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Pete The Prognosticator

Many people are familiar with the prophecies of Nostradamus, however, few are familiar with the works of his younger brother Pete. While Nostradamus is so often credited with the predictions of major travesties like the reign of Hitler or the Kennedy assassination, Pete’s prophecies, while stunningly accurate, are substantially less impressive as they accurately depict very mundane features of modern life.

The most common example academics typically point to is this quatrain: “The small Deborah fills the Danish with paste.” Most recognize this as the foresight of a crème filled Little Debbie snack. However, there are dissenters, small groups believe that this quatrain refers to an early episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” where Ray’s wife Deborah attempts to make a dessert. Still there is a handful of historians that believe this was a premonition referring to an invasion of Denmark led by the German General D. Borha, this makes sense because General Borha led an abnormally pale group of pasty white infantry, also, they glued all of the POW’s mouths shut with Elmer’s school paste.

Perhaps the most impressive of Pete’s foretelling comes from his work titled People will love Regis Philbin, and other predictions, from the future. in quatrains 4-9:

The boss rises to the dusk, but is without words
He will return in the dawn and rest with similar sentiments
Weary is the boss, weary and disinterested with himself
He will be in need of assistance.
The boss will be unable to ignite an inferno devoid of a flash
The weaponry will be employable despite the boss rollicking in a place without light.

This passage is particularly notable because Pete seems to author the first verse and chorus of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ by Bruce Springsteen almost a half millennium before Springsteen popularized the song.

These are perhaps the most impressive of his predictions, but they are just the beginning of a seemingly limitless list of prognostications. For instance, quatrain 12 “The men of light red hue are named Floyd and harmonize as light erupts through the artificial sky,” is almost certainly in reference to the popularity of laser light shows in planetariums set to a Pink Floyd soundtrack. Another hotly debated verse: “The four will be apprehended based on biblical law, former friends will turn on them, and they will be imprisoned.” This was originally accepted as a prediction of the four man plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln and other high ranking officials, the biblical law being “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” However, most experts now agree that this was foretelling the finale episode of Seinfeld, where the four main characters are captured for breaking the ‘Good Samaritan’ law and former characters from the show testify against them until they are thrown in jail.

While not as heralded as his brother, Pete is vastly underrated in the world of prognostication; hopefully he will one day receive the recognition he truly deserves.

Meeting of my Mind

I was standing in the grocery store trying to picture what it would be like to not have an imagination. I looked over to say something to my existentialist real estate agent, he sold real estate but the estates were only real to him. I was distracted and my mind started to wander while I was keeping an open mind, and when I turned back around I had lost my mind. I turned to the real estate agent and said, “I lost my mind.” He asked me “where was the last place you put it?” I tried to think about it but I was coming up blank, because my mind was gone.

I tried to use my subconscious to figure out where my conscious mind was, but I ended up just getting very self-conscience because I could not longer distinguish between right and wrong since my conscious had taken my conscience with it. All of that would have confused me but I didn’t have a brain at the time to get confused.

Lucky for me I, when I was a child I had an irrational paranoia that the CIA had not put a computer chip in my brain and I was afraid to jog my memory for fear that it would run away. In order to calm my fears, my therapist put a tracking device in my head. Using a GPS I was able to find brain, a wind had caught my brain and I had to climb up on my roof and get my mind out of the gutter. After the reverse lobotomy I was back in my right mind. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, don’t let yours wander unless you are keeping a close eye on it. But, if you do lose your mind, take the opportunity to pick someone else’s brain for a little bit.

Poetry in Motion – The Road Less Traveled

The Case for Carnivores

There are people out there who will have you believe that being a carnivore is inhumane in today’s day and age because of the gruesome ways that animals are killed and prepared for eating. But I am here to tell you, that vegetarians are as vicious, if not more, than meat eaters.

Meat eaters make no bones about the fact that they love to eat off of the bones of animals. They have no problem discarding animal carcasses after they have picked the body clean of meat. It is the hypocrisy of vegetarians that is most bothersome. They accuse meat eaters of killing innocent animals just for an 8-ounce filet. But think about this: vegetarians kill innocent plants everyday. They say that these plants are grown for food, but I challenge a vegetarian to give an example of something beneficial cows would do if not harvested for happy meals. Cows are bred for steaks and yeast is bred for bread. Vegetarians eat the heads of lettuce, the hearts of artichokes, ears of corn, kidney beans, and crushed nuts. They eat baby carrots and baby spinach, plants that are never even given the chance live as full-grown plants, at least carnivores have the decency to use the word veal, not baby cow. You tell me which eating philosophy sounds more gruesome and inhumane!

Lesser Philosophical Writings

The Missing Shade of Brown – David Hume

In the much-less-researched sister paper to his most famous idea “The Missing Shade of Blue,” that discussed Hume’s view of epistemology (he also drafted a work about shades of urine called ‘I-pissed-my-ology’), Hume writes about trying to describe the color of a rather intense bowel movement to his friends.

“Many will try to convince you to believe that all ideas are copied of similar impressions, however, I present a countering example. Upon ingesting sizeable portions of economically priced Mexican food I rushed to the restroom to defecate. Following this event, I was attempting to describe the elimination to a group of my colleagues and, though my colleagues had never seen this specific shade of fecal matter, I was able to tell them that the color lay somewhere along the gradient between deep bean burrito mahogany and foul hot-wing chestnut. Given only these two parameters, my colleagues were able to vividly picture the color, shade and hue of my elimination, despite the fact that they had never seen this specific shade of brown but were able to picture a shade of brown born not from recollection, but conceived merely by their own minds.”

The AIM – Plato

Here Socrates engages in a format, similar to the Republic, where he attempts to engage multiple other philosophers. Although this dialogue, unlike others, takes place in an AIM chat room, some philosophy historians believe it to be the alone@home room.

Socrates: Would it be fair to you well-minded men, to say that the appetitive part of the soul is that which lusts after, and seeks the pleasures of the body?
Blondebabe43: Where’s all the cute boys at?
Vrbrian222: 16/m any ladies wanna chat wit me?
Brooklynswagga212: Hey peoples!!!!!!!!
Blueeyesx119: 22/F lookin for a hot guy to chat
Socrates: What a clever way of consenting to my notions regarding the appetitive soul
Sweetannie19: hey guys a/s?
Hunk_henry: 22/m
Freddie2120: 14/m
Socrates: Forget this, you idiots aren’t helping at all
Socrates: 52/m

The Afterlife of God – Friedrich Nietzsche

Many people know the famous line for Nietzsche “God is dead,” but few know the full context of the line as it is presented in ‘The Afterlife of God.’

“God is dead, but I think he went to God heaven. He was a pretty good God. I bet His son takes over the family divinity; the Holy Spirit will probably cry nepotism though.”

To Catch a Poltergeist

It was midnight when the Wilson family was awoken by the smashing and clattering of a lost soul rummaging around their living room. Mr. Wilson came downstairs to see the usual, crucifixes flying, scratches on the walls, things you would expect with any poltergeist. But the Wilson family had just moved in, and they were not going to just give their house to this phantasm. The Wilson’s called in some experts to communicate with the spirits and find out why they were haunting the house.

Mr. Wilson contacted a local historian who told him that years ago an eleven year old girl was murdered in the house and had been rumored to have been haunting the house ever since. The ghost hunters arrived later that day, ouija boards and all. The spirit greeted them in the lawn outside. One of the ghost hunters laid the ouija board down and began transcribing the message.

“Why don’t you come inside and we will play.”

The messages continued growing more and more graphic until the team ran terrified back to their van. Mr. Wilson demanded that the team “quit being a bunch of sissies and get in the house.” One of the ghost hunters finally stood up courageously and decided he would go into the house to investigate and would not leave until the residence was cleared. He exited the van and pushed nervously toward the door.

As he approached the house the door cracked a bit, and a strong gust of wind blew out of the door, the wind seemed to form the words “come in, I made some cookies in the kitchen, I am going to change, I will be out in a minute.” Terrified, the ghost hunter cracked the door and peered in, but everything seemed calm. He walked in stepping very cautiously on the creaking floorboards. Every shadow caused the ghost hunter great anxiety as he carefully surveyed the room. He entered the kitchen when the ghost of a tall, thin, investigative reporter appeared.

“Why don’t you have a seat at the counter?” the ghost calmly suggested. The ghost hunter turned a bright shade of white, as if he had just seen a ghost, probably because he had.

“Why did you come here today?” the ghoul questioned.

“I…I just came to meet this spirit who has been haunting this house,” the ghost hunter explained.

“Do you know how old the spirit you were trying to reach is?” the spirit asked.

“I think she said she is thirteen,” the man replied “I don’t really know exactly how old she is.”

The ghost began to interrogate the ghost hunter, “What were your intentions here today, why were you trying to meet an underage spirit?”

“I don’t know, I just wanted to talk to the ghost maybe get her to leave.” The man answered.

“So you were going to try to bring her home with you?” The lost soul inquired.

“No, no I was just trying to get her out of this house, I don’t really know where I wanted her to go.” The man quickly refuted.

“Well that is interesting, because I have the oija board transcripts right here.” The ghost stated, he began to read “I want to scare your (expletive deleted) and (expletives deleted) and I am going to haunt your (expletive deleted).” The disembodied spirit of the investigative reporter read as the ghost hunter hung his head in embarrassment.

“My name is Chris Phantom, and I’m with posthumous Dateline NBC, we are doing a story on men who come to meet underage spirits. Is there anything else you would like to say?” The ghost queried. The man, paralyzed by confusion, shook his head no and looked for on of his friends playing an elaborate joke.

“You are free to go,” the ghost said. The ghost hunter rose to his feet and walked out of the house fully expecting to be tackled by ghost police, however, he was allowed to walk all the way back to his van unharmed. Upon enter the van though, the van was lifted off of the ground and tossed on its top. Mr. Wilson and the ghost hunters scrambled from the car and decided to quit fighting these ghosts and instead, move to Canada, where nothing interesting ever happens.