PEORIA, IL—Saying he was already dissatisfied by how little he’d accomplished, 33-year-old Kevin McDouglas told reporters Monday he felt even lazier when looking at the impressive list of achievements the militant Islamist organization ISIS had accumulated this year. “Jeez, in the same time it’s taken me to restain half the back deck, these guys have been out there making some real, tangible progress toward establishing a regional caliphate,” said McDouglas, noting that he couldn’t help but feel like he had wasted his summer after comparing how rapidly the jihadist group had swept through northern Iraq to his own inability to schedule a dentist appointment or clean out his car even with the week off he took in July. “I’d never even heard of them a few months ago, and now they’ve nearly wiped out an entire ethnic group? And here I’ve still got that pile of bricks in the driveway waiting to be placed around the edge of the garden.” At press time, McDouglas was reportedly feeling much better about himself after thinking about the eight pounds he’d recently lost in comparison to the leadership crisis al-Qaeda has been experiencing.

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