Author Archives: brokawphotoi

So yeah, video games have come a long way since Asteroids. (ptew! ptew! ptew!).

Now for only 50 cents you can actually transport yourself into other dimensions. What a bargain, Asteroids cost 25 cents a million years ago.

I was watching and thought this was just one of those driving, crash-into-stuff, run over-people video games until I saw the kid getting all sparkly like when being transported on Star Trek. I could even hear that sound effect.

The lights dimmed and then he was gone. What the fuck?

I went over to the console and there he was on the screen in some weird candy land with giant lollipops and chocolate covered pork roll. He looked pretty stoked to be there, but it didn’t last long. The screen started counting down, 5,4,3,2,1 and flashed brightly.

Unfortunately, I was sitting right where he was being returned and we morphed into a kid/curmudgeon beast like in The Fly. The kid had my head, I had his body and our arms were sticking out our knees.

I was a little worried his parents might notice and get pissed at me. Really pissed.

The only thing to do was to try and reverse it, so he, I, we hobbled over to the change machine to get a bunch of quarters and see what we could do.

It took about 30-40 tries and over an hour but we finally got pretty close to being separated and normal and decided to call it good.

I still have a few of his parts and has some of mine but they aren’t too noticeable, except that he has my ears and nose hair. Poor kid.

I think I have his belly button.

…

I’ve heard the legends and now I know they are true.

Coyotl, a disciple of Quetzalcoatl,  is a neolithic shaman, who wanders the hills of Nockamixon in spirit form, luring men into his realm and devouring their soul.

He only lures men, whose minds are simpler and souls easier to devourer than women or teenagers who don’t take his shit.

I often hear him howling deep in the woods at night. Sometimes at my door. Then one night, in my shower. When I open the plastic curtain expecting to be mauled by a wild canine, all I found was a puff of green smoke and the smell of marshmallows (a sure sign of Coyotl).

When I mentioned this to the herbalist at the health food store, she fired a big wet, wad of saliva on me. Ptew!

Apparently, this is an ancient protective ritual to protect me from being devoured. I’m just assuming, though. She never really explained.

The next day, while trespassing in my neighbor’s woods looking for truffles, I suddenly heard a terrifying howl right behind me. I did a quick tuck & roll, cupped my genitals and climbed halfway up a tree. The howling got louder and more fierce.

When I looked down, I saw a pair of malevolent icy eyes staring at me, so I took a picture. It was a little blurry so I tried again. I didn’t like the exposure in that one so I made some adjustments and fire off a few more shots. Still too dark.

I was thinking about adding some fill flash, when Coyotl burst from the icy ground, oak leaves stuck to his face and began to approach me. (I would have I gotten that shot, but I was set on the wrong ISO and it would have been too noisy).…

It’s a real thing, but it’s not an apple and doesn’t grow on oak trees. It’s a nickname given to a gall created by a wasp.

Fake folklore has it that oak apples are natural aphrodisiacs and farmers used to collect them for their livestock before switching over to artificial insemination. Some farmers may have tried a few themselves, too. Farm families are unusually large (12-20 children) where oak apples are common and the farmers are among the most cheerful people in their region.

People are high discouraged from experimenting with them. Oak apples may be poisonous, they may contain parasites and may even be hallucinogenic.

Don’t eat four of them, parboiled with 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg and a crushed clove. You’ll see the inside of the universe and may forget your name for a few hours.

Nothing has ever been proven about oak apples. There is no data. Research is banned in most states.

Scientists continue to insist there is no such thing as a natural aphrodisiac and that people should continue to buy actual, proven boner drugs on the internet or from talk radio hosts.


…

It could be the answer to our current crisis. It is a newly synthesized molecule that both treats symptoms and immunizes.

If you get sick you get a shot. You’re cured and are fully vaccinated.

It’s such an elegant solution and was designed accidently by artificial intelligence at CELAXAPHIN.

CELAXAPHIN is a logistics firm coordinating supply side load with demand side demand and depletion depreciation. It does a lot of complex modeling and relies heavily on organic algorithms that continuously self adapt.

Javis, a newly hired IT guy at CELAXAPHIN Corporation was making his rounds one afternoon cleaning out viruses downloaded from pornsite and he took a break to do a little news browsing.

He was engrossed in an article about CRISPER when there was a unexpected power disruption. The lights flickered for a moment and every computer self-rebooted. The computer Javis was browsing on automatically downloaded the CRISPER article into the network where it became entangled in the logistics algorithms.

The system’s AI latched onto the article and scoured the internet for every paper ever written about gene splicing. It then hacked into unsecured lab doing RNA research, stole all of its data and synthesized an entirely new molecule which it began manufacturing it secretly at a pancake syrup plant.

None of the workers there every got sick, despite being huge NASCAR fans. Blood testing and double blind studies confirmed they were immune. So were all the customers at Pankake Shacks across the country where the syrup was used. It wasn’t long (about 8 months) before epidemiologists discovered what was happening.

The CELAXAPHIN immediately bought the plant and now manufactures and packages the syrup in mini alcohol bottle, labelled One Shot.

It is being marketed as a pig laxative and is already being widely endorsed by Fox News. You can get it in hardware stores.…

As we age things slow down. Sometimes way down. It’s not healthy.

Common advice is to eat plenty of fiber and exercise, but in this age of dawning enlightenment we know we can take this further and franchises are emerging that can train us to make our morning constitution a spiritual practice.

Zen monks talk about spending time on the cushion where they may sit for hours not thinking. The founders of Mindful Movement realized many of us were also sitting for long periods but were probably scrolling our cell phones rather than meditating. They knew that this time could be better spent seeking enlightenment.

Mindful Movement monks provide gently effective guidance and always remind us to not push.

MM assshrims have opened up across the country and almost everyone of them has a waiting list. They aren’t cheap either, clocking in at $500 per month along with a $1000 initiation fee. They justify that this cost is necessary to cover the extensive plumbing in each facility and that people seldom need more than a month or two to master mindful movements.

If this really catches on it could have a positive impact on society. We can all stand to be more mindful and regular.…

Hover cars were really big for a while in the sixties, especially in remote places like Dustville Oklahoma and Cornpone Nebraska.

You could buy a hover car kit from the Sears Roebuck catalog and convert your dad’s clunky, four wheeled car car into a smooth riding cruising machine.

They work on the principle of reverse-osmotic, magno-gravitation pull. Once activated they would hover indefinitely.

While the hovering part worked great, there wasn’t a good propulsion system. Propellers proved to be too risky and jet engines made them go too fast.

Most hover cars were simply pushed to get them going. Once started they would glide endlessly assuming there were no trees, buildings or rock walls anywhere nearby. You couldn’t stop or steer them.

Some hoverites (as they like to be called) experimented with using oars and others tried sails. The results were always the same. They’d crash into something and explode. After a while Sears stopped selling them.

The reverse-osmosis, gravitational-pull engines rely on levitationate, which floats away as soon as it’s mined. It’s all gone now.

Pretty soon almost all the existing hover cars had exploded, ending a sweet little chapter in automobile history. Occasionally you can find oner in an old barn or a back alley, still hovering.

Don’t play with it though. they are still highly explosive and will blow you away.
…

We usually think of worms as being a summer critter, coming out after a rain and baking to a crisp on roads and sidewalks, but there are winter varieties too, and they are delicious.

Summer worms are horrible and I wouldn’t recommend eating them. As you might expect, they taste like dirt.

Winter worms are a different story. They have a delicate flavor often described as a blend of oyster, snail and salamander.

I alway go worm gathering at dawn when they are still groggy and easy to sneak up on. You can use fresh ones or even ones that have been smashed by a passing car. They keep their flavor. I always bring a scraper when I go gathering.

You can find them on almost any back road. Avoid winter worms you find in the suburbs, They’re loaded with lawn chemicals. City worms aren’t bad, though. They have a nice urban flavor but it’s hard to collect very many. Worm gathering is very popular in most cities and they are being over harvested.

We have plenty of winter worms where I live and on a good day I can harvest a nice basket full of the pink morsels and enjoy them for breakfast with some creamed herring and French toast. They are also great pickled and smeared with peanut butter on a saltine.

…

Personal saunas are huge in PA coal country. The saunas themselves aren’t huge (they’re tiny) but they are hugely popular.

Unlike the wimpy Swedish kind, made out of cedar with a bench to sit on, Pennsylvania saunas are made out of Bethlehem steel and you curl up into a ball and sit on the floor.

There are also no hot rocks to pour water on (also wimpy). Instead, there is a nice hot bed of burning coal which really heats up the steel.

New Years Day is known locally as Coal Cooking Day and everyone in the family takes a turn at roasting in their saunas for about a half hour. It’s a cleansing ritual. The sauna burns off all the bacteria, mold and moss that grew the previous year. It also takes off all body hair.

The coal fumes are thought to be good for the mind, too. People have been know to write and publish epic poems after a good cook. You can find many of them on Amazon. Just search for “Coal Tales.” While not everyone does the epic poem thing almost everyone comes up with a haiku, a good lymeric or a shanty.

If you’d like to experience a coal cook check out one of the many tours offered by the PA Visitors Bureau.

…

The New Year’s Eve drone hunt contest has become a tradition in many parts of the country, especially here in PA where people like shooting things.

Drones have proliferated almost everywhere. At first they were owned and operated by licensed professionals who were trained to control them. But that was then, this is now. Licences aren’t required anymore and any yahoo who wants one can buy one.

As a result, many have escaped and become an invasive nuisance. You can’t go for a walk in the woods without being buzzed.

While being buzzed doesn’t bother most people, it is devastating to wildlife. To help control the drone population it’s become legal to hunt them year round. No bag limit.

Annual drone hunt contests have become very popular.

Even though it was foggy last year, the drone hunt contest in Bucks, PA had hundreds of participants. 3,256 drones were blasted out of the sky. The winner was Hady Cnychwr, from Wales, who bagged 216 of the flying fuckers. …

Abandoned wells are a huge problem from both an environmental and safety perspective.

There are countless abandoned oil wells, gas wells and water wells just waiting for a kid to fall into and become the leading news story for a week.

As dangerous as these kind of wells are, abandoned man wells are even more of a threat. Dozens of these wells were drilled across the country in the eighties by USGS volcanologists. The wells allowed them to climb down, deep into the mantle to make observations and collect samples.

Excursions often lasted a week or more. The mantle is really deep. When the scientists emerged they always seemed unexpectedly refreshed and vigorous, even the old ones.

Samples indicated the presence of previously unknown mineral, eternimite. When tested on lab mice, they never died.

Eternimite also induces euphoria when inhaled. The mineral is not volatile at the surface but off gasses profusely down in the wells.

Naturally, numerous papers were published (you can find them on Google Scholar) and the well attracted scientists from all over the world. Many (especially the French scientists) would descend into the wells with their teams and then refuse to come out.

It wasn’t long before every well was occupied rendering them useless for further study. It also created a world shortage of volcanologists.

The USGS had no alternative except to terminate the program and cut off all funding. The wells were just abandoned. They couldn’t be sealed because people are still down there and were just left open to rust away.

Sometimes the well dwellers come to the surface to get a Slurpy but for the most part they stay down in the wells.

Information about the location of these wells should carefully guarded to prevent abuse. Hopefully, people don’t find the online map of the wells at USGS Earth Explorer at https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/…