Pope Proclaims Pictures Pass For Prayer

   

Pope Francis Saying GR@CE

 In a recent release to the press from the Vatican International Congress of Ecclesiasticity (VICE), the world was brought up to speed with Pope Francis’ latest religious revamp.  He stated in an e-mail in which he CC’d humanity, that in what he called a “DM” from G-d, he received what he refers to as his latest, “E-Piphany”.  Pope Francis in his infallible Holy Hipness, has declared that taking a picture of your food before eating it is a suitable replacement for saying grace.  He went on to further elaborate that not only is it ok to take pictures of your food with your phones (IOS and Android equally acceptable), but any type of handheld recording device can be used in lieu of saying grace.  The modern world KOFP’d (Kneeling On the Floor Praying) in response.  Early statisticians and anthropologists predict that this bold move by The Apostolic See will increase Pubescent Electronic Divine Offerings (PEDO) by at least 400%.  This is a huge leap in the pope’s current string of attempts to bring the 2000 year old religion into the 21st century.  In conjunction with this news, the pope also announced that the vatican will be releasing an app called, “GR@CE” (as of now available only for Blackberry®), where the pics of your now blessed food will earn you IP (Indulgence Points) which can be redeemed for forgiveness of a myriad of sins.  There will also be in-app purchases available in order to be able to buy IP with real currency in case you’re lagging behind your friend’s scores, but aren't particularly hungry.

Now I, like the majority of red-blooded American human spawn from the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and eightieth decade, have read my fair share of Nintendo Power magazines.  I used to beat Ducktales on the reg when I was like six years young.  Ain’t no thang .  I also, being the naive imbecile that I was/am, thought I knew a thing or two about MarioKart for the Super Famicom Entertainment System.  I lived in this blissful ignorance for over a decade.  I was like a stupid fucking piece of shit ant that is all cocky because it is so sure it knows that two foot area between that tree and that rock in the park.  Well guess what, ant, the world is a lot bigger than that miniscule swath of land that you’ll ne’er even fathom existing outside of.  Much like the aforementioned lame-ass ant, I was about to get stepped on by life.  I went to college to party and learn stuff, but boy-oh-boy did I not know how forcefully expanded my mind would get on one fateful eve in the bayou.

I had just befriended the Adams and Oak crew and was heading over to play some of the Kart Of Mario.   I whistled the tune to the underground level 2-1 in the original Mario as I skipped over the uneven sidewalk squares that led to that fenced-in wonderland on the corner of Adams Street and Oak Street.  It was one of those cherished New Orleans afternoons where the humidity was merciful and the sky was clear.  You might say I was in a good mood.  Heck, even a grand mood.  I was on my way to see my buds to play some Super MarioKart fer crissakes!  After saying high to Dunk in his car (pun intended), I sauntered into Tmatt, Christserveher Columbus, and Daniford Frickiford’s “apartment”.  I plopped onto the couch, releasing dust motes from the civil war era, and cracked the knuckles on my gaming fingers as one of my bros tossed me a forty.  Chris smiled his trademark shit-eating grin, and Dan continued to be totally hairless as they sat next to me on the couch, assuming their battlestations.  TMatt was outside looking really cool as he smoked a cigarette of tobacco.  He peeped his soft-haired head in and saw that it was time to do his sworn duty.  

The game starts up and we jam out to the sweet 8-bit tunes and crack some jokes I don’t remember while we choose our characters and the level upon which I would be forever changed.  The game started off like many matches in my life had started.  Boop... Boop... BEEP! We were off. Everyone taking their well practiced turns with great aplomb, stockpiling fantastical weapons as we left the cheating computer players in our proverbial dust.  Soon the race evolved into a match solely betwixt mortal humans, or so I thought.  As the race went on at its feverish pace, something outside of the game kept gnawing at my attention.  It wasn’t until midway through the second lap that I realized what had been disquieting me so.  During this race that was taking the full previously untapped potential of my mind just to keep up, TMatt was lounging against the armrest of the couch, playing using only one hand.  His non-gaming hand was deftly tilting his Mickey’s Brand ® malt liquor bottle so that it’s golden contents flowed gently and steadily into his open maw.  This man was merely having a leisurely drive in the same race that threatened to cause my brain’s neurons to cook my brain right in my skullpiece for just trying to keep some semblance of competition.  

His casual demeanor changed abruptly when Dan, through what must have been some serendipitous intervention from the Nintendieties, rounded the final turn with an eye on the first place prize.  TMatt placed his forty ounced beverage on the stained carpet and placed his hand on the controller.  Once he assumed the grip of a proper player, his eyes started glowing red and the closer Dan got to the finish line, the darker I noticed the room was getting.   It was the final stretch.  Dan getting ever closer, and TMatt had just hit a question block.  Every second stretched into a minute, and every minute into a millenium.  Madness was the only escape for someone not prepared for such intensity.  Tmatt’s inventory kept randomizing and I wondered why he didn’t just cut it short to get his weapon sooner.  The room just got darker and darker as his weapon choice randomized, and a murder of crows scattered into the sky outside.  Dan, sopping with sweat, was mashing the controller’s buttons like a man drowning.  His character got ever closer to the finish line and right when he passed the point where his triumph was all but guaranteed, Tmatt’s inventory stopped on the lightning bolt and Tmatt pressed the fire button.  The entire room filled with a flash that only the unfortunate people subsequently vaporized by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb ever experience.  The flash was followed by an unnatural silence and a darkness permeated the room, the sky outside, and even our souls.  Chris shit his pants.

After exactly 666 seconds, the perfect silence was broken by the sound of Paco outside yelling that the mu’ffuckin’ power went out in the middle of, “The People’s Court” right before the verdict.  All of us, after a minimal amount of our wits were gathered, huddled at the window as we watched Paco climb the electrical pole outside A&O and jam his bowie knife into the transformer.  The lights flickered on, almost as if they were unsure if it was safe for them to start working again.  “Holy Fucking Shit”, we could hear Chunk curmudgeoning from his apartment.  We all sort of nervously giggled and played a quick game of grabass while we were trying to settle our nerves when all of a sudden Chris says, “Hey you guys. The Super Nintendo power light is on. Turn on the TV, Dan, to make sure it’s not broke.”  Dan hesitated for a moment with the remote control before turning on the boob tube and what that screen subsequently showed will forever be burned into the hypothalamic cortex of my feeble feeble mind.  

The three of us simultaneously turn slack-jawed to look at TMatt who was going outside to finish smoking that cigarette that I told you he was smoking earlier in the story if you were fucking paying attention.  TMatt looked back at us at the threshold of the apartment with the air of Mick Jagger after eating a twix bar and said, “I put hot sauce on my hot sauce.”

The End

News Flasher: New York City Replacing All Sewer Grates

   
     Clark Coproperari, head of New York City sanitation, held a press conference last Thor's day stating that a city-wide decree has been mandated from the city's panel of wizened elders to replace every single sewer grate that exhales up from the depths and into the faces of our humble pedestrians daily. The sanititan referenced a calculation from the department of statisticians and probability that determined within the realm of acceptable error and propriety that an average of 3000 cellphones are lost to the depths of septic abysmea every month. Dr. Coproperari's eyes fogged over while calling forth a simpler era when portable cellular transponders were of Zack Morris proportions, never in danger of slipping through the cracks of urban life. Stirred back to the present by a passing vulgarity launched by a transient gizmonger, Dr. Coproperari mustered his new energies of fluster to introduce Sven Hamburger our majestic city's prominent urban bio-ecologist, who, with great efficiency, explained his scientific discoveries.

     

     Apparently scientific evidence abounds with indications that the sewer alligators are being poisoned from the heavy metals that constitute the phone batteries. Sven illustrated that this is of mounting concern because the alligators have been showing signs of evolving into a new subspecies over the past generations that are more suited for sewer life and these poisonings could ruin cloaca lacerta's chances of ever coming to fruition. 

     The mayor then brusquely took the podium to say, “People happy/alligators live = win/win.” He was then carried off on the shoulders of the populace to the sound of a roaring applause. His senior information adviser assumed control of the micromaphones to assure the remaining crowd that the gratehole's new size will be designed to keep the new iphone 5 and its slimmer dimensions from falling in, with provisions made for the possibility of future interpersonal digicomm's dwindling dimensions. 

     The procession of public speakers ended with the theatrical entrance of the proclaimed leader of the subterranean dwellers to protest the just aforementioned project. The man, who introduced himself as The Hoborg, vehemently informed us surfacers that they have become technologically savvy over the years and have been able to fix the majority of the “lost” phones with bags of rice. With all these gadgets they have created a communications network called “The Undernet”. It has vastly improved their chances of survival by keeping each other updated on the C.H.U.D. migration patterns. The press conference came to an abrupt end when The Hoborg was respectfully manhandled away from the speaking pedestal. No word from the ministry of physics and engineering if this grate change will affect water-flow.

Related Articles: Scientists Create A“Cell Phone”.

News Flasher: Scientists Create A “Cell Phone”

     The Conglobation of Anonymous Scientists, after the first rays of dawn escaped our ionosphere this morning, were successful in creating a portable telephone the size of a single human pancreatic cell. When the scientists were further questioned about it, they responded: “You need a microscope to dial and you can't hear shit”.

News Flasher: Shocking your mind with my little genitals of information

It is with untold of bittersweetness that I report on this latest development, which is filled with reassurance and yet a smidgen of nostalgia. I have just received confirmation from the Department of Folklore in Wilno, Lithuania, that in fact, the last known Vampyr on Earth has just died of AIDS.

Who Was This Last Survivor?

This Vampyr who, in his human life, went by the name of Baron Borit Von Grütenkvaltensjorgesborschkachov (luckily for myspell-check) legally changed his name 512 years ago to Kapitonas Neuntöter immediately postceding a rather inspiring tour of plaguespreading around the German areas of Eastern Europe. Once vaccines and fungus-garlic teas or whatever made The Black Death less deadly, Kapitonas Neuntöter settled down in a small cottage in a small village in Transylromania where he married the Famous burlesque dancer and infamous poetess Succubus Mėnesinių Ciklas. There they whiled away the centuries concocting wiles to capture lost children in the wild. They would also devour the occasional drunken tavern patron they would come across on the darker roads, but usually that was just in the winter time or on days of great festivities. They led relatively uneventful lives, even for vampyrs, for several human lifetimes. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that the life of Kapitonas Neuntöter, and the lives of all vampyrs across the globe, suddenly received a shock.

Let Me Learn You On a Little Lesser Known History

Even for those of you who are blissfully unawares of the comings and goings of occult and mythological beings, one quick youtubular search of anything pertaining to the decade that is known as the eighties will open your eyes to the fact that this ten year span featured the largest and most public population of vampyrs that our planet has ever seen. Although each continent had their fair share of nosferati, nowhere could compare to the density that pervaded Eastern Europe. The detriment caused by the overwhelming presence of these bloodsuckers caused these countries monumental concern. This led to Russia’s government developing a secret laboratory of their finest scientists to try to develop some kind of scientific solution to this overpopulation. It wasn’t until the latter part of the decade that these scientists concocted a virus specifically engineered to target vampyrs and their way of life. It was known as the Vampyr Immolation Virus, or VIVus for short. It was not lost on the scientist the coolness that a virus specifically designed to kill the undead had the nickname “VIVus” which is actually the Latin word for “alive”.

Part of the virus’ ingeniousness was its method of transfer. It needed blood-to-blood contact in order to infect a new host. This took prey on the vampyr’s well-known method of ingestion. Contrary to some people’s belief, the vampyr when indulging in a snack does not poke two holes into the jugular vein or carotid artery of its meal and then drink from the open wounds as if from a fleshy chalice. For you see, one of the first changes in the transformation of a human to a vampyr is the anatomy of the teeth, the canines in particular. they become more pronounced and sharp. What is not usually known is that at the points they have valves, that when inside of a bloodvessel, sense the sudden pH change, and open to a shunt in the core of the tooth that leads directly to the bloodstream (the posterior superior alveolar artery, infraorbital artery and the inferior alveolar artery), instantly bringing nutrients to the undead tissues. So in other words there is a blood-to-blood connection between diner and food during the entire time of consumption. The result being, once the final form of the virus was released, that vampyrs receive an ultimatum: risk dying from drinking contaminated blood, go to government-operated blood distribution vestibules, or die of starvation. A cold and harsh resolution from our Cold War buddies.

The plan once the virus was developed into its final and FDA approved form was to release it into different populations by surreptitiously installing infected and beautifully homegrown government-issued sex workers into major cities during flu season to silently infect the majority of our large human populations. This completely developed form of the virus would just give a human host one week of mild flu-like symptoms with occasional uncontrollable laughing incontinence and then circulate in the bloodstream asymptomatically for the rest of his or her life. When the virus comes in contact with a vampyr’s blood, however, the virus attaches to the conveniently named Draculin protein on the vampyr’s transformed tissues and cells. This then causes pineal gland malfunction which leads to sudden yet sneaky changes in their sleep patterns. During the next two weeks, the vampyr will gradually keep waking up 12.3 minutes earlier each day until he unwittingly awakens during daylight hours and accidently burns to death presumably while watching the beautiful sunset.

It All Goes Wrong

As you can see, this would have been the perfect deterrent for random vampyr attacks on villagers and tourists alike, but history had something different in mind. Everything would have gone according to plan if it wasn’t for a certain overzealous 3 star general by the name of Rekuital Mestʹ. He was in charge of the classified operation spearheading the creation of the VIVus and was chosen for that post because of his repeated fervent desire to put an end to what he called the “sexy scourge”. At the age of 14 his parents were ruthlessly killed and eaten by a succubus that had lured Rekuital back to his home. The succubus would have then asphyxiated him to death through a gauntlet of sexual adventures if it wasn’t for the village warrior monk’s fortuitous surprise visit that disrupted that deadly coitus. This obviously left poor Rekuital Mest’ scarred for life and very mentally deranged. This, however, was the perfect psychological profile to ascend the military ranks of the Russian Department of Folklore. It was not one fortnight after the prototype batch of the VIVus virus was created that General Mest’ snuck his way into the laboratory using his many security clearances and stole with the vial of unperfected VIVus. The problem was that this version of the virus apparently attacks both human and vampyric hosts with deadly results, although much more deadly for vampyrs.

This lead to the severe decline of the vampyr’s presence during the 90’s and by the 2000’s only the sparkly and wimpiest vampyrs that rarely suck the life force from anyone were left, ending with the loss of a wonderfully rich yet decidedly deadly subculture from the Earth.

Philm Review: Southland tales

Phil M. Bufferton – I like movies more than CelluLloyd





Like watching an obese man stuffed full like a pate goose with Mexican party favors, yellowcake uranium glo-stick liquid and Chinese fireworks explode at EuroDisney


The absurditee of this film hit me particularly hard first off because I hunkered down and watched this on April 26th, 2009 year of our Lord, and the movie begins with Texas getting nuked in the near future of 2008. I smirked to myself with great irony as I continued to peruse this mildly interesting alternate near future past subjunctive perfect.


This attack causes America to go completely insane and attack all of the best oil producing countries. They also state that the United States instates a state of pseudo-marshall law, requiring citizens to need a passporte to go from state to state. In our blind rage we Americans make enemies of all the oil providers, resulting in an oil, and therefore petroleum, and therefore gasoline, shortage. Alternative fuels become a sought after novelty and commodity. The most prominent and exciting one is called “liquid karma”. Awesome.



Well enough of this preamble. This movie caught a lot of flaque for being “absolutely fucking terrible. I’d rather stare at my microwave turned off and empty” quoth the Siskel. My hypothesis is, however, that this movie was trying to be the worst shit ever on purpose. Very Avante Garde, and once you realize this the movie is quite the agreeable experience due to its zaniness. Every person ever is in this movie, including a very many famous peoples known for their comedic prowess. For example: the three scientists who invent liquid karma are, no lie, the “incontheevable” guy from princess bride, the creepy old psychic from poultergeist, and Booger from Revenge of the nerds 1-23. That in itself is a joke, an awesome, awesome joke of awesome proportions. My only qualm comes in around hour 3 or 4 at which point I literally didn’t know where I was anymore. I felt like I was living in Southland, just waiting to get murderdeathkilled. Luckily I was just in my room watching a movie, thank you for your concern. This disorientation kinda put a moist towellette on the climactic(?) ending, in which everything weird decides to start making less sense in an effort to let the audience (me) know that the movie was coming to a close and reality will be reinstalled momentarily.



After the movie was over, I went to the bathroom and peed liquid karma. Was the movie real or just another spontaneous fever dream? I’ll let you decide in the comment box.

Jason and the Armgonauts

The precocious tale of Jason Sphygmo, the inventor of the blood pressure cuff






Our story takes place in the 1880s, a very perilous time for the health of most humans. One of these humans in danger of failing health happened to be Jason Sphygmo’s father, Johannes. Johannes Sphygmo was a bread winner by trade and a marksman by folly. He died spontaneously during his afternoon coffee, right in front of Jason on a Wednesday. This caused a deep impression in the silly putty of his mind, for Jason was nary 20 years old.



Heaven Knocks On His Cranium

Jason Sphygmo had the honorable profession of plumber, which at this juncture in history was a very precarious one due to the high lead content in the tubery of the time. It was on a bitter November morning that fate decided to play trickery on Jason Sphygmo. He was diligently at work in the basement of some government official’s house when a sudden surge of high pressure when through the piping, causing them to burst and knocking our poor hero unconscious. When he awoke with his head in the lap of one of the softer nursemaids of the manor and a handkerchief drenched in ether draped around his face, he was astruck with an epiphany. The vessels of the body, much like the tubery of a guildhouse, are subject to varying pressures and any type of flux or wane in these pressures can cause the bodily humors to become disbalanced. (Editor’s note: amazingly enough, this idea had uncanny accuracy in terms of the cause of his father’s death. Retrograde autopsy performed in 2004 has revealed that Johannes Sphygmo died as a result of an aneurysm in his brain, a ballooning outpouch in the blood vessel due to high pressure!) It was this hypothesis that was the catalyst of events that eventually lead to the creation of the world’s first blood pressure cuff.




The Beginning of a Legend

Three months later, after exhausting study and work in his home-made laboratory, Jason Sphygmo emerged from his labors with a 123 pound contraption he dubbed “The Sphygmomanometer”. This apparatus uses mercury and steam to gauge the internal pressures exerted on the vessels of the human body. In order to get a reading all one would have to do was enter the chamber and sit perfectly still as pressures 3 times that of the atmosphere was impressed upon his frame. A ticker tape 2 feet long would emerge from a slit in the back and once all the numbers were put into the formula and calculated out with an abacus, the subject’s blood pressure can be ascertained. The entire process only took one hour and fifteen minutes. Women were contraindicated from using the machine due to the bouts of hysteria, fainting spells, and vapors that women were susceptible to in that era.



The Rest Of the story

Jason Sphygmo lived to be the ripe old age of 42 and died of a disturbing combination of lead and mercury poisoning surrounded by the riches that his invention had brought him from the world over. Interestingly enough, on his deathbed, Jason Sphygmo had perfectly normal blood pressure.



Further Informatics

Future models had various improvements in size, efficiency, and comfort, but the original machine has a sense of majesty and honor that one must see in person to understand. The original model is on display in the Museum of Medical Conservatory Histographies in Belgrade, Iowa.