funkboxing

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – December, 2007 (pdf)

The current political debate over illegal immigration has little to do with science, or reason in general. However, when you think of immigrants as “aliens” and allude that this group may include extra-terrestrials, the debate begins to fall within the realm of pseudo-science and metaphysics, or something like that. That’s good enough for me.

Illegal aliens come in all shapes and sizes, including brown, black, and off-white. The illegality of their alienness also comes in troubling variety. The most heinous aliens are, of course, the ones that are called Aliens and drip corrosive mucus and have mouths inside their mouths. These illegals are well-documented perpetrators of murder and kidnapping, and there has to be some sort of rape charge when an Alien baby chews through your rib cage.

The most insidious aliens, however, do not have the decency to drip viscous fluids and look all scary. Some aliens do not bother to hiss and spit to warn that they are about to tear you several new ones and probably enlarge the old ones. Some aliens are cute. There are two things I learned from Kirk: You shouldn’t trust cute without hot, freaky, alien sex, and you should never trust cute. Captain Kirk never had sex with E.T. Think about it.
E.T. had a seminal influence on our culture and the way we think about illegal aliens. Five years after the second celebration of the tenth anniversary of E.T.’s visit to Earth, it is time to carefully consider what effect his short stay may have had on our culture. To this end, the remainder of this article will focus on developing a fair and accurate, social and scientific profile of this enigmatic, visa-less visitor.
The first thing we know about E.T.’s activities on Earth is that he was accidentally left here by his friends, who were most likely fleeing in haste after committing some petty crime or vandalism. Instead of turning himself in to the proper authorities and snitching on his friends, E.T. chose to willingly defy the U.S. government and went on the lam to escape justice. These actions are clearly those of a dishonest and malicious individual. Little further analysis is required to establish that E.T. was a remorseless sociopath, capable of any depravity. After his arrival, E.T.’s activities on Earth became progressively more disturbing.

To elude authorities, E.T. snuck around the edges of a suburban, middle-class neighborhood, preying on young, impressionable children. They were enticed by E.T.’s disarmingly stubby stature, amusingly long neck, and large, compassionate eyes. Children were not threatened by E.T., so they provided him sustenance, supplies, and contextual information about humanity. They were encouraged to deceive their parents, because children saw E.T. as something between a friend and a pet. Knowing that adults would see E.T. as a threatening anomaly, they hid him from their parents and boldly lied to cover their tracks. With gentle coercion of children, E.T. adeptly divided loyalties between families, and even between our species.

E.T. used his influence over children to support his indulgences. It is clear from his choice of Reese’s Pieces as his favorite sugar fix that E.T. was a long-term addict. Demanding a specific brand of candy shows a highly developed level of addiction. Much like an experienced heroine or cocaine user knows the quality of his score, E.T. chose only the highest-grade confections.

E.T. made no effort to assimilate into our culture; instead, he exposed our children to his debaucherous and immoral lifestyle. When he was not indulging his shocking transvestitism in dolls’ clothing, he was flaunting his androgyny by walking around nude, without any form of distinct genitalia.

These dangerously antisocial tendencies cannot be taken lightly, because E.T.’s iconic status is so empowered by his use of alien, tele-psychic voodoo. There are several instances in which E.T. directly violated our understanding of physics. In addition to powerful telekinetic abilities, he demonstrated the ability to telepathically get a little kid drunk. The remote intoxication of a minor may seem amusing to you, but that’s just because you are a terrible person.

E.T. was also purported to have healing powers, but this is unsubstantiated. The U.S. Justice Department maintains that E.T.’s finger has no medicinal value and it is a proven gateway digit, leading to the use of harder appendages. E.T.’s seemingly miraculous revival from the dead was no more than a possum trick, contrived to further confuse people who think that life and death are already too confusing.

In perhaps his most brazen act of treachery, E.T. single-handedly created a device which violated every conceivable FCC regulation and international trade agreement, and probably a local littering ordinance. E.T. was a little, alien MacGyver. Unlike MacGyver, E.T. did not employ his astonishing resourcefulness and technical skill to perpetually confound evildoers like Murdock. He used his gifts to illegally text message his homies using a jacked-up Speak & Spell™.

Modifying consumer electronics for dubious purposes is suspicious. Making illegal transmissions to unknown forces beyond our borders is an act of war. Making the United States look technologically inferior to little brown people is heresy. The obvious conclusion is that E.T. was a harbinger of doom and destruction, worthy of no less irrational hatred then we have for most brown people.

I hope that this profile has helped lay bare the true agenda of an illegal alien who claimed to come in peace, but exhibited antisocial and psychopathic tendencies which have had a strong influence on young men and women, even to this day. This analysis should be held as a warning against welcoming anyone into our community who exhibits any form of foreign behavior. The sophisticated and ancient traditions of a foreign culture are only manifestations of the inferiority of all foreign people, including and especially brown ones: the freeloading Mexicaterrestrials and, of course, the freedom-hating terroristestrials.

originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – November, 2007 – (pdf)

Everybody loves alcohol. It has helped us start and win wars, it’s why we changed the constitution twice, and it just makes sense. It is the social lubricant that keeps the cynically self-righteous, moral fabric of our society from chafing against the swollen genitals of our collective guilt and denial. Alcohol is natural, legal, and moral, and you can drink it off of parts of sorority chicks.

The alcohol we know and love is composed mainly of ethanol, which, despite sharing a number of chemical similarities with deathanol, is widely accepted as pretty good stuff. Ethanol is a proverbial fuel for the service industry, violence, teen pregnancy, regular pregnancy, and gay pregnancy. It is also a real fuel for burning in things that run on real fuel. Ethanol is becoming well known as a potential clean, renewable source of energy.

Ethanol is created in a process known as fermentation, which you should know all about if you paid attention in any life science class you took since 5th grade. The raw materials needed to create ethanol are sugars, yeast, water, heat, and an inflatable pool filled with baby oil and aggressive women. The sugars used can be anything from those found in corn to those found in that box of sugar packets you stole from Starbucks, even though you buy coffee at Perks. The sugars needed to create ethanol are found in the same crops we use for eating. For hundreds of years, human beings have used a variety of crops to produce enough alcohol to get hammered and still have enough left over to put food on the table…unless there wasn’t enough to put food on the table, in which case, we just fermented what we had and got hammered anyway.

With the prevailing winds of government mismanagement and corruption, we simply cannot grow enough crops to satisfy the demands of eating, drinking, and driving. To make ethanol a viable fuel source, we will need to find new raw materials from which to brew it.

The solution that has lingered on the horizon for decades has always been the prospect of cellulosic ethanol. Cellulose is basically what gets plants hard; it is chemically equivalent to plant Viagra. Cellulose is a long chain of tightly bound molecules that contains a great deal of energy. When this energy is released in reactions such as fire, the effect is what we have come to know as “fire.” Fire is the initial discovery that allowed humankind to dominate predators, nature, disagreeable people, and weaker fires.

Cellulose can be broken down into digestible sugars, which can then be fermented into ethanol. With current technology, breaking down cellulose is a difficult process, requiring expensive Oompa Loompa labor negotiations. Scientists are busy engineering new enzymes that will bypass the need for fictional labor entirely. If cellulose could be broken down cheaply and efficiently, we could create fuel from nearly any source of plant biomass, including the troublesome Oompa Loompas.

What? You didn’t know the Oompa genus is in the Embryophyte Subkingdom? Check your 5th-grade life science textbook.

Funding for research into cellulosic ethanol production has grown exponentially in the last few years. Funding has increased because we recently found our gonads wedged snugly between Iraq and the hard place we call the President’s head. Our elected legislators have heard the cry for cheap, clean, domestically renewable energy, and they have responded by spending our tax dollars on incentives to make companies spend a little money on stuff that makes us feel a little better about our insatiable addiction to foreign oil.

Cellulose-related research has been conducted in some form since the oil crisis of the 1970s. For a brief period, cellulosic ethanol was seen as a long-term solution to foreign oil dependence, lingering just beyond the horizon.

We learned from that critical time in history. Our leaders are adjusting the way they stay the course in order to address the emerging energy crisis. We learned that having a long-term solution lingering just beyond the horizon allows us to feel good enough to wait for oil prices to drop and things to get back to normal.

Cellulose research is, in itself, a solution, because it gives us a good excuse to discuss what we could do if we really cared about finding a solution. If we talk long enough, the problem will have gone away, and we will again have cheap, anonymous sources of blood-soaked oil to refine into cheap, taxable gasoline. That’s what happened in the 70s; that’s what is happening now.

Cellulosic ethanol research may or may not continue after we win the war on terror and secure enough oil to shut up and get back to some serious NASCAR. Without a need for renewable, clean fuels, we may find it’s better to leave cellulosic ethanol simmering on the back burner, in case we need a distraction next time we face a cataclysmic hiccup in the energy market. If research continues, it will be primarily relegated to pot smoking, environmentalist kooks.

Should cellulose ever become a viable source of ethanol, its primary application will most likely be to convert wood shavings into a tasteless, 190-proof liquor, which can then be sold to university Greeks for use in body shots and hazing by ritual self-immolation.

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – September, 2007 (pdf)
As we go about our daily lives, we are given to forget the things that make our daily lives possible. Part of the reason that we live in peace and comfort is the fact that billions before us died, so they take up less space and generally cause less trouble. Many of them died from natural causes, but others died from supernatural causes, like being killed by some a–hole.

Human life and civilization depend on the death of human beings, so as civilized people, we must cultivate a balanced and moral understanding of the value of human life and death. We must strive to be enlightened humanitarians while still satisfying the need for some people to be dead. Nature will certainly satisfy some of this need, but we are industrious creatures, and to grow and expand, we must provide for ourselves.

Our needs as human beings are only met when we have power over the life and death of other human beings. To protect our right to fulfill this need, we protect our right to bear arms with passion and ambition. In a technologically advanced society, the only way for a population to protect itself is with inexpensive and readily available weaponry. To maintain social equality, the ignorant and lazy must have the right to easily purchase powerful firearms to protect themselves from the hyper-educated intelligentsia and their homemade electro-laser cannons.

Handguns are a simple and efficient equalizer. Handguns give power to the weak and weak-minded: real power, not like the pen, voting, knowledge, or any of that crap. Small, light, concealable, and fun, handguns allow any man, woman, or child to intimidate, maim, or kill as nature intended.

With total equality achieved through mass armament, we must still protect human life and encourage people not to kill each other unnecessarily. Modern civilization has created a mechanism to protect human life from rampant cycles of violence and retribution. The solution is as simple as the problem: Kill people that kill other people. We do not apply this solution indiscriminately; we reserve capital punishment for the most heinous offenders and people we need to kill to prove a point.

Capital punishment should be considered analogous to antimurder or unmurder. It is as antimatter is to matter. The two are tangible and real but annihilate one another, releasing extreme forces. Capital punishment acts as unmurder by discouraging murder while effectively canceling its overall effect on society.

Because of strong unmurder legislation, we have a much lower net murder rate, if we calculate murder and unmurder together. If we include those killed in police raids or by prison rape, we have mathematically eliminated murder in our society.

This mathematical balance is threatened by the growing popularity of suicide. It is especially attractive to those enduring extreme suffering who are so very close to a natural, moral, and legal death.

Suicide is analogous to double murder. It counts as the deaths of both a victim and killer, but it cannot be reconciled by retributive unmurder. The only way to discourage suicide is to legislate its immorality and severely punish those who assist in the process. State-mandated punitive death should be the only legally permissible form of death available to those who aren’t already dead or going to be.

We have the tools to kill each other and the laws to kill each other for doing that. If we apply them wisely, we can maintain a civilized and moral understanding of life and death.

Compassion for all human life is the true measure of our moral values. We are a great people, and the way we run our society today will teach our grandchildren’s grandchildren the value of human life and show them the path to the future. When they arrive at that future, they will appreciate that we are dead and take up less space and generally cause less trouble.

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – August, 2007 (pdf)

There was a commercial once where the guy who wascaptain of the space station on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine said, “I want my flying cars.” He was talking about why we hadn’t moved further technologically than we had at that time. He sounded serious, but it was because he was being paid to sell credit cards or insurance or something.

I don’t want credit cards, insurance, or flying cars. I’ll tell you what I want, Captain: I want that damn space station.

We went to the moon before half the people reading this were born. That’s right, folks: believe it or not, we went there. We walked all over that bald, bucktooth cousin of ours and showed it what city folk can do out in the country. We figured out that it was cold on one side, hot on the other, and really dusty.

We learned in the process. We learned about the universe and surviving in space and whatnot. We united the human race in purpose for a singular moment in history. It was a pretty good ride. After about five years, we went back home for good. That’s the story of our farthest manned exploration of the cosmos. That was nearly 40 years ago.

It took us about 40 years to get from E = mc2 to Hiroshima. It only took about six years once we really got started on the bomb. Later that century, it took us about 20 years to go from DOS 3.1 to the Xbox™. During that time of vital development, we flew the exact same space shuttles. The time from the inception of the Mercury program to the conclusion of the Apollo program spanned about 15 years; that’s about the same amount of time between our wars in the Middle East. We can do a lot in a short time if we have the incentive.

The lessons of history teach us that our efforts are most united by two things: war and money. The past 40 in particular have taught us that technological advances come from the same incentives. Since we cannot count on an alien attack, if we wish to explore space, we must find money in it.

Making space exploration a public priority isn’t an easy sell, because there is little incentive. It takes a great deal of imagination to think of space exploration as a benefit to humanity. It doesn’t really seem to benefit anybody except  the guy in the spacesuit floating around out there, and he could be out drinking if it wasn’t for the stupid mission.

Space exploration would be a hard political platform to run on, and as an issue, it’s special-interest at best. Guys in spacesuits who’d rather be drinking don’t even constitute a special-interest group. Politicians have learned to stay away from space issues as a talking point, because other than the occasional mention of a mission to Mars, it sounds a little frivolous and kooky.

Furthermore, anything that is of benefit to humanity as a whole can be seen as a threat to national security. Politicians focus on running the government, and that takes money. Politicians spend our money to make more money to be sure we have money to run the government and make more money…for the economy, of course.

Many believe that NASA has been a drain on the economy since its first mission. Only a few, really nerdy people derive any satisfaction from the pursuits of this agency. The gains from the space program are outweighed by the fact that it costs us valuable tax dollars that could be better spent on defense contracts, campaigning, political favors, outright bribes, and other expenses that grease the wheels of democracy.

NASA also creates problems, such as the knowledge that huge meteors and comets might someday destroy human life on earth. This knowledge is counterproductive to economic growth, because it is a threat to security that cannot be  shocked and awed into submission. These abstract fears are not conducive to the political process.

Any political group who worries too much about a cosmic apocalypse might as well get tinfoil hats and hang out with L. Ron Hubbard’s crew. God is in charge of the apocalypse, and if He wants us to prevent it, He will provide the economic incentive to do so.

The Ansari X Prize was a boon to space exploration, because it gave us a tangible incentive to think about space: money. Financial incentives were offered, and we achieved more in space than we could ever have hoped with socialist ideas of exploration for the benefit of science.

In 2004, SpaceShipOne was launched in low orbit and claimed victory for all mankind. For this achievement, some rich guy claimed the $10-million prize. Nearly $100 million was invested in research towards this goal.

The Vostok 1, piloted by Yuri Gagarin, completed the same feat in 1961, but Yuri didn’t win $10 million, and the research was done by commies, so it didn’t benefit their economy. It took only 43 years for us to find the means to promote space exploration with direct capitalist incentives.

Science observes that space and time may be infinite, and so, the universe may contain infinite means for human survival within it. There is a hidden danger in this interpretation. To regard the universe itself as an infinite material and scientific resource simply violates the principles of supply and demand. We need demand to run the economy, and with an infinite supply of anything, we lose all demand and the economy crashes.

We must set limits on ourselves regarding space exploration. If we do not, we may find ourselves exploring space with no money to spend once we find somewhere that will take a Visa.

Commercializing space travel allows us to pursue spaceborne technologies with a mind towards concise goals. Goals like getting me that damn space station. Government-funded research and other socialist abominations can lend themselves to wasteful and frivolous studies not pursuant to economic goals. Commercial space travel will allow us to harness the infinite cosmos to sell more expensive vacation packages and support vast service industries that will fuel our economy.

It may also provide us raw materials and scientific data, but any available resource will be properly fought over to establish ownership. These future wars and conflicts over resources in space will give us new technologies to go deeper into the universe to seek more and more wealth to fight over.

I want that space station, and I’d join the Federation or the Alliance or the freaking Empire to get it. I want that space station because I want to see the universe and hire really smart people to go study all of it and tell me what it’s all  about. I think a space station out in the Gamma Quadrant would be a good start.

I’d need money to run the space station and hire all those smart people. Fortunately, a space station is also a great source of revenue from tourism, commerce, and people paying to not be exposed to the vacuum of space.

To provide even more economic incentive for space exploration, I present the Gimme Space Station U Prize. The winner will be the first person to get me that space station, and the prize will be $50 in MySpaceStation Bucks and a gift certificate to not be exposed to the vacuum of space.

It’s commonly believed in the academic world that Sir Isaac Newton was responsible for developing the mathematics of calculus. This is a lie that has been covered up for nearly half a millennium. I’m here to speak the truth and to expose the Great Newtonian Lie for what it really is: a conspiracy to deny the rightful owners of calculus their due respect.

It may ease your indignation to know that, though we do not credit the rightful owners of calculus with its development, we do reward them financially for their efforts. Of course, when I speak of the rightful owners of calculus, I am speaking of the Brooks/Cole publishing company and their star author, James Stewart.

Stewart, working only with quill and ink in his parents’ garage, perfected the radical new arena of calculus called Edition 5E. 5E is not just any college textbook; it is filled with new pictures, graphs, sample problems, and a riveting new preface. The only imperfection in this new edition is that Stewart, in all his modesty, does not rightfully credit himself as the inventor of calculus.

I am not certain of the historical evidence for James Stewart inventing calculus, but the marketplace never lies. I found online that Newton’s Principia is free to download and print, proving it is a worthless document and was most likely plagiarized from Stewart’s work. Calculus 5E, however, is a respectable $120 – used. From this price, we can accurately deduce that it is superior in form, function, and weight. Calculus is a rapidly evolving science: The calculus you learned last year from the Fourth Edition is obsolete now, a dead language like Latin or Canadian. The only way to keep up with the eternally shifting planes of calculus is to accept the Brooks/Cole orthodoxy and purchase a new text each semester, or just drop out and give up.

If you are poor and you cannot afford Stewart’s book, there is simply no way for you to learn calculus. You should accept that you were born into a lower-class life, and you need not burden yourself with education.

You may be tempted and deceived by so-called “open-content” textbooks available on the web. Free, open-content textbooks are free and open-content for a reason: They are lies; otherwise, they wouldn’t be open-content.

Anyone who would develop a textbook filled with public
knowledge and release it to the public at no cost and for no
personal gain is a menace. Knowledge that isn’t paid for in
cash is knowledge not worth having. Anyone who openly
disagrees with the preceding statement is merely confessing
anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-American
sentiments. The American patriot Sir Isaac Newton knew this
well; that’s why, when he went to college, he was happy to
buck up the $120 for Stewart’s book.

Also, I didn’t want to say anything, but Osama Bin Laden likes open-content textbooks and says James Stewart is the Great Satan, so…you know.

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – March, 2007 (pdf)