Quick one today
because Saint Patrick’s day comes a week early in Chicago
and I’ve still got a hell of a hangover to sleep off

So some scientist is giving a lecture
there are people who like to say it was Bertrand Russel
but that’s boring
I say it was Bill Nye the Science Guy

So Bill Nye is doing a demonstration about the solar system
he’s got a golf ball that represents the earth
and it’s on a little electric train
on a little electric train track
going around a bowling ball he’s spraypainted to look like the sun
and that’s all on top of a big metal disk
attached to a robot arm
that’s twirling around a nonstop lightshow of LEDs and tissue paper
that represents the milky way
it’s dope and there are sound effects

so this lecture is finished
everyone has learned a lot and people are getting ready to go
when suddenly this old lady stands up in the back
and she’s like “YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT BILL NYE
EVERYBODY KNOWS THE EARTH IS A PLATE FULL OF WATER AND DIRT
SUPPORTED ON THE BACK OF A TURTLE
A SPAAAAACE TUUUUURTLLLEEEE”

So Bill Nye is like “what the fuck
are they just letting anyone walk into my lectures now?
ma’am with all due respect you are a big idiot
like let’s say you’re right
let’s say the world was slapped together
with all the care and attention of a first grade science fair project
the world is balanced on a turtle
but what the fuck is the turtle balanced on?
OH THAT’S RIGHT
NOTHING
WHERE’S YOUR GOD NOW?
UNDER THE TURTLE MAYBE?
*FUCK* YOU, LADY”

The lady seemingly doesn’t realized how served she just got though
she just looks him right in his piercing brown eyes
and she’s like “Another turtle
and under that turtle is another turtle
and on and on like that forever
except for on level 6 million or so
which is just a giant jar of suck my dick”
then she drops a mic nobody knew she was holding
and she out

the moral of the story is screen your lecture guests

the end

You guys all know who Isaac Newton is
he’s that british dude with a talent for getting fruit-induced concussions
and then revolutionizing physics or whatever
he’s the guy who came up with those three laws of motion:
1) objects are lazy unless they’re already going somewhere in which case look out
2) something about force vectors
3) If you hit a dude, he will hit you back at least as hard as you hit him

but guys
I ask pose to you this question:
WHO CARRREEEEESSSSSSSS?
As Dirk Gently points out in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
someone was gonna discover gravity eventually
that shit’s on ALL THE TIME
that’s like if we made a big deal out of the guy who discovered pooping
like, sure, pooping is a big deal
but it’s not like you really had to go out of your way to discover it, dude
you just had to go

No, the real story, my friends, is not about Isaac Newton
it is about a dude who Isaac Newton sentenced to DEATH
YEAH
Did you know you could gain the power to kill dudes by being good at math?
well, actually you can’t
you have to also get appointed the head of the british mint
and spend all your time running around undercover
arresting counterfeiters for years and years
which is exactly what Newton did
because I guess he was tired of shaking the foundations of our understanding of the universe?

anyway the guy I’m referring to is a dude named William Chaloner
and he is essentially the best criminal ever
he grew up in Birmingham, where he made a living counterfeiting pennies
but that’s a really slow way to get rich
so pretty soon he moved to London and started selling dildos
BUT NOT JUST ANY DILDOS, MY FRIENDS
these were dildos concealed inside of WATCHES
that’s some James Bond shit
or more accurately
some Austin Powers shit
I mean how do you even do that
how can you cram a satisfying amount of dildo into a wristwatch?
the secret died with William Chaloner

but until he died
William dished out currency like he was making it rain at a strip club
except if william had made it rain the kind of currency he was counterfeiting
everybody would have died
because William was counterfeiting SOLID GOLD COINS
(I mean his coins weren’t solid gold
but they were supposed to be)
and he got SO RICH doing this
that he was able to pose as a british nobleman

so William goes to parliament
with his new fancy clothes and diamond carriage and whatever
and he’s like “Listen, guys
the british mint basically sucks every chode
It is so incredibly easy to make fake coins
you might as well just hand out a check to every citizen
that just says “FREE INFINITE MONEY”
so here’s what you do:
you appoint ME as the head of the british mint
I will make sure NOBODY counterfeits your coins
because I uh
I know about counterfeiting”

YES FRIENDS
THE DUDE WHO MAKES ALL THE FAKE COINS IN BRITAIN
WALKS INTO PARLIAMENT
AND APPLIES FOR A JOB
AS THE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT THAT MAKES ALL THE REAL COINS IN BRITAIN
dude has some brass balls
although considering his profession
I would estimate that his balls are only 45% brass at most

But Isaac Newton is having none of it
he’s like “SERIOUSLY GUYS?
COME ON
THIS DUDE IS OBVIOUSLY A CRIMINAL”
and parliament is like “oh shit.”
and then William runs away
to the suburbs
where he not only continues making fake coins
but also starts printing counterfeit hundred-pound bills
from the newly-formed bank of england
and when the bank of england finds out
he just turns in one of his accomplices
for forging blank checks from the CITY ORPHAN’S FUND
and is rewarded for his efforts with another 200 pounds
plus he gets to keep all the money he already stole

so Isaac Newton is tearing his hair out back at the mint
and meanwhile William Chaloner is counterfeiting lottery tickets
he’s counterfeiting more coins
and he’s having sex with all the ladies who counterfeit coins
and he’s naming his accomplices every time he gets in trouble
(INCLUDING HIS OWN ALIAS)
and he’s also just straight framing people as members of obscure religious sects
then busting them
and collecting fat rewards from the british crown
at this point I am beginning to understand why they took so long to put him in jail
because every day William Chaloner spends free
like TWELVE OTHER PEOPLE GO TO JAIL

But it turns out that ceaseless betrayal and endless crime is not a good long term strategy
because pretty soon another forger turns William in
and they find his fake lottery tickets too
plus he printed all those hundred pound notes
and even though NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS ARE A FELONY YET FOR SOME REASON
that’s still enough to put him in jail while Newton constructs THE ULTIMATE CASE

Newton is intent on not fucking up this time
he’s tried a lot of stuff
he has personally gone undercover to collect evidence
he has re-designed british coinage with security features
he has recalled ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE COINAGE IN BRITAIN
and now he has developed a comprehensive network of spies and informants
pretty much with the sole goal
of shitting in William Chaloner’s breakfast
and it works
he fields eight witnesses
and William doesn’t have any friends left because he sold them all out
and it takes the jury like three minutes to be like “hang that bitch”
so they do
and it’s gross
but hey, it was fun while it lasted

so the moral of the story
is that you can completely revolutionize science and mathematics
change the way we view the solar system
and create groundbreaking inventions for everything from tamper-proof currency to cat doors
but in the end
you are never going to be as interesting
as a dude who makes fake shiny things

THE END

soooo it looks like i’m updating once a week now?
also it looks like nobody has taken me up on my offer
come on guys it’s a sweet offer

ANYWAY LET’S TALK ABOUT LIGHTNING
or if not lightning exactly
then at least lightning’s better-behaved alter-ego electricity
when last we left our heroes
they were busy rubbing shit all over other shit
and then proving that lightning and electricty were actually the same thing
and then going to france and having a lot of sex
and apparently all this shit was crucial
especially that last part
because it opened the door for a dude named Faraday to come along
and start making machines that rubbed shit on other shit
with UN-HEARD-OF EFFICIENCY
he also invented a kind of cage that makes your cell phone not work
so basically he sounds like a dick

BUT HE IS AN IMPORTANT DICK
history is full of important dicks
like Alexander the Great
and Napoleon
and Benjamin Franklin’s dick
there are comparatively few important vaginas though
which is weird
because there’s a whole FUCKTON of really important ASSHOLES
which brings us to Thomas Alva Edison

see, after Faraday invents his spectacularly efficient way of rubbing shit together
Thomas Edison gets super rich by selling crazy souped-up telegraphs
and puts up a gigantic building in new jersey
so that he can more efficiently gather smart people
and rub their brains together
(as a side note
I am currently pioneering a new historico-scientific theory
it is called
“everything in history is just rubbing things on other things”)
and through the friction of all these smart brains
Edison comes up with some pretty cool shit
or more accurately
better versions of other people’s already cool shit
like lightbulbs and shit
and one of the things he comes up with
is another way to generate and distribute electricity

Edison calls his way “Direct Current”
(or DC)
and the other way
which is being pioneered at the same time by a dude named Westinghouse
is called “Alternating Current”
(or AC)
do not try to understand what these things mean
it’s really hard
all you really need to know
is they would make an incredibly sweet band name

so the problem with DC power
is it’s lazy
it won’t travel very far before it gives up and goes away
so you have to make a lot of power stations in order for it to work
meanwhile
the problem with AC power
is that someone has not yet come along
who can upgrade it and make it TOTALLY AWESOME

ENTER NIKOLA TESLA
tesla is this Serbian dude with like no social skills
because he put all his attribute points in CRAZY BRAIN
he willingly gave up rubbing his junk on ladies’ junk
so he could spend more time figuring out how to rub electric shit on other shit
and he hallucinated like ALL THE TIME
to make up for the fact that he slept like NONE OF THE TIME
this dude was less of a dude
and more of a streamlined engine for turning food and water into SCIENCE

So Tesla looks at AC power like ok guys
i see what you’re doing
with the rubbing stuff on other stuff
but guys
what if we made it
MORE COMPLICATED
and everyone is like AWRIIIIIGHT
especially that Westinghouse guy

so westinghouse buys all of Tesla’s great ideas
and then Edison is like oh shit
Westinghouse is about to totally wreck my shit
AC power can travel longer distances than my DC power
it is cheaper and more efficient
welp
i guess there’s only one thing left to do:
time to start murdering animals

so that is what Thomas Edison does
first he invents the electric chair
and powers it with AC power
so everyone will know just how fucking dangerous that shit is
ignoring the fact that lightning can also kill people
and i’m pretty sure that’s not AC OR DC
ELECTRICITY:
JUST PRETTY FUCKING DANGEROUS ALL AROUND
but edison doesn’t stop at revolutionizing american justice
no no no
then what he does
is he starts stealing stray cats
and frying those fuckers on his electro-killing machine
but everyone is still like yawn
so finally edison is like fuck this
just fuck this
fuck
I’m gonna get an elephant from the god-damn zoo
and I am going to electrocute it to death with one of my inventions
while filming it with another one of my inventions
and THAT is going to solve this whole thing for me
i don’t see how it could fail

so he does that
he kills Topsy the Elephant and then shows people the video
and somehow
that fails to convince everyone to buy his flavor of electricity
so that shit fails pretty hard
but it’s fine, because it’s not like Edison is exactly hurting for money
he gets distracted pretty quickly
by an ambitious scheme to repeatedly fire X-rays into his own eyes
presumably in order to become more like superman

meanwhile, shit is not going too well for Tesla
because after a brilliant career of turning down ladies
and sculpting reality with his mind
his mind is finally like fuck this
i’m done
from now on
it’s just gonna be martians and talking pigeons
all day every day
and Tesla is like oh well
it was fun while it lasted
i guess i better go die in a tiny apartment
after eating nothing but milk and crackers for months

now guys
i know you were expecting the standard narrative
“Nikola Tesla invented radar and gravity and knees
and Thomas Edison stole all of it with his asshole machine made of assholes”
and while Thomas Edison is indeed an asshole
and Nikola Tesla did indeed invent like a million things
what both of them have in common
is being FUCKING CRAZY
like, from my perspective
there is not a lot of difference between hallucinating pigeons and aliens
and shooting yourself in the eyes with radioactive beams over and over again
which just goes to show
that the moral of this story
is that all the smartest people in the world
are also the biggest goddamn idiots

the end

ok so being a scientist is hard right
i’m not a scientist
i’m more of a
i guess you would say
vagrant
but I have it on good authority that being a scientist is hard
you gotta like
go to school and do math and shit
and that’s a shame
because for too long now
science has been closed to bored lazy idiots
whose sole qualification
is that they don’t give a shit if they catch on fire
well my friends
after some exhaustive research
I have come upon a solution to this grave societal ill
here’s what you do:
instead of being a scientist
try being a scientist
IN THE 1600s

guys
science in the 1600s was basically just like throwing meat at a barn and seeing if it turned into anything cool
for real guys
There was a real dude
named Jan Baptist van Sweetname Helmont
[“Sweetname” added for emphasis]
who thought you could make scorpions
by putting a piece of basil between two bricks in your yard
HE WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO THOUGHT THIS
what i’m saying is that the bar for science in the 1600s was hella low
and dudes were capitalizing

basically here’s what happened:
somewhere along the line, dudes figured out that if you rubbed certain things on certain other things
other things would stick to those things
they discovered this because dudes love rubbing shit on other shit
and that’s great
because as soon as this amazing discovery is made
it opens the door to another hundred or so years
of just rubbing random shit on other shit in the name of science
for real this is all these guys are doing
this german guy spins a bunch of sulphur around
BAM
ELECTRICITY
then this english guy starts rubbing flannel shirts on windows
and mashing sugar cubes together
FUCKIN ELECTRICITY UP IN HERE
is there any thing that you can rub on another thing that will NOT produce electricity?
PROBABLY
PROBABLY THEY FIGURED OUT WHAT IT WAS
DURING THEIR HUNDRED YEARS OF GLEEFUL FRICTION

but so eventually dudes calm down about rubbing shit on their shit
much like teenagers entering into adulthood
and they start to do slightly more complicated things
like sometimes
after they rub shit on their shit
they press it up against other shit
to see if the electricity will go into the other shit
and then they discover that sometimes when you rub shit on shit
shit doesn’t stick to the shit
it actually gets pushed away!
holy shit!
and it turns out that if you rub silk on a window you get one kind of electricity
and if you rub flannel on sealing wax, you get another kind
and those two kinds stick to each other
(like i said
they had a long time to figure out what shit was good to rub on other shit)

Then somebody invents a jar you can put electricity in
it’s pretty cool
basically there’s a metal coating on the inside of the jar
and a metal coating on the outside
and one of the two kinds of electricity is on the outside
and the inside has the other kind
and that keeps the electricity from escaping
because it is the will of zeus that it be so

so people start experimenting with these jars full of dangerous
and this one guy gives himself the FIRST EVER ELECTRIC SHOCK
WHOAH
GUYS
are you telling me dudes had been rubbing shit on shit for well over a hundred years
and no one had yet fucked it up?
okay I take back what I said about 1600s scientists
those dudes were legit
but wait wait, check this out
so the Dutch guy says he wouldn’t shock himself again “for the crown of France”
which is no big deal because I don’t even think France has a king anymore
but then the Dutch guy has a couple weeks to think about it
and he realizes that getting an electric shock is actually REALLY COOL
and then suddenly everybody is buying these fucking jars
just to ELECTROCUTE THEMSELVES
it actually replaces microscopes as everyone’s favorite science thing
so okay
I un-take back what I said about old-times science
it sounds dumb as hell
and therefore PERFECT FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME

then in 1706 Benjamin Franklin gets born
maybe I will tell you more about him later
but right now all you need to understand
is that if America has a Zeus
it’s probably Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin is the kind of dude who is instantly good at everything he does
and therefore develops a style of living
in which he struts dick-first into the thick of every problem he encounters
and fucks his way out the other side, grinning

so this guy decides he wants to know what’s up with electricity
which means he has to take a break from singlehandedly inventing Philadelphia
to run some experiments
and it turns out that there is one particular experiment
that everyone else is too much of a pussnexus to actually run
and that is the experiment
that will finally answer the age-old question:
“IS LIGHTNING MADE OF ELECTRICITY????”
COME ON
COME THE FUCK ON
IT’S FUCKING LIGHTNING
WHEN YOU GET HIT BY LIGHTNING IT GOES BZZT
AND YOUR SKIN GOES TRANSPARENT AND EVERYONE CAN SEE YOUR BONES
HOW IS THAT NOT OBVIOUSLY ELECTRICITY?
HOW CAN YOU COME UP WITH A THEORY THAT SCORPIONS COME OUT OF BRICKS AND PASTA HERBS
BUT NOT MAYBE TAKE A WILD GUESS THAT “HEY
MAYBE THAT GLOWING GOD-DICK THAT TURNED THE FARMHOUSE TO CINDERS IS MADE OF ELECTRONS”
man, the past is dumb

but Big Ben Franklin is NOT
so he does the smartest possible thing
which is to make a kite out of metal and silk
attach a key to the bottom
attach one of those electro-shock jars to the key
and go out in a fucking lightning storm
THIS GUY IS ON OUR MONEY, AMERICA
NOT ONLY IS HE ON OUR MONEY
HE IS ON A DENOMINATION OF MONEY THAT I’M NOT EVEN RICH ENOUGH TO POSSESS
AND I HAVE NEVER WALKED OUT INTO A FIELD WITH A SIGN ON MY BALLS THAT SAYS “ZEUS PLEASE KILL ME”
MAYBE THAT IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING WRONG

anyway this experiment is a great success
Benjamin Franklin finally proves beyond a shadow of a doubt
that lightning is the only thing it could possibly be
and he writes a paper about it
and sends it to the Royal Society of London
and they’re all like PISH POSH
EVERYONE KNOWS LIGHTING IS MADE OF GLOWING BEES

all of which just goes to show
that no matter how suicidally dumb you are
there is ALWAYS someone dumber

TO BE CONTINUED??!??

Decided to take a break from the Silmarillion
cause I’m a little bored of it honestly and I have a feeling you are too
I’ll come back to it eventually
MEANWHILE
recently a friend of mine introduced me to a troubling myth
made more troubling by the fact that even today
there are quite a few people who believe it’s true
in some parts of the country, it is even taught in schools
yes friends
I am of course referring
to “Global Warming”

So in the beginning Prometheus brought fire to man
and it was good
(except for prometheus)
but then man made an important discovery
the discovery was this:
you don’t have to just burn little pieces of wood
you can burn like
ANYTHING
don’t matter if it’s old tires or plastic or witches
you make a big enough fire and you can ruin ANY OBJECT with it
so obviously people get busy ruining as many things as they can
they burn down forests
so they will have more space to put fires
they burn all these dried out leaves and inhale them
so that they can see cooler shit while they stare at their fires
they even build big huge houses in the middle of their cities
so they can set coal on fire all day long
this is called the industrial revolution
and the industrial revolution is where shit finally starts to get out of hand
because what people realize in the industrial revolution
is that the more and bigger fires they can produce
the more small green pieces of paper they will be able to collect from other people
shockingly, they do not want these green pieces of paper so that they can set them on fire
these pieces of paper are called “money”
and they are one of the few things that people are strangely unwilling to set on fire
instead they do what is called “spending”
which is similar to burning, but marginally less likely to cause explosions
anyway we’re getting off topic

so all these fires have an unintended effect
this unintended effect is called “smoke”
and you would think that people would have given this more thought
seeing as they themselves had been inhaling smoke
in order to become more unproductive/dangerous
FOR CENTURIES AT THIS POINT
and that is basically what happens to the entire planet
when all this smoke starts flying everywhere
like, the earth pretty much just gets high as balls
and when you get high as balls (as I assume you do if you frequent this website)
you get the munchies
and what does the world eat, besides hopes and dreams?
HEAT

so earth is flying through space, just munching on all the heat it can get
and meanwhile people are down on earth inventing new kinds of smoke to put in the air
they make these things called chlorofluorocarbons
which are great for spray-on deoderant and refrigerators and the apocalypse
and also nitrous oxide
which is actually also another thing you can inhale if you want to see some shit
and they even start building huge fences around ridiculously large plots of land
(which they have because they set fire to all the things that used to be there)
and they fill this land with lots and lots of big meaty fart machines called “cows”
and this whole time earth is just up there like nooo man i’m too highhhhhhhhh cut it out i’ve got the spins

here is what happens when earth gets the spins
first we get hurricaines
just all over the place all the time
and lightning and tornadoes and maybe even some more fires if we’re lucky
and then earth’s cool hat (also known as antarctica) is gonna melt right off
which is way overdue, I think
because what good is all that ice up there if I can’t put it in my vodka collins
except actually I guess all that ice was up there for a really good reason
it was up there because that is where god put the biblical flood after he was done using it
so New York is gonna drown
and everyone is going to have to find somewhere else to be busy and poor

oh and you know food?
no more of that
all the people who make the food are gonna get too sweaty and quit
or maybe die of starvation because it’s too hot to actually grow food
and that’s bad because we need food for stuff
soon after that, satan will appear riding a lava cyclone
but no one will care because we will all be busy
being dead and getting eaten by cockroaches

so the moral of the story
is that there is no end to the ridiculous shit that people will believe
unless it happens to be true
in which case good luck convincing anybody

THE END