Recently, I have been employed by the government to solve the problem of unemployment. Because of this, my job is already partially completed, as at least one person in the world is now no longer unemployed. With this in mind, I literally CANNOT fail as there is already a slight margin of success, and so I really don’t have to work that hard. It is a pretty sweet deal, and I am able to simply wander the streets, interrogating vagrants. This is little different to my regular schedule, but now I am paid for it, and I get to wear a badge.
Between my roughing-up of vagrants, however, I have had time to ponder and muse on this subject. Time, as they say, is money. If my interrogations have taught me nothing else, it is that the unemployed have nothing but time. If this is the case, WHY ARE POOR PEOPLE STILL SO POOR? I think I’ve pretty much solved that problem, I just have to wait for the universe’s logic to kick in and I’m done. With my copious amounts of free time (and thus, free money), I have decided to create a handy job-seeking guide for the unemployed amongst you.
Step one is to apply for a job. Any job, it doesn’t really matter which. Find something and apply for it, chances are you will not get this job, but it will help you get your foot in the door, and believe me when I say that putting your foot through the door makes a strong impression on a prospective employer. Kick their door down when going for the interview. If you get the job, great! Be sure kick down the door to your new office, to show them who the boss is (note: it is not you yet, but maybe one day, if you kick down enough doors.) If you don’t get the job, and this is likely to happen, be sure to leave your resume for any other jobs they might be looking to fill. Like the old proverb says, when one door closes, it’s probably a good opportunity to kick it down.
Step two is the actual interview. Don’t be nervous – most recruitment agents are genetically engineered to smell fear. The release of adrenaline associated with your nervousness will be picked up by them, causing a surge in their dopamine levels. Instead, threaten them with a knife to show them you mean business, regardless of what the business actually is (note: if the business involves actual knives, such as a restaurant or knife-fighting ring, you may like to bring in an elephant gun to really make your point clear.)
Once you have failed at obtaining three jobs, it is time to fake some credentials and apply for a government grant on how to solve unemployment. This dissertation completes the requirements of my government contract, and my ten thousand dollars and I will bid you good luck, and happy job hunting.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Friday, March 19, 2010
A dissertation on the longtime historical feud between science and sports, which I suppose is a type of science
Since the dawn of time, or, at the very least, the dawn of time-outs, science and sports have been rivals. Science is the geek, and sports is the jock. Sports is popular. Everyone likes sports. Science isn’t popular, but it does the important work. And when it’s not doing important work, it is fighting goblins and ogres with a +3 broadsword, which, I think you will agree is also important work, at least to the peasants that are about to be eaten.
But where did it all begin, you ask? Scientists were not always the down-trodden underdog of the sporting world. Sport is, in essence, applied physics. Physics, as I should not need to tell you, is a type of science. It should not surprise you, then, that scientists were once magnificent players, dominating whatever game they set their mind to, and their minds were considerable.
Tall, muscular, intelligent and ethically unimpeded, the scientists rose to fame through their legendary prowess. They calculated the angle, momentum and speed of a ball, the precise area to hit it, or catch it, or stab it with a rapier. They knew how to vault over a pole with ease, to illicit the best response from the crowd; they even knew how to determine the atomic composition of the trophies they won (most of them were made from Hyper-brass).
The scientists, it seemed, had the unfair advantage. After many heated debates (these are much like regular debates, but they take place over a giant Bunsen-burner) amongst the United Nations Ethics, Quality and Unfairness in Athletic Leagues committee, it was decided that the more intelligent the scientists were, the less muscular and physically dexterous they could be. Some scientists, like Professor Stephen Hawking, were outraged, and rebelled against the judgment, using science to grow new muscle tissue from pig stem-cells. These scientists were punished for their hubris, and that is the reason Stephen Hawking is crippled and enfeebled to this day. It is also why Stephen Hawking always smells like bacon.
Scientists grew to resent sports, especially when the sporting community started appropriating scientific concepts to make sports more engaging. Perhaps the best example of this is the ‘standing wave’, also known as the Mexican wave, for its inventor; Professor Charles Mexican, a Welsh scientist and occasional racist. Professor Mexican was outraged at this new use for his standing wave, which had previously been used only to speed up the transmission of polio between minorities.
This negative attitude towards sports has changed, however, with the invention of Science-ball. Science-ball is a new type of sport that only a scientist may play. Normal athletes cannot comprehend the advanced scientific concepts that govern the rules of the game, or the fact that the rules of the game can be changed at any time as long as whoever made up the rule is discredited by a group of scientists that are able to submit a peer-reviewed journal article whilst hitting a beam of positrons with an energised bat made of radium. The game is difficult, largely because it is impossible to predict where the ball will be at any one time. Instead, scientists hold a Heisenberg glove into a probability cloud that represents where the ball may be found at certain times. When a pile of Uranium-238 has decayed by three half-lives, a buzzer is sounded and the Heisenberg-glove is empirically tested using Infra-red spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance to determine whether or not the ball has been caught. The game is then over, and the results are published in six to eight months with detailed graphs, diagrams and a reference list that spans eight pages. Of course, the rules are constantly in a state of flux, and rival scientists may try to sabotage the player’s attempt at catching the ball (possibly by releasing mutated insects, infectious viruses or laser-wielding robots onto the field). Very few people have been killed, but I feel it is only a matter of time before someone discredits Dr. Steinberg’s theory that murder is not inherently entertaining. Did I mention that Steinberg is a notorious rapist and a drunkard? Also, his scientific credentials are highly suspect.
Until next time, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Love in the Time of Timetravel
My friends, the life of a superscientist is a lonely one, and I must say that fewer women find my status attractive now than they did in 1873 (I travel back to that time occasionally when I get ‘the vapours’). As such, finding a female counterpart can be difficult, especially now that there are sexual harassment lawsuits preventing me from courting the few female scientists employed at my laboratory. It is because of this that I experimented with gender differentiation in cloning. Yes, I know, it was ill-advised, but I sought to engineer a female version of myself. Rutherford Joans was her name (I know that this naming structure is unconventional, but let’s face it, the name Rutherford is an under-used one, and I’m trying to bring it back in style) and my heart melted when I first saw her. Cardiac liquification is an unfortunate side-effect of seeing your own clone, but luckily mine was intelligent enough to reverse the process and my heart is back to the solid state it prefers to be in.
Our courtship was an unusual one - as we were essentially identical, conversation was limited to stating various topics and then nodding in agreement. This left more time for sexual intercourse, which was awkward and uncomfortable for both parties, but I am told this is normal in married couples, so logically we deduced that we were ahead of romantic schedule. I am sure that most of my readers (all three of them) are condemning me right now for this shocking display of what may be constituted as ‘incest’, but you should no doubt be aware that clones are always infertile, so there was no risk of impregnation and genetic abominations. Additionally, I performed a hysterectomy on Rutherford Joans whilst she was still in the cloning tank. Also I am sterile due to years of working with plutonium.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Well, actually, it was meant to be, as I intentionally designed the experiment myself and engineered her from scratch, but the relationship did not work out. That is what I meant to say. Opposites attract, goes the old adage, and sadly the inverse also applies. My female counterpart and I were electromagnetically repelled from each other and flung across the room, which made the sex even more difficult. Holding hands was significantly more complicated than usual, unless we used statically charged gloves, and even then the electric shocks made it too painful to enjoy much. Eventually we realised that our relationship would not work, and we parted ways. Then I harvested her body for resources and engineered some lab assistants to help me build a death ray. It’s sad, though in a way, I’ll always have a reminder of the times we shared together, and every time I molecularly disassemble one of the workers with an enormous laser, I’ll think of her and smile.
Until next time, dear readers, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN ROMANCE!
Our courtship was an unusual one - as we were essentially identical, conversation was limited to stating various topics and then nodding in agreement. This left more time for sexual intercourse, which was awkward and uncomfortable for both parties, but I am told this is normal in married couples, so logically we deduced that we were ahead of romantic schedule. I am sure that most of my readers (all three of them) are condemning me right now for this shocking display of what may be constituted as ‘incest’, but you should no doubt be aware that clones are always infertile, so there was no risk of impregnation and genetic abominations. Additionally, I performed a hysterectomy on Rutherford Joans whilst she was still in the cloning tank. Also I am sterile due to years of working with plutonium.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Well, actually, it was meant to be, as I intentionally designed the experiment myself and engineered her from scratch, but the relationship did not work out. That is what I meant to say. Opposites attract, goes the old adage, and sadly the inverse also applies. My female counterpart and I were electromagnetically repelled from each other and flung across the room, which made the sex even more difficult. Holding hands was significantly more complicated than usual, unless we used statically charged gloves, and even then the electric shocks made it too painful to enjoy much. Eventually we realised that our relationship would not work, and we parted ways. Then I harvested her body for resources and engineered some lab assistants to help me build a death ray. It’s sad, though in a way, I’ll always have a reminder of the times we shared together, and every time I molecularly disassemble one of the workers with an enormous laser, I’ll think of her and smile.
Until next time, dear readers, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN ROMANCE!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Apocalypse Now. Or, more accurately: Apocalypse Sometime in the Future
I apologise for not updating my blog more. Due to my rather ‘select’ group of readers, however, I suspect this is not the end of the world.
The end of the world involves many more cannibals and in-flight magazines. There are many ‘theories’ as to how the apocalypse will arrive. The most popular (by vote) of these is that of nuclear holocaust. The nuclear holocaust is a scenario in which the reanimated corpse of Hitler attempts to destroy every Jew on the planet with a nuclear warhead. The thrifty or bearded readers among you will almost certainly be mutated by some form of lingering radiation, while the rest of us will escape relatively unharmed. HOWEVER, the electromagnetic pulse will disable all electronic devices, and, if movies have shown us anything, it is that society will quickly devolve into post-apocalyptic tribes of punks and cannibals.
In the event of nuclear holocaust, you yourself may be tempted to resort to cannibalism, but I warn you, DO NOT DO IT. Once you start, you cannot stop and will eventually become just another irradiated flesh junky. Instead of eating them, I suggest experimenting on humans as though they were lab rats (due to the radiation, actual rats will have grown up to eight times their original size, and so it will be impractical and dangerous to use them.)
If you really need food that badly (and I assume you will) I offer you this advice: airplanes. Grounded airplanes are a treasure-trove of salted peanuts. These will provide all the nutrition you need - do not be fooled by the ‘food pyramid’ you may have heard about. This is merely a scam used by Egyptian dieticians to sell books that are not even written in hieroglyphics. Airplanes also contain enormous back-catalogues of in-flight magazines, which can withstand nuclear blasts completely unharmed and are one of the few materials which will never biodegrade. Ever. They are ideal for building shelters and little forts, as well as providing some light reading.
Eventually you will want to do one of two things: go back in time to avert the blast and save the world, or make the best of things as they are and rebuild. I would suggest avoiding time travel, as it is rife with paradoxes WHICH YOU SHOULD KNOW BY NOW. I HAVE ONLY BEEN BLOGGING ABOUT IT FOR TWO YEARS.
Anyway, don’t travel back in time. Chances are that if Hitler came back, nothing you can do will stop him from coming back in any alternate history. Unless he was never killed in the first place, in which case he’s now immortal, so well done, genius. I suggest making the most of life in your post-apocalyptic shelter. Find some form of weaponry (may I suggest science?) to defend yourself against savages, cannibals and religious fanatics.
Once you have tested the structural integrity of your shelter by banging on it with a large stick for about three hours, start making it a little cozier by adding a throw-rug or some cushions. If cushions don’t exist in your time, litter the corpses of your defeated enemies at the outskirts of your territory. This will ward off trespassers, as well as boost your chi (dead bodies are rated highly in the ancient science of feng shui.)
Remember: do not drink the water. It does not contain all the electrolytes your body needs. If possible, break into an abandoned Gatorade factory. These factories often have Coca-Cola vending machines in their lobbies, which will supply your body with everything it needs (apart from love, obviously, but the coin slot should have enough spare change to buy you twenty minutes with one of the cheaper mutant prostitutes available – keep in mind, her face being slightly melted doesn’t lessen the attractiveness of her having two and a half breasts.)
You may find yourself growing bored, so why not take up a hobby? May I suggest surviving? Or perhaps dedicating yourself to the pursuit of science? Either to decontaminate the environment (this is more women’s work, so don’t feel that this is urgent) or to breed a race of super mutants (also known as ‘real’ science) who will fight your enemies until you achieve total dominance of the sprawling wasteland that was once a city.
After you’ve succeeded, just sit back and wait for the inevitable uprising of the mutants, before you are torn limb from limb and consumed in a cannibalistic orgy. Alternatively, offer them some peanuts. I trust you remembered to genetically engineer them with a fatal peanut allergy?
Keep these tips in mind, and you should have no trouble surviving the next nuclear holocaust. THAT’S RIGHT, THERE HAVE BEEN ONES BEFORE. But until next time, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
The end of the world involves many more cannibals and in-flight magazines. There are many ‘theories’ as to how the apocalypse will arrive. The most popular (by vote) of these is that of nuclear holocaust. The nuclear holocaust is a scenario in which the reanimated corpse of Hitler attempts to destroy every Jew on the planet with a nuclear warhead. The thrifty or bearded readers among you will almost certainly be mutated by some form of lingering radiation, while the rest of us will escape relatively unharmed. HOWEVER, the electromagnetic pulse will disable all electronic devices, and, if movies have shown us anything, it is that society will quickly devolve into post-apocalyptic tribes of punks and cannibals.
In the event of nuclear holocaust, you yourself may be tempted to resort to cannibalism, but I warn you, DO NOT DO IT. Once you start, you cannot stop and will eventually become just another irradiated flesh junky. Instead of eating them, I suggest experimenting on humans as though they were lab rats (due to the radiation, actual rats will have grown up to eight times their original size, and so it will be impractical and dangerous to use them.)
If you really need food that badly (and I assume you will) I offer you this advice: airplanes. Grounded airplanes are a treasure-trove of salted peanuts. These will provide all the nutrition you need - do not be fooled by the ‘food pyramid’ you may have heard about. This is merely a scam used by Egyptian dieticians to sell books that are not even written in hieroglyphics. Airplanes also contain enormous back-catalogues of in-flight magazines, which can withstand nuclear blasts completely unharmed and are one of the few materials which will never biodegrade. Ever. They are ideal for building shelters and little forts, as well as providing some light reading.
Eventually you will want to do one of two things: go back in time to avert the blast and save the world, or make the best of things as they are and rebuild. I would suggest avoiding time travel, as it is rife with paradoxes WHICH YOU SHOULD KNOW BY NOW. I HAVE ONLY BEEN BLOGGING ABOUT IT FOR TWO YEARS.
Anyway, don’t travel back in time. Chances are that if Hitler came back, nothing you can do will stop him from coming back in any alternate history. Unless he was never killed in the first place, in which case he’s now immortal, so well done, genius. I suggest making the most of life in your post-apocalyptic shelter. Find some form of weaponry (may I suggest science?) to defend yourself against savages, cannibals and religious fanatics.
Once you have tested the structural integrity of your shelter by banging on it with a large stick for about three hours, start making it a little cozier by adding a throw-rug or some cushions. If cushions don’t exist in your time, litter the corpses of your defeated enemies at the outskirts of your territory. This will ward off trespassers, as well as boost your chi (dead bodies are rated highly in the ancient science of feng shui.)
Remember: do not drink the water. It does not contain all the electrolytes your body needs. If possible, break into an abandoned Gatorade factory. These factories often have Coca-Cola vending machines in their lobbies, which will supply your body with everything it needs (apart from love, obviously, but the coin slot should have enough spare change to buy you twenty minutes with one of the cheaper mutant prostitutes available – keep in mind, her face being slightly melted doesn’t lessen the attractiveness of her having two and a half breasts.)
You may find yourself growing bored, so why not take up a hobby? May I suggest surviving? Or perhaps dedicating yourself to the pursuit of science? Either to decontaminate the environment (this is more women’s work, so don’t feel that this is urgent) or to breed a race of super mutants (also known as ‘real’ science) who will fight your enemies until you achieve total dominance of the sprawling wasteland that was once a city.
After you’ve succeeded, just sit back and wait for the inevitable uprising of the mutants, before you are torn limb from limb and consumed in a cannibalistic orgy. Alternatively, offer them some peanuts. I trust you remembered to genetically engineer them with a fatal peanut allergy?
Keep these tips in mind, and you should have no trouble surviving the next nuclear holocaust. THAT’S RIGHT, THERE HAVE BEEN ONES BEFORE. But until next time, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
A Brief History and/or Future of Time Travel
Time travel is problematic, what with all the paradoxes, grammatical uncertainty and incestuous hijinks that inevitably ensue. As such, I resolved to invent a new method of time travel that avoided these issues altogether.
Using a thin sheet of plastic wrapping (commonly used to preserve sandwiches during space flight) to cover an ordinary spacecraft, I developed a machine capable of temporal intangibility.
Temporal intangibility, as you all should know, is the quality of being unaffected by the passage of time. Essentially it is the quantum mechanics equivalent of MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” if it were an ode to time itself, and not merely to all of the player-haters out there in the ‘ghetto’.
By initiating the temporal intangibility, the spacecraft (and anything inside) is completely unaffected by time until the mechanism is disengaged. In doing so, I can travel forward in time without aging or subjecting myself to populist cultural trends such as electro-shock therapy and the Macarena (oddly enough, both trends cause similar muscular spasms in the participant.)
Travelling backwards through time, however, is considerably more difficult. I would, in theory, have to force the entire universe to do everything in reverse for a certain period of time. This would be easy for stars and celestial bodies – they do very little and are widely regarded as galactic layabouts. Humans, however, are notorious for their stubbornness at doing everything forwards. Walking, talking (with the notable exception of satanic recording artists) and eating (again with the notable exception of the bulimic, alcoholic or Ancient Roman crowds) are all done forwards. Sexual ejaculation would be particularly unpleasant to complete in reverse, and is the primary reason for my hesitancy to travel back in time. Also everything is monochrome once you go past the 1930’s and having experienced the world in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOUR, I cannot – or will not - go back to the way things used to be.
It is unfortunate, then, that once you go forward in time, you will be unable to go back. That is why my machine is currently untested, and so I do not know if it actually works. That has not, however, stopped me from selling it to a six year old boy in Scandinavia. His parents miss him dearly.
Until next time, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
Using a thin sheet of plastic wrapping (commonly used to preserve sandwiches during space flight) to cover an ordinary spacecraft, I developed a machine capable of temporal intangibility.
Temporal intangibility, as you all should know, is the quality of being unaffected by the passage of time. Essentially it is the quantum mechanics equivalent of MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” if it were an ode to time itself, and not merely to all of the player-haters out there in the ‘ghetto’.
By initiating the temporal intangibility, the spacecraft (and anything inside) is completely unaffected by time until the mechanism is disengaged. In doing so, I can travel forward in time without aging or subjecting myself to populist cultural trends such as electro-shock therapy and the Macarena (oddly enough, both trends cause similar muscular spasms in the participant.)
Travelling backwards through time, however, is considerably more difficult. I would, in theory, have to force the entire universe to do everything in reverse for a certain period of time. This would be easy for stars and celestial bodies – they do very little and are widely regarded as galactic layabouts. Humans, however, are notorious for their stubbornness at doing everything forwards. Walking, talking (with the notable exception of satanic recording artists) and eating (again with the notable exception of the bulimic, alcoholic or Ancient Roman crowds) are all done forwards. Sexual ejaculation would be particularly unpleasant to complete in reverse, and is the primary reason for my hesitancy to travel back in time. Also everything is monochrome once you go past the 1930’s and having experienced the world in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOUR, I cannot – or will not - go back to the way things used to be.
It is unfortunate, then, that once you go forward in time, you will be unable to go back. That is why my machine is currently untested, and so I do not know if it actually works. That has not, however, stopped me from selling it to a six year old boy in Scandinavia. His parents miss him dearly.
Until next time, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Eye of Newton
Yes, my friends, I have not posted in a while. You will forgive me, however, because I have implanted subliminal programming into your subconscious mind that forces you to do so. You will also forgive me because I have a good reason.
I have been teaching. "Teaching what?", the uneducated of you may ask. "Teaching SCIENCE!", I will reply. Or did reply. Just then. That was my reply. Anyway, I have been teaching science at a Unified Neurological Implantation facility, or UNI. This is apparently a place where the young and ignorant go to receive knowledge, which is directly implanted into their brains via pumps and lasers. Everything is done with pumps and lasers now, even lunch.
But how best to teach the youth of today? Surely conventional methods are ineffective, as young people dress and spell so poorly. The best way to learn, goes the old adage, is to teach. I have posited that the inverse of such a law would also be true. Thus, I have enrolled in my own class as a student, in order to teach to the best of my ability.
I will enlighten you as to the observations I have made in my experiment thus far.
Day One: Very little happened. No sign of teacher. Students became restless. Sat in lecture hall for a good three hours before deciding that there would be no lesson today.
Day Two: Similar observations. Still no 'educating' taking place.
Day Three: A 'substitute' teacher showed up, and attempted to direct the class. The result is mixed at best. A largely theoretical approach was taken, with NO explosions at all.
Day Four: Again the substitute showed up to 'teach'. No chemicals were mixed, and few - if any - loud exclamations were issued whilst holding a beaker triumphantly. Beginning to question the legitimacy of the supposed 'science' content of this course. My portable telephone activated whilst in class - embarrassing for all involved. The caller asked why I have not shown up to teach the class, or called in sick. I inform them that I am a mere student, and that they have the wrong number.
Day Five: Still no explosions. I interrupt the 'lecture' at several points to question this - only response being laughter. Upon questioning the credentials of the teacher, I was thrown out. Teacher seems to resent the use of the words "talentless hack".
Day Six: Lecture is difficult to hear through the solid wooden doors. Attempts to blow up the door were ineffective. Recommend use of actual explosives tomorrow.
Day Seven: No class. Apparently some sort of alarm was sounded, and the students were sent home.
Day Eight: Class resumes, but I am indisposed. I have been called to meet with the Dean of Students. Attempts to straighten this whole mess out were met with confusion. Perhaps I will have to teach the teachers how to teach science, before they will let me teach science.
Day Nine: I throw the substitute teacher out of MY classroom. He resists, until I show him the note from the Dean that explains things. Class begins. My expectations for the students were far too high. They do not even understand the basic system of elemental categories - based on the sound-effects made when they explode. They insist on something called a Periodic Table. I inform them that the only table needed is a lab bench, from which you can make things explode. This is met with derision and laughter from students. Recommend removing their laughing-glands before next lesson.
Day Ten: Operation a success for students 1-23. Dean of Students arrived before the rest could be finished. Attempts to explain the situation in a lighthearted way were unsuccessful. Dean said it was no laughing matter. Maybe he also had this operation performed - not happy with the results? Offer to perform a laughing-gland transplant was rejected. Removed from grounds of University.
Day Eleven: Received summary dismissal. No pay received.
So, there you have it. Coincidentally, I am now completely available to offer private tuition, or to provide educational lectures. I have a great one on Isaac Newton and how witchcraft influenced his description of the three laws of motion.
Until next time, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
I have been teaching. "Teaching what?", the uneducated of you may ask. "Teaching SCIENCE!", I will reply. Or did reply. Just then. That was my reply. Anyway, I have been teaching science at a Unified Neurological Implantation facility, or UNI. This is apparently a place where the young and ignorant go to receive knowledge, which is directly implanted into their brains via pumps and lasers. Everything is done with pumps and lasers now, even lunch.
But how best to teach the youth of today? Surely conventional methods are ineffective, as young people dress and spell so poorly. The best way to learn, goes the old adage, is to teach. I have posited that the inverse of such a law would also be true. Thus, I have enrolled in my own class as a student, in order to teach to the best of my ability.
I will enlighten you as to the observations I have made in my experiment thus far.
Day One: Very little happened. No sign of teacher. Students became restless. Sat in lecture hall for a good three hours before deciding that there would be no lesson today.
Day Two: Similar observations. Still no 'educating' taking place.
Day Three: A 'substitute' teacher showed up, and attempted to direct the class. The result is mixed at best. A largely theoretical approach was taken, with NO explosions at all.
Day Four: Again the substitute showed up to 'teach'. No chemicals were mixed, and few - if any - loud exclamations were issued whilst holding a beaker triumphantly. Beginning to question the legitimacy of the supposed 'science' content of this course. My portable telephone activated whilst in class - embarrassing for all involved. The caller asked why I have not shown up to teach the class, or called in sick. I inform them that I am a mere student, and that they have the wrong number.
Day Five: Still no explosions. I interrupt the 'lecture' at several points to question this - only response being laughter. Upon questioning the credentials of the teacher, I was thrown out. Teacher seems to resent the use of the words "talentless hack".
Day Six: Lecture is difficult to hear through the solid wooden doors. Attempts to blow up the door were ineffective. Recommend use of actual explosives tomorrow.
Day Seven: No class. Apparently some sort of alarm was sounded, and the students were sent home.
Day Eight: Class resumes, but I am indisposed. I have been called to meet with the Dean of Students. Attempts to straighten this whole mess out were met with confusion. Perhaps I will have to teach the teachers how to teach science, before they will let me teach science.
Day Nine: I throw the substitute teacher out of MY classroom. He resists, until I show him the note from the Dean that explains things. Class begins. My expectations for the students were far too high. They do not even understand the basic system of elemental categories - based on the sound-effects made when they explode. They insist on something called a Periodic Table. I inform them that the only table needed is a lab bench, from which you can make things explode. This is met with derision and laughter from students. Recommend removing their laughing-glands before next lesson.
Day Ten: Operation a success for students 1-23. Dean of Students arrived before the rest could be finished. Attempts to explain the situation in a lighthearted way were unsuccessful. Dean said it was no laughing matter. Maybe he also had this operation performed - not happy with the results? Offer to perform a laughing-gland transplant was rejected. Removed from grounds of University.
Day Eleven: Received summary dismissal. No pay received.
So, there you have it. Coincidentally, I am now completely available to offer private tuition, or to provide educational lectures. I have a great one on Isaac Newton and how witchcraft influenced his description of the three laws of motion.
Until next time, I hope you have enjoyed another of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Happy New Year!
I would like to take a moment to wish a very happy New Year to everyone, on behalf of the scientific community and indeed Science itself.
Another year has passed us by. Is it just me, or was this year shorter than the previous ones? (This is of course impossible. If the rotational period of the Earth had shortened, we would have burned to death by now. It is merely a New Year's jest that I was making. I apologise if I have misled you.)
No, the year is no shorter, it is still 365.2425 solar days long. Time, however, has slipped away from us. Or rather it has been stolen. Not by the ever-increasingly demanding technological devices, nor social commitments or working habits. No, it is the Time Bandits that have robbed us - an initiative spearheaded by Terry Gilliam wherein he would kidnap and indoctrinate small children and even smaller dwarves into a band of thieves that would attempt to steal temporal energy through a large pneumatic device known as a time-sink.
The use of this temporal energy was unknown for quite some time (as the Time Bandits themselves utilised the device to slow us down in our discovery of what exactly they were doing. Pretty crafty, if I may say so.) It is now known that the dwarves, a vain group to say the least, used the stolen time to rejuvenate their ravaged faces, making them youthful and almost childlike. The children, as it always is, were tired of being so young and never allowed to make their own decisions, such as when to go to bed, or how many prostitutes were 'excessive' in a temporal orgy. As such, the children used the temporal energy to age themselves to adulthood. Sadly, the unaccounted-for side effect was that their bodies did not grow, only age. As you can see, this became something of a problem, as the children would become dwarves, and the dwarves children. A never-ending cycle began, in which more and more time would need to be stolen in order to feed the ever-growing vanity of the Time Bandits.
Eventually, the Time Bandits would run into their future (or past - it was impossible to tell, as they eventually all looked the same) selves, often the child version meeting its dwarven parallel and being both disgusted and slightly aroused at the same time (as is stipulated in the Kevorkian paradox - that is, a person will always be both repulsed and sexually attracted to a version of themselves, whether temporal, clone, evil twin or robotic.)
In an ultimate act of both vanity and desire, the Time Bandits - both past and future - merged together to create a single entity. This did not turn out so well for either party, and the result was an incredibly wrinkled and giant baby who grew younger with age, until he disappeared into nothingness (or technically, a fetus, and then nothing.) The backward-but-also-forward aging baby did (or will do, depending on which point in time you live) a great many things for the universe, including the creation of the Earth itself. This may seem like a paradox, considering that the Time Bandits who became the baby would first have to feed off the Earth's temporal energy, but really, you're just not thinking hard enough about time travel.
The time-baby would eventually merge with the universe itself, which accounts for why the Milky Way is so heavily favoured by the universe. To this day, speaking in baby-talk will provide good fortune in your life, which is why some people insist upon babbling in made-up words at all times. Those people, however, are batshit crazy.
There have been many stages of the universal time-baby. The earliest known period was the gaseous one. Through an explosive force of excessive magnitude, this gas was released and the galaxies and planets began to form. The time-baby grew cranky, however, and there was much destruction. Comets rained down, stars became supernova and cosmic radiation was sent in all directions. Scientists have concluded that this is probably why the dinosaurs became extinct. The time-baby never liked dinosaurs. They tasted funny.
This is not the last of the time-baby's impact, however. One day, the time-baby will grow hungry, and will feed upon the Milky Way. This will be the end of our planet, and perhaps our race. To this end, scientists have worked on two different projects. The first is a ship, designed to send our species to other habitable planets, in order to prolong our existence. The second is a weapon of immense destruction, using ambient energy found on the outskirts of wormholes and temporal rifts to start a chain reaction and generate such an enormous explosion that would send the time-baby into a deep, deep slumber. This weapon is, of course, known only as The Pacifier.
As is tradition, we send twelve of our oldest living males into the cosmos beyond, via space capsule, as a sacrifice to the time-baby, also known as Baby New Year. It is thought that the residual time energy inside of the geriatrics will postpone our destruction by another year.
Also, old people do not smell so good, and they are whiners.
So, until next time, Happy New Year! I hope that you have enjoyed another one of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
Another year has passed us by. Is it just me, or was this year shorter than the previous ones? (This is of course impossible. If the rotational period of the Earth had shortened, we would have burned to death by now. It is merely a New Year's jest that I was making. I apologise if I have misled you.)
No, the year is no shorter, it is still 365.2425 solar days long. Time, however, has slipped away from us. Or rather it has been stolen. Not by the ever-increasingly demanding technological devices, nor social commitments or working habits. No, it is the Time Bandits that have robbed us - an initiative spearheaded by Terry Gilliam wherein he would kidnap and indoctrinate small children and even smaller dwarves into a band of thieves that would attempt to steal temporal energy through a large pneumatic device known as a time-sink.
The use of this temporal energy was unknown for quite some time (as the Time Bandits themselves utilised the device to slow us down in our discovery of what exactly they were doing. Pretty crafty, if I may say so.) It is now known that the dwarves, a vain group to say the least, used the stolen time to rejuvenate their ravaged faces, making them youthful and almost childlike. The children, as it always is, were tired of being so young and never allowed to make their own decisions, such as when to go to bed, or how many prostitutes were 'excessive' in a temporal orgy. As such, the children used the temporal energy to age themselves to adulthood. Sadly, the unaccounted-for side effect was that their bodies did not grow, only age. As you can see, this became something of a problem, as the children would become dwarves, and the dwarves children. A never-ending cycle began, in which more and more time would need to be stolen in order to feed the ever-growing vanity of the Time Bandits.
Eventually, the Time Bandits would run into their future (or past - it was impossible to tell, as they eventually all looked the same) selves, often the child version meeting its dwarven parallel and being both disgusted and slightly aroused at the same time (as is stipulated in the Kevorkian paradox - that is, a person will always be both repulsed and sexually attracted to a version of themselves, whether temporal, clone, evil twin or robotic.)
In an ultimate act of both vanity and desire, the Time Bandits - both past and future - merged together to create a single entity. This did not turn out so well for either party, and the result was an incredibly wrinkled and giant baby who grew younger with age, until he disappeared into nothingness (or technically, a fetus, and then nothing.) The backward-but-also-forward aging baby did (or will do, depending on which point in time you live) a great many things for the universe, including the creation of the Earth itself. This may seem like a paradox, considering that the Time Bandits who became the baby would first have to feed off the Earth's temporal energy, but really, you're just not thinking hard enough about time travel.
The time-baby would eventually merge with the universe itself, which accounts for why the Milky Way is so heavily favoured by the universe. To this day, speaking in baby-talk will provide good fortune in your life, which is why some people insist upon babbling in made-up words at all times. Those people, however, are batshit crazy.
There have been many stages of the universal time-baby. The earliest known period was the gaseous one. Through an explosive force of excessive magnitude, this gas was released and the galaxies and planets began to form. The time-baby grew cranky, however, and there was much destruction. Comets rained down, stars became supernova and cosmic radiation was sent in all directions. Scientists have concluded that this is probably why the dinosaurs became extinct. The time-baby never liked dinosaurs. They tasted funny.
This is not the last of the time-baby's impact, however. One day, the time-baby will grow hungry, and will feed upon the Milky Way. This will be the end of our planet, and perhaps our race. To this end, scientists have worked on two different projects. The first is a ship, designed to send our species to other habitable planets, in order to prolong our existence. The second is a weapon of immense destruction, using ambient energy found on the outskirts of wormholes and temporal rifts to start a chain reaction and generate such an enormous explosion that would send the time-baby into a deep, deep slumber. This weapon is, of course, known only as The Pacifier.
As is tradition, we send twelve of our oldest living males into the cosmos beyond, via space capsule, as a sacrifice to the time-baby, also known as Baby New Year. It is thought that the residual time energy inside of the geriatrics will postpone our destruction by another year.
Also, old people do not smell so good, and they are whiners.
So, until next time, Happy New Year! I hope that you have enjoyed another one of my ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE!
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