Teresa Nielsen Hayden reminds us of the Horror of Blimps:
Posted by DeLong at April 30, 2004 11:00 AM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postTeemings - Extras - The Horror of Blimps: The blimp which was up until this moment a fun toy here embarked on a career of evil. Using the artificial convection of my central heating, the blimp stealthily departed my office. It moved silently through the living and drifted to the staircase. Gliding wraithlike over the staircase it then entered the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping peacefully. Running silently, and gliding six feet or so above the ground on invisible and tiny air currents it approached the bed. In spite of it's noiseless passage, or perhaps because of it, I awoke. That doesn't really say it properly. Let me try again.
I awoke, the way you awake at 2:00 AM when your sleeping senses suddenly tell you without reason that the forces of evil on converging on you.
That still doesn't do it. Let me try one more time.
I awoke the way you awake when you suddenly know that there is a large levitating sinister presence hovering towards you with menacing intent through the malignant darkness.
Now sometimes I do wake up in the middle of the night thinking that there are large sinister and menacing things floating out of the darkness to do me and mine evil. Usually I open my eyes, look and listen carefully, decide it was a false alarm, and go back to sleep. So, the fact that I awoke in such a manner was not all that unusual. On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes, and there it was! A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!
Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a security outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his feet up on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINISTER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my body has. A full decade's allotment of adrenaline was dumped into my bloodstream all at once. My metabolism went from "restful sleep mode" to HOLY SHIT! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a nanosecond. My heart went from twenty something beats per minute to about 240 even faster.
I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of time until they show up. Evolution know this, too. It knows what to do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark. When 50 million years worth of evolutionary survival instinct hits you all at once flat in the gut at 200 mph it is not a pleasant sensation. Without volition I screamed my battle cry (which is indistinguishable to the sound a little girl makes when you drop a spider down her dress (not that I'd know what that sounds like,) and leapt out of bed in my underwear.
I struck the approaching menace with all my strength and almost fell over at the total lack of resistance that a helium balloon offers when you punch the living shit out of it with all the strength that sudden middle of the night terror produces. Its trajectory took it straight into the ceiling fan which whipped it about the room at terrifying velocity. Seeking a weapon, I ripped the alarm clock out of its plug and hurled it at the now High Velocity Menacing presence (breaking the clock and putting a nice hole in the wall.) Somehow at this moment I suddenly realized that I was fighting the blimp, and not a monster. It might have been funny if I didn't truly and actually feel like I was having a legitimate heart-attack. On quivering legs I went to the bathroom and literally gagged into the toilet while shaking uncontrollably with the shock of the reaction I'd had.
Unbelievably, both my wife and daughter had completely slept through the incident. When I decided that I wasn't having a heart attack after all I went back into the bedroom and found the blimp which had somehow survived the incident. I took it to the walk in closet and released it inside where it floated around with the air currents released from the vents in there. I closed the door, this sealing it in, and went back to bed. About 500 years later I fell asleep.
***
At about 7 am my wife awoke. She had been playing tennis and wasn't aware that we have assembled the blimp the previous evening, and that is was now floating around the the walk-in closet that she approached.
The dynamic between the existing air currents of the closet and the suction caused by opening the door was just enough to give the blimp the appearance of an Evil Sinister Menace flying straight towards her.
This time the blimp did not survive the encounter, nor almost, did I, as I had to explain to my very angry spouse what motivated me to hide an evil lurking presence in the closet for her to find at 7 am.
I can order replacement balloons on the internet but I don't think I will.
Some blimps are better off dead.
That post -- incredibly -- did not win the Koufax award for funniest blog post, which went to Atrios's competent but comparatively unfunny Preznit Give Me Turkee post, if memory serves.
It was the funniest thing I read all year, on or off the net.
Thanks, Brad. I needed that. I laughed just as hard as I did the first (and second) time I read it. "Deep in our alligator brains ..." indeed.
Posted by: Beth on April 30, 2004 11:19 AMI want one!
Posted by: digamma on April 30, 2004 11:25 AMI well remember reading this about a year and some months ago when it was posted and many folks linked to it.
Which in Web terms makes it a Beloved Classic.
Posted by: Gary Farber on April 30, 2004 11:31 AMAnother of similar ilk and quality - I think via TNH's comments section - here -
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pfarley/31191.html#cutid1
(The Day the Easter Bunny Died)
A great, funny post - just what I needed to break the tension of studying for law school finals. Next time, though, give fair warning - if I'd known I was about to errupt in unconctrollable guffaws, I probably would not have read this sitting in the middle of the law library, surrounded by earnestly studying students.
Posted by: Rex Momus on April 30, 2004 12:30 PMYes, truly one of the greats of the internet.
Here's another:
http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html
There's one more that I'd love to post, called "The day the internet was censored." It's an internet log of a spontaneous attempt by a bunch of people (circa 1996) to convince somebody else that, due to the Communications Decency Act of 1996, that swearing on IRC was then impossible, being replaced with [CENSORED]. Hilarity ensues, and then it goes one step beyond, as it turns out the target is from Finland, which should not be subject to U.S. censorship laws.
I'm spoiling it because sadly, the one source of this article has taken it off the web, and is ignoring requests for its repost.
Posted by: Thane Walkup on April 30, 2004 12:36 PMIt's funny, but the funniest thing that I've read all year is that eBay wedding dress sale.
I've saved it for posterity at http://www.charm.net/~msaroff/eBay/. I didn't write it. I'm just archiving it for posterity.
FWIW, the funniest thing that I've ever read, "The Attack of the Mad Sh*tt*r", is also archived on my web site, as it's author has stopped writing and pulled all his stuff. That's at http://www.charm.net/~msaroff/shitter.shtml .
Posted by: Matthew Saroff on April 30, 2004 01:10 PMMy two and half year old wants us to move to an apartment complex in Phoenix- why? Because they have a nice bundle of ballons out front floating in the breeze. Of course, dad the economist has thought about grabbing said ballons for son, but he is content with a ballon from Safeway on Saturday. Just watch out for the legos when you stand up to swat that ballon in bare feet.
Posted by: Allen M on April 30, 2004 01:31 PMWait, we're doing "funniest ever" as well?
1991 Usenet post and still my favorite-ever rant:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1991Jul11.031731.9260%40athena.mit.edu&output=gplain
Highly geeky -- but oh, so good.
The BOFH, along with the PFY, still torments his users and his boss over at The Register, for those who know how dumb users really are.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/
Posted by: TheSquire on April 30, 2004 04:24 PM"I want one!" was posted by digamma
Buy a round mylar/metallic helium balloon. Tape several pennies to the center of one side, so the balloon rotates 90 degrees and floats like a flying saucer. Now carefully attach more pennies and smaller bits to the underside, until the balloon floats about 6 inches from your ceiling. Release it. The near-ceiling thermoclyne and room air currents will do the rest.
I've had several such pets. They wander all around the house, ducking down to go through doorways. The air conditioning (or heating) moves them around the house. Sometimes they get lost or stuck, and I have to hunt for them and release them. One will last about a week, though you will have to remove some coins over time.
And they will startle you!
Posted by: tjallen on April 30, 2004 04:37 PMSee this website for a much fancier version of the same idea:
http://dealtime.catalogcity.com/cc.class/cc?pcd=7723102&ccsyn=48
Posted by: tjallen on April 30, 2004 04:56 PM"That post -- incredibly -- did not win the Koufax award for funniest blog post."
Well, of *course* it didn't - it was a message board post, not a blog post.
The message board in question is the Straight Dope Message Board, where fans of Cecil Adams' weekly Straight Dope column (a staple of alternative weeklies) go to play, debate, and generally converse.
The poster known there as Scylla, who wrote "The Horror of Blimps", has written things far funnier than this. I remember reading it and thinking, "he's lost his edge." But Scylla on an off day is funnier than most of us at our best, so it's OK.
But to see him at his best, try the OPs in these threads:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=33909
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=55694
Enjoy.
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