Mind Scalpel

Apparently the threat of terrorism is like cumin, or chili powder: sprinkle it on an epic screw-up and it makes everything taste a lot better.

Witness what happened recently in Florida, which was plunged briefly back into the Stone Age by rolling power outages. In practically every article about that event, there was a statement that the blackouts did not appear to be caused by terrorism.

Wow! That makes me feel so much better! It’s very comforting to know that, through no intentional act, an entire slice of United States civilization was taken off-line, just by completely random events. We can all rest much easier now.

One gets the feeling that we’ll start seeing news squibs like the following:

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So, what’s all this fuss about the South Korean company that’s offering to clone your pets? Okay, granted, there is one small issue, mainly that the people who are rich enough to have this done tend to have offensively annoying pets, and therefore we could be polluting the world with more of these (click at your own risk). Still, one could engage in countermeasures by cloning big, fierce, poodle-eating hell mastiffs, so it could end up being a self-compensating system.
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As part of my Secret Plan for Global Domination, I have of course been developing an army of nigh-invulnerable, genetically-engineered super-soldiers, which, as Steven Covey would say if he were a would-be Global Despot rather than a self-help guru, is a “Quadrant II” activity for evil geniuses. (Incidentally, when I execute Phase I of my Rapid International Takeover, self-help gurus will be in the first group against the wall; self-actualization will be irrelevant when everyone’s highest values will be whatever I dictate. But, I digress.)

Anyway, one typical downfall of standard evil geniuses who develop super-soldier armies is that their super-soldiers tend to rebel, often at the most inconvenient times. I’m not a standard evil genius; I’m an exceptional one. So a primary focus of my research and development activities has been not just on enhancing my minions’ physical abilities (strength, power, speed, reflexes, resistance to pathogens, ability to endure long car trips without bathroom breaks, etc.) and mental powers (situational awareness, rapid learning so they can be speedily grown in vats and quickly infused with appropriate skills, high aversion to daytime television, and so on), but also on ensuring that they will remain fanatically loyal to me.

So naturally I’ve been sticking electrodes in subjects’ brains and figuring out what can be done with them since, oh, heck, it’s been so long I can’t even remember. Perhaps you are now starting to understand a few of the reasons this blog is named “Mind Scalpel.”

That’s why I enjoy seeing news stories like this one, describing some “new” discoveries that I had developed and surpassed, in secret, years ago. See, some doctors are all excited that when they were poking around in the brain of a 50-year-old obese guy in search of the “don’t eat so much, knucklehead” synaptic center of his brain, they discovered that their patient recalled, in great detail, a scene from 30 years before:
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I know you’ve heard the commercials — you’re driving along, listening to the radio, and suddenly some guy says in an incredibly matter-of-fact voice “Hello, my name is Stan O’Hanlahan…”.

And then the hushed, minor-key Piano Chord from Hell plays: “*PLING*”

Stan O’Hanlahan then, incredibly matter-of-factly, spends the next thirty seconds describing an escalating odyssey into Disease Hell that begins with him talking about how he was a normal guy, just driving along listening to the radio, and segueing rapidly (but still incredibly matter-of-factly) into a series of health disasters, most always involving some form of cancer, and usually tossing in a tidbit of soul-crushing detail (”and then my eyes exploded” or “I tried to hug my daughter but my arms fell off”) that is clearly designed to freak you out, finally moving on to how the drug company selflessly developed a life-saving cure that brought him back to normal (with a realistic and lawyer-inspired note of caution, like “of course, this doesn’t work for everyone, and I still have no eyes/arms, but…”) while the music changes from the minor key to a major key, the joyous oboe kicks in, and some soothing woman comes on and breathes the drug company’s name gently into your ear a few times.
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So now I’m aware of at least one business that is installing the equivalent of “SpeedPasses,” as made by this company, at their cafeteria cashiers. It’s as if it’s been so much effort to get food in this country that we just had to do something to eliminate any conceivable inconvenience: “My god! These people are starving! You can’t expect them to find cash and get change, or wait to sign a credit slip, before they get their food. That would be cruel! They’re practically wasting away!”

So now you can practically run by the cashier (or, given our obesity rates, move at a nice fast waddle) on your way to jam down your hamburger. Helpful this is?

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