Sun, 02 Mar 1997Please send your queries c/o misterdark@mail.geocities.com
WHY NOT MR. WONDERFUL?
Dear Mr. Wonderful,Since when did Mr. Wonderful become a follower of Vedanta? How does that effect your peceptions of the western world in which you've always resided? Do you feel like a Hindu trapped in a Catholic's body, or what?
-The Stirred Sage
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Dear Sage,Mr. Wonderful embraces all creeds and beliefs. In his quest to become the All-Being, Master of Time, Space and Dimension, there is no room for quibbling or second chances. Any religion has lessons for the seeker, especially those religions that feature naked people prominently.
I still love the western world, especially when you travel far enough so that most of it is east of you. Hawaii is a nice place to perceive the western world from.
Most often, I feel like an Albigensian trapped in the body of a Hickory
Farms spokesperson. Thank you for asking.
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MR. WONDERFUL--WHEN DOGMA ISN'T ENOUGH
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MR. WA-WA-WA-WA-WONDERFUL
Dear Mr. Wonderful:What's the deal with the Darwin fishes? You either see a traditional IOXYE(sp?) OR a Darwin fish. You never see both. Does this mean that you either believe in the Creation and reject evolution, or you believeevolution and reject the Creation? Is every Darwin fisher an atheist, and every IOXYE person suspicious of modern science? Can't I believe in God and evolution? If I put both fishes on my car, will a lightning bolt immediately strike me dead? If so, is it God, or just Mother Nature thinning the herd?
--St. Hedwig
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Dear Heddy,That's a very good question. So good, in fact, that I'm going to suppress my first instinct, which is to give a short, off-topic answer like "Yes it's communicable, but put some ointment on it and it will clear right up." You deserve better than that, and so I turned to some experts.
FRANK ZAPPA has this to say: "We must be vigilant! Victims of this psychic manipulation could wind up haunting the mini-malls of America, like the zombies from _Night of the Living Dead_, stalking human souls in their sacred vehicles, marked on the rear bumper with the 'Sign Of The Fish.' Forget about a Russian invasion - these guys live next door to you! Develop those reflexes folks! Every time you see The Fish, think about using The Harpoon."
GOD says: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth..."
JOSEPH CAMPBELL says: "The Hindu legend of the birth of the great sage Vyasa from a fish-born virgin nicknamed Fishy Smell (whose proper name, however, was Truth) may recur to mind at this point..."
As an experiment, I placed a Holy Bible next to a Choose Your Own Adventure book (#11-Mystery Of The Maya). No lightning struck, no blood burst forth, no hailstones battered me senseless. I do feel a little hungry. None of the Cosmic Powers seem to mind the conjunction of the sacred and the secular, so your car should be safe.
Whether one can simultaneously hold belief in Creation and Evolution, well... Let's just say you have to cut off a few bits from each to make them fit in the same box. It's possible, but it's not the orthodox version of either. You can believe in *a* God and Darwin, but it's not the same God that Pat Robertson believes in. And to tell the truth, Darwin probably doesn't want people believing in him so much as his turtles and stuff. Unless he gets a royalty on all those walking fish, you really aren't pledging your allegiance to evolution, just "Clever-bastard-hood".
The bottom line is: if you're a superficial enough Christian that you think God wants you to own a car, then no, you probably don't think enough to accept evolution. And if you're a smug enough fan of science that you think a novelty from the seventies is cool to have on a car, then you're probably too arrogant to have faith.
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MR. WONDERFUL--WHERE THE KARMA MEETS THE DOGMA
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P.S. You all know how the Jesus Fish is derived from the Greek Letters for ÒJesus Christ, Son Of God", or some such, right? IXYOE=Ichthos=Fish. Well, here at the lab we've decided to play that game: "Mr. Wonderful Answers All"--MWAA! Get a big silver pair of lips and smack 'em onto your bumper! It's a secret sign! MWAA!
MR. WONDERFUL'S BITS
***********FAN FICTION***********FAN FICTION**************** This just came across the Wonderful desk and we thought you might like to get a glimpse:"This past Thursday reporters in India were stunned when they saw children of a local tribe enacting a ritual believed to have been lost in the fourteenth century from the Albigensians. Even more surprising to the onlookers was the fact that the children were carrying large smoked salamis and cheeses. Reporters were diverted from attempts at communication with the children when a horrible scent suddenly spread throughout the air. After taking refuge in a nearby van the reporters claimed to have seen Visnu in distance.
It is this reporter's opinion that said reporters must have inhaled a little too deeply of the Smoked scent."
Our thanks go out to "Scoop of the Jungle" for that bit.*****************FOLLOWUP QUERY************FOLLOWUP QUERY************
Dear Mr. Wonderful,
I have a Darwin fish on my bumper and live right smack in the middle o' Moron, uhh, Mormon country. I'm very happy about it. Am I arrogant?
Signed,
Cute fish with feet are better than scales.
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Dear Cute,You've gone beyond arrogant, my friend. According to _Reader's Digest_, Mormon-baiting in a gun-rack town is one of the top fifty "Foolish Things that'll Get you Kilt." It's the religious equivalent of tugging on Superman's cape. It's like making love on a roller coaster. It's coating yourself in barbecue sauce, climbing a mountain and shouting, "Hey Cougars! Cooooo-gars!"
However, as long as your insurance is paid up and you don't actually expect to change any minds with your secular humanist dogtags, whatever makes you happy is cool by Mr. Wonderful.
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MR. WONDERFUL CANNOT BE STOPPED!
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MR. WONDERFUL'S GUEST COLUMN
Allow the Captain of Cool to step aside, Let the Master of Mantissa take a bow, Put the hook on the Leviathan of Learning, and let's give a big warm e-mail welcome to a guy whose eyes are bigger than his fingers.....
*****************GUEST LECTURE**********GUEST LECTURE******************* Dear Mr. Wonderful,
Please allow me to add some credibility to your dime-store,seltzer-bottle-and-big-funny-pants, advice column. I know your honkey white ass feels the need to shine every now and again, and I'm not gonna knock you off your Pedantic Pedestal in your Ivory Tower (re: honkey white ass point of view. No, actually my mission here is to give some more sources for St. Hedwig, who had a problem with being morally drawn and quartered by dueling bumber stickers.
Philip Kitcher wrote a book called "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creation Science". It is a phenomenal book attacking not Creation, not God, not the Bible, but rather those who wish to have "scientific" creationism stand side by side evolution in our schools. Anyone interested in this debate at all is highly encouraged to arm themselves in the good fight by the contents of this excellent debunking of creation "science" rhetoric. The point is well made that religion and science are not mutually exclusive, it is only pay mongering rabble rousers who make it seem so, kind of a Don King of the Pulpit deal.
Darwin, by the way, was a god-fearing, bible-thumping, blue blooded englishman who was too engaged in keeping the status quo for the good of his aristocratic to even publish the "Origin of the Species" for nearly 20 years. He had major moral dilemnas stretching him between his good, church-goin' ways and the stark truths of reality. He finally came to the conclusion that God works in His own ways, not by anything conveniently usable by man (or the Church). Says Darwin near the end of "Origin":
"To my mind it [laws of creation] accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become enobled."
Signed,
A. Theist
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Dear Mr. A,
Thanks for the info-tainment, True Believer!
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MR. WONDERFUL IS GENEROUS AND LIBERAL
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MR. WONDERFUL'S DEAD HORSE
A little while ago, I made reference to that wonderful Reader's Digest article on the top fifty "Things that'll get you Kilt". I suppose this sort of thing was inevitable...
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Mr W-
If it gets you Kilt, isn't that the best thing a little Scot Lass could ever hope fur?
The Rampant Scot
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Dear Scotty,Actually, that bit's called the Sporran.
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MR. WONDERFUL FEARS NO JOKE
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MR. WONDERFUL'S MYSTERY TOUR
Dear Mr. Wonderful,A few of us were sitting around having a slightly illegal evening, when, as would happen in such a situation, we started pondering your genius column. And we came upon 2 unanswerable questions, and we hope you can give us your wisdoms upon the subjects.
1. Is life acutally a big purple scary monster that is related to the under-the-bed monsters?
2. Who, currently, is the best bartender of all the taverns in Boston?
--==wuzupcracker!==--
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Dear 'ZupI will answer your unanswerable questions, you little hooligans, if andonly if you cease pluralizing the word "wisdom". Otherwise I will be forced to knock you silly with a Strunk and White.
1. "Acutally", it's not. I am.
2. This is a fascinating question and I thought about asking some experts (i.e., people who have been to Boston in the past six years) but then decided to watch TV instead. Since "Cheers" and "Boston Common" are both set in Beantown and I just finished reading "Skylar in Yankeeland" which makes fun of the Hub, I'm as good as any friggin expert. To simulate drunkeness, I banged my head against the desk a few times. The answer to your question is Woody.
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SHROOM ME, I'M WONDERFUL
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MR. WONDERFUL SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
Dear Mr. Wonderful,Here in Santa Cruz, we smear barbecue sauce on ourselves and run through the meadows looking for mountain lions all the time. Surprisingly few people die this way--I am assuming the pumas are thinking "stupid smelly hippies" and hiding from us. It is far more common for people who are tripping on this that and the other to mistake themselves for cougars and spend all night stalking deer in the meadows (it's true--ask the night proctor!)
Does that make us arrogant? Or just stupid?
Grub Girl
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Dear GG,First things first: the reason your mates are not being eaten has to do mainly with the fact that Mountain Lions live on Mountains, not in Meadows. Your basic Meadow Lion is a solitary creature, given to contemplation and light opera. Furthermore, it is well documented that the Meadow Lion has no particular taste for barbecue sauce, preferring a tangerine marmalade or a mint sauce on the side.
I myself have tripped over many a root or branch while in nature, which is why I avoid it. I also trip over small tables and children. I suppose if I struck my head hard enough I might think I was a Puma, but then I'd just go around asking people "One Lump or Twoooo?" This "Night Proctor" (a dangerous title if I ever heard one) would be well advised to report the phenomena to the AMA so they could ignore it.
It seems to me that Santa Cruzians are neither arrogant nor stupid, but just dreadfully, horribly, frighteningly bored.
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WONDER MAKES RIGHT.
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Wed, 12 Mar 1997
MR. WONDERFUL'S _THE WALL_
Wonderful;I finally got to see Laibach, a band I actually enjoy (a rare thing in itself), but I came in late and missed the first half of the set. In premonition of said event, I have been very depressed and do not feel the constant motivation I need to accomplish my personal goals. While the acomplishments of an individual's life are insignificant, the long term results are also unremarkable when compared to the greater scope of time existant; unfortunately this knowledge does not lift the burden of every single minute of existance. (In fact the only comparison of time and reason is in the interaction and observation of others but that is another paragraph) What I desire help with is regaining a sense of idyllic enjoyment, not even purpose. Sex, alcohol, drugs, love, hate, driving, sleep, tv, books, pritti pictures, posessions, music, companionship, and comics have all been worn out; lobotomy, education, and AMC/Turner classics are only temporary and poorly timed balms. What can Mr. Wonderful and his pirated copy of Cecil Adams suggest? I feel very lonely and glum. And I don't want to move to California.
ENdUei
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Dear Glum,Yes, given that we are all insects, doomed and screwed from the start, there really isn't much point to it all. Not even bass-filled fascism and techno-throbbings can change that. If you insist on thinking about such things, be prepared to Papa Hemingway your way out in short order.
But have you really worn out all those things you listed? I mean, think about it...isn't there maybe just one little thing that you haven't mined completely? I think you know what I'm talking about...
Hatred. Hatred is your only salvation. Learn to feel the burn of a deep and abiding anger. Despise. Condemn. Allow the molten core of your soul to pour out, to crush and devour. Focus the beam of your rage, laser-burn your name on the hearts of your enemies. Raise the cup of bitterness to your lips, take great gulps of bile and vitriol. Burn. Burn. Clench your teeth and put your fist through the glass. Acid for blood and smiles full of knives. Gorge yourself at the bloody meat table of your own pain. Remember every sharp moment. Let them cut you. Burn fire blood and slash through history. Learn spite. Learn scorn. Curse your way to life. Resurrect your phoenix ashes on a pyre of brilliant Hate.
And visit Disneyland right after.
ARE YOU BORED? Come visit Mr. Wonderful's City of Love! Always entertaining! Plenty of Green Beer!
MR. WONDERFUL IS A GEEK!
Beer Mr.Glorious, Magnificent, Magnanamous, Procrastinative, Somewhat Pragmatic, Enigmatic, Automatic, Slightly Pneumatic, Catalitic, And Mostly Carcinogenic, Wonderful,
After watching Star Trek, and its children, for many years now I have decided it necissary to ask this question. Why in the name of all that is warp driven does no one ever die in any of these stinking films?!
They get eaten, stabbed, dumped out air locks, trapped in worm holes, possesed by aliens, disintegrated, melted down, besieged by Tribbles, lost in sub space, blown up, frozen, etc. I mean how many times can some mutant dung beetle crawl in your ear and eat your brain before you cease to be?
Picard: Turned into a Borg, nearly died from several diseases that up until the last two minutes of the show were deemed most certainly incurable, Spock:Zapped by fourty billion rads of warp core radiation causing the skin on his face to melt, then gets shot out of a torpedo tube... But oh no... tisk tisk we can't kill him. No we'll drop a bomb on the planet he slammed into in his capsule, and barbecue the suface. Then in a couple of days he'll not only be alive, but a young man. Ain't that a hum dinger!
My point being... :-)... The episodes would be so much better if people would die for good at least once per season. Babylon 5 for instance... Now there is a good wholesome show full of killing.
Anyway, I was wondering if you could explain this phenomenon to me.
Perturbedly yours,
Jesterlovich
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Dear Pon-Farr,I shall explain all. First, I'd like to thank everyone for getting off the religious topics for a while, as I was using up my Karmic Credit Card at a pretty good clip. And I'd also like to point out that y'all are starting to write longer letters, which is fine, but means I have to be funny quicker, or my ratings drop.
Well, right off the bat, you're showing a tragic elitism. From my seat in the third row I've seen plenty of people die in the Star Trek future. Ensigns bite it at the drop of a warp coil. Deck Crews are routinely flushed into space. Even on the TV show people in red shirts were turned into little cubes and crushed. Gary Mitchell got crushed. A lot of crushing going on. And howbout that guy that ate phaser to get away from Khan's control? And...I'm revealing too much about myself here, aren't I?
Point is, the people you're talking about are Officers. Of course officers don't die. That's even true today. Officers work very hard to get to the point where they can sit fifty miles back from the front and phone in other people's death. It's a mark of distinction, breeding and Satanic Pacts.
Babylon 5 is _so_ cool.
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WONDERFUL IS AS WONDERFUL DOES.
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MR. WONDERFUL SUPRA MORTIS
Dear Mr. Wonderful,I would like to share a particularly interesting forensic case with you that happened to come across my desk tonight. It seems that a rich banker in Detroit was working late in his office. He spilled a cup of coffee, wheeled his rolling desk chair backwards to pick up the cup (details like these we can tell from the bizygomatic lenth of the skull) and accidently slipped off his chair and was impaled twice on the same #2 pencil, piercing the left side of the cranial vault just anterior to that suture-whaddyacallit-thingie.
What makes this case interesting is the occurrence of a little something that we forensic anthropologists like to call a "cadaveric spasm," in which certian muscles of the body will unexpectedly contract at the moment of death in interesting, unusual ways. In this instance, our impaled rich banker experienced a cadaveric spasm that caused his body to call a cab, go to the airport, get on a flight to San Jose, CA and from there take a few busses to the campus of UC Santa Cruz, where he buried himself in the woods behind the Social Sciences #1 building. (As a side note, the body was later discovered and excavated for use on the final exam in Anthropology 103, a course that is causing many hardworking college students severe headaches tonight).
My question for you, Mr. Wonderful, is this:
Aren't dead things fun?
Yours respectfully,
Meat-lad, P.H.D.
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Dear Doctor Spock,WHO MAKES THE JOKES HERE, HUH? HUH? YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?
After decompressing:
Mr. Wonderful has been studying the process of cadaveric spasm for some time now. I am particularly interested in finding the gene that causes it (as genes cause everything: Gene Rayburn, Gene Rodenberry, Mr. Green Genes (Happy St. Patrick's Day!)) so that I might develop another great boon to mankind, perhaps the greatest since the "shuffle" feature on CD players, to wit: The Self-Cremating Corpse. Your tale has led me to start a full scale study in Detroit. I suspect, however, that your business-corpse was simply trying to get another cup of coffee.
As to your question, I defer to our resident expert in such matters. Mr. Dark says: "On the whole, dead things are not so much fun as dying things. A sizable portion of my day is spent in contemplation of the little things. The fall of a leaf, the whisper of a kitten's whiskers. I don't admire these things, just contemplate them the way a gunman does his target. All things being equal, I prefer explosions."
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MR. WONDERFUL HAS POWERFUL FRIENDS
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Back to Behemoth... Back to the Librarium Index... or On to April
Wisdom and Wit © 1997 Mark Anthony Masterson. Thank you to all the querents (Especially Matt and Tekurah, who played along first), long may your lights blink mercilessly.
