On a Run Down Through Mexico

Eyes on the ground are imperative when you are walking a road cut through the jungle. In Southwestern Ontario only ticks will try and climb into your pants and there's nothing else to worry about. In Honduras everything has fangs, everything has poison and everything jumps onto the cuffs of your pants when your foot lands near it. These are aggressive critters, and you need to be vigilant or you end up screaming like so many other Firestone acolytes. 2.5 million people with their pants tucked into their socks are coming up on the Guatemalan/Honduran border, on their way to confront a horde of biometric organisms that have set South American technology back to the 1930's. Millions of biorobos are scattered through the south of Columbia and Venezuela, grabbing anything with internet capabilities and tossing it into the nearest lake, slowly making their way north as they send each successive region back to the dark ages where storytelling was the only way to entertain. An enterprising bard could probably make a bit of coin down there now. I'll have to remember that for later.

It's incredible how much easier it is to cross from Mexico to Guatemala than it is America to Mexico. It's literally the difference between having your belongings torn apart by a Mexican border guard and just showing a Guatemalan that you have a passport. It doesn't have to be your passport, because they don't get out of their chair to look at it in Guatemala, but they at least want to know you have someone's documentation. Most of the Firestone migration made it through without incident. There are rumours of one smart-ass acolyte sarcastically applauding how thorough the Guatemalan guards were, and now he won't talk about what happened in the windowless room he got dragged into. The Constant Law of Comeuppance, the karmic physics equation that seems to underpin the balance of space-time by carving chunks out of people who test fate for the fuck of it, it works, and it will be in physics textbooks one day. That smart-ass acolyte who got the Level 2 search could prove it, if he would put up his hand in a crowd of 2.5 million so we could find him. C'est la vie, eh?

The Ontario election broke me, broke everything I tried to do. There was too much, the history, the platforms, the talking points, the mudslinging, there were so many valid ways in, picking one over another defied logic because there was always something sitting right beside it that seemed like a better angle. Stutter to article length with that tactic and by the end you have something that will never hold together because stretching a thought into a paragraph is useless when everything you need to say can be covered easily in a single sentence. The PC's didn't have a leader or a platform, Liberals = Gas Plants, and you want another Bob Rae? And why can't the Libertarian and Freedom Parties get along? They should have so much in common. Then the None of the Above Party showed up just in time to present an option to people who wanted an elected representative that didn't have a fucking clue. So I got on a plane to Mexico to dodge the confusion and ennui machine and left my absentee ballot at the gate on my way to join up with the Firestone migration. For now the white noise of election season has faded, so hopefully I'll be back in time to cover London's mayoral election, which should be fun because all you have to do is fill out a single page of paperwork to run for Mayor of London. No primaries, no leadership elections, no oversight at all. That's why crazy people can run for Mayor, and that's why paying attention to municipal elections can be tolerable. I'm looking forward to it.

For now I'm amongst the Firestone migration, coming up on the Honduran border, constantly checking that my pants are still tucked into my socks lest a living nightmare start burrowing into my skin. Sleep is a form of torture along this road. There are thousands of people all around you, all in their own tents, but you are alone in yours and questioning it's integrity while your face is next to the ground where the insects walk, constantly thinking that there's no way a single layer of nylon could keep out something with tiny knives on it's face. The sleeping conditions have the acolytes as bleary eyed and short tempered as I usually am. It doesn't make for pleasant day travel, but at least we are fairly well fed. The Catholic populations of Latin America have a lot of room in their hearts for pilgrims on a pilgrimage, and they're trying their best to keep the acolytes travelling toward their goal, which most experts speculate is their own annihilation at the hands of a clearly superior biometric weapon. Reports out of London said Sandra was travelling with the migration. I'm keeping an ear out for her as I make my way. More next week from the crowded jungle roads of Honduras.

Update from the Firestone Migration; Goose-Shredder says What he Wants

With my chief expert on the lam and only commenting on the things he's most interested in, I've had to go over his head and contact Ovaltine Goose-Shredder's sociologist colleagues myself for news on the Firestone migration. According to eyewitness scientists, the leading edge of the massive human migration is currently 400 km north of Mexico City in the province of San Luis Potosi. The mass crossed the Mexican/American border over the last week of April and had shockingly few hiccups going through the process of 2 million bag checks and questionings. The scientists did observe one couple from Maine who were dismayed to find they had forgotten their passports and had to turn back. They'll probably snap out of their passive-aggressive monotone conversation around Tennessee.

The bottle-neck created by the border crossing has broken the migration into towns, each consisting of a couple thousand people. Breaking up the migration into smaller chunks of humanity is putting less strain on local amenities like restaurants and truck stops, and is generally making the travel more enjoyable for those involved. Further divisions beyond the towns are noted, as there are neighbourhoods of people sharing resources and utensils, but the neighbourhood divisions are harder to pinpoint and tend to shift from hour to hour. When you start tracing the associations through individuals, it's hard to say where one neighbourhood starts and another ends, as all borders drawn are borders crossed.

Along the roadsides, makeshift vendors and soup kitchens are set up by folks in front of the Firestone migration who want to help the acolytes but don't want to fight a broccoli-headed bio-weapon themselves. The soup kitchens will set up and begin doling out food to as many people as they can until they run out, often causing the family providing to go hungry for a few days. It's the kind of goodwill among humans only a common enemy can bring about. The sociologists think this is why there are so few issues throughout the Firestone migration. Pack together 2 million people in a stressful situation without a common goal and things will get dicey in a hurry. But if at the end of their journey they will have to rely on the stranger beside them in potential life or death combat, they'll make sure they don't offend them on the way to the battlefield.

And now on to the things Ovaltine Goose-Shredder is most interested in, namely people calling his colleague Neil deGrasse Tyson a philistine. The backlash against Tyson is because he said people should avoid pondering “deep” questions with no answers on the Nerdist podcast, and a bunch of philosophers stopped pondering questions with no answers long enough to get riled up about it. The following is Ovaltine Goose-Shredder's e-mail. I've changed a few pronouns so he addresses the wider public, instead of just me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is taking entirely too much shit from philosophers. It's shitty to watch someone with such stellar answers taking flak for the questions he didn't ask. He still ended up a scientist and a humanist. Leave Neil alone. He's doing fine. He just told other people how they could do fine like him. See? Everything's fine.

No matter what, curiosity is the evolutionary feature that keeps all species exploring and chasing ideas. To say that a person could not ponder deep questions without answers is impossible, we can't avoid it. We're relentless ponderers. Why a scientist and a philosopher can't see that this is a useless argument, that curiosity will go on spinning us out beyond the fringes of our answers regardless of anyone's opinion of it's merits, is kind of perplexing. You're both equally valid. Just chill and operate as you will. Neil can do fine not philosophizing, and other people can do whatever the fuck with their philosophizings.

As Massimo Pigliucci noted, this isn't the first time Neil has talked some smack about the Philosophy of Science. What Neil mentioned previously, and what is probably his main reason for derisively mentioning the philosophy of science, is that the field has not made a measurable contribution to physics since the 1920's, and no one has a rebuttal for that. If you're interested in results, Neil kind of has a point. If you want everyone off your back while you think the thoughts you want to think, I'll shut up now.

With love,

OGS

James Betty Seizes Editorial Control; Declares Everything Awesomer

In a stunning turn of events, James Betty has stormed the PAJ mainframe and cut the editorial staff out of “their property” and his first decree as Lord of PAJ is that I can stop writing everything like a god damn news brief. Can't I just tell a story like a person would, instead of hammering facts into a standardized format that conveys beautiful experiences through the stammering of an informative robot? Oh jesus, it took me two sentences to start sounding like a righteous wad. Ditching the sober second thought might be one of the worst ideas I've ever had. I'd love to make a crack about what happens when you turn off the autopilot here, but it's too soon. It's also a bad sign that I'm not even through the first paragraph and I'm already parroting the voice of the old master to subdue myself. Sarte was right about this freedom thing. It's going to take some courage to stick with this change, and it's more than just shouting down my own doubt. Those quotes up there are real. “Their property.” Lawyers said that. I'm countering a fairly legal letter with two crossed fingers and hoping the PAJ editors will realize spending money on lawyers to regain something that makes them zero dollars isn't a good investment. That letter they sent probably cost $300. Hopefully that's all they're willing to lose.

Working in journalism will gain you a few contacts in high places, and those contacts are especially handy when they have known about Heartbleed for years. Caligula Goonsquad and I are not especially friendly, in fact the extent of our relationship is him reading my e-mails and me not trusting him, but when I mentioned to Ovaltine Goose-Shredder via e-mail that I wanted to stage a coup d'etat at PAJ, Caligula gave me the username and password of the blog almost instantly. At the risk of ratting on Caligula after he did me a huge favour [not his real name, btw], I want to go on record saying I have someone doing favours for me inside the NSA. Hopefully the prospect of running into someone who is above the law will scare those lawyers away. They'll have better luck putting a t-shirt on a fish than sticking some consequences to an NSA agent. And I probably don't need to mention this, but I will anyway: Caligula Goonsquad has a malleable relation to morality. They're clay. They're molded into whatever his country needs. He's a good bureaucrat in that respect. Sometimes he molds them himself, but nothing's ever set in stone, and that makes him unpredictable and dangerous. And don't take me exposing him as a guarantee that he will turn against me, you don't know what that man is capable of.

Over the years there have been a few things the editors of PAJ and I have clashed over, but the fact is they've been pretty good about giving me leeway in the format when I asked for it. They've been good to me, and I don't forget that, but when they decided they wouldn't let me post a eulogy for Karen by telling me PAJ doesn't have an obit section, I knew I was done working with them. The format of the blog can be whatever we want it to be, so don't tell me you won't post an obituary, that's obviously not the reason. The only question left was what to do about striking out on my own, but before I could quit writing for PAJ Caligula handed down an answer from on high. Even though I despise everything about him and what he does, keeping the continuity with my past body of work was too big a plus to ignore. So I stole a website. Hear me out before you judge, or just don't judge.

Ovaltine Goose-Shredder introduced me to Karen seven years ago. We were quick friends and I loved her like I love anything that makes the world feel like a balanced place. Goosie I've known since high school. I didn't know there was a force on this planet that could bring his manic energy onto an even keel. The peace that followed Karen around almost made Goose-Shredder practical. Almost. I'm glad I saw the effect she had on the world around her. I'm glad I know her example. It gives me hope that I will see more of her likeness in the world in my later years. As the world's first human to be brought back from a lengthy death, Karen faced challenges both existential and personable that those of us without mechanical two stage pumps for a heart couldn't even imagine, and she stood up to these challenges with the grace she carried everywhere in her life. She will be missed, for real and forever this time.

PAJ will be back to reporting next week, only from now on it will be Awesomer. Welcome to the new shape of the news.

James Betty Finds Easter Full of Fear, Trembling

Alright, I've tried to come at this story from a few angles and they've all failed. This one centres so much around myself that it makes trying to write it with any sort of objective distance seem like a bad joke. In that vein, for today I'm just going to call myself an archivist to prevent any violation of the journalistic integrity of this publication. But Jeez-Louise does this story have me freaked out.

Earlier this week I thought I would start recording my life 24 hours a day, because last week I decided I was going to start living my life like a work of art and it needed to be documented. I attended my family's Easter celebration on a warm Sunday afternoon with my digital audio recorder in my shirt pocket to put the Betty clan's 25^th annual Easter Egg Battle Royale on record. It's kind of like the Hunger Games, except we destroy food instead of people. Each of the around 40 participants decorate a hard boiled egg and gather on the front lawn, and with everyone standing in a circle all the eggs are flung into the centre repeatedly until only one is left. That one is the winner. It wasn't mine. I finished second. I always finish second. In fact I'm getting a little sick of always being second place. That's how seriously we take this. There's a sash where your name joins the annals of family history. Anything with annals is serious.

But this isn't about me playing second fiddle to someone who should probably have an asterisk next to her win, because my Aunt's a pharmacist so of course she's got some form of doping going on. This is about the conversation I recorded with my Grandmother Muriel before the egg toss, where I realized that it's a pity no one was recording my Grandmother's life, because her knowing there was a witness around might have saved a few lives over the years. There's only one way to tell this story, and it's in Muriel's own words. The following is a transcript of the conversation I had Sunday afternoon with my Grandma Muriel on a sunny lawn.

James Betty: “These eggs would feed a lot of starving people in central Africa, you know.”

Muriel Betty: “They would go bad before they got there if we mailed them, dearie.”

JB: “I know that, it's just the principle of the thing.”

MB: “Just enjoy the game with your family. Don't attach too much to it. The important part is that we're all here, and we're happy there's another spring. It's a rebirth for all of us.”

[long pause]

MB: “Are you going to take issue with the blessing before the meal too?”

JB: “No, the blessing is nice. It's nice to hear someone voice their best wishes.”

MB: “Then why are you being a brat about the game we play?”

JB: “Because it's just a game, and I don't really have much else to say.”

MB: “Oh dearie, you can tell me anything.”

JB: “No I can't.”

MB: “Did I ever tell you about the conscientious objector I killed in 1940?”

JB: “What?”

MB: “He was assigned to be a firefighter in my hometown. One day when he came by my father's farm to buy some eggs I asked him why he hadn't gone to fight with all the other boys in town. He said he wouldn't raise a hand in violence against his fellow man. Now I don't know why the hell he thought Jerry didn't deserve a good whipping, and I asked him how a no good coward could still go showing his face around town. He said some gibberish about 'being the flesh the evils of the world make themselves known against' and it didn't make a lick of sense because Jerry was just awful, so I raised my pistol at him and said Mister, am I going to shoot you or are you going to stop me? Well he must have thought I was joking because he just laughed, and that didn't scare me one bit so I shot that coward down. From there I went running straight to the Judge who ran the General Store and told him what I did. He gave me a butterscotch candy for being such an imaginative girl. Never did say what he thought of the murder, though.”

JB: “No.... no no no...”

MB: “Around 1980 I finally started to understand what he had said, about being the flesh the evils of the world make themselves known against. I had to regret it first, but I had to get far enough from the person I was back then to do that. Then I understood. That man gave me his life to teach me that lesson.”

JB: “Lessons can be taught by talking too...”

MB: “Try to go your whole life without killing anyone, James.”

JB: “... Okay Grandma.”

MB: “Have a cookie, dearie.”

JB: “Is that a threat?”

MB: “You might have missed the point.”

Woah! Right? I still don't know how to process this, but the phrase “grandfathered in” makes so much sense now. Does she still have a handgun? Do senior citizens just have piles of illegal shit lying around their houses? What's in my Grandmother's attic? Whatever questions remain, the important lessons are clear: Grandma has a gun and she's not afraid to use it. Happy Easter everybody!

If We'd Just Stranded Putin on the Moon 2 Years Ago Like I Fucking Said...

Vladimir Putin could be ineffectually kicking moon dust and drinking a beige Russian knock-off of Tang through a zero-gravity crazy straw right now, but he isn't because a plan for Putin to live out the rest of his years in voluntary exile on the moon was passed over by the international community two years ago. As an idea, Putin getting off the Earth was very popular, but the costs involved in setting up a self-sufficient habitation on the moon proved prohibitive and the idea was dismissed as fun to think about but not a pragmatic use of resources, at least not until earlier this week when having Putin around started costing people their countries.

What began with the annexation of the Crimean province of southern Ukraine has led to Russian backed groups of armed rebels storming government and police buildings in parts of eastern Ukraine. With this, Russia has stationed a large military force on their Ukrainian border and vowed to invade if any ethnic Russians are attacked by Ukrainian forces, essentially daring Ukraine to raise a hand against the people tearing their country apart. International Relations expert Ovaltine Goose-Shredder says the situation is a case of entrapment on an international scale. “Russia are really being dicks here,” he said in a text message early Thursday, “sending [Russian] operatives in to stir up shit [in Ukraine] so they can have an excuse to invade? This is the kind of reprehensible trash only Russia could pull.”

The international community, while widely condemning Russia's actions, has reaffirmed that they made the correct decision in not sending Putin to the moon because the dismantling of Ukraine is looking more like a Russia problem than simply a Putin one. “What we're dealing with here is a country that feels they have the right to annex property to bring about their fated return to former glory as the Soviet Republic,” an unnamed source inside the United Nations said. The source was quick to point out that Russia was not bringing communism back, but that they were after the landmass, resources and international prestige the country enjoyed during the Soviet era. “Putin being gone would make no difference, Russia historically has had a giant head and they're looking to swell it some more. It would happen with any leader [in Russia].” The source also noted that Russia's use of extortion and entrapment for gaining wealth fit with their current post-Soviet economic model.

Russia's actions as of late have put the general public on edge, as the accumulating threats and incidents point towards a re-emergence of a Cold War mentality. What worries the public most is the precedent that Russia's annexation set. If Russia feels they have the right to take control of any piece of territory where people speak Russian, they could conceivably pull the move on the entire former Soviet bloc, as well as certain neighbourhoods in London and New York. Stopped for comment on Richmond late Thursday, Citizen Danny expressed doubt in Russia's competence as an actor on the international stage. “Didn't [Russia] give a bunch of women two years in the gulag for being objectively awesome? And then their whole gay thing? [Russia] is too clueless to be a country.” Experts agree that Russia's right to be a country seems to be based more on the fact that they've always been a country, and not on any qualitative judgement of the worth of their actions. Citizen Danny hopes Russia will “chill out with the invasions” soon.

Ovaltine Goose-Shredder Chased to Countryside After Copping to Gross Negligance

Revelations of Ovaltine Goose-Shredder being the architect of the biorobo genome that exploded out of Google's Antarctic cloning facility in a technology destroying fury have shaken the already tepid public perception of the world's foremost mad scientist, leading Goose-Shredder to duck from the public eye and conduct his press conference in a largely deserted restaurant south of Mount Forest, Ontario. Showing a rare sign of humility, Goose-Shredder allowed his prepared statement to be interrupted and indulged the overwhelming question of how he could do this to us. Goose-Shredder began by insisting that he did not believe the technology to bring the biorobo genetic code to life existed, and that he only created the code out of the barest necessity. “Look, I needed a job,” he said early Thursday, “and I needed a place to sleep because I accidentally blew up my house, and I needed a distraction because my wife Karen had her first death in that explosion, and trust me, the first time your spouse dies is by far the hardest one to deal with.” In summation, Goose-Shredder needed to get out of town, and an avenue that popped up happened to be a Swedish national offering a bunk on a boat to anyone who knew how to code a genome. Even though Goose-Shredder didn't know how to code a genome, he says he didn't let that stop him from taking the position.

The experience of working on the boat was a trying one for Goose-Shredder, who said Hjalmar would get in his grill every day about “'Google is evil' this and 'technology will only destroy us' that.” Despite avoiding him as much as possible, Goose-Shredder got to know Hjalmar well enough to realize that the GASP leader has a much deeper investment beyond what he sees as his noble crusade in the defence of human agency and creativity. “Now me, in the time I worked with [Hjalmar], I didn't ever believe Google had a secret cloning base, and I made sure [Hjalmar] knew that.” Goose-Shredder said, explaining that his discussions with Hjalmar would get heated to the point where the scientist would end up throwing Erlenmeyer flasks at him, something Hjalmar tolerated because he didn't know Goose-Shredder didn't know anything about coding DNA. Goose-Shredder spent 6 months on Hjalmar's boat putting together the biorobo genome, but it only took a few weeks for him to begin noticing patterns in the way Hjalmar conducted himself. “It started with the salt and pepper shakers always having to be touching each other. If I separated them even a little bit, a centimetre even, he would push them together so they were touching. He couldn't leave the room until he'd done that.” From there, Goose-Shredder began watching the way Hjalmar washed dishes, and noticed that every individual cup, plate and utensil had a pre-staged place on the counter, a place in the drying rack and a place in the cupboard, and the process was the exact same every day. Once Goose-Shredder began looking for them, the habits became very easy to spot, and he realized that Hjalmar had a catalogue of everything he interacts with over the day and he has to line everything back up with a picture that's been burned into his thoughts before he goes to bed. Goose-Shredder says that Hjalmar didn't just start GASP for the benefit of humanity, but because Hjalmar is worried about Google becoming so pervasive that it becomes a prerequisite for interacting with people. “Hjalmar is worried about something he doesn't trust fixing itself between him and the people he loves. That changing the way we relate might change the relationship.” If this is true, Hjalmar would be trying to get rid of Google because the company doesn't line up in his head as part of the path to his relationships. However, what Goose-Shredder thinks Hjalmar might have overlooked in his marine based defence of his personal relationships, is that no one wants you around when you stink like crayfish all the time.

Goose-Shredder continued to insist that at no point has he ever wanted to disrupt Google's activities, saying that at all times coding the biorobo genome “was simply a project, and not something that [he] ever thought would be brought into the world.” Asked why he didn't go work for Google when he had no allegiance to Hjalmar's cause, Goose-Shredder says that working for Google was never an option. “I said I wasn't very good at genetics when I answered Hjalmar's ad, and the truth is I'm still not, even though I've coded a successful genome,” he explained. Goose-Shredder feels that compared to Google's geneticists he is “still the wimpy kid on the playground,” but insists that is only metaphorically speaking because he “still has more swagger than Google's entire science division put together.” To back up this assertion, Goose-Shredder pointed out that he frequently “drinks scotch until awesome things happen,” but also noted that he is a long way away from Google's geneticists in terms of things like ability and understanding. “Google's geneticists could have put [the biorobo genome] together in 1/20^th the time it took me, and then they would still have the copyright on the technique for bringing it to life. I don't have a damn clue how to do that. My idea for bringing something to life was putting a two stage pump where a sea lion's heart used to be.”

While he lags behind Google's genetics department in skill and knowledge, Goose-Shredder did find some solace in being on the scientific fringe. “A tech firm never would have thought to put together a technology destroying organism, in fact they probably would have just put together something altogether more helpful for humanity.” After proving himself inept, Goose-Shredder floundered for an ego boost. “I mean, it's interesting, right? [The biorobos] are something that could only have come about from a crazy person putting out an ad for a bent mind. We did something that no one else could have done, because they deemed it outside the scope of their necessity, but Hjalmar and I were crazy enough to need [the biorobos].” Goose-Shredder then remembered his need to distance himself from Hjalmar, saying “Wait, I hate [Hjalmar]. He's a dick. I threw Erlenmeyer flasks at him and I bet some of them hurt. You're welcome, World.”

Stopped for comment on Goose-Shredder's appeal for thanks outside the Covent Garden Market late Thursday, Citizen Danny expressed outrage over the forced resignation of the technology he's bought over the years. “Thanks Goosie, thanks for all the bullshit. I mean, I know I tend to accidentally throw my phone at the ground all the time, and occasionally use it as a coaster, but those are my choices, or my fault at least. Now some giant plant is going to push me down and steal my phone? Fuck! Are you kidding? I just bought this one, it's not even broken yet!”

While the mood of the general public is keeping him out of populated areas for now, Ovaltine Goose-Shredder's long term fate will depend on what the authorities make of his involvement in the biorobo genome project. After insisting several times during the press conference that he had no intention of letting loose the biometric robocop horde upon the world, Goose-Shredder made an impassioned plea to distance himself from his creation, saying“It was just a project for me, you know? I just coded the genome, I didn't know Hjalmar knew how to bring it to life.” Goose-Shredder then added what amounted to a Napster Defence, saying “Are we going to start punishing people for spreading ideas now?” Goose-Shredder was informed that yes, when the idea is bad enough, a person can be punished for it. “Oh right, racism. Well,” Goose-Shredder said as he edged away from the podium, “well maybe you might not see me for a long time or a while. It's been fun, I'll try to keep in touch. Maybe...” Goose-Shredder concluded the press conference by disappearing out the back door of the establishment.

Ovaltine Goose-Shredder Turns Evil; Hjalmar Same Jerk as Always

World leaders are pleading with GASP founder Axel Hjalmar to spill the secrets of the biometric robocop genome in hopes that a weakness can be found before millions of middle aged professionals following the Preacher Firestone confront the biorobo horde somewhere south of Mexico. Hjalmar, speaking via satellite uplink from an undisclosed location that was probably a boat, succinctly dashed any hope of being helpful, saying “Firstly, No, I will not help. Secondly, No, I cannot help. But even if I knew a weakness, my first answer is no, I will not help.” Hjalmar says that being both leader and public relations liaison for GASP has led people to incorrectly assume he is the architect of the biorobo genome, and he is certain the person who did create the biorobo genome will not be found, as “he or she has retired to an empty corner of the planet with the satisfaction of helping a noble cause, and knows enough to keep their mouth shut.” Hjalmar then surprised no one by suggesting the problem lay with Google, pointing out that Google has been in possession of the biorobo genome code for well over a year without saying a word about it.

At this point the world became a little annoyed with Google's complete silence and demanded the company comment on the status of their findings or risk unspecified penalties. Google took the opportunity to showcase the use of Google Glass as an effective teleprompter by having a representative of the company read a prepared statement early Thursday. Google's statement confirmed that their team of geneticists have been poring over the source code since its discovery, but also confirmed that they have found nothing and no one ask them any more questions, please. The Google Glass wearing representative then turned from the podium and ran from the questions of the assembled journalists until he reached the street, where he was pelted with bottles by a crowd of people who assumed he was so bored with normal life that he had to digitally supplement everything that passed before his eyes. Funeral services for Greg “At least I got to work for Google” Kerblowski will be held on Saturday. No charges will be laid in the bottle pelting.

PAJ's Megaconglomerate-Public-Relations expert Ovaltine Goose-Shredder was asked how Google could maintain silence while being centrally involved in such a catastrophic international event, and his answer was that the company simply has nothing to gain from keeping the general public in the loop because Google is at the top of their field and it would needlessly complicate things to involve anyone else. “Google knows the score by now, they have the greatest minds in genetics, bar none. The very people who perfected human cloning, in fact,” Goose-Shredder said in a press conference late Thursday, “Even though I created the biometric robocop genome it wouldn't do them any good to talk to me about it. It would only take Google's geneticists one glance to understand what's going on with it, and after going over it a few more times they would know there weren't any holes. It's plain on the page.”

At this point Goose-Shredder was interrupted by the shouts of the assembled journalists wanting clarification on his involvement in the biorobo genome project. Goose-Shredder soaked in the furore he created before answering in the affirmative. “Okay, the cat's out of the bag, and I'm not going to bother putting it back in. I was the most qualified response to Axel Hjalmar's Kijiji ad. He was looking to hire a geneticist and I was willing to bluff my credentials and hopefully learn how to code a genome before he figured out I was an amateur. I created the biometric robocop genome in late 2010.”

Goose-Shredder was then interrupted by a cacophony of incoherent questions and he screamed curses while promising to give more details of how he coded the biorobo genome at a later date. Once Goose-Shredder was given word that everyone would shut up about his collusion with Axel Hjalmar, he dickishly finished his comments on Google's public relations efforts by telling the assembled journalists how to do their job. “The weakness Google is looking for would manifest in how the different functions of the genome interact with each other when the organism comes together, so you were asking the wrong question when you focused on the DNA sequence.” Goose-Shredder said that Google should have been asked if they had created a biometric robocop within containment for the purposes of studying it, if they deprived it of sunlight until it was weak enough to approach, if they then dissected the docile biometric robocop, and if they made a bunch of other biorobos watch. “Maybe Google is twisted like a SAW movie,” Goose-Shredder said, “but how would you know if you never asked?” Goose-Shredder then concluded the press conference by sarcastically wishing the assembled journalists good luck at Google's next bi-annual press conference. A press conference detailing his involvement with the biorobo genome project is scheduled for next week.

Phoning it in: The March Madness Edition

[Ed. Note: James Betty doesn't take sick days, but the editing, spell-checking, general format and plot of PAJ all get pitched when he gets the sniffles. Since he's literally the only writer on a staff we don't pay, once or twice a year we let the guy phone it in. We call it health insurance.]

I seem to have caught this March Madness everyone's talking about, and it's manifesting as fever, chills, aching joints, vomiting and just a ridiculous amount of mucus. Experts say it won't be over until April 7. I don't know if I can last that long. Tell my wife she can go ahead and marry that bottle of Pinot Grigio like she's always wished. I've filled out the bracket like the experts said, and the only thing left to do is wait to see if I survive. I guess I could drink a lot of fluids while I'm waiting, like doctors say you should, but I ask you, what the does a doctor know about college hoops? In their 8 years of training I bet fadeaway-3's never even came up, and Cinderella was only mentioned as a case study in occupational therapy. March Madness isn't taken seriously by medical science, but I write before you today as living proof of it's debilitating effects. I feel almost as bad as I did after that “St. Ides of March” party a few years back. The Shakespearean accents got dropped pretty quickly, and then things got decidedly more interesting. Dave got shot. Don't tell anyone I said that.

Ohio State Buckeyes? More like Ohio State Fuckeyes. My bracket didn't even last 2 hours. Guess that's what I get for betting on a team I hate. Okay, I'm over it. That didn't take long. The Fuckeyes comment was made out of anger. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for all the profanity I've spouted in my life. I bet my Grandmother feels relieved now, but has no idea why.

Grandma's scared for my soul again. I just caught myself screaming at the TV, so maybe I'm starting to feel a little better. Well, I guess I didn't so much catch myself as I was interrupted by a police-issue flashlight banging on the door of my apartment. My neighbours don't like raspy voices yelling profane death threats in their neighbourhood. I urge citizens to have courage in these trying times. Luckily, your team going down by 24 points in the first ten fucking minutes is a legitimate reason to yell death threats. Looks like the law is on the right side of something for once.

The way these networks cover the games either makes no sense or makes such perfect sense that you wonder how we could know so little about the universe. The networks will cut away when Delaware is getting blown out by a real team, underscoring the tangential affinity America has for that middle child of States, but when NC State is setting up an upset, who wants to watch that, right? FUCK YOU, TSN2. I WANNA WATCH THAT SHIT. That's probably the problem right there. I'm not an American television subscriber. Missing a few basketball games is probably worth having health care and not worrying about guns. Oh Canada, all your basketball sucks. Oh well.

PAJ Season 5: Everything Goes South

The Preacher Firestone and his amassed acolytes crossed the Arkansas/Texas border early Thursday on what is now the 89th day of his march south to confront the biometric robocop horde that is screaming up South America destroying every means of accessing Google in existence, colloquially known as the Technology Apocalypse. Amassing followers since leaving the alley behind Jack's on December 13th, the Firestone migration is now estimated to number at a traffic snarling 1.5 million people walking south on the I-40 towards Dallas. Acolytes have been ducking off the interstate at every available avenue to buy up all the Miracle Grow plant food they can get their hands on from nearby hardware stores and garden centres. When asked for comment by anyone, about anything, the Preacher Firestone responds only with the words “Resilience means Miracle Grow.” The short response is a marked change for a man who didn't shut up for over a year straight, causing experts to wonder why he would choose the moment he finally mobilized his followers to stop telling them what to do. With millions of people marching to confront an enemy that has already defeated one army, President Obama has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to follow the Firestone acolytes with a fleet of mobile hospitals that “probably won't be needed” in the event of an actual emergency. To keep the biorobos from destroying any life saving medical technology, the FEMA medical fleet has been outfitted with analog medical devices from the1960's, but due to strict regulations currently in effect at border crossings every medicine and bag of saline will be tested for illegal substances. Mexican Border Services estimate that effective scrutinizing of the entire convoy will take 3 months, so the mobile hospitals should be about a month and half late for the potential massacre.

Adding to fears of the Firestone acolytes being led into a grand catastrophe is the demographic makeup of the migration. Ovaltine Goose-Shredder has been in contact with colleagues who have found that the average marcher is 53.2 years old, with professions tending towards service workers like bank tellers and librarians. “In terms of the acolyte's skill sets, those with a military background are conspicuously absent,” Goose-Shredder said in a press conference early Thursday. All soldiers and reservists were ordered back to base for a state of high alert after the biorobos made landfall in November, but despite this the US military has stated repeatedly that it has no plans to engage the biorobos. “Everything has been shifted to a coping strategy after the Argentinians proved resistance was a terrible idea.” Goose-Shredder said. Asked how the Firestone acolytes would fare in battle against the biometric robocop horde, Goose-Shredder said he felt ill thinking about it and lambasted their presumed fertilizer strategy. “Taking Miracle Grow to the fight, what the fuck is that? Just pump [the biorobos] up with steroids before fighting them? This Firestone guy is leading [the acolytes] into a massacre, it's the only explanation,” he said, adding, “I always figured [Firestone] was a dick.”

In the absence of comment from the Preacher Firestone, being more adamant and less coherent than the other acolytes has made Local Outragee Sandra the de-facto representative of the migration, with her yelling making her a beacon for the camera crews of the 24 hour news networks. Sandra has been following Firestone since he took his first step out of the alley behind Jack's onto Richmond, and revealed to serious journalist Wolf Blitzer that she was following Firestone in hopes that the pilgrimage would reconcile a deep belief that she has led the next generation wrong in her career as an educator, screeching, “This is it, the legacy we will leave for the children! They shall have the Google to love and to hold, and it will help them with their homework!” Sandra has no idea why she's carrying the Miracle Grow, and says no one she has talked to knows either.

Due to the horribleness of the events set to unfold somewhere around Honduras, Military and Medical experts are calling for American authorities to stop the Firestone migration at the Mexican border. Taking control of my word processor from a sealed room beneath Langley, NSA worker Caligula Goonsquad said it would be difficult for Border Patrol to turn the migration away, because stopping one million people from doing something is impossible. “To avoid a confrontation [with the biorobos], the Firestone acolytes would have to turn around of their own accord.” he typed. “1 million people wanting to do something is a terrifying prospect, that's why we have to get ahead of them before it happens.” Goonsquad claims the NSA had prepared for Firestone to die before he had a chance to wield his power, because “The prophet always dies.” They did not plan for any mass movement to spring from his followers. “At most we thought Google Chrome would gain a few subscribers. It was all he talked about, really. Then after some angry soul killed him, [Firestone's] message would be sanitized by a retail chain by wrangling his public perception into some non-challenging happy-go-lucky slogan for a throw pillow. You know, the life cycle of ideas.”

At the time of publication the biometric robocop horde has made it as far north as La Paz, Bolivia.