Kanye West kicks off the collection with his usual festive flair…

The fantastical book cover, as imagined by Gallery of the Absurd

The intro to the book:

Character design and illustrations by 14 of Gallery of the Absurd. Character-inspired nursery rhymes by The C-Spot creator, Candy Kirby:

(As inspired by her Poise panty liners endorsement deal.)

Kessler admires his handiwork

Frank Kessler never imagined that a little graduate school journalism project at Indiana’s Ball State University would lead to a glamorous job fabricating quotes for tabloids — but that is exactly what happened.

Popular celebrity magazines such as Star and Us Weekly depend on “insider” quotes to make the celebrity scandal du jour sound even more juicy.  Kessler, as it turns out, is behind most of the gossip juice, landing his gig after a professor recognized his flair for the melodramatic and completely fake observations.

“I turned in an article about a campus prostitution ring, but Professor Mackey figured out I made up pretty much everything in the story.  Especially when police busted the ring, only to find out it was a Pi Phi scrapbooking group,” recalled Kessler.

“Mackey failed me, but he saw I had a real talent for fooling readers with well-crafted nonsense.  That’s when he introduced me to a friend at Page Six, who needed some good quotes from a ‘bar witness’ about Vince Vaughn getting sloppy drunk.  Before you know it, my career as an ‘insider’ really took off,” Kessler said, his pride evident.

Kessler quit graduate school soon thereafter to make up observations for a number of gossip rags, and was quickly promoted to more prestigious fabricated relationships, including “friend of Brad Pitt” and “Gossip Girl on-set snitch.”

Kessler reflects:  “I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like I really am an old friend that Katie dumped when she married Tom Cruise.  And, I gotta say, it still hurts.”

on thisholiday,i amthankful 4 madonna lookIngg like fuKcing gollum on sterOIds that makesme laUGh so hard.  i also gIvve thanks for marcjacobs which is why i wrotTe 60blogs aBBout the sexxy motherfuKcer.

im also thankfull 4 my tYYping lesoSns thisyear.  and 4being sober.  shut uPP!  its true, i Do not ingest narcotics of any sort of drink alcohol,is WRONG.

of course im not alwYas thankful, i sometimes get pissed about the ridiculous nonsense ANNd share a teesny bit of it, yep a teensy bit, but basically im off blogging because i get upset when people use images like “CR__K P__E+” and “drunk” as these are simply not things which are true about me and i canNott ynderstand y anyonEE would SAY THAT SHIIT bOUt. me.

i thinkl that sums upthe spirit of thANksgving.  and my guitar fuKKups are too boner to even mention.

luv

corK

Lydia says the story first caught her attention when the reporter used such descriptions as “alarming” and “an epidemic even more dangerous than global warming and Chernobyl combined.”

Then, the unthinkable happened.

“I was mashing my potatoes and happened to look up, only to see a shot of my big butt walking down Michigan Avenue,” recalled Lydia.  “I couldn’t believe it at first, but then they showed my front with a black bar across my eyes.  And I knew that was me:  the obese one.

“I swear they gave my belly more rolls than it really has.  Like, digitally, maybe?  Yeah, that must be it,” she added.

Lydia is not the first Chicago-area resident to be victimized by the local news; a Wilmette man whose house was featured in a report about offensively tacky Christmas decorations recently filed a lawsuit against WGN-9 for defamation of character.  Both the plaintiff and the television station refused to comment on the pending suit.