Advice I gave to a friend not long ago regarding her apprehension toward an upcoming math class:

“Mathematics is a lot like trying to ride a greased ostrich: it’s frustrating at first but gets easier and easier the more you practice. Oh, and people look at you weird if you talk about it at a party”.

Happy freaking Valentine’s Day, everybody.  May Cupid’s arrow fly straight and true…. and kill some smug jerk who’s in love.

Hatshrapnelonians! Lend me your ears.

It has been a long time since Mark’s last post.

Yes, there have been posts by others. But none of them have been what you have grown to know and love over these long years!

Why has Mark abandoned us? What have we done to bring down such wrath and neglect? Why do bad things happen to good people.

We make a little offering of cookie crumbs and Arbys sauce to the burners on the toaster oven, sending smoke to the skies in the hopes he will return and set things right for us all. Others may chose to go back to his earlier work, more than three and a half years, to the days of Pantsshrapnel. Yes, it was hard to type and resounded vaguely of porn, but there you go.

In the long twilight days without a zombie paintshop cartoon or a picture of Mark’s phase superimposed upon a man wearing a fairy outfit, what do we do to make life worth living?

Lets start by looking at the numbers.

For the first year and a half, there were no comments. Pantsshrapnel was a one man band and your feedback was not wanted. Since then he transitioned them to Hatshrapnel and someone even commented on old posts a few times.  They now no longer have working pictures, although the text is still great.  There were as many as 75 comments per month. The trend went up and down with the months that Mark posted versus when he didn’t. Since March, the average number of comments per month, and indeed, per post, has dropped dramatically.  Clearly reader participation is in a waning phase following a solid run of interest. 

The number of posts that Mark has made over the years is truly amazing. There are more than 130 posts, each one an average of one page of text and a picture. The time between posts is an average of ten days, or three posts per month. Some months Mark was very consistent and managed to write once a week, but many months he let slide and waited as long as 55 days between posts. I am proud to point out that during my debut, we managed to put posts up as quickly as twice per week, the fastest since July 2006.

Right now we are in one of these long, dark waiting periods, where Mark slumbers in intellectual hibernation. He is at the cusp of the creative cycle, the critical juncture between doing something and not. The creative juices are flowing and, no doubt, churning deep inside him. It is merely a matter of time before they burst forth in a stain of masterful crayon-based cartoonery.

I have been truly impressed at Mark’s dedication and enthusiasm. No where else can I give an example of someone giving their time and creative efforts to building a website that serves absolutely no practical purpose except to make me laugh or groan on occasion. It is an amazing effort and he has done a fantastic job and asked for nothing in return. For this, Mark deserves our gratitude and loving attention in his future endeavors. I think I speak for the crowd when I hope he comes back soon.

 Thanks for letting me play.

-John

The first rule of Science Club is you don’t talk about Science Club.

When I was in fourth grade, the school bully and has squad of goons cornered me against the wall before class. He grabbed my jacket and slammed me up against the brick wall and started yelling at me for something. I don’t remember what he wanted, but I do remember my instinctual gut reaction. The world slowed while I swung my violin case up from my side and hit him on the side of the head, knocking him, his goons, and me down, giving me the time to kick some dirt in his face and run off to class. You might think that a violin case wouldn’t be the best weapon, but it was about three feet long, armored with rough plastic and pokey hinges and latches, it weighed about fifteen pounds, and I had it right there in my hand. Later that day I was called to the principal’s office. The bully was suspended for a week and I was asked to consider, in the future, avoiding beating people with my orchestra equipment.

The second rule of Science Club is you don’t talk about Science Club.

Ever since then I have lived with the confidence of knowing that I could deter any physical conflict by merely picking up the closest item and swinging it as hard as possible and also screaming at the top of my voice. Keyboards have plenty of sharp edges and a decent amount of heft. Computer mice are equivalent to a half a nunchuck or some kind of aboriginal squirrel-hunting device. A laptop is undoubtably lethal if struck upon the neck or temple. A blackberry or iphone can be hurled at great speed to crush the larynx or the groin to knock a man down. I do not envy the fate of anyone who comes after me when my trusty swingline stapler is within reach.

The third rule of Science Club is when someone says stop, or goes limp, even if he’s just faking it, the Science is over.

I remember the first time I met Mark. It was in the parking lot of a bar, we were playing chess. He looked me in the eye with the desperate look of a man who had lost it all. “I want you to hit me as hard as you can” he said. It isn’t that Mark has a death wish, indeed he craves living life to its fullest.

The fourth rule of Science Club is only two guys to a Science.

The fifth rule of Science Club is one Science at a time.

The fourth and fifth rules of Science Club are probably the most commonly ignored. There are a lot of science opportunists out there, and also a lot of lone wolves. I have done both and neither are pretty. I have probably whittled away my entire scientific career on the idea of studying Mars and asteroids. There are only five people in the whole world who actually do this full time and one of them must die of old age or mysteriously disappear before someone can take their place, and even then the competition is tremendous. Once a person does become a popular scientist, then they have to juggle the raging hoards of lackey graduate students, jealous peers, and the unrelenting public, all while maybe doing a little work on the side. The other end of the spectrum is the scientist that works, eats, sleeps, and dies in the basement closet of some underfunded university. Sure, this has worked a few times, look at Einstien, but mostly these guys are lucky to be included as co-author in a publication they wrote and end up with a terminal illness because the other side of their closet-office wall houses the constantly-on Hard X-ray Source for the physics experiment that is vaporizing mice in the second sub-basement in the floor above. Two scientists, working together on one project at a time. That is how it is done right.

The sixth rule of Science Club is they Science without shirts or shoes.

I have hairy knuckles and am not afraid to use them.

The seventh rule of Science Club is the Science goes on as long as they have to.

I used to work at a lab at an unnamed university that rhymes with the Buniversity of Blinneysota in Blinneapolis.  There I prepared samples and ran a piece of equipment that heated up rocks and then compressed them. No big deal, except this piece of equipment was called a bomb, for very good reason. This particular setup heated up samples to molten orange temperatures and squeezed the rocks so hard that they deformed with the consistency of putty. If the vessel holding the rock happened to crack and decompress, the 3 inch thick-walled steel tube could explode with the force of a jammed canon. That is why I, the intern, got to sit outside the steel blast shield and monitor the readings for up to 36 hours at a time. Whatever it takes, that’s what I say. And you won’t find the results in any peer reviewed publication to date.

The eighth rule of Science club is If this is your first night at science club, you have to do Science.

 If there is one piece of poetry that is good enough to march down to the local public library and steal a copy from the shelves, this is it.  In Hatshrapnel’s continuing commitment to public library welfare, we are making this available legally to all takers.  Coleridge would approve, just leave the freakin’ albatross alone.  

Kubla Khan - Coleridge 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree : where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round: and there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; and here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! As holy and enchanted as e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted by woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, a mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: and ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever it flung up momently the sacred river.  Five miles meandering with a mazy motion through wood and dale the sacred river ran, then reached the caverns measureless to man, and sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: and ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure floated midway on the waves; where was heard the mingled measure from the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! 

A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw: it was an Abyssinian maid, and on her dulcimer she played, singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me her symphony and song, to such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, that sunny dome! those caves of ice! and all who heard should see them there, and all should cry, Beware! Beware! his flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.     

Hello again, Shrapnelites.  Hey, I want to apologize for my recent absence.  I’d tell you the truth about how I got a little bogged down with decisions about grad school and my future career, but it seems like it would be more fun to lie, so:

Hi, gang.  Boy, am I glad to be back.  A few weeks ago I was attacked and kidnapped by a tribe of Pygmies that had been living under my bed.   They took me back to their native land, Chicago, where they worshiped me as a god, but wouldn’t allow me to update the Shrap, despite my constant and sincere pleas for the mental well-being of my reader-base.  Fortunately I was able to construct a rudimentary flare gun using a cardboard toilet-paper tube, some iron filings, and a flare gun I found.  I signaled the police who contacted Superman for me and here I am, safe and sound.

Anyway, a big thanks to John for filling in for me while I was not writing, and I assure all (three) of you that he has not taken me hostage and usurped the site for his own nefarious purposes.  (Someone contact Superman; John has taken me hostage and usurped the site for his own nefarious purposes.)

Now that I’ve taken care of the housekeeping, I have finally gotten around to writing a post again and you will find it previous to this one (or click here), so enjoy!

P.S. I had no idea where you were going with the ducks, John, but now I see that you’re laying the groundwork for an origins story on a pair of super-powered, possibly radioactive, crime-fighting ducks.  I like the idea, but if the story doesn’t pick up soon, you’re going to lose your core audience, which consists of people that read this site and who, therefore, expect a certain level of wit (zombie references), brilliance (bad MS Paint pictures), and class (CRAYONS!).

To end war, famine, hatred.  That was what he wanted.  Mankind had suffered the ravages and utter inhumanity of one world war and it could not possibly survive another.  The Earth was changed; man now knew the depths of the sickness of war.

To end war, famine, hatred.  That was what he wanted.  It was 1923 and America was still trying to regain it’s economic composure after the Great War.  The nation’s leaders - nothing but voices on the radio, really - advised the public that things were getting better, the future was getting brighter and brighter.  But he knew different; the haunted faces of the men he saw on the streets - men that had seen war and survived, men who had watched acts of gruesome cruelty played out on brother human beings, sometimes by their own hands - told him how wrong the leaders were.  Without help, the human spirit would fall and devour itself inside a generation.

To end war, famine, hatred.  That was what he needed.  “A factory!  A factory is the answer!” thought our courageous hero.  “After all, it is 1923 and this is America!  With the combination of the hard-working attitude of the American people and the infinite imagination of the human spirit, we can create anything!”  And so a factory he built.

Brick by brick, for twenty-nine years our hero gallantly built.  Selling all of his worldly possessions, he bought a small tract of land far from any town or roads.  Living on the small scraps of food he could find or those that were offered him by like-minded peace-seekers, he spent every waking hour finding funds and seeking investors for building materials, and, when lean circumstances dictated it, making his own materials.  And every day he built.  Slowly, his facotry began to take shape.

Then the Great Depression.  Workers were not hard to find, but money always was.  Still, his efforts were redoubled and supported by the throngs of men that, despite the lack of pay, felt that a true man needed to be actively working and, if he couldn’t find a paying job, a noble one was a good substitute.  Those were good days for our hero.  Masses of desperate and humbled families were ready to hear his plans for a world without violence, without the evils of the past.  And, somehow, despite the impossibility of it, there was always food enough for the workers with exactly the right amount left over for a traveling stranger at the factory-grounds when the situation called for it.

The post-depression years were thin, but things were always thin at the factory grounds and our hero and the few workers that remained after the depression worked hard to survive while building the precious factory.  The workers built without pay, forming a tight community with their humble families and the hero around the idea of working toward a dream, toward a world-wide release from the human condition of hatred and cruelty.

Then WWII.  The second war to end all wars.  The violent infection of the human spirit spilling out over the face of the entire Earth in blood.  Our hero’s men were given guns and shipped to Europe and told to kill.  None of them returned to the factory.  Whether they survived or not, our hero never learned, but they never returned.  Still, he was more convinced than ever that working on the factory was important.  If mankind made it through this latest world-wide conflagration of violence and blood, the factory would be vital for the redemption of the soul of humanity.  All building materials were appropriated for the war effort, so he learned to bake his own bricks and put off wiring and plumbing until materials again became available.

And then the bomb.  Eighty-thousand lives extinguished with the flip of a switch.  Forty-thousand lives with the second bomb the next day.  Over two-hundred-thousand after the dust settled.  For the first time in twenty-two years, our hero did not work for a whole day.  Instead, he stood within the unfinished walls of the factory and pondered the souls of those for whom he was too late.

And then work began again.

The return of men from war brought a new workforce and the rekindled economy and victorious spirit of America brought with it new, although modest, investors, the first since the depression.  Time  had brought progress to the rural area and the intervening twenty or more years had seen small towns spread until they were within sight of the factory and roads form that traveled directly past it.  Within seven more years, the factory was completed.  The builders left.  Great machines had been built and placed.  A massive roof stood red-tiled and proud in the morning sun.  The halls of the administrative offices were shining with fresh wax.  And the door to his office proudly bore his name.  The stage had been set.  Now to fill the factory with workers to bring to pass the peaceful destiny of humanity.

He took out ads.  He placed billboards.  He hired recruiters.  But none would come to work for the factory.  The post-war economic boost left hardly a person without employment.  And still, the rare applicant refused to work at the factory after interviewing with our aging hero.  Apparently, no one wanted to work to end war, famine, and hatred.  Perhaps mankind had lost it’s innocence, he thought.  Perhaps it was too late and the illnesses of war and inhumanity had already claimed the world as a casualty that was now just slowly fading to an inevitable and violent end.

Still, he waited.  Every day he reported to his office and waited.  The few applicants became fewer and fewer over the years, and they all left without a job.  The factory and our hero grew older.  Time saw more wars come and more humanity go.  And still, he waited.

He was waiting the day he passed away.  He was found in the sad office chair in his dilapidated office, where he had always sat eagerly awaiting someone to come work in his factory.  It was 1972, forty-nine years after the epiphany that the factory must be built.  He had spent every single minute of those years thinking about the factory, about healing the world, about saving mankind from the darkness.  To end war, famine, hatred.  That was what he wanted.

The world moved forward and downward.  Shortly after our old hero’s death, the greatest factory ever built was torn down and replaced with a vaguely-purposed warehouse.  The demolition marked an important point for the human race, and how remarkable it is that the event went entirely unremarked upon.  All that remains of the factory to testify of it’s existence is the great metal sign, now sitting in a junkyard, that once stood atop the building announcing it’s presence and purpose:

Happiness,

Puppydog,

and

Sunshine

Factory

Day 31 (051509) - The little boogers have grown up a bunch over the last two weeks. So, officially they have lost little booger status and are now middle sized teenaged boogers. Anyway, I told them to go to work on some chores and they told me I just didn’t understand and…well, they got angry. One is yelling at me and the other is giving me the silent treatment. I’m sure they’ll eventually see what is good for them.

PS I have it on good authority that Mark speaks on Thursday. I think he is angry too.  

Day 19 (050209) - Yesterday, we decided the ducks were too stinky living in their little tupperware house in the kitchen. So, we built them a mansion in the backyard, it is now known to all as Chateau Du Foie Gras.

They are comfy in their new abode, heated nest, an outdoor pool, and approximately their full weight in duck food - what more could a growing duckie want? 

Day 7 (042109)  - She decided to rename the Wilota on Day 2, and it is now Sonrisa (also spanish for “made up word”). Today the little duckies got to go outside for the first time. They have grown about double their original size but are still small enough, we discovered, to wiggle through the fence and make a break for it…

Day 1 (041409) - They showed up today. The big one is Pato Doble, (Duck II), and the other is Wilota (spanish for “made up word”). These are baby ducks…in my house.

There are two different types of people who write blogs. There are people like Mark, who wait entire months at a time between posts, even when good, equally busy friends bail them out and buy them a few extra days to get some dang thing onto paper. And then there are people like me who plan an entire year in advance. This is a list of blog posts I prepared so that I could have a full years’ worth of topics available before starting. The important thing is that I had a plan, not that I didn’t use it. Enjoy. 

1 Nicknames - I need a good one

2 Brought a knife to a gun fight

3 Science bully

4 Part time professional

5 People who have a life after I leave

6 When semantics do matter

7 I only read the classics to have fancy quotes

8 Logging for the environment

9 Hello, welcome to hatshrapnel. I love you.

10 Vampires, kill ‘em all. And unicorns.

11 Learning to live in the upcoming pre apocalypse.

12 How to win friends and influence people, a guide to messianic fervor and martyrdom.

13 The secret diaries of a nonpracticing gringo zen master, all is revealed!

14 Columbian masked wrestlers

15 Football, that’s the round one, right?

16 Car salesmen, realtors,  telemarketers and other professional career choices of Satan worshippers.

17 Environmentalists are against electricity, travel, and eating food. Oh, wait that’s not true. In fact they just hate people. Cha chunk, let’s conservate.

18 King of the hikers.

19 Hazy crystal ball

20 John - Impaired on life

21 Seventeen pedestrians were struck during the typing of this post.

22 The whiz quiz OR how I knew all that not drinking and taking drugs would pay off eventually.

23 A wise man once told me something that was very, very stupid.

24 Where are all the clues?

25 Death will just have to wait

26 Mark-ditty my M-dawg

27 The ethical hiearchy of need.

28 I’m only anal 78.6 percent of the time.

29 The internet, that great big thing in the sky run by magic.

30 Written in front of a live studio audience.

31 Mark, able to calculate the 13 millionth prime number in a single bound.

32 Put the Blog away before I take it away.

33 Keefner’s Rough Riders

34 Now you know why I used the qualifier ‘practically’.

35 I want a nice hat but am concerned for its wellbeing with so much hatshrapnel around.

36 Wyola, intradumentional vortex connecting Montana, Wyoming and Bangkok.

37 Scientists, menace to society?

38 The Return of Stickfigure Bob and the Last Crusade

39 This came to me in a dream

40 God, I love caffeine

41 How much do I have to make before I can stop picking up all those pennies?

42 Confessions of a political spy…the time I taped Newt Gengrich for the Democrats

43 Walking softly with a big stick, Teddy you were a genius

44 Don’t be a fool, you idiot!

45 John vs Shatner, ok I’ll take on Nimoy instead.

46 Idaho, land of sweet freedom and relatively expensive unibomber cabins. My new home.

47 The Catholic Vengeance squad, it is the little Inquisition that could.

48 Do the Hustle! Do do do do do duh do do do do do da.

49 There is nothing to fear but fear itself and Y2K

50 Behold! Bask in the magnificent opulance of the the Mark and John Special, the new karioki spectacular!

51 All my headlines inspired by God…or at least I didn’t do ‘em.

52 End of the year flashback. Or how I learned to relax and love the Hatshrapnel.

Here we delve into the subtle world of aged foreign literature.  A Mexican monk sold this to me on the Calle de los Muertos of Teotihuacan beneath the shadow of an Aztec pyramid. It is authentic ancient literature copied down through the ages from the original codices of the archaic and downfallen Mayan culture.  That was six hundred bucks well spent, let me tell you… I have translated the text with the aid of nothing more than the world’s most sophisticated language algorithms.

And now I share it with the world. Behold. 

Senior Cacahuete: A Good Man

It is the morning and Senior Cacahuete Fernando is not tired.

Hello, good morning. How are you?

It is time for the great vacation to South America.

Senior Cacahuete got on his bicycle.

But, there are bad men at the airport.

There are two bombs for the airplanes.

At the airport, a person asked Senior Cacahuete for money.

Thank you Mr. Warning! There are bad men, and Victor, in the bathroom. 

Senior Cacahuete bought a ticket.

Senior Cacahuete. You are here. I have a gun.

However! I am the police. Where are the bombs?

In the bathroom Mister.

Thank you Senior Cacahuete. You are a good man.

And the whole world was good and Senior Cacahuete had a good flight.

Ok, if you made it this far, you deserve an explanation. When I found this in an old box of high school stuff, I uttered a great big “What the bleep! This is fantastic!” That was a few months ago. Since then I have yet to figure out what I was thinking. Needless to say, I am more than willing to swear on your holy text of choice that I did not partake of any kind of mind altering substances in high school.

Mark, this is what you can expect every time you are three days late to posting. Be warned.