Oh to be an old time research psychologist. I would awake each morning content in the knowledge that I would, one day, know all about how the human mind worked. No psychological stone left unturned, all of the secrets of thinking would be mine for the taking. And all I had to do to grab them is find some volunteers, especially some babies, and totally fuck with them.
I would put on my sensible black slacks and spotlessly clean lab coat and head into the kitchen. There, my beautiful wife Ester would cook me breakfast while I read the paper.
“What will you do at work today, dear?” She would ask from the stove.
I would look at her over my horn-rimmed glasses and tell her, “Ester, don’t be silly. You wouldn’t understand.” She would giggle and go back to the eggs. What would a mere woman know about fucking with babies?
Upon my arrival to the lab I would be greeted by my trusty assistant, Jenkins. A short, pudgy fellow, he would scurry up to me and get me up to speed on the latest experiments. Earlier experiments had discovered the age at which a baby could understand not to crawl off the edge of a table. They were placed atop a table. A sheet of glass came up against the edge of the table so that the baby could not fall and then we would monitor whether or not the baby would crawl past the edge of the table.
My newest experiment took these findings to the next logical step. At what age could babies see glass? Babies were held above a deep pit, at the bottom of which was a frightening oil painting of a terrible monster. The babies would think they were a dozen feet above this awful beast and then, quite simply, we would drop them. Of course, there was a thick sheet of glass a few inches below them, so their injuries were actually quite minimal. We could then measure how much the baby cried and squirmed. The less they panicked, the more likely they could see the glass.
Another experiment was in progress to see how well a man could solve a puzzle under stress. We would have him solve a complex puzzle and time him. Then, we would have him solve a similarly complex puzzle while hanging from the ceiling while an intern took a swing at him with a bat every thirty seconds.
I was most proud of our experiment in classical conditioning. John Watson had proven that he could train a baby to be afraid of a harmless white rat by startling it with a loud sound every time the rat was revealed. However, the rat was a neutral stimulus. I wanted to go one step further and see if we could transform a positive conditioned stimulus into a negative one. To accomplish this we started with the baby’s mother. The baby would become happy whenever his mother would enter the room at which point we would shock him with electricity. Soon the baby learned not only to fear his own mother, but as an added bonus to also fear happiness. This was a major leap in psychological findings. Jenkins expressed concern that this would have ramifications through the rest of the child’s life but I simply puffed on my pipe and place a fatherly hand on his shoulder. I would tell him, this is what we do. We are old time research psychologists.
From time to time there may be things that I’d like to present that won’t fit in any of my other categories. Primarily, these would be things that wouldn’t be by yours truly but yours truly still wants you to see. It’s just another fantastic feature! Why go anyplace else?!
This new feature is called “In The Thresher” because inside a thresher you can find wheat AND chaff and I hope to throw a bit of both at you. As a trial thresher run, I present a YouTube video featuring an attractive woman with little clothing on doing a pole dance. The catch? It is very hard not to get distracted.
I walked the man down to the register. He was a bit on the older side but that’s ok. Money is money. I’d just served a rather annoying group of kids and sometimes, the worse mood I’m in, the friendlier I get to customers. To compensate, I suppose.
“Alrighty, sir.” I said as I punched the buttons on the register. “Your total is… Ten dollars and seventy-two cents.”
He passed me a twenty dollar bill and then fumbled in his pockets. “Wait,” he said, “I have two cents… if you want them.”
“Sure!” I said cheerfully. “I’m always interested in another man’s opinion!”
How are you? I hope this letter finds you well. I am afraid I need to tell you something that will not be easy for either of us.
You’re starting to weird me out a little.
So, yeah, you get my e-mails. That’s your job. But why do you insist on reading them? It’s not really okay, Google. You probably don’t have any sort of malicious intent, but it’s still creepy. You can’t just read my mail and then give me advertisements based on what you find. If my grandma sent me a birthday card in the mail with a check for twenty dollars and a little note saying I should come over for cookies, that would be really nice. If I opened the letter and a bunch of little slips of paper fell out telling me the best place to buy cookies, great investment opportunities, a website for grandparents, and some fourth unrelated thing I would be upset because that wouldn’t be from my grandma. It would be from the postmaster general, tampering with my mail. (A felony!)
The other day my friend sent me an e-mail asking if I would like to have lunch next Monday. You, in your creepiness, sent me a little note asking if I would like to add “lunch break” to my Google calendar. Not only that, but you knew what day next Monday was. You not only read my mail but you also figured out what day this Monday was and then added seven! You are too eager to keep tabs on where I’m going!
And another thought on the ad thing? Please stop trying to sell me my friends. It doesn’t even make sense. If I had a friend named, say “Electronics Macpherson,” and she wrote me an e-mail, I could understand if you gave me an ad with a link to Yahoo for “All the best Electronics items.” It’s not grammatically correct and it’s still creepy, but at least it makes a bit of sense. But don’t offer me links to “All the top selling Greg items,” “Your one stop shop for Rachel products,” and “Great deals on everything Stephen.” These aren’t things you can buy. They are people’s names. Abraham Lincoln said we’re not allowed to buy people anymore. (“Click here to find your nearest Lincoln-Mercury dealership!”)
So, in summation, stop nosing through my stuff. I get you’re curious and trying to make some money for what is an undeniably great e-mail system, but it reminds me too much of when I was a sophomore in high school and I asked this kid to pass a note to this girl I had a crush on and he handed it to her but he’d scrawled “Ask me about hot date ideas in your area!” inside it.
I don’t like scary movies, really. Well, I say I don’t and I tend to avoid them, so I’m probably not the most qualified guy to make the accusation that scary movies are doing it wrong but who cares.
Here’s how I got to where I am. I’m climbing into bed and I glance at a small pile of movies on the floor. I can just read a comment on the back of the unrated DVD of “Dawn of the Dead.” It bills it as the version too scary for theaters.
Is it scary? Yeah, I dunno, I guess. It’s gory, absolutely, and it does have zombies in it, so maybe? If I recall correctly it did give me a nightmare, but that was based more on the odd “half-second of screaming zombie footage every three seconds” editing technique applied to the end credits.
Scary movies should be scary. To me that means inducing fear in the audience. Fear. A tense, drawn out whine of single violin note followed by a guy jumping out and stabbing someone? That’s startling. It isn’t scary.
Actually, personally, I don’t necessarily classify zombie movies as scary anyway. They’re about people. Different people thrown together trying to survive. It’s just scary around the edges.
So what is scary? Not “Final Destination” or its ilk. Don’t misunderstand, I love those movies (2 is the best) but they aren’t scary. Mostly gore (hilarious gore, at times) and a bit of startling.
“Hostel” on the other hand, I had to turn off almost immediately after the action started. “Gore?” I had thought, “gore is fine, haha, good times!” No! It was most decidedly bad times! There is a key difference between “Final Destination” violence and “Hostel” violence. In the former, death is being doled out by coincidences, bad timing, and an implication of fate or death actively working against these kids. The latter is people who are, to use a clinical term, totally bat-shit crazy torturing innocent tourists. It is phenomenally unsettling and downright disturbing. That’s closer to what I’m talking about.
Maybe the first “Saw” movie. Not so deeply disgusting as “Hostel” but still a man inflicting pain and horror on his victims for some maladjusted reasons. “Seven” has a similar thing going on. A scary movie, a really good one, should derive its fear from the psychological, not the visual.
And, ironically, if they do it right, I totally won’t go see it.
It is a question man has asked himself since the very dawn of time- If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
(Author’s note: At the dawn of time, this was pronounced “”Ugh oog gah nng guh?”)
I, too, have often asked myself this very question. Flight is out. I’m six foot seven and that’s high enough off the ground for me, thanks. I get a bit wobbly on the second floor of the mall. Laser vision would probably refract through my glasses and come out wrong. Plus who the hell wants laser vision? Super strength would be nice, but I’d be the idiot that accidentally rips off his car door. I always admired the Flash, since his super-speed made him super-witty, but I don’t want my super-resume to read “runs real fast.” So I’ve come up with a few finalists.
Telekinesis
Moving stuff with your mind? That’s pretty cool. Just flopped down on the sofa and realized the remote is across the room? Float that sucker over! Vacuuming the rug? Time to lift all the furniture at once! You know that hilarious prank where you pull someone’s chair away when they’re about to sit down? You could do that from across the table!
Laziness, chores, and terrible pranks aside, I do often wish I could do this. For some reason, automotive situations make me yearn for telekinesis. Sometimes if I can’t find a parking space I wish I could push other cars out of spaces and take them for myself. If I’m driving down the parkway and someone cuts me off I long to simply lift the car off the road and toss it away with my mind. If I’m in a really bad mood I’d crush the car flat before tossing it into the bushes. That’s right, telekinesis also means wrecking things with your mind. I am all for that.
Mental Projection
I don’t have a better term for this since it’s rarely used in comic books. I don’t mean some sort of lame psychic “project your awareness out into the world” deal. We’re talking about physical constructs projected from your mind. The Green Lantern does it with his ring, but mine wouldn’t be all green. And my one weakness wouldn’t be the color yellow. What the hell, I’m gonna be a superhero that could be defeated by Big Bird? No thanks. Lately the Green Lantern seems to be all about shooting laser blasts out of his ring and grabbing people with circles or something. I’d go the old-school route. Moving things with big floating hands. Digging away rubble with a huge mental-powered shovel. Stabbing the bad guys with a broken bottle I have created with my mind. It’s a superpower that requires a bit more imagination and has a bit more flair than simple telekinesis.
Elasticity
One of my favorite superheroes is Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four. Yeah I’m tall but sometimes there are things I can’t reach. Thanks to my new elastic body I wouldn’t have to worry about that. I could change my appearance at will by stretching or squashing my features. And, as an added bonus, elasticity makes you comically invulnerable. A supervillian could drop a car on you and you’d just ooze out the side. Absorbing punches is no problem. Hell, bullets would hit you, stretch out your back, and fling back at your attacker. The only downside is, as I find in real life, getting clothes that will fit when you stretch.
It’s a tough call. Telekinesis is out, since mental projection can do the same sort of thing and more. I think, in the long run, the winner would be x-ray vision. So I could see through girls’ clothes. Obviously.
“Kelly, I told Mrs. Johnson you could baby sit her twins tonight.”
“Mooom! I can’t! Not tonight!” Kelly Bradley pouted and stamped her foot. “Jenny is supposed to come over, and we were going to work on the theme of the junior prom! I’m president of the committee!”
Mrs. Bradley shook her head. “Kelly, I already told her you would. You can work with Jenny tomorrow.”
“Mom! Those kids are such brats! They scream and they hit and they bite and they are so strong for such little kids! They’re terrors! Have you ever seen what they do to their cat? I can’t take that tonight! It’s… It’s my time of the month.”
Mrs. Bradley sucked a breath in through her clenched teeth. “Kelly Marie Bradley. I will not have you making silly excuses to get out of this. You are going and that is final. Time of the month or not, you will behave yourself and baby sit those kids.”
—-
That night after Kelly had stuffed little Tommy and Teddy Johnson with pizza she asked them what they wanted to do.
“Cops and robbers!” Shouted Tommy.
Kelly winced back from the scream. “I was thinking more like a movie or…”
“Cowboys and Indians!” Screeched Teddy.
“Guys, I really don’t think…” Kelly began.
“Space aliens!” Screamed Tommy.
“Yeah!” Agreed Teddy. “Fluffy can be the alien king!” At this, the family cat ran under the sofa. The boys launched themselves out of their seats, screaming, and began running around the house making laser blast noises and the screeching of, Kelly assumed, space aliens. She pressed her hands to her forehead. She glanced out the window. The sun had gone down and the little suburban block was dark. She winced as sharp cramps stabbed through her abdomen. As she tried to ignore the screams and sound of things breaking she saw the moon appear over the trees. She gasped.
Her time of the month.
One of the twins streaked by and shot her with a foam dart gun. She turned to yell at him but could only manage a growl. Her blond hair rustled slightly and then began to grow. It grew shaggily in across her scalp and then the growth spread down across her shoulders. Her Gap t-shirt puffed up with coarse hair and then bulging muscle. Her pink nails grew out into razor sharp claws. Soon, her trendy low-rise jeans split along the seams as powerful legs tensed and swelled. There was a crackling sound as the knees changed direction. Kelly fell onto her front paws and her nose lengthened into a cold-nosed snout. Finally, there in the Johnson’s living room stood a large golden-brown wolf. It was twice the size of a regular wolf, with strong jaws lined with ivory teeth. It was built for one purpose- to hunt. It was sleek, strong, clever. A perfect killer in every way. Just then the twins tore back into room and skidded to a halt. They looked at the creature with open mouths. It glared back with sharp green eyes. Finally, as one, the twins screamed out.
“Doggy!!!”
They ran at it, sticky fingers outstretched. The werewolf’s nails clicked on the hardwood as it tried to run for the front door in a panic.
When I was a sophomore in college I was introduced, via the internet, to a friend of a friend (of a friend, in all honesty). There was a group of us chattering away on AOL Instant Messenger, usually in a chatroom, having discussions about absolutely nothing. What was peculiar was that my friend lived in Arizona, where he had moved junior year of high school. He met this other guy, who introduced him to his friends from the internet. One of these friends ironically lived maybe an hour or two away from me in South Jersey. After a while we began to hang out, and one day we decided she would come visit me at my school so we could party and have fun. At this point I was a junior and had discovered the joys of drinking so we were set to have a blast. We dropped her car at my mom’s house (I went to school 20 minutes away but lived on campus) and headed back to good old Drew University.
Sheila and I were a lot alike. She was a girl and a lot shorter than I was, but personality-wise we were a good fit. We told stupid jokes, giggled, (Er, she giggled. As a man I gave a hearty guffaw) and generally enjoyed each other’s company for the usual two or three days she’d visit. We were basically good kids. Until we decided to become the Bonnie and Clyde of New Jersey. We were driving along, almost to campus, and drove by a series of road cones strewn about by the curb.
“Huh,” I said, passingly, “those aren’t really doing much, huh?” She agreed. Somehow the idea came up that we could take two. “One for me, and one for you.” I forget whose idea it was, but I quickly turned the car around and drove back to the scattered pylons. Little Sheila hopped out and quickly scooped up our booty and we sped back off into the night.
Three blocks later I was stopped at a red light and glanced in my rear-view mirror. The fuzz! “Sheila!” I spat out in a frantic whisper, “There’s a cop behind us. Hide the cones!” She twisted in the passenger seat and tried to cover them with a jacket. In retrospect this was probably a bad idea, as the cruiser’s roof almost immediately blazed into red and blue lights.
Let me take a moment to describe the town Drew is in. It is not a college town. It’s your typical little Jersey town full of big houses and rich people. This means that there is little a college kid can do to get in a lot of trouble. This also means there is very little for the police to do.
Fairly soon a second cruiser, roof alight, pulled up. The first officer approached my car and asked us to step out. We were asked a few questions, but it was for show. They had us pegged. Someone had seen us and ratted us out. They took back our hot goods and one officer looked around inside my car a bit while we waited. I turned to the other, prepared to deliver the most macho thing anyone has ever said to the police ever.
“Uh. Um. Officer?”
“Yeah?”
“I er, have this anxiety thing so if, uh, I throw up it’s not because I’ve been drinking or on drugs or, like, anything? Ok?” (Whenever I recount this story, that’s the part that drives the women crazy.)
“There’s nothing to worry about, we just have to ask you some questions. Calm down.” Ok, so, they were gonna take the cones back, give us what-for, slap on the wrist, send us on our way. Then they separated us for questioning. There was one key question. “Who took the cones?”
“Er. We did.”
“No. Which one of you actually took them?” Oh. So it came down to this. I was the wheelman. The getaway driver. I kept the motor running; my little Bonnie grabbed the goods. I like to think what I did next was honorable. Even if it was lying to a cop.
“Me. I took them.”
“Ok.” He returned to his back-up who was questioning Sheila. About this time a third police car, this one an SUV, pulled up on the opposite curb lit up like a Christmas tree. Did I mention that we were literally in front of the police station? I could see it. I was not shaping up to be a good criminal mastermind. My officer came back. “So… you say you took the cones. But she’s saying that she took them. Which is it?” I wanted to keep up my lie, but I was afraid Sheila would stick to her story too, which had the benefit of being true, and then I’d be in trouble for stealing and lying to a policeman. I came clean.
“S-she did.”
“Alright.” Our story clear, it was time for our slap on the wrist. Or so I thought. Sheila was cuffed and stuffed into the back of the cruiser. We could have walked to the station, but I guess it had to be done by the books. Then one of the cops came towards me. I halfheartedly held out my arms, wrists close together. Would they tow my car? Just leave it here? Why oh why did I turn to this life of crime?!
“Alright. Go on. Get out of here.”
I stared at him, lowering my wrists a fraction. “What?”
“We’ve gotta process her. You can go.”
“I- what? But she…” I looked over his shoulder at my sullen friend locked in the back of the car. “Shouldn’t I come too? Can’t I stay with her?”
“No. It’s gonna take a while. Hour or two. It’s best if you just go home and we’ll call you when we’re done.”
And so I was forced to get back into my car and leave Sheila to her fate. I drove the remaining few blocks to campus like any criminal would after narrowly escaping the coppers- sobbing uncontrollably with fear and guilt.
“What?” Mike looked at his girlfriend curled up next to him on the sofa.
“I want to have a baby, Mike. Don’t you?”
“Kate, we’ve been over this…”
“I don’t care. I don’t understand why you don’t want to have a kid!”
Mike groaned quietly. “I don’t want to have this fight now. We’re sitting here, talking about where we’re going to go for dinner, I suggest we try the Applebee’s they just opened up on Route 26 and you start talking about having a baby!”
Kate pouted. “Think of how great it would be! You love kids. I know you do.”
“I do, babe, I do, but they are so much work! You have to put in a lot of effort.”
“I have to put in a lot of effort? Just me?”
Mike groaned again, a bit louder. “You know what I meant. If we had a baby you know I’d help, but… I don’t know, come on, let’s just go out to dinner.”
Kate crossed her arms and squared her shoulders, huffing angrily.
“Aw, Kate! I’m just saying… look, do you know how much a kid costs? We don’t make a lot of money, you really think we could afford to have one? Really?”
“We could afford one. Kids don’t cost that much.”
Mike rolled his eyes. So much for a nice dinner out. There was no way he was going to win the argument. Now he was going to have to spend the next couple hours making a baby. Great.
“Fine. We’ll have a kid.”
Kate squealed with delight. “I’ll go to the store and pick one out! You get the marinade ready, ok?” She kissed him and then grabbed her keys and dashed out of the apartment, singing happily. Mike grumbled and set the oven to preheat. This was worse than when she discovered lobster for the first time.
Brenda and David seemed like a normal, straight-laced couple. They brought three-bean salad, homemade, to the annual block party. They always had great decorations up for the major holidays like Christmas and Halloween and always took them down shortly after the holiday had passed. They carefully sorted out their recycling.
They also had a collection of sex toys so vast and varied it would make your eyes water.
Long ones, thick ones, colorful ones all adorned the shelves of their never-offered-never-used guest bedroom. Arching columns of latex, stout vibrating structures of chrome and plastic, beautiful curving works of clear glass, all carefully tended icons of their nightly rituals.
Not all the toys were for Brenda, either, some were for David, or for both. That ultimate symbol of femininity, the most coveted flower in history, bound and cast in pink latex with hand painted details. Whips curled and hung on hooks up on the wall. Gags and blindfolds in a drawer next to a cornucopia of oils and lubricants. Things got interesting after sundown. The safeword was “avocado.”
One day, after months of saving, Brenda and David were able to purchase a TrueGirl sex doll. Not a shoddy blow-up affair but a full-sized replica of a woman done in exquisite detail. It was molded from the highest grade silicon rubber over a fully articulated skeleton. It had wavy blonde hair that fell past its shoulderblades, beautiful green plastic eyes, full, pouting, airbrushed lips and a cute, thin nose. David had picked her out, so her body was petite, short with small breasts and hips. They fell in love with her as soon as they opened the box. They named it Tiffany.
Tiffany “slept” in the bed in the guest room, though she was pulled out almost every night for a man on woman on rubber three-way. No matter how coated with fluids she became, she always got wiped clean. There was never any visual evidence of the night before.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Names have power, belief has power, and, perhaps more potent, intimate fluids have power. As soon as they named her it began. Nightly, as they slept with her, they fed it. When, the next morning, they called it “she” and “her” it grew. One night, after a month of vigorous use, they left her in her bed. In their own room, Brenda giggled.
“Do you think Tiff is jealous? I bet she wishes she could cuddle with us.”
Down the hall, the doll’s eyes stirred and snapped open. It sat up, jerkily, and looked around. It took in all the latex and metal and glass and then looked down at herself, hands shaking in two little rubber fists. It rose, unsteadily, to its feet and then stalked from shelf to shelf.
“Baby,” David purred, “she just likes sex.” He laughed. “She don’t care about romance.”
Out in the hallway, Tiffany walked slowly down the hall, her little rubber feet making sucking noises when they pulled off the hardwood floors. She had armed herself from the bedroom. One hand clutching a long black paddle with wooden studs, the other a 14” “SupaLuvr” firm latex molding, complete with real looking veins. She had a bit of trouble working the doorknob but eventually shouldered her way into David and Brenda’s room. They stared at her, awestruck, until she sprung, arms whirling.
When asked later, neighbors stated that they thought they could hear the couple screaming what sounded like “avocado.”
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