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Head to Rapid Transmission for analysis and review of Science Fiction

For a science fiction read you can't put down, buy Joseph Hurtgen's cyberpunk romp, Tower Defender

Diggity Dawgs

The Surgeon General's Last Warning by Peter Hurtgen

We All Live In A Yellow Submarine by Peter Hurtgen

Random Advice Column

Thoughts on Fortune-Telling and Luck

First of all you can't think that you're life is gonna match up to what you see in the horoscope columns of the funny pages. That stuff's in the funny pages for a reason, it's not serious. You might as well be waiting for wisdom to drip from the grizzled lips of Hagar the Horrible if you think the horoscope is gonna do anything for you. People who read the horoscopes are the same kind of people that won't walk under ladders because they think it's bad luck. It's not bad luck to walk under a ladder but it's a bad idea. Saying that it's bad luck to walk under a ladder is like saying it's bad luck to look down the barrel of a gun. I guess more to the point, if you're the kind of goon that will casually strut along under ladders, you're already pressing your luck, and luck can only hold out so long. Maybe my second piece of advice should be to organize your life in a way that has the least amount of bearing on luck. As an addition, don't waste your time with fortune cookies either. If you hadn't figured it out by now, I'll go ahead and tell you that real fortune doesn't come out of cookies, not unless you happen to be the Keebler Elves.

The Thing About Walking Up Stairs

Lots of people, when they walk up stairs take massive strides, lifting their legs up as if they were moving in time with aerobics tapes. You'll notice that most people actually have to bring their feet down quite a long ways to get to the level of the stair with each step they take. This is a real energy waster. Try bringing your leg up so that your foot skims across the edge of the stair and then put your weight down and go on to the next stair. You can save something like 50% of your energy that way.

The Thing About Clothes

You don't need more clothes. Right now you probably have enough clothes for 5 people. Have you noticed that no one has ever bothered to give you a rundown on exactly how many clothes you really need? That's because everyone has been brain-washed by the Macy's parade and those GAP commercials of happy people swing dancing in Khaki. I'll tell you how many clothes you need. You need:
4 Pairs of shoes
      1 pair of sneakers
      1 pair of work shoes
      1 pair of dress shoes
      1 pair of casual shoes
8 T-shirts (1 for every day + an extra)
8 pairs of boxer briefs
12 pairs of socks (half athletic / half dressy)
5 sweaters
4 pairs of pants
4 pairs of shorts
2 belts
2 coats
2 jackets
2 hoodies
4 ties
5 dress shirt-shirts
4 hats
2 scarves
2 pairs of gloves

When you get a new item of clothing, it should immediately replace an old item. Everything else is excess. This list is even excessive. Remember, if you havn't worn something in nine months you will never wear it again.

The Thing About Video Games

The amount of time that you spend playing video games can be calculated in direct proportion to the amount of work you have done. Every six hours of work deserves one hour of gaming. So, if you work 12 hours in a day, you can play a video game for 2 hours. The big payoff comes from working for fifty hours and then getting an 8 hour splurge. If you've really been working hard, not playing any video games all week while you amassed the 8 hour grace time to game, you'll discover about 3 hours in that you feel like you're wasting your time. In which case you can alter the ratio, giving yourself one hour for every 12. The older you get you'll realize that even two hours of playing video games in a week is too much time, given the pressing need to earn a considerable enough capital to have anything like a decent retirement by the time you reach your golden years.

The Thing About Junk Foods

First of all, it costs way too much to eat junk food. Second, it gives you a bad complexion. If you do the math, you realize that losing money and your looks adds up to one thing: not being able to get a girlfriend. Do you really want that?

New Element Found

Pavlov's Dog

Google Mainframe Timewarps, Returns Intact

Technician Jerry 'Lieberwitz' Sandowski tried to add 10 trillion
gigabytes of memory to the google mainframe and the machine
went white hot, shimmered and briefly couldn't be seen.
Anton Scaliazano, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Colonbia
University postulates that the google mainframe must have
timewarped. "This could be big," says Scaliazano.
"The ramifications of a mainframe of this size bopping around
the space-time continuum are mind-boggling. For all we know,
galaxies could have just been born."
Scaliazano elaborated for the next thirty minutes using words
that only a theoretical physics professor could
theoretically understand, gesturing wildy with his hands
and extending his arms heavenward in a presumably
godlike manner. The upgraded machine is working
fine now, but the probability that the earth was destroyed
in a parallel universe is staggering.

Get Rich Quick Scheme That Works

"Man, I was beginning to think I'd never find a get rich quick
scheme that actually works, but this one is like greased
lightning!" -Ronald Hoover Crane Operator: Bluelick, West Virginia.

Now there is an easy way to riches, and you don't even have
to do anything! A cloned race of aliens from outer space are
paying big money to extract cellular tissue from normal
people like yourself. They'll even take live tissue from
your children and grandparents!
"The whole process lasts 2 maybe 3 hours and then, Bam!
your bank account is hit with a cool million or more." reports Arnold
BoJenkins of Bluelick, West Virginia. "You actually get
paid in alien currency, but the exchange rate is out of this world."
Their markets are very strong right now and with our current
financial crisis you will be remunerated 25,000 US per alien dollar.
"The reason this has become available," explains Hoover
"is because aliens are demanding too much payment for live tissue
extraction, which explains the desire of alien corporations to outsource.
And you'll be surprised how quick you heal from the procedure."
The aliens are adept at telepathy. Simply send out
the message with your mind that you will refuse the right to attorney
in the event of an accident in the procedure and aliens will be
extracting your flesh in minutes.

Church of the Living Dead

What started as a huddle of bodies on the streets of
Bluebank, West Virginia in the late 1970’s
has slowly amassed into a movement across age, race, and even
nationality. The Church of the Living Dead figures into the spiritual
scene every bit as prominently as Catholicism and Mormonism, and
perhaps more so because of it’s unprecedented unification of
so many disparate groups. Polls show that right behind the
scientology, the Church of the Living Dead is the fastest
growing of all current ecumenical movements.
In response to the accelerating popularity of the church,
Rocky Tenant, chief apostle of the association of the living dead
said, "people know when they are in a church that is really alive
and they know when they're in a church that is really dead.
What they cannot yet distinguish is a church that is
simultaneously alive and dead."
“Our church has a very important calling.” Said pastor Wayne
Ashe while treating a gash on his hand he demurred as only a scratch,
despite the arrangement of teeth-marks resembling a human mouth.
Continuing Ashe said, “We do our best to reach out to the disheveled
masses that come through every week, and sometimes there are
casualties, but we truly have a passion for all the lifeless souls out there.”
Certainly one of the greatest hot-button issues currently surrounding
the church is the taking of the sacrament, which has often resulted in what
has been described as “nothing short of a bloodbath.”
Notwithstanding the controversy, Tenant said the church would
Forge on into even the darkest places in America. In his words,
“Our methods of bringing in the lost are nearly irresistible. First there’s
a knock at your front door and then your backdoor, which is usually
followed by your windows, and once they get a captive audience
integration into the fold ensues quite rapidly.”
Look for the Church of the Living Dead to move into your community
Soon!

Andaluni the Greats Fanmail

Dear Mr. Andaluni
How do you do such great tricks?
Your friend, willie­­

Dear Willie
There is no such thing as a trick. Clever men devised the idea of calling magic a trick so they wouldn’t be cast out of society. But now, fortunately, no one really minds if you dabble in sorcery. So I will tell my tale:
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month, eleven years ago, I arose at an hour past midnight and walked deep into the woods. There I did secretive things that would place a blight upon your mind if I spoke candidly regarding all the horrible trials I faced. There were five days of the trials and voices from out of the dark that tore bitterly into my soul. But to make a long story short, after all that I’ve had really no problem getting out of shackles and belts and all that.
-the Great Andaluni

Dear mister Andaluni
What is the scariest trick that you have done?
Your pal, little jim

Dear Little Jim
I was once shot of a cannon into a tar pit, shackled, with belts prohibiting the movement of my legs, arms, neck and torso. I couldn’t free myself of my bonds in the tar but I found an intact carcass of a wooly mammoth and used the shackles to cut into its belly, there I bit into his lungs and breathed ten million year old air for a half minute, until I was able to free myself of the shackles. From there it was touch and go, but I rapidly made my way out of the mortal danger of the tar pit.
-the Great Andaluni

Dear mister andaluni
Will you ever jump out of a plane at high altitudes and land on the ground without using a parachute?
Your buddy, billy

Dear Billy
Not unless I am shackled first.
-the Great Andaluni

Garbage Man Arrested for Destroying Material linked to Al-Qaeda

Late last week garbage collector Mike Douglas from New Jersey was arrested for his connection with the Middle Eastern terrorist group Al-Qaeda. Apparently, he had been dispensing of their written communication since early 2006. It is purported that he further destroyed video and audio messages that the terrorists used to communicate with each other.

“It was the perfect setup,” says Albert Griss, chief secretary of Washington’s Department of Homeland Security, “The terrorists were placing these highly sensitive materials in regular kitchen trash bags and this garbage man was removing it for them right under our noses.”

Freddie Brown, the driver on Douglas’ route was aghast to learn of his partner’s criminal involvement. “It was so nonchalant. I would drive up there and he just threw the bags in the truck like any other house. Sometimes he went ahead and crushed the trash to make more space and sometimes he didn’t. It was like he wasn’t even nervous about the thing and that goes to show how truly warped he was.”

Many of Douglas’ neighbors mentioned that he was mostly quiet, kept to himself, but seemed like a fairly pleasant sort. Jill Davis, head of the neighborhood watch mentioned he was always leaving his residence suspiciously early in the morning.

Douglas couldn’t be reached for comment as he is being held in solitary confinement somewhere offshore so that normal laws regarding cruel and unusual punishment don’t apply. Griss said of this move, “We let Douglas have far too much control over garbage for far too long. Now we’re giving him a real lesson on what it means to take out the trash!” 

Rock Off

Sign Language Comic

Cottonmouth

Four In Language Class

Swim Champion

You Know Funny Relationship Advice: Should I Call a Girl I Just Met?

I got a lovely girl's number tonight. Had planned on phoning her tomorrow. Is that ideal? Alek Alek, Based on the limited information you have supplied and the fact that you have asked complete strangers to answer a fairly straightforward question, I can only surmise that you probably don't want to call her and therefore shouldn't. However, I'm willing to work with you a little bit so I have graciously compiled a five question criterion to apply to any blind calling situation which will point you in the right direction. 1. Is the party in question (whomever will be receiving your dubious phonecall) above the legal age, or as a concession, within the age of consent so long as you intend on coming out in the open with your intentions to the party's legal guardians? 2. Does the party in question appear to have any ties with occult activity/terroristic involvement/association with communist party leaders (what about the KGB, ODESSA, or the IRS?) 3. Has the party in question made overt vampiric references. I won't beat around here, you don't want to be lured into vampire society. Eternal life may sound great, but the catch-22 is that vampires are undead rather than alive, so you can kiss life goodbye. To figure out whether or not the party in question is indeed a vampire, watch to see if she winces as you walk past a street preacher. Another giveaway is if you've never seen her outside the cover of night. As a warning, many times vampires, and male vampires at that, not the voluptuous women which you might imagine, hire attractive girls to set them up with their next take. That pretty girl giving out her phone number might be your ticket to Transylvania. 4. Did you extract the phone number from a lady of the night or a slick poster with a picture of some saucy looking dame? 5. Upon parting from the party in question, did you later discover that certain valuable possessions were no longer on your person (ex: wallet, cell phone, watch, cuff links,rosary, clove of garlic). As a sidenote, if your clove of garlic has gone missing you might think you could have full assurance that she is not a vampire, and only a kleptomaniac, however, this is most certainly a sign that she is indeed working for a vampire organization and has stripped you defenseless for the gritty rendezvous in which she hopes to ensnare you. So, if you have have answered yes to 1-2 of these criterion, I advise you to give pause before dialing. If you have answered yes to 3-4 of these criterion, I strongly advise you to take a holiday, and maybe consider moving to a different side of town. If you have answered 'yes' on all 5 accounts, I want you to stop taking drugs today. The girl you met was probably your landlord in the stairway demanding rent.

Money Laundering

Mistletoe

You Know Funny's Relationship Advice: Bewildered in Baltimore

Dear Joseph, My husband doesn't act like he loves me anymore. Whenever he's home from work, and that is rare, when I try to look at him kindly, he scowls back at me. What makes me feel the worst is that he has cut himself out of all our family portraits. I don't know what to do. Bewildered in Baltimore Hey there Baltimore! Sad to say, this scenario is all too common and usually stems from one or more causes which I will reveal in 5 clearly delineated points. 1. You're probably looking at your husband at all the wrong times. Your husband is very stressed out with all of the different roles he has to perform. On top of being a husband he has a demanding job where he has to curry favor with an entire hierarchy of monomaniacal businessmen, and then there's all of those kids when he gets home. His scowl, as you put it, is probably communicating a fun-loving sort of message like: "Wow! I love you for everything you do here," or, "Boy! Our life is kinda crazy but i'm sure glad we do it together every step of the way!" 2. You shouldn't conclude too quickly that your husband cutting himself out of family portraits is a bad thing. That you feel that way probably indicates there is a greater trust issue that you need to resolve in yourself. It is very likely your husband has a new found interest in scrapbooking, and wants to use only the best pictures of himself to create an ultimate book of memories. If your picture goes missing soon, you'll know that this is indeed the case. 3. I was going to pass over this one, but gut feelings are usually right, so, I think you might want to really pay attention to this particular insight. If, and this is truly against all odds, the problem somehow isn't with you, I'm afraid to say your husband might be dabbling with sorcery. Everything you said points squarely with a passion for spellcasting, probably to summon a high level vampire from the chaos realms. I'd watch out for the kids, because if your husbands summoning backfires, he could suck the whole neighborhood into the realm of the dead, and can that ever get ugly! 4. Scratch the whole sorcery thing. It really seems unlikely for this to be his fault. I mean, in the 1980s I counseled scores of women just like you and I observed that the men were never to blame when the sort of situation you described occurred. I've got a stronger hunch now that you are a vampiress and you've cut out those pictures yourself to subtly paint a family portrait excluding the man you've been conspiring against all these years. 5. I'm really shocked that you would have the gall to write this column faking a problem, but now it's all clear to me. You believed that if I didn't see through your little plan, then you could pull it off. Well, I'll say that you almost had me but, luckily for our completely oblivious husband, I caught all of the clues and unveiled your terrible plan. Better luck next time Baltimore.

Mime Movers

If you're into mimes and not just mime memes, buy the Mime Book by Claude Kipnis. Kipnis was a mime's mime. He was the mime that mined the mime world and came out with gold, mime gold.

Jekyll and Hyde

Always Whining

Girls Love the Notebook

Francis Could Tell a Phone Anything

Natural Born Leader

Monday Mourning

Cat Man Don't!

The Tasmanian Devil

Mr. Skeleton Man Can't Hold His Liquor

It's hard to say no to Dr.Ugs

Model Student

The Jolly Colorful Giants

Microwaves

Chuck and Bob were not stoked. The surf was nothing but microwaves.

Gas Leak

Coat Hanger

Life on Mars

Holy Knievel on a Typical Day

Rocking Chair

Writer's Block

Not Feeling Well

Brownies and Gravy

Space Jam

Wizards vs Bulls

The Escape Goat

Can't Ketchup

Letter from President George W. Bush to the President of Anheuser Busch

It has been discovered that former president George W. Bush would sometimes drink too much and write letters to the president of Busch Beer. We were able to uncover one of the letters:

President Busch

            I want to ex-empt this letter by professing to you that I have been fooled again by your product lines. I had already drank either ten or lavender of your Busch beers before I realizationed I was drinking beer at all.

Magical Frogs

Lime Disease

Nightmare on Stye Street by Frankie Martinez

Frankie Martinez is an artist living in Charlotte, North Carolina. Check out his blog to see more of his amazing illustrations!

Travelling to Disney World

Jew-Jitsu

Abraham's Lincoln

Schmuck of the Irish