something like, “This is why I like kissing– because it keeps changing. At first when you kissed me, I thought ‘he’s not a very good kisser,’ but your more recent kisses have been really good.” (This is after kissing for all of ten seconds!)

WTF and LOL, right? “Tell me how you really feel, Sharon!”

And by the way, in case Sharon googles herself and is reading this … she should know that in my dream, her skin was really sweaty and kind of splotchy, so yeah … might want to look into getting a new dream-stylist.

But overall, a pretty cool dream! I was stoked! Because: Sharon Stone, people! “That’s how I roll.” Now China’s all mad at me, I bet.

Hey everybody, this week’s PUNCHLINE POLL is now up and awaiting your vote at True/Slant. This week’s joke is called “The Afghan Classroom.”

Please take a minute to read the joke and vote on your favorite punchline! Winning punchline advances to next week’s joke!

Polls close Thursday evening.

Many thanks from your humble servant,
David Rees