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Author Archive | Mark A. Rayner

The Lost Power Point Slides: Fortean Edition

By on August 6, 2005 in Odd Science, The Lost PowerPoints

Charles Fort, circa. 1920In honor of Charles Fort’s birthday (Aug. 6, 1874) The Skwib offers these slides from Fort himself, the man who invented the word teleportation, and who spent most of his life examining the territory between science and the absurd.

Explaining one of his 1915 manuscripts, called ‘X’ (slide 10)

  • Always been interested in planet Mars
  • Mars inhabited by red, pink and orange races of humanoids
  • The red race, or Barsoonians, actually control events on Earth.

Explaining his other 1915 manuscript, called ‘Y’ (slide 6)

  • Sinister civilization hides under the South Pole
  • There are also dinosaurs there too.

Explaining why he burned both manuscripts (slide 2)

  • Showed them to Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • He thought they were great
  • If he liked them, they were probably crap.

Introducing alien abductions (slide 3)

  • Abduct human beings by means of “teleportation”
  • (An alien technology that allows instantaneous travel between two distant points)
  • For some reason, they are particularly interested in the business end of our digestive tracts.

Presenting ‘Wild Talents’, his 1932 book (slide 12)

  • Okay, “teleportation”. Phew, what was I thinking?
  • Teleportation is not an alien technology or ‘cosmic joker’
  • Teleportation is the result of freakish propensity to engage one’s primeval mind
  • Less than one in one million people have this propensity
  • I am one of them. Just kidding. I can barely THINK, let alone teleport things.

Charles Fort [wikipedia] | Fortean Bureau | Fortean Times

Unfrozen caveman lawyer defends Marc Emery

By on August 5, 2005 in Parody & Satire, Skwibby fiction

Your Honour, I’m just a caveman. I fell in a crevasse, froze, and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me!

Sometimes your traffic makes me want to get out of my Range Rover … and run to the nearest Starbucks, or wherever I can find some decent sushi … Sometimes when I get an email on my Blackberry, I wonder: “Did little demons get inside and type it?” I don’t know! My primitive mind can’t grasp these concepts.

But there is one thing I DO know — when a man like my client sells seeds of a plant found in nature, using only a website, the postal system and a multi-million-dollar grow operation, he has done nothing wrong. He should not be extradited to a foreign country, to be punished by those who are so alienated from Mother Earth that they cannot enjoy her fruits.

You might be thinking of a saying from my time: “never poke a mammoth in the eye, unless you had a way to kill him too.”

I say, sometimes the mammoth has to be poked, just so he won’t step on you. But what do I know? I’m just a caveman. Your world frightens and confuses me!

–With apologies for the early-90s reference, and to Phil Hartman, for stealing his bit.

Inspired by:

DEA asks Canadian government to extradite “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery

Taco Bell ads lead to bullying at day camp

By on August 5, 2005 in General Skwib, Skwibby fiction

Taco Bell locoLittle Jimmy just wanted to be cool. That’s what he thought saying, “I’m good to go,” and making a flip-like hand gesture would do for him.

Instead, he found himself at the receiving end of an “atomic” wedgie — having his underwear pulled up over his head while still wearing them — for being such a dork.

“Like, I just couldn’t take it!” an enraged Patrick Goon, the chief bully at Camp Whatchadoin said.

“Jimmy’s normally okay, but today he comes to day camp all like, ‘hey, look how cool I am’, and then the counsellor goes, ‘are you ready to leave for the lake,’ and Jimmy goes, like, ‘I’m good … to go.’ And then does that gay hand thingy like the in the Taco Smell ads. He didn’t even say it right! It’s not: ‘I’m good … to go’ it’s like: “I’m good-to-go.’ And it’s so lame!”

Jimmy spent the rest of the morning in the infirmary, icing his private region and receiving counselling to help with the shock of an “atomic” wedgie.

“Yeah, we see at least two or three “a-doubleyous” as we call them in the business,” says camp nurse and psychologist, Betty Frigid. “But this is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. He was particularly traumatized when Patrick shouted: ‘how’s this for thinking out side the bun?'”

When asked if the bully would be disciplined, Camp Director Bob Serunkel, said, “normally, we would take something like this pretty seriously, and maybe even send him home. But in this case, Patrick got a warning. That ad drives me nuts too.”

In a related story, Business Wire was pantsed by the Financial Times for running Taco Bell’s media release about the portability of the foodstuff mentioned in the ad.

Media Release | Business Wire Story on MSN | More about wedgies [wikipedia]

Chilean company creates Slurm

By on August 4, 2005 in General Skwib, Odd Science

Slurms MacKenzie drinks ewww, SlurmLA FLORIDA, Chile — A new cough remedy is available, and it’s made with snail slime.

According to the La Florida Bureau of the Edmonton Sun, the traditional remedy is called Karacoflu and is flavoured like strawberry, avocado . . . and, oh, right snail slime!

Maria Sannino, snail rancher, said: “I have more than 8,500 snails working, so we can get material for this ancient cough medicine recipe. The snail slime has antibiotic properties as well as antibacterial and anti-inflammatory ones.”

Some of the snails have complained about the conditions on the Sannino Snail Ranch, and are threatening to unionize.

Inspired by:
Snail medicine

Carnival of Nuns, Loos and Martian Hockey

By on August 3, 2005 in General Skwib

The 150th Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Riding Sun this week. In addition my post about the NHL-NASA mission to Mars, and the usual political stuff, there are a couple of gems that I’d like to pass along.

I love a good golf joke, and this one is familiar, but it has nuns instead of priests, so it seemed fresh. You’ll find golfing nuns at Wicked Thoughts.

And there has been a lot of press about the decline of the European Union, and this post at Generic Confusion about toilet signs adds to the noise. Looking at them, I wonder what is going to happen in the future: women will no longer wear skirts or dresses and we won’t remember a time when they did. We’ll all be wearing Adidas track suits, and there will be no gender-specific clothing. It probably won’t matter — all toilets will be unisex by then anyway. And no doubt the nuns be history too, golfing or not.

The Lost Power Point Slides: The Dog Edition (#1)

By on August 3, 2005 in The Lost PowerPoints

Why you should let me eat that disgusting thing on the road: (slide 2)

  • Oooh, it smells good.
  • By good I mean gross.
  • (Remember, in dog terms, gross is good.)

Why you can trust me not to roll in that disgusting thing in the park: (slide 6)

  • Really, I won’t roll in it.
  • But it smells good, doesn’t it?

Butt smelling, the canine semaphore: (slide 6)

  • Most hominids do not realize that their butts are data-rich sites of good smells.
  • Canines are capable of deciphering many of these smells.
  • Which are good. (Gross.)

Marking territory — the four-legged art: (slide 10)

Like any art form, there are practical considerations:

  • How long a walk are you going on?
  • How much water did you have to drink before you left?
  • Can you make the resulting pee-to-distance ratio work out in your favour?