Productivity Decreaser

Terry Gross!

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:41:06 -0500

Terry Gross!

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:51:00 -0500

One of my favorite short stories. Reprinted here thanks to the lovely “read more” feature.

———-

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.

“Huh?” said George.

“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.

“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.

“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”

“Um,” said George.

“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”

“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.

“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”

“Good as anybody else,” said George.

“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.

“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”

George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.

“You been so tired lately – kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”

“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”

“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean – you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”

“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.

“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”

If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.

“What would?” said George blankly.

“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”

“Who knows?” said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen – ”

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

“That’s all right –” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”

“Ladies and gentlemen” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me – ” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under–handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen – upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H–G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H–G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle–tooth random.

“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with him.”

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have – for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God –” said George, “that must be Harrison!”

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber–ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”

The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while – listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.

They kissed it.

And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.

But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel.

“Yup,” she said,

“What about?” he said.

“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”

“What was it?” he said.

“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.

“Forget sad things,” said George.

“I always do,” said Hazel.

“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.

“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.

“You can say that again,” said George.

“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”

The middle-aged cleaning lady at my job makes me do her English class homework.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:03:00 -0500

I’m a nice-enough guy and I do it for her at least once a week, but at this point it’s getting ridiculous. How do I tell her (in a nice, but effective way) that there’s no point to taking an English class if you’re not going to bother to actually learn the language?

Also in this aisle: handguns, skateboards, beef jerky.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:22:00 -0500

Also in this aisle: handguns, skateboards, beef jerky.

I cried like a stupid asshole from beginning to end in this...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:59:16 -0500

I cried like a stupid asshole from beginning to end in this movie. That said, it definitely deserves to be a best picture nominee, especially with the expanded field of 10 nominees.

(via darkpizza)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:38:04 -0500

(via darkpizza)

E.R. Doctor Lists 12 Ways to Avoid Common Untimely Deaths (Abridged Version)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:17:00 -0500

Linked from Kottke.org and originally by BodyByScience.net

I don’t agree with everything on here but I definitely think it’s worth a read. His opening paragraph states: “While the things I list certainly seem unpredictable to the victim in question, they are actually quite recurrent to the emergency physician who cares for such events.”

Drive the biggest vehicle you can afford to drive. Your greatest risk of death comes from a motor vehicle accident. Despite all the data from the government on crash test safety, I can say unequivocally that in a 2-car accident, the person in the larger car always fairs better. Force=Mass x Acceleration. The vehicle with larger mass imparts the greater force.
Never get on a 4-wheeler ATV. These are the most dangerous vehicle that I know of. ATV’s have produced more quadriplegics than anything else I have seen.
Do not road cycle or jog on public roads/roadsides. This is self-evident.
Do not learn to fly a plane or helicopter unless you are a full-time professional pilot.
If you are walking down a sidewalk and are approaching a group of loud and apparently intoxicated males, cross to the other side of the street immediately.
If your gas grill won’t start….walk away. Never throw gas (or other accelerant) on a fire.
Never dive into a pool or body of water (except in a pool diving area marked 9 feet or deeper after you have checked in out feet-first).
Never get on a ladder to clean your gutters, or on your roof to hang Christmas lights. Do not cut down trees with a chainsaw. In general, any house or lawn work that you can hire for an amount equal to or less than your own hourly wage is money well spent.
Don’t try to custom-build a dream house upon reaching retirement age, a ton of old people die from the stress.
If anyone tries to force you into your car or car trunk at gun point, don’t cooperate. Fight and scream all you can even if you risk getting shot in the parking lot. If you get in the car, you will most likely die (or worse).
If you are in any personal or professional relationship that exhausts you or otherwise causes your recurrent distress, then end the relationship immediately.
Maybe don’t play the lottery. Any unearned wealth, or wealth that is disproportionate to the objective value you provide will destroy you. Lottery winners and Sports/Movie stars share a common bond of high rates of depression, addiction, and suicide.

Because the only thing I like more than buying clothes at the...

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:02:07 -0500

Because the only thing I like more than buying clothes at the mall is buying clothes at the mall with my dog.

Me too, Don. (Pic via DanielleGee)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:50:00 -0500

Me too, Don.

(Pic via DanielleGee)

How To Eat Properly (A Flat) Chicken Wing.Choice user comment:...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:42:26 -0500

How To Eat Properly (A Flat) Chicken Wing.

Choice user comment: Tommy22Hats says - I KNOW HOW TO EAT A CHICKEN WING BITCH

A Convincing Case That Spike Lee’s Masterpiece The 25th...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:24:00 -0500

A Convincing Case That Spike Lee’s Masterpiece The 25th Hour is Actually The Best Film of the Decade.

This is one of my very favorite movies and I’m glad someone loves it this much.

(via Ebert)

SHAKE SHACK IS COMING TO MIAMI BEACH!!! FUCK AND YES!!! (via...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:59:17 -0500

SHAKE SHACK IS COMING TO MIAMI BEACH!!! FUCK AND YES!!!

(via Miami Eater)

darkpizza: frakyeahbsg: i guarantee these are the cutest...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:13:25 -0500

darkpizza:

frakyeahbsg:

i guarantee these are the cutest things you’ll see all day. roslin front and center :3

Galactica Goes Kokeshi » Fanboy.com

The Adama needs a little work, but the rest are definitely present-worthy.

This is a real fucking product, everybody. I think I hate this...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:46:52 -0500

This is a real fucking product, everybody. I think I hate this more than the Snuggie for dogs.

Something about this Brutus character just makes me think I...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:05:46 -0500

Something about this Brutus character just makes me think I can’t trust him politically.

Imagine going back in time and telling your 10-year-old self...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:48:00 -0500

Imagine going back in time and telling your 10-year-old self that that the future will bring the ability to download any album, movie or video game whenever they want. Then imagine telling them it really isn’t as exciting as it sounds.

It is a fucking crime that crystallized pineapple looks a lot...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:01:00 -0500

It is a fucking crime that crystallized pineapple looks a lot like crystallized ginger. Surprise ginger is not alright, candy makers.

"I could go on stage, unzip my pants, and hang my dick out and people would think it was some..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:02:46 -0500

“I could go on stage, unzip my pants, and hang my dick out and people would think it was some statement or something.”

- Bono - via this pretty solid list of musician quotes.

holymoly: Our best Japanese character imitations. Halfway...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:44:53 -0500

holymoly:

Our best Japanese character imitations.

Halfway through the evening I lost my Pokeball and started looking more like Go Diego Go!

Zomby - Test Me For A Reason Burial-quality dubstep with a heavy...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:21:45 -0400

Zomby - Test Me For A Reason

Burial-quality dubstep with a heavy Boards of Canada influence.