Alien Night Club - Show 38?

Alien Night Club <the transcripts>

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Show 38? Show 38? Sure why not Show 38.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Alien Night Club. I am your nonadjectival host Captain Blank. Definitely not the hostess with the mostest. Don't know why I said that.

Anyway, welcome. Welcome my fellow Rageaholics.

That's a command, by the way. There's no comma after welcome. Let's all welcome the rageaholics. Otherwise they might get mad. Angry. Perchance even enraged. As the moniker suggests.

A question, though: let's consider the etymology.

What is an alcoholic?

What is a chocoholic?

What is a rageaholic?

1 and 3 are expected to get treatment. Number 2 does not.

1 and 3 often find their family and friends struggling to maintain a relationship with them. They may even be estranged.

By the way, if I knew something, like if something was coming, you guys would want to know, right? Like if this ship we're on were suddenly in danger? You'd want to know. I think you'd want to know. I hope you'd want to know. Because I would want to know. I would definitely want to know. If it's the Ugly Truth or the Beautiful Lie, I want the truth.

I'm not sure what the people back on Earth would want.

Here, we would take action immediately. If you're on a Disney cruise to the Bahamas and there's a storm coming, you'd want them to turn the ship around, right? Fuck the vacation. Get back to land and hurry home. You don't ride out a Cat 4 hurricane at sea. This is a big ship but I'm sure it could change course if it had to.

You can't really move the Earth, though.

You might be able to do something if you had time, though.

In Don't Look Up, they had 6 months. J Law put it on her diet app. Did you guys see Passengers? It was her and Chris Pratt. Really good. They spent their whole lives on that ship. They grew a tree.

But yeah, in Don't Look Up they had 6 months. I don't know how much time they had in Armageddon or Deep Impact. I don't remember Armageddon and I never saw Deep Impact. Even though I love Morgan Freeman. I always thought he and Denzel should run for office. Denzel could be President and Morgan could be the wise elder statesman VP. If they were in office and an asteroid or comet were on its way, comin in hot, real hot, they'd marshal the world's resources and would do something about it. Not try to mine it for God stroke Gawd's sake.

Not sure what would happen if they had more time, though. Like 140 years.

Anyway….

We never talked about peeing sitting down.

I pee sitting down. Not in public but at home. Apparently a lot of men not only don't pee sitting down, they have a real problem with it. They refuse to do it. They will not pee sitting down. It's girly. It's what women do. A man pees standing up. He pulls out that hog and lets it loose. A 3 inch firehose of pleasure. Spraying pee and toilet water everywhere.

Because when you pee standing up, when the stream hits the water in the toilet, toilet water and piss go everywhere. It splashes on the toilet seat, on walls, on the floor.

Haven't you ever been standing there peeing while you're wearing shorts and you feel the pee sprinkles landing on your legs? Or if you're wearing flip-flops or you're barefoot and you feel the pee landing on your feet?

Have you ever seen the aluminum dividers of the toilet stall all rusted at the bottom from all the toilet water and pee landing on them and causing corrosion?

I've seen pee eat through paint and drywall.

What do you do when you whip it out and point your dick at the bowl but when you release the hounds they don't go where they're supposed to go? They run all over the place. On the side of the toilet, on the back of the toilet, on the floor.

Ever used a toilet in a bathroom with carpet? Good luck peeing standing up in there.

What do you do when you make a mess?

Do you clean it up or do you flush the toilet and leave so someone else has to deal with it? Even if it's your house. Oh, I'll deal with it later, the game is on or I'm bingeing The Terminal List — totally worth it, by the way — or I'm playing Ikari Warriors and have spaghetti sauce on my shirt.

If you're at home, maybe. Maybe. You might tear off some TP and give it a quick wipe.

But if you're in a public restroom, hell no. You put the mouse back in the house — the tiny little 3 inch pleasure mouse — you maybe flush with your foot, using the bottom of your shoe, you zip up and you're out of there. You may not even wash your hands. You didn’t really touch anything. Right?

By the way, you know the bowl of mints they have at the hostess station near the front door? Allegedly — allegedly — those things are teeming with E. Coli. People eat, the new food pushes on the old food, and you need to make room. So you go to the bathroom, the restroom, the water closet, the WC. And when you're done with the pinching of loaves, you may or may not wash your hands.

A lot of people don’t.

Hence the little bowl of fecal mints people grab on their way out.

I've seen that, by the way. I've gone into a public restroom, seen that there is someone in the stall defecating, and before I finish peeing and washing my hands, that guy flushes, comes out, and leaves. Walks right past the sink.

I try not to be a prude when it comes to stupid stuff but ew.

Now, what if you're at a friend's house and you spray piss everywhere but into the toilet? You didn't mean to. But sometimes your urethra plays a trick on you. And the pee goes sideways. So you quickly adjust your aim to get back on target as you're sending rounds downrange.

But what if it bifurcates?

What is bifurcates? What does that mean? Picture the tongue of a snake. It’s forked, right? That’s bifurcated. You’re walking on a trail and it splits off. One goes left, one goes right. One is the road less traveled and will make all the difference. That’s a bifurcation. And sometimes when you pee, the skin on the tip of your dick doesn’t open all the way and you get two streams of urine. One stream goes into the toilet and the other stream doesn’t. It goes on the floor. And you’re like, Ah!!!!!

What do you do?

You quickly assess the streams to determine which one is bigger. It will have a greater volume of piss and should therefore be the one that goes into the toilet. Because you don’t know how long the bifurcation will last. How long the bifurcated stream will present you with the impossible choice. Usually your dick will eventually cooperate and the 2 streams will become 1. Sometimes you can clench everything, all those muscles you use for peeing and not peeing, round muscles called sphincters, and you can stop peeing before too much pee goes on the floor. And when you start again, hopefully you’re presented with one lemonade fountain rather than two. But not always. Sometimes your urethra is persistent and that forked pee squirts all over the floor again. Eventually you work things out and get most of the pee into the toilet but the damage is done. You can see the puddle of piss on the floor. Yay. That’s one of those private battles we all fight. Like when the toilet clogs. Oish. That happens to me a lot. Not quite 50% of the time but probably somewhere in the 30s.

If you clog a public toilet, you run away, right?

Of course you do. I do. We all do. Because it’s not our job. There’s no plunger. Usually. So even if you wanted to fix it, you can’t. Besides, they’re paying someone to clean the bathrooms. That includes cleaning the toilet. And unclogging it after you went in there and backed out a fatty because you pigged out yesterday and now you have a doo-doo whose mass is approximately equal to the obscene amount of food you ate.

But what if you’re at a friend’s house?

What if you’re at your lover’s place? And you guys are in the middle of doing it. And you got so keyed up while you guys were making out and undressing each other that the peristaltic action of your intestines increased and you need to shit. Now. So you excuse yourself, go to the bathroom, and proceed to blow mud.

So romantic.

It’s actually a good litmus test. If your would-be lover handles it well, that’s a good sign. If they freak out and cover their nose and berate you, that’s a less-good sign.

Here’s another good reason to pee sitting down: when it’s dark. At night. Because it’s usually dark at night. Unless you’re at or near one of the poles in a place where the sun never fully sets and it’s 3 o’clock in the morning but looks like the sun has just set. It may not be such an issue then. Unless you have blackout curtains. Which you might. I’ve never been up there or down there so I don’t know how many people have blackout curtains.

Point being — AHHHHH!!! — if you wake up in the middle of the night to pee, do you turn on the light? I don’t. I pee sitting down. So I don’t haff to worry about bifurcated streams and making a mess. Because if your bladder wakes up in the middle of the night and your dick decides to have some fun and sends half the pee left and half the pee right, you’ll be standing there with your 3 inch pleasure weasel in your hand, letting er rip, but vaguely wondering why you’re not hearing anything hitting the water. Because that makes a very specific sound everyone with a penis knows well. We learn it when we’re little. Because it’s always the same sound. That deep, watery sound of a stream of urine blasting into a toilet bowl. So when you know you are absolutely 100% peeing but you don’t hear that sound, then what?

If you had sat down before you started, a bifurcated stream wouldn’t matter.

Unless your dick gets REALLY clever and points straight ahead and the pee squirts perfectly through the thin pancake ATM machine slot between the toilet bowl and the toilet seat. And the back of your pants and underwear get all soaked with pee. That’s fun.

So make sure the regal weasel points down.

And don't fret over peeing sitting down. It actually makes sense when you think about it.

Unless you're xenomorphologically predisposed to releasing waste products in a position other than seated.

How many generations is 140 years? I read once that a generation is 20 years. So that would make it 7 generations.

That's one hell of a countdown.

At what age would you break the news to people?

Happy Birthday! Oh, by the way….

Also by the way, here are some nuggets, some, none, or all of which we may actually discuss:

Canoe.

Being honest.

Figure out all space rocks with 150 years of Earth at X velocity.

Muse York, the city of Muses. Just like this tee shirt with the big MY on it and underneath it says City of Muses. At first I thought it stood for Mew York, City of Cats. But I think it may be Muse York.

Mew York is where Cats was created. Have you seen the live action movie? Cats? Everyone talked all kinds of shit about it when it came out. So much so that I never even bothered to watch it. But I would like to. Think about it, you get really high and watch this movie about cat people. That’s wild. Especially if you are a cat person. Which I am. I love cats. I adore cats.

Imagine going to see the play. Cat people in real life. I'd rather go see them at a cat cafe than in a theater on stage playing pretend. They're pretending twice. They're pretending to be cats pretending to act out a story. But what if you could go to a cat cafe full of real cat people. And you could feed them and pet them and play with them.

And have sex with them.

That gives all new meaning to the name of the cat cafe: Pussy Time.

And the woman who owns The Cat Cafe across the street hates the idea of a competitor opening across the street.

He assures her, however, that she has nothing to worry about, a completely different clientele.

After they open, her business not only doesn't drop off, it increases. She eventually goes in there and sees why.

It's not a cat cafe. It's a freakin Cats afterparty where everybody is as Method as you can possibly get.

She is greeted by the owner whom she hates but also wants to bone. Annoyingly. And he shows her around and it's weird. But kinda cool.

He says come back at 9:30.

Why?

Just come back tonight at 9:30. Go to the back door and knock 3 times slow, 3 times fast, and 3 times slow.

That's 9 times. Like a cat's lives.

You're gonna fit in well here.

She goes back that night and it's a bar slash lounge slash disco. It's a mixture of cats and humans. Some are clearly in the throws of passion.

Julia asks where Chris is.

Someone points.

He's overhead walking on a tight rope. No net. No safety harness.

Chris!

What?

There's someone here to see you!

Who?

Julia.

Julia!

Oh, great. Tell her I'll be right down.

He'll be right down.

He loses his balance and falls, catching the cable with his hands. He swings his legs up and shimmies the rest of the way, then jumps down.

I thought you had that, Chris.

So did I. Maybe tomorrow night. Hi!

Hi.

Julia's eyes rome his body.

Rome?

R-O-M-E?

They roam his body. His cat body. Lithe and muscular. His cat face. His cat eyes. His whiskers. Actual whiskers.

He's a cat.

He shows her around. She loves it. It's cat paradise.

They even make out.

The next day she goes over.

Chris isn't here but he'll be in tonight.

When she gets inside, he's up on the wire again.

Cats start approaching her.

You must be Julia. Hey, you guys, this is her, this is the girl. Chris hasn't shut up about you.

Over time, she spends more and more time there. Daytime feels like naptime. She comes alive at night. Partying with the other cats. With Chris.

One day she discovers her employee's costume. She confesses that she's been attending Cats After Dark, Lovecats, Hot Tin Roof, and other private secret cat clubs for years. And she told Chris he should open a cafe across from Julia's because they should meet and join forces.

Thus the inevitable surprise.

Eventually she becomes one of them.

Its Grease meets Cats.

She gets a complete feline transformation. Like Sandy at the end of Greece.

One of my absolute favorite albums by the way.

Also by the way, today may or may not be new year's. Pretty sure it is.

In my opinion, my learned opinion, New Year's is the sexiest holiday. You should spend it with your lover.

Fucking.

Like animals. In a sexy hotel suite somewhere you love to be.

Or with your friends.

But ideally naked with your lover.

Start the party around 9 or 9. Get high, shower and freshen up, make out a little, eat, maybe smoke a little more, and then start going at it around 11 so by the time midnight comes around, you're going at it pretty hard and fast. You're done with the foreplay and your passion has been ignited and you're going at it like animals now. You're basically doing cardio. You're making noise. You're talking to each other. Saying all kinds of sexy stuff. So much so that you miss midnight.

That's the name of the story by the way: Missing Midnight.

You guys are so lost in the lovemaking, the animalistic fucking, the rutting, that you miss midnight. You hear people outside yelling and counting down.

It's almost midnight.

Let's come together. Right at midnight.

Fuck yeah.

I love you, baby.

I love you, too.

And then you both come so hard that you're a tiny bit concerned that you might pass out.

And then fireworks.

What do you prefer, a fireworks show or a drone show?

The drones are getting pretty darn good.

I am kind of disappointed that we're still using propellers back on Earth, though. Doesn't it seem like we should be beyond that technology by now? Just spinning a propeller really fast.

The guy who picked me up sure as shit wasn't using any propellers. I can tell you that.

You're probably wondering what it's like being up here.

Well, for the most part, it's amazing.

It's definitely a trip realizing that I'm here.

Some days are kinda hard.

But I had hard days on Earth. A lot of em. And if you're gonna have hard days, you might as well be on a spaceship.

There's days or at least moments when I wonder what's goin on in California. Moments when I wish I was down there living out that New Year's Eve fantasy I just described. Or getting high and going to the gym then running on the trail. Or going to Border's to write for a few hours before I went to work. Then getting home from work and getting high and taking a shower and going to bed with my girl. Going at it like animals. Wondering if the people in the apartment next to ours could hear us and were in there listening to us do it and laughing their asses off.

Joke's on them, though, because we're the ones in love and getting laid.

St. Patrick's Day, no. Wait. Valentine's Day. That's the day for lovers. It feels trite to me somehow. Everyone is doing the same thing. Going out to dinner, giving flowers, and hoping to get laid and then having only semienthusiastic sex.

New Year's is better. Because everyone is at a party or crowded around the TV, waiting to do the countdown.

But not me. And not you.

Because we know that it's a million times better to not only be kissing at midnight but to be making sweet love at midnight.

And if you're thinking that all this talk is about is sex and that sex isn't that important, I would argue that, actually, it is.

And if you don't know that, you either forgot or you never discovered it to begin with.

Either way, I encourage you to get back to it. But keep it on the down-low because we need to stop oversexualizing our culture.

Question: When 2 people with penises are about to make love and they're getting it on and getting naked and they see each other's penis for the first time, do they get offended if one penis isn't erect?

You'd think by that point that it would be erect.

Imagine having a little secret container on your keychain or your phone case so you can always have sildenafil with you. And you crush one up in your mouth and try to let it dissolve under your tongue so it can hopefully take effect before they see you naked.

Because you never get a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression. Remember that commercial where they said that? It was for a hygiene product. Deodorant or dandruff.

Isn't it sweet that we all spend so much money and time trying not to be smelly or flaky?

So when we get naked with someone the first time, we don't give them a reason for that to be the only time.

A tiny little shrimpweasel in a tiny little sock?

Or a stallionous thundercock even Thor couldn't lift.

Chris Hemsworth has to put on his Thor getup and go around grabbing cocks just to make certain he can.

You can hear his voice: God of Thunder, my ass. More like God of inflated cocks. This whole thing reminds me of that day we drove through all those frogs. And then almost drowned in the quicksand. Wait: if the frogs are the cocks and the quicksand is the…special sauce…is that what's coming next? Do I need scuba gear? And a hazmat suit? Perhaps a wetsuit. Or even a drysuit. A wetsuit allows the semen in. It forms a thin layer between the neoprene and your skin and your skin heats it up and keeps you warm underwater. That's why it's called a wetsuit. A dry suit is more like a full-body condom with booties. Impenetrable. Mostly. If you were to stand there throwing hundreds and hundreds of golf balls at a chainlink fence, eventually one's going to get through. What is the temperature of semen anyway?

Don't know. I've never stuck a thermometer in my own jizz. I'd think it's a little below body temperature because that's what the sperm like. Which is why the testicles are outside the body, encased in an at-once comical yet hideous contraption known as a scrotum.

It's great fun ending a sentence with the word scrotum.

Try it.

The next time you're conversing with someone, find a way to work scrotum into it, right at the end. See what they do.

Do they recoil?

Or do they not even blink? Because they're actually into scrotums. They like them. They love playing with them and licking them and looking at them. And they especially love all the other stuff that usually happens when scrotums are in the wild.

And — and this is the important part so pay attention — they're now evaluating you. They are trying to figure out if you like balls the way they like balls. They're hoping you do. Because they want to fondle some balls and have their balls fondled and the question is if they're going to be doing that with you. And if it's safe to trust you and to share with you.

So if you're talking to a person with balls but you don't really see them in a ball-fondling light, don't play the scrotum game. Save it for someone you'd like to teabag. Or have teabag you.

Imagine being a window washer on a skyscraper. Way, way up in the air. And even when it rains or snows, you stay on the scaffold. You live on that scaffold. Even in a whiteout blizzard where you're covered in snow. Covered. And it snows a lot. And it rains even more. That's what it's like to be a urethra scrubber. But at least it's tropical.

Amy Pohler's all like, Oh, really? I'd take a hot Jacuzzi peepee shower or a milkcream Clorox cumbath any day of the week and about a million times on Sunday.

And Digestive is like, Fuck all y'all.

And Anus is like, No, fuck all of y'all, y'all.

Anus has a point.

You are now entering Swamp Ass.

Ever seen those people with a tramp stamp that says Enter?

With arrows pointing down. I respect the honesty.

Remember when we were talking about Don’t Look Up and the scene of the sanitation engineers putting trash in the back of a trash truck and their uniforms said DSNY on the back? Department of Sanitation New York.

I saw it again.

I was watching a video about the Fermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi was a physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico, USA. He was having lunch with the dudes in his department and he mentioned a cartoon he’d seen depicting aliens on their home planet right after their flying saucer landed. They’re basically getting home from work or from vacation, who knows, and they’re carrying garbage cans. Something about garbage cans on Earth captivated them. So they stole them. They stole them from New York. People of New York, those little kleptomaniac alien motherfuckers stole your garbage cans. Your tax dollars paid for those garbage cans.

And how do we know that those little kleptomaniac alien motherfuckers stole the garbage cans from New York?

Because the cans each have letters clearly stenciled or painted on the side of each one that say D-S-N-Y.

Even back then, in the early 1940s, whomever drew that cartoon thought Disney was trash? Maybe it’s because Disney was making war documentaries. I have no idea, I need to do more research. I’m just saying that it’s yet another strange coincidence. DSNY.

By the way. Enrico, Ricky, was wetnursed when he was a baby. He and his brother were sent to live with another family so that woman could nurse him and he could drink her breastmilk. Colostrum is supposed to be super good for you. And make you smarter and more better well developed. It looks like it worked for little Ricky.

By the way, again, Ricky’s brother, Giulio, his big brother, his bro, his literal brother, died during surgery when Ricky was about 15 years old. The poor kid had a throat abscess and he died during surgery. Years later, Ricky meets this amazing woman and they get married and are ready to go the distance. There’s only one problem: the fuckin Nazis are comin. Because she’s Jewish.

Recall that Enrico drank nothing but breastmilk until he was 2.5 years old. He’s smart. So he packs up his wifey and they get the fuck out of Italy. They go to America. And he helps create nuclear technology to help America stop those fuckin racist psychotic Nazi murdercult pieces of deranged, severely confused, highly ignorant shit. And Ricky didn’t wait until things were getting bad in the 40s. Hell no. He knew better. Breastmilk. They left in 1938. The Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor until a few weeks before Christmas in 1941, 3 years later. Hitler didn’t invade Poland until 1939. Enrico saw that shit comin, too. So he and Laura got the fuck out of there with their kids. Ricky had a good thing going. He was teaching all over the place and doing amazing work in physics at the top research universities all over Italy. He and Laura got married July 19, 1928 and had a beautiful summer wedding. He even joined the Fascist party and met Mussolini. But then Mussolini went full d-bag and teamed up with Adolph. Fascism got into bed with Nazism and the antisemitic bullshit meant Laura and the kids were in danger. And a lot of Ricky’s friends got canceled. They weren’t allowed to work. These previously successful, educated, hard working, well-liked people suddenly became persona non grata. Which means they weren’t wanted anywhere they went. Because they were Jewish. They had 2 kids, both Jewish, mind you, because it goes according to the mother. Their oldest was a sweet little girl named Nella. Their youngest was a boy whom they named Giulio, to honor Ricky’s big bro who passed away during that botched throat surgery.

In 1938, Ricky and Laura took the kids to Sweden, to Stockholm, for a little trip. Because daddy had just won the Nobel Prize. The Nobel fuckin Prize! In Physics. And he was just 37 years old.

And then what happened?

Ricky and Laura and the kids didn’t go home. They didn’t go back to Italy. Because they didn’t feel safe. Hitler had been ranting and raving for years. The Germans were all lathered up and they got a bunch of the Italians all lathered up. So Ricky and Laura said, Fuck this! and they went from Stockholm directly to New York City.

That was in December 1938. Their first Christmas away from home. Their first Christmas in their new home. 5 universities offered him a job. 5. That’s gotta be so great, having the top 5 universities begging you to come and teach there. He ultimately chose Columbia because he’d already been there and had lectured there 2 years earlier and knew a bunch of people and he and Laura probably felt at home. And that it would be a safe place for Nella and Giulio. Safer than Italy, anyway.

Meanwhile, Hitler and the racist psychos are over in Germany trying to build a nuclear bomb so they can win the war and take over the world, just like in Phillip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle. Amazon made it into a series you should watch if you haven’t. Unless, like me, you find it too fuckin scary to even contemplate. Which is why I only made it through Season 2. I’ve been meaning to watch it for years. But I’m too scared. And I don’t seem to have full access to Amazon Prime here on the ship.

Point being — AHHHHH!!! — that Einstein and a bunch of other genius scientists got together and wrote a letter and sent it to President Roosevelt, warning him that if he thought Pearl Harbor was bad, an even bigger shitstorm was coming.

Now, all this time, Ricky was working his ass off at Columbia University. He and his team had been buying shitloads of uranium. They were playing Legos with big blocks of uranium at school. And they figured out that nuclear fission was real and that you could make a bomb that would be so insane, even Hitler would be fucked.

11 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, they had a big meeting and decided to switch from uranium to plutonium and they all moved to Chicago. Ricky didn’t like dragging Laura and the kids away from their friends but daddy had work to do. Thank God.

They needed a place to test their new reactor and the middle of Chicago seemed like an unwise choice. So they found a plot of land 20 miles away out in the woods. But the plan got all messed up because of permitting and red tape.

So Ricky says, No problem. I can build it in the squash court underneath the bleachers in the football stadium at the University of Chicago. They started building the thing, a giant sphere, a giant ball a few weeks before Thanksgiving. 3 weeks later they were making nuclear energy. And the ball didn’t even need to be as big as they’d originally planned.

About 5 months later, in April 1943, they came up with a plan to use the nuclear waste to contaminate the German food supply. Because fuck the Nazis. And the complicit motherfuckers living there, right? But they decided not to go through with it because they weren’t sure they’d be able to kill at least 500,000 people, thereby rendering the attack ineffective.

Yes, it’s fucked up. Which is why they say War Is Hell.

But we must understand that every day, week, and month that went by, they were certain that the Germans were on the verge, the very cusp, of developing an atomic bomb. Which they would drop on every major city they could. Starting most likely with London.

So Robert Oppenheimer, another genius raised on breastmilk, built a lab in New Mexico. He was out in the desert working on the Manhattan Project. And he called Ricky and was like, Yo, Rick, get your ass down here, you gotta check this shit out, it’s fuckin wild. We’re gonna blow some shit up. You don’t wanna miss it.

So Ricky went down to Los Alamos and became one of the directors of the place. And he saw the Trinity test. And it scared the shit out of him. He estimated the blast yield would be 10 kilotons. It was actually 18.

Ricky and the guys met with a bunch of Washington military brass and they all agreed to use nuclear weapons on industrial targets. That was in May, 1945. A lovely spring with people looking forward to summer and trying not to jump off a roof because of all the carnage going on in Europe and the Pacific Ocean, where the United States Navy was duking it out with the Empire of Japan.

That was in May.

They make it through the summer.

The Nazis haven’t dropped any nuclear bombs on London yet. But they want to really, really badly.

Then, on a Monday, Ricky is at work. The public address system comes on and they hear the voice of President Harry Truman making his now-famous speech on the radio, telling America, the Japanese, the world, and especially Adolph and the other Nazi fuckfaces that America just butt-fucked Japan with a dick big enough for an entire city to feel it. And that more was coming if Japan didn’t surrender.

But Japan didn’t surrender. They had scientists go look at Hiroshima to confirm that it was destroyed by a new bomb. Which it obviously was. But they also told the military and government brass that the Americans likely only had 1 or 2 more of those bombs. So they all agreed to ride it out.

The Russians saw all this and decided the Japanese were fucked so they declared war on them, too. The Japanese didn’t give a shit about this, either. Not enough to surrender.

The next day, Nagasaki happened.

And the Japanese surrendered.

The point is not to debate the necessity of either or both of those bombs vis a vis the intentions of the Japanese leadership.

The point is to illustrate who Enrico Fermi was in order to elucidate his credentials so that we may better understand his infamous paradox.

That summer, the war ended. On New Year’s Eve — surprise! — he moved his family back to Chicago where he resumed teaching.

He eventually succumbed to stomach cancer in the winter of 1954. He always suspected that working with the uranium was dangerous but he believed it was worth the risk in order to stop the fuckin Nazis. God bless you, Enrico Fermi. He was only 53.

His big sister Maria perished in a plane crash in Italy in 1959. So Ricky lost both his siblings to cheesedick ends.

Anyway, the cartoon in question was published in The New Yorker Saturday May 20th, 1950. The story goes that Ricky was at work one day and was walking to lunch with his friends and fellow breastmilk geniuses Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski. It was summertime. So chances are they read The New Yorker and had seen that cartoon.

Now, keep in mind that the whole Roswell UFO thing happened in 1947. So everyone had been talking about UFOs. Especially the breastmilk boys. They figured the UFOs were fake, the photos were fake, et cetera. But Ricky did think there was at least some possibility of life out there. And if there were, where was everybody? Quote unquote.

Ricky was not the first or only person to ponder this. A Russian rocket scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote something very similar back in 1933. He came up with the Zoo Hypothesis. It states that Earth and everyone on it are a giant zoo. Animals to be observed but not interfered with. Probably more like a giant wild animal park in Africa. Or like not taking starfish and stuff out of the ocean when you go swimming in it.

Another scientist, an astronomer, named John Allen Ball has put forward the Laboratory Hypothesis which states that Earth and the people on it are not part of a zoo but really more of a lab in which experiments are being done in order to accelerate the evolution of an intelligent species in order to guide it past the risk of destroying itself as well as ensuring that when humans do finally venture out among the stars, they come in peace. Not with nukes and nationalist ideological bullshit.

Of course, there’s just one small problem with the Fermi Paradox, the Zoo Hypothesis, and the Laboratory Hypothesis. And I’m sure you’ve already realized what it is.

It is this:

How…

…did I…

…get here?

Ka-boom!

Remember at the end of Spaceballs?

British accent: Oh shit. There goes the planet.

You can say that again, sister.

Here's an idea. The Blank Adventures of Holy Smokes and Cherry Thunderbomb. They're 2 best friends, tgirls to the end. Because they're lipstick dedicated. They are actors. They have their own hit series that's on par with GOT and Stranger Things. They're sort of like bounty hunters. Private detectives who also get hired to do certain jobs. Thriller type stuff. Part psychological thriller and part action thriller with guns and cars. And the gimmick is that you get to fill in the blank. You pick the adjective. I have a few ideas for my own. But I want to hear yours. Maybe each winning adjective will dictate the plot and story for that episode or that season.

That would be coool.

Do you like your computer?

Because I kinda hate mine.

I feel badly about it. But I still do.

There’s really only 1 thing I don’t like about it.

Now, this is not to be confused with features it has that I don’t care for. I’m talking about shit that is fuckin wrong with it. Wrong as in WRONG. Manufacturer’s fuck-ups is what we’re talking about. Some shit they fuckin knew about but couldn’t do anything about so they said fuck it: build em, sell em, and ship em.

Ladies and gentlemen, coming to the stage, the hardest working DJ in the system. If not the whatever is bigger than a system. The galaxy, I guess. Because Earth is part of its sun’s solar system. There are buttloads of those. Just like there are buttloads of systems in a galaxy. And buttloads of galaxies in whatever is bigger than that.

Is there an interim jump?

Or do we go from galaxy to universe?

Because now that I’m thinking about it, that seems wrong. Either that or the so-called known Universe — with what, Sammy? —

SV: A capital motherfuckin U.

That’s right! A motherfuckin capital U. Just like he said. Except not because I inverted them. Thank you, Sammy. That was awesome. It occurred to me a moment ago that I may have suddenly appeared as a crackerasscracker White man yelling at a Black man. I love that look Black men get when they come face to face with an actual racist.

I don’t love it. Obviously. It’s fuckin bullshit. But I admire the way they take it. Their whole fuckin demeanor changes. They look off to the side, eyes cast up…up…as if…to the heavens. Heaven itself. Because in their head, they’re lookin up at God stroke Gawd and thinking, Motherfucker, again?!!!

And God is like, Apparently.

And the black guy is standing there a tiny bit zombie like. Because he’s so fucking pissed — and hurt, by the way; like, fuckin devastated but we’ll get to that in a minute —- he’s so fucking pissed that his soul momentary leaves its body so it can go up to Heaven and smack God stroke God upside his head. Or at least knock over the salt shaker where God is having lunch.

And God gives you that look.

Like, Did you just knock over my salt shaker?

And you’re like, Oh, fuck. I just knocked over God’s salt shaker. Forsooth He shall surely smite me.

And God just goes on lookin at ya. He’s stopped eating now, too, by the way, so you know you done fucked up REAL good. He’s leaning on his elbow. With his fork in his hand. He’s eating spaghetti.

And the Italians…

…go…

…in the softest possible whisper…

…wild.

You just saw God eating spaghetti. Everyone in Italy, Italians everywhere, are gonna go fuckin nuts. It’s gonna be glorious. It’s gonna be the 2nd Coming of Italian Food.

Watch this: as spoon as you tell em — spoon? — that you had a vision of the Lord and He was eating a plate of spaghetti…

…they…

…are going to invent…

…new types…

…of Italian food.

Think about that for a minute.

All of this begs the question: how, please tell me, please: how is there any vacancy in Italy?

And the French are like, Excuse moi you impotent American but you are now the mother of all of my fuckers! I spit on you! You are banned from France. Vive la France, oui? NON! NON! Non pour toi. NON POUR TOI!!! Va te faire foutre, you man with no taste.

I think I just got banned from France, you guys.

And the Italians go, Non, non, non, it’s okay, you are both right. We Italians do have great food. But the French also have great food. Everyone knows that.

Of course you guys have great food! Come on, France. It doesn’t diminish you guys to say how good the Italians are. Au contraire, mes amis. Bien sur, pourquoi pas. Va te faire foutre? That’s a good one, you guys. Seriously, though, you guys are tops in lots of stuff. Pastries for sure. Like…holy cow. Everyone knows that. Pastries are perhaps the finest of culinary arts, are they not? Winemaking is right there with it, I’d say. And there are loads of other things. And taste is highly subjective. And by the way, all you snobby Americans who talk shit about the French because they eat nasty shit like pigeons and frogs, you eat turkeys. Wild birds native to the area.

What do you think they did in France?

They did what you did: they ate what was around.

People didn’t always have an abundance of food. If you study history, you find that there are a lot of periods of time in which large numbers of people were starving at any given time. They didn’t have any fuckin food. It happened a lot.

It’s happening now.

On Earth.

Right now.

There are people on planet Earth who are starving to death. Because they don’t have any food.

That’s so fucked.

Look at the American war in Afghanistan. Kuwait and Iraq, too. We’re talking about sustained combat operations.

For like…20 years.

That’s a long time.

Think about if we’d had a million Americans go over there and help with security, build schools, spend time in the community, get to know the locals, the actual Afghan people. Not the fucking psycho talibanners who want to oppress everyone and make it be like the 1300s again. The regular people. If we had a million Americans go over there and live there and work there and make friends and have relations and integrate and re-Westernize the place, the problem would be solved. You can’t bomb it away. You can’t drone it away. The only way is by going over there and talking to them and —

No.

Excuse me. I misspoke, my friends.

I just said that the only way is by going over there and talking to them and — And then I stopped. Because I realized I said something wrong. I said talking to them.

No.

Talking with them.

Not lecturing them. Not berating them. Certainly not with epithets. That’s right, motherfucker: epithets.

Because that is why the Black guy’s soul leaves his body; because he hears that shit. And the only way he can stop himself from killing you right there on the spot is by having his soul leave his body — his soul actually LEAVES his body; think about that — and goes up to Heaven, sees God sitting there enjoying a meal, which at this particular moment on this particular day is spaghetti — Italy 1, everyone else zero — and he storms over to the table to have words with God for letting this crackerasscracker TALK to him like that. But then he realizes what he was about to do so he backs down. But on his way back to his body and away from God’s table, he reaches out and knocks over the salt shaker. It tips over and some salt spills out. Not a lot, maybe 20-25 grains scattered in a loose pattern there on the quintessentially Italian red and white checkered tablecloth. He’s got one of those little red glass candles, too. The ones in the dark red glass. I love those. Along with a good, really big pizza, and a red plastic Coke cup. With crushed ice. Fuck yeah.

Point being — AHHHHHH!!! — that he has to go back and clean up that salt. He says, I’m sorry, God.

And then he stands the salt shaker back up and places it exactly as it was, wherever it was. Probably next to or at least close to the pepper. Unless God was using it. I’ve never salted my spaghetti but maybe He does. Maybe that’s the best way to eat spaghetti. With a nice dash of salt on it. Or maybe that’s a terrible way to eat it but that’s just the way God likes it. He’s God, He can do what He wants.

Or can He?

Does Mrs. God come into the room with a few more bottles of the most amazing Italian red table wine and say, Sweetie, enough with the salt. You know what the doctor said.

And we’re like, God has a doctor? Oh, shit! Is there something we need to know?

And God goes, Yeah. Don’t ever knock over my salt shaker.

And the guy who’s trying not to kill the crackerasscracker guy carefully cleans up God’s salt. After he does so, he returns to his body, which has been standing there like a zombie all this time. Not technically deceased, but definitely unoccupied momentarily.

And that crackerasscracker had better hope that when that man’s soul returns to his body, that he’s still sufficiently terrified for having just tasted God’s wrath and cannot, therefore, kick the honkey’s ass. Even though the honkey deserves it and we all know he deserves it. He could certainly do it. But what comes next isn’t fuckin worth it. So fuck you, you racist motherfucker.

The point is that that’s what I felt like after I said what I said after Sammy said what he said.

We were talking about space. And solar systems. And before that we were talking about computers. And manufacturer defects. And how the manufacturer KNOWS their product has a problem. They know it has the defect. But they build em, sell em, and ship em anyway. And in some cases, they sell em, then they build em, then they ship em.

And more important than what we were talking about is the fact that I was making an introduction. I wanted to introduce the man who does the introducing. Someone should introduce him for a change. I think he would like that. I think he would appreciate it. I know I would.

Ergo: I will also say what I am about to say vis a vis the following:

Coming to the stage, ladies and gentlemen, the hardest working DJ in the Universe both known and unknown. Put your hands together or do whatever it is you do to show love in a nonthreatening way. Here he is, the sexiest em effer I know — no offense, Sammy.

None taken.

— Mister Sexy Black Voice. Whose real name is Carl, by the way. Carl. Take it away, Carl.

Thank you, Captain. That was mighty nice of you. Longwinded as fuck. But nice. Like the crackerasscracker said ladies and gentlemen, make some sweet love for bandest with the mannedest, the one and only The Hot Fudge Sundaes as they perform their latest hit song titled Build Em, Sell Em, Ship Em.

{musical interlude}

Have you guys seen those party vans? They're all over the world now. They're big vans or maybe a tour bus or an RV. And on the side of the vehicle is a QR code. When you scan code, it takes you to a site asking for 99 dollars. When you say NO! it asks for 99 cents. Then it grants you access to a live feed inside a night club with all sorts of crazy blue and red and purple and green lights and a disco ball and a blacklight. The works. And inside that club is a bunch of people partying like it's 1999. And some of them are very naked. Doing what naked people do. Twosomes. 3somes. Trains. And you quickly realize you are watching a live feed inside the party van. It has been pimped out like a night club. With cameras and microphones everywhere. And then you find people to go in there and party and do all kinds of crazy stuff while they’re driving around. It's basically a roving sex club. Financed by whomever paid 99 dollars or 99 cents. And maybe the people inside are pros. Or maybe they're just adventurous couples who like being watched when their identity is hidden by the crazy lights that obscure their faces.

That's a 3 percenter. You're welcome.

Did you guys see that movie about the young 30something professional woman who is working her way to the top and has everyone asking her, When are you gonna settle down, when are you gonna start a family?

And she's like, I'm busy. I love my career and I'm going to Antarctica.

And she does. She actually goes to Antarctica. And when she's there, she meets the dreamiest hunk of burning love she's ever seen. He's part of a team investigating neutrinos and how they pass through the Earth.

A whirlwind romance ensues as they spend their time naked and occasionally exploring the ice.

They return to New York for a dream wedding. Where she announces they're going to live in Antarctica.

That sound is not Blue Oyster Cult. It's jaws hitting the floor. Along with giant turds. The highpower cutter of throats is bailing to go live in the frozen asshole of the world? She obviously caught a bug down there and is now insane. One of those neutrinos knocked her upside the head. Wait, is she knocked up? She’s going down there to have it and a year from now she’ll come back and say she rescued him from a cave deep beneath antarctica.

That sounds like a kickass line of dialogue for a leading lady.

What actually happens, however, is that she marries the guy, goes down there, they make love 2 to 3 times a day for about a year and a half. Then it’s down to every other day. At most. They never let more than 48 hours go by without making love and getting naked and mashing their genitals together until they both have a thing that is, as Chandler once said, kind of like a sneeze only better.

She does get pregnant, by the way. That’s what’s supposed to happen if you go at it like animalistic animal newlyweds. You’re gonna make more animalistic animals. Isn’t it cute when kids say aminals? Autocorrect will probably try to change aminals to animals when the person who eventually has to type this has to type this.

Yeah, that’s me.

Oh. Okay. Hey.

Hey.

Okay. That’s a little awkward. I wasn’t expecting them to be here. Uh, anyway. She gets pregnant, goes back to Manhattan for the 3rd trimester so they can have the baby be born there.

Word immediately gets out that she’s back. Rumors fly like cows in a tornado. Poor cows. Cows are so cute. I just love cows. They’re adorable. Anyway, when she gets out of the hospital, the paparazzi are waiting. She comes out in a wheelchair, holding the baby. Somebody bulrushes her.

Bulrushes again. Twice in 2 days. Odd word to pop up.

Bulrushes

Fuck, it did it again.

Bumrushes became bulrushes. Spellchecker stroke autocorrect is a form of AI. And it’s been doing shit I don’t want to do for decades. Of course The Terminator is what awaits us with this shit. Hello. Wake up. Haven’t you all heard what Elon has been saying about this shit all along? He’s absolutely right.

It’s more dangerous than plutonium.

We haff to look at it kinda like that.

Anyway, as our momma throatcutter beloved is coming out of the front doors of the hospital right there on the sidewalk in Midtown or wherever is the nicest, someone bulrushes.

Did it again.

Someone bumrushes her. It did it that time again, too, but I decided not to say anything. So the guy…charges… her. Instant melee. That’s pronounced MAY-lay, by the way. Not MEE-lee. And it means just a whole shitload of hand to hand combat. Like in Braveheart. Or 300. Or The Outsiders. One of the greatest movies ever made. We’re gonna do it for Johnny, man. We’re gonna do it for Johnny! Everyone knows Stay golden, Ponyboy. But no one ever says We’re gonna do it for Johnny!

Imagine what a mindfuck that is for Ponyboy. Fuckin everyone he knows thinks very highly of him. They see something in him. Probably potential. So they don’t want to see that potential squandered. And plight always squanders potential. That is the true plight of our inner cities, by the way. People are so busy trying to survive that their potential is persona non grata. They won’t even let it in the front door. A lot of people think it’s dangerous talk. The truth is that it’s shifting the conversation away from what is and onto what could be. Because that’s the way you do it. You focus on the future. On that goal. Finishing high school. Not becoming a parent yet. The scholarship. The college degree. The good job somewhere away from the plight so they can live and work around people who are not trapped in that mess. People who don’t sleep on the floor in their closet. And if they do, it is not because they’re hoping to avoid stray bullets while they’re asleep.

Think about that.

You’re pissed off that your pillows aren’t right. That you can’t get comfortable. In your CalKing bed. And your discount Amazon microfiber sheets from China that are surprisingly soft and silky, just like the reviews said they were. That’s your big gripe. Oh, oh, too many pillows. No wait, not enough pillows. Someone call the UN!

And the people in the ghettos and hoods and projects are afraid of getting SHOT.

While they sleep.

Every year, we should have Plight Month. Maybe it can be in May. Because May is usually a nice month. People are generally happy. School is getting out, summer is basically here, a lot of people are excited because they’re going on vacation. Maybe to Disneyland or Disneyworld or EuroDisney or Disney Shanghai or Disney Tokyo. Or wherever. Down the block to the community pool. And then home again well before it gets dark. Because that’s when the shooting begins. It sounds like fireworks. And it’s every night. And it’s insane.

Why….

….why…is nobody doing anything?

The Great Pacific Garbage patch is getting cleaned up. And that’s great. Of course it is.

It’s just that…over here, where we are, our babies are dying. They’re killing each other. They’re having gun battles in the streets. In front of everybody. In front of families and people eating. Imagine you’re enjoying a really, really good burger and you’re so hungry. And that burger you’re eating right now is so good. It is tender. It is juicy. It is cooked perfectly. The produce is really fresh and crispy and they even did something special to the bun. And there’s some special sauce that’s a little tangy, maybe chipotle, and it has fried onions on it and a slice of white cheese unlike any cheese you’ve ever had before. It’s smoky and a bit like cheddar. And it’s amazing. The whole burger is amazing. The fries are even amazing. I almost said Friends. The Friends are amazing. They very much are. But imagine that burger in your hands. And it’s big, too. It’s not some rinky dink podunk burger that’s about 4 inches wide. It ain’t no McDonald’s cheeseburger. No offense, McDonald’s. Or anyone who likes McDonald’s and eats there. I like it, too. I don’t eat there very often because the food is so delicious. If I eat there, I will begin eating there regularly. And the food has too many calories for me to do that. I will get fat. Very fat. Quickly. And I don’t want that to happen.

The point is that a McDonald’s hamburger or cheeseburger is delicious but they’re not exactly big and for some reason they’re always flat. When you unwrap them, they’re flat as fuck. Still tasty, of course, but flat.

But not the burger you’re eating. It’s a bigun. And a goodun. If that’s a word. Who knew you could get such a tasty burger anywhere besides Big Kahuna Burger? This place makes a good burger, too. Big Kahuna better watch his back.

You take another huge bite of your burger. And now you get a big hit of pickle. The perfect amount. So you compliment it by grabbing a few long, thin, perfectly crispy and salted fries and dip them in the little white paper cup of ketchup you pumped out of the silver ketchup box next to the window before you sat down. And you crunch down on those fries and they are hot and crunchy and perfect. And you are even more impressed with this place. What is the name? Tony’s or something? Tony’s sounds like it ought to be a pizza place. But this Tony is making darn fine burgers. You’re not sure if they’re as good as Bob’s. But they’re on par with the Big Kahuna. And you take a long drink of your chocolate shake to wash everything down with. You considered getting Sprite. Because the irony was not lost on you. But you felt like having a shake. A chocolate Frosty from Wendy’s is what you actually wanted. But the only Wendy’s you’re aware of is 15 minutes away. It’s just too far to go for a Frosty. As delicious as they are. But this shake from Tony’s is perfect. It’s not too thick. You can actually get it through the straw. You can actually drink it without looking like you’re trying to suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. I will refer you once again to Baseketball. If you’ve seen it, you already know. All I will say is the bad guy from Superman 3 and Jenny McCarthy.

So. To sum up. Dinner at Tony’s. Burger. Fries. Shake. A perfect evening with the family. Sitting on the little curved fiberglass seats at an outdoor fiberglass table with a fiberglass umbrella over it.

And then fireworks are going off. And you’re so happy. Because you LOVE fireworks. You start looking up. Toward the sky. Hoping to see the fireworks. Because yes, ladies and gentlemen, Black people like fireworks, too. Fireworks are not just for White people. If anything, if they’re for anyone, they’re for Chinese people. They invented gunpowder 3000 years ago. Fireworks are their invention. Is the very best fireworks show on Earth in China? It should be.

The point is, you’re looking up, hoping to see fireworks. But the cute little goshdarned fiberglass umbrella is in the way. And you take another big bite of your burger, laughing at yourself as everyone around you starts to jump to their feet, screaming, because of the fireworks. They’re excited, too! You wanna see em but man you wanna continue eating this burger. It’s that good.

Then a bee flies past your ear. You flinch a little. That deep buzzing is always a little distressing. Even if you’re not afraid of bees. That deep sound they make is still intimidating. Probably because if some shit ever went down, that little bee could kick your ass. And you know it. And the bee knows it. And the bee knows you know it. Just like when Janice told Chandler he loved her and he knew it, he just didn’t know he knew it. Same thing.

So you keep eating. Another sip of shake. Mmmm it is so smooth and sweet and cold and the chocolatey sweet goodness pairs with the crispy well-done outer part of the meat, that part that gives just a little charcoal flavor. That distinct grilled flavor. That’s important to have in a good burger. A good burger should be well done on the outside but still mostly pink on the inside. So you haff to cook it hot enough and short enough in order for it to turn out like that. So good that the meat bees come for a bite. I had that happen at a fair once. A big old meat bee wasp thing showed up, buzzing around my sandwich. It was a grilled chicken sandwich. I was happy to share but I didn’t want the wasp walking around on my sandwich. So I used my fingers to tear off a little hunk of the nice whitemeat chicken. About the size of a cooked pea. And I set it to my right on the wooden picnic table. And the bee saw exactly what I was doing. And she landed right on it. Went to town. I watched up close as her big-ass mandible things scissored in and out and she carved out a huge chunk of chicken and flew away with it in her mouth to go give to her babies. If you had a frisbee in your mouth. That was about the size of the piece of chicken she flew away with.

Now, I don’t know if that freaks you out. If you are pretty much scared of bees and wasps because you are afraid of getting stung. If you are, I sympathize. I am afraid of that, too. But the thing is, if you stay calm, the bee will stay calm. Even if you scream and run away, the bee stays calm. It’s only when you start trying to kill it that it finally is forced to defend itself. So remember: the bee doesn’t care about you. It is not a malicious, malevolent creature looking for humans to sting. They die when they sting. They don’t want to sting you. They’re just looking for food to take back to their hive or to the nest they’re building. That’s it. They only want food. And it’s not even for them. So stay calm and let them have some and then they’ll fly away. And you can consider it as a blessing because a wild animal just interacted with you. It’s a beautiful thing that just happened. Cherish things like that.

Another bee flies past your head. You’re pretty sure you felt the air move as it went by. It went right past your eye. Like it tickled your eyelash. You actually felt its wingtips touch your eyelashes.

And now you’re like, Okay, that’s the 3rd bee that buzzed me. Am I about to be attacked by a swarm of African Killer Bees? Or better yet, Murder Hornets? Am I about to be murdered by hornets?

No, you are about to be shot by a bullet fired from a gun held by the Big Kahuna himself.

Those are not bees.

A big dude is leaning out of a car window, firing a bona fide Uzi at the building behind you.

You realize that you are alone.

Where did everyone go?

It’s not fireworks. It’s the Big Kahuna. If he had a garden hose, the whole side of the building would be wet.

Someone walks up behind you and hits you in the back with a baseball bat. It steals focus from your burger and the Big Kahuna.

Someone else hits you in the leg. You’re looking around, trying to figure out where they are so you can duck and hopefully get away. Because being hit hard with a baseball bat sucks. Broken fingers and hands, broken arms for sure, probably a fractured skull. Maybe even a broken jaw. A whole bunch of missing teeth. All around good times.

You start to feel kinda sick. Lightheaded and maybe like you will even throw up. You hope not because you hate throwing up. It is not fun. You stand up because the guy with the gun is still there shooting. He seems very angry at the little brick building that’s been in this neighborhood as long as you can remember. Certainly at least as long as you’ve lived there. But your leg feels funny. Asleep, almost. Liken when Tom Hanks stabbed Eugene Levy in the leg with the anesthetic at the dentist. And Eugene Levy’s whole leg went numb. He did such a good job acting like his leg wouldn’t work. I actually asked a dentist if that would actually happen. I was sitting in the chair, he’d just given me shots to numb me up, and we were waiting a few minutes for the stuff to kick in. I had a bunch of those little white gauze logs in my mouth so I couldn’t speak normally. But I said, You remember that scene in Splash when Eugene Levy got stabbed in the the leg with the Novacaine and his whole leg went numb and he couldn’t walk?

And the dentist said, Yes, I remember that scene.

I was about 12 years old, by the way. I said, Would that really happen?

And he said, No. You’d wind up with a numb spot on your leg about this big.

And he formed his thumb and index finger into a circle about 2 inches in diameter. And he put it on my thigh to illustrate.

And then he proceeded to drill on me or whatever it was that day. He did a lot of work on me. He pulled 7 of my teeth in one day one time. 7. That sucked. Probably not as much as getting hit by a baseball bat. But it wasn’t exactly a Vladnik carnival.

The point is that that dude is shooting and you need to get the fuck out of there. And to make matters worse, there is at least one person attacking you with a baseball bat, and there still may or may not be bees in the vicinity.

It’s not clear exactly what’s going on. But when in doubt, get the heck outta Dodge.

Except that your leg is asleep.

And your head feels funny. You’re almost kind of sleepy. You actually slept really well last night. Granted, you slept in the closet like you always do. Like you do every night. But you were in a good mood and the weather has been really nice and you weren't too hot and you weren’t too cold and for some reason you weren’t bothered over having to sleep in the motherfuckin closet. So you slept well. But now suddenly it seems like maybe it might be time to take the rest of your Tony’s Special #1 home so you can put it in the fridge and enjoy it later or perhaps tomorrow for lunch.

But boy your leg sure does feel funny. And you find yourself being forced to sit down. But your balance is off and you’re not exactly in the process of sitting. You’re also a little bit in the process of falling. But you land on your butt and you’re fine so you laugh it off. Even though you are a little embarrassed.

And the Big Kahuna is making so much noise with that thing. Finally he stops and slides back into the car and the car speeds away driving much too fast. Not safe at all. And you hate to see that because there are kids in this neighborhood. Kids walking, kids on bikes, people walking their dogs. It ain’t exactly prototypical Main Street, USA. But it most certainly is typical Main Street, USA.

You still have your burger in your hand, too. You’re not sure what to do with it at this point. You should probably get up and sit down at the table and put the burger back on the tray. Maybe you can wrap it back up in the yellow paper they wrapped it in when they cooked it. Even though you can never manage to wrap it up as well as they do it. You certainly don’t want to waste it. You paid 5 dollars for the #1. You’re not wasting anything. The burger and fries are going home. The shake you kinda need to drink now because once a milkshake warms up it tastes kinda gross. Foamy and weird, like something you probably shouldn’t even be consuming. Yet, when it’s cold, for some reason it’s fine. That also seems funny.

You can’t seem to get up, though.

You reach out for the fiberglass seat beside you but when you reach for it, you miss. Your hand grabs air. You realize it’s further away than you thought it was. Now you see it. You reach again. But you miss again.

Is the table moving?

You lunge for it and this time you get it. Weird.

You try to get up but you can’t. You don’t have the right leverage or you’re not in the right position. You let go of the cold fiberglass seat and touch the ground, to get your legs underneath you so you can stand up. So you can get up off the ground. Bees or no bees.

Your hand slips. There’s ketchup on it. There’s ketchup all over the gray concrete. It’s all over your pants. These are your favorite jeans, too. Not the expensive ones but definitely, for some reason, the most comfortable pair you own. And tomato sauce stains. There’s no way all this ketchup is going to come out. It’s on your shirt, too.

You’re thinking, What the fuck? Did somebody throw ketchup on me? Did that big silver ketchup dispenser pump fall off the ledge by the window and somehow hit me in the back? And now I’m covered in ketchup?

Where the fuck is everybody? Why was that guy shooting? I’m definitely sleeping in the closet tonight. Maybe even the bath tub.

If you can get up. Because you’re having some sort of sleep attack. You feel like you’ve had 2 beers too many. A little too much red Italian table wine. An entire bottle too much. You already know you’re going to be hungover as fuck tomorrow.

Wait a minute. You didn’t drink. You were sitting here with your family enjoying a peaceful evening together, punctuated by one fine, tasty burger. And fries. And a shake. An actual chocolate shake. It has been years since you had a chocolate shake. Because you never let yourself get them. Even though you love them. They’re one of your favorite things to eat.

But now everything is weird. You’re on the ground, alone, covered in ketchup, and, apparently, there are no fireworks.

And you need to get your ass up off the ground, figure out what is going on, ask them to put your burger and fries in a paper bag so you can go home. And try to laugh about the ketchup. Even though your favorite jeans are probably ruined.

But maybe you’ll just sit there for a second. You’re tired. And sleepy. Why are you so sleepy?

You close your eyes.

Maybe you’ll just sit there for a second and wait for your family to come and help you up. They’re going to laugh like hell when they see you sitting in a big red puddle of ketchup. But that’s okay. You don’t mind because you know it will be very funny. They’ll probably think it’s your blood at first. That that crazy guy with the gun shot you.

But it’s just ketchup. That guy was just messin around. He wouldn’t shoot up Tony’s. Who would do that?

And then your soul leaves your body, goes up to heaven, and sees God sitting there eating a Tony’s #2: aioli burger, large fries, and a real milkshake. God even has the big silver decanter they made His shake in.

Do you guys capitalize God’s pronouns? I do. I know some people don’t. But it is what I was taught and it seems appropriate for some reason. Even though I’m sure he doesn’t give a crap.

He’s happy you’re there, though. Happy and sad.

Instead of going over and knocking over his salt shaker and then sheepishly cleaning up the spilled salt, you join him at the table. And before he was a giant and you were standing on the table, barely larger than the salt shaker. But now you’re the same size, sitting beside him, and a fresh Tony’s #1 is put before you. God smiles at you, burger in hand, waiting for you to taste it so he can see your reaction.

You take a whiff first. It smells amazing. Like a grilled burger should. You can also smell the bun, like freshbaked bread. And ketchup.

Ketchup.

Ha.

That’s a good one. So much for your jeans.

But for some reason, it doesn’t bother you. They’re only jeans.

You take a bite. Oh, man. This one is even better. Tony really outdid himself. That burger is so good it’s almost as if you and Tony died and went to Heaven on the same day just so you could enjoy a burger with the Lord Almighty.

Remember in Demolition Man when Stallone ate that burger he said was the best burger he ever had? Me, too. Wink, wink.

Now, if you’re an atheist or, God forbid, vegan, and you get attacked by a ketchup dispenser and suddenly find yourself on a different astral plane and the first thing you do — for reasons incomprehensible to you now — is to to eat a hamburger and it is the single best hamburger you’ve ever had even though you somehow know 100% that it’s not made from meat, no beef from a dead animal — aminal — what do you do then?

First, you probably acknowledge that the whole atheism thing was wrong. Because this is definitely someplace else.

And if the atheism was wrong, could the veganism also be wrong?

That was a joke, by the way, about vegan being worse than atheist. They’re not. They’re both equally stupid and snobby and preachy and pretentious and always ready to fight about it with pretty much anyone.

Have you seen Haunters-in-law? Deceased parents decide to go back to Earth and haunt their children. It’s hilarious. The gags write themselves. I think that’s a really good idea. I laughed my ass off the first time I heard it. The first time God told me about it while I was taking a shower. I get a lot of my best or favorite ideas in the shower. I used to practice kata in the shower. Not physically but in my mind. And it was pretty much as good as actually doing it. Later in the dojo I had to do it in front of people, the guys in their black ghis that snapped when they punched. They each wore a black belt. With strips of red electrical tape on the tips.

It’s like when you go to the airport. Because you’re flying somewhere. C.f. Brian Regan’s bit about not knowing how or when to use the You, Too phrase: Cab drops you off at the airport. As you’re getting out, the driver says, Have a good flight. And you go, You, too! You have a good flight, too. In case you ever fly someday. I’m a moron, I don’t know how to use the You, too phrase.

You’re nervous about missing your flight, like we all are. Even when you’re standing on the jetway. And you get to the round part, the inside of a big-ass accordion part. You see the plane. The actual skin of it. White and dully shiny. Companies like FedEx and UPS spend buttloads of money washing their airplanes. They taxi them through giant car washes. It makes them go faster more easily, which saves money. Dirt causes parasite drag. Wash and wax your car really, really good and then go for a brisk, happy drive on a brisk, happy day in October. Doesn’t the car seem faster?

You step onto the actual plane and wait to show your ticket to the cabin attendant. The person in front of you does it first. Because we’re all too dumb to match numbers and letters with what’s printed right there on our boarding pass. You sneak a peek into the cockpit. Furtive. Because you don’t want to look like a terrorist casing the joint, figuring out how to grab a 40 out of the cooler before bolting for the door. It’s all switches, lights, and knobs. And people saying important things you kind of wish you knew, too. The left seater has more stripes than the right seater. Everyone in the dojo is kneeling on the 70s-brown carpet that always smells like feet when you succumb to the urge to smell it. People fidget as their feet fall asleep. I'm the only one standing. I move about in a predetermined series of steps, blocks, parries, punches, and kicks. It's a slow motion kung fu movie with invisible actors. And for 5 or 6 minutes I'm the star. I probably don't look as cool as I would like to. I bow at the end. The man with the most stripes says good job. I return to my vacant spot in the circle and kneel. Shower kata works. I try to be a good person. I’m fuckin not but I try to be.

Anyway, the point is that people sleep in their closet.

And they shouldn’t haff to.

Our cities should be safer than that.

I actually thought rolling in the national guard and having a big sitdown with the community leaders and all the gang leadership and working something out was a good idea. At least it was somebody trying to do something REAL. Trying to actually solve the problem. To provide a solution. Rather than attacking the problem.

Because when you attack a problem, what happens?

What happens when someone attacks you? You fight back. You fight like hell, right? Of course you do. We all do. That’s what we’re supposed to do. We even made laws about it. And everyone knows about those laws. They’re called self defense laws. They state that you have every right to defend yourself.

Well, so does the problem you attack. You attack and it fights back.

That’s why you don’t attack the problem; you be the solution.

If there’s too much shooting going on, you don’t show up with more guns, hoping to outshoot the shooters. That’s only going to lead to more shooting.

You roll up and say Let’s stop this. Let’s talk. We all see that this is insane. That it’s madness. That we’re killing each other. And therefore ourselves. Over nothing. A few city blocks here, a few city blocks there. Over some bullshit reputation. And the worst part is that nobody cares. The rest of the country doesn’t care. I mean, they care; they’re not heartless. But they’re busy with their own stuff. They can’t just stop what they’re doing and come over here where we are and say, Okay, let’s all put down our guns and resolve this amicably. They can’t do that. They’re busy with their own lives and their own problems. Which means we haff to do it ourselves. We are the only ones that can fix this. We need to stop looking to Washington. Okay? Washington doesn’t give a fuck. That’s a whole weird, narcissistic world unto itself. It’s survival on another level. All we haff to do is put down our guns and set up some trade agreements and plant some urban gardens and start having cookouts together so we can all get to know one another as people. That’s it. It’s that simple. Our kids can play together and the smart kids can tutor the kids who need help in school. And the athletic kids can help other kids throw a football or do a layup or ride a bike. And we’ll go out together, shovels in hand, and we’ll renovate our parks. And we’ll paint over all the graffiti. And we’ll pick up all the trash. And we’ll clean up our yards. And anyone on drugs can continue to take them as we all come together to support them deciding to get off of them. And we’re all going to get to know the police officers instead of being afraid of them. And the police officers are going to get to know us instead of being angry at and indifferent toward us. And we’re going to solve our own problems. We’re going to begin behaving like a community. And if we all haff to start wearing the same orange tee shirt so we feel like we’re all on the same team, that’s what we’re going to do.

As Heath Ledger said in The Dark Knight, Where is Harvey Dent?

If you live in a city that does fireworks every night, you need a Harvey Dent.

If you live in a part of town where people sleep in their closets to avoid getting shot, you need a Harvey Dent.

If you live in a part of the country where you’re scared whenever you’re outside your house, you need a Harvey Dent.

Speaking of the man who ruined Batman, did you guys ever notice that at the end of The Dark Knight after Harvey Dent falls and dies, Batman and Commissioner Gordon are standing there over the body having a profound conversation about Bruce Wayne’s new reality. Christian Bale and Gary Oldman — watch The Professional if you’ve never seen it — are talking.

To each other.

Alone.

Yet Bruce — Christian Bale — uses his deep, raspy Batman voice.

Why?

Commissioner Gordon knows who he is. He knows he’s Bruce Wayne. And they both know he knows.

Anyway, back to the throatcutter lady from Antarctica coming out of the hospital with her baby.

Someone charges her and a scuffle ensues.

She falls out of her wheelchair and lands on her baby, crushing it. She sits up, with blood and guts all over herself. Her mutilated baby in her hands. What’s left of it.

The paparazzi blast away with their cameras. Even though several of the ones in the front row immediately vomit and or faint.

Ha-ha, I got you! she cries out. She begins eating the blood and guts from her baby.

It’s just cherry preserves and watermelon, you idiots, she says. And a doll. My real baby is over there.

And her husband, the Antarctica neutrino sexy neutrino dreamboat neutrino sexy neutrino sleuth neutrino finder sexy neutrino sexy finder sexy man, walks out carrying their little bundle of joy, a beautiful healthy baby. Neutrino. It’s so much fun to say neutrino. Even Amy Pohler down in Endo is walking around the factory saying neutrino this and neutrino that. Neutrino neutrino neutrino! Nobody even knows what they are. As usual.

Everyone is so relieved about the baby that they don’t even think to take pictures. The happy parents get into the waiting big black SUV — definitely a primo Model X — and drive away.

Within minutes, the footage is on the air. Within the hour, the whole world has seen it. And by the time the 11 o'clock news wraps up, everyone thinks she’s totally batshit and is therefore legally unfit to be a mother.

She is immediately booked on all the major talk shows. Which she agrees to do.

Remotely.

Because fuck them.

And when one of the moronic talking heads goes, Is it true that you discovered this child in a cave in Annarttica and you rescued it which seems great and everything but it’s actually some form of alien life we don’t understand yet and it’s actually here to be the nondenominational antichrist?

And she goes, Yes, that is, in fact, correct. The evil neutrino creature has me under its spell. Just like it will soon have all of you under its spell. And soon, all of humanity. We are all doomed. And there is nothing any of us can do about it. Wait! It’s crying again. I haff to go to it. It needs more blood. I’m so lightheaded already. My nipples are bleeding. They’re bleeding! Momma Throatcutter is coming, sweetie!

And then she gets up from her desk, leaves the frame, and leaves the TV hosts and all of us staring at the wall behind where she was sitting, somewhere in her house. It’s a dark grey wall with no artwork or any decorative interior design stuff anywhere. She could be in a secret government bunker somewhere and we’d never know.

The point is that everyone believes what she just said. That it’s a demonic neutrino baby here to enslave every single person on Earth.

Hijinks most definitely ensue.

She basically has to go into hiding. Everyone is suddenly out to get her. A christotaliban redneck puts a 1 million dollar bounty on the baby. And another 10 grand for the throatcutter woman. They print out wanted posters. They actually hire an artist to draw her and the baby and put them on Wanted posters like in the Old West. Millions of people go into high gear, gearing up with guns and ammo and pickup trucks and David Bowie knives.

I’m Kristen Bell, bitch.

And they drive around with cammo paint on their faces. And every time someone sticks a camera in their face, they say I’m gonna get me summa that. The only good neutrino baby is a dead neutrino baby. What in the sam hill is a neutrino, anyway? Ain’t they like one of those invisible cosmic particles that’s always hurtling through space kinda like radio waves? Exceptin a course that that’s a wave whereas a neutrino is a particle. The whole thing is all very Einsteinian and a hair above my pay grade, I’m afraid. But that don’t matter. I’m gonna find me that neutrino baby. And when I do, I’m gonna do my patriotic duty on behalf of the citizens of Earth. I am fully prepared to think globally and act locally. I admit I was not entirely on board with the climate crisis hysteria and the recyclin of chewing gum wrappers and having your very own compost heap in your bath tub and all that greenhouse gas fossil fuel nonsense. But I am on board with the fight against the neutrino baby. The neutrino baby is a clear and present danger to the Earth. But mostly to these the most glorious United States of America, because that’s where I live.

Point being — AHHHHH!!! — that that shit starts happening. So of course they and the baby go into hiding. They go to the airport to catch a flight but the ticket agent recognizes them despite their disguises and goes, Is that the neutrino baby?

And she goes, No. It’s not the neutrino baby. There is no neutrino baby. It’s just a baby.

And the ticket agent freaks out. She goes, Oh, my God, I can feel the neutrinos! They’re hitting me! My face is melting!

And other people in line see and hear this. Especially that word: neutrino. That is the new zeitgeist word. Every media outlet in the world summons scientists and particle physicists to come on their show and explain what a neutrino is and how to avoid them so they can’t melt your face off. Michio Kaku and Neil Degrasse Tyson go on Oprah together and get into a fistfight talking about quantum mechanics and particles versus waves. And someone in the audience calls out, They have neutrino rage! Run!

And the whole audience gets up screaming and running and random people start beating the shit out of each other, holding each other’s shirts and punching each other with their right hand like hockey players, because that’s how people who don’t know how to fight fight.

And Oprah is just sitting there. Calmly. Looking at the camera. Half-grinning her Can you fuckin believe this? trademark Oprah smile we all love and relate to so much.

And then some asshole sees this and cries out, Oprah’s in on it! Oprah’s in it! Get her!

And they stop fighting each other and rush the stage.

Oprah throws her blue index cards at them and runs like Yasmine Bleeth running on the beach in slow motion, nipples erect because all the women on Baywatch had to stick their hand into a champagne bucket full of ice water and then rub their nipples to make them hard before every take.

So they take the baby home. Commercial travel is obviously out of the question. Some friends have a little place in the Caribbean. Is it cuh-RIB-eun or car-ih-BE-un? Pirates of the

Anyway, they charter a small jet to the Bahamas, where no one will know they’re there and they’ll be safe.

Except that some morons who are too smart for their own good see the footage from the airport and deduce that they’re trying to get the neutrino baby out of the US. They check all the radio traffic at all the nearest airports and find a small jet going to the Bahamas. They hack the airport security camera footage and see crazy bloody nippled Momma Throatcutter boarding a plane with the nondenominational antichrist in her arms. They track the jet on radar and quickly determine via its flight path, aircraft type, and range that it must be going to the Bahamas. Protesters converge on that airport. A sea of hysterical morons crashes through the chainlink fence at the end of the runway, killing 17 people in the process. By the time the jet is making its approach, there’s nowhere to land. The pilot, who is smart and doesn’t believe neutrinos will melt his face off, put extra fuel on board for just such an eventuality. He pretends like he’s going to land. And all the idiots on the runway stand there holding hands and praying for each other, prepared to sacrifice themselves and eat spaghetti with God in Heaven if it means also causing the jet to crash and destroy the evil arthritic neutrino baby.

And someone on the runway goes, Arthritic? How can a baby have arthritis?

And the other person goes, I don’t know. That’s just what I heard.

And someone else goes, I heard it has three eyes and no reproductive parts because it reproduces by some sort of unknown cellular division using power it gets from stealing all our neutrinos.

And someone else goes, Wait, it steals neutrinos? I thought it was going to bombard us with neutrinos. Didn’t you see the woman at the airport who got her face melted off? My friend saw it and said it was just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And someone else goes, I thought it was going to take all of the neutrinos out of the Earth and the Earth was going to implode.

And someone else goes, I heard it has two heads.

And someone else goes, I heard she has sex with it. That she’s a witch and she summoned it from the pit of Hell and that’s why she went to Antarctica, because that cave was the closest she could get to actually being in Hell.

And someone else goes, I heard that she and the baby murdered all the other explorers down in Antarctica. That they killed anyone wearing a puffy orange jacket. Or anyone with a beard. Or anyone with those sunglasses that have the leather things on the sides.

And someone else goes, I heard this is all part of Operation Highjump. Which was a huge government operation back in the 1920s or 30s or 50s. And everyone was racing to get to Antarctica because they found something. Governments from all over the world sent teams of people, including lots of military, including the United States. They sent a man named Admiral Bird. He was like some sort of big time 5 star general or something. And he took a whole bunch of Navy ships and hundreds of people and they all went down to the South Pole and they never came back and no one knows what happened to them to this day.

And someone else goes, Of course we do! The lady witch and the cute little neutrino baby got them!

And someone else goes, Wait, if that was back in the 50s or whatever, she wouldn’t even of been like alive yet. How could she even be there?

And that other person goes, She’s a witch! She’s immortal.

And someone else goes, That’s right! She draws her strength from the neutrino baby! That’s why we haff to kill her. I hate to do it but I’ll be the one to do it if I haff to. If it means saving the Earth, I’ll stab her or hit her with a broomstick.

And someone else goes, Why would she have a broomstick?

And everyone goes, Because she’s a witch!

And that person goes, Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

And someone else goes, Maybe if we pray hard enough, God will hear our prayer and make the plane explode.

And someone else goes, Yeah, let’s all join hands and pray really hard!

And someone else goes, No, that won’t work. If she’s a witch, she has to be burned alive. Same with the baby. Then the ashes haff to be scattered so they can’t reanimate themselves on Halloween night 100 years from now like some sort of zombie phoenix.

And someone else goes, But if God makes the plane blow up, they’ll explode, right? It’ll be a big fireball in the sky. So they will be burned alive.

And someone else goes, But what if God only makes the engine explode and the plane crashes into the sea? She’s a witch. She can float. She’ll swim ashore and take all of our neutrinos and we will all be dead by morning. I’ll miss my pilates class.

And someone else goes, What if we had a bazooka? We wouldn’t haff to wait to see what God does. We could do it ourselves!

And people go, Yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea. Who brought their bazooka?

And everyone just looks around at everyone else. And they’re all dejected and sad and angry at themselves for not thinking to bring a bazooka. Because a bazooka is pretty much standard equipment when you’re on a mission to save the world from a witch and her neutrino baby.

And someone goes, Is anyone here from the Taliban?

And someone else goes, What difference does that make?

And that other person goes, The Taliban has lots of bazookas. First they had American bazookas when they were fighting the Russians in the 80s. Then they had Russian bazookas when they were fighting the Americans after 9 11. And now they have American RPGs, much better than a bazooka, because the Americans ran away and left 10 trillion dollars worth of equipment behind, making the Taliban the 2nd most powerful army on Earth. Surely the Taliban can take care of the neutrino baby. And its mother and her bloody nipples.

And everyone shouts Yes yes we must have the Taliban, only the Taliban can save us!

And people around the world are watching this conversation in real time because the people there are livestreaming it on their phones.

And it’s even worse than the capitol riot and the rittenhouse affair.

Someone goes, Why do they call her Momma Throatcutter? That’s so messed up.

And someone replies, I heard it was because of an old photo of her from college when she dressed up for Halloween as like a nurse or something with one of those old time straight razors.

And someone else goes, I heard she dressed up as Darryl Hannah in Kill Bill.

And someone else goes, No, no, no, it’s because she’s a witch and a mother and she cuts babies’ throats and drinks their blood because that’s what witches do.

And someone else goes, I thought that was vampires.

And someone else goes, Same thing.

And everyone nods and murmurs, happy and unified in their agreement that witches and vampires are the same thing.

And someone goes, But wait, if we enlist the help of the Taliban, won’t that mean we haff to dress like them and be like them and girls won’t be able to do math or play volleyball or drink? So, like, say goodbye to Champagne Thursdays.

And someone else goes, Why can’t girls do math or play volleyball?

And some big fat guy who needs to shave goes, Because they’re not as good as men at spatial thinking or sports. It’s science. Evolution. Men evolved to hunt animals for food while the women were back in the cave protecting the children. Men learned to count animals and run after them and throw a rock at them. Which is why we’re better at math and volleyball. It’s basic run of the mill Darwinism, really.

And someone else goes, I thought it was because the Taliban are a bunch of backward misogynists who want to go back to living in the 10th century. And women who can do long division or can jump really high and hit a volleyball over the net are a threat to them and their cult of lies bullshit so they pretend that it’s an affront to God so they haff to cut their head off and then make sure all the little girls grow up avoiding math and volleyball because then the Taliban will haff to cut their heads off, too. And they don’t want to cut anyone’s head off but if it’s an affront to God, then they have no choice. It’s like when your kid cuts class to get high in the parking lot so you take away their Playstation for a few hours to teach em a lesson.

And everyone nods and murmurs again, happy and unified in their agreement that long division is hard and that after the Taliban kills the witch and her neutrino baby, they’ll double-cross the Taliban and kill them with all the extra RPGs that will be lying around. Because once the witch and the neutrino baby have been taken care of, everybody will want things to go back to normal. And that means learning long division in 6th grade and then forgetting how to do it a few years later. And playing volleyball, too. Because feeling the warm sand beneath your feet is so nice, even if the water is polluted and you’re afraid to walk in it for fear that your toenails will fall off, because you heard once that that’s what happens to the people who surf in Santa Monica. And you think about that every time you walk on the beach and see yellow foam on the sand and you wonder who thought it was a good idea to build pipes that go from everyone’s house to the ocean, thereby filling the ocean with poop. And it’s just like in Caddyshack when a kid shits in the swimming pool. Everyone gets out of the water as if it was on fire. So they have Bill Murray drain the pool and clean it. And he’s standing in the empty pool wearing a white hazmat suit and galoshes. And he finds the brown poop log. And he picks it up and looks at it. He takes a bite of it. Because it’s not poop, it’s a Baby Ruth candy bar. Peanuts and caramel covered in chocolate. Delicious. Probably not after it’s been floating in a swimming pool. But I ate other people’s meat off their discarded fajita platters. So I can certainly understand eating a mostly edible candy bar out of a swimming pool.

That really happened, by the way. A group of teenaged girls in Afghanistan had to go on the run and into hiding because the Taliban was after them. And the reason the Taliban was after them — brace yourself, because it’s fuckin stupid — is because they were — drumroll, please! — playing volleyball. They weren’t aiding and abetting the Americans. They weren’t spies. They were just girls who were going to high school and taking notes in class and eating lunch together and then going to volleyball practice after school. And they grew up during the so-called occupation by the Americans. Think about it. They’re born, they grow up, the Americans are keeping the asshole Taliban at bay. So the girls, and all the children, of course, can go to school and be normal people, just like in other parts of the world. And some of them are tall and everyone is like, Hey, you’re tall. You should play volleyball! And they’re like, Okay! And next thing you know, you have teams from different high schools having friendly volleyball matches. And their parents go to their games and watch them play and it’s amazing because it’s like normal life. Finally.

And then the Americans leave.

And within hours everything is fucked.

And within days, the Taliban comes to the houses where the girls live. And they confront their parents. And they arrest — quote unquote arrest — the girls. Who are guilty. Of playing volleyball. And they cut the girl’s head off. With a knife. And she dies. Screaming. In agony. The other girls hear about this and decide to get the fuck out of there. They go hide. Because they played volleyball and now they’re going to be executed in a most cruel and inhumane manner.

But by all means let’s protest the sale of fucking ice cream in Israel.

Maybe we should get our priorities straight.

And maybe we should’ve looked at Iraq and Afghanistan the way we looked at post-World War II Europe.

Maybe someone should sit down with the Taliban dudes and explain to them why having their women learn long division and play volleyball is a GOOD thing. And that it’s possible to do long division and play volleyball without having their culture invaded by Satanic Western behaviors like using condoms and learning to drive.

Of course, I’m nobody from nowhere. I’m some asshole on a spaceship. So what do I know?

By the way, if you were on Earth and saw me get quote unquote abducted, what did you think? What was going through your mind while you were watching the global broadcast by the man with the red skin and white hair? You saw the same feed I saw, the video of my dad’s house. You saw me open the door and come outside and look up at the ship. When the elevator thing came down, were you thinking they were gonna vaporize me or something? Or did you know it was basically a way into the ship? That’s what I thought. I wasn’t scared at all. I was confused. It’s like if a couple of cops came to your house and said they had a warrant for your arrest because you robbed a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But you live in California or wherever and you’ve literally never even BEEN to Atlantic City. So there’s obviously been a mistake. So you now haff to go with them and help them to realize they have the wrong person. You’re gonna haff to let them put handcuffs on you, for safety, and take you to the station and book you and take your mugshot — which will be public domain, by the way, so you’re fucked even though you are innocent — and then you’re going to haff to sit in a jail cell until someone can come and bail you out so you can go find a pro bono attorney to help sort all this shit out. It was kinda like that. I knew I had to go into the elevator and go up into the ship. I didn’t know what was going to happen after that. I didn’t know I’d wind up doing this. But I also didn’t think they were going to be experimenting on me or anything. Which they didn’t. Everyone has been very nice.

This has gone way off the rails, by the way. She was supposed to get married and move into her new husband’s house with him. It’s been in his family for generations. It’s a little old and creepy and probably needs to be gutted because she knows nothing about electricity and even she can see that the wiring is definitely not up to code. It’s a structure fire waiting to happen. Because that happened a lot when electricity was first introduced into people’s homes. They were afraid of it. Just like they were afraid of cars. And airplanes. And computers.

Just like we’re afraid of robots taking over the Earth.

Like in The Terminator. And The Matrix.

And AI is where all that shit starts.

Anyway, the first few days they spend in the house, weird stuff starts happening. She sets her mug of coffee on the kitchen table, walks into the other room to get her phone, comes back and is about to sit down when she realizes her cup of coffee is no longer on the table. It’s over by the refrigerator.

Which is weird.

She just set it on the table 30 seconds ago.

But now it’s over there.

And then Don’t Fear the Reaper starts playing on her phone as she’s holding it.

Even though she’s alone in the house. Her husband went to the office to take care of a few things but he said he’d be home early, 3 at the latest. And then he wants to make love to his wife in every room of this house. Including his old room upstairs where he grew up and where he had his first nocturnal ejaculation. And this time, he wants to have a proper ejaculation. All over her great big titties.

No, he didn’t say that. He’s not that kind of guy. He probably wouldn’t object, though, if they were making love and she said, Pull out and come on my tits.

He’d love that.

Anyone would.

But after her bra goes missing and she finds it in the freezer 4 hours later and her shoes wind up in the oven and she becomes convinced she’s in the Poltergeist house and there are dead bodies under the foundation, he comes over and sees she’s in a panic. She eventually manages to explain to him that the house is haunted as fuck.

And he goes, Oh, that. No, no, no. That’s just my parents.

Imagine Paul Rudd saying this.

And she goes, Your parents are dead. You told me they died years ago. Are you lying to me?

And he hugs her and says, No, sweetie, no. Not at all. I would never lie to you. They really did pass away. It’s just that, well, they’re haunting me. Well, us.

They’re WHAT?

They’re haunting us. They think it’s hilarious. They always threatened to come back and haunt me. And they did. It’s okay, though. They’re harmless. They just like messing around. They always were jokers. They loved messing with me, too. I could never take a joke. They were my parents so I trusted them. But they were always messing around. And the more upset I got, the funnier they thought it was. Then one time when I was really mad at them, I told them I hoped they’d hurry up and die so I could be free of all their bullshit torment.

Kids always say things like that to their parents.

I was 23.

Oh.

Anyway, when I said that, my dad just said, That won’t matter, son. We’re gonna come back and haunt you.

And they are?

And they are. So, sweetie, I’d like to officially introduce you to my parents, Jack and Judy. Your haunters-in-law.

And then she screams and runs out of the house and down the steps and down the dirt road to the scary black wrought iron gate. And the whole place is scary as fuck. Like Norman Bates in the ultimate Victorian fixxer upper.

Also, different subject: Lamborghini, I’ve been working on the supercar shower and I’ve made some progress. It must be user friendly and low maintenance. And it has to be reliable. So no glass. And it should have 3 shower heads. 2 facing each other so you and your lover can shower together and you can each have your own shower head. So you can actually shower and get clean and have the water be the temperature you prefer. No more dosey-do in a phone booth, sharing the water, freezing your ass off while the other person is standing under the shower head.

So, a shower head for each of you and then one more on one side. That’s where you go to make love after you’ve gotten all turned on watching each other bathe. Stroking dicks and washing pussies and tits. And backsides. Et cetera. Whatever equipment you have between you, that’s what you should enjoy watching your lover wash.

And if your lover is watching you bathe, make a show of it. Perform a little for them. Stroke and squeeze and tug and pull and spread.

That reminds me, we were supposed to do a song. SB, what song were we supposed to do?

I thought you’d never ask.

Better late than never.

Especially when it’s your period and you ain’t ready to start a family.

That’s true. What song are we hearing?

The song we are hearing is called I forget.

I Forget? That’s the name of the song?

No, I forget the name of the song. You’ve been talking so long that I forgot the name of it.

It’s okay, we’ll come back to it.

If we can remember the title.

That’s true. So, we have 2 cute little stories: Momma Throatcutter and Haunters-in-law.

I kind of see JLaw as Momma Throatcutter, a woman who has to go on the run to protect her baby from the idiots who really think it is an evil neutrino baby here to destroy the Earth and send them to hell, where it’s really hot and you get burned alive every minute of every hour of every day and it never ends and there’s nothing you can do about it and it’s not fun and they don’t want that to happen so they are forced to kill the neutrino baby.

And then we have Paul Rudd in Haunters-in-Law.

We probably should have Plight Month, though. We can call it something else. That was just a top of the head thing. The point is not what we call it. The point is finally banding together to do something about our problems. Finally growing up. And acting like adults. That means squashing all your childhood baloney and starting fresh because you’re an adult now. And you shouldn’t be letting your life be dictated by something that happened to you 30 years ago. That was then. This is now. Great movie, by the way, with Emilio Estevez. That was then, this is now. Check it out after you watch Demolition Man. And The Outsiders. Emilio Estevez is in that, too. He sits down in front of the TV with a beer and a chocolate cake. It’s so awesome. An entire big round chocolate cake. As though he’s planning on eating the whole thing.

After that, you should watch Wisdom. He’s in that, too. And he wrote it and directed it. Demi Moore is in it, too. It’s quite good.

Also, Lamborghini, let’s start with the shower. That’s easy. We can do that pretty fast. Then we need to introduce the Jacuzzi shower. It’s a Jacuzzi hot tub with a shower attached to it, perhaps on 2 sides. So you can shower or soak. Maybe we don’t mix the water, because we don’t really want shampoo or soap or bodywash in the Jacuzzi.

Also, this must be reliable. And easy to own and operate. You’ll have more money than Volkswagen in no time. Just from selling showers. Because a whole lot more people can afford one. Pretty soon, the supercar shower will be the status symbol of choice. Not the BMW in the driveway or the paid-off mortgage. Even though both of those things are great. And even though one is better than the other.

Unless you’re sleeping in the closet.

And Plight Day….

No.

Plight Month is a month during which everyone — and I do mean EVERYONE — sleeps in their closet. For one month. Take out all your shoes. Put em somewhere else. Take out whatever else is in there and put it on the bed. Because for the next FOUR WEEKS you won’t be needing it.

Why?

Because your ass is going to be sleeping on the floor in the closet.

Now, if you are claustrophobic…

…I repeat: if — if — you are claustrophobic…

…tough…

…shit…

You get in, you get your blankets and your pillows right, you lie down and get as comfortable as you can, and then you reach up and close the door.

BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE REST OF US DO.

Let’s see how you like it.

Spoiler alert: you won’t.

You won’t like it.

Well, maybe you will if you enjoy being inside small spaces because it makes you feel cozy and protected and safe. But if it makes you feel trapped and if it makes you feel like you can’t breathe and it makes you feel like you need to get out of the closet or you’ll die, join the club.

And that is exactly the point of Plight Month.

Now, if you do not have a closet, ask yourself this question: If I knew bullets were about to come through my windows or door or even the walls, a lot of bullets, and I had to find a place to get out of the way and it had to be somewhere I might have at least a little bit of protection, where would that be in your home?

Bathroom floor?

Bathtub?

Kitchen floor? Maybe behind the cabinets. In between the cabinets and near the appliances, something big and metal is good. Anything that looks like it could stop a bullet is where you want to be. Even if it looks like it might cause the bullets to slow down, it’s better than being in bed up high several feet off the floor, right about the height at which bullets tend to traverse the air inside the room you’re in, tearing massive jagged flabby meat holes in anything they come in contact with along the way. And if it looks uncomfortable, trust me: it will be.

And that is the point of Plight Month.

And just so we don’t go out on a total downer, albeit a fucking poignant one, allow me to say this vis a vis the following which I am about to say and will also say: if you are trying to have sex while watching this, I’m sorry. If you are giving or receiving oral sex while listening to me ramble on about neutrino babies, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re kinda tired and worn out and are just trying to get some sex in where you can. Or maybe you’re pounding ham and aren’t even listening, don’t even know I’m on. If you were asked tomorrow about the neutrino baby, you’d have no idea what that even means. Because you were busy being intimate and coming your brains out.

If we had Juicy January or Fornication February or Make Love in March or Anal Sex April or Make Love in May or Jackoff June or Juicy July or Assworship August or Striptease September or Oral Sex October or Naughty November or Deviant Sex December, do you think it would be a good or a bad thing?

Would it mostly help or mostly hurt?

The idea is that during each month, you try to do that thing every day. Like one of those challenges when a couple tries to have sex every day for 30 days. I actually can only speculate as to how beneficial or detrimental that would be. The one video I saw gave me the impression that the couple hated it. Now, they were married and had kids and jobs and ballet and soccer practice and daily commutes and mealtime and bathtime and homework time and they probably barely had a moment for themselves, let alone to spend together, let alone for having sex.

So they probably thought it would be a good way to reconnect.

To simply HAVE sex.

Every day.

Like a diet or workout challenge.

You WILL exercise EVERY DAY.

You WILL weigh yourself EVERY morning after you pee but before you drink your coffee.

You WILL track your macros and stay UNDER your caloric allotment EVERY DAY.

You WILL have sexual intercourse with your spouse.

Actually, if you did all those things, your life would be quite a bit better.

Let’s add some more!

You WILL read any book you want for at least 30 minutes EVERY DAY. Set a timer on your phone. Treat it like cardio for your brain.

You WILL work on your side hustle passion project hobby dreammaker for at least 30 minutes EVERY DAY.

Finish the novel. Reread what you’ve already written and add 500 words. Don’t think about it, just do it.

Make the video. Try to finish it and upload it. Or get a little closer to doing so.

Work on the website.

Send some emails. At least one. Targeted and specific to the person you think can help you.

Write the song.

Write the poem.

Practice the instrument.

The point is that doing it a little bit every day makes it feel like part of your life. Kind of like sleeping. Or using your phone. It’s second nature. Eventually, all those brief periods of activity will meld and morph and combine to be this thing you do. Instead of a thing you wish you could do and wish you were doing.

Anyway, the couple in the video I watched seemed angry. A tiny bit angry at each other but probably mostly just angry at the situation they were in. Being busy parents and loving their kids and not wanting to change anything but also wishing constantly that things could just slow down a little bit. So they could catch their breath. Get a little more sleep. Put a bit more effort into the small things. Like hygiene. Shaving. Dressing. Being in the mood to wear cologne or perfume. Cleaning. Vacuuming. Cleaning the disgusting toilet. The shower. The shelves and drawers in the refrigerator. The floor mats and trunk of the car. Or most likely cars, plural.

I kind of got the impression their marriage was seriously on the rocks. And she read about the sex thing in Cosmo and decided to talk to him about it.

Which is good.

She didn’t cheat on him, we hope, or he on her, we hope, and instead they turned to each other. That’s a really good sign. That’s a strong beginning. That shows that there is a strong foundation there. A history of love and respect. And they remember how it used to be. And they wish it could be like that again. And they maintain hope that it will be again one day. Maybe once the kids get a little older, probably in high school in another 6 or 7 years. That’s when the kids will be old enough to look after themselves for a weekend while mom and dad drive to the nearest decent hotel where they can do 3 things:

Eat

Sleep

and Fuck.

It’s actually in a different order.

Fuck

Sleep

Eat

Repeat.

Couples, try to do that once a month.You owe it to your kids to set a good example. And the way you set a good example is by being happy. And the way you be happy is by prioritizing your marriage. And the way you prioritize your marriage is by spending time alone together doing things you enjoy. Travel. Movies. Plays. Museums. Sporting events. Orgies.

Well, no, not orgies.

Because of monogamy. Because my understanding is that open relationships don’t seem to last. Probably because making love is the one activity that you two do together that you don’t do with anyone else.

That’s what makes it special: you only do it with each other. Ideally, you stay in the playful, horny state of mind you were in when you were first dating.

When you were in love.

When you didn’t need a challenge to make love every day.

You simply did it because you wanted to.

There was nothing else you’d rather do. You were naked together. Going at it. Alone in your tiny apartment. Wondering but also not caring if the neighbors could hear you.

Time seemed to stop when you were together.

Which is why you wanted to get married.

Because when you were making love, one of you screamed out, Don’t ever stop fucking me like this!!!

Or something to that effect.

Focus on THAT.

Focus. On. That.

See what happens.

If we had a different sexual challenge each month, it would turn everyone’s focus to making love. That would force us all to slow down. To have sex. To have orgasms. And to relax. Then we could approach our problems in a calm, mature, friendly way. There’s no telling what we could do together if we all started doing that.

Now, if you ARE trying to have sex while I’m prattling on like Annie Wilkes, I’m going to shut up and stand here quietly, mouth closed, so you can come.

Go.

Oh, one last thing: In the book, Annie Wilkes runs the sheriff over with a riding lawnmower. In the movie, she gives it to him with a shotgun, both barrels. Poor guy. I liked that actor and that character. I wish he’d survived. But he had to go in order for us to hate Annie enough to enjoy watching Paul shove burned manuscript pages into her mouth and telling her to eat it til she chokes. I don’t advocate gag-inducing fellatio, by the way. I find it a turn off. Choking and gagging and spit strings everywhere…. No, thank you. The fellatio crosses over from sexy and hot to an act of being demeaned. Which is not sexy.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Remember in The Dark Knight when Heath Ledger as the Joker? Or as I refer to him: The Man Who Ruined Batman. There was the scene with the two ferries. Ferryboats not fairies of the magical sort. And then the timers went off, he was expecting them to blow each other up. And he is up on the skyscraper looking down at the boats on the water, which must’ve been an amazing view, and he says the following:

Here we go!

That’s our show!

Thank you and goodnight.

Hope you came your brains out. If you haven’t yet, keep going until you do. And we’ll resume this tomorrow night.

Remember to tip your waitress!

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Alien Night Club - Show 39?

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