If you scare someone half to death twice, are they completely scared to death?
Of course not. Because if you scare someone half to death a second time, they’ll be three-quarters to death.
This brings up Xeno’s best-known paradox, which describes motion as a never-ending series of “You go halfway to your destination.” In the end, you never actually reach your destination.
Then he’d dance around and shout “IN YOUR FACE!” in Greek.
Because he was acting like a dick, Xeno was beaten to death by his fellow philosophers.
Not half to death. To death.
Don’t act like a dick.
Tag: commentary
Catcher In The Lie
A madman killed John Lennon.
Another tried to kill Ronald Reagan.
And then another attacked an actress and killed her.
They all had my book.
They all said to understand what they did, read the book.
What I put in there.
It was the truth about the phonies.
Not the evil these people did.
Their evil. They murdered. Murdered.
Not me. They.
That is the truth.
No, I have not stopped writing.
I cannot stop writing.
Writing the truth.
But I can stop publishing.
Because phonies will read my writing if I don’t.
And they will murder. They will kill.
I was born in pizza…
These days, passwords can be hacked easily. If you use the same password everywhere, a thief can roll up all your accounts.
Thieves will also try to social-engineer the security questions. It’s not hard to look up your mother’s maiden name or the city you were born in.
A security expert says that you’re supposed to choose counter-intuitive answers to these questions, such as “Pizza” for your mother’s maiden name, or for where you were born.
Which means that the Indian at the call center will scratch their head in confusion as they sell your information to a Russian hacker.
The Koto
Master Watanabe makes swords. He’s been making swords for forty years.
His swords are the best swords, but he has yet to recreate the Koto, the legendary samurai sword.
There are no instructions or directions remaining. So, Watanabe experiments with every sword he makes.
He is teaching his apprentices how to make swords, so they can carry on the traditions, and his quest to recreate the Koto.
But you know what? Watanabe’s a moron.
Who the fuck needs a Koto? Who’s going around with swords these days?
What people need are knives in the kitchen and for self-defense, not swords.
Ceremony of the broken
Funerary ceremonies. There are so many.
I’ve seen my share of them.
When a magician dies, a broken wand ceremony is performed to represent that the magic is gone.
When an engineer dies, a broken slide rule ceremony is performed to represent that the math is gone.
When a chef dies, a broken spatula ceremony is performed to represent that the cooking is gone.
When a painter dies, a broken palette ceremony is performed to represent that the art is gone.
But when a politician dies, what is left to break? Promises? Commitments? The System? Those are already hopelessly broken.
Harpoons
The airlines have loosened their restrictions on what you can carry onboard, but you still need to check weapons
Yes, this includes harpoons.
Not that you can do much with a harpoon. You’ll need a clear aisle for a good harpooning, but killer whales usually strike during feeding sessions. Which is when flight attendants are out with the beverage cart, blocking your throw.
Sitting next to a rampaging killer whale? You’re probably getting crushed against the window.
God forbid you’re trapped in the middle seat between two of them. Whatever happened to the airlines making oversized passengers buy two tickets?
Big Guys
Joe Washington played football. He was one of those really big guys on the offensive line.
Too big.
As the clock ticked down to zero on the final play of the game, Joe fell to his knees and dropped to the turf.
Massive heart attack.
The players… the coaches… the fans… everybody watched as the trainers shocked him a defibrillator and did CPR, but he was gone.
Some players wish to be cremated and have their ashes scattered over their home field.
But Joe wanted to be buried there.
“Hell no,” said the ground crew. “You’ll hit an sprinkler pipe.”
Ex Machina
Greek Theater introduced the concept of Deus ex Machina to the world, where a seemingly impossible task would be resolved by the contrived intervention of something newly-introduced to the plot.
On the other hand, Diabolus ex Machina is when something that is absolutely certain is thwarted by the contrived intervention of something newly-introduced.
Theater-goers hate both of these concepts because they demonstrate sloppy writing and planning by the playwright.
But the Japanese love to put both of these machines in an arena full of flamethrowers and buzzsaws and make them fight.
They also like tentacle porn, those weird Japanese freaks.
Dedication
There’s a lot of people I should thank for my stories. And there’s a lot of people who expect to be thanked for them, too.
I must admit that some of those people who expect to be thanked have been invaluable in inspiring my stories.
Especially the horror stories. Because they were total fucking assholes.
So, when I published my first book, I put a line on the dedication page with “sign your name here” under it
The good people can sign their name there. The bad people can sign their name there, too.
I’ll just write more stories, okay?
Harryhausen
The Find A Grave site has no information about the legendary animator Ray Harryhausen.
Why the mystery?
Well, when Ray died, his colleagues wanted to pull out his bones and replace then with a poseable metal armature. That way, they could create stop-motion puppetry animation with him.
That’s disgusting, I know. And terribly inefficient in this age of computer-generated special effects. They could just create a digital Ray Harryhausen.
But you just don’t get the same impact with CGI as you do with a practical puppet. It isn’t too real. It’s fantasy.
The cops arresting them for grave-robbing?
Too real.