When coffee is no longer a tangible thing and exists only as an ethereal question, the sharp derangement of the day has not yet reached its peak.

When this question is answered…

…you will find yourself in a wood-paneled room seated in an appropriately uncomfortable chair, properly underdressed for an occasion of analytical education.

I am surrounded by the most nauseatingly, stereotypically precocious and privileged British snoblings. An extreme emotional reaction, they still illicit, but it is one of eye-rolling snickering if not immediate dismissal given the megawatt spotlight harshly illuminating their faults, powered by the very strength of their caricature. Something of a ratio that eats itself…

A very Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes dancingly leads the class in solving an unknown crime. People, places, things, and events that are not in and of themselves crimes, are meticulously described by the great professor. By further uncovering and connecting these island facts with the strands of one true logic, we should – no we must! – come to a single and unavoidable conclusion as to what in fact constitutes the crime, who committed it, how, and why.

Why am I here? I have so seldom cared to feign interest in any such masturbatory subject as this. I have even less patience for the presumed importance of such a discussion’s participants. And this must be clear to all…glaringly so for Sherlock himself.

But he likes me…or fears me…or hopes that by ignoring me I’ll simply cease to exist…

This could happen.

But there is a shadow on his face, likely imperceptible to others, that flickers of a fleeting and fighting guilt. The lines on his face relax for a millisecond to wordlessly communicate that he simply needed the money, awkwardly dangling a plea for forgiveness.

Or perhaps more, he knows already that I am guilty of the criminal mystery he has just put forth. This is very likely. I accept it without too much thought, pleading guilty to an indefensible and invisible act and ignoring the sentence.

In the course of a string of pandering attempts at a solution that amount to little more than an obvious, ass-kissing version of “20 Questions”, I am cooking meat in my hands.

Time flies and I am well overfed until the current sycophancy is cut short by a spontaneously possessed young girl who begins a haunting song that while not skillfully performed is nonetheless beautiful if not more so because of this slight failing. The lights dimmed and she providing her own and our only luminance, neither waiting for a well-mannered opportunity to begin nor directing this performance at anyone in particular, she hums forth a set of lyrics that perfectly detail the events of the mystery while maintaining a perfect poetry. A hypnotically appealing trance of enlightenment, we are all of us drawn to it like moths to a flame…

…until…

My friend Greggins nervously half-raises his hand and then repeats the same motion with his mouth as he seeks to jump ahead and unlock the mystery single-handedly.

“I…think…she is…onto something here.”

This shatters the trance of the young female medium. She is silent and common once more. The key to the mystery is lost, perhaps even now lost to Holmes, the original source of the day’s game. It is as though all that she had brought from the other world bonded to that which we already knew and stole away together in a frightened retreat, leaving us with nothing.

In The Sporadical’s continuing crusade to uncover overlooked, underground cultural idiosyncrasies that will aid us in transitioning to The Second Surreal and Unnerving Human Empire, we bring you…cows crapping in a field for money!

Cow Chip Bingo!

Traditionally, Cow Chip Bingo is begun by a township painting a grid onto a field, pasture, or the front yard of someone universally disliked by the muttering masses. One may then go to the local corner store and purchase at a cost of $5 - $25 one of the squares in the aforementioned grid.

When all else has been properly prepared, the local crotchety old man, whom has no other responsibilities, grins the only smile of his life as he lets loose the cows, which have been mentally abused over the course of 2-3 years to such an extent that they have been conditioned into the proper grid shitting lather.

Should a cow fortunately plop in your square…BINGO! You get your $5 - $25 back and the remainder is kept in the township treasury to fund the purchase of a non-functioning tank to keep in front of the bowling alley.

In the near future of The Second Surreal and Unnerving Human Empire, a form of this will take place in each documented township on the 3rd ABBA Day of each month.

A close relative to the above event, currently gaining in popularity, involves the drilling of holes in the floor of one’s 2nd or more floor apartment. With the aid of 15-20 members of the surrounding community and a metronome, a controlled symphony of synchronized excrement is rained upon the downstairs neighbor in such a way as to produce a peculiarly pleasant melody in addition to the inevitable insanity.

A videotape of these events is sold to universities and seminaries, clearly and clinically showing the destruction of one’s befuddled and terrified mind as excrement inexplicably falls from the sky in such a widespread, choreographed manner that it could not possibly be due to a simple plumbing malfunction. Proceeds from the sale of this videotape pay for the repair of the floor, the cleaning of the downstairs apartment, and psychiatric fees for the affected neighbor.

The key difference with this practice is that in the near future of The Second Surreal and Unnerving Human Empire, a form of this will take place in each documented township on the 2nd ABBA Day of each month.

How else will your flowers grow?

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not.

Doctor Who is a brilliant show. If you are not familiar with it, the general premise follows a mostly quirky Time Lord (alien-type) referred to only as The Doctor, travelling anywhere and everywhere in time and space. When gravely injured, he regenerates into different forms (actors) so that he lives more or less forever in, what should be, increasingly marketable forms.

Given the almost unlimited nature of such a show, its no wonder that it lasted upwards of 26 years until some smart guy took the reigns and started stapling question marks all over everything and the general consensus in England was that it would be best if the show didn’t exist for a few decades.

Despite continuing on in other media and a failed re-launch in 1998, it didn’t really resurface until 2005 when Russell T. Davies brought it back with a bigger budget, a load of camp, proper love for the show’s history, and a lot of running. Except for super ridiculous camp at some points, Davies did a hell of a job shepherding the series back to life.

With Davies now giving up the helm, fans are fairly excited to have Steven Moffat taking over as head writer and executive producer. Amongst his other accomplishments, Moffat has written some of the best episodes of the new Doctor Who series, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink in particular. Although Doctor Who will not formerly resume until 2010, spreading 5 specials throughout 2009, expectations are very high for these new episodes.

Of particular note, is the as yet unconfirmed rumor that Neil Gaiman might be brought on to write an episode of an upcoming Doctor Who season. Gaiman is not only a generally documented fan of the series, but is also fairly friendly with the aforementioned Steven Moffat.

Nail Gaiman writes…a lot…and it is generally assumed that he writes very well. He is best known for his DC Vertigo comic book series The Sandman. When I read The Sandman, I was completely absorbed for the first half of it, but was then overcome with a sickly indifference to the plight of the main character and wondered whether Lucifer Morningstar’s story would have been more interesting to follow. It was.

In general, let’s simply chalk that up to my eternal hard-on for non-bestial representations of Satan. I do, however, like to poke fun at what I have found through my moderate reading to be Gaiman’s reliance or addiction to building the foundations of stories from somewhat modified historical/mythological tales.

I would personally love to see Gaiman write a Doctor Who episode that revisits the themes found in the two-part-story of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, which had The Doctor confronting a force that claimed to be Satan, or some such incarnation thereof that had existed before and will exist after time…an idea that very much disturbs The Doctor’s core beliefs.

This would provide a very interesting perspective of The Doctor to explore and would also allow Gaiman to dabble in countless ancient tales of supreme evil, perhaps even geeking out and dabbling in the old series’ treatment of a “possibly-satanically-evil” villain named Sutekh the Destroyer.

Neil…if you do indeed write such an episode…I will not take any legal action against you or anyone connected with the show, even if you are indeed inspired by this brilliant blog posting. When you are deep in the warm embrace of Doctor Who, I will only be capable of love for you.

However, I will pretend that some friend of mine had read this article and that the two of us had made a wager whether or not said idea would be used. I will calculate at such time an amount owed to me equal to half of some friend of mine’s annual income. This will be done after deleting this paragraph. Neat and tidy.

If Neil Gaiman writes an episode of Doctor Who, chances are it will either be particularly placed in history or deal with a historical entity transplanted to or re-imagined in the future. I will at such time look smart for having said so now.

If my prediction proves humiliatingly inaccurate, I will then jump in the TARDIS, travel back in time prior to this post, and educate myself to the wider breadth of Neil Gaiman’s work.

Then I will jump back in the TARDIS…going back in time once again, just prior to educating myself on the wider breadth of Neil Gaiman’s work, to remind my past self that I had access to the TARDIS and will smack myself for thinking of educating myself on the wider breadth of Neil Gaiman’s work instead of flying around willy-nilly in the TARDIS. This will create a horrible paradox and I will be caught in a resultant Time Loop that will have me infinitely eating a Tastykake.

Praise be.

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not.

I unlock the door to my apartment building, exhausted after a long day at work. As I open the door, I find that Bonnie, my upstairs neighbor, is standing at the bottom of the stairs, her young daughter at her side. She is holding a strange bundle. She asks me, “Is this your baby?”

The baby clings to her breast like a monkey and looks like a tiny, emaciated old man with wily eyes and hollow cheeks. The child is mine, but I am loath to admit it. It stares at me with a look of indifferent recognition, its eyes alert and intelligent. I stare back, narrowly, silently.

“I found it in a crib back there,” Bonnie continues, pointing with her thumb to a nook beneath the stairs, “Do you know where it came from?”

Of course, I know. But I am not going to tell Bonnie. As far as I know, the child is half mine and half alien. The aliens stole my eggs, made a hybrid baby and then dropped it on my doorstep, expecting me to take care of it. They never asked me, never gave me a choice.

“Yeah, it’s mine. You can just leave it back there,” I say.

Bonnie looks concerned, pauses, half-turns, then, with a grave look, asks me, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, it’s fine. I’ll get it in a minute.”

As Bonnie — finally — turns to put the baby back beneath the stairs, I notice how well-dressed she and her daughter are. Bonnie is wearing slacks and a brown sweater, sort of classy business attire, and her daughter is wearing a clean pink dress. Her hair is done up in a bow…it must have taken Bonnie forever to get it like that…such a perfect little girl.

I have not moved since I closed the front door behind me, and I stay still as Bonnie emerges from beneath the stairs, sans baby, takes her daughter’s hand and walks up the stairs to her apartment. I watch them as they ascend, making sure to look Bonnie in the eye as she looks back at me uncertainly.

When they are out of sight, I make my move, dashing behind the staircase. Before I turn to the nook where the baby sits in its crib, I pause and lean against the wall.

I would like to love this baby. I would love to hate this baby. Neither emotion manifests. The child was forced upon me without my permission, and I know that I ought to kill it, but it is still half-mine, therefore half-me, and I cannot bring myself to do anything violent.

But I cannot take care of it. For one thing, my boyfriend would never put up with a baby in the house. Or maybe that’s just the excuse I use to make myself feel less guilty for neglecting it. It has occurred to me to kick the boyfriend out, explain to him that I have responsibilities, and bring the baby upstairs.

I finally peek behind the staircase. The baby looks different…it’s fat now, and red like a tomato. It sits in a small wooden crib with bars on the sides. It has a shelf above it, just out of reach to its little hands. On the shelf is a candle. I must have put that there so it would have some light. My boyfriend’s cell phone is also sitting on the shelf. Maybe he came down here to check on the baby and left it here.

My boyfriend is not the problem, and I know it. I do not trust this baby. I won’t have it in my home. But I can’t give it up…how could I put a thing like this up for adoption? And, of course, it is still half-mine. Half-me. So, I suppose, I half-love it.

I am struck with a motherly urge to hold my baby. I reach down — almost — and then I notice its skin. The baby looks like an overripe tomato, its skin so thin that I would surely break it open if I tried to pick it up. An invisible membrane over a clump of red.

The baby points to the shelf. Is it pointing to the cell phone? Does it want me to pick it up? The baby stares at me with tiny black sphincter eyes. I shudder, pull my hands away. I have to leave it, have to go upstairs.

Guilt creeps over me and I turn away. I can’t touch it, I don’t even want to reach over it to get the cell phone from the shelf.

I look back at it…it’s reaching for me now…it wants to be held. I know that if I pick it up, I will break its skin. I back away.

I turn, walk back, up the stairs to my apartment. I leave the cell phone with the baby. If it needs anything during the night, I’m sure it will figure out how to call me.

End dream.

In my neighborhood, we are facing quite truly absurd food shortages that impact the simplest actions of everyday life. This is an issue I know I’ve addressed to some degree before and I don’t mean to harp on this matter, but life has turned into a nigh impossible fight for survival, scrounging and scrounging and still failing to dig up any deliciously decadent ice cream or French Crullers. Frankly…I’m out of tricks.

I had, for such a very long time, been a very Vanilla man…perhaps only ever splurging for Bean or French variations. However, one day something snapped inside of me…a total and complete change in my personal passions.

What I came upon was a real Danzig world view, grabbing existence by the horns and riding that metaphorical bull in a very awkward, alarming, and lewdly painful rumpus-room manner that would make certain the loss of one of my more preferred appendages.

This roughly translates to my consuming Crazy Soup, which is 1 part vanilla ice cream, 4 parts chocolate syrup, 12 parts sugar, and 27 parts maple syrup. This was a spectacular sustenance that had the added advantage of providing me the short-lived superhuman ability to scale any surface no matter how steep or solid.

However, in addition to the unfortunate side effect of bloody, crippled, frightfully mangled fingers, Crazy Soup was also a shitload of parts. To simplify my urges I took it upon myself to chart a course for the local supermarket where I would be sure to find pre-packaged Crazy Soup substitutes.

What I found were 5 different brands of the following flavors: Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, and Neapolitan. Lovely. More brands than flavors. Seriously.

Amongst my many adventures in foreign lands – Pennsylvania – I have come across ridiculously decadent flavors that generally revolve around 8 different types of chocolate wrapped about 3 different kinds of fudge, covered in the murdered liquids of 2 additional fudges.

This is a fine touchstone…a general standard one would expect to find in some quantity in any ice creamery. And so I went with such expectations to my local Baskin Robbins…31 flavors, dig? It was there that I found such rich and varied flavors as Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, and Neapolitan. Really?

I did find some “creative” flavors. though I wouldn’t as such call them tasty or decadent. Maybe its just me, but “Pine Cone Crunch”, “Double Ribbon Potpourri” and “Warm Dishrag” are not the most appealing concoctions.

I am, however, highly adaptive…a real survivor…and my very biology has literally changed in order to accommodate my will to live as I was able to replace shockingly sweet frozen dairy with a new foodstuff: French Crullers.

And so I turn around and find myself at my local Dunkin’ Donuts. What I don’t find….is French…Fucking…Crullers. Wow…way to go Dunkin’ Donuts…you’re selling sushi now…but not French Crullers.

Right.

Today in the park, a basketball game was violently interrupted by the popcorn rattle of gunfire, throwing many peaceful park-goers flat on their stomach clinging to the uncertain safety of the asphalt and still others scattering, fleeing away from the scene or unwittingly into the very heart of the uproar. Its always hard to accurately get at the psychology behind such a violent act, but clearly some distraught man cracked under the heat of the summer and the unacceptable lack of Double Icing Fudge Explosion Triple Chocolate Cookie Dough Party Cake Ice Cream, voicing his anguish through the only options left to him.

Panic sets in…and it should. It has for me….and I too am not exactly on the up-and-up, resorting to an underground black market of crullers and other confections. But what choice is a man left with? It is that or starve…surely. Am I expected to take the train for a sugar hunt downtown every time I simply seek to sustain myself?

I find it stupefying and deeply offensive that the National Guard has not been brought in to handle the situation, shepherding the arrival of Red Cross packages containing Infinity Fudge Caramel Sugar Suckle ice cream and the frenchiest of French Crullers, forcing storeowners not only to sell me these very basic life necessities, but also place them in my mouth and help me chew at precise hour intervals throughout the day, in my waking hours and my slumber. My biology demands it.

Can nothing now fill this void?

Oh mighty Giton! Why hast though forsaken me?

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not.

I found this spectacular video linked on Phil Plait’s intelligent and responsible blog Bad Atronomy, where he introduces the clip, writing:

You are immersed in magnetic fields right now. Your computer, your house, your office, your street, your TV, your iPod… they all have magnetic fields around them, and you are embedded in them as well.

Sweet Christ! I never knew. It’s like something out of a an old Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who episode…a cheesy invisible monster made more frightening through the stark reality of this video.

But now that we know…something must be done! Clearly it is these magnetic fields that have been invisibly fucking up everything for us always: mediocre love lives, the elusive peace in the Middle East, dead end jobs, global warming, and the lack of crullers at my local Dunkin’ Donuts.

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! This is a call to arms, gentlemen…THEY ARE FUCKING EVERYWHERE! You heard the man!

Pick up a blunt magnetic-field-destroying object and start smashing everything you see.

As soon as I saw this video I began doing my part, running outside with an aluminum baseball bat and swinging wildly at the air around me, light posts, the asphalt…all this while spastically pulling on my underwear, frantically attempting to smash and free them as well from this cancerous magnetism…no easy task, I’ll tell ya.

An old man kindly hobbled up to me and asked, “Are you OK, sonny?”

I spun around, red-eyed, slobbering blood with my head reared back and my nostrils flaring, snorting like an enraged bull. SMACK! The old man hits the ground like a sack of flour and with similar powdery fallout.

“You are free, old man! FREE YOU TOFU EATIN’ OLD FOOL! I can see…don’t you see!? DON’T YOU SEE?! No more magnetic fields on MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Later – two days later in fact – after I had freed my entire neighborhood from all magnetic fields, what community bravely remained gathered my exhausted and shattered body from the pavement and placed it on a leftover float from the Italian Festival. Cradled in the arms of a filthy, crumbling statue of the Virgin Mary, the float was carried through the smoldering magnetic-field-free streets, hoisted on the shoulders of the thankful souls I saved.

Through the narrow swollen slits of my eyelids, I could just barely make out the flickering majesty of my work. Burning buildings, ruptured fire hydrants, and a seemingly endless littering of things that were once living…all humanely “de-magnetized”.

SPLASH!

Breaking through the stinging shock of my new surroundings, I figured I must have been thrown into the river and found that I had not only been placed in the arms of the Virgin Mary, but rather bound to her with very strong and abrasive cables.

Gathering an impossible reserve of energy and superhuman strength, I swam ashore, dragging the Virgin Mary behind me.

She now stands behind me, clad in fishnet stockings and a tube-top, blessing my actions as I go about my heavenly mission of spreading the word of the dangers of Satan’s invisible magnetic demons.

Koo-Loo-Koo-Koo-Koo-Koo-Koo-Kooooooo!
Koo-Loo-Koo-Koo-Koo-Koo-Koo-Kooooooo!

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not.

Or rather – back in reality – the article concerns itself with a study in Indonesia focusing on the effects of soy product consumption on memory – that’s human memory for those keeping score at home. High tofu consumption was associated with worse memory, further theories even connecting it to aiding the onset of dementia. However, the 719 subjects of this survey were all elderly participants so they may have quite naturally not remembered whether they ate Tofu or not, yet kindly nodded when asked by the researchers if they did.

The science actually points to the culprit being things called Phytoestrogens, micronutrients found in many soy products that have effects similar to the female sex hormone oestrogen. This is the same ingested compound that makes me cry uncontrollably whenever I come across A League of their Own on TV – this is a real thing…and a real problem…which is why I’m so heavily interested in this study.

One theory has it that these phytoestrogens and oestrogens tend to promote cell growth in the brain, which for some reason does not jive with an ageing brain – the natural decrapitating tendencies of an ageing brain perhaps creating a defeatist conflict with this new promise of growth, too depressing a hope that the two forces decide to throw away old pictures rather than hanging on to a lost cause. That last bit of theory did not come from a scientist.

A diverging theory points to formaldehyde as the real culprit, as it is sometimes used as a preservative in Indonesia. But fuck that theory. It is not a surprising cause and is only immediately funny… I can do nothing with it as material…

To be fair to my soy–lovin’ friends, where tofu fails, apparently its soy sibling tempeh makes it big time. The theory here runs that high levels of the dementia fighting vitamin folate found in tempeh, combine with the high levels of phytoestrogens to form Voltron, which epically battles the Robeasts that attack the human brain as it ages.

Remember…before you eat anything…ever…you might first want to run a lengthy study of its effect on at least 719 elderly Indonesians.

Of course, your safest bet all around is to simply eat nothing. Or perhaps it is better said that you should not eat anything. We’re not quite certain yet what would happen if you ate nothing. Err on the side of absurdist caution on all edible things and you will surely live forever…a period of time redefined as the distance between now and the moment you succumb to starvation.

And I’ll form the head!

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not

My scientists have formulated that putting these polls into posts under their own category will not only pad my stats and make slightly mightier the girth of this fine site, but will also – shockingly! – organize the damn things so that they may be better perused in their later years.

First up…the 2008 US Presidential Election.

I have seen very little coverage of this event on YouPorn and have as such pooled what little information I could gleam from the ever smaller tubes of the internets. Collected here in this poll are all currently known candidates for the 2008 US Presidential Election.

Remember: VOTE OR NOT!

Already, Pier Paolo Pasolini has raced out to a commanding lead with 2 votes. This comes as no surprise. He is a fierce political warrior. While some may criticize his being dead, he has already proven that this is no true obstacle. If memory serves, he handedly won the 1999 Northampton Senior High School Student Council Presidency and led that institution through 3 glorious years now referred to as its golden age. Unfortunately, his reign ended in 2002 when he was found dead and buried for 27 years in a marked grave in Casarsa, Italy. Yet he rises once more for this new challenge…

I am myself conflicted as to whom I should vote for. After all, I did run that 1999 campaign that saw Pasolini defeating his opponents José Offerman and Chili Davis…both of whom also employed me as their campaign manager during that race. And although our political views have grown apart over the years, we still share many of the same ideals…and at least a few happy memories of years gone by.

Further complicating the matter is the surprise run of Arch Stanton in this year’s presidential election. I admit, disgracefully, that I served as his campaign manager in a 2002 bid for The Palladium’s Residential Council Presidency. This was a pure money job for me…and it showed. Fiercely campaigning with an almost limitless war chest and facing no opposition, Stanton still lost the election…heavily. Quite an obscure fellow, he simply didn’t have the name recognition necesary. The position remained unfilled and The Palladium prospered because of it.

I guess in situations such as these I generally default to a libertarian vote, but party platforms can be such a nebulous thing. I might just turn around to be informed that the libertarian party now randomly has in its platform a state mandating of thrice-weekly human-octopus sexual relations…no exceptions. How folks in Nebraska will stay out of jail is beyond me. Here come the storm troopers to make sure you’ve given special lovin’ to your cephalopod. “What…no octopus? Not our problem.” WHACK! But I don’t mean to besmirch the Libertarian Party. That’s more of an Arch Stanton position anyway… oh Arch…what the hell is wrong with you?

Carpe Que Sera Sera and vote for the leader of this splintered reality.

I’m Thomas K…and I’m not.