I went over to a Super Bowl party tonight. I’d tell you my thoughts on the game, but apparently re-broadcasting, or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game, without the express written consent of the National Football League, is strictly prohibited.

My friend Brian made chili seriously amazing chili. I couldn’t stop eating it. Now I feel like something’s going to burst out of my chest like in Alien. So, I’m going to take a break from studying for the quals to curl up with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol until this all blows over. Still, there is the very real chance, given my genetic make-up and family history, that I am currently having a heart attack.

So, with what may or may not be my dying breaths, I want to tell the world that I hate Christianity, because they keep doing shit like this:

That cost $3.01 million. That guy in there was Tim Tebow, who’s made something of  a name for himself by being pretty and using makeup, effectively making him the Taylor Hanson of collegiate football. The ad was paid for by Focus on the Family, a non-profit, tax-exempt hate group which runs the gambit of all the common causes with which Christians poison our society. They are devoted to the suppression of individual liberties through a staunch anti-choice agenda, compounded with a decided anti-science philosophy via their alliance with the Discovery Institute.

Most heinous of all, Focus on the Family opposes the rights of people of all orientations to marry the ones they love. Read that again. They oppose people being in love, and anyone who opposes love is the enemy of Yellow Hat Man.

Focus on the Family begged for change to scare up $3.01 million, to tell people that abortion is bad. I beg to differ, case and point:

I wondered how many people starved tonight, because the Religious Right was neither: opting to keep Haitian food banks empty to keep the cable networks laden with their precious propaganda. I made a few calculations to see what exactly $3,010,000 can buy in this day in age:

At this point, August has already sent an angry letter out to be proofread before sending it to me. This is about when other Christians approach me and say: “You complain about how these ‘Christians’ act…but that’s not the ‘real Christianity’…” Everyone claims to have the real Christianity. Well, I offer a challenge to the “real Christians”. If you really love your neighbor, you’ll find a way to stop these people. Have your God use his magic if you need too. I thought I was a real Christian for a while. Then I remember that Jesus was a long-haired construction worker who shot his mouth off at every opportunity. If Christ were here today, he’d walk into your churches, break all your shit, and somehow weasel out of doing any jail time. He did it before, and allegedly, he’ll do it again.

Don’t try to save me. Save yourselves from yourselves.

I’m doing the Christians a favor by going to Hell. By going to Hell first, I’ll have the keg tapped by the time they all get there, so I’ll have worked out those first few cups of foam.

I was on Facebook, minding my own business, when I saw that someone had posted a link to my buddy Dan’s wall, which I thought to be amusing.

It seems that the Japanese, being from Japan, had managed to one-up the Snuggie by creating a footie sleeping bag. With this, kids at slumber parties can just  pass out anywhere and be golden, and Jake and Lenny would not have almost been mauled to death by that bear at camp that one time, a funny story I should tell you sometime.

That’s not why I’m writing this.

No, because I saw something bewildering on the side of the page.  I clicked it, somehow forgetting my last fifteen years of Internet experience, telling me that something should not be clicked. Apparently they a make vagina-scented perfume now.

Once again to reiterate, you can buy a vial of human cooterstink. As perfume.

You should be revolted. I however, could not be revolted. I, being an engineer, instead immediately asked: “Whose cooterstink are they bottling?” and “By what process does one extract and refine human cooterstink?”

This persistent analytic worldview is a blessing, and as shown, a curse sometimes.

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.

Yesterday, in a stunning blow to freedom and justice, gay marriage has been re-illegalized in Maine. This anti-civil rights campaign was received large amounts of funding from a number of notorious hate groups, such as Focus on the Family and the Catholic Church, in another example of the Religious Right being neither.

Sure we read in Leviticus 18:22 (and Leviticus 20:13) that “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” but that doesn’t say anything about girl-on-girl. And why would it? Yahweh is said to be male, and therefore, by definition, is a big fan of lesbian porn.

Leviticus 11:12 tells us to avoid Maine lobster, and Leviticus 19:27 bans shaving and haircuts, but we ignore those. Why? It all comes from a little thing theologians like to call “exegesis.”

Exegesis is the process of sticking one’s hand up God’s ass, in order to make him talk. Since the Bible is the compiled mythology of wandering Bronze-age goat headers, it cannot be made applicable to modern day without creative interpretation. Say I wanted to convince people of something, like that I had the power to fight off a pack of crazed unicorns (Pslams 22:21), or to go about rationalizing the destruction of an entire race of people, like those fucking Hittites two doors down from me (Exodus 34:11-14). Well, the Bible is a pretty thick book with a large number of whacky statements, so I just need to leaf through it and cherry-pick out some lines, and then pepper them in to my next hate speech/homily to make my personal agenda sound like it’s God’s agenda, much like how I’m about to do.

See, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus explicitly states that homosexuals should be able to legally marry in the State of Maine.

No, seriously. I just leafed through the one of those little green Gideon’s Bibles which tend to pile up in my office, and I saw it there plain as day:

Sure, your bible may be a different edition, and that line may have a different wording, or not be presented in my large, effeminate, cursive script, but it’s just as true as anything else the Bible has to say. God divinely inspired the hand of [this] man to write [in] the Bible. So although it was written by [this] human[‘s] hands, it is is none the less the inerrant word of God. This is true, and I know it’s true… for the Bible tells me so.

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:

James Bond is simply better than you. Period. Thus, to emulate him is to be great.

Jenny was so delectably shy that she would vapor lock whenever I came to call on her. We sat on the sofa, I was grinning, and she was trembling, and fidgeting. Typically you just wait a shy girl out, and she’ll open up on her own, but the nuns really did a number on this chick, and Jenny was tough nut to crack. The last two weeks was an epic exercise in patience; we knew we liked each other, and at this rate it was only a matter of time before one of us was driven batshit insane from our situation.

Clearly, this called for the high-test Sean Connery-grade awesome.

“We need a change of scenery, c’mon, let’s go to the Circle,” I told her.

“Well, I don’t know what to say…”

“You should say: ‘Yes,’” I unhesitatingly replied.

“Well, okay…” said Jenny, with a grin. It was the contented grin of a girl desperately trying to keep us both from drowning in her vaginal moisture. At that moment, I had won.

Once there, Daryl poured me a Labatt’s, and Jenny and I found a table. Then, I took her hand, looked her straight in the eyes, and gave Oscar-quality monologue telling her how I felt about her, and the world, which resulted in me becoming the captain of her heart.

I was able to make a quiet and awkward evening into the beginning of the happiest relationship I’d ever been in, all thanks to the fact I have, at my command, a complete and encyclopedic knowledge of every James Bond movie. In this case, it was Terence Young’s 1962 classic Dr. No. Based off of the sixth novel, Dr. No was the first of the United Artists/EON era films, and the first time Sean Connery portrayed 007.

However, this can, and has, backfired, since you will also assimilate every other line in every one of these movies, and use them as responses as well.

We were on one of our Tuesday dates, walking back to our cars from Uptown when we stopped by the sundial to see the glorious panorama of the South Quad, highlighted by MacCracken Hall.

“Wow! What a view!” said Jenny.

“To a kill!” I unhesitatingly reply.

“What?” said Jenny. “That doesn’t even make sense! …is that from something?”

“Yeah a movie,”

“…was it a Bond movie again?” she said with a grin, knowing I have been trapped. (We had already watched Dr. No together at this point.)

“Yeah…” I sigh.

“Which one?” asks Jenny, as I sigh again.

“…A View to a Kill…”

“…aaaaand you honestly thought that would be smooth?” she asks.

“No, quoting Bond movies is just kind of a reflex…and… I …don’t want… to talk about it…right… now…”

I had major plans for July 11. We’re set that Saturday aside for celebrating my birthday, and I had a full schedule of fun planned. I was going to a karate seminar at August’s new dojo, go to a cookout, watch UFC 100, and get the fuck drunk.  I was only able to do three of those.

About three hours into our training, Mr. Capella was having us work on harai goshi. I was going pretty well. I was a judo player when I was studying at Oxford*, and harai goshi was one of my signature moves. I was kind of leery when people were practicing on me, because four years and nine days earlier, I had dislocated my left shoulder in a harai goshi accident.

I was practicing with August for a while, then I went to work with Joe for a bit. He was throwing me, but it wasn’t harai goshi. He was having problems with working the swinging leg into the equation, as Joe throws are typically of the “pick them up and drop them” variety. They work, but tits not compatible with the sweeping part, which makes harai goshi a faster and more brutal throw.

In order to help Joe get the feel of rolling the opponent over the hip,  Mr. Capella was showing him how to do seoi otoshi, which is basically the standard body drop (tai otoshi) executed from a front stance rather than a side-facing stance.

Seoi otoshi is a good move to have.  Seoi nage, the standard judo throw, can be easily countered if your opponent places the palm his hand on your hip when you comes in to throw him. This way, you never get close enough to have good leverage, and you opponent retains his balance, making him impossible to throw. If this counter is used you on,  the setup for seoi nage can quickly be changed to a seoi otoshi setup, allowing you to counter the counter.

Rather than pulling me straight forward, Joe pulled at an angle, so rather than fall forward, I fell at and angle. On my way down, my arm hit his knee.

I laid face down on the mat motionless.

“Ahhhh,” I said lackadaisically. I didn’t feel a thing, but I knew something was wrong. My arm was numb and paralyzed. I couldn’t feel my arm, but if I could have felt my arm,  it would’ve hurt.

That’s when my day got weird.

Babies won’t mind if you abort them, so go right ahead. Sure, they might haunt you, but since when was that a bad thing? I mean, they owe you.

Don’t look at me like that. Don’t shoot the messenger. No, seriously, don’t shoot me — I don’t think this way. These are the thoughts of Doreen Virtue, a “fourth-generation metaphysician and clairvoyant spiritual healer, with B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in counseling psychology,” a faculty member of the American Institute of Hypnotherapy, and an advisory member of the Depossession Institute.

In addition to multiple TV appearances, Doreen Virtue has written a number of articles in popular publications, and penned forty-eight books and cartomantic aids with a lowball combined sales estimate of 500,000 copies. Among these, is The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children, which is one of the seminal texts in Indigo studies. As I will demonstrate later, there is a shadiness to many of these claims.

The nefarious Dr. Virtue channels the power of the Dread Dormammu to cast "Magic Missile," dealing 1d6+1 points of force damage.

Stevie* was the one that introduced me to the machinations nefarious Dr. Virtue, as she bought her books, attend her workshops, and became one of her evil henchmen. It’s all she would talk about, and she became more and more detached from reality with each phone call. For every problem, Doreen sold a product, and Stevie was sold on its central theme, that if you bought enough of them that you’d gain a couple of extra senses or mental powers “like the X-Men.”

I thought that these chinsy Hay House books, like Doreen’s were silly nonsense enjoyed by harmless hippies. After seeing what they had done to my friend, did I see their true, malevolent nature — that it is indeed, a monstrous institution, like some sort of low-budget Scientology.

I knew what I had to do.

I began to look into this Dr. Virtue, and it became eerily captivating. Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson were to watch Tetsuo: The Iron Man, through a kaleidoscope. This accurately describes how Doreen must view the world. That’s when I landed upon this gem:

Several years ago, a woman named Melissa became pregnant by a man she adored and loved. However, the man wasn’t interested in a relationship or a baby. Melissa didn’t tell her young son, Liam, that she was pregnant. However, one day Liam drew a picture and handed it to his mother, explaining that it was a portrait of his little brother (Melissa only had one child at the time).

Ultimately, Melissa made the difficult choice to terminate the pregnancy, without telling Liam. About a week later, Liam said that his little brother told him, “I decided not to come yet, but I’m okay, and I love you.” The little brother said that he was taking care of Melissa like a guardian angel until he was ready to be born as a child. When that time came, both the little brother and Liam would take care of their mother.

–Doreen Virtue; excerpted from The Crystal Children, pg. 49.

I figured that was a good place to start as any. From the notes that I’ve taken from the couple of her books that I’ve stumbled across, I believe that I can generate six months worth of posts.

Rest assured, gentle reader, my story with Stevie has a happy ending. I, and later, her boyfriend kept poking at her, asking more questions than she could find adequate answers for. Then, by the grace of Carl Sagan, through the noble works of the Amazing Randi and his Foundation, she was freed from oppressive yoke of crystals, trinkets, and doublethink. Having repented her ways, Stevie enrolled in a Ph.D. program in biomathematics, where she furthers mankind through her studies of plant interactions.

For this, I am fortunate. I realize that this situation only turned out well because she was surrounded by people who had the tools and the talent to deal with the situation.

I’m a scientist. It’s my job to ask questions and solve problems. But not everyone has had the training I’ve had. Some young lad somewhere may be in the same situation I was, and would seem powerless to stop it. He is not powerless, for I will aid him.

In a world where blind obedience was made the highest ideal… and questioning is reprehensible… justice will have a new name!

I, Ryan Coons, as part of my Crusade of Justice, and acting as the Purveyor of Truth, vow to stop the machinations of the nefarious Dr. Virtue!

______________________

*Name has been changed as per her request.

Yesterday marked the passing of actor David Carradine, who was partially responsible for the mainstream popularity of the martial arts today through his popular TV show Kung Fu, and his unpopular TV show Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Carradine also enjoyed a film career, which is highlighted with the title role in Tarintino’s Kill Bill, but should be better remembered for the huge amount of senseless fun movies like Lone Wolf McQuade and Death Race 2000.

He was found dead in his hotel room, an apparent suicide. Then today, more details were released.  Carradine was great; he doesn’t deserve the news article describing his passing to start out with the phrase: “…whose body was found in a hotel closet in the Thai capital with a rope tied to his neck, wrist and genitals.” That hurts, but unfortunately, the truth does that.

I could comment on this, but Joe, August, and Luc would likely slit my throat if I did, so I’m going to let George do it for me, because A) he’s better at it, and B) he’s already dead, and thus immune to bodily harm.

Do you know who’s the happiest guy in Hell right now? That dude from INXS, because now people will stop making fun of him.

A day after I published The Greatest Prank Phone Call in the History of Man, I received emails, instant messages, and phone calls from Luc, wanting to tell his side of the story. Now he will tell his side of the story, better shed better light on the unbridled awesome that was that call.

So without further ado, a reading from the Gospel, according to Luc.

–YHG

________________________

Anyone who was old enough in the nineties to know that the Millcreek Mall was never gonna be the same again when the conversation pits were filled in, was also old enough to remember that for some unknown reason, there were a LOT of tornado warnings in Erie County during that time. The people who filled the pits may have angered the gods. And for an even odder reason I have yet to figure out, I’ve always been absolutely terrified of tornadoes. You may think “Come on Luc, who the hell isn’t?” and to that I ask YOU:

Did you stash your most prized possessions under the steps when you were seven because the sky got dark at three in the afternoon? How about jumping in the bathtub at mere the issuance of a tornado watch when you were eleven? I used to be that scared, I’m more intrigued now more than anything else, but Coons called it, I was astraphobic.

I’m not sure where it came from. It could be from how I first learned what one was. I lived in a trailer park in Lake City on May 31, 1985. I remember how purple the TV screen was, how black the sky was and how awful the voice sounded (and still does) when the NWS was giving instructions on what to do if a “tomato was coming toward you” I freaked and asked my stepdad why a tomato was attacking Albion. He corrected me and told me what they were and what they did.

“Tom? How far is it from here to Albion?”

“10 miles”

“is it headed this way?”

“I don’t know”

I wasn’t traumatized by anything he said but I DO remember it clearly.

So lets talk about a certain phone call…..

I was minding my own dammed business watching the storms on the weather channel, because it was BAD out. The grass was HORIZONTAL in the yard from the wind. There was a spinner watch and I was already nerved up.

I wanna take a second to say that I don’t remember exact details from this night. But I remember the call. I don’t remember running down the street, but I do remember saying to myself: “Why would Coons go to such great lengths just to do this?”

Because he’s a damn genius.

I used to be VERY outward and nutty consistently, but somewhere in 1996, his became more consistent and mine started to come and go as it pleases.

As I heard the well-done audio of his house being blown clear to Oz, I noticed there was nothing on the TV about it, but being a master of “what if?” thinking and scaring the crap out of myself was, and sometimes still is, commonplace (and even worse if someone nudges me), I thought that maybe the NWS just didn’t see it yet and put up a warning. At that point I blacked out and I remember nothing.

Way to go for the throat.