So! Valentine's Day, huh? Am I right? Huh? Yeah! Hearts! Flowers! Candy! Ha-haaaaa, ugh. Now that it's safely past us for another year, I gotta question. Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool romanticist, all luvvy-duvvy boo-boo kitty nummymuffincoocoobutter, or a hard-nosed, bitterpants, my-heart-is-a-black-cinder, Gothy/Emo Morrissey mumbleynose, there is one thing we all wonder about: What the hell is up with all those cherubs?
These little winged refugees from a Van Halen album cover are always seen flitting about with bow and arrows at the ready, intent upon riddling some poor innocent sap with their barbed shafts of lurve. Okay, first of all, who's arming these flying menaces? Listen, I know that in Russia, love makes YOU, but here in America, you need to be at least 21 years of age and require a permit before you're allowed to own a projectile weapon. Unless you're talking Nerf weaponry, in which case, there's a little warning story for you to hear elsewhere on this blog.
Second of all, doesn't it concern anyone else that these ambulatory celestial rats just kinda meander around dispensing their own brand of indeterminate matchmaking, with no apparent brief or mandate as to which two people might actually be compatible?
Location: San Francisco. Seen sitting across from each other on the local transit, a man and a woman, each absorbed in their own little pursuits. He's into multiple piercings, facial tattoos, hardcore thrashgrindsloppunk, and, curiously, needlepoint. She likes Jane Austen, bob-do's, O magazine, and the collected works of Shostakovich. In floats a frisky little cherub with sheer simple-minded perversity on its face. Twang! He's gut-shot! Twong! She caught a hot one to the neck! And now it's all over. Somehow, these two are now doomed to try to mesh their individual social, familial, professional, philosophical, and emotional worlds together, and heaven help them both. I give it two months.
And third of all, speaking of heaven, do we even know for sure that these things have divine backing? Tiny mutant wings and a bioluminescent cranial light source do not the beatific make. So we're talking either infernal origin or mad science. I'll tell you which I'd prefer.
If I were an undersexed over-brainy nerd/dork type with full government funding (I've got two of those covered already; guess which two!), this is what I'd do. Under the guise of Valentine's Day, I'd release into the unsuspecting populace droves of genetically-engineered flying babies, outfitted with Olympic marksman-level sharpshooting skills, the very latest in miniature sniper technology, and the pheromone-sensing knack for finding two people cosmically unsuited for each other. Then, having embedded the both of them with light-bent heat-seeking projectiles containing a potent cocktail of pair-bond selective-antigen orgonetropevores combined with sophisticated tracking nanobots, these Cross-pollinating Heuristic Explore-and-attack Recombinant Uncanny Blasphemies (or C.H.E.R.U.Bs) would keep tabs on the resultant hook-up, break-up, and wash-up pattern that typically occurs over the succeeding couple of months, weeding out the chaff from the wheat until at last my perfect mate rises to the top of the heap of broken, disillusioned, ready-to-settle-for-less women, and I STRIKE!
The question you have to ask yourself now, is: does this pattern sound familiar to you? Have you gone through this experience already? Have you lowered your standards to the point where they're already met? Now you know. Oh yes... you know.
So, yeah. Valentine's Day, huh?
It was late last night in the red barlight
And she looked all right
Oh no
She had a slutty kind of appeal and there was definitely something to her
And you could think of friends of yours who if you knew if they could they would do her
She had a dirty sock kind of appeal
Oh God, NO
-- "Billy's", The Billy Nayer Show
If you’re like me, or even like him, or her, but not her or her, and totally not like that guy, ‘cause eww, what the hell is wrong with his ears, he doesn’t know the business end of a loofah from a turkey’s wattle and MAN he needs the services of a manicurist like WHOA… then you’re concerned about supramandibular cranial detonation, or headexplodeytude.
Headexplodeytude, or HET, is a syndrome suffered by millions of decent government-fearing folk daily. Doctors diagnose headexplodeytude in 4 ½ out of 67% of sufferer…ers every month, and new cases are on the rise. What causes HET, and how can we hunt down and lynch those responsible?
HET begins as a throttled impulse. We’ve all experienced moments of feeling frustrated at a co-worker’s cheerfully ignorant ineptitude when filling out a TPS report, or the inability of a customer service representative to understand that it’s impossible for you to go to the website to fill out a problem ticket when lack of Internet service is the reason you’re calling in the first place. DID YOU GET THAT, COMCAST? STOP PLAYING BEJEWELED AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!
However, as well-raised, polite, and intelligent people, we understand that we can’t just say whatever rage-fueled magma-like invective we’d like to let spew forth from our mouths, so we push our anger way down deep inside and try to conduct ourselves with decorum. Unfortunately, that anger doesn’t just go away. Instead, it mixes with the digestive juices, deeply-held resentment, and fears of mimes we all harbor inside and causes pressure to build up from within. Over time, that pressure can travel up the esophagus and fill the sinuses, causing a horrendous explosion, showering everyone nearby with viscera and bits of the previous night’s Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream binge.
So what can be done to arrest the effects of headexplodeytude? Well, you could try yoga and meditation! No, no, seriously, science has long ago debunked the myth of cultivating a healthy philosophy of tolerance, acceptance, and inner peace as a method of managing the kinds of stress that leads to HET, and instead turns to biopharmaceuticals for help.
Introducing Noboomitor. Carefully developed over the course of 5 years by a team of caring, respected scientists from various third world yet totally clean and broadband-enabled countries, Noboomitor has been proven effective in over a thousand Phase IV clinical trials as compared to placebo. Noboomitor is quick-acting, totally more purple than that other purple pill, won’t stain your teeth, and is effective for over 12 minutes before requiring another dose. Noboomitor isn’t for everyone – please check with your physician if you are:
• Pregnant
• Thinking of becoming pregnant
• Terrified you’re already pregnant
• Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Junior”
• Currently taking anything for anything
• Over 5 feet tall
• Were born in a month ending in “ember”
• Bipedal
• Have a face
• Or have recently been possessed by Shreeknolgth, Dread Monarch of Styrofoam Peanuts and All Related Packing Material That Makes That Nerve-Shredding Squeaky Sound When They Rub Together, I Hate That
Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, vomiting out of someone else’s mouth, inability to say the letter “ “, plague of frogs, Reaganomics, mudtongue, inverted nipples, slight headache, and loss of appetite. Ask for Noboomitor at your local pharmacy. Please remember to provide adequate credit references, and any documentation concerning mortgages, trust funds, and off-shore bank accounts. After all, if it’s expensive, it probably works!
Noboomitor is your best choice for temporarily staving off the inevitability of supramandibular cranial detonation. Remember: only you can prevent your head from exploding. Please, think of the children. If they go to school with pieces of their daddy’s noggin plastered all over their precious little faces, you can bet they’ll be picked last for dodgeball. And no one wants that. Noboomitor: it works, bitches.
Having every question answered isn't gonna help at all
Having every question answered isn't gonna help at all
Having every question answered isn't gonna help at all
Having every question answered doesn't help
When you're not supposed to know
You're not supposed to know
You're not supposed to know
Anything
-- "Textbook", We Are Scientists
