Criminally Underfunded Mad Science

Okay, yes, I see you in the back in the oddly fuzzy suit. Beavers. Yes. They build stuff all the time. Houses, in particular. You ever seen a beaver build a car? That's what I thought. Sit down. Now that I've sufficiently moved the goalposts, I can now criticize the entire animal kingdom for not being able to build something as complex and glorious as the 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier.

That's right. If you go to your local pet emporium, you're not going to find even a single torque wrench for your "super smart" Bichon. Farms, even ones stocked with adorable goats, are not capable of even light panel press operations. In many ways, every creature that isn't us is simply incapable of making a car. Which is why we love and cherish them.

Airplane test pilots, okay? They beat up the airplane real bad, doing loop-de-loops and other stunts that you would never see in a real airline. If the plane doesn't fall apart for that, it probably won't fall apart while you're riding in it, even if you are bringing luggage that is technically a little bit over the weight limit. The test pilots break, and if enough of the plane survives to figure out what they broke, the engineers fix.

Me? I'm a problem solver. I'm sure it's a lot of fun to be the kind of person who breaks stuff. It is also somewhat pleasurable to build a machine so well that it defies their puny human attempts at malfunction. Holding entropy back for just a hot minute longer than the previous attempt did? Delightful. Then they find a new way to smash my dreams, and the cycle repeats. This sustains human civilization for all eternity, or at least until some idiot figures out how to destroy the sun.

"You can't put the words FUTON FETISH in 150 point type on the front of the magazine," she explained patiently but at a volume exceeding maximum safe worksite levels. I slapped my watch to keep it from automatically filing a lost-time complaint with the union metamind.

"We already took the photos," I gamely explain. "It's like a high concept art piece. Hugh wanted more of that."

5-RebeccaSue's jewelry pulsed with nightmare light as she removed the photo proofs from the envelope. In each picture, a scantily clad model was performing a pantomime of a crude act with furniture.

I had had enough of living next to the Installation Wizard. Every evening he went out there and waved his wand around and erected all kinds of horrible things. I often thought about moving away, but a big perk of where I live is that my landlord has repeatedly forgotten to cash my bad rent cheques ever since he didn't come back from that Panama vacation.

Most of our other neighbours kept a wide berth from him, and it was getting to the point where just existing next to him made me also a neighbourhood pariah. All those sneers at the community garden. Hugh Georges making a reference to "plug and play" and then snorting his way through a high-pitched laugh at his own joke. Eventually, I would have to do something. My hand would be forced.