First published on January 3, 2005, IMFOECOE originally ran in eighteen segments over two months that together formed one of the most mammoth and comprehensive works in the history of obscure political science humor: a complete, alphabetical listing of all 189 countries recognized by the US government, with accompanying attacks on the culture, history, or population of each.

All of the information used to make the jokes can be found in the CIA world factbook, or in the author’s relatively extensive knowledge of geography, history, and savage insults.

Dear God and all the Cardinals and whoever else:

Ever since I was a little child it has always been my dream to be pope. While other children were playing with broken glass and eating cats, I was blessing things and reading nutritional information on the things I ate (the pope must be very healthy). My mom always told me that Catholics would have a special place in hell below the Jews, but slightly above Mormons. I know in my heart of hearts of spades that this is not true.

Ladies and gentlemen, readers and people who read, today in modern and civilized America we are facing a great many ills that threaten the fate of our fair Republic. The grand experiment set forth by our fore-fathers shall but erode to dust, if we dare not take action. These evils are not simply a sum total of malice from varied sources; rather they can be traced to one origin. For I have pinpointed the locust that sweeps barren across our great land, and it is none other than the most abject and weary of our kind; the geezers.

With the possible exception of a mother or two, nobody who reads my journal has been alive during an Intergnum — that is, the period including the death of a Pope and the election of his successor. The series of events that is initiated upon the Pope’s death is actually quite interesting, so I thought this would be a good time to share some of the rituals with you, my loyal readers.

When the Pope is first thought to be dead, a special Cardinal first asks him, basically, “Are you dead?” If the Pontiff doesn’t answer, the cardinal takes out a special hammer and strikes him about the head with it three times. The purpose of this is to make sure he’s proper dead; if, in fact, the Pope was still alive, the repeated blows to the head would change that with a little holy brain trauma. Then special bells in the Vatican are rung to scare away all the vultures that have been roosting outside for the past decade waiting for that old coot to up and die already.

What in the sweet blue fuck am I doing here?

I don’t know any of you people. Well, OK, that’s not true. I know the gentlemen that you, in turn, know as Kalen and Wilshire. But I haven’t talked to either of those douchebags in years, so that hardly justifies my presence.

What the hell is this site even about? Probably a failed computer game mod, if my last experience with those guys is any indicator. Fuck. I don’t know anything about computers. It took me years to figure out how to get the thing to make any decent porn. That was a rough patch of trial-and-error. I had wondered why none of its various orifices seemed to fit properly. Also, for anyone who was wondering, the human penis does conduct electricity, and how. You live, you learn.