No, Louis CK is not a fraud, and he has a new thing. You should buy it.

Better than that, Louis CK is trying a new means of communication against the best advice of people in his life. He’s trying to sell content directly to us, the consumers. This is great news.

It’s great news for anyone who:

• Thinks ads are annoying, pushy, and cacophonous, on top of occasionally being disingenuous when they’re not outright lies.
• Thinks censorship is wrong.
• Thinks artists should have complete creative control over their work.
• Is tired of Hollywood’s bullshit, TV’s bullshit, etc.

By cutting out the content distributors and middlemen, Louis CK is delivering hilarious entertainment directly to us. This is how it should be done. This is the way forward.

Buy his new thing.

I was reminded of those when I spotted The included image in the Thornton Road Chick Fil A yesterday.

Here’s what those numbered points say:

1. If the victim is choking, call 911. Let the victim know you are going to help them.

Hey, I’m going to help you, but first I’m going to make a quick phone call. Don’t worry, you’ll pass out long before the ambulance can get here.

2. Give 5 back blows.

Seems to me like this is something that should happen at the end as a means of thanking the person who just saved your life, but I am not a doctor or anything.

3. Make a fist with your hand and place your (blurry words here about fisting)

I’m realizing here that no mention has been made of Dr. Henry Heimlich. What ever happened to him and his maneuver?

4. Grip your fist with your other hand and press into the victim [sic] abdomen with 5 quick inward and upward thrusts

If you should happen to graze victim jiggling breasts in the process, do not make a big deal out of it. Just file it away for later.

5. Repeat until object is dislodged

Or until you reach completion, whoever comes last.

I saw one of my teachers choking once in high school. A classmate of mine performed the Heimlich, a piece of potato came rocketing out, and pretty much everyone was embarrassed.

Not sure if there were any back blows, but I don’t really want to know anyway.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked, so I figured it had potential and wrote it out.

I remember watching a History Channel show about prison life in which a former prison hit man is talking about having to store his stabbing weapon up his backside. He referred to it as a “keister stash.” It’s kind of a terrible juxtaposition, you know, since being a hitman might be the most manly thing a man can be, while getting penetrated anally is arguably the least. You could see the conflict in the man’s face on the television.

That got me thinking about how uncomfortable it must be physically to carry a knife that way, and then I started thinking pragmatically about what a person might do to ease the discomfort.

And so, the idea of the dildo-handled shank was born. Here’s the full article:
“Prison Hitman Ostracized for Fashioning Dildo Handled Shank”

I’m also in the process of moving to an emerging neighborhood, which got me thinking: what must it be like to have a smartass move into your neighborhood and have the gall to refer to it as “emerging.” What a smug prick!

So, I wrote an article about that very thing:
“Emerging Neighborhood Emerging Too Slowly, Reports Homeowner/Victim”

And I was also tricked into watching Grey’s Anatomy by Cheryl, though I did get dinner out of the deal. That got me thinking about what other sorts of deception someone else’s Cheryl might engage in to get them to watch Grey’s, so I wrote an article along those lines as well.

It is here:
“Grey’s Anatomy Treachery Suspected”

I’m still working on my novel project, although I haven’t had a lot of time to get into it over the holidays, what with the eating and the drinking and the moving. December should be a strong month, ideally.

I also had an idea for a story today. It goes like this.

Two vacuums who are both standup comedians by trade are talking. The older, more established one is mentoring the younger newcomer.

“Listen,” the older vacuum says. “You’ve got to get the change jokes out of your act. Everyone does jokes about change. We’ve heard it all before. When you’re run over change it makes a lot of noise and just falls out again. We get it. That’s hack shit.”

The younger vacuum is hurt but tries not to show it. “Well, yeah but my joke is a play on words. We fear change. Get it? Change like money but also…”

Older vacuum cuts him off. “I get it, and I’m telling you it’s hack shit. What’s next? Mao Tse Tung? ‘Change must come from the barrel of a gun’?”

The younger vacuum looks as though this is a pretty decent premise for a joke he’d have happily included in his act had this conversation never occurred. The older vacuum senses that he’s not getting through.

Older vacuum tries again. “Did you look at the crowd out there?”

“Of course I looked. I thought it went-”

“Well it didn’t went. You bombed. You did not suck.”

“Aw, come on I totally sucked.”

The older vacuum realizes he is talking to himself. Not that he’s not being heard, but that he’s talking more to a younger version of himself that he sees in the younger vacuum than to the younger vacuum. He relaxes his attachments and leans back a bit. The younger vacuum senses the tension go out of the conversation.

“You know,” the older vacuum says, finally, “You’ve got a lot of promise, kid. You are going to be fine.”

This is a short selection. I’m still introducing the main characters and their environments.

Here I’m describing how the Martian colony came to be what it is. Enjoy!

The human race discovered that it was the only sentient form of life in its solar system at about the same time as the first aliens came around to politely mug us. Human scope took a great leap then. At one moment, humans were warring bitterly against each other over Earth resources, and the next they were hugging each other in mortal fear and fighting as one.

We have now adopted the much more civilized practice of financially ruining one another rather than the barbarian practice of hacking each other to bits. Some call it progress. Some say it is better to be dead than ruined. Only the ruined say the latter, though, and they’re famously maudlin.

In the course of repelling the first wave of muggers, Earth scientists captured and reverse engineered every piece of alien tech it possibly could. By war’s end, humans found themselves able to travel the heavens with relative ease, which led to manned exploration of the solar system. This, in turn, led to colonization attempts on anything that had a solid surface to stand on, and a few new kinds of celebrities.

Some planets had supported colonization very well. Others not so much. The colonists were nothing if not enterprising, however, seeing each and every planet as a giant ball of resources just waiting to be mined.

Of the colonized planets, Mars was the most heavily populated. It had a surface that one could stand on, a little water, and wasn’t too cold. Miners had flocked to it hoping to discover untold riches in gold or diamonds, but had limited success. What gold they found was barely valuable enough to pay for the process of mining it and shipping it off world. In short, Mars was exactly what it appeared to be from above: a giant ball of rust.

Not willing to give up so easily, the wealthy Earth businessmen who backed the colonies bought heaps of advertising and a fleet of lobbyists on Earth to tell the story of the first planetary gold rush. Books were written. Blockbuster movies were made. The tourism trade flourished, generating many thousands of times more money than any mining operation. Profits soared, weighed down only by the cost of the mining that the tourists had come to see and take part in in the first place.

As a result, the miners became adventure travel guides. They began to be paid not on the value of the minerals they mined, but on how miner-ish they looked. Geologists and engineers were fired, and hard men with lantern jaws were hired in their places. This was fortunate, as mining crews occasionally fought over the most scenic travel spots, and engineers are quite useless in a scuffle.

Having done my last hiking trip solo, I knew that to be a poor plan. Thankfully, my friends Chris and Brandon agreed to come along. The three of us piloted my car up to Vogel State Park on Friday. As the driver, I operated the wheely turny part and the pedal mechanisms. Chris navigated using his iPhone, and Brandon snored in the back seat.

Vogel State Park, or “The Vog,” as local refer to it, is quite lovely. It is situated in a narrow valley, has a very pretty lake, and is surrounded by trees.

It is also surrounded by bloodthirsty 500lb bears who would like nothing better than to bite my soft city ass off, but I’ll get to that later.

Once at Vogel, we paid for a hiking permit, a fishing license, and a parking permit, and checked our gear. I had all the essentials. Sleeping bag: check. Hiking poles: check. 16oz Bourbon: check. Red Crocs: check.

We shouldered our packs and headed up the road to the start of the Coosa Backcountry Trail, marked by the yellow blazes. If you don’t know what a blaze is, it’s a little patch of paint on a tree that shows a hiker which trail they’re on. These trails spiderweb through the backcountry, you see, and it can be confusing to navigate them even with a map. The blazes help a lot, usually. On this particular trail, however, the blazes came in as bewildering an array of colors as Crocs do.

We hiked three miles to West Wolf Creek, found a suitable site, and set up camp. It should be said, at this point, that the common wisdom is that one does not cook and eat one’s dinner in the same area as one’s tent. This is because food smells attract the aforementioned bloodthirsty bears, who will happily disembowel city dwellers and prance merrily on their innards.

For these reasons, we cooked and ate our dinner a suitable distance from our tents, then gathered around a fire as the light faded. Belly full and bedtime fast approaching, I happily nipped at my bourbon.

Brandon sipped coffee. Chris looked out into the distance, toward where we’d cooked dinner. “That,” he said, with admirable calm, “is a bear.”

We all looked. It was indeed a black bear, wandering around near where we’d cooked our dinner. Later, on retelling the story, many have asked me if it was big. I’ve only ever seen one wild bear. It looked to be the size of a schoolbus. He wandered back and forth over our cooking site, then disappeared into the woods. The three of us chatted excitedly, exchanging wild conjecture and ideas for hasty bear defense.

Brandon was in favor of sharp sticks. Chris wished he’d brought a gun. I suggested we appease the bear with sexual favors but was voted down. In any case, the bear had left the scene and did not return.

His memory, however, lived on in technicolor. Once in my sleeping bag, I began a long mockery of sleep. The wind blew in the trees, causing them to rub and creak together. Every little sound was the bear returning to slay me and my friends. Do bears like bourbon? I had no idea.

After a long, long while, it was day time. I had survived the night. We hiked in excellent weather and didn’t see any bears for the rest of the weekend, but I know they’re out there, waiting to kill me.

But, if I may quote Nick himself, “EEEEeee! Aaah, Oooh!” Seriously, that’s how he talks.

I have been writing quite a lot.

Today had a guest post on a site called Reluctant Runners. It is about whether or not one should wear headphones in a running race. Don’t.

I’m also still writing and editing for The Leaky Wiki, which is sort of like The Onion, except TLW publishes my writing and The Onion doesn’t return my emails. I wrote one called “New ‘Superfont’ Emerges, Designers Threaten Suicide,” and another called “Crazy Girlfriend Breaks Up with Bewildered, Smothering Boyfriend.” Check those out and let me know what you think!

I’ve also started a new novel, hopefully to have the first draft finished by Christmas. It is a science fiction project about a guy called Dangerous Dan. Dan has some problems, not least of which being that people occasionally fire lasers at him. As a result, I spent some time this week researching what it would be like to have someone fire a laser at you in real life.

Long story short, such an attack would probably be quiet, invisible to the naked eye, and intensely painful, much like my farts in all respects. That aside, as a part of my research I unearthed a vast community of people who build and modify lasers, and then burn shit with them, a pastime which is, it should go without saying, fuckin’ awesome.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=woiTedSKPrk

I had such a great conversation with the sage Jon Fasman on last week’s podcast, I think I’m going to try to get this new project traditionally published, even though I’ve been really pleased with the progress of Jack Dick and Other Stories.

If I can make a recommendation to you, it is this: start a podcast. It’s so fun and so rewarding. Our first couple episodes were a struggle, and I’ve been shot down on interview requests a few times, but it’s still really cool.

Now, I’ve got to get in a few hundred words on the Dangerous Dan project and then go see a movie. Life is good.

A Feynman diagram of a car and a bike meeting in traffic. A turd sandwich is created.

Dig this: I was watching a show on quantum physics recently, and I learned that photons passing through two slits behave differently depending on whether you detect their state at the slits or at a screen just beyond the slits. What the hell, photons?

I’m reminded of riding a bike in traffic. You see, bikes are slower than cars most of the time. If you ride a bike in the city you are gonna get passed by a ton of cars. Sometimes cars pass you even when it doesn’t make sense.

Let’s say you are on your bike, and you’re approaching an intersection. A car passes you, but then reaches the intersection and has to stop. Car brakes are very powerful. The net effect is that the car passed you only to jump in front and slow you down.

Worse yet, sometimes cars jump ahead of you and then turn abruptly, which means you’re in danger of crashing into them.

I think this is because drivers behave like photons in the double slit experiment. You can’t know what they’re going to do until you see them do it. Similarly, photons don’t know where the hell they are going until they’re observed. They’re aloof like that, photons.

Of course, you also have to consider the relativity of thought. If humans think at a fixed speed, the speed of thought will cover much greater distance in a car than on a bike. If you sit in one place all day, you can think your ass off and never run into anything at all.

That might be nice, depending on where you sit.

On the Southern end, said Approach Trail starts at Amicalola Falls State Park, just an hour and a half north of my beloved home of Atlanta, and goes directly up a cliff face which has water frothing down it in a great torrent. This water is Amicalola Falls and it is both striking and lovely. I understand it is also the highest falls east of the Mississippi. Kudos to you, Falls.

At the visitor’s center, situated at the foot of the Falls, I signed in, told the gentlemen how far I intended to hike–definitely to Springer Mountain, possibly as far as Stover’s Creek–and received a piece of paper to put in my car to indicate that I was out on the A.T., not merely abandoning my car.

“You know,” one of the gentlemen said, “You could drive to the top of the falls. Save you about a mile of walking.”

I waved my hand dismissively, as any foolishly-confident city-loving idiot might. “Meh, a mile? No big deal.”

That first mile of the Approach Trail is not so much a trail as a orgy of stairway overindulgence. It has off-angle landings and soaring flights, twists and turns, and always, always more steps. Around 600 steps, in fact. Mind you, the stairs are sturdy and free of needless carvings or paint, but they still must surely be the stairway designer’s equivalent of Beethoven’s 9th.

Along the way, I labored and sweated past more than a few families resting on the benches built into the landings. Once, thanks to an ill-timed arm swing and the afternoon sun, a drop of my sweat broke free of my swinging hand, arced trough the air, caught perfectly a twinkle of sunshine, and landed on a toddler, causing his father to frown. Ill-equipped to tactfully handle this situation, I climbed on as though nothing had happened.

At last, I reached the top of the falls and quite a nice view.

Soon I was in the woods proper, and still climbing. I sweated even more profusely, but at this altitude toddlers were mercifully scarce on the ground. I did see the dead body of a rattlesnake, which I handled with my usual aplomb. Let’s just hope that anyone in earshot merely thought I was shrieking excitedly to my brother the trucker.

I also came upon my first pile of discarded gear trailside. Hikers, it seems, desperate to shed any weight they can, are known to merely drop items on the side of the trail. In this case there was a hatchet and a rain poncho.

I walked along in something of a rush, wanting to make sure I got to the summit of Springer Mountain with enough daylight to make dinner and set up camp comfortably. I got there in just over four hours of hiking, and enjoyed another nice view from the top.

The view was even better in the morning.

That was nice, considering I knew I had to do down the stairs when I got back to the falls. Oh well, at least I didn’t get eaten by a bear.

1. Chris Horner – Rider Chris Horner quite unexpectedly finds himself at the helm of Team Radio Shack… nearly as surprised as everyone else is that Radio Shack is still in business.

   He had a great Tour in 2010, however, finishing in the top 10 even as his captain, seven time Tour de France champion Larry Armsfeld, tumbled down every mountain in France and finally withdrew from the race. Here’s wishing you a great race, Chris Horner, and a speedy recovery to you, Larry!

2. Alberto Skeletor – Skeletor isn’t as worried about winning the Tour this year as he is about starting it. He was caught cheating his bony ass off last year and nearly exposed at last for the villain that he is, but was saved–somehow–by his home country of Spain.

   Some cycling insiders felt that these events were “like seeing an American murder conviction overturned by a Bolivian school principal,” but nothing could be done. Such is the power of Skeletor. Look for him to once again ascend to the top of the podium even if only his brainwashed Spanish subjects will be happy about it.

3. Andy Schleck – Young hopeful Andy Schleck, assembled in a Luxembourgian scientist’s lab from good weather and sportsmanship, is the nice-guy favorite to win this year.

   Skeletor will most likely kill him and eat him on live television.

That about wraps it up, friends! It should be a great race, at least until Skeletor eats Schleck. I’ll probably stop watching at that point.

Perhaps he wouldn’t be a Jesus at all, but a Buddha or a Ganesh or a Thor. What would the Baptists say if the Savior finally returned and had an elephant head?

Obviously Heaven (or Valhalla or whatever) would know that these discrepancies would exist. If they sent one Jesus, that Jesus would have to spend pretty much all His time correcting everyone and settling disputes. There’d be very little time for loaves or fishes or sermons on the mount.

That’s why Heaven would have no choice but to send multiple Jesuses. I’m thinking at least ten thousand. The only question, then, is which religious sects or denominations get a Jesus, and which do not?

Well, clearly Heaven would have to be as non-descriminatory as possible. The Bible, in Matthew 18:20, says something like “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Clearly you don’t need a Sistine Chapel to hang out with Jesus. I’m sure the other religions are similarly cool with small groups.

The Dictionary defines the word “religious” thusly:

relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity

So, you don’t have to have a deity, necessarily, to be religious. That makes sense because there are a lot of people out there who aren’t very religious, but who are very involved in some other pastime or hobby that gives their life meaning. Clearly those people cannot be refused a Jesus because they are, by definition, also religious.

There would therefore have to be a Soccer Jesus. Football and Golf and Basketball Jesuses also would have to exist. There’d probably have to be a gambling Jesus and a drinking Jesus as well. There could be a Hipster Jesus, but no one would have heard of him.

There would, without a doubt, be at least one Cycling Jesus. Actually there’d have to be a few, because there’d need to be a roadie Jesus and a mountain Jesus. The fixie Jesus would be covered by the Hipster Jesus, though, so we can ignore him.

I know this all sounds crazy but it’s the only way. I don’t presume to tell Heaven what to do, I’m just guessing that this is the way they have it all worked out.

Hope I get to ride with Cycling Jesus. I bet he’s fast. Probably pulls all day, too.