I didn’t think yesterday was going to be epic, oh, but it was.

I went to work and plotted some points, and managed to leave work such that the rain started right when I opened the door to my building, and made dinner such that I was done right when the tornadoes started. After that, I read some journals, and washed the dishes, and read more journals. And then, right around midnight, Mike Brownstein left a post on my Facebook. A link to a one-line news article that said that “Touchdown Jesus” off of I-75, was on fire.

Then, like that, I grabbed the ol’ SuperFunAdventureCodex, and crossed one more item off my list.

A transcript of the list is given below.  (The items are listed in order of importance.)

Things I’d Like to See:

• Christopher Walken performing a spoken-word version of David Bowie’s “Heroes”
• Ally Sheedy naked
• Jesus Christ on fire
• solid room-temperature superconductors
• Nuclear power renaissance
• identity of “Deep Throat” revealed
• functioning and economical EUV lithography system
• destruction of the Roman Catholic Church
• a cure for diabetes
• Labyrinth II
• electric cars gaining widespread popularity
• the Kurzweilian Singularity
• the domestication of the Komodo Dragon
• old-school breakdancing making a comeback
• the identity of who killed Laura Palmer
• Sarah Palin running for office again, so we can continue to make fun of her.
• Dolph Lundgren fighting Jet Li
• Reliable jetpacks
• Gene Hackman in drag
• Concise, coherent, and preferably closed-form solution to the Problem of Evil
• Collapse of the Kim Family Regime
• Passage of the ERA
• Passage of a amendment to legalize same-sex marriage
• Men everywhere wearing fedoras and flat caps at all times, like they did in the 1920’s
• Freddy Kruger fighting Jason Voorhees
• all my friends living happy and fulfilling lives
• repeal of fireworks laws
• to see BP go under

For those of who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, a little backstory.

Shortly after I moved to Ohio to start grad school, right around the time the neo-cons and Christo-fascists went mad with power, the Solid Rock Church spent $500,000 to build “King of Kings,” a 62 foot bust of Jesus Christ facing I-75. The statue was ostensibly to help people by serving as “a beacon of hope and salvation,” but in practice, the colossal eyesore merely served as a navigational marker to lead people to the flea market. Within minutes of its dedication, the people of the greater Cincinnati area rechristened the statue “Touchdown Jesus,” for obvious reasons.

Well, last night, Touchdown Jesus was struck by lightning by the same thunderstorm that not-killed me with tornadoes, cloud-to-ground lightning, and baseball-sized hail, proving once again that Yahweh is some linear combination of retarded, incompetent, and/or drunk.

Also, their was apparently the Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was completely undamaged, signifying that Larry Flynt is truly favored by the Lord.

Also, apparently statues can catch fire.

That kinda threw me for a loop, for we tried to set literally everything in the universe on fire back in Boy Scouts. Then I found out Touchdown Jesus was made of styrofoam, and everything made sense. It was a giant metal frame, next to pond, covered in styrofoam with a fiberglass skin. Apparently it had a lightning rod, but it didn’t work. I’d like to take this time to point out that lightning rods are a proven technology and have no moving parts.

The comments for that YouTube video are priceless, by the way. I could say more about this, but I’m going to let Percy Shelley take over from here:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

You may ask: “Wasn’t Boobquake was like a week ago, isn’t this a little late?”

Yeah, it is. But I wanted to keep tabs on New Madrid before I spoke up.

See, I’m more qualified to report on this than some of the proper media outlets, because I actually know what was going on, because I’m friends with Jennifer McCreight. I joined her Non-Theist Society about three years back, and in that time she lead me on some wacky adventures, which really helped me grow as a person. I also learned a lot about her that isn’t reported elsewhere, such as her inability to ride a bicycle.

Jen only ever invited 50 people, whom I was one of. I didn’t invite people, because I can’t go around asking chicks to show me their cleavage without looking like I was Creepy O’Creeperson or something. In the meantime, the intertubes caught fire and all hell broke loose. By the time the day in question came about, about a million people were invited. As in 10^6. Granted, [at the time of writing] only 213,918 participated, and an unknown (but presumably significant) portion of which were dudes, but that’s still larger than all but 94 cities in the US.

I did go to the meeting by the bell tower, which Jen setup after several media requests to have something film-able. Girls in low-cut tops milled about as geology majors set up seismographs to monitor the Boobquake epicenter. Fun was had by all. Still, before going out, I used my Facebook status to inform my friends of my final wishes, in the event of death by misadventure, as that shifty Yahweh has been after me for some time.

For the record, if I were to die:

1) All of my worldly goods are to be sold on eBay, with the revenue generated to be used to commission Jan Hammer to compose a requiem for me — so that I may live forever wherever synthesizers and moderately-priced causal dining meet; and

2) I don’t want to be buried in a Pet Sematary; I don’t want to live my life again. Oh no. Oooooooh noooo…..

The Purdue Exponent managed to succinctly capture the zeitgeist of the moment in a single headline. Jen managed to summarize it even better at the bar a week later:

“The media is retarded. I knew this before, but this only reinforces the belief.”

No seriously, look at this shit:

The problem with twenty-four hour news channels is that news doesn’t really doesn’t happen twenty-four hours a day. There’s maybe twenty-four hours of news in a week. Granted, that’s how Jen & Co. managed to get on, but Jeanne Moos interviewed Jen for two hours, and the finished product consisted of random annoying people on YouTube, YouTube footage of the event itself, a camera being held up to a monitor that had YouTube clips playing on it, and part of a Skype interview. Even TV realizes there’s nothing good on TV, and plays on the computer instead.

I refuse to comment on Jeanne Moos’ Chroma Key boobs, because I wish to maintain my willing suspension of disbelief, and pretend that shit never happened.

Also, old media camera guys are dicks. Did you know that? Yeah. They just walk up to chicks and say: “Show us your cleavage. C’mon, show us your cleavage.”

Hey now! I happen to know those cleavages, as well as they women they’re attached too — and that’s no way to treat women. Hell, the camera guys didn’t even give them beads, like in those Girls Gone Wild videos. Hell, they didn’t even politely goad them for twenty minutes, like in those shitty knock-off Girls Going Crazy videos.

In the end though, Boobquake was a good thing. In the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia enjoyed broad creative freedoms that the remainder of society did not. The reason is that the intelligentsia posed no threat. Churches and countries come and go, but many of them can endure the most profound of philosophical treatises, but the legitimacy of any regime is easily eroded by a joke that catches on. For this reason, atheists, agnostics, pastafarians, et.al. everywhere can only profit from making fun of people.

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions…” -Thomas Jefferson; excerpted from a letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, July 30, 1816

When Ames was going under, Mike immediately ran out and got one of those inflatable chairs, because they were popular at the time. It became readily obvious as to why they went out of style, because it was a total pain in the ass to inflate and keep inflated. It came with patches for when it sprung leaks, but we’d gone through them all within the week.

It was a cold Saturday afternoon. I arrived at Mike’s house, as it was the de facto assembling point at the time. Joe was there, so was Mindy, the chick he was dating at the time, along with Tim ‘n’ Rick, and maybe Jered and Ken. As we were loading up out cars to head over to Behrend for sledding, Mike walks out with the inflato-chair.

“Are you throwing inflato-chair out?” I ask.

“Yeah, but I’m going to ride it down the sledding hill first,” said Mike.

“Oh, so you’re going to deflate it and sit on it, like one of those roll-up toboggans?” I ask.

“No, I was just going to keep it as it is, and ride down the hill on an easy chair,” said Mike.

I collapsed with laughter, because the movie in my head was just that great. So we all drive to Behrend, and trudge up the hill. There were about thirty people there, all of whom smiled at the prospect for fun upon seeing the inflato-chair. Mike mounts the inflato-chair, and we push it down the hill, except that we just wound up pushing Mike off the chair.  We repeated this another six or seven times to collect enough data to conclude what was going on. Apparently inflato-chair had a coefficient of friction large enough to render it unusable as a sled. We also found that to keep from being pushed off, you had to recline almost, by leaning back. Even then, the chair’s bottom would remain in place, and the rest of it would just ooze over that point, kind of like a Caterpillar drive, eventually ejecting the passenger. WD-40 could not correct this. In anger of the massive disappointment that was inflato-chair, we kick it into the wooded thicket atop the hill.

“Stupid inflato-chair,” mutters Mike.

“I hate inflato-chair,” declares Joe.

So we sled for a while, I had some pretty neat jumps and wipe-outs on the Saucer of Doom, but nothing as epic as last time. Little kids kept coming up for a hit of WD-40, and their parents would pull them away, fearing for their safety. Eventually, I discovered the solution to our problems.

“Dude!” I shout. “We need to put inflato-chair on the saucer!”

Everyone’s eyes light up, then fade away as Joe points out:

“You’ll just be pushed off of it.”

“No, I wont, because you’re pushing the saucer, and not the chair,” I tell him.

Without speaking, we all run into the thicket to retrieve inflato-chair from the woods. I WD-40 the saucer and set the chair on top of it. Everyone backs the fuck up, I align the chair with the jump in the middle of the hill, lean back, and give a thumbs up. Joe and Mike pushed me down the hill. It worked flawlessly. I was about halfway to the jump, when a little kid, maybe about six or seven — old enough to know better — was standing in the middle of the hill. No one saw him before because the jump had obstructed him from our view. It was a really sweet jump. I started shouting at the kid:

“Dude! Move dude! Get out of the way dude! Dude! Move!”

The kid didn’t move. He just stood there for what seems like a minute. I want to think that his brief life was flashing before his eyes, but that couldn’t have been it. He hadn’t accrued nearly enough life experience to cause him to seize for that long. He stood there because he was too damn confused, because a twenty year-old man with a beard and a silly hat was hollering all kinds of sentence fragments at him, while barreling towards him in a bright yellow Barcalounger at thirty miles per hour. I drew closer and closer, and screamed louder and louder.

“Dude! Get the hell out of the way dude! Run, man! Run! Move dude! Dude!”

I want to say that everything was ok.  I want to say that kid was… well, fuck, sentient. He wasn’t.

I totally crushed that kid. Bad.

I should be in jail, that’s how bad it was.

Imagine a hovercraft running over a speed bump. That’s an accurate portrayal of events. He didn’t even have time to scream as he got sucked under.

“Oooooh!” shouted the thirty people atop the hill in unison.

A second later, I hit the jump, and became a projectile. I flew in a parabolic path, similar to an Olympic ski jumper, but without skis or training. As the ground rapidly approached, I tucked my chin and did a proper ukemi, and log rolled about 300 feet down the hill. I laid there for a second, testing each joint to make sure my spinal cord was still intact. When it was, I walked in a sine wave back up the hill, picking up my saucer and inflato-chair, breathing deeply to get the stars to stop. Towards the top of the hill, sitting next to the jump, was the crying child who I completely and totally destroyed, and his dad. He was angry.

“Why did you do that?” asked the dad.

“I tried to tell him to move,” I explain.

“You could’ve done something,” snaps the dad.

“No, I was stuck in that that thing. I couldn’t move, he could,” I explain.

The dad wants to be angry, but can’t.

“C’mon,” he says to his brutally crushed and p0wn’d son. “Let’s go!”

I want to feel bad, but I can’t because it’s not my fault that his kid was too dumb to move. At least that’s how I think the conversation went; my razor-sharp memory fails me in this instance. I likely suffered a minor concussion, so I get a by for that.

I went to see Ninja Assassin for my birthday.  After seeing the preview, I had high hopes.  I wasn’t disappointed.  Ninja Assassin gave me everything I wanted, ninja, explosions, and extreme, gratuitous violence.  What else could I want for my birthday?

Honestly, I really enjoyed this film.  It tells the story of Riazo, played by Korean pop star Rain, an orphan who is brought in by the Black Sand Ninja clan, from his training from his eventual defection from his clan.  Lots of flashbacks and training sequences smattered about between the intense action sequences, I just really liked the movie.

Within the first minute, the tone is set as the top of a triad gang member’s is lopped off with his body spurting blood on his friends.  Repeat for the next 99 minutes and go home happy.

I also like how the movie follows the ninja henchman paradox.  This theory states that the toughness of a ninja is inversely proportional to the number of ninja present.  While one single ninja represents an unstoppable killing machine, in large groups they tend to die rather easily.  We also see the impact of this theory in that as the ninja henchmen are killed off, the individual ninja get tougher and tougher.  So a small piece of financial advice to you, a ninja bodyguard is a better investment than an army of ninja henchmen.  Just an FYI.

So, in summary, see Ninja Assassin.  It is worth it.  It is gruesome and fun, everything you would want it to be.

Earlier today, Ray “Bananaman” Comfort and Kirk “College Kids are to Young to Remember When I was Famous” Cameron, went viral with their remix version of Charlie Darwin’s smash hit, On the Origin of Species.

Their version intentionally omits a few chapters, and includes a fifty page reductio ad Hitlerum introduction, which Comfort wrote/plagiarized.

These doctored copies were then distributed around the country to be handed out to random-ass people on the campuses of top universities yesterday. That makes sense, because when I think of a fundamentalist Christian jihad, I immediately think of MIT and Caltech. They came to Purdue a day later, since I guess we were a second-round draft pick.

I’d review the introduction in detail for all of you, since they were being handed out here, but I didn’t get one, which sucks. I knew I should’ve taken the long way home today.

However, since turnabout is fair play, I have come out with my own version of the Holy Bible. The SuperFunAdventureBible clears up and confusing or flowery passages and allows the reader to concentrate on the real crux of the Christian faith:

Christians should be thanking me, as I carefully removed (with a utility knife) all of the times the Bible urges people to participate in:

• murder (Ezekiel 9:5-6)
• genocide (Deuteronomy 20:16-17; Exodus 17:13-16)
• incest (Exodus 6:20; Genesis 19:30-38)
• abortion (Hosea 13:16)
• cannibalism (Jeremiah 19:9)
• materialism (Proverbs 14:20)
• domestic violence (Proverbs 20:30)
• shit-eating (Ezekiel 4:12-15),
• genital mutilation (Genesis 17:9-13)
• …and Communist party membership (Acts 4:32-35)

Thanks to me, the Christian apologetics have less to apologize over. Now, Christians can concentrate on the central themes of intimidation and greed without the requisite cognitive dissonance.

A few months ago, I reported on the semi-serious internet campaign to get me to re-grow my mullet.  Well, a few weeks back, I was invited to a large-ish party to celebrate another successful Nuke Week and to commiserate with those still recovering from the aftermath of the thermohydraulics midterm. Shortly after the festivities began, someone found a ginger mullet wig laying about the apartment. (I never really had a chance to figure out whose apartment it was, but that’s besides the point.) The wig was being passed around, and I knew that I had to try it on.

My co-workers were mortified.

“It…it…it…” said Doug.

“It…kinda works…” admitted Tom.

I looked into the mirror…

…and I saw what should have been, for a fleeting moment, before the wig was passed on. The important thing is, we now all know what I look like with a mullet. Will we ever see it again? It remains to be seen.

X-mas is coming, by the way…

A few weeks ago, a bunch of the Non-Theist Society and I packed up the ol’ SuperFunAdventureBus with magic and good times and trekked through the pre-apocalyptic wastelands to Bloomington, IN, to the see the famed evolutionary biologist, popular author, and rabble-rouser Richard Dawkins speak as part of his international book-signing and lecture tour. During the question-and-answer session which followed, My friend Jen, the BlagHag, asked Prof. Dawkins:

“I had the misfortune of visiting the Creation Museum this summer. While there were many scary things there, the scariest was how it was full of children. When you see kids like this or those who are home schooled or going to religious school, they’re effectively being brainwashed. Is there anything we can do to teach them science, or are they a lost cause?”

This sent Dawkins into a stirring diatribe, but he never explicitly answered Jen’s question. He’s human, and he doesn’t have all the answers, and I’m sure if he knew how to reach those …well, lost souls, he’d already be doing that. It’s hard for us, because we have no default person or think to consult with our problems, we have to be crafty enough to solve each problem as it arises and to have the strength to look within ourselves to find the answers. Fortunately, I have both and have taken the liberty of solving this problem.

To reach the deceived youngsters, Richard Dawkins must undergo either DNA splicing, the Fusion Dance, or the unholy powers of the Necronomicon to combine all of his powers and abilities with those of 80’s metal legend Don Dokken, to form Richard Dokkens, who must then go on tour. The mind-bending awesome that would ensue would permeate through every strata of society, exposing everyone to the Gospel of…well, no one really. For those who doubt the feasibility of this plan, I present, in evidence, the last half of Dokken’s “Dream Warriors”:

Now, take that, and multiply it by an integer greater than one. That is the power that Richard Dokkens would command. The only fault in this cunning plan is that the human mind would not be able to process awesome of this magnitude, so we may have to delay this until after the Kurzweilian Singularity. I’m doing my part with that, so to all the genetic engineers, ascended Sayians, and Kandarian translators out there: the ball is in your court.

One time, while at Joe’s mom’s house, we came across a MicroMachines garage playset, which wasn’t his.

It belonged to Mindy, Joe’s ex, and was the only thing of hers that we were able to confirm was entirely hers and that she’d forgotten when she moved out of the basement.

Being the well-adjusted individuals that we are, decided to destroy it, and in the most spectacularly awesome way possible.

Without hesitation, we decided to pack it full of fireworks, and blow it the fuck up. That wasn’t going to happen though, since Tom Thompson* had used up all of his quarter sticks, so the best we could do was melt it, but we tried to blow it up, Cthulhu help us, we tried. I ran home and grabbed whatever fireworks were there, leftovers from Tom Thompson’s parties and a bunch of PA legal bullshit that I bought when I was twelve. We packet that shit tight with ladyfingers, M-200’s, Moon Travels facing outward to cut in half, disco flashers, and paper towels soaked in Aqua Net hair spray.

It was all sorry and half-assed. We were rightfully ashamed.

So I went home and got some old model rocket engines from when I was a kid. We packed a handful of model rocket engines in there, and that made it novel, fun and acceptable. We sealed every hole with study tape, to keep the explosives in and though we knew the tape would blow out before the walls, we at least tried. We laughed, because now the toy garage looked like it was all boarded up and abandoned.

“Look at it!” said Mike. “It’s all ghetto now!”

I picked it up and proclaimed it “The Ghetto Blaster.”

Joe keeled over from laughter in the spiteful schadenfreude that I had brought into his house.

We detonated the Ghetto Blaster to initial disappointment, before it erupted in white flames which completely and totally ruined all of its shit. Post-blast analysis, combined with out extensive fireworks experience brought us to conclude that the PA legal fireworks did the most damage, because the Disco Flashes have magnesium in them, and a little burning magnesium goes a long way.

____________________________________________________
* Names have been changed to protect those with outstanding warrants.

This is Chapter IV of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapters I, II, and III.
______________________________________________________

As I sat there talking to Joe about my research, I saw this off-white rumbling steel cube inching towards me.

Eventually I saw that it was being pushed by a petite brunette woman, 1/17^th the volume of the cube, putting all of her weight into the cube to get it to move inches per second. X-ray Chick was machined from a single block of steel, with a nurse’s uniform heat shrunk on to her. I could have bounced quarters off of any part of her person. She was probably so fit because she had to push the x-ray machine around all day, kind of like Conan the Barbarian. She wore no rings, and thus, she was a legal target.

Clearly, I had to bed this woman. I would be a crime not too.

“Hey, I’m here to take a few x-rays, it won’t be long,” she tells me.

“Yay! High-energy photons!” I cheer. She smiled. Being a physicist and nuclear engineer, I occasionally with x-rays, so I know exactly what they do. Still, I hadn’t got my hormesis in a while, so it wasn’t that bad.

Apparently, the doctors didn’t think I could make to the x-ray room, partially because I was a shoutin’ shirtless karate ape-man on drugs. Instead, they brought the x-ray room to me.

At the speed of thought, X-Ray Chick threw some levers and the cube deployed into a complete x-ray lab, like something from Command & Conquer. It seemed familiar to me, for some reason.

She came back with a leaden washcloth to cover my penis and testicles.

“Thanks, I need that,” I told her.

She smiled and threw some switches. A small box lit up, except for the black crosshair-pattern on the front. As she aims the shadow of the crosshairs on my shoulder, I remember where I’ve seen this machine:

“Dude! It’s like 70’s Hulk!” I shout to Joe.

I know how radiation works, but deep down, even though its foolish,  and irrational, there will always live a little part of me that thinks this:

…and says. “Yes. Hell yes. This.”

Because of this simple joy, the first x-ray went off without a hitch. The second, not so much.

“Now, I know you’re going to hate me for this…” said X-Ray Chick.

“Why’s that?”

“I need for you to go like this…” she told me, as she performed the communist solidarity fist gesture, “…and then rest your elbow on this sponge.”

“Yeah, ok,” I tell her. I moved my arm to the desired position very slowly, because I did not have a functioning skeleton at the time. It was fairly excruciating; but I knew I had to play it cool to be able to score a slice of this righteous meow.

“Hey Coons! You’re sponge-worthy!” shouts Joe and she inserts the sponge to support my arm.

X-Ray Chick looks up in horror and disgust, for the jig, much like my girthy schlong, was up. To add insult to my injury, Joe used his camera phone to preserve this moment for all time:

Ever have a raging hard-on while wearing your athletic cup? Don’t. Just don’t.

So after dislocating my shoulder, putting a damper on my birthday and vacation, as well as having me pay to get stabbed, Joe fuckin’ cockblocks me. Amazing.

She was mostly silent after that, but managed to produce some wicked-grotundous images:

It was New Year’s Day, 1986. Penn State was in the Orange Bowl, my dad was in his Penn State shirt (a story in itself) and I was four years old.

My dad almost never drank, and there was rarely any beer in the house, but there was that day, because Penn State was doing well. It wasn’t my dad’s collegiate standard, Rolling Rock. This was beneath that. It was worse than Natty, or Keystone, or even Herman the German. It was Beer Beer — as in generic beer.

“Oh, Beer-30,” you say.

No, Generic Beer is a step below Beer-30. I’ve seen Beer-30 before and it at least comes in a colorful package.

See, back in the day, there were no store brands, or stuff like Grand Union, Sam’s Choice, or Food Club. There was one, universal store brand called “Generic,” which was situated on an isle isolated from the rest of the store that was completely devoted to this line of products. They all came in white packages with the name of the contents in black capital letters, and nothing else. There weren’t even any nutritional labels, because Congress wouldn’t pass the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act for another four years.

For example, rather than having, Ruffles, Lay’s or Troyer Farms potato chips, there was another option across the store called “ONE POUND POTATO CHIPS.” If you wanted pop, there was Coca-Cola Classic, Pepsi, RC, and “COLA.” Thus, by induction, in addition to Rolling Rock, Natty, Keystone, and Herman the German, there was also a beer called “BEER.”

“What’s that?” I ask my dad, unfamiliar with the can.

“This son, is beer,” said my dad.

“Beer?” I said quizzically. “What’s that like?”

He looks left, he looks right. Then, my dad said the magic words:

“Don’t tell your mother.”

I nodded in agreement. He handed me the can, and I took my first drink.

It tasted like homeless people boiled in dumpster swill.

I didn’t drink for nearly twenty years.