More than enough to go around

A short while ago, a colleague of mine started a new blog to discuss articles of interest to Geek culture (e.g., comics, movies, music) and asked me to contribute. After dragging my heels for quite some time, I have finally done so.

Now I know what you're thinking - "Josh, you hardly ever post here. What makes you think that you can start blogging all over the Interweb? You're biting off more than you can chew." First off, let me point out that my bite marks are on record with at least three separate police departments, and all parties involved have agreed that my capacity to cram human tissue between chompers far exceeds that of most men. And let me further assure you that I am more than lazy enough to not post on two blogs simultaneously.

In fact, I make this promise to you, my faithful readers - I refuse to let my not writing for The Mind Blender interfere with my not writing for VentingPlasma.

Crisis averted - now go read my most recent brilliance.

Feel My Sting - A Photo Essay

To put it simply, the entire experience was thoroughly unpleasant. The apple flavor of the sucker was terrible, and the scorpion itself had an overt chemical taste. Whatever substances they use to treat the insect are what you get to taste when you eat it. I only came close to gagging once, so I'm fairly proud of myself with regards to the overall experience.

The best part, however, had to be the ingredients list - Malitol syrup, scorpion, artificial flavoring and color (yellow 5, blue 1).

Contest Entry

The School of EVIL

By Joshua A. Young

Peter was in high school and he was at school and knew that something was really wrong but he didn’t know what. And then at lunch he realized that he was the only kid in school. “Where is every body?” He asked the janitor. But he didn’t know. Then he asked Mr. Jake but he told him to shut up and finish his test. He didn’t know any of the answers to the test.

When Peter was in the bathroom he heard a scream and ran out. The principal yelled at him for running he said that someone was screaming and the principal told him that no one was. The principal gave him detention for being out of class but it was the passing period.

Peter knew that it was someone really screaming and began to investigate. He looked in each of the classrooms but they were all empty except for the teachers and desks and chairs. Then he found in one of the classrooms red stuff on the ground. He thought it was blood and smelled it. It was blood! The blood was on the ground in the classroom and in the hallway. He followed it on the ground until he found where it ended. It ended in the kitchen. He didn’t know why there was blood in the kitchen, so he started to investigate the kitchen. There was blood every where. It was on the counters, and the floors, and the ceiling, and everywhere. He wondered where all of the blood came from but he didn’t know. But he was going to find out! He heard a noise and hid in a closet. The cook came in and started cookinig. He picked up some carrots and started cutting them. They were on the counter and had blood all over them. The cook licked of f the blood and cut them. “Mmmm. I like blood but it is better when it is fresh isn’t it Peter.” He said to Peter because he knew that he was in the closet the whole time!

Peter jumped out of the closet and yelled “You won’t get away with this. Killing is against the law and you are going to go to jail now for doin it.” “He he he he he.” The cook laughed in an evil laugh. “You will never live long enough to let the cops know. And I have cut the phone lines.” The cook swung at him with a knife and cut his face. Blood shot out everywhere and he could taste the blood and smell it. It was running down his throat. His face hurt where he was cut really bad.

I grabbed a hammer off of the table and a nail too. “You might have won this fight, but my dad was in the army and taught me hwo to fight.” I said. Then I dropped to the ground and crawled up to him really fast. Then I drove the nail through his foot with the hammer in one strike just like my dad had taught me when he was a green buhray. The blood shot up out of his foot all the way up to the ceiling. He screamed really loud and yelled and his face was all scrunched up like he was in a bunch of pain. He tried to grab at me but he couldn’t move his foot so he was stuck.

And that was when I realized that his blood was wrong color. It was yellow and not red like all of the other blood that was in the kitchen. I said “You’re blood is not the right color. It is yellow. What is wrong with you.” And he laughed again. He said with a look of disgust on his face “What you didn’t know is that Im not really a cook but I am an alien and I am here to eat everyone in your school. I like to eat people because they taste so yummy. Then he took a big bite out of a hand. A HUMAN HAND!!! Blood ran down his face and I puked everywhere and he licked that up and said MMMmmm I like that to.

That was when I got scared because he was an alien and I didn’t know how to kill him because he probably had crazy alien powers. I knew I had to get out of there so I ran out of the school and all the way home. I couldn’t find my parents even thought they didn’t have to work today because it was there day off. I had to think really hard. I was thinking real hard but I had a headache because the cook had cut me in the face and then I knew what I had to do. “Of course I said I will go to the secret science lab that is outside of the town that we live in.” They will stop him

The science lab was really far awy and I knew that it was going to be hard to get there and then a jeep pulled up next to me with a man in an army uniform. It was a army jeep. I said “You almost nocked me off of

(Editor's note: The fourth page of this epic tale has been lost to the sands of time. Mayhaps it was ingested by a canine or supressed by a provision of the Patriot Act. We now resume our tale already in progress.)

not really a alien. He is an android from the future. “How did you know that?” I asked the scientist guy. He said it was because they had caught the cook before and did tests on him and found out that he was a robot. I said “why would you let an evil killer robot cook go so that he could kill people. He killed every one in my school even my friends.” And the scientist guy said “We didn’t know yet.”

That was when the cook busted in the door. He stabbed all of the scientists, but I killed him when I hit himn in the weak spot in his head with a bat like the scientists told me to. I saved everyone int the world but noone ever knew.

THE END.

Word Smythery at its Finest

Since the company I work for is infested with liberals and hippies, we have a "give back" program in place that is intended to waste company assets and revenue in order to benefit the larger community. Most of this aforementioned program focuses on volunteering at a local middle school that is renowned for offering a substandard education. Luckily, I am able to dodge involvement in these efforts since I have a restraining order in place that bars me from being within 50 yards of any elementary, middle or high school in the State of Colorado - there was an incident of which my lawyer advises me not to speak.

As much as I avoid involvement, the other employees in my department embrace it. It seems like they pounce upon every opportunity they are presented that involves milling about with grubby adolescents. So, when this institute of learning held a short story competition, many of my colleagues volunteered to be judges.

While I did not participate in the actual judging, I was given the opportunity to read many of these stories. They were hypnotic. They were amazing. They were the worst writing ever performed by a human hand (or robot for that matter). Narrators shifted from third person omniscient to first person at the drop of a hat. People were simultaneously drowned while having conversations. Dogs magically appeared to be stabbed in the neck. Entire pages of story were missing. Girls told each other that they had fat asses.

I was enchanted by the very nature of these tales. They were so horrific that I could not turn my eyes away, and as I pawed through page after baffling page, I knew that I had to recreate this phenomenon. The mildly-retarded seventh-grader inside me beckoned me to write a story of equal caliber. It was a challenge I could not resist.

And lo, I organized among my colleagues a short story competition. There were only two rules:
- The story had to be roughly three pages long
- The story had to be written in the style of a poorly educated seventh grader.

My entry will now follow.