Does Not Compute

No CAPTCHA. That's Arabic. I don't know Arabic. Try again.

Am I the only one who can barely make out what the CAPTCHA words are? What supercomputer is cracking this code when I - a living, breathing human, despite what you've heard - have to squint and guess?

I've Invented a Machine that Shows You How You Will Die

We're going to slide this wire into your frontal lobe, easy peasy, and after a few moments we'll start to turn the machine up. How does the wire get in there? A needle, dear - a very sharp, long needle with that wire threading through it as thin and strong as spider’s silk. The needle is so sharp you won't even feel a thing. Well, maybe a little pinch.

There's a minimum of blood, since your brain doesn't bleed. Did you know that? Oh, it's full of blood alright, but it won't come pouring out. The brain is greedy, and precious. You'll be fine.

To read the rest, go to this page.

Goofus and Gallant

Gallant helps the old woman across the street.
Goofus calls her a race traitor for buying brown rice.

Gallant waters his neighbor's plants while they're out of town.
Goofus takes a dump in their laundry hamper.

Gallant reads to the kids at the School for the Blind.
Goofus hands out Rubik's cubes at the School for the Blind.

Gallant makes his own environmentally safe cleaning products.
Goofus uses endangered species to clean porous and non-porous surfaces.

Gallant joined the Boy Scouts.
Goofus practices building punji pits.

Gallant eats lots of fruits and vegetables each day.
Goofus ate a whole man once. Dentures, too.

Gallant volunteers at his local animal shelter.
Goofus thinks enough bottle rockets make a dog an astronaut.

Gallant cleans his room without his mother having to ask twice.
Goofus saw his mother cheat on his father with the mailman.

Gallant always recycles his empty soda bottles.
Goofus builds replicas of historical disasters in empty soda bottles.

Gallant is learning another language to expand his horizons.
Goofus has a repository of ethnic slurs second to none.

Gallant does all his math homework, even the sample problems.
Goofus found a way to get high using aloe vera and lighter fluid.

Gallant learns responsibility by paying for his own cell phone.
Goofus knows his cartoon is stuck in the 1950's.

Gallant helps his community by picking up litter.
Goofus started a porn site called "Naughty Clutter Girls".

Gallant saves all his change in a piggybank.
Goofus is an assumed name for a drug lord with a large slush fund.

Gallant sticks up for children that can't defend themselves.
Goofus knows that we live in an arbitrary void in which all human actions are ultimately meaningless and our destiny is to die ignorant and alone.

Why don't you?

David Beckham wants you to eat his fish sticks.

"Please eat my fish sticks."

That Time

Did I ever tell you about the time I ate a toaster? I think it was 2003, maybe 2004. It was autumn, unless it was spring; regardless, it was the time of year when it rains more often than it doesn't.

I woke up uncharacteristically early that day, before the sun had snuck past my curtains. My stomach hurt, but that's not true enough - I was so hungry, the mere thought of not eating, not gorging myself, hurt. I would have killed and eaten any living thing that crossed my path in those first few moments of consciousness.

Instead, I stared at my hands for awhile. Do you ever look at your hands? I bet you don't.

Seen through a certain frame of mind, each hand is an awkwardly oversized pinkish spider, one that's lost a few limbs in a fight. The nails at the end all look like little faces, faces hiding behind the shiny surface of the nail. These finger face people are prematurely old, regular wrinkles running their length. The knuckles are white-pink clusters of dubious purpose - mating? digestion?

Despite their advanced age, fingers are sinuous. They move with a liquid grace, like water being poured by an invisible hand into a thirsty mouth.

After ten or so minutes of this, I couldn't remember if I was the one moving my fingers. Is it always like this? I remembered my hunger, and never once thought of eating my fingers. That would be ridiculous. If I ate my fingers, how would I get more food? Man is a tool using animal, after all.

I bounded up the stairs to the kitchen that rested above my sleeping head. The whale song of chairs scraping the kitchen floor had stopped before my finger gazing. I was alone. Once in the kitchen, my shoulders slumped and my head hung low. My hunger was instantly converted into lassitude, and the tile floor I was forced to stare at held no easy answer.

Stooped like an old man tying his shoe laces, I followed the patterns on the floor. Line into line, perpendicular parallel, start again catch the same. I lost track of time again. Somewhere in the eastern reaches of the kitchen I found a drooping black worm, like the bottom of a lowercase G. It brutally stabbed into the red wall of the kitchen, white plastic blood congealed around the wound.

As I followed the black worm up, I noticed it terminated (or began?) at the toaster. It was part of the toaster, some sort of proboscis. The hunger emerged full force from the middle of me, and that's when I knew I had to have it.

I used my hand spiders to grab the proboscis and rip it from the wall. I saw bright metal teeth gleam, and I knew I had chosen well. Next, I grabbed the body of the thing itself and slammed it to the ground. The predator had become the prey, and I'm sure the wall - immense but defenseless - was grateful.

There was a clank and a groan, but the toaster didn't fight back. I had stunned it with my sudden action. Flakes of previous meals fell from its lower half, the gritty detritus of the consumed. I savagely brought the toaster to the floor again and again and again. When I finally cracked its housing, I slurped up the metallic bits inside.

It wasn't long before only the toaster's protective outer shell and the end of its fanged proboscis remained. I left them there as an offering.

Satiated, sated, and stuffed, I made my way back down to my bed. My stomach hurt again, but this was good. It was good.

And that was the time I ate a toaster.