October 16, 2016

From “All Hexed Up” by Lex Dahle

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Magicists have long since concluded that a very particular type of hex, the hexus malificus, was responsible for most curses. This curse, widely known as the Common Hex, Merlin’s Hex, or less politically correctly as the Gypsy Hex, afflicts millions every year but is easily treated by commercially available and safe counter-curses and counter-hexes.

However, newly discovered documents from notable hex researcher Jumbicus the Magnificent indicate that many occurances of what are presumes to be the Common Hex may actually be a much rarer and more serious curse, which may also occur alongside and worsen the Common Hex. Named the Swiss Curse after the first cases were catalogued near Chur in Grisons, it may explain why some otherwise normal Common Hexes last for years with debilitating results.

If a Common Hex curse is actually the Swiss Curse, or is inflicted alongside it by natural magic or by design, it may explain why normal counter-curses are sometimes ineffective as well.

The American Magical Association has declined to comment, but many fringe elements have declared this new research a victory and validation.

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October 15, 2016

From “The Papa Przewalski’s Pizza Psychic” by Welsh Pietrzak

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Being psychic must be great, they say. You’d get all the free stock tips you could ever want, be able to dominate conversations, and rule the world. Asimov wrote about a psychic mutant so powerful that he conquered the known galaxy.

Me? I deliver pizzas to drunk Southern Michigan University students in Hopewell.

You might ask, or think about asking, why this is. I’ll know either way, but only if you’re coherent.

Peoples’ thoughts are a disorganized soup from which comprehensible words and images only haphazardly arise. So while it’s easy to see what someone’s about to say, the lead time is really short–a second or less. Most people just don’t think that far ahead, and they think so fast that it’s tough to keep up.

That’s when you aren’t getting flashes of suppressed desires and gummed-in stale jokes. So much of what I pick up is farts and sex. SO MUCH.

Add to that the fact that I have to focus and pay attention. If I think about something else, it’s like overhearing a conversation a room over. I might get the gist, I might not. But it can be exhausting and distracting picking up on the sexual fantasies of a 68-year-old in the next apartment over when you’re trying to study, believe you me.

I also don’t fit into the “Esmerelda the gypsy” mold that people expect from psychics. I am built like a linebacker, six feet tall and 200 lbs plus. Ladies aren’t meant to be that big, at least not according to clothing stores. People don’t think as much when you intimidate them, and their thoughts often turn to critiquing my appearance as a Bride of Frankenstein.

Which leads me to Papa Przewalski’s Pizza. It offers three things that are extremely valuable to a psychic: flexible hours, free food, and long stretches where I can plug my headphones in and blast other peoples’ thoughts out of my head with heavy metal music.

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October 14, 2016

From “Saving An Endangered Hominid With Bunnies” by B. Pal

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“It’s really quite a simple process,” says Zadume Magarabad, the initiative’s local team leader. “We send out the drones, which are modified from commercially available bomb disposal robots, and they distribute the pellets in every direction using a little feed ramp like the ones you use to feed livestock.”

The pellets are specifically designed to attract local wildlife with their sweet taste. When small animals–hares, stoats, voles, and the like–eat the drone-scattered pellets, they become innoculated against sylvatic plague, which is largely spread by fleas.

Some have asked why Magarabad’s team has to use drones to vaccinate bunnies, which doesn’t seem to have much to do with their stated purpose. “Bunnies are its food!” he laughs. “If you vaccinate the food, you vaccinate the food chain.” When pressed about why his team isn’t addressing the problem more directly, Magarabad adds “Have you ever tried to find a yeti to give them their shots? It’s not easy.”

Sylvatic plague, which was introduced by climbers to the Himalayas in the 1960s, has decimated the already fragile yeti populations. During an outbreak, up to 100% of a yeti family group may die. By inoculating their food supply, the team hopes to save the gigantopithicids from extinction. With the population already pressured by a decrease in its natural range and illegal hunting, some experts fear that the sylvanic plague might be the last straw for the endangered species.

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October 13, 2016

From “Tom Petty Wins the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics” by the Hopewell Democrat-Tribune

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At the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today, the Nobel Committee bestowed the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics to chart-topping singer-songwriter Tom Petty for his epochal 1989 single “Free Fallin’.”

In a prepared statement, the Nobel Committee announced Mr. Petty’s win “for having created new awareness of equations for falling bodies and expressing the notion of universal gravitation in the great American pop tradition” through the song. As a laureate, Tom Petty will recieve a gold medal, a diploma, a stipend of 8 million Swedish kronor, and a lifetime honorary appointment to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The Academy’s spokesperson, neurologist Dr. Sven-Olaf Larsson, noted in his statement that some may take issue with the award being “frivolous.” “I understand that this is an unexpected choice,” Dr. Larsson said, “but after much reflection and discussion and reflection, the Committee was unable to think of a figure with a greater role in promoting universal gravitation than Mr. Petty and his song ‘Free Fallin’.'”

Reached for comment at his home in Encino, California, Mr. Petty demurred when asked to make a statement but declared himself “honored and surprised.” A statement issued by his publicist later in the day declared that “Mr. Tom Petty is delighted to accept the award, and urges all his fans to continue to fly high whilst maintaining a healthy respect for gravity.”

Others who had been favored for the award included Swiss high energy particle researcher Dr. Lana Kleinschmidt, American quantum string theorist Dr. Caesar Hernandez, and Russian astrophysicist Dr. Ivan Lebedev. Their projects had included safe and reliable nuclear fusion, time travel and probability, and machines to recycle extraterrestial CO2 into oxygen for future colonization of Mars.

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October 12, 2016

From “The Necrotech Precedent” by GesteCo LLC GmbH

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Shortly after the demon posessing the artifact slew the CEO and inhabited her still-bleeding form, the GesteCo board of directors meeting dissolved into chaos.

Shareholders attempted to force the revenant from its (?) position, citing Clause 32 of the company bylaws (“in cases where the CEO dies or is incapacitated”). However, a white knight investor in the form of Necrotech Holdings prevented this. It injected capital into the company by buying shares and citing the case of its own CFO, a demonic gestalt of corrupted souls inhbiting the husk of a 13th-century alchemist.

Under the new (or the same?) CEO, GesteCo posted record profits its following quarter, due largely to its expansion into dark energy research, soul oil extraction, peonage, and consumer products.

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October 9, 2016

From “The Other Dark Meat” by Anonymous

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Hatched under a blood moon from a black egg laid by a hen that had been hexed by a witch or something, Peckabella the Dark Chicken was the most evil fowl ever to walk the earth.

Her Dark Eggs were sold at a local farmer’s market and uickly gained infamy both for their robust taste and their 100% evil content (by volume). Misfortune invariably befell anyone who handled, ate, or touched one of these black oblate spheroids of doom, but they also had a surprisingly robust taste.

Eventually, the farmers decided that Peckabella’s reign of doom over the barnyard had to stop. They made plans to cook her into a pot pie for the neighbors. But the evil chicken had the last laugh: while a pot pie did show up on the neighbors’ doorstep the next day, Peckabella was seen in the farmyard soon after. It was the farmers that were never seen again.

The dark chicken ran the farm under an alias until she disappered a few years later during a solar eclipse.

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October 8, 2016

From “Invasive Roundabouts” by Auburn D’Soto

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Originally native to the island of Great Britain, the roundabout is an urban spirit that takes the form of a massive circle blocking an intersection. It feeds off the energy of wasted time, momentum, and frustration to grow and reproduce. The largest and oldest roundabouts have multiple lanes, having become far more efficient in their harvesting of misery.

A pregnant roundabout was imported to New York in 1989 in the mistaken belief that it could reduce fatalies at Dead Man’s Corner in Queens. From that single progenitor a massive infestation of invasive roundabouts resulted, and with no native predators they have expanded aggressively at the expense of native four-way stops.

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October 7, 2016

From “Astral Affections™ Dating Service” by Calista Stofferan

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I had exhausted all the usual avenues of dating. The bar scene, online matchmaking sites, the local matchmaker in my shtetl, nothing seemed to being the prospect of love any closer.

Then I tried Astral Affections™, the award-winning dating program for out-of-body experiences. By leaving my mortal shell and projecting my ego into the Realms Beyond, I was able to stroll the streets of mighty Celephaïs free from the constraints of mortal affection.

Without Astral Affections™, I never would have met the love of my life, Shar-Udar. Some back home may say that a guy like me could never work things out with a being of pure dreamcrystal coalesced from the souls of drowned insectoir concubines. But I say that we, and our family of precipitate dreamworms, are proof otherwise.

Try Astral Affections™. It works.

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October 1, 2016

From “Irritable Time Syndrome” by GesteCo LLC GmbH

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NARRATOR: Do you notice that time seems to pass irregularly for you?

YOUNG WOMAN: I had just gone for a jog around the park but I’d been gone for six days, long enough for the police to open an investigation!

NARRATOR: Do seemingly normal events seem to take far too long, or happen far too quickly?

MATRONLY LADY: I had just sat down to tea and then, all of a sudden, my thirties had passed on 6.2 seconds.

NARRATOR: You’re not alone.

TEENAGER: I know the clock said it was only six seconds, by from my point of view it was thirty-six thousand years. I used the time to invent a new language.

NARRATOR: If you or someone you know experiences random bouts of irregular time, you may suffer from Irritable Time Syndrome, a chronological disease experienced by one in twenty adults. But now, there’s something to help.

YOUNG WOMAN: Chronosterol.

MATRONLY LADY: Chronesterol.

TEENAGER: Chronesterol.

NARRATOR: Once-daily Chronestrol can help you with your Irritable Time Syndrome. Ask your chronologist today. Possible side effects include nausea, upset stomach, headahce, deja vu, memory loss, temporary temporal dislocation syndrome (TTDS), and dry mouth. Stop taking Chronesterol immediately if you experience sudden aging or sudden youngening.

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September 29, 2016

From “For Want of a Coffee Pot” by Anonymous

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For want of a circuit the coffee pot was lost
For want of a coffee pot the coffee was lost
For want of coffee the temper was lost
For want of a temper the argument was lost
For want of an argument the contract was lost
For want of a contract the firm was lost
For want of a firm the jobs were lost
For want of a job the livlihoods were lost
For want of a livlihood the economy was lost
For want of an economy the country was lost
For want of a country the thermonuclear arsenal was lost
For want of a thermonuclear arsenal, the world descended into a period of anarchy and nuclear winter from which there was no return until the sun expanded in its red giant phase and swallowed the broiling Earth
All for want of a coffee

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