Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts

Monday, March 23, 2009

Are you a man?

Are you a man afraid of injury?  Especially... down there?  Is a tight bundle of fear preventing you from getting that vasectomy and filling your mailbox with endless paternity suits?  We can help.  Here at the Hurts-A-Guy Institute, we can remove that fear.  

Cower no more - Hurts-A-Guy knows that so many males are afraid of that special masculine pain.  We begin our program with selected videos, first classic silent films then work you up to "Emergency Surgery Bloopers."  Soon, you too will be able watch "Man Being Hit with Football" for the stellar photography.  Step two is "The Sideline" where anything from the errant 5 year-old-headbutt to the banana peel gag-gone-wrong will help you really experience what so many merely stumbled into before.  Next, our is "Whoops I forgot my cup" where 'Taking one for the team' is the focus.  Everything from missed soccer tips to annoyed MLB pitchers is presented with an intensity that will surprise!  For the truly advanced, there's "Hazing Gone Wrong" and "Hand Me My Cricket Bat" - the Hurts-A-Guy Institute has something for every man.

Milicent Fillmore, founder and President of the Hurts-A-Guy Institute: "So many men I've run into simply crumple in the face of certain strikes.  It removes their self-esteem and makes them feel like less of a man.  I created the Hurts-A-Guy Institute to correct that - to make sure every man can take one in the pills and keep on truckin!  The intense Hurts-A-Guy Institute program will deliver - it will make a man out of you!"

So call us today at the Hurts-A-Guy Institute.  We give you the tools and training to be a real man - a man who can overcome man-sized man pain.  Our highly trained and bonded sadists will skillfully strike the right balance to bring out your inner masochist.  Call the Hurts-A-Guy Institute at 1-800-1-NOFEAR for a location near you!

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Mr. Mann

What?

No, I wasn't paying attention Miss Billingsworth. Terribly distracted - I'm having trouble focusing on anything.

Really? It doesn't seem like an attention deficit is something that could be caught, but I will take you at your word.

There's no reason, no root cause - at least nothing I can point to. Things have been proceeding as well as they ever have...

Like Winnipeg street in the spring yes. Guess I've used that one a little too often. Consistency, habit is everything, so the minor disruptions are the norm. Can't say that the disruptions are more or less "normal" - I don't have some kind of crisis bell curve that I can pin things to. No, it is a general feeling of unease. But why would anyone else be experiencing the same deviations? There must be a common thread...

No Miss Billingsworth, I don't think that you are the source. I thought my calm demeanor would point to the opposite conclusion. Excellent idea to search for simplest commonality. No, it has to be something else. I suspect it is something more ephemeral, something like the great conjoining of coincidence, of relationships and news stories, things with no really business being in common...

I am not paranoid!

Yes I sound paranoid, but I'm not! This is not some delusion, some conspiracy theory. It is a different kind of sensibility. The human mind can behave as a giant filter, something that most call "intuition". Intuition is the result of filtering new experience through the canvas of experience. Since it is an emergent property of the mind, it is impossible to point to a simple conglomerate of facts as the cause of any output.

Well, do you?

So, if I'm not crazy and you still don't agree, what is the basis for your disagreement?

But the mind is an evolving thing. It has a purpose, if not a life, of its own that is in constant flux. Not that everything is changing all the time, but that any change is possible implies that novel abilities emerge.

This isn't some Marvel universe where magic DNA alterations lead to special powers. Powerful new properties could emerge at any time. They may never be recognized or repeated, so that makes it difficult to prove my point. I think...

Well, if someone could possibly relive our conversation in the roiling future-now, I'm sure they'd agree with me.

No it isn't fair, but I've already asked them and they agree.

Well, I have a number I can call....

No you may not have it! It violates several of the classical laws of space-time so...

I don't know some kind of cellphone. All I know is that it is wireless.

Motorola?

I can't believe you thought it was true! You're so naive Miss Billingsworth!

No, it's a compliment! If you aren't naive, I should go into politics. Some kind of post-Einstein intergalatic communication platform - "Everyone must be able to communicate across the cosmos before we can solve our problems here!"

Alien Phil - very funny. Who would want to talk to that - it probably tell you to stop calling and solve your own problems.

So, do you still think I'm off base with the idea of emergent mental properties?

All it took was some time and a gravitational cell phone to convince you!

Gravitational - bends the fabric of space time...

Guess that is too much of a leap. Still haven't figured out what is bothering me though...