The Internet is a Playground: Irreverent Correspondences of an Evil Online Genius

by David Thorne

Materials that are not suitable for building shelter with: Water ...

If you are being attacked by a wolf, do not accidently grab a snake to fight it off with.

If you have emergency flares, taping several dozen to your legs and setting them off at the same time will allow you to hover above the wolves for several seconds, safe from their snapping jaws.

If you are camping in a cool climate such as the Antarctic, make sure you take a scarf.

suitcase of pornography. I read somewhere about a guy who, while camping, cut his leg, and as he was sleeping, a spider laid eggs in the wound. I would rather amputate my leg than have baby spiders hatching in it, so a surgical-grade bone saw is an essential component in any backpack. It is always better to preempt these things, so any limbs that receive cuts, scratches, or bites should be removed

immediately.

Survival Tip #6 Find some means of alerting rescuers to your whereabouts. If you are lost in a desert, writing a large SOS in the sand with your water is an effective means of drawing attention. If you are lost in a jungle, a simple two-way radio can be constructed from kits available at any Tandy or RadioShack store. Waving your arms at passing rescue planes expends precious energy, so it is better to dig a s...

Use the time you are waiting to be rescued wisely. Sort your DVD collection into alphabetical order or fix th...

meaning to for months but did not get around to because it would mean driving to the hardware store a...

As you have no way of knowing where you may become lost, a map of everywhere is required. Simply marking everywhere on the map you are not will pinpoint where you are. A simple compass can be constructed by rubbing a small round pebble up and down polyester slacks to generate static magneticity, then floating the pebble in a small pool of water.

Keeping a collection of pebbles in your pocket is also handy for when you come to a stream, as you can use them as stepping-stones. In case of deeper rivers, it is wise to carry a collection of larger rocks in your backpack at all times. If the river is still too deep, constructing a canoe can easily be accomplished by pouring a mixture of liquid polymer and setting agents into a precast mold.

Don’t take photos of girls leaving the high school from your car, as the fine is $360 and a year’s probation.

I know they will bitch, but their opinions mean little to anyone, so sometimes I just stay in the shower for an hour and then go back to bed.

If I do decide to go in, I sit in an office the size of a wardrobe and temperature of a kiln prostituting myself by spending the day making poor products look appealing so that people will be tricked into buying them.

When I

was at school, I had an English teacher named Judith Bowman who would make us read a novel every few weeks and write a two-page essay on each. This would not usually be an issue, as I enjoy reading, but Mrs. Bowman loved Agatha Christie novels so would force us to read only these. As my interest in reading about French inspectors on trains is on equal par with being molested by a drunk uncle, I handed in my two-page essay on two pieces of paper measuring two-by-three centimeters each (arguing that the size of the two pages had not been indicated at any time) with the words “Reading the novel Murder on the Orient Express is” on one piece, and “less enjoyable than being molested by a drunk uncle” on the other. This did not go down as well as might have been expected, and I was forced to rewrite the essay, which this time I began with “Being forced to read Mrs. Bowman’s own personal preferences

in literature is less enjoyable than being molested by a drunk uncle, which is why I chose to read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card instead . . .” If I were a professional fortune cookie writer, among the standard messages of promised hope and riches, I would include statements such as “I am sending you this message from the future. Robots wi...

Sometimes when I am at work and have had enough of moving pixels around the screen, I will grab my keys, saying, “I have to go to a client meeting. I will be back in an hour,” and run out the door before anybody can question who the meeting is with. Then I go shopping for cleaning products

or to a movie. If I were a park ranger I would tell everyone that I had a meeting with a sick bear or something, then go for a canoe ride.

Once, while

talking to a girl at a bar, I lied to her about my job, telling her I was a wind turbine technician (specializing in aerotechatrons), because I was bored and thought it would be funny. After a few beers, I put my arm out to lean against the bar and my hand slipped, sending my neck into the corner of the bar and leaving me unable to breathe for a few minutes. After assuring her that I did not require medical assistance, she stated that she had to go and asked for my business card. Forgetting my deception, I handed one over, and while she stood there reading the card, frowning, I asked her out, but she said no.

Having a job where people tell you a story and you say, “I don’t think so,” seems like it would be a lot of fun.

I have been in a total of three vehicle accidents. The first occurred when I was driving on a dirt road in the rain, lost control, and hit a cow. The second occurred while driving home from my friend Simon’s place. While at his house for a coffee, I attached a rubber spider on a string to the inside of his cupboard with sticky tape so that the next time he opened it to grab a coffee mug, the

spider swung out at him. The reaction was more than expected: Simon screamed, threw himself backward onto the floor, and actually cried. Later that afternoon as I was driving home, I lowered the sun visor and the rubber spider, which Simon had placed there in what he felt was appropriate retaliation, fell forward onto my lap. I pressed hard on the brake and turned the steering wheel, sending the vehicle into a spin and clipping a white Mercedes before ending up in an elderly man’s front hedge. The third occurred many years ago while driving to uni one morning. A girl driving a Ford Laser pulled up at the traffic lights next to me, and I noticed she was wiping tears and looking quite angry. As there is nothing as attractive as an angry and ...

was pulling to a stop, I edged forward, but she braked more suddenly than I had expected, and I slammed into the back of her car hard enough to see her head flap around like a rag doll. After pulling over, exchanging details, and offering to drive her to the ho...

Hello, my name is Professor Thomas. People ask me many scientific questions, and I know all the answers because I have the Discovery Channel at home.

Sometimes the ocean water is high, but sometimes it’s low because the moon is magnetic and it attracts the water. I thought magnets only attracted metal. Water’s a type of metal. It is also one of the noble gases.

Water dies, then decomposers break it down into organic matter. Then it rains water seeds, and

when the water seeds mix up with the decomposed water, lakes grow.

Absolute zero is when it can’t get any colder. It could get infinitely colder, but it wouldn’t be any more cold.

If I were the manager of Monarto Zoo, I would have photographic, life-size cardboard cutouts of animals placed throughout the park and drive the bus too fast for people to notice they are not real.

We boarded a thirty-year-old school bus, then waited forty minutes for it to fill with people. We were especially lucky to be sitting opposite a mum with a baby that had bright yellow feces leaking out from its diaper. The bus traveled for about ten minutes before stopping to open gates. This happened about twenty times before we saw what was possibly a giraffe lying down. It was too far away to tell whether it was alive, and a few children started asking if it was OK, so the bus drove on.

The people who wrote the brochure covered themselves, though; each statement regarding the wide and exciting range of animals to be seen began with “Depending on weather conditions . . . ,” so they could have added tigers, polar bears, and elk to the list without any risk of litigation. We did see a dead cat, but that was not listed in the brochure.

While traversing the next few checkpoints, we played a game called “What we could be doing instead?”

On the way back we pretended to push each other off the boardwalk into the mud, and since Seb was annoying me, I pushed him off the boardwalk into the mud.

If I could retract my statements I would, but I do not have a time machine.

why dont you stop wasting your time and get a girlfriend!

Thank you for the excellent suggestion, Dick. I contacted your wife and we are now seeing each other.

youve got mental problems wanker and dont call me dick. your the dickhead!

Dear Dr. Dick,

Thank you for that in-depth psychoanalysis that is so accurate as to be uncanny.

Although hungry and bored, I was lucky enough to have an overweight American girl sitting in front of me with her seat reclined, thus allowing close inspection of her dandruff. As her hair was very dark, by blurring my eyes I was able to pretend I was looking out of the window at a star-filled night and, at one point, made out the Big Dipper.

When I was about ten years old, there was an elderly man, living across the road, named Mr. Anderson, that I (innocently) drove insane through a sequence of events over twelve months, which included painting his windows black, believing he would wake up and think it was still nighttime; tying his lawnmower to the back of his car so he drove off with it; and putting several packets of raspberry Jell-O crystals in his fish pond. The day I dipped tennis balls in paint and threw them at his house obviously broke him, and he came out screaming and waving a rifle before being arrested. I did not see Mr. Anderson after that, but I am sure everything turned out fine and that he looks back on those times with fond memories.

Chuck wanted to ritualize my first kill by dipping his finger in the blood and wiping it on my face, but as he had done a poo in the forest, without access to hand-washing facilities, I told him that as a vegetarian this would not be appropriate.

Made the long journey from Harrisonburg to Philadelphia for the sole purpose of visiting the famous Love Park. My girlfriend and I fought just hours before due to me stating that I would rather go see the Space Shuttle than visit her family, but apparently there is no Pissed Off at David Park. We then drove home during a blizzard using a TomTom GPS system stuck on bicycle mode.

The adrenaline rush was unlike anything I had ever experienced, and the rest of the way home I drove sixty-three even though it was a sixty zone, as my need for speed had been fueled. My most recent stunts include running on the concrete at my local swimming pool, putting aluminum foil in the microwave, and talking to strangers.

I am currently preparing for my latest stunt, in which I intend to play with pointy sticks, then eat and go swimming without waiting thirty minutes.

The car’s exterior, engine, transmission, and tires are shot, but apart from that the vehicle is in excellent condition, so it is worth spending money on.

Each day before I leave the house, I dress as an elderly Jamaican woman and am well known in the community as Mrs. Cocowan. That way, if I ever find myself involved in a major crime, it is just a matter of time before they start looking for a large old black lady that sings for money at the train station and can run surprisingly fast.

The dinner started normally, with Thomas, the business owner, talking about his hair and a staff member leaving in tears after being accused of stealing, but went downhill from there. By the fifth Scotch, the entire table, including the managing director of McDonald’s, sat in embarrassed silence as Thomas cried while telling a story about how, when he was twelve, his dog Trevor had died of testicular cancer. By Scotch ten, Thomas had vomited onto the leg of one client and perforated another’s arm with a fork while flamboyantly telling a story about his experience in a Phuket brothel.