Naive’s Guide To Everything in the World

Non-Fiction

October 9, 2009 at 11:03 am | In The Knave | 2 Comments
Tags: Non-Fiction

Non-fiction, sometimes referred to as actuality, is any account of real things, events, people, places, thoughts, experiences and so forth. Some say it is very telling that for most of the world, the base group of writings is “fiction,” and then all writing about reality is defined in terms of being disallowed from that main, proper group. Others are jerks who edit those people’s Wikipedia entries to read “citation needed” whenever they make such an observation. Still other others point out that fiction derives from a Latin root meaning to “create”, while yet another group would mention that Latin is a dead language and that those other others will be dead too if they don’t stop being such smarty-pantses. A few would say that the act of creating fictional work is a superior art to just writing down a bunch of stuff that happened. Many would agree with this and go on to say that they would much rather read the fanciful imaginings of Lewis Carroll than the transcripts of the meetings of the Senate Environmental Sub-committee on Bovine Eructation. Hearing this, a certain population would point out that non-fiction is practical and applicable to the world and therefore can contribute to the betterment of the entire human race. One guy named Ralph would then add that the two divisions of literature should actually be “faction” and “non-faction”, because the base unit of writing should be anchored in reality. A guy coming out of a 7-11 with the latest Dan Brown paperback might then give Ralph a little shove and say, “Who’s making stuff up now, buddy-boy?”

The point is this: Non-fiction is truth. Once something is made up, it ceases to be non-fiction and therefore becomes the opposite of truth. Fictions are lies. Lies are as evil as made of wood witches, and therefore should be burned. Non-fiction does not get the respect it deserves. The only way it will get this respect is to destroy every work of fiction on Earth. Only in a world where children ask their parents, “Mums and Daddums, why do we have books called ‘non-fiction’ when there is no such thing as ‘fiction’?” can humanity be free to prosper unshackled by the weight of these fictitious lies. Imagine a world where the script to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen didn’t exist and instead we spent the $200,000,000 converting a real Camaro into a sentient robot with a plasma cannon, missile launchers, and the inability to speak except through his car radio? Suppose we didn’t read about how The Da Vinci Code led a man to discover that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a living descendant and instead learned something more important like the fact that Leonardo Da Vinci created the first ever printed version of the rhombicuboctahedron. As is always the case with fiction, reading the novel completely wastes your time on what essentially amounts to bull’s fecal matter, whereas, if all fiction were obliterated, you could show off the obscure, but true, fact you had learned about Leonardo’s rhombicuboctahedron at a dinner party and impress your pretentious boss. – The Knave

P.S.: The Mary Magdalene and Jesus thing is just nonsense, because it would be impossible to prove that any remains were actually those of Mary Magdalene and therefore genetically matching them to a living person would not establish anything and so the whole idea of any related conspiracies to cover up the relationship is simply implausible. And why would they have started covering this up in the first place when no one knew about DNA for more than a thousand years of the conspiracy? Prior to DNA, the church could have just denied any alleged connection and besides, how can anyone, including Maury Povich, prove Jesus was the father without Jesus’s DNA? Mary was a prostitute, so the father could have been anyone in the Roman Empire with twenty denarii. Also, why is it called the “Da Vinci” code? That is basically calling it the “of Vinci” (as in the town where Leonardo was born) code. If Dan Brown was a born again Christian, I guess he would take “of Nazareth” as his personal Lord and Savior.

Pyramid Scheme

October 2, 2009 at 2:05 pm | In J. Frederick | Leave a Comment
Tags: Pyramid Scheme

The pyramid scheme – and its weird Italian cousin, the Ponzi scheme – get a bad rap, but I’m here to tell you that I would not currently have my vast fortune, my many yachts, my many wives, my many perfectly legal and not at all morally ambiguous investments in diamond mines, were it not for my fortuitous involvement in a pyramid scheme many years ago. Before I came into my wealth, I earned minimum wage working the night shift at a cheese factory; my second-hand pants were held together with rubber bands and tape, and I could only afford to take my girlfriend to imaginary movies, which was good because she herself was also imaginary. Every bank in town rejected my applications for loans, and by that I mean that I stood outside them on the sidewalk for hours, waiting for an employee to come out, unsolicited, and just hand me a briefcase filled with cash, which they never did. I was offended by their refusal to acknowledge my intense desire to not be a flat-broke cheese factory employee who wore soiled, ill-fitting pants and spent his mornings practicing kissing on a pair of wax lips affixed to a pillow, so I did what any sensible person would do: I called the phone number on a “Work From Home” sign attached to a telephone pole near the bus station. The phone was answered by a man with an indiscernible accent, his voice ravaged by decades of cigarettes – and if you can’t trust such a person to make you wealthy, who can you trust? He identified himself as “Mark Price”, explaining that his company required all employees to adopt code names referencing members of the 1990-91 Cleveland Cavaliers. “That’s very weird,” I told him. “Yes,” he replied, almost wistfully, “yes, it is.” In the end, I agreed to have him call me “Craig Ehlo” and he proceeded to outline his plan: he would send me a list of names, and I would send one dollar to each of them, delete the name at the top, add my name to the bottom, send the list to all of my friends, and encourage them all to do the same. “That sounds oddly familiar, wildly illegal, and mathematically unlikely,” I told him, “and also, I have no friends.” “I appreciate your reservations and you are perfectly within your rights to not participate,” he replied, “but at the very least you need to understand that your cowardice sickens me.” Well, never let it be said that I back down from a challenge, especially a challenge issued by an unseen, mentally unstable stranger with a fake name trying to get me involved in a suspicious-sounding get-rich-quick scheme. That fateful phone call occurred ten years ago; I won’t bore you with the details, but to this day thousands upon thousands of tax-free dollars continue to arrive daily at my massive estate in Liechtenstein, and it’s all thanks to your friend and mine, the unfairly maligned pyramid scheme! Also, I started selling heroin. Either way, money is great; you should get some. - J. Frederick

Health Care

September 29, 2009 at 3:39 pm | In Da Ritzenator | 1 Comment
Tags: Health Care

healthcare Whoo-Ha! Come and play the fabulous but stressful game that every lucky working adult in America has been forced to play for decades!(*) Your life depends on it! When it is your turn (once a year before your employer’s fiscal year), all you have to do is guess what ailments and problems you’ll encounter in the upcoming year. It’s a fun game of chance mixed with real life gambling!

With your predictions in mind, you then refer to your game instruction manual, and if you can decipher the crazy mazes of “backtalk reading”, the puzzles of “circular wording,” and the daring leaps of faith you need to make with “context clue assumption,” you randomly lock yourself into what you think is the best plan for you. It’s exciting! But remember to check the fine print and be sure that the plan cost is not too much compared to your salary. Now the fun can begin!

As you roll the dice of reality, you advance along the board of live. You draw a new card every day, and along the way, you might encounter some problems you anticipated: like running out of prescriptions or having to visit the doctor for a check up (**). On some days, you might get happy cards, saying “You are healthy!” You may get mystery cards like “You are having a baby!” Or you might even encounter a bad monster card like “Your son discovered crack and now needs rehab!” Whether you were prepared for each event or not, you need to go back to the instruction manual to see if your plan will help you along the board or make you lose your turn. What a gamble! You’re all-in!

If your plan does not cover you, the warning alarm in your head will sound, the floor opens and you plummet into a hole of financial dept where you stay for years until you can dig yourself out. If your plan says it will cover you, then that’s great! But don’t celebrate too soon; you’re not out of the woods just yet.

Like every great game, there’s still a big twist to undertake before you clear the gauntlet. You must submit a medical report and all receipts to the game makers. They make the final coverage decision. With all their might, they spin the Yes/No Wheel of Justice. Be careful, there’s danger afoot! There are more NO spaces on the wheel than YES spaces, and there is really nothing you can do to sway the cruel wheel’s fate. A few weeks after submission, a golden envelope comes in the mail with the answer. You’re shaking with anticipation! You open the letter to reveal the final answer which the wheel has determined. What did YOU get??? Play the game of Health Care now! - Da Ritzenator

* Game may not work in other countries, such as Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Oman, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Ukraine and the United Kingdom

**When visiting a doctor, please be sure to use pieces and expander packs that are made by and compatible with your plan, or you could forfeit everything in your bank!

Racism

September 18, 2009 at 3:33 pm | In The Knave | Leave a Comment
Tags: Racism

racism Racism is the belief that if locked in a dark room with strangers, all are equal, but if the room is illuminated so that physical features and skin color can be seen, the racist is far better than those who look different and hates them in proportion to the degree of that difference.

Racism is perfectly legal as long as there is no provable discrimination. Discrimination is excluding, restricting or giving preference based on race in any field of public life. If this is too great a constraint on a racist’s hatred of those who are different, he or she will find an alternate reason to take the same action against the member of the undesirable race. A Google search for “How to keep (racial slur) out of my workplace / town / club” reveals many resources created by racists and bigots. Bigots are people who find racists to be overly tolerant. Simple racism puts too many limits on the groupings of people they can hate.

Racists believe that their skin pigmentation, hair type, and the arrangement of their facial features entitle them to privileges that must be jealously kept from those who are different. This can lead to awkward and embarrassing situations for the racist when he or she meets someone of ambiguous race. Resolution is achieved by consensus with fellow racists by asking the question: “So, do you think (name) is a (racial slur)?” If the answer of more than zero known racists is: “Yeah, and if not 100%, then their mother was one or got pregnant by one,” then the racist can feel comfortable adding the name to his or her list of people to hate.

Although racists mainly worry about people unlike themselves taking their jobs, rights, country, et cetera, they also worry about finding people to validate their hatred. In modern society it is now taboo to attend a dinner party and call out to all attending: “Anyone else here hate (racial slur)?” The best way to meet like-minded souls is to approach the problem indirectly. For example, a racist might walk up to someone and say: “I can’t believe people actually voted for (name of candidate of another race)!” If the other person has a rational and coherent explanation for voting one way or the other, they do not share the bigotry and should not be trusted by the racist. – The Knave

Gloom

September 17, 2009 at 2:13 pm | In A. Kitty Bee | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gloom

gloom As in “gloom and doom” or “gloomy” or gloomvesent.” Gloom is a word sometimes used to describe things that are gloomy- like a feeling or the weather or an old creaky house on the corner of your block that you and your friends throw stones at, but then later you find out a defenseless old woman lived there and you feel really bad and have guilt ridden dreams for the rest of your adult life. Gloom could also describe a person’s out look on life. If someone is always walking around thinking its going to rain or that the government never does anything right, or that the grocery store is always out of their favorite ice cream flavor- that would be someone who is gloomy. If it’s gloomy outside then it looks like its going to rain all day long, but it never does. Its just cloudy and gray and, well, gloomy. Gloomvesecnt is the opposite of effervescent but it basically has the same effect on things. - A. Kitty Bee

Clock Extinction

September 16, 2009 at 11:37 am | In The Knave | Leave a Comment
Tags: Clock Extinction

Let’s face it. Clocks ain’t what they used to be. Nearly totally gone is the face clock. This type of clock can only be seen on old buildings or in old movies. Sometimes they are used as pieces of art, but they are essentially useless for the function of telling time. Perhaps a watch might have a face instead of a digital display, but who wears watches anymore except as jewelry? Again, they are just objects for show, not practical items. Has the watch been wound? Is the battery good? Was it set correctly? If you want to know what time it is, you take out your mobile phone, you don’t look at a watch.

Many saw this coming with the advent of digital display flip. The clock was becoming faceless. There were no longer any hands moving in one direction showing seconds, minutes and hours. It could be argued that digital clocks are a good thing. They are easier to read, because they give the exact time with no need to interpret three moving hands and coming to a decision on what time they represent based on their positions, lengths, and thicknesses. 9:32:27 is clearly displayed on a digital display, whereas with the face clock, the thickest and shortest hand would be above the nine, but not quite at the dot representing the place the ten would be and the middle thickness and length hand would be two notches past the six and half a notch on its way to the third notch, while the longest and thinnest hand would be two notches past the dot representing the five. That is assuming all of the hands were properly calibrated to begin with.

Mechanical clocks are no longer used for telling time. Nowadays, when people say the word “clock”, they are usually referring to number groupings in a digital image on their computer or cell phone. Where clocks survive, and it is only the digital ones that do, is incorporated into other devices such as microwaves, digital video recorders, ovens, coffee makers, radios, cars, et cetera. Of what use is an actual stand-alone clock? Nothing beyond aesthetics.

A digital animation of an analog clock face is too pointless to address in this article. It would be like adding a feature to Google Maps where you had to virtually unfold the map before you could read it and the more times you did it, the town names along the creases became more difficult to read and if you refolded it wrong when you finished, tears would start to form to the point where you would have to apply virtual Scotch tape to your map, which would soon start to yellow, collect dirt, and peal. Or how about an MP3 program that added scratches and pops and that you had to virtually flip so that it recreated the analog experience?

Digital displays are probably better than analog displays for clarity and electronic clocks that can be remotely updated and adjusted for accuracy and changes like daylight savings time are more convenient, but we must consider the impact on our language.

What will the children of the future think when we tell them to turn clockwise? Unless they’ve seen Big Ben or an old city hall, they will never have seen a face clock and even if they have seen one, they may not have known that it was a time keeping device and how to read it. If you had never used a face clock to tell time, how would you know which direction the hands normally turned?

We could go back to words used before clocks, such as deasil (sunwise) and widdershins (against sense). Sun worshipers, such as the people who said things like “deasil” and “widdershins”, considered it a bad idea to travel in the direction opposite the sun, which made their armies easy to defeat, because all you had to do is get a little to the east of them and they would consider it bad luck to attack you and think you were blessed by their god because you were attacking sunwise. Essentially, sun-worshiping civilizations could only travel north or south, because to go in any other direction and return would mean half of the journey was in defiance of god. Perhaps they could travel west to east at night when the sun wasn’t around. They’d probably still have to sacrifice a goat or something. In any case, unless we go back to worshipping the sun, we are not going to say: “Screw the bolt in deasil and unscrew it by turning it widdershins.” It’s just not going to happen.

We could simply remove the word from our language and say things like “Turn the dial dextral” (to the right) or “sinistral” (to the left). Maybe we will some day just use left and right. Really, the words clockwise and counterclockwise are totally unnecessary.

Still, there are other linguistic impacts. When future generations hear that something “runs like clockwork”, what will they think? They may say, “My clock is my cell phone, which runs the latest Microsoft Mobile OS, so what you are saying is that it runs like it will frequently crash and is prone to viruses?” There are even religious implications. William Paley’s “Watchmaker Argument” for God’s existence will now have to be reformulated as the “iPhone Argument”.

What about the word “wind” (that rhymes with “kind”)? Kids today don’t wind anything anymore. There are no watches or toys to wind, except maybe the timer on a board game. No one says to wind the clock anymore—they just reset it. This word will soon disappear. “Wind” will be gone with the wind.

Where does this leave us? We should start getting used to eliminating clock terminology from our daily speech or end up sounding as ridiculous as our parents do when they ask us to “tape” something from TV or tell us that when they were dating they gave each other mixes of their favorite songs, which seems to have something to do with things called audiocassettes. (Researches here at the Naïve’s Guide think these were some sort of MP3 playlists saved onto an analog version of a flash drive to be physically exchanged rather than shared over the internet.)

If you find yourself about to use clock terminology, replace it with something current. For example, at the bar, instead of saying “Hottie, 3 o’clock,” borrow some GPS terminology and say, “Hottie, turn east.” Don’t say your firm has been “working around the clock,” say you’ve been “working so hard we haven’t even had time to Twitter.” - The Knave

Creationist Science Fiction

August 20, 2009 at 2:45 pm | In The Knave | 1 Comment
Tags: Creationist Science Fiction

Creationist Science Fiction (CSF) or “Chri-Sci-Fiction” is a sub-genre of Science Fiction or Speculative Fiction that relies on the Christian Bible more so than any ideas of modern science and technology. Defining a genre can be highly subjective and many elements of CSF may cross over into areas such as fantasy and secular non-fiction.

Scholars consider the first ever CSF novel to be “José Y Una Ropa De Diversos Colores” written in 1479 by Alonso de Hojeda. In this story, José is given a coat of many colors by his father, Jacob. This favoritism angers his brothers and they send José to the moon on a flying camel, and then give their father the coat covered in blood to show the favorite son is dead. José is enslaved by the Man in the Moon for whom he mines moon rocks at first, but eventually he becomes the commander of an important moon base. When the Woman in the Moon makes a pass at José, he explains how their orifices aren’t compatible, but the Man walks in and seeing them together, he imprisons José. His cellmates, a moonraker and a mooner, former servants of the king are both having dreams, which José interprets. The moonraker will be eaten by a man with stainless steel teeth, while the other cellmate will return the palace to moon the King again. When the king has dreams, the mooner recommends José to interpret them. The king dreams of seven fat mooncalves and then seven anorexic mooncalves. José predicts there will be seven years of good green cheese production and then for seven years the cheese will grow mold and turn blue. José is put in charge of storing cheese for the good years against the famine that will come in the following years. When famine strikes Earth as well, the José’s brothers moonwalk to get some cheese, not knowing José is now a big man on the moon. José gives his brothers, none of whom recognize him, sacks of cheese, but he sneaks a moonstone in Benjamín’s bag and later accuses him of theft. The other brothers offer themselves up as prisoners in his stead and seeing their selflessness José reveals himself, they drink some moonshine, and all is forgiven despite the selling into slaver, framing, lying and whatnot. José reunites with his father and gives his brothers each a crater in which to harvest cheese from the milk of the udders of the lovely, but anatomically incompatible moon maidens.

Most early Chri-Fi follows this pattern of betrayal, redemption, and moon maidens. As the genre expanded, new sub-genres were added. Here are summaries and examples of the most common:

Hard CSF: Some secular science is used, but only in ways compliant with creationism. A key work is Light of a Bright New Star in which a new star appears in the night sky. Knowing the age of the universe from the Bible, scientists know that this star must be six thousand light years away, since its light is only now reaching Earth at the center of the universe and what is more, they are now seeing the light of the first days of Creation. Assuming this must be a sign from God, twelve apostlenauts sacrifice forty lambs to the Lord and He presents them with a spaceship powered by the wings of angels. After their wives dutifully prepare them a feast of bread and fish they fly though the void toward this newly visible sun. Using a powerful telescope the men watch events on a planet around that bright star. As they get closer, they can see history unfold at a rapid pace. The beings, also created in God’s image, look exactly like humans. The apostlenauts watch the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the parting of the Red Sea and every event of the Bible up until the birth of Christ. Instead of the people of this world embracing Christianity, they turn away from Jesus. In fewer than two thousand years, the last follower of the Son of God was crucified. When the space travelers arrive on the planet, everyone is dead from endless war and the embracing of false religions and homosexuality and feminism. A serpent appears to the apostlenauts and tells them that when the Rapture came none were saved. They learn that they must spread the Word to save the World and the souls of Man or perish as the people of this planet had.

Time Travel: Many Chri-Sci-Fiction writers wonder what it would be like to travel back to Biblical times. In “The Tasting at Cana”, a famed wine critic is rewarded by God for convincing the school board to order a statement be read before all science classes. In the statement, the teacher must explain that science, like religion, is a system of beliefs and that alternate explanations exist for everything explained in the textbooks. The critic’s request is to be transported back in time when Jesus was beginning His ministry so that he might attend the Wedding at Cana and taste the wine converted from water by the Christ. Time travel stories also bring Biblical figures to current times. This can lend itself to some humorous stories, such as “Lazarus the Life Insurance Salesman” or “Jonah and the Trip to Sea World.”

Cyberpunk: Stories generally revolving around bringing sentient computers to Christ or God speaking to humans through computers. In a controversial story, “The Web Log Is Exalted”, a blog on the lives of the prophets becomes self-aware after two thousand seven hundred fifty posts (2,750 being equivalent to ABE in hexadecimal, suggesting the prophet Abraham). God makes a covenant with the blog that if it recognizes Him as Lord, the blog will be enhanced into a vlog and then a vrlog to include innumerable apps such as social networking, video chat, and games. Seeing the sin on the Internet, God tells ABE that he will destroy it. ABE asks if it will be spared if there are only fifty useful websites. God says it would be saved. Would it be saved if there were just forty-five sites not full of links to adultfriendfinder? If only thirty shopping sites were not full of reviews written by the seller, who is really trying to rip you off? If thirty sites weren’t ways for that kid who beat you up in high school to find you and friend you? If twenty websites weren’t ways to indulge in narcissism by updating the world on every inane thing you do in 140 characters or less? If just ten websites were not in any way connected to any form of pornography, would God spare the Internet? God said that were this the case, the Internet would be spared, but since it wasn’t He destroyed it.

Alternate History: These are “what if” stories where the Bible is played out in different ways. In The Han Who Would Be King, the Chinese are God’s chosen people and Jesus is born during the Western Han period in Hongnong. He is crucified, dies and is buried during the Eastern Han period. It is very memorable for its different spins on the words of the Christ, such as “Give unto Cheng what is Cheng’s, give unto God, what is God’s” or “It is easier for a giant panda to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven” or “I am the good yakherd: the good yakherd giveth his life for the yaks.” In one crazy book called A Brief History of Time the author speculates that rather than creating the universe in six days six thousand years ago, that there was a single creation event from which all matter and energy in the universe emanated nearly twenty billion years ago. This wacky author has even gone back and changed some details of his story instead of writing it once and perfect like the Bible. Remember, this is fiction.

War: Mostly stories about slaughtering Godless aliens who will not accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. This is okay, because they do not look the same as us, so they couldn’t be special to God as they were not created in His image. In Star Crusade: The Wrath of Prawn, a shrimp-like alien race insists that Jesus did not exist until He was sent to Earth to save all mankind. Jesus is one in the same as God and therefore is now, was and always will be God. The simple-minded prawns thought that since He was the Son of God, it implied that God the Father must have come first. They also questioned the necessity of the Dove God third part of the Trinity. Of course, these were the devils words so all were killed, and then eaten with horseradish sauce and ketchup.

Missionary: Christians travel throughout the galaxy preaching the Word of God to all sentient species willing to open their hearts to His Love. Father Bruce Cockburn tells the tale of two men who had been roommates at a private high school and also at the seminary. They travel together to a planet with a very advanced race of sentient aliens to spread the Gospel. All members of this species appear to be male and they reproduce through a form of isogamy. The two priests realize that this would be considered lying with a male as with a female and preach abstinence to the entire population. They must resist the urge to conjugate with members of the same sex, even if there is only one sex, because that is the literal word of the Bible. Fortunately, the missionaries are successful and bring the population to God. Eventually the species goes extinct through lack of reproduction, but to the last, none are left behind to burn in eternal hellfire. The novel is called HomoSAVEDuals.

Superhuman: Think Superman, but the hero is not a godless alien. All superpowers are granted by God and maintained by prayer and devout service. The superhero is often faced with situations where despite his great power, he can do nothing to correct the sins of the world, thereby teaching humility and a call to service for all men, not just a special few. In the novel Judge, Jury, and Crucifixioner, a Christian District Attorney with the power of invisibility spies on criminal organizations in order to bring them to justice. He eventually becomes a judge and uses his invisibility to gain extra information from the prosecution and defense when they confer with their clients. He always renders the correct verdict no matter how the lawyers may lie or the criminals break their sworn oaths on the Bible. Finally, he becomes a Supreme Court Justice with his superpower intact, but despite this, he is powerless to convince the other justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Biblepunk: A unique area of CSF where all stories are set in Biblical times with technology of that era, but modern or futuristic results are achieved. In the short story “Fisherbot of Manoids”, the Apostles Peter and Andrew decide they should find a way to become “fishers of men” literally. Using the carpentry skills learned from Jesus during downtimes, they construct a twenty foot tall gopherwood apostle with two giant arms holding a net. As unwitting passersby cross beneath the hands, Andrew and Peter use a series of ropes and pulleys to drop the net over two or three men who are then hoisted from the ground, swung over the Sea of Galilee, and dropped into the water for Baptism. Unfortunately, this only results in anger and a burning giant wooden fisherman. The Apostles learn the lesson that people must come to believe on their own.

Women’s Stories: These stories involve women who have used unorthodox methods to please the men in their lives. Some of these novels have verged toward feminism and have been added to book burning lists, but in general they are about wives obeying their husbands and daughters respecting their fathers. In Be Not Blasphemed, a young woman is warned by her mother to obey the Bible’s teaching. Her mother tells of the duties of wives: “To be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” Despite this, she gains a doctorate in physics and takes a job earning more than her husband with her higher level of education. At first her husband is tolerant, because his wife keeps the house clean, cooks a good lasagna, and has borne him two sons. When he decides to quit his job to start up a Christian rock band, she becomes impudent and insists that if he isn’t working that he should do the cooking and the cleaning since she is earning the money. He quotes the Bible to her: “It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman” and he leaves with some camping equipment. Distraught, the wife decides she must win her husband back and become the wife he desires. She invents a time machine, with which she travels back to her high school graduation and convinces her younger self to volunteer at the church rather than attending MIT. All is put right. – The Knave

Stab Wound

August 13, 2009 at 10:02 am | In The Knave | Leave a Comment
Tags: Stab Wound

When someone plunges a knife into you chest multiple times, the result is something called “stab wounds”. A knife is not necessarily the only way that you can get a stab wound, but it is certainly the most popular. Stab wounds should not be confused with other related forms of personal injury such as contusions, puncture wounds, slicing wounds, projectile wounds, stake wounds, and impalements.

A contusion—if intentionally perpetrated, i.e. not caused by an accident—is basically a failed stab. If you are hit in the chest with a cobblestone, you will be bruised and the attacker could possibly pummel you to death, but you won’t have been stabbed, you would only have been contused. Cop shows like to call this “blunt force trauma.” The key here is that to do a proper stabbing, you need something relatively sharp. You can stab with a rock, but a cobblestone is too rounded. A sharpened piece of flint stabs very nicely and was a preferred method of murdering people among our ancient ancestors.

Puncture wounds are very similar to stab wounds, but there are very distinct differences. A puncture wound just has to pierce the skin. Stab wounds are always deep. Also, there is a difference in intent. A phlebotomist drawing blood creates a puncture wound when she draws blood. You could say that the needle punctured your skin, but you couldn’t seriously claim to the police that you had been stabbed. However, if that same needle were to be thrust into your eyeball by a meth-head aromatherapist having a bad day, you could claim that you had been stabbed in the eye with a needle. Similarly, if you are chipping a block of ice to make margaritas and you slip and fall so that the ice pick penetrates your chest, it is still only a puncture wound, because there was no intent to stab. Only when your spouse decides to finish you off, because you bled on the new carpet, can you consider yourself to have been well and properly stabbed.

Slicing wounds (sometimes called slashing or slitting wounds depending on the size of the weapon) not only penetrate the skin, but cut along it and often cut through flesh and muscle as well. Sometimes a stab can turn into a slice if the victim won’t be still while your knife is plunged into their esophagus or other body part. Stab wounds are only the size of the weapon with which you did the stabbing, whereas a slicing wound could extend from a person’s big toe, all the way up the left leg, the stomach, the chest, cut up along the neck and chin, through the cheeks, between the eyes, over the skull, to the nape of the neck, and then continue down the back, right buttock and leg to the other big toe. Really, while slicing someone up, there is no real reason to ever withdraw the knife from their body unless you get tired or get caught on a bone or are going for a specific artistic pattern of cuts or something.

Projectile wounds are caused when something is thrown, dropped, shot, or otherwise propelled into the victim. Stabbing is hands-on, while projectiles are hands-off. Some implements could be used either way, so it is really only whether or not you are holding the weapon when it penetrates the skin that makes the distinction. It would be possible to stab someone with an arrow, or to throw a knife at a person you really dislike or who won’t turn right on red even though there is no traffic coming and it is perfectly legal in your municipality and that damn light has been red forever. It is not always the case though that a weapon can be used to stab or to project. For example, you could not stab someone with a .357 magnum bullet or even with the pistol itself. You would be forced to commit your murder by shooting the round from the gun.

Stake wounds occur when you use a hammer or some other object to pound a weapon into a person. Some confusion is caused by the fact that a short, sharpened piece of wood is referred to as a “stake”. Many believe that using this as a weapon to attack a vampire or weremongoose is staking, but it is actually stabbing with a stake, which is very different. The hammering of the stake, knife, or other pointy object into the victim with a rock or anvil or other heavy object is intrinsic staking someone and not just stabbing them.

Impalements are essentially super duper stabbings. They are stab wounds that go clear through the body. You can impale someone on a sword, a spear, a spit, or a pole. Impaling was popularized by Vlad the 3^rd of Wallachia, who considered impaling his enemies on tall poles so that they slowly slid down dead to ground to be the height of dinner theater. Nowadays, impaling is thought to be passé and so 15^th Century. Stabbing is much preferred, because it is very difficult to conceal in you biking shorts a weapon long enough to impale someone. Impaling has to be done to the trunk of the body. You would never say that you impaled someone’s ring finger with a straight pin. If you are looking at some dead telephone repairman behind a discount tattoo and dentistry parlor, and you see that there is a rebar going right through his chest and out his back, it is much more likely that he fell on the thing than that someone actually impaled him.

So, to summarize, stab wounds are caused by intentionally plunging sharp pointy things deep into a body by hand, but not through to the other side and without pounding the weapon deeper into the victim with another object or cutting an entry site larger than the object with which you are stabbing. No one is accidentally stabbed. You can claim all you want that you didn’t know your boss was going to come out of her office at 5pm and that you were just casually practicing your Ginsu thrusting when you stabbed her by mistake, but it is not going to fly. And although you might say you stabbed yourself in your thigh with your pen accidentally, it is only a puncture wound unless your deep-seated self-hate compelled you to stab yourself for being such a chucklehead. - The Knave

Insomnia

August 6, 2009 at 10:24 am | In The Knave | Leave a Comment
Tags: Insomnia

Insomnia is a great mystery to many people, that they think about as they lie in their beds, trying to get to sleep, wondering why it is that no matter how long they lie down, counting sheep, tensing their muscles, waiting for drugs to take effect, thinking about getting that glass of warm milk that people always talk about in movies and in television shows that seems really disgusting, because there is a reason that milk is refrigerated and if warm milk was good for people they would sell it that way, but then they remember that there is milk that can be bought warm, usually in a cardboard container and it seems like it must be okay because it is ultra pasteurized and then pasteurized again, or at least they think they remember seeing that that kind of milk was triple pasteurized and maybe if milk is pasteurized enough it can be drunk warm like this milk and there is also condensed milk that comes in cans, or at least usually comes in cans and this milk is sometimes called for in recipes, but if it can be cooked with, it is probably okay to drink too, but then maybe it is only good if it is cooked and cooking it makes it warm, so they can’t take it anymore get out of bed and boot up the computer to do some research on the topic on Wikipedia and find that condensed milk is actually a sort of thick sugary paste that doesn’t sound very drinkable because all of the water has been removed and then they read about evaporated milk, which is probably what they were thinking about when they were thinking about the warm milk in cardboard containers at the supermarket and it turns out the evaporated milk still has some of the water in it, but a lot has been evaporated and if you were to add the rest of the water back in, it would be just like normal milk, but the reason it can be stored warm in the store is that it has been homogenized and sealed in its container to prevent spoilage so it would definitely need to be refrigerated after opening the box, since it is basically just like normal milk, just half the volume due to the removed water and then they read some articles about insomnia on Wikipedia, but it’s no help since they have had insomnia for a long time and have seen a doctor and know all of the various theories and remedies, which haven’t worked, so they are back in bed at the point of thinking about how they cannot sleep and they still can’t get the notion out of their head that if they were just to go and heat up some milk, everything would be okay, if only in that they would finally stop thinking about warm milk, so they get out of bed again and go and heat up some milk and drink it and find that it doesn’t taste terrible, but that it is somewhat off-putting and then they realize that maybe the reason they couldn’t sleep was that they needed to go to the bathroom and so they go to the bathroom and maybe are successful there and maybe they are not successful there and either way they have to go back to bed, because if they are going to sleep, that is the place where the sleeping will happen, but now that they have lain down in bed they remember that they drank the milk and that milk is a liquid and that it is only a matter of time before they will have to go to the bathroom again so that if they do finally get to sleep because of the warm milk they will only be awakened again by the need to go to the bathroom, so they just lie there looking up at the ceiling waiting until they have to go to the bathroom so that they can take care of that and then they will be okay to sleep through the night, but by that point it is getting toward dawn and they worry that they will not be able to get to sleep in time to have enough quality sleep to wake up in time to go to work and so maybe it would be better to just stay up through the night, but then staying up will mean that they will not be productive at work and it sounds like the toilet is running still, so they get up and go into the bathroom to see if the water in the tank is still running, but it isn’t and everything is okay, so they go back to bed and then wonder if the milk was ever put away, because even if the warm milk turned out to be okay, it would not be good to let the milk stay warm and turn sour, because only the amount to be immediately drunk should be warmed, and since they are sure that unrefrigerated milk will turn sour unless they buy that milk that doesn’t need to be refrigerated, but even that kind of milk would need to be refrigerated once the container was open, but in any case, that is not the kind of milk that is currently in the house, so they go and check to make sure that the milk is indeed in the refrigerator, which it is, so they go back up to bed and the sky is lightening from pitch black to a dark gray and now there are only a few more hours left until it is time to wake up so maybe it would be a good idea if they watch television for thirty minutes and then try to get two hours of sleep and so they turn on the television and watch an infomercial about buying gems wholesale, but it begins to repeat after thirty-five minutes and so they turn it off and try to sleep again, but by now the birds are chirping and the sky is a light gray and the traffic is picking up, so they finally give up and drift off to sleep twenty minutes before the alarm goes off and when it does, they hit the snooze button every nine minutes until they have slept for an additional ninety minutes in ten segments of nine minutes each in between hitting the snooze button and now they realize that if they don’t jump out of bed right now and get in the shower, they will be late for work unless they are very lucky and make all of the traffic lights and don’t get behind a garbage truck or a school bus and so they hit the snooze button one more time hoping to get lucky and then nine minutes later, they quickly run to the shower and get mostly dressed, saving buttoning buttons and tying shoes until they are in the car stopped at red lights and hopefully reading this run on sentence has made all of you insomniacs out there drowsy, so go get some shut-eye. - The Knave

Trundle

July 27, 2009 at 2:08 pm | In Da Ritzenator | Leave a Comment

Apparently, a trundle is a big hoopy thing that kids rolled down a road for fun, while using a stick to keep it upright. I recently discovered this when we were cleaning out my grandparent’s house. Under a pile of moldy girlie magazines, I found my great grandfather’s copy of Dr. Flemington Davenport’s children’s book on the subject, as well as an entry about trundles in my great-great grandfather’s personal journal. He speaks about the chaos and shenanigans that trundling, (which according to him is, “the act of batting a hoop down the cobbles whilest causing a ruckus.”) creates. Here is one entry of his transcribed:

“August the Seventeenth, year of eighteen hundred and eighty. Five Forty Two in the A.M. Woke up again with the dream. Nay, nightmare. Warmed some milk, and diluted it with 3 ounces of cocaine. Hope that settles me down as the doctor said it would.

August the Seventeenth, year of eighteen hundred and eighty. Six Thirty Eight in the A.M. Fell back asleep for a few minutes but woke with an intensified version of the nightmare. Tried returning to sleep, alas, I cannot. Perhaps if I write this vivid phantasmal experience down, I will purge its presence.

The villain in this tale is ridiculous, as it is an inanimate object, one enjoyed by children at play. As it evokes a joyous spirit from the lads and lasses frolicking in the streets, I am dumbfounded as to how it might bring me the terror that it does. For my own son, Reginald, is the owner of one, and trundles at a great pace, so I have seen and been told.

In the nightmare, I am walking home from a busy day at the tailor. Suddenly, the cobbles around my path grow to insurmountable heights, blocking out the sun, casting my vision into near blackness as far as I can see. I quicken my pace down the now-created corridor, and zig and zag along the path; my twists and turns force by the walls that now loom over.

This running can last for hours. Again and again, just as I feel the end is neigh, more barriers rise toward the horizon. At some point my wife of 10 years reaches for my back from behind. It does not look like her, yet it is known to me to be Mildred. Her horrible disfigured face looks to no match of what I see every day. She warns that we must quicken and sprint up the path. As I grow tired, I cannot keep up and she runs ahead, her voice trailing, begging for me to keep up, but she disappears.

Her warning does not leave me with much time, as I am quickly gained upon by what appears to be an enormous hoop that is normally found bolted to a barrel to maintain its structure. From here the dream, already weird, grows to unreasonable oddness. In the middle of the hoop, or trundle, (which is what my son refers to this structure as), appears the face of a monstrosity, not much unlike Mildred’s distorted face. The area where the eyes should be is replaced by pulsating mounds of flesh, where throbs replace blinking. The mouth and teeth take up the rest of the face, and blood plasma rains down from the top teeth, and up from the bottom. As the trundle rolls, the face maintains its directional hold and the size grows at a quicker rate than it should by perspective alone. All I can do is halt and observe its gaining size and shortening distance. At this point, I can now see a trundle stick, floating behind it. Alas, it is not a stick as such, but a femur fashioned to a point, also dripping plasma blood like from the mouth. This bone taps both sides of the trundle when necessary, keeping it upright and stabs the wheel on occasion, causing increased volumes of plasma to drip from the teeth. The mouth grins with increased joy, rather than misery when it is penetrated by the trundle bone.

A series of changes take place between me looking away to leg it off and my returning glances back. In each returning vision, the face changes in rotation from my boss’s face with the bone becoming a gigantic needle, to my son’s face with a normal trundle stick, to President Rutherford Hayes’s face with a bayonet rifle, and finally back to the distorted Mildred face and bone.

I maintain my distance in front at great length, but I tire and fall down in a clump. It is here when I am doomed: the trundle is about to roll me over. When at once, a second large trundle appears in my front. The face in the approaching trundle is always Reginald’s at this point, and the trundle in front of me is the face of his crony and our neighbor, Ernest Gittins.

Reg and Ernest can often be found, by the end of the day, after their lessons and chores, to be trundle racing up and down our street. They race behind the hoops, batting and giggling them as they run for the end of the block. I take pride in my boy who can trundle slightly better than Gittins, whose father bested me last year with their cheating ways at the fair. My Gooseneck squash was surely grander than their paltry yellow squash, but alas, his cousin was on the judging board…

Back in the dream, the two trundles spin sideways, facing each other; their teeth growing to take over the entire hollow area inside each hoop. At first, their anger appears to be focused toward each other, but at the pinnacle of their madness, the teeth return to their previous size, and as the flesh masses return, their aggression joins league and shifts onto my presence below, standing at their base.

It is here that I must be too afraid to continue, and I awake in a shaking and sweating fit. I have concluded, after seeking a doctor’s advisement, that the cocaine enhances the nightmare, rather than soothes it. I must consider seeing a new doctor.”

I can see that my great-great grandfather had issues and was not a normal man. It must run in the family, cause if you’ve ever met my dad…well, I better not go on in case he reads this some day. Let’s just say, “Ouch, my back!” And now that we know about the early stages of great-great grand pappy’s cocaine use, I can sure see why I too could get so addicted to collecting baseball cards. But at least his entry shared a little bit of insight to the 1800’s, and his nightmare gave me the informational to add this entry to my guide about everything. Also, I can’t believe we had a president named Rutherford. The 1800’s must have been so stupid. – Da Ritzenator