Well, it’s Thanksgiving Day here in the US, which as you might know, is a holiday rife with celebratory traditions recognizing the things we are thankful for. So I doubt many of our American readers are lurking about. And if they are, they’re most likely either as drunk as a Skepchick on payday, or teetering on the edge of a pie-induced coma.
So for those of you coherent enough to surf the dub dub dubs and actually comprehend what you’re looking at, today’s Afternoon Inquisition is for you. And what the hell. We might as well have a little fun with it.
Using the comments section, can you write a short story about the fictitious “League of Anonymous Skeptics” debunking or otherwise fighting some dangerous irrational person or item of claptrap?
(Note:You may write no more than 3 sentences per comment box, and the next person to post a comment is required to pick up the story where the previous comment left off.)
I’ll get it started:
At 3pm on Thanksgiving Thursday, a call came in to the headquarters of the League of Anonymous Skeptics. The members of the league had been drinking heavily, and so answered the call by saying . . . . .Â
“You have reached the League of Anonymous Skeptics. If you are calling to report a UFO, press 1; if you are calling about Sylvia Brown, press 2; if you are calling from the liquor store, I told you we’ll pay you Friday.
“Um, any other options?”
No.
Well, um, hello, yes, excuse me ma’am, but I was looking for some help. You see I have this…problem…I’d like it to be dealt with rather discretely and I heard that’s your specialty.
“Sir, I don’t know what you’ve heard about us, but we don’t do cover ups.”
“Oh, no, no! It’s not about that. It’s about a.. er… A pareidolia. A pareidolia is haunting my place.”
“Pareidolias don’t haunt, sir. They scurry.”
“Scurry, haunt, what’s the bloody difference! I saw on Oprah how these things are bad for you and I want it gone!”
“Quite so. However all our squads are on very important assignments at the moment…”
“But this is an emerency! Elvis is on a head of cabbage in my refrigerator.”
“Elvis! That is an emergency! We’ll send our Rapid Response Skeptic Squad immediately!”
“Damn Jim! We didn’t get gere soon enough. It’s obvious that Elvis has left the building. ”
“But thank goodness the cabbage is still here.”
“What’s that on the cabbage? Mud? No … it’s “
“It’s chocolate mousse.”
“No wait, it’s changing shape…it’s…it’s…”
“…a chocolate moose? That’s a new one on me, Jim. What could it possibly mean?”
The squad looked on in horror as the moose took form. It was not a happy chocolate moose, with anger and vengeance in its gumdrop eyes!
“This seems entirely implausible.”
Said the moose….
“Who on earth would fund a team of Anonymous Skeptics?”
“That’s where the vision ends every time and I come out of my trance” said the young man to the psychic.
The audience looked at the wrinkled old woman who peered out from under her pink tinted glasses. How was Daniela going to interpret this one?…
Daniela thought credulously for a few minutes. “I need some of my holistic water so I can think.” “Then I’m going to ask my chiropractor what to do.”
But that was the least of her problems. For when she looked out into what should have been a packed audience she saw only an empty, disheveled hall. There was no profit to be had from the young man’s deranged dreams.
“Damn, another deus ex machina†said the guy reading all this in a book. “Can no-one write a story without crow-barring one of those in?†he thought, looking out of the window of the train. “Fuck, is that a UFO?â€.
I’d better call the League of Anonymous Skeptics – they’ll know how to explain away my panic about this UFO!
Probably just a weather ballon or something he thought as he dialed the hotline. But just as his call went through he felt himself being beamed out the window and …
. . . as the shards of glass tore deep gashes in his body the train passed into a tunnel. But our friend did not and was no more.
Meanwhile, at the secret Sylvia Browne institute of science and technology…
“The kids dead, that will be $400 dollars”
Jimmy put the next sucker, I mean person in need of my help on the line.
-Just then James Randi walks into the secret lair.
The headmistress hobbled around the room, peering critically at the neophytes in her early morning Cold Reading 101 session. “More general, less specific!” she rasped, her voice harsh and jagged, like a mountain lion choking on a porcupine. One of the students raised his hand.
“Miss Browne, If the person is in real pain, isn’t it wrong to con them out of what little money they have left?” asked the student, whimpering slightly. Even this room of charlatans could predict what would happen next, as the haggard beast launched across the room and sang her crooked yellow teeth into the students tender young neck. “Classh dismisshed” she slurred through a mouthful of gristly flesh before turning to complete her feed.
Having sated her lust for the flesh of the gullible, she seated herself in the chair of life and rolled toward the waiting throng of worshipers. Each held a ‘token of the missing’ allowing them an audience with . . .
…Jenny McCarthy, who had just returned from a a secret bio-research lab on the shore of a remote Montana lake. She had brought them a present. A genetically modified woo infection.
As they lined up to receive their shot, one of her victims was heard to say…
“Is this homeopathic?”
“Yes, but I’m worried that this vaccine will cause me to have autism.”
“Will it deprive me of my psychic powers?”
The homeopathic doctor, who was also a chiropractor, looked at Jenny McCarthy and said: “You already have autisim, ADHD, ADD, CIA, GOP and EIEIO.”
Just then James Randi finally reached the classroom (having entered the lair 7 comments earlier, almost unnoticed). “You’ll have the same psychic powers you always had,” he intoned wisely. Jenny attacked, using the Nguni Stick Fighting technique she had learned on a recent fact-finding trip to South Africa.
As Jenny lunged, Randi quickly reached into his Skeptical Utility Belt (patent pending) and pulled out…
…a glass of water. Randi threw the water at Jenny. She began to whither and shake, not unlike the wicked witch of Oz.
“I’M IMMUNIZING! I’m Immunizing! i’m immuni…..”
As Jenny McCarthy diminished into a puddle of ignorant sludge, Randi sniffed and walked away, knowing that his cameo in the story was over, because he was not an Anonymous Skeptic. Meanwhile, the she-beast, Sylvia Browne, had escaped to an abandoned amusement park where she was pursued by the League of Anonymous Skeptics, two of whom were on rollerskates, and a few others of whom were on Segways — the rest pranced in unison, like a Broadway chorus line. They had all forgotten their bus passes.
Suddenly, the beast released a wave of stupid so powerful that it started to burn everything around her, at the same time inducing the brain cells of unprotected minds into suicide, and bending the fabric of space and time.
Then, from out of the smoke and carnage rode a single Segway. It’s rider’s fedora seem to smoke from the flames of his red hair. Armed with a chicken cannon of immense proportions, he smote the beast, saving the day, and preparing a tasty meal in one fell swoop! HooZaa!
Meanwhile, the accellerating wave of stupid was still closing on Arthur Dent*, so he quickly put on his Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses(tm). They immediately turned opaque black so that his mind was saved from the wave of stupid that now washed harmlessly over him.
Not so fortunate was the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. However, it is already so mind-bogglingly stupid (It thinks that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you) that the wave had no effect on its already virtually-nonexistent brain.
The wave of stupidity gained height, speed and strength as it roared off across the world…
*gratituous and pointless H2G2 reference.
…and the next morning, no one noticed any difference.
Except Oprah all of a sudden seemed to make sense. The League of Anonymous Skeptics were certainly glad that scientists had discovered anti-wave-of-stupid spray last year. Having Oprah make sense is the worst fate for humankind they could think of. They shuddered at the mere thought – “what do we do now?”, they said…
and pulled out their flasks of Buzzed Aldrens.
As they contemplated the situation they suddenly realized that singing could be heard down the block, and it was getting louder. A band of happy Pastafarians emerged from the smoke and haze along with The FSM Himself!! Divine intervention would certainly help the situation.