BERTRAM'S EMPORIUM of Things PEOPLE SAY
Step into the twisted corridors of Bertram’s Emporium, where the mundane meets the macabre in a carnival of unrestrained wit and biting satire.
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In the madness of contemporary culture wars, the Emporium serves no ideology. It serves up iconoclasm. From hillbilly erotic philosophy to a cancel rag that declares the Sun triggering, from The Pronoun Simulator to The Abortion Avatar, from neocon unicorn princess to Antifa blackshirt, no extreme of the ideological spectrum is too self-absurd to spare. On one end, the far-right’s demands for freedom from sweeping government powers evaporate the moment their own sacred cows of religious education and fetuses are at stake. On the other, militant gender identity ideology undermines the rights of the very people it patronizingly claims to protect, with dangerous implications for women, trans people, and detransitioners. On the whole, the absurdity of those ideologies is on plain display to those residing between the extremes who long for a more reasoned approach. Bertram’s Emporium delivers one in the guise of humorist social commentary vignettes. It also delivers purely comedic pieces at a time when everybody can use a laugh.
Welcome to the Emporium.
"WE ALL NEED TO SEE OURSELVES IN THE MIRROR,
SO WE DON'T TAKE OURSELVES
TOO SERIOUSLY."
Rusty Allen, author of Ella's War
The Contemporary Culture Review
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The Queen’s Gambit (2020)
As a member of the rook-presenting community, I am uniquely affected by a show that capitalizes on a cultural appropriation of the Ancient Persians: chess, decolonially known as shah mat. That the protagonist, despite the misleading identifier “Queen” in the title, is in fact a white non-genderqueer woman, adds post to trauma.
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Faithful to its supremacist agenda, in every match the white pieces go first. And what does defeat look like in this imperialist normalization of violence? In losing one’s king: aka, in a threat to patriarchal power structures. By failing to equally prize all players for participation, this show serves as shameful endorsement of meritocratic elitism. Why does everything have to be about “winning,” aka, domination of the disenfranchised?
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This show could have been an important step forward though much remains to be done, had its focus been on the closeted cowboy character and his journey of identity.
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☹☹☹
Bertram's Catalog of Gizmos for the Modern Human Specimen
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The Abortion Avatar
In collaboration with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the research concluded that non-conventional pregnancy can be traced as far back as the pre-inseminational stage, when unborn life pulsates like so many miniature miracles within the scrotal pouch. Thanks to these revolutionary discoveries, we were able to create The Abortion Avatar—and give Pro-Lifers the second chance that other people’s unborn angels never got.
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“How does it work?” It’s simple.
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First, our rigorously vetted donors provide fresh unborn issue at the vital post-ejaculatory stage. The issue is collected in the full splendor of its pre-youth in hermetic vials that preserve the sample at a cozy room temperature. We then select the right issue for your needs and ship it straight to your doorstep. Once delivered, The Abortion Avatar can be safely released from its encasing. And let the goo-goo gaga fun begin!
EDITORIAL REVEW
2nd September 2024
TITLE: Bertram's Emporium of Things People Say
AUTHOR: Ariel Peckel
Star Rating: 5
CATCHY QUOTE
‘Poking fun at the modern world has never been so much fun. A satirical gem!’ The Wishing Shelf
REVIEW
I do a lot of this – checking out books and telling the world what I think of them. So, it’s not often I stumble upon a book that’s totally different. But that’s what happened with Bertram's Emporium of Things People Say. In this often wildly erratic book, the author looks at (and plays with) the modern world of denying facts, gender identity, and well, pretty much anything that’s (a) divisive and (b) will upset the woke readers of The Guardian. And I must say, it’s all good fun.
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Now, if you happen to get upset by satire and the thought of a book ripping into the crazy woke world / crazy right wing world we live in with classics such as a Pronoun Simulator (“I thought you were going by ‘vlem,’” they’ll say. And you’ll say, “I go by ‘those/thars’ now. Don’t you know I had an ungendering case of flatus on Monday?) will deeply upset you, Bertram's Emporium of Things People Say is NOT for you. But, if like me, you know the modern world’s all a bit bonkers and it’s wonderful fun to rip into it all, then you’ll have a lot of fun with this book.
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In many ways, this book would be the perfect present for a young adult. It might help them to look at cultural wars with an open mind; it will also show them that a lot of what’s written on Twitter (X) or any platform for that matter is utterly bonkers! And that’s a good lesson for any adult to learn as soon as is humanly possible.
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The Wishing Shelf Book Awards
‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review
www.thewsa.co.uk
about the Author
From Colombia to Israel to Canada, and in the process, from Judaism to apostasy via philosophy, Ariel Peckel is of no fixed identity. He obtained a PhD from the University of Toronto in philosophy of religion with a focus on the Enlightenment and on modern naturalism and atheism, writing a dissertation on Hume, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. He has published an award-winning article in the journal Hume Studies (2024), and divides his time between academic writing and satirical social commentary, aspiring to refine the art of tipping sacred cows in both domains.
Miss Gayïd’s Six Steps to Sucksess
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Step 1: Provoke uploadable social outrage
As Madison Avenue stout feline once exclaimed, there is nothing such as bad publicity. And that sack of douche was correct. There are multiple reliable fashions to provoke uploadable social outrage.
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Miss Gayïd’s top selection is for publicly castigating preferences of pronoun on university campus in front of indignated activists. These righteous commoners will defiantly position cellular mobile cameras at you, meanwhile condemning with many rackets and chants of “Shame!” Once time that content is onto TubeYou—hello illustrious new career! (Not to mention, hefty new paycheck, made out to J. Sonpeter.)
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Congratulatings, you have converted into intellectual celebrity Sucksess. Do not neglect to appreciate your sponsors. Thanks you, indignated activists!
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Bite-Sized Bits
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They say never meet your idols. I’m flattered. Nobody has come to meet me in years.
Judas Priest, KISS, Barenaked Ladies, Beastie Boys, and Black Sabbath once formed a supergroup. They were called Priests Kissing Barenaked Boys on the Sabbath.
Humpty Dumpty’s wife got laid by an egg.
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It is one thing to be a person who can hardly put up with things, it is another to be putting hard things up into your person.
I thought she was gaslighting me, but she later assured me I was only under that impression because I wasn’t in my right mind.
“Give it to me straight, Doc. Have I got the clap?” “The clap?” “It’s slang for gonorrhea.” “My dear boy,” said the doctor. “You’ve received a round of applause.”
"A PHILOSOPHICAL RIDE THAT IS AS FUNNY AS IT IS TIMELY."
Daria Sommers,
award-winning director, writer and producer
Gringos Travel Guide:
Tips and Tricks for the Wanderlost International American
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London, England
We know what you’re thinking. “Pay a visit to our old colonial overlords? We dumped their tea into the ocean for a reason!”
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Yet despite the language barrier, the British are quite similar to us Yanks—or as they pronounce it, “Wanks”—second only to the Italians. Like us, they enjoy Cheerios, so much so that they pay tribute to the brand after every encounter. They too find any sexual activity that isn’t abstinence repugnant. And sure, they still treat their Queen like a beloved deity; unlike us patriots, who stopped making cults of personality of our political leaders. But they did get two things right. (Though dentistry ain’t one of them!) The grub and the pub.
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Conveniently, you can experience both in one sitting. Enjoy a pint of lukewarm ale while sucking on hard-boiled eggs coated in ground mutton, battered and fried, and keep those babies coming till you’ve “laid a brick in yer trousers,” as the local saying goes. Or was it, “you’ve laid a brick in yer trousers”?
Bertram's Emporium of Things People Say
Only the more eccentric of the lot cross paths in Aisle 7, and occasionally even cross swords there, too: many a LARPer and cosplayer frequent that section. Interactions are rare, but there have been some. One time, a tinfoil-hat survivalist talked chemtrails with a crystal healer. Turns out the one’s commune is just down the road from the other’s bomb shelter. On another occasion, a gun-toting libertarian bonded with an unbathed youth who called himself an anti-statist and an anarchist, failing to register the redundancy of that self-description.
But by the looks of it, Tweed Warrior is not about to engage the specimen goggling behind her in the line. And sure enough, she all
but walks through him as she makes her way to the exit, so engrossed
is she by her new buzzbot; though she also seems partly driven by
a mission to ignore this person out of existence. The ignored specimen is of the downhome blue-collar genus: the sort that the Tweed Warriors of yesteryear would have been able to identify as proletarian, and through some unaccountable alchemy of the mind, thereby identify with, despite not having worked a day of their lives in a factory or having lifted an object heavier than a hardcover of Das Kapital. But the Tweed Warrior redux of today is not concerned with class as a category of oppression. It may not have bothered Marx, Engels, or Lenin that their firmly bourgeois class status prevented them from claiming their own oppression while speaking on behalf of the oppressed; but these days, lacking a claim to victimhood amounts to social suicide. Luckily for her, she happens to be a “her,” and a plausible survivor of anxiety or fat-shaming at that. As for the queueing blue-collar crewcut male, he suffers from the additional curse of being several shades too pale to register in Tweed Warrior’s mental spreadsheet of folks who are allowed to have had tough experiences. But to be fair, Downhome looks none too keen on making this liberal snowflake’s acquaintance either.
