BLACK HUMOR
Iraq, February 2005
I had a dream February 8, 2005
Lieutenant Rafid saw the object growing larger without using his scope. He estimated its diameter at around thirty meters. At the same time, the needle on his Machmeter spun wildly. He shouted into his throat mic:
“Everyone behind me! Attack formation. Arm the missiles!”
The men obeyed. The object had stabilized right above the Natanza nuclear reactor. It was covered in shifting lights, and emitted colorful beams of light that seemed to caress the ground installations like hands. The Iranian felt a strange sensation.
“Is this an American craft or... a djinn?”
Anyway, it was too late to wonder. The glowing object kept growing rapidly in his scope. The lieutenant recalled the orders from Air Force Command, reiterated during the morning briefing. They were clear and straightforward. With a gloved thumb, he found the red firing button on his control stick and pressed it, thinking “May Allah forgive me!” Seconds later, wind whipped across his face. Above him, a beautiful white blossom had opened up. There were two other blossoms nearby; Rafid could see the lights from the reactors of three Sukhoi jets ahead of him as they rushed toward the ground. One after another, they crashed down. Turning back, he saw the Blue Patrol aircraft turning and heading back to base.
……
Condoleezza Rice was about to go on air. The makeup artist made some final touches to her expressionless face. The Pentagon communications officer announced her appearance by placing both hands on the console, then stepped aside to let the President’s National Security Advisor take over. She searched for the red light indicating which camera was active so she could face it properly. But when she tried to speak, her face contorted. She moved away from the podium and began vomiting in front of everyone. Dozens of cherries came out of her mouth. She had several violent bouts of vomiting; the amount of cherries and juice seemed endless. The communications officer intervened and signaled the cameramen to stop filming.
“Ms. Rice isn’t feeling well.”
That was certainly true. She wasn’t well at all. Her eyes were rolled back and her black dress was stained with cherry juice, looking like congealed blood.
……
Cardinal Rizetti burst into the grand aisle of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. He ripped off the buttons of his cassock one by one while staring at the awestruck faithful and tourists with a mad look.
“Forgive me. Forgive me, all of you. We misused money meant for faith. Leave now, quickly, leave!”
Then he started speaking in a strange, incomprehensible language. A French Dominican, Father Bourgeois from the Saint John of Malta convent in Aix-en-Provence, who was writing a dissertation on sacredness, heard this speech and exclaimed:
“That’s Aramaic!”
“What?”
“He’s saying in Aramaic: ‘I wanted this place to be a house of prayer, but you turned it into a den of thieves.’”
The floor trembled. Golden mosaics lining the vast dome detached themselves. People screamed and rushed toward the doors. Luckily, there weren’t many people there at that hour. Not knowing where to go, the crowd gathered in the square near the fountains. The ground rumbled. The Cardinal stood in the doorway, still shouting—first in Italian:
“I deserve only what I get.”
Then in a language none of the faithful understood. From a distance, Father Bourgeois watched him, fascinated, while people finally began fleeing in all directions.
“He keeps going. It’s still Aramaic.”
“And what is he saying?” asked another monk from his order.
“He says, ‘Judas, not a single stone of this temple will remain intact.’”
The heavy doorframe collapsed onto the Cardinal amidst a cloud of dust.
……
Sergeant Schwarz emerged from the tent. He looked disheveled, which was unlike him. He wore a khaki T-shirt and simple shorts. The Iraqi sunlight seemed to blind him for a moment. Then he reached for the identification plate hanging from a chain around his neck. With a firm motion, he tore it off and threw it far away. His men stared at him in shock, as did the Iraqi interpreter wearing a long gray gandoura. He walked straight up to a corporal standing at the camp entrance in combat gear. Schwarz spoke to him. The corporal realized he was being addressed in Arabic, which totally threw him off because nowhere had it ever been mentioned that the Sergeant spoke that language. Called upon, the corporal turned to the Iraqi interpreter:
“What’s he saying?”
“He says, ‘Soldier, get rid of all these killing tools. Remove them immediately—that’s an order!’”
Before the corporal could react, Schwarz snatched his M-16 and tossed it aside. Then he unfastened his bulletproof vest and, handling the soldier like a puppet, stripped him of it. The corporal remained speechless, frozen in awe. The Sergeant took the magazines from pockets along his pants and emptied their bullets into the sand, where they sank in like golden seeds. Speaking in English, he ordered all present to disarm as well or fetch their weapons from the tents. Everyone obeyed robotically. Then Schwarz fetched a can of gasoline. He poured it over the pile of weapons, shook the can, and tossed a match onto it. The men quickly stepped back, anticipating that the bullets would detonate under the heat. Indeed, less than a minute later, gunfire erupted.
Schwarz covered the few hundred meters separating the camp from the runway, where a C-130 with engines running had just unloaded its cargo. The Sergeant climbed aboard via the rear ramp and headed straight to the cockpit. The pilots turned around.
“Now, head to Daran. But this time load the plane with medicine, food, and especially water. I want lots of water cans.”
“But... we have no orders for that. Today we’re supposed to make rotations delivering mortar shells...”
Schwarz reached out and swiftly pulled out the 9mm pistol the pilot carried in a holster attached to his harness.
“You’ve got no orders. Well, I’ll give you some!”
After removing the safety and cocking the hammer, he aimed the cold barrel at the pilot’s temple.
“OK, OK, don’t get upset. Medicine, food, and water. Got it.”
Pushing the throttle forward, the pilot sent the heavy plane racing down the runway.
……
During that tremendous downpour in Mecca at the end of January 2005, Ahmed noticed something odd. When rain fell so heavily on pilgrims that many had to use their clothes to shield their heads, he stood near the Black Stone. He knew its dark color meant it absorbed heat strongly. Yet, in reality, it didn’t absorb more than the rest of the building. But when water streamed over it, the stone instantly turned into steam.
At nightfall, when only a few guards remained in the holy area, he dared approach the object with all his devotion. After kneeling before it for a long time, he touched it and discovered it was scorching hot, but he dared not tell anyone for fear of being accused of something.
In fact, nobody touched the stone. No one even thought to clean it. There’s hardly any pollution in Mecca. Time passed. Ahmed knew the stone was “working,” but he didn’t dare share his discovery with anyone. Finally, one evening at dusk, the phenomenon intensified. The stone turned dark red and strange shapes seemed to appear on its surface. Quickly, the rising temperature broke its resin setting in the silver mount. It detached and began emitting light. Devout believers rushed to the scene; many fell face-down in awe at such a miracle. The Black Stone, now resembling a glowing piece of coal, moved several dozen meters surrounded by a hazy glow. Then it shot up into the sky, accelerating until it became merely a tiny star.
One mullah who’d rushed over missed nothing of the spectacle. Seeing Ahmed’s bewilderment, he simply said:
“You see, my son. It simply returned to whence it came, ages ago.”
A drawing that made all of Moscow laugh
Found on http://www.pravda.ru
Our French economy is saved – I sold them six Airbus 380s
April 2005
June 1, 2005
Raffarin’s legacy:
- “Young people are destined to become adults.”
- “The future is a series of everyday moments.”
- “Widows live longer than their husbands.”
- “I recommend a positive attitude.”
- “France is strong when it’s a force that moves and knows where it’s going.”
- “The Marseillaise will be less booed if everyone sings it together.”
- “The citizen is a pedestrian of the Republic.”
- “A people that doubts is not a people that marches.”
- “Politics isn’t a sport; it’s not teams against each other: we’re all Team France.”
- “Thinking in terms of plurality, some have forgotten France’s singularity.”
- “Thanks (to Bernadette Chirac) for showing us victory isn’t easy; it’s won farm by farm, commune by commune.”
- “We must establish a Republic of common sense.”
- “There was a bill we stopped in time: when we no longer work the day after a rest day, fatigue will be defeated.”
- “The Europe we must envision tomorrow isn’t yesterday’s Europe.”
- “Let’s not be timid or cold towards Europe.”
- “My ‘yes’ is more than a ‘no’ to ‘no’.”
- “I’m not an ENA graduate; I speak directly as I am.”
- “I dislike not being in control of my own programming.”
- “Do I look like a psychopath?”
- “I’ve got my curves but also my energy.”
- “I’m the pilot of the government’s Airbus.”
- “I don’t work for myself; I’ve got no inflated ego.”
- “We must leap over hurdles; in the end, I leap them one after another.”
- “They always announce my departure for next week. In reality, I resist a bit.”
- “I start over from scratch.”
Our politicians are beings who hop from left to right; their consistency in incompetence is admirable.
Pierre Desproges
When humor appears on scientific journal covers
This was a title I often cited. One of my readers, Francis Potaznan, found the actual cover. It’s from a November 1993 issue of Science et Vie. It’s hard to believe this isn’t a joke or hoax. But no—this article was authored by Daniel Tarnowski, Hélène Guillemot, and Thierry Pilorge. Topic: “Our brain is chaotic. Neural networks follow this rule too: order arises from chaos in our thoughts.” “We untangled the knot of chaos.” “Chaos knocked out.” “Does this mean brain activity is always chaotic?”
Among other things, they write “Effects of chaos in the solar system,” but completely forget that this system is entirely regulated by dissipative processes (via tidal effects) which chaos theory utterly ignores due to its inability to handle them. A 19-page article!
This kind of prose matches the poverty and incoherence of the special edition on evolution published in July 2005 by research circles—an unbelievable neo-Darwinist patchwork.
We’re in the depths of thoughtlessness.
June 20, 2005: Anti-drone umbrella
September 9, 2005
Luckily, this multi-ton American bomb didn’t explode!
Michèle Alliot-Marie, Defense Minister
Soldier equipped for avian flu
Gilles’ idea
Man, this metastasis...
March 2008:
“Honey, I told the British I’d send a thousand men to reinforce Afghanistan.”
“I’m proud of you, darling. You truly act like a great head of state.”
April 2011
Fukushima
August 2011
Libya 2011
These holes are quite large, since the reactor vessel’s diameter is 5.5 meters.
Cesium sieve
Eben Alexander, neurosurgeon, after his NDE in 2008, reassures the world about what awaits after death: ineffable bliss. So, post-life service is guaranteed.
Here, in Portland, USA, in 2013, alongside the Dalai Lama at a “Yankee Tibetan Buddhists” ashram during a symposium on life after death.
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