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On a forum, I recently encountered the question: “Of life’s essentials, which would you prefer?  Breathing or Dr. Pepper?”  The poll was inexplicably leaning towards BREATHING of all things, so I felt compelled to offer the following counterpoint:

A rejoinder

You fools!

The obvious choice is Doctor Pepper and LET ME EXPLAIN.

Air is a whorish mix of gasses that are inert (lazy Nitrogen, I’m looking at you!), noble (Oh, Mister ‘I’m too fancy to stick around’ Helium, your lofty attitude has been noted), dirty (carbon dioxide, you are such a guilty pleasure, you leave me gasping), and then finally, the useful: Oxygen.  It’s not just a TV channel anymore!

Most of the stuff in there is USELESS! It’s a bunch of inefficient THINGS thrown together in a Boyleing mass of heaving, windy WASTE that blows around knocking things over and generally getting in the way of things.

BUT THE OXYGEN…. damnation, we still need it.

WHEN SUDDENLY

Enter, if you will, the miraculous concoction that the physician himself mixed to fight ill humours. I speak, of course, of DOCTOR PEPPER.

This is a mix of delightful components that come together in an unadulterated symphony of delicious taste.

• Water! The stuff of life!
• Syrup of the maize plant, a testament to our Native American roots!
• Caramel E-150d! A coloring agent so nice, they named it after a candy.
• Phosphoric acid! If it wasn’t for this plucky little liquid, the Prussians might have won for the Kaizer during his reign of terror, but add a splash of H3PO4 to your party, and suddenly they’re running in terror! Huzzah!

“But Thunderscreech”, you bleat entreatingly, “I must have air to breath or surely I shall die!”

“NONSENSE!” I thunder in righteous indignation. That witches brew of accidental plant farts is the result of Chlorophyllic excesses and has no place in man’s domination of the land. When given impossible choices, air takes second chair to the obvious superiority of Dr. Pepper.

“But Thunderscreeeeech,” you begin again, and I slap you in the face!

The answer, dear sir or madam, is as plain as very fundament of this magical brew. I speak, of course, of water.

H2O. Wasser. Vita la muerte cabron! (uncertain translation)

Yes, this liquid contains the key to your survival in a world UNENCUMBERED BY NATURE. Through the simple application of electrical current through a elementary anode/cathode arrangement, you can separate the blessed oxygen from it’s handy friend hydrogen, then do it again. Then again many tens of billions of times again!  Electrolysis is more than just a hair removal technique, it’s also the key to life!

Properly segregated from it’s flammable roommate, the oxygen is now available to keep your lungs properly working, your blood corpuscles the correct color, and your life in a state of continued existence.  THIS IS GOOD, right?

Plus

You also now have Doctor Pepper, which you CAN DRINK.

I rested my case and expect no further discussion is needed as I have clearly ‘put this one in the bag’.

Good day.

Rant, Trolls

No, not a disabled spot, it’s where wheelchair folks get onto the sidewalk.

Rant

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Pictures, Rant

NASA says it’ll cost a trillion fucking dollars and 25 years to go to Mars.  It took 8 years to go from Yuri to Neil & Buzz’s stroll, and now NASA is saying they need to basically start over and take a QUARTER CENTURY to take on Mars?

Look, Mars needs women.

If we want to get to the “Three breasted prostitute” scene from Total Recall, we’ll need to get started now.  Considering the massive costs associated with anything government, the actual first manned landing will probably need to be done privately, or mostly privately.

10 years ago, that would have sounded like an impossible fantasy, but with companies like SpaceX that have the passion to innovate and spend SMARTER instead of BIGGER (see Scaled Composite‘s SpaceShipOne for an example), it’s possible. Hells bells, we’re getting to the point where one really dedicated billionaire could buy 3/4 of the hardware needed off-the-shelf.

Mars on the cheap

Heavy launch? Fuck it, the Soviets pioneered assembly in orbit, now there’s no need to create a whole dedicated launcher like the Ares cargo monster. Just buy a bunch of Proton boosters (dirt cheap compared to equivalent US launchers) to chuck everything up.

The Soviets^H^H^H^H^H^H^HRussians will sell you the remaining Salyut  core module. It’s identical brother was the core of Mir, and another brother is the ‘Zvezda‘ module on the ISS. It’s a 40 year old design lineage that has proven itself at keeping people alive for years at a time and comes with an exercycle. You chuck this up there with one of the Protons and let it screw itself into the stack. Voi-fuckin’-la, you now have crew quarters that will, properly stocked, keep your astronuts alive for the duration of the trip, assuming they don’t accidentally space themselves.  And shit, you can use it to build the damn rocket too because you can have a crew up there to catch the payloads and hook up all the wires.

John Carmack made this for the lulz, imagine what he'd build for reals.

For the big stuff, assemble with KURS automated docking systems (now with almost 30 years of successful use in orbit). Proton goes up, upper stage finds the growing “Mars or bust” staging location, KURS drives it into dock like freakin space LEGOs.  “But Thunderscreech”, you mew, “isn’t that what caused the collision with Mir?” Fuck no, that shit happened when they turned the docking system OFF to do it manually.

Ten or twenty Protons later, you’ve got a huge fucking booster assembly in orbit built out of upper-stage assemblies that are usually used to chuck comsats into Geosynchronous orbit so fat housewives can catch all their ‘stories’. “But Thuuuuuuunderscreech”, you honk, “isn’t there a lot of waste in the form of redundant systems and mass by having all those complete booster stages up there? FUCK YEAH, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than making an untested booster that needs a whole new rocket to put it into orbit. Spend SMARTER, not BIGGER.

The Mars Lander and re-launch assembly is the wildcard. You probably drop your return-stage first under an assload of parachutes with some sort of soft-landing rocket system. Let John Carmack build it, he’d fucking love a chance to actually put his code on the planet that made him his first million. Similar issues for landing the person/peoples on the planet, but that can be solved. This is the main place to insert speculative dollars, rubles, or whatever the hell we’re spending in the future. And be “we’re” I mean whichever software billionaire takes a break from tennis to say “Fuck it, let’s do it.”

Finally, you cram a couple folks into a Soyuz and kick ‘em into orbit to dock with this structure the way they’ve been doing since the early 60s. Light the candle, and sit back and wait.

Total cost? Maybe a couple billion, maybe a little more.  Shit, let’s say ten and make sure the whole thing has a kick-ass paintjob of a naked lady wrestling a dragon or something on it.

But a TRILLION?

C’mon, NASA.

Rant

We're in the money!

FUCK YEAH, the news says the recession’s over!  Hot damn!  I haven’t checked my 401K yet, but I assume this means that it’s tripled in value back to where it was a couple years ago!  Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to get my next paycheck with it’s big chunk of money that retroactively brings my salary up to where it should be, and I sure am looking forward to having my dollar go a lot further later today when I go buy stuff!

Phew, I thought for sure that my upcoming mortgage payment was going to be late, but it looks like everything’s going to be fixed!

I’ve got friends who don’t read the news because they say it’s prone to making exaggerated claims that don’t affect my day to day life, but they’re saying the recession’s over, so woo-hoo!  I can finally pay off some of that crippling debt!

You know, I don’t have the check right now, but I bet I can probably just take a print-out of the news to the store with me, they should just extend credit based on this fantastic news, right?

Right?!

Rant

One of the most perplexing examples of mob dumbfuckery to show up recently is the “AntiVaxxer” movement.  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically an organized effort to kill off young kids and bring back an age of disease and pestilence among the uneducated and easily conned.

"It's ok if your kids die as long as people think I'm still relevant."

Oh, that’s not how THEY describe it, of course.  Luminaries in their group like Doctor Jenna McCarthy (she is a doctor, right?  I mean, she’s setting health care policy, so she’s qualified, right?) talk about how great it would be to get rid of vaccinations because people aren’t getting sick any more.  The little logic flag that just popped up in your head?  Yeah, that’s just your “profiteering center”, according to Jenna McCarthy and her followers, because that’s the only reason people would support these procedures.  Certainly, it’s irresponsible to make any connection between worldwide vaccination efforts and the huge drop in sickness, right?   Whoops, your “BULLSHIT!” circuit breaker just popped.  Go ahead and reset that, we’ll be discussing some more of their claims shortly.

To the antivaxxer hoards, the fact that worldwide health has gone up in regions where vaccines are administered is incidental to their feelings.  “MERCURY!” they cry, referencing some of the preservatives used, despite the fact that you’ll get roughly the same amount of mercury from eating a small piece of fish.  If you believe their strident pleas, receiving the shot essentially means that mercury will seep through your pores and turn you into a highly toxic, autistic version of  The Silver Surfer.

“Autistic?” you ask, scratching your head.  “Where’d that come from?”  Well, about 15 years ago, Andrew Wakefield published an article in the Lancet making a link between MMR vaccines and autism.  The world reeled!  “ZOMG!!!!” read the headlines, and everywhere, people began to talk about deferring their children’s vaccinations.  ….except that the claims weren’t true and the study was discredited almost immediately when it was discovered that a group of people paid him to say this so they could sue a vaccine company, but the damage had been done.

So, we’re left with the AntiVaxxer movement today.  Their entire belief is based upon the disproven work of a discredited doctor who got caught faking evidence for money….  and they don’t care.

It’s as if stupidity has been bred into a generation of perfectly normal looking people who you don’t realize are batshit crazy until they open their mouths, but then it’s a non-stop torrent of drivel.  Their movement is a sham, sort of a modern day version of not wearing your seatbelt because you want to be “thrown clear of the wreck”.  They point to their own health and say “See?  People just don’t get these sicknesses anymore!”  without a trace of irony about the face that THEY themselves received vaccinations as children.  Also, the causes they take up reflect their ‘crazy levels’ quite nicely too.  This year?  Swine flu.

“Oh noes!” they cry, “the H1N1 vaccine is ‘new and untested’!”  The fuck it is, it’s made the same goddamn way flu vaccines have been constructed for decades.

Is anybody exploring alternative vaccinations?

You know the real reason the H1N1 vaccine is panned, the reason they REALLY subscribe too but don’t mention?  Because some radio host told them the vaccine is part of a government plot to genocide their asses.  What.  The.  Fuck.  Seriously, there are radio hosts out there who talk about body bags and medical camps and “the government is gonna reduce your population to free up land and money!” and they claim the vaccine is part of this conspiracy.  Holy goddamn hell in a handbasket.

This conspiracy theory, of course, is horseshit.  “But why, good sir?” I hear you ask through the whispering tubes of the Internet.  “And how do you know?”  Simple: they’re just not competent enough.

To believe that the US government can put together a big secret plan to kill off most of the population as part of some great conspiracy against its own citizens is to imbue them with skills in leadership, organization, planning, etc that they have consistently failed to demonstrate.  It’s like accusing your dog of being the leader of a world-wide diamond theft cartel.

I could disprove this theory so many different ways, but the sheer lack of ability our government has at doing anything big and secret is such a deal changer, I don’t need to go any further.

So back to the antivaxxers…  it would be funny if they were just making this decision for themselves and dying off, but here’s the rub:  All of these parents saying ‘No vaccinations for my child!”?  They’re vaccinated!  Their parents were not retarded, so they got the various vaccinations when THEY were kids.  The only people who die from horrible, preventable diseases?

Nice fucking job, guys

Their kids.

FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-

Yet strangely, if I were to go out and punch each of these poor excuses for parents in the face for being so viciously, short-sightedly stupid, somehow I would be considered the villain.  There ain’t no justice.

Rant

While collecting my morning gruel, I saw the shirt over to the side here being worn by a fellow grubber.

Now, I’m a huge nerd, so I like me the Star Wars just fine.  Hell, I even waded through almost all of the books over a 5 month period recently to find out what’s been happening to me good ol’ friends Han, Luke, & Leia.  (An aside: Lots of really dumb crap, as it turns out, with just a little good stuff mixed in.  It’s like knowing there’s a small handful of gold nuggets in a barrel of sewage, it’s worth the unpleasantness of sifting through to find ‘em, but you don’t always enjoy the trip).

But…  I’m a Star Wars fan who, like most of my fellows, am able to exist without wearing shirts that immediately announce my undesirability to all women.  I’d prefer they learn that by talking to me, see…

Well, this anonymous breakfaster, with his fashionable camo shorts and optimistically crew-cut hair is not only wearing a dorky Star Wars shirt, but it’s also one of the “Big Dog” series.  “Big Dog“, if you are not familiar with it, has essentially moved into the shirt genre previously occupied by the “Big Johnson” line of apparel.  They’re like jokes, only smaller.  Humor for leotarded people, let’s say.

Now, this might seem like a long post for what’s otherwise a pretty benign issue, but the real problem here is the cheapening effect this has on a very serious subject:

The effectiveness of funny shirts.

Just in case you can't clearly see this silly design in my poorly lit, improperly framed and amateurishly taken iPhone photo

Some of us invest some serious time and thought in selecting shirts that are actually clever and/or funny.  When we wear these shirts instead of something with buttons, we expect people to look at them and be amused.  “Hey, that fat guy is actually slightly less repulsive than I thought because he has a funny shirt!  Ha ha ha!  I would like to have his children” is basically how the thought process should work.  Instead, things like ‘Big Dogs’ shirts have flooded the market with asinine attempts at cleverness that serve to basically bankrupt the comedic economy.

I’m sure that this dude looked at the shirt in some mall shop and said “Hey, that’s some seriously funny shirt.  It says ‘Sith Happens’ which is almost like ‘Shit Happens’, but it is socially acceptable because the word is actually different!  Ha!  Oh, and that Darth Vader figure on the back is actually…  a St. Bernard dog instead of David Prowse (who, as Star War nerds know, was the actual person in the suit, not James Earl “Awesome Voice” Jones) and dogs are FUNNY HAWHAWHAWHAW” to himself, then whipped out his bank card.  “Shopkeeper, good sir, sign me the fuck up for this wicked shirt!  No need for a bag, I shall wear it out of the store!”

Meanwhile, my Threadless shirt of Vader pruning a Death Star-shaped topiary receives an occasional chuckle at best, obviously because people are no longer investing the time to appreciate the sublime humor of T-Shirt art because shirts like that goddamn ‘big dog’ line have ruined it for them.   FFFFFUUUUUU-

If I can reach just one person with this rant who might otherwise stray in this fashion, I’ve done my duty.  Once you start down this ridiculous path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

Dumb, Pictures, Rant

What kind of deity would allow the following in a world where all the fat fuckers like me are trying to lose weight?

I read an article about how ducks and geese being fed bread at lakes are developing a nutritional malady called ‘Angel Wings‘ that leads to deformed bone structure because of the crazy mix of calories in the high-carb treats.  This, of course, merely encourages me to feed them more, because I fucking hate birds.

I’ll write more about that later, right now I’m working on a plan.  This is what I have so far:

1. Put a bunch of spoons into a cup.
2. Tape the cup next to the ‘Ready-to-eat Cheesecake filling’ display.
3. …

Actually, I guess that’s the whole plan.  I thought it would be more elaborate, but that’s pretty much it.

“Why?” I can hear you asking (actually, that may be the medication speaking, it seems unlikely that I’d actually hear anyone ask me that while I’m in the process of writing this).  Well, I figure there may be an alternate approach to the whole weight-loss thing that other people haven’t considered: Fucking up the grading curve.

If I can just get everyone ELSE to get fatter, then suddenly, I don’t look as huge, right?  This is basic relativity physics here.  If everyone else gains 20lbs, then me being 50lbs overweight becomes 30lbs overweight without me having to put down my cake.

FUCK YEAH.

The german blood in me loves the efficiency of this, because if I do decide to lose weight, the actual amount I need to lose is almost halved.  And if I get some sort of wasting-away disease, I might actually transition to “skinny” (well, relatively speaking) even faster!

Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes is Latin for “Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants”.  Also, it sounds fucking wicked when you use a different language, because as a nation, we’re a bunch of dumbasses who automatically assume that anything other than English or Spanish is dripping with brilliance.  Anyhow, while usually used as a metaphor for your achievements being possible because of the hard work others did before you, I’m wondering if there’s a semi-literal interpretation I can use once my plan takes place.

Of course, in my version, ‘dwarfs’ becomes “Cool Skinny Dudes” and “giants” becomes “newly fat(ter) fucks who ate a bunch of cheesecake filling”.  Oh, and “standing on the shoulders” becomes “fucking your girlfriend”.

Rant

I’m flying out on a business trip in a couple weeks, and due to what must be a hilarious sequence of computer errors, I’ve somehow been booked First Class for the flight out.  I say “computer errors” because

1. My company does not do this on purpose.
2. The people who would do this as a favor for some folks wouldn’t for me, for I am a raving douche bag.

So, this leaves me with a conundrum.  I can either sit back and enjoy the flight, staying classy and having a great time up front with the big kids.  Or…..

I could be an asshole.

Now, I don’t need to be a jerk to the stewardesses.  There’s nothing I can do on purpose that can be more offensive to them than my presence and personality already brings to the table.  I’m an overweight computer nerd with fucked up facial hair (“Check me out, I’m Wolverine’s fat brother!”) with the fashion sense of a stray dog covered in garbage.  I’m terrified of any social interaction that doesn’t involve my arcade character tea-bagging an opponent over the internet, so my ability in face to face conversation is… limited.  I’m 6’2, which means I tower over most women, so I usually avoid eye contact to avoid “looking menacing”.  Unfortunately, this usually backfires when it looks to them like I’m staring at their chest instead.  This is twice as likely when I’m sitting down and they’re standing.  Also, by the way, a view that is twice as nice.

Finally, my use of technology takes what would otherwise be a casual social crutch and turns it into a rusty nail of stupidity.  For example, I’ve spent hours reading my iPhone while holding it in my lap.  To me, this is perfectly reasonable, and it may even sound like a fairly normal if geeky thing to do.  The problem is…  the iPhone is invisible to everyone else, so to them, I’m ‘that dude that keeps staring at his crotch and occasionally poking it’.

So…  this aside, what else can I do to properly take advantage of this increasingly unlikely seating arrangement?  I’ve put some thought into this, and I’ve decided it’s time to be…  The Judge.

A little known fact about human psychology, we seem to be wired to find the judgment of strangers somehow more relevant and important than the judgment of those we know.  It sounds retarded, and it probably is, but for some reason, if your sister looks at what you’re wearing and says “Did a 3 year old child pick out your clothes today?” you can dismiss it.  Bah, sis, whatever.  But when someone on the street looks at your clothes and gives a little smirk, you might feel like ice water just poured down your spine.  “Holy shit!  A stranger looked at me….  and I failed their test!”

I don’t have an explanation for this (well, I do, but it mostly involves your mother and how fat she is, and also shut up) but I’ve seen it enough to be convinced that it’s true, so perhaps it’s time to take advantage of this situation and try it out in public.

The Plan (because without a plan, you’re just rude.  WITH a plan, you can be a true asshole)

1. Dress snotty.  This means, as best as I can tell,  ‘black turtleneck and khakis’.  This is, of course, if television has taught me anything that porn hasn’t.
2. Take advantage of early boarding, get to my seat before everyone else.  This should be cake.  (waves ticket) First Class, remember?
3. Don’t shave.  No reason, I just fucking hate shaving.
   Now the hard stuff:
4. As each person boards, look them up and down.
5. Make brief eye contact so they’re looking at me.
6. Immediately break eye contact and smirk while shaking my head slightly.

That’s it.  Nothing fancy.

What, you were expecting Isaac Einstein?  No, it’s simple, you’re doing one small thing.  You’re judging them on some basis that’s beyond their understanding (because you don’t have one) and they failed your standards.

So…  I’ll judge them.  I’ll send each of the cattle back into their pens behind me with the sudden thought that maybe they took a wrong turn in life.  Because not only did a stranger evaluate them on some unknown metric, that stranger was obviously respectable and wise because he was sitting in First Class.  The fact that he’ll be riding back home in coach two days later doesn’t matter because they don’t know.  They’ll slouch back to their seats and sit down.  The Air Mall catalogs will mock them from the seatback centimeters in front of their noses, and maybe one or two of them will actually cry a little.

Fuck yeah, I’m gonna get me some tears.  Then, back to reading books on my crotch.

Rant, Stories