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Lyle Zapato

A Paranoid Alternative Fuel?

Lyle Zapato | 2007-05-18.5640 LMT | Aluminum | Technology | Mind Control

Hydrogen is an ideal alternative fuel source with a slight problem -- how to safely transport and store it. Now researchers have come up with a simple solution using the paranoid's best friend, aluminum.

A mixture of aluminum and gallium pellets act as a catalyst when mixed with water to produce pure hydrogen gas. After burning, the only waste products are water, aluminum oxide, and gallium (all of which can be recycled). Filling up your tank would mean adding water and occasionally refreshing the aluminum pellets. (Well, more likely there would be a replaceable canister containing the Al/Ga pellets. Replacing the oxidize aluminum would be done at a recycling facility, not by the consumer.)

Normally, aluminum is impervious to corrosion in water since it rapidly forms a thin, protective shell of aluminum oxide (aka corundum, the base mineral for ruby and sapphire) that keeps the bulk of the metal unoxidized. This desirable property is what makes AFDBs safe to wear in rainy Cascadia.

Gallium disrupts the formation of this shell by diffusing into the aluminum's surface, allowing the water to fully oxidize the aluminum. This, of course, separates the hydrogen from the oxygen in water, providing the fuel. An incredibly simple and elegant solution to all our energy woes, it would seem.

One has to wonder, though, why researchers were exploring aluminum corrosion technology when they stumbled upon this fuel-producing side-effect. Could it be that mind-control technicians were developing chemical attacks against aluminum-based psychotronic deflection technology? Almost certainly yes!

By coating surfaces with a gallium powder catalyst -- distributed, perhaps, by chemtrail planes -- the Forces of Mind Control could eat away at paranoid protective defenses as rain and ambient humidity slowly, but surely, turn our beanies and anti-psychotronic bunkers into piles of aluminum rust.

And what better WMD (weapon of metal degradation) to use than gallium, a sinister doppelgänger of aluminum -- born like an evil twin as a byproduct of aluminum extraction -- whose atomic number is 31, the reverse of aluminum's 13.

While gallium also has psychotronic properties (it's in the same periodic group as aluminum, skulking just below on the table), it's of little service to the paranoid since its low melting point of ~303 K makes it useless for deflector beanies, heated bunkers, and general summertime paranoia. In fact, the most common beneficiaries of gallium's psychotronic properties are the NWO, who use it for adaptive deflective elements in the psychotron cores of mind control satellites -- I've seen the schematics!

Increased production and distribution of gallium under the guise of fuel-pellet technology might just give the Forces of Mind Control the cover they need to enact this corrosive doomsday scenario. It would be a sad irony if we were to gain energy independence only to lose our minds.

Lyle Zapato

ThreadBanger Explains The AFDB

Lyle Zapato | 2007-05-18.4520 LMT | Aluminum | Mind Control | Fashion

This week's Thread Head podcast from DIY fashionista network ThreadBanger tackles hats -- in particular, the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie. Watch these AFDB build instructions especially designed for those Web 2.0 types who only accept information presented in video format:

EMBEDDED VIDEO REMOVED SINCE IT NOW AUTO-PLAYS COMMERCIALS
Watch it on their site instead...

Note: their AFDB build substitutes the tape matrix from steps 6 & 7 of the canonical build instructions with a regular hat acting as both beanie stabilizer and camouflage. This is certainly acceptable, especially if you are going to camouflage the beanie anyway, but care must be taken that the beanie is securely ensquished inside the hat and that the hat fits snuggly on the head so that it is unlikely to blow off or else you run the risk of Catastrophic Beanie Failure.

Also, if you are hosting a DIY show on making AFDBs and a Paraterrestrial Agent of Mind Control is patroling in the area, do not remove your aluminum fortified hat to point out the innards to the camera! That's just reckless hostery.

Lyle Zapato

Tree Octopus Dot Net

Lyle Zapato | 2007-05-13.4100 LMT | Cephalopods | Cascadia | Nature

Long-time tree-octopus-sighter and forest-canopy-researcher Y. D. Bar-Ness has started a new website called TreeOctopus.net, which (besides containing information on his international forest research, writings, photos, curriculum vitae, etc.) offers his services as a Professional Tree Octopus Naturalist (available for birthday parties? contact him to find out.)

He also has a CryptoEcological Notes section that includes different tree octopus species and many other little-known or endangered creatures, such as the Seattle Viaduct Troll (subspecies of the more familiar Fremont Troll) and the transdimensional Phase Shark -- all organized via a handy Crypto-Iconic rating system.

I welcome Bar-Ness to the exciting field of arboreal octopology and await his many important contributions to the saving of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

Lyle Zapato

Maglev You Long Time?

Lyle Zapato | 2007-05-11.5470 LMT | Monorail Danger

The dangers monorails pose are many: spontaneous combustion, collisions, flying debris, falling elephants, alien abductions, and now... mobs of prostitutes!

Prostitutes jump on Monorail tracks to escape cops

KUALA LUMPUR: About 20 prostitutes disrupted the Monorail service for an hour last night when they leapt from a shoplot onto the tracks to avoid arrest.

...

Assisted by Monorail staff, police and firemen took an hour to round up the prostitutes who were running on the tracks. They were nabbed and brought down via emergency stairs used by train engineers during repairs.

Of course, if Malaysia had chosen enclosed, family-friendly pneumatic tube transit they wouldn't be having this problem. City planers considering monorails: do you really want to put parents in the awkward position of having to explain to their children who all the half-naked women running ahead of the monorail train are?

Lyle Zapato

Some People Have Odd Collections

Lyle Zapato | 2007-05-02.9060 LMT | Technology
Lyle Zapato

Anthropologist Beguiles Magical Octopus From Island Clans

Lyle Zapato | 2007-04-18.1650 LMT | Cephalopods | Politics

According to The Walrus magazine, members of the Lau Lagoon clans of Solomon Islands are accusing Canadian anthropologist Pierre Maranda, recipient of the 1996 Canada Council Molson Prize and proponent of structuralism, of stealing the clans' sacred octopus, holding it captive in a swimming pool on his "faraway island" (Canada), and using its magic power to make himself rich and famous, thereby leaving the islanders vulnerable without its protection:

The [Lau people's] ancestors, who were descended from worms, lived on a mountain above the jungled folds of Malaita. One day, a hero named Golo'au ventured forth from the mountain to discover the promised land, which was not land at all but a vast, reef-protected lagoon fringing the island's northwest coast. Golo'au and his kin built rafts from bamboo and they paddled out onto that calm water. They pulled hunks of coral rock from the shallow bottom and piled them upon each other until they had created islands on which they could build thatch houses. The Lau raised their children on the water, safe from the headhunters and mosquitoes that populated the bush. Fish filled their nets. Life was good. When the ancestors died, their spirits did not leave the lagoon. Instead, they inhabited the bodies of sharks and birds and, together with other spirit creatures, they were able to protect their descendants with their magic.

For centuries the Lau people honoured the spirits by following their edicts and killing pigs for them. The priests of the Rere clan offered regular blood sacrifices to the speckled octopus that inhabited the reef near the island of Foueda, ensuring the octopus would protect them from the dangers of the sea. "The octopus took care of people," the man with the scarified cheeks told me. "If they were lost at sea, he would bring them home. If they were drowning, he would save them." Sometimes the octopus would crawl right up out of the sea into a priest's canoe to let him know it was time for a sacrifice. It would crawl onto land, too. If you left a basket of food outside your door, the octopus would plunk himself down on top of it and engulf it. He preferred pork to fruit.

The Rere priests had kept the octopus's name a secret so that lay people, fools, and enemies could not abuse its power. But, said my friend, all that changed half a lifetime ago. That's when Maranda tricked the priests into giving him the secret names of their ancestors. He used those words to beguile the octopus, lure it through the reefs and away across the Pacific. The creature did not go willingly. It used its power to strike Maranda with a terrible illness and it killed his wife. But still it did not return. The octopus had not been seen near its coral sanctuary in years. Now, with no spirit to protect them, the people of Foueda have become vulnerable, falling victim to mysterious diseases or drowning inexplicably in the empty and unforgiving sea.

Of course, Maranda has his own version of the events. And then there's the complicating factor of a custody dispute over the octopus (Seventh-day Adventist islanders apparently want it rebaptized with a proper Christian name, like John, or Paul, or Ringo).

Regardless, this incident does highlight the importance of teaching your sacred octopus about Stranger Danger: If a strange anthropologist approaches you and offers you tasty pork treats, do not go with him -- even if he knows your name. He could be leading you to a life of mytho-semiotic debauchery in Québec.

Fortunately, I don't think the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus has much to fear from being lured away from the Republic of Cascadia since we have a system in place to keep just such a thing from happening: Should the tree octopuses be reported missing, an Octopus Alert will be howled to the Sasquatch Militia, who'll place the borders on lockdown until they are recovered. In the unlikely event that the abductor manages to escape Cascadia to Canada, interhominoidal agreements ensure that the Royal Canadian Mounted Wendigos will be waiting to recover the tree octopuses and extradite the abductor back for delimbing. So don't get any funny ideas, Pierre.

Radical Sasquatch

HOWL: MORE JERKERY!!!

Radical Sasquatch | 2007-04-15.5820 LMT | Sasquatch Issues | Crass Commercialism | Food

Last year I howled about HUMAN ADVERTISING JERKS MESSING WITH SASQUATCH, where they played CRUEL PRANKS on Sasquatch in order to VIRAL-MARKET jerked meats!

Well the JERKS continue to engage in ANTI-HOMINOID HATE CRIMES!!! This time they harass an innocent Sasquatch who was minding his own business TRYING TO CATCH A FISH, ENJOYING AMATEUR LEPIDOPTERY, and WALKING DOWN A HUMAN ROAD!!!

SASQUATCH EXTINGUISHES FLAME!!!
SASQUATCH RUSHES TO EXTINGUISH DANGEROUS OPEN FLAME LEFT BY HUMAN JERKS!!!

WORST OF ALL, the Humans also engage in RECKLESS BEHAVIOR by leaving an UNATTENDED, LIT FLAME IN THE FOREST!!! ARE YOU TRYING TO BURN DOWN OUR HOME!?!

Is SMOKEY THE BEAR not getting through to you PYRO­MANIACAL PIP­SQUEAKS!?! Is he too GENTLE to make an impression on you!? Perhaps there should be a SMOKEY THE SASQUATCH instead:

"PREVENT FOREST FIRES OR I WILL RIP YOUR ARMS OFF!!!"

The Monorailist

Monorail Akbar!

The Monorailist | 2007-04-08.3460 LMT | Monorail Danger

News from the East: The Hajj to be Monorailized!

A study prepared by the International Transport Projects Company for a monorail system that will transport pilgrims to and from the holy sites of Mecca, Mina, Muzdalifah, and Arafat has been joyously welcomed by agencies of the Saudi Arabian government. The $1.86 billion, four-line project could be completed in a mere four years and will be able to carry nearly 800,000 pilgrims during the Hajj in the sort of dignified efficiency that only monorails can offer.

As explained by monorailologist Dr. Muhammad Naji Kurdi, a Mecca monorail system will have wider social benefits beyond easing the pilgrimage: "It will also create new job opportunities for young Saudi graduates, especially in operating monorails and manufacturing carriages and their spare parts."

With the coming of the Monorail, disaffected Saudi youth will turn away from anti-social avenues of expression to embrace the uplifting of mankind through monorailular knowledge. This will lead Saudi Arabia inexorably away from their destructive oil-based economy toward a sustainable monorail-parts-and-services-based one -- a positive transformation that we must all go through in this new century, the Century of the Monorail!

Although the current plan only encompasses transporting pilgrims between the holy sites, my contacts in the International Monorailist Community assure me that Phase Two will present a bolder vision: Once the four separate lines are connected into a single, continuous one -- complete with spiraling track around the Kaaba, switchback tracks between Safa and Marwah, and the ability to cast stones from the monorail's window as it passes by the jamarat in Mina -- and a high-speed line from Mecca to Medina is added, pilgrims will one day be able to make the Umrah and the Greater Hajj without ever disembarking the Monorail.

Some in the Muslim world may be leery of such modernity coming to this, their most holy of places. But let me allay these fears: This choice to submit to the Monorail -- if such an irrefragable inevitability can be called a choice -- is the right one for Mecca and for Islam.

There is a natural concinnity between Monotheism and Monorailism -- a shared purity of Singularity that speaks to Unity and Transnational Brotherhood. While the Monorail is the epitome of Ultramodernity, it is also a timeless invocation of Oneness, uniting the Future and the Past in a continuously looping track with a station conveniently located at Now. How fitting then that the Five Pillars of Islam should be joined by the Concrete Pillars of the Monorail. In fact, I would dare suggest that it would not be theologically unreasonable to proclaim: "There is no God but Allah, and Monorail is His public transportation!"

I say unto the people of Saudi Arabia: Welcome! Welcome into the fold of Monorailfaring Nations! While Dubai may have gotten here ahead of you by creating the first monorail in your region, your contribution to the Monorailist Cause will be no less important, as you will be poised to introduce the profound spiritually transformative power of the Monorail to pilgrims from all over the World.

So, to the minarets, you muezzin of Monorailism, and let this be your adhan: A Mecca for Monorailists! a Monorail for Mecca!

Radical Sasquatch

HOWL: THE TRUTH ABOUT MARS!!!

Radical Sasquatch | 2007-03-30.9700 LMT | Sasquatch Issues | Paraterrestrials

Using one of their "ROVERS" -- which I can only assume is some sort of METAL DOG with CRYPTO-CAMERAS tied to it -- Humans at NASA!!! have STUMBLED UPON THE TRUTH ABOUT PLANET MARS:

MARSQUATCH PRINT
(CLICK FOR NASA!!! SITE!!!)

This photo of a HOMINOID FOOTPRINT on Mars' surface CONCLUSIVELY PROVES that Mars was once INHABITED BY A TRIBE OF ANCIENT HOMINOIDS!!! These "MARSQUATCH" no doubt are the ones who seeded the volcanoes on Earth from which ALL TERRESTRIAL HOMINOIDS ERUPTED!!! This means that Mars is PART OF THE COMMON HERITAGE of all Sasquatch, Yeti, Yowie, Grendel, Hibagon, Mawas, Enkidu, Agogure, and even Teh-Lmas!

In light of this new discovery, I am howling on the SASQUATCH MILITIA to start a SASQUATCH SPACE INITIATIVE!!! I believe that in three years time we can have a HOLLOWED OUT SEQUOIA LOG capable of carrying three or four brave ASTROSQUATCHES on a mission to EXPLORE MARS and to CONTACT any remaining Marsquatch for BARTER or CULTURAL EXCHANGES!!! WE HAVE THE LOG TECHNOLOGY and the SASQUATCH POWER TO HURL IT TOWARDS MARS!!!

IN THE MEAN TIME!!! Nerd Humans at NASA!!! should IMMEDIATELY stop their "ROVERS" from making tracks all over our ANCESTRAL HOMELAND, stop crashing SKY-CAMERAS into it, and stop their plans to COLONIZE OUR PLANET!!! If Humans want the MOON or some stupid ICE WORLD, they can have it, but MARS IS OURS!!!

NERD HUMANS, HEAR MY HOWL: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT MARS!!! ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE!!! OR WE WILL DELIMB YOU!!! Just like we SHOULD have done with your SCREECHING, BONE-TOSSING ancestors before they started INVADING OUR FORESTS!!!

[2008-01-23] UPDATE!!! MARSQUATCH PHOTOGRAPHED!!!

Lyle Zapato

Nerd Nite's Alrite For Feit-Thompsoning

Lyle Zapato | 2007-03-28.9650 LMT | Entertainment | Art | Nature

In Inkling Magazine's "Nerds Just Wanna Have Fun," Kurt Wong tells us about Nerd Nites, informal scientific symposia held in bars and clubs in Boston and New York where scientists hook up with vibrating tadpoles over lectures on synchrotron-based X-ray scattering, Z/W sex chromosomes, and worm poop.

If you don't know your fusiform gyrus from your fuel-efficient Prius, you might be out of your league at first, but put on your beer goggles (held together with single malt scotch tape) and you'll quickly become a vocal expert on every topic discussed. And if not, you can at least hope a fight breaks out when some drunk catastrophic limnogeologist pulls a Michael Richards and starts hurling untoward comments at uniformitarians in the audience. Now that's edutainment.

As you'll note, I did the illustration for the Inkling article, which gave me an excuse to draw this happy little camel spider:

camel spider

I think he makes for an apt exemplifying topic illustration since, like potential Nerd Nite attendees, Solifugae are active at night, seek dark recesses, and get their nourishment from drink (Guinness and liquefied beetles, respectively... or, possibly, irrespectively).

Oh, and my finite apologies for the awkward and way, way, way too obscure (yet, oddly solvable) nerd pun in the title. There's just no excuse for that sort of thing.