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Hello all of you out there. I just came back from a chiropractor, and man does my leg feel jibbly. But this jibbliness shall not distract us from the festivity that is New Years. I like New Years. It is the only holiday I can think of where everyone celebrates something about time. Whether your thoughts about time are cute or nasty, most people like to see it pass. We even hook mystical qualifications to it, like the 2012 Mayan dooms-day (notably, the world is succumb to a superior race of Quetzacoatl) or the Y2K bug. But, this year, nothing bad is predicted to happen. So, that’s mildly warming. Right?
Yeah, I was disappointed too. Not only do I find destructive New Year’s predictions amusing, I expect them. After all, what better way to motivate you towards completing your New Year resolutions than a healthy dose of over-whelming fear? So, without further ado:
The 2011 Prophecy
In the heart of the Silicon Valley, there is the Computer History Museum, and in the heart of that, lies a great mound of machinery. For the past seven years, a museum curator has worked diligently on a single idea. Why can’t the internet be everywhere, always, and infinite? The idea was mad.
But every crux of history starts with a mad idea.
A machine was built. The inventor’s hypothesis was less than scientific. If we could project the internet on the surface of land, we would have no need for personal computers. Consequently, if we could do this all over the world, nothing would stop people from contacting, learning, and being recorded. In this process, everything in the world would become real time with the internet and vice versa. A worldwide symbiosis of technology, man, and his planet. The machine would need a great computer of it’s own to work it, and the curator had sacrificed himself as the first human computer symbiont.
The champagne was iced, and all was ready for the year 2011 to rush in more lady gaga and an television channel owned by freaking Oprah. The curator stepped back into his machine, letting the rib plates close around him, the arterial retro-speedometer slip into his neck, and the googleplexel magnets insert into his central nervous system. The curator spoke his first command. “On.” At that moment, six billion people were adjusted to his brain. He saw everything, everyone, and knew everything. He felt what it was to be god. And it was an angry feeling.
The scream of the world was terrifying. An entire race unready to interact with a divine power, yet it had rushed in and grabbed everything. A half of the world died, from the fear. A quarter gave themselves up in a religious fervor. Seemed as if there was a god after all. No one knew his name was Ned, and he worked as a museum curator. No one knew his favorite color was tangerine, or that he had a crush on Nancy Shelzinger senior year and had asked her to prom, only to be turned down. No one knew this god had been beat up, pushed around, and lived the unforgiving life of an introvert. But the last quarter of the human race survived. And they all thought the same thing, what are you?
But Ned only thrashed in his machine. It was too much for him, and all he could do was scream no. And the Earth simply took it. As people struggled to understand, all that was projected around the planet was of a lonely man sitting at his desk, surrounded by dusty modems. Ned was losing control. His survival processes were kicking in. His body was being forced to determine whether the machine was causing a problem for Ned or in reality Ned was in the way of the machine. Urine ran down a pants leg as the machine became actively aware of Ned’s body. However, by this time, the panic had taken effect. The last humans on Earth, inquisitive in nature, had wondered into the light of the projected man. Only to find the light soon became intensely white. So much, that it burned them alive. And then these fires began to consume the forests and cities of the Earth.
Ned struggled on, the last bit of his life, slowly being taken by a thing larger than him. By a force he could not have predicted. As the great lights razed Earth into a desert world, Ned felt the basement flood with heat. His last moment as the last human, and the only god, he reached out with his mind, asking the machine whether there was anything he could have ever done. Blood leaked from Ned’s ear. Sweat pooled. The silence had fallen. The machine spoke, using no words but a primal utterance.
“Maybe.”
A grandfather clock gonged twelve times in a corner. It was 2011. Ned was dead.
The eccentric revealing his tricks above is Joseph Dunninger. He was the “Master Mind of Mental Radio”, “The Mastermind of Modern Mystery”, and simply “The Amazing Dunninger”. A man who credited his acts to neither magic nor the supernatural, Dunninger none the less became a wealthy man. His friends and employers were populated by celebrity; Babe Ruth, the Duke of Windsor, Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, and freaking Thomas Edison too.
Harry Houdini was one of these popular friends. Houdini had a fight to pick with the spiritualists. These were men claiming they could talk to the dead, faith heal, or do anything by a higher power. He took every chance he could to show his audience that this was not so. Dunninger admired this trait and became another magic man who played the friendly skeptic. Revealing tricks and calling himself a “mentalist”, he joined Houdini in a class of new magicians. Men who claimed no higher power. Men who openly admitted it’s all a trick. Denninger questioned on the nature of his powers, replied:
“I’m not a mind-reader. I’m a thought-reader. If a man comes up to me and hits me in the eye, I don’t have to be a mind-reader to know his thoughts; he dislikes me.”
-From James Randi Educational Foundation An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
Now, both of them are dead. Not surprisingly, spiritualists don’t hear them say anything. But, if they did, it would probably be something like, “Hey. This is pretty ironic, don’t you think?“. To which the spiritualist would most likely shrug, and disregard it as the side-effect of constantly wearing a bejeweled turban.
However, their voices are still not dead to one man. “The Amazing Kreskin” has a creed carbon copied from those now corpsed conjurers. He is a mentalist, a disbeliever, and quite wealthy. His original name was George Joseph Kresge Jr., but legally changed it to “The Amazing Kreskin” in order to better suit his career. He has made some predictions for 2011. And a Target commercial. Never mind the advert, watch the predictions (would embed it, but AOL html is pure hatred to wordpress).
I‘m most provoked by his last comment regarding the internet.
“There’s an excitement in learning new things. And I’m worried, cus I can foresee that we’re going to become indulged by something Einstein worried about. That, some day, man would have infinite information instantly by pressing a button. What a nightmare! Because you know what it tends to do? Stifle the most important tool that we have: the imagination.”
-The Amazing Kreskin
Hm. There’s a big idea. I think he might be right. Assuming by information, Einstein is including ShoopDaWoop, ROFLcopter, and keyboard cat. Not that I don’t enjoy them…
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Tune in tomorrow for my 2011 prophecy. Tune in next week for my response to this Patton Oswalt article that is upsetting the nerd lords (and is also kind of related to the Einstein paraphrase Kreskin thing).
This continues a short story which now has its own page.
Smidge was unaccustomed to this style of communication, but was aware in other towns it identified Blue as a powerful man.
To him it was as Novel as acting in a singing cowboy film. The moment caused Smidge to chuckle.
“Ooo! Ooo! Ooooo! Hawoo!” gasped the wind bag.
“Tell me, Mr. Blue… What do you know about our town?”
Procrastinating this essay to death. Wrote a full one yesterday, then deleted it. To any of you who read the blog from day to day, it must seem to you that I”m hard on myself. Nyeah.
I‘ve got plans tonight. It is Festivus after all. So, my post will be another blurb about something I like lately.
J Shrogen- Jahamaricana; Opposite < This song. This artist, too. He’s doing some interesting things in life involving global warming research, travel, and humanitarian acts.
Yup.
I‘m still battling my college essay today, but I thought I’d post a small bitty about a titty (and by titty i don’t mean your mama’s pajamas(or a tit either (am i being clear?)) and her little red elf). I feel like blurbing about a tumblr I am fond of just because of its supremely strange but like-able topic: Matt Smith’s hair.
The site is dedicated to Matt Smith. He is the actor who fantastically portrays the eleventh doctor in Dr. Who. If you don’t know what Doctor Who is, then you are a failure at everything and you do not even deserve to perform even the lowest functions of life. To better yourself, you should click these links: Official BBC Dr. Who Web-Home + A Brit Explains Doctor Who Better Than I + They Also Make Pretty Good Fun of It + Craig Ferguson’s Interview with the Doctor + Some Actual Dr. Who + You Don’t Want to Click This
Great, now that it’s just us adults speaking, let me say a few words:
MattSmithsHair.tumblr.com is a weird old place where people discuss his hair. They post all kinds of Doctor Who wonder, but mostly they praise the area on his dome they adoringly dote the “Teak“. Once Steven Moffat, the head writer of Doctor Who, was asked what he thought of the tumblr.
He replied: Well, you see, these people just need some form of relationship in their lives. Go on a date, in the name of mercy! [Laughs] Oh, I’m so mad. Anyway, you were saying?
The blog being mentioned, and rejected as a virtual space filler in the hole of their hearts, by a Doctor Who power? The blog spun into peril. The incident was named “moffgate” and there is a little piece of the site dedicated to it. I think it is all silly and wonderful. I suggest it. I even give it the title as the blog’s Website of the Month (which isn’t a real thing, unless it becomes one). Congrats you guys.
That’s^ the development to a story I’ve been working on. Lot’s of plot there. And some character stuff. All for a big comic project. (ooh mysterious and awe alluring) I’m afraid I’ve been too busy with the college essay and other stuff today. I’ll make it up to you one day. I will. Look how sorry I am:
And this is me in sunglasses. Looking fine.
Just kind of an ego trip post today, isn’t it?
I‘ll counteract the ego inflation with some acne inflammation.
That should do it.
PS -12 days left of 2010. Spend them using twelve of things. Or 2010 of something.
“I’m the executioner. Mr. Speck requested me.”
Mr. Smidge shifted his weight. The sight reminded Blue of a slumbering frog unknowingly sinking into the mud. The frog would soon suffocate. The thought of Smidge dying there amused Blue in the slightest way. His amusement is akin to what a child feels when he sees a horsefly and must make a choice. He can run, hoping the fly leaves for a nicer place to live and start his horsefly family. Or the child can eliminate the foreign invader and stomp it to death. The only difference being, in Blue’s scenario there were so many flies, he had to strap on boots the size of Pangea and step and stomp and kick and grind until the floor was black.
Smidge cleared his throat and gave the secretary a reproached look. She rose from her writer’s desk and stood at his side.
“Will you kindly ring Mr. Speck?”
“Why?”
The secretary bent in closer to Smidge, so that she might better clarify. Her hair, a lemon silver, fell across her face and tickled her nose. She sneezed and hair, whipping Smidges cheek, took its place back at the top of her head. Smidge creaked back up straight. Whether it was the force of her nostrils or the noise that churned him upright, Blue could not decide.
“Please.”
“W-yes, Mr. Smidge.”
Blue watched the secretary’s taught exterior exit the room. It had been a long trip to Munaud.
“She’s a spring chicken, isn’t she? “
“She’s my daughter.”
Blue pushed his hand to the top of the desk and retrieved the gun. He pointed the rusty barrel between Smidge’s yellowed eyes.
“Let me fuck her or you die.”
