The boy bounced freely from his roost atop the trike, striking the ground with gruff enthusiasm and a spankering of trust only to be thrust into a cold cruel trikeless world that knows no pity for for the ground and schooled class of glasslike leaches of desire and withering expectation of uniform atrocities that gleam like a dazzle-pinned reaper inside a triumphant catass trophy pawing at the sun when it knows full well the sun can take no more.

Leveraging a skyline tremor into a never rending level-headed louse-drive that parks in my braids suffocating the follicles that followed their folly fully into it's flatulent fruition - a park-and-ride suicide with rancid metrokane suffrage that tapes name-droppings to a whole new levelich can't easily be reached or refrigerated without vagrant variants being obtusely jolted from their neo-naptime kinder-gestapo milk-marches.

Emblematically emblazoned with lilly-white embalmatorium overtones undermining the lynchpin leprechaun taunting the rainbow headaches of my nimble uplifted leatherette soul.

Achey echoes arc in twisted piney wedg-shuttled lampstick artichoke leprosy two-fold twisted like bacon in my engendered handcuffing overstuffers.

Wind out tenderly for an intersplendant reafforming of glitteronomous fredglings that gather like lake moss and leaf frost in your intensely wicked grandpa beard of one-thousand-and-.5 lunches diseased by winter tragedies that criss-cross and slowly envelope and predestine our very shells of egg-sub-zestiness inversely like a mother-in-law with doorlike napkin-feelers stationed near the necks of louder dogs.

Michigan whisps like a tenderized beaten meatless elbow that brings up endless barfs of summer.

The Novel Novice Contemplates His Navel

Once there was a man who desperately wished he could write a compelling semi-autobiography. He started wishing this beautiful wish at a very young age, in fact he started wishing at the earliest age anyone has ever started to wish, but nobody bothered to write it down or even take a photo.

When he was at school he wished this very same wish all day, every day. Everyone was so used to seeing him wish that they never really thought anything of it, but the wishing continued until he had wished further and longer than anyone who had ever lived.

Today at 94 years old it is possible that he could forever hold the world record for the longest wish except for one thing, at some point his wish seems to have degraded into more of a mental tick than an actual wish for anything and people stopped saying "shhhh, the man is wishing" and began saying, "dude's looking at his gut".

Even without the support he had gotten, and even with the slow turn the community was taking toward a constant buzz of scorn, he was writing his novel at exactly the same pace as always... nothing. Hadn't even started.

At the ripe old age of 94 - health and eyes in speedy remission - he finally asked for a pen. On that pen was written a slogan, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it". This was all the encouragement he needed to keep going in his quest. He happily dropped the pen and started wishing once again, now with more vigor and power than ever before. He wished for a bionic sailboat, a scarf made entirely of butterflies, a basket of concubines, and a rocket that could take him to the center of the earth. He wished for more things in his final hours than anyone had ever wished for in their entire lives and he died with the distinction of never having even the most vague and interpretable portions of even one wish come true.

Being so adept at this wishing game, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that this great wisher was also the only man to make a wish 7 days after his own death. The wish? He wished he had never been born.

Welcome to the wonderful world of dumb

As I've mentioned before, I generally can't be bothered to rant about anything specific because it is easy to get bogged down in the details. So here is a simple little rant that doesn't get bogged down with information. Unjoy!

We all know that people are stupid. That's not to say that ALL people are stupid. Some are dead. But in general, it is very safe to assume that any random person you may chance to meet is stupid. Stupid people have inexhaustible storehouses of stupid advice. They enjoy beating you over the head with this advice. They like to start forums that waste everyones valuable time.

For example, you might wake up in a good mood one morning and forget that the world is stupid. You realize you could use some good old fashioned learnin' about something you feel dumb about, so you look it up on the Internet. Pretty soon you realize that only stupid people have posted on any resources. That's right, the 8 people in the planet who might know are sitting on the info and waiting for a profit. Everybody else is wasting your time.

I hope this information helps.

the bird

yesterday while driving i saw the bird - the bluebird of happiness - as it bounced off the windshield of a neighboring vehicle. the bird looked not so much happy as surprised. i thought the bird might still be alive, so i swerved to miss it. in my rear view i saw a car spin 360 degrees and come to a stop. since i thought it would provide more time to gawk at the wounded bird, i stopped and pretended to care about the young woman in the car. for such occasions i always keep long stemmed roses on ice in the trunk. as i approached the young lady, i produced the flowers from behind my back. to my surprise, she had something for me as well - the bird. she explained that she spun her car so she could catch the bird in her open rear window.

then something terrible happened, she bit the bird in half. when i asked her why she did that, she said that she only did what i wasn't man enough to do. i asked why the bird had to die and she told me not to be such a girl. then i realized that i was just making all this crap up and i was really very secure in my masculinity which is why i can write such things.

needless to say (but i will) there never was a bluebird of happiness, it was actually blue because it was a blue word, and it was a bird because you can't be heard from one car to another. of course, after having been severed the blue was forgotten, but everyone saw plenty of red.

Nimble Happy Sunshine Flowers

“Aren’t bunnies the best?” “Sure are.” “We are bunnies.” Thus went the conversations of Bunny Land. Each day scores of happy bunny topics were broached by the BCI or Bunny Chief Inquisitors.

The job of the BCI was one of great responsibility. It required poise, confidence, fluency in 64 languages, degrees in the interdisciplinary fields of both Chemical Engineer-leading and Chemical Cheerleading, and no history of fur matting.

Although not required, it was expected that the BCI candidate would have a good working knowledge of hair care products. Since almost every bunny in the world has been used for chemical or cheerleading testing, they generally know what hair care products burn their eyes. This universality of training in bunny society is one of the primary reasons that it isn’t even mentioned on the forms.

Bunnies of note have often speculated as to whether a bunny could achieve such a high-ranking position as BCI without having a comprehensive hair care research background and if so, what would happen. The consensus of opinion at the last HRS (Hopping Rodent Summit) was that it would have no positive or negative effect on the duties of the BCI. But the real question remained unanswered, “Could it happen? Could a bunny be elected with no hair product experience?”

The following is a paid advertisement:

Yes, there is nothing more enjoyable than acquiring your very own fluffy, cuddly bunny. As we all know, bunnies are the answer to all of our woes. They are happy, bouncy, quiet, and their poop is round. These are the key factors that have made bunnies such valuable members of almost every family in America. It doesn’t hurt that they wiggle their damn noses when they nibble on clover! I swear, some people have literally died from cute attacks after watching bunnies hop around and nibble on sprouts. This is why the bunny has been featured on the news so often recently. It seems a bit harsh to compare the cuteness of the bunny to the venom of a cobra, but at least they qualified it by making it clear that the comparison was to a spitting cobra. I get the spitting cobra analogy on one level anyway, a spitting cobra can blind its prey from several feet away and a bunny can blind its prey with cuteness from up to 80 yards away. So in that sense, I have to concede that bunnies are more dangerous. However, in most cases I still have to say that the comparisons are unfair.

Get one today!!! A bunny, not a cobra!!!

Ghost Doll

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Ghost Doll. She was made of glass and fire, and was allergic to killer bullets. But once while waltzing to the soup store, she stepped into the middle of a bulletin board landslide that scraped her out to sea. When she finally stopped barfing shards of lemon pie, she realized that she metaphorically wasn't in Kansas anymore. She also redundantly had never been in Kansas before, at least twice. She paradoxically had ALSO never been to Kansas anymore.

After she had finally finished pondering the realizations of not having been in Kansas, she began to wonder what she should already know, and why wondering this might do her any good, when the answers were bound to be wrapped in mysterious ramblings from an impersonal narration by a former NFL hall-of-famer if they could get him, which they couldn't. But he had turned down so many opportunities that opportunity finally got bored and stopped knocking him on the head and instead tried the kneecaps and landed him like a ton of fish after he stopped bathing because he couldn't afford soup and was dyslexic in a funny (but not derogatory) way.

Opportunity knocks, not mocks. One of the new slogans opportunity had printed for tee-shirts of inverted destiny that it had printed up on aluminum feather garlands that filter through our transparent minds with greased knots weaved within our tangled strangled consciousness creating a shovel-slapped plethora of life-giving crimson fluid for the counterpoint to our intensity of inverse nuances.

Well, of all her friends Ghost Doll's best friend in the whole universe was a girl named Tuna Scooper, and they would laugh and play, even though they were only each other's imaginary friends. But they themselves were in each other's parallel universes, so they would spend their days explaining to the other imaginary friends that in the world to which they belonged they weren't real. But the other imaginary friends treated them as outcasts due in part to the fact that a decree had been written that allowed mice to be used as lies for a decade and four pennies. But still nothing came of it.

But, oh, how they would laugh and play and dissolve crickets and aluminum handbags and western style handkerchiefs which they used to sun themselves on the family gizzard pick and scream about how uptight holidays spawned by cancer are.

Those were the days we all recalled with trite contrition spoon fed like a baby mermaid glittering in the mundane & noxious oceans of our prefab bliss.

Understanding Nudity

We don't choose to be nude. We're born that way.

Words such as these may make some people uncomfortable. But it is a fact that we are all nude at one time or another, and in fact we are unclothed to some degree at all times, so "partial nudity" should not be a shocking thing to see. If it is seen, it is generally seen with the naked eye, because binoculars and video cameras will often convince the somewhat nude person to cover up.

Now I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not condone nudity, nor do I revel in it. I am merely admitting that I have been nude at times. It's nothing to be ashamed of... unless you're nude in front of other people, which is disgusting.

There are however, many people who actually apply to themselves the label "nudist", as if they can really be summed up in such a generic term, and who am I to say that they can't?

Also, many people live their daily lives with little or nothing to wear, and yet they wouldn't generally be thought of as nudists but rather, as lazy, poor, itchy, burned over 80% of their bodies, too fat right now, sun bathing, getting a full body waxing in preparation for a nude photo spread that they were tricked into believing was actually required by the government to pre-screen potential organ donors, taking a bath or shower, deciding what to wear or "other".

I'm sure there was some reason I started writing this... trying to be clever, sorry it didn't work.

The Non-Gay Man Chain of Friendship

I once had a friend tell me that if he was a woman he would marry me. At first I found this "compliment" a bit disturbing for a few reasons which I won't bore you with.

It was not long after that revelation that he was telling me about a good friend of his who was going to visit. He described how they were a great complement to each other's personalities and that if he (the visiting friend) was a woman, he would marry him.

After I heard this, I started to wonder why in one friendship he was the woman and in the other he was the man. I didn't bother to ask, but still I wondered.

All the facts having been considered, I believe that it was just a way of defining each friends status in the relationship where gender was taking the place of a more socially acceptable ranking system. It was sort of like when I called another guy "Jennifer" because he didn't know how to string ethernet cable through a suspended ceiling. I was indicating his "little girliness" at stringing cable. Just a note to everyone who wonders, you don't push it, you roll it in a loose ball and throw it.

Some people have a family structure that they assign friends to, a mother, father, children and sometimes even extended family members. They relate to these people as having these same family roles in their friendships.

Personally, I've often found it a bit disconcerting when when someone would call me "friend" and then even more so when I was referred to as "best friend", so when "husband" was implied I was quite a bit taken aback. But I'm not really *too* disturbed by people making overtures of friendship anymore. I've gone from being fed-Up with People, to being tolerant of their seemingly haphazard methods of defining relationships.

So, I do have friends, and I am married to an actual woman, so hopefully that will preclude any possibility of marriage to a non-gay man-wife.

Brainy Computer Not Such a Smartypants

While reading an MSNBC article about Britain's Fastest Supercomputer HECToR, I was shocked to see the inverse synergy that was portrayed in the article:

"With the power of 12,000 desktop PCs, the mammoth machine called HECToR is the country's fastest computer and one of the most powerful in Europe.

It can make 63 million calculations each second, allowing scientists to conduct research into everything from climate change to new medicines."


My old Mac G5 is 1000 times faster than Britain's fastest supercomputer? They really got ripped off! They could have just bought a Pentium II 300 and had two extra megaflops. I guess that having the power of 12,000 desktop simply refers to the fact that they have a redundant array of e-machines aftermarket power supplies which as we all know, are far better than the originals, and Britain wouldn't want their floppy drive to get corrupted during a reboot!

Now, I'm not the type of person to believe everything I read, but what type of technology writer could possibly make such a mistake? Interestingly, the person who posted this article on MSNBC had taken it from the Reuters feed, which at the time I'm writing this says the same thing.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKL1154155020080114

Of course, we know that the worlds fastest computer is Japan's MDGRAPE-3 @ 1 petafllop, followed by the BlueGene at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California @ 478.2 teraflops. Of course the BlueGene is considered the the world's fastest because it is not in Japan. This helps us to understand why a computer that is far slower than everything I use on a daily basis can be the fastest in Britain, it's that pesky high pound vs. dollar value which must reach a balance somewhere. This balance is struck in the amount of processing power allocated to other countries. That is why Japan's supercomputer doesn't exist even though it is so fast, and why Britain's is so fast even though it is so slow.

Now, I will clear up the mistakes made in the Reuters feed, which should have read as follows: With 12,000 redundant aftermarket e-machines power supplies, the mammoth machine called HECToR is the country's fastest computer and one of the most powerful in Europe due in part to the surprising stability of the Euro.

It can make 63 million calculations each second, allowing scientists to check e-mail, run DOS programs, and play tetris.


I guess what I'm trying to say here is, don't believe everything you read, because, not only is it poorly written, it's wrong.

Legend of the Vomelette

Dale Perkins - retired hotel inspector - enjoyed nothing more than an extended stay at a bed and breakfast. He liked the casual atmosphere and the idea of waking up and having a meal with new friends almost every day. Indeed, it is the rare guest that is entirely standoffish at such an establishment. But Mr. Perkins had an odd and secret hobby, he was in search of the world's most obscenely disgusting naturally occurring omelette.

Being a hotel inspector, he had come close many times, but it always seemed forced. Hotel employees are often treated with little respect and will at times be tempted to add a little something special to a meal. He didn't want to find the worst omelette that could ever be made. A bad or even deadly omelette could be produced by anybody if they were upset enough. He simply wanted to observe in the wild, the worst omelette that could be found, free of malice or animus. Poetically, he wrote in his journal of "an omelette born of good but bent on evil".

There were times when the monotony of the search got to him, and while not directly saying, "make me a disgusting omelette", he would occasionally garnish his order with the words "add your own special touch" or "do something unexpected with it" or "do something crazy" or even "feel free to experiment wildly and insanely". Although he felt guilty about possibly tainting the integrity of his retirement project, there was really nothing to worry about. One inn keeper spit in the omelette, but the only disgusting thing about that was the slight taste of Listerine that made its way into the omelette. Other than that, there was an omelette that had grated shoe polish on it. That was it, from now on he was determined to let this omelette manifest itself naturally. He only hoped that he would live to see it.

Dale decided that a change of venue was in order. He simply wasn't getting the results he expected from these typical b&b's. His first foray into the underworld of the b&b's was an abysmal failure. He had chosen a b&b that actually advertised its proximity to the local brothel and blood bank. As he walked in, he chuckled when he saw the "check all firearms at door" sign. It was plain to see that this was no ordinary b&b. Yet, the place was clean and tidy, in fact it was by far the cleanest b&b he had ever been to. It was really an oasis in the concrete jungle.

The true test of this place was going to be the omelette. Dale came down stairs early to get a jump on the inn keepers. He thought that he could perhaps irritate them into making him a bad omelette, but when they came downstairs and saw him starting breakfast on his own, he didn't say the unspeakably rude things he wanted to say, he just said, "I'm sorry, I just got a bit crazy there for a second". They responded, "that's okay, we love it when the guests take the initiative". They added, "however, since we can't be sure that you perfectly followed our omelette hygiene chart..."

Yes indeed, this omelette was by far the best he had ever tried, even though he was eating it in the most sanitized setting imaginable. Finally, he had to ask the inn keepers why they advertised the fact that they were so close to the house of ill repute. They responded, "we did it because we didn't want to disappoint anyone, we believe in honesty in advertising".

Dale had eaten it all, omelettes that were too runny, too dry - even crispy, obnoxiously overflowing with salsa, omelettes with brown slices of avocado, omelettes with raw cucumber and pineapple, omelettes with way too much bacon (even though that is nearly impossible). There were no more towering omelette mountains to climb, and no omelette fords that needed to be waded across, nor were there any omelette volcanoes, oceans, rivers, or other metaphors that needed to be confronted in some illustrative way.

Mr. Perkins died before he ever found his elusive evil and/or deadly omelette. Or did he?

Yes, there are many who speculate that the final omelette eaten by Mr. Perkins was indeed the elusive Vomelette, and studies have been started to prove it. Using Mr Perkins copious notes they aim to re create every omelette experience he ever had and have a seven man and one woman control group eat this diet for the next 50 years until they come to the last omelette. At this point the three woman and two man variable group along with the 2 woman and 14 man secondary control group (which will have never eaten any eggs or egg products before) will all eat a lab created exact duplicate of his final omelette.

Of course, when conducting any type of controlled tests, it is important to take good notes and there has been considerable and heated debate as to whether that final omelette was made with imitation crab meat or imitation crap meat. It will only take 50 years to find out.

banana upheaval

Mind escapes me in an oblivious turn for the better or worse that seems to be smiling the length of my doom in a cold sweat with razor burn banana peel whiplash as the garden of indentured servitude entices you to partake of its fruit and the unparalleled joy that comes from knowing your choices are bad in advance.

pet peeve #9,000,000,000,004.07

Randomly numbered list items presented out of order. Stupid, pointless, hated them since I first saw them. Why are they still around?

sifting through the red tape of my lucid dreams

As I fill the folds of my weathered neck with baby field greens, I spy an opening in the human resources department of my soul. I send in my resume and get called in immediately for an interview. The interview goes well, and pretty soon I’m told that I’m overqualified for the position. As frantically as I know how, I just miss explaining the fact that the position wouldn’t even be available if it wasn’t for me. The double meaning makes me laugh and the tension is traded in for a bucket of handlebars. The entire staff of my body hop on their unicycles and pretend the handlebars are connected. Oddly, I don’t see a thing but I am provided with all the forms, signed in triplicate and notarized by Dr. Penguin, a most respected figment of my embellishment.

Imitation Limitation

You imitate art and you imitate life,
but you forgot who you were
and lost all your notes.

You come to me for validation
but all I have is truth.

The truth is that
you never knew
who you were
and nobody cares
who you are.

I could teach you to be me
but you’d just be
a cheap knock off.

Could you honestly live with that?

Look who I’m talking to,
there’s nobody there,
it’s you.

this old steak

my heart is a steak - aged and tender

your heart is a hammer - it keeps beating and beating and beating my steak to a pulp

i just know

a woman once said to me, "how did you know?"

"mans intuition", I replied.

I never really thought about it before...
but I wonder what we were talking about.

i was rain

Like a droplet in a dream
falling so fast that it feels like floating or even flying
I try to recapture the weightlessness
by laying on the roof and staring at the stars
but I’m afraid to climb the ladder at night
so I stay right here on the ground
in fact, I crawl
but for fear that someone might roll me over
I lay down
face down
with my
eyes closed
maybe I should
dig a hole

Baby Face

M. T. Brown was the first adult recipient of a human baby face transplant. The circumstances surrounding how his face went missing were a mystery. All he could remember was that he was walking to the office on Tuesday and the next thing he knew his face was just gone.

Being that Dr. Brown was a very important under cover geneticist, he was fast tracked to the head of the queue at the reconstructive surgery ward. His fellow doctors and scientists would do anything to get him back on track so he could meet with investors, world leaders, and the Nobel committee. They were so focused on getting him back to work that they allowed many ethical grey areas to be temporarily swept under the rug. One such area was the use of brain dead patients that hadn’t been qualified or released to be used as donors, another was using patients that were in waking comas and simply drugging them to make them appear lifeless, another was capturing vagrants and ragamuffins directly from the streets and drugging or even lobotomizing them so they could be used as possible face donors. Finally, they started rounding up minors who were lost or seemed to be “up to no good”. Some who disapproved of these methods still agreed that this needed to be done for the sake of efficiency and variety, both of which were very important to Dr. Brown. Besides, they were able to round up over 80 possibilities in less than 7 hours.

They would load the possible donors on carts and parade them in front of Mr. Brown, but he just kept waving them away and saying no, no, no. After running through all the adults, they finally put all the youngsters on the carts and began wheeling them in, every one was a “no”. They were beginning to get frustrated that they had done all this work seemingly for nothing, when one of the doctors remembered that he had seen a baby laying in a basket earlier on the street corner on his way in to work. He left it there because he didn’t think he would need it. I mean, who could even know that events would possibly have unfolded in such a way, and that a seemingly useless baby would be so urgently needed. He jumped into his fancy Italian sports car (that was normally for picking up the ladies) and raced to the street corner hoping, wishing, dreaming and even praying that the baby would still be there. To the astonishment and titillation of the doctor the baby was still there! He was so excited that he had found the baby that he accidentally slammed its left foot and right hand in the door, no big deal though, they wouldn’t be needing those anyway.

The scientist was frustrated that the baby was screaming and fussing so much that he threatened the baby in no uncertain terms. The baby finally shut up just in time to sneak it into the hospital. The surgeons quickly drugged the baby and didn’t even bother to place it on the presentation cart. They ran with the baby and as one of the interns held it up, Dr Brown excitedly yelled, “That’s the face!! That’s the face!” The doctors and scientists breathed a stunted sigh of relief, then someone spoke up, “we’ve got a lot of work to do lads, first we’ve got to kill this baby!”

Once the baby was killed, they quickly but carefully removed its face. Two of the best interns they had were assigned to the task of making this whole thing look like an accident. First they stole a forklift, a vehicle that would be totally untraceable back to them. Next they collected old liquor bottles and spread them around inside the cabin. They wanted this baby to appear to have been drunk at the time of impact, because they knew the media would run with the whole “faceless baby” thing, but a “faceless drunk baby” seems like a much less sympathetic character.

After hours on the operating table, Dr. Brown was finally lucid enough to move a little on his own. The surgeons explained to him that even with all of the advancements that have been made in accelerated healing, the process was far from over and the sutures would need to remain in place for a month. Then they peeled off the wrapping to reveal the new face of Dr. Brown.

First, Dr. Brown faced the group and they marveled at how well their fellow surgeons did at grafting a baby face onto a full grown man’s head, but they marveled even more at Dr. Brown, and how he instinctively knew that this face would suit him so well. Finally, Dr. Brown turned to the mirror and at seeing himself, he screamed, “That’s the face!!! That’s the face!!!” then he stabbed himself in the forehead with a scalpel and began cutting chunks out of his new face. Everyone started to scream, but then remembered that they had seen and done some slightly unethical things that evening themselves, so they regained composure pretty quickly.

Dr. Brown however, was literally and figuratively coming apart. They quickly sedated him and started to investigate what could have gone wrong. Finally one of the doctors said, he knew what was going on. “Where’s that baby?” he said. One of the interns came forward and said, “we put it in a forklift and drove it over a cliff.” The interns and the doctor raced to the scene of the “disposal” in a really cool Lamborghini stretch limo. When they arrived at the scene it was crawling with fuzz, when they asked the pigs what had happened, they said, “looks like some disgruntled child laborer got drunk off his keister, ate his own face and flipped his forklift “ass over teakettle” into the ravine."

“You think he ate his own face?” they inquired. “Yep, that’s what it looks like, we’ll know for sure when they do the autopsy”, he replied.

Finding that the body had already been taken to the coroner’s office, they raced on ahead of the rest of the group knowing that the answers were there. As they arrived, the medical examiner was just finishing up documentation of the contents of the baby’s stomach. When asked, the M.E. told them that there was definitely ingested human tissue in this baby. After performing DNA testing, it was clear that this was indeed the baby that had eaten Dr. Browns face. They now realized that Dr. Brown thought the carts of bodies were part of a criminal identification lineup, not a visage buffet. But they chose to let it slide because he was clearly in shock, so you couldn’t totally blame him for his confusion.

They asked the M.E. to make this new information go away, to which he replied, “Sure thing, anything for you Chuck,” which made Dr. Chuck feel pretty good about being a Rotary Club member. They took the face fragments back to the hospital and were able to use about 50% of Dr. Browns original face in the project. They couldn’t remove all of the parts of the baby face from Dr. Brown without severely limiting his chances of recovery, but they were able to use parts from a couple of other donors to create a real cohesive whole. The only problem was if Dr. Brown didn’t shave he would have 5 different colors of hair in his beard. Most people would just think this was a sign of his age. Since some touchy secrets may have been revealed, everyone involved was charged not to tell that Dr. Brown was not only the first adult to receive a baby face transplant, but he was also the first recipient of a community patchwork face.

Incidentally, the only article in the daily newspaper that was in any way related to these events was in the classified ads, it read as follows: LOST, unmarked industrial sized forklift, was used for drug and gun trafficking, REWARD! If found, please contact Lester Joseph Gillis VI.

Scilence!

I've been catching up on my scientific reading lately and have been astounded by the abundance of published research that is unfinished. I understand that you guys want grants and other sources of funding to keep going, and you need to make a name for yourself in order to continue your research. But similar projects will be funded with or without your help, and I think it would be in the best interest of science if you just back off, stay in the background or just quit! Did you ever think that maybe you're taking money away from real scientists who may have some actual research to do?

All you "scientists" who subscribe to the idea that science is unprovable should really tone it down. If you feel the need to be near lab equipment, why don't you get a little cart with wheels? You can use this cart to fetch flasks, beakers, books, coffee, doughnuts, and other science related equipment. Yes, you can have a doughnut, but don't shove it into a flask and write a paper about it, that's not your job anymore.

Imagine a world where everyone waited to speak until they produced a genuine thought. Imagine a world where no one published articles unless they said anything new. Imagine yourself actually helping to facilitate the realization of such a world.

The beggar on the street makes up crap too when he thinks he can get some money from someone, but at least he doesn't publish his findings in science journals. The nightly news is filled with error, misinformation and hack, but at least they throw in a generous dusting of "allegedly".

I know the blame doesn't rest *entirely* in the hands of you "pseudo scientists", you only start the wheels of misinformation rolling, the "editors" have to take a healthy portion of blame pie as well. After all, they are the ones who checked for spelling, grammar and clarity of thought, yet they never bothered to check and see if anything was actually accomplished by your writing. A good question for an editor to ask would be, "Was any new, interesting or even documented data presented?"

I know, I shouldn't expect that being a scientist should be any different than any other job, where politics, recognition and power get in the way of a job well done. But I like to think of science as beyond all that. I know it isn't, and I know that most of what is called science is marketing fluff and office (lab) politics. But wouldn't it be great if the content was as powerful as the headline?

For you non scientific people who actually read this far... Generally, what is written in the science tabloids is based on some factual data or on an observation that cannot be reproduced. I have to admit to having perpetrated a science hoax myself.

Once upon a time when I was a young lad, I was looking up at the stars through an opening in the clouds and a small spark came down, hit my brother's truck and disintegrated into many tinier sparks. I ran in to the house to tell everyone what I saw. NOBODY believed me. I was so upset that I was disbelieved that I formulated a hoax. I dug a small hole in the driveway, placed a rock that would look like a meteorite into the hole and super heated the rock with my dads oxy-acetelene torch. Then I ran into the house *acting* excited about the meteor that I had seen land in front of the garage. Everyone believed me, it didn't matter that I was a bad actor and the rock was clearly a fake, the rock was hot and in a hole so it must have dropped from the sky.

The rock was so hot in fact that you could ignite matches on it by touch for a few minutes afterward. It was so hot that it shattered the glass bottle we tried to pick it up in. Any doubt that was generated by the fact that the rock was sitting in a hole dug with a tablespoon instantly abated when the match test (which I recommended) was administered. In fact I remember comments about how it wouldn't be possible to heat the rock up that hot.

Well, there was one small hiccup to my family hoax. My mom wanted to call the local "authorities", the college, the planetarium, that kind of thing. Realizing that this hoax would have been seen through by even the least competent scientist, I conveniently lost the rock. If you looked at it closely, you could see that it was full of seashells and was basically sandstone. Not the stuff meteors are made of. I imagined a scientist coming to the house to test it and laughing when he couldn't even get a magnet to stick to it, then turning to me and saying, "thanks for wasting my time and by extension the time of the entire world of science."

Now that I'm older, I realize that the odds of that scenario playing out were slim to none. I had a true story with a false outcome that would have created a cloud of buzz that you couldn't cut with an electric buzz knife. The "scientist" would have taken it to the lab and written page after page of observations. The sheer bulk of words would lead others to believe that I really found something. And everybody else that wanted a little taste of my fame pie would hop on board no matter how skeptical, in fact they would have reasoned that after they get fame and funding they could separate themselves from the issue and wriggle out of the pit of scientific whoredom they had now bedded down in for the short haul.

You can understand it when put in this context, because the rock I saw fall COULD have been sandstone, and it COULD have been full of little sea shells. It can never be proven so it can never be disproved. When you lie about something you believe, all you need to do is create enough reason to suspend disbelief long enough to present the evidence that proves your lie. I guess that's science.

individuality overdose

Stan was like every other boy his age in that he wanted to be just like everybody else but still retain a vague sense of individuality. In all other ways he was totally different from other boys his age. And if you say that the other boys are also boys, then I'll remind you 1) you are talking to a story that has already been written, you won't convince the story to change now 2) you are not allowing the story to unfold naturally like the petals of a flower, a soggy accordion, or the pages of a book.

So back to the story...

Stan was keen to be influenced by peer pressure but was hard pressed to find a peer that was forceful enough to influence him. He was the equivalent of an autistic savant who only understood his own need for social acceptance. His comprehension of his own isolation was so profound that people would come from miles around to see just how lonely he could be. One and all, they were impressed by Stan's stark portrayal of loneliness. Comments ranged from, "looking at Stan is like you're drowning in his own sorrow", to "staring at Stan was like being microwaved to death in a sensory deprivation iron maiden".

As the years wore on, many other attractions were added near and around the Stan exhibit. A slacker exhibit which blurred the lines of slack by its use of coma patients rather than actual slackers was a particular hit. Examples of displays that never quite caught on were such flops as, Dudes with Suds, Jocks with Zubaz, and Turd Flingers. The Turd Flingers debacle was a shock to the parents who arranged the showing. They assumed that since monkeys were so popular, humans with the same antics would be a boon. The reality was that most families weren't willing to pay great fees to see the same things that happen on a daily basis in their own homes.

A stark comprehension of a singular petrifying reality was still worth coughing up some serious bread. Anyone who knew anyone knew that they could never be as alone as Stan. Seeing him suffer in his chronic involuntary detachment remained a great comfort to many. The thousands of onlookers somehow intensified and focused his already obscene estrangement.

One day a particularly depressive dental school dropout decided to walk through the displays because he had a few minutes to spare before killing himself. When he got to the Stan exhibit he was shocked by what he saw. A single hand movement. Was that a wave? Again, there was another almost undetectable movement of a hand. ExPreDent waved back and saw what appeared to be a smile. Although ExPreDent had never visited the Stan exhibit before, he had heard about it and seen Stan on all the magazine covers. He knew this was Stan, but he was acting so different, and even though the communication was minimal, Stan was expressing himself more than ever before.

Having been there to see all of this, made ExPreDent change his mind. He climbed down the steep concrete wall using a piece of a sturdy vine to lower himself to Stan's level. He said to Stan, "Why of all people did you pick me to communicate with?" Stan replied, "Because I knew no one would believe you."

Stan and ExPre sat up all night talking and laughing about uninteresting thoughts they had throughout their lives but never felt like sharing with anyone else. At least that's what appears to have happened. Both Stan and ExPre were found dead the next morning lying in a pool of their own sarcasm. Shards of crystalized thoughts were found as far as 30 meters from the corpses, and the fragments seemed to make up complex hyperbolic allegoric palindromes written in some hybridized variant of pig latin, esperanto and calculus.

Without Stan the exhibits seemed pointless, because there was no longer a clear benchmark for isolation and sadness. The loneliest person in the world could be just about anybody.

Reminders:

Milk
Butter
Bread
Fantasy is for suckers,
reality is a pain that never goes away,
even in death.
Not that I'm a masochist or even a pessimist.
I'm a multitasking realist who needs...
Organic Heirloom Tomatoes
Feta Cheese
Kalamata Olives
Something I can Kill Myself With
Razor Sharp Fettuccini?