[cue the sound of distant footsteps approaching rapidly]
Oh my god…[out of breath] Oh my God…[huff, puff] you guys…magnetic nanoparticles can remotely control worms! This is amazing. This is…hold on, let me catch my breath…This is…just awesome. Until this very moment I was convinced that magnetic nanoparticles were in no way capable of dictating the behavior of any living creatures, but especially worms. This is some really important shit guys. You know where it goes from here, right? It started with remote controlled cars. Now we have remote controlled worms. Next up: snakes. From there it’s a straight-shot to remote controlled humans. You just have to get from a snake to an alligator, from an alligator to…uh…what’s another member of the Chordata phylum that might be comparable to a human? Anyone? Are there scientists out there reading this website? No? So none of you know all the different animal phyla? Really? Well, how the hell am I going to make this longform joke pay off if I can’t draw physical comparisons between alligators and another creature that might be in the — wait a minute! Humans are Chordata! Wikipedia, you are a life saver. Admittedly I did not know this fact — having just called my readers unintelligent it does not bode well for me that I am guilty of exactly what I charged you all with being guilty of — and have proven myself to be quite the ignoramus. Wikipedia, I owe you a very large debt of gratitude. My joke has been ruined, smashed, utterly decimated, and there is absolutely no way I can recapture it without deleting this entire paragraph and starting anew, but that would be disingenuous, and I hate disingenuity! Is that a word? No? Oh well. Thanks for the fancy book learnin’ treatment, Wikipedia! For once I was blind to what phylum I belonged to, and now I can read!
By the way, if you (that is, the person reading this, not Wikipedia — I know Wikipedia can’t read) have a few minutes to kill you really should read all the different Animal phyla. There are some great jokes in that list, especially the translations of what all the different names mean. Brachiopodoa: Arm foot! Oh, how I’d hate to be the creature with that horrible disability! Still though, I’d love to meet him, if only to see how funny he looks. Rotifera: Wheel bearer. What, so like a squirrel? I saw one of those guys racing through the LA County Arboretum last week and let me tell you, they are fast little critters.
You know who else has wheels? This guy. Me. I’ve been running up a storm lately. Why, just this morning I ran through Runyon Canyon. Here’s a bit of social dysfunction I witnessed today. When you’re a man and you want to show off by sprinting around the park like Mr. Olympia, don’t act like a douche when you realize that I’ve passed you simply by running at my normal pace. A young guy this morning shot past me like a bolt of lightning when he saw that I was the only guy around who was running, but I passed him maybe three minutes later when he had obviously ran himself tired. As we reached the park exit, I was ahead of him by a good hundred yards. And yet, as I exited the park and started to walk down the hill to my car, this guy starts sprinting again and makes sure to pass me before stopping. It’s as if he wanted all those people entering the park to think that I was the sucker who had given up and slowed to a crawl before I could make it to the “real” finish line, the invisible one where the guy decided to stop. Now, I’m not the type of person who takes pride in my physical shape, nor do I think I’m a particularly good runner. I’m not putting on airs about my abilities. Hell, I don’t even know if any of the people walking into the park noticed. But even I, someone with absolutely no self-esteem who would love to see his ego stroked by the adoring fans I expected to congratulate me like when Lane Meyer beat Roy Stalin in Better Off Dead, wouldn’t stoop so low as to disrespect the guy who had just beaten me in a race by disregarding the fact that the race had already been won. That’s bush-league. It’s bad park running etiquette, and what’s more it smacks of bad parenting. For shame, people involved in the rearing of this douche! For shame! Your son is no better than a common Acoelomorpha. He is the very definition of “without gut”.
Happy Mondays – Performance
Grails – Up All Night
