Howard Ho Ho frequently has dreams of
people sending him e-mails, but alas, he wakes up from that
fantasy. For some more behavioral engineering, contact Ho at
palmtree@ucla.edu.
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The following sentence is true. The previous sentence is
false.
Welcome back to another edition of the obscurely educational
““ yet totally incoherent ““ column with me, your
condescending ““ yet self-contradicting ““ host. Straight
from the censors, I promise to deliver sensational truths that you
can disbelieve right away, if only because you have no pulse.
Today’s topic is the programming of the human psyche.
I’m joined today by University of Colorado Boulevard at
Wilshire Boulevard professor Shylock Schaep, the leading researcher
in the field of studying messed-up people. Unlike most researchers,
Schaep himself programs his subjects from childhood in order to
make his discoveries. His latest product, X.U. 135, is a
prepubescent male whom Schaep says is the most average prepubescent
male ever created. He accomplished this through putting X.U. 135 on
a steady diet of MTV, soft-core pornography, fat from Taco Bell
chalupas, caffeine (fed intravenously every day) and hormones to
make him even hornier!
“Yes, X.U., whom I affectionately call
“˜Mongrel,’ is the most perfect subject for study,
because whatever the average prepubescent male will do, Mongrel,
who sometimes will pee on my foot to show affection, will do to the
extreme. Hence, Mongrel can be mass-produced for all those
experiments that need to be done: Do those “˜Sweet and
Low’ packets really cause cancer? What really happens to a
person’s body when in a car speeding into a wall? Now we will
know,” Schaep said.
With such a tool at his disposal, Schaep has made breakthroughs
in the field of learning how it is that people are programmed to do
whatever you tell them to do. His first experiment, “Ear
Thingy,” deals with musical programming. When Mongrel hears
the music of a Mozart symphony, he falls asleep immediately from
boredom.
However, when a loud monotonous bass beat is added to the same
music, suddenly Mongrel comes alive with hip gyrations and head
banging, becoming the rhythmless fop that you no doubt were in
middle school.
For the next experiment, “Eye See,” Mongrel is
strapped in a chair while he is watching colorful MTV images
splicing into each other faster than you can say “A Clockwork
Orange.” One can see the dazed look he has from the images
overloading his senses. He whines when it is turned off.
This is later contrasted with a showing of the 1943 film
“Casablanca,” starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid
Bergman. Mongrel watches the screen confused, first by the black
and white photography, then by the absence of gratuitous sex, then
by the scary fact that he’s not being visually overloaded,
thereby making him feel somehow empty. Mongrel falls asleep
again.
The final experiment, “Read Stuff,” consists of
Mongrel reading about various things and rating them from 0 to 212.
For example, when reading a description of old guys, The Rolling
Stones for example, Mongrel rates them as being 0. However, when
the same descriptions are used but under a new, fictional band,
N’SLAVE, Mongrel gives it a 213 and must then be given a
sedative.
Schaep claims creating a Mongrel is not very difficult. After
all, MTV and chalupa fat are readily available. If you can’t
find these specifically, you can easily feed your own Mongrel with
endless permutations of the same pop ditties, Pokemon episodes and
Twinkie lard.
And now, I will attempt to interview Mongrel. How do you
feel?
“I feel like I can fly. I feel like I can touch the
sky,” Mongrel said.
Is being a guinea pig really what you want out of life?
“In the end, it doesn’t even matter. I had to fall
and lose it all,” Mongrel said.
Is there anything you’d like to say to anyone?
“Yeah, check it, check it. Won’t you be my
girlfriend? I’ll treat you good girl. You’ll be my
shining star, one I need, darling babeeeeeeeee “¦ “
Mongrel said before collapsing into a coma, giving Schaep the
opportunity to stick little things in Mongrel’s body.
Mongrel represents a gigantic leap in proving that it is
increasingly easy to get people to buy into crap. After all, if
record companies can produce demand for subpar products, then why
would they spend the extra effort to release good stuff?
Disclaimer: Failed mongrel members may become drunk talk show
hosts. Join me next time for a follow-up interview when Mongrel
wakes up from his coma and describes dreams of Britney
Spears’ navel dirt.