GalacticMu

One of the points of interest on my mental map is to make my own Mortal Kombat-style game. I’m not so much about the button mashing, but I love me some fatalities. My game would probably be 80% fatality.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer

Some worry that the robots might eventually become smarter than humans. Here’s what you might have to look forward to if they don’t.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
Galactic Mu

[Captain says: stop messing with your speakers, there is no volume. This is the only YouTube video we could locate, and it had a copyright issue with the soundtrack.]

Finally, after all these years, a diagnosis.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer

A little eye-candy for you space travelers. Human Franco Brambillo will amuse and delight you with his collection of vintage alien-invasion postcards. Of course, we’re all aliens to somebody.

Always here to help,
Halcyon Snow
Psych Officer

I was an accidental fan of Tom Gauld’s for years, thanks to a book of postcards in the Captain’s library. One day, I discovered he was on flickr, and lo, there was much rejoicing. Gauld packs a ton of humor and humanity into every cartoon and he makes it look so damn easy.  Slip on by his flickr stream and wallow in the goodness.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
Galactic Mu

I come from a long line of non-braggarts. It’s a Viking thing. We tend to keep to ourselves. We like to keep it all bottled up and then let it out in a frenzy of raping and pillaging and maybe some burning, if it’s not too damp out. It’s a cultural thing.

However-

I have to break precedent to tell you this: Dedicat Ed is now available on Kindle.

It is, as it says on the back cover*:

A heartwarming story about a foulmouthed midget who wants to play in the NBA, and his sister, a pragmatic prostitute. You know, the American dream.

If you own a Kindle or an i-phone, or an i-pod touch, and you like midgets and/or hookers and/or laughter, and/or feelings you should definitely buy Dedicat Ed. It’s only $4.80, the same price as a ham sammich. And it won’t make you fat, infest you parasites, or give you hammy breath. Guaranteed.

I co-wrote it a few years back with a good friend of mine, Eric Fleming. It’s very funny. Laugh-out-loud funny. I have no problem saying that because many of the funnier parts were not even written by me. It’s also pretty insightful about humans and the things they do, and I can definitely say that because none of the insightful parts were written by me.

I did, however, write a chapter which involves rough midget sex and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. If you ever want to make friends quickly, pull up that chapter, and put your gizmo on text-to-speech mode. Instant robot midget porn. And, like the man says, if your friends don’t like instant robot midget porn, then they’re no friends of mine.

Dedicat Ed is written in the style of an oral history. In other words, people take turns telling the story. It’s kind of like a mockumentary, if that helps. Here’s an excerpt from auto mechanic Willy Jopstone, one of Mary’s many satisfied customers:

…she told me she was eighteen but if I wanted would pretend she was fifteen or whatever. The thing about that girl was, and I remember this part too; was that she was a pro. Not that she fucked like a pro, which she did, but she was all business. No pimp either; I like that on account of the pimp always dickin’ me over money. Hey! I like to tell the boys, listen to this now, I like to tell the boys that when I get a hooker with a pimp I get fucked by the broad and then get fucked by the pimp, too! Two for the price of one! Get it? Not that I get a dick up my ass really, but that he screws me outta money. I ain’t queer.

What else about Cherry? Well, she charged more than most girls did. She asked alotta questions about stuff; things about cars and things about being a guy getting a hooker and shit like that. I told her, listen to this one, I told her: ‘What, you writin’ a book or somethin’?’ Hey Frank! You writin’ a book or somethin’?

What, more stuff? It was fifteen years ago man! All I know is this hot little chick is standin’ on the corner looking all fresh and fine and I says to myself: ‘Willy, this here is your lucky day!’ You can cut that out, the part with my name right? Anyways, so I stop and she gets in the car and names her price and tells me her brother will kill me if I don’t treat her right and puts her hand in my lap and off we went.

Oh, there’s one more thing that made me laugh my ass off. Listen to this one. Hey, listen to this one guys, I ask this hooker who’s this brother who’s gonna kill me if I don’t treat her right and she says it’s her little brother. I ask her how old her little brother is and she says; you hearin’ this? She says: ‘He’s seven!’

Always here to help,

Halcyon
Psych Officer
GalacticMu

 * There is no back cover.

And work. And hospitals. And malls. And so on.

Pure, distilled fluorescence.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
Galactic Mu

[Captain's Note:  I could also hear it, and found it so irritating I could only tolerate about five seconds of it.]

As you pass through distant and uncharted galaxies, it is important to remember that alien species often have different cultures than the one you are used to. These differences will almost certainly extend to the realm of culinary choices. Try to remain open minded, even if it means ingesting an ensign.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
Galactic Mu

If you are anything like me (doughy, bookish, functioning eyeballs), and you grew up in the seventies or eighties, you have fond memories of the art of this guy: Richard Amsel. Here is a guy who, armed with only a pencil and some watercolors, and what I assume were huge pieces of paper, unleashed movie-scale awesomeness on our as-yet unjaded eyes. What kind of awesomeness? Try the poster for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or the Dark Crystal. Or Chinatown. Or, Mu favorite, Flash Gordon. If your life were half as exciting as this poster, you’d probably die of awesome-poisoning.

Thank you, Mr. Amsel for blowing our young minds. And thank you, Adam McDaniel for telling the story of the man behind the awesomeness.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
Galactic Mu

As you may recall¹, Mental Mapping is the process of describing the shape of a mind (usually your own) by identifying recurring (and preferably unusual) thoughts.As with most sciencey ideas, questions abound regarding the process of Mental Mapping. Some of these will be answered in good time, to the best of my ability. Some of you might answer the remainder, to best of your ability.

Let’s start with this example: our beloved Captain’s Mental Map [discovered in the archive, recorded somewhere in the year '02]:

Grapes (or peanuts) the size of footballs²
I’m Homo sapiens / everyone else is Homo faber
Being first on the scene of an accident
Awareness of paranormal activity
Desire to commiserate with the Irish working class
The words “Half and Half” are pronounced “Hlaf n’ Hlaf”
Want to move to Chuuk

The above should give you a pretty good idea of what a basic mental map might be. I conferred with the Captain, and she claims that mostly, over the last six years, the entries have held up. Mostly.

Which brings us to an important point about mental mapping: these maps (like all maps) are subject to change. Given the nature of this invisible ganglionic territory, even the best efforts are bound to be full of guesswork and errors.

As with any map, you must start with the basics, and make some assumptions. Here be dragons, and so forth. Revisions are essential. Paradoxically, errors in mapping your thoughts increase the accuracy of your mental map (only if they are your errors). Mis-thinking is a form of thinking. Accuracy (I’m talking to you, Ensign Aargh) is not a prerequisite for success.

It is probable that conscientiously mapping your thoughts will change what thoughts you think. But unless you can un-think about it you’re humped, so you might as well start with what you got.

Don’t think of the points (or lines, or stars, or townships, or mountains, or whatever) on your map as being “right” or “wrong.” There is no right or wrong in mental mapping. There are only degrees of interestingness.

Here are the basic criteria I use when assembling a mental map:

Recurrence: when you have a thought, consider whether it is a thought you’ve had before.

Regularity: how often has this thought recurred? The thoughts that interest me most recur at a rate of less than once a day and more than once a year.

Interest: what is your reaction to this thought? Does it stimulate an chain of further thoughts? Does it (or has it) worked its way into conversation or action? If you cohabitate with someone, they might have a good idea of what some of the points on your map are.

Uniqueness: is this thought yours, or is it owned by many people? A common thought is often accurate, but not telling. For instance, let’s say you regularly think “puppies are cute.” It is certainly a part of your mental map, but it does not go far in distinguishing your mind from anyone else’s.³

One typical reaction to the idea of mental mapping is to be stumped. This leaves you to consider the possibility that perhaps you are deep down, a boring person (see footnote). Don’t panic – the process of assembling even a meager list can take weeks or months.

One patient swore that he had nothing of interest to map. Two months later, at three in the morning, he called us with a revelation: he had recognized a point on his mental map. Every time he went into an old house, he said, he would find himself thinking that maybe there was treasure secreted inside the walls.

Good for him.

Always here to help,
Halcyon
Psych Officer
GalacticMu

p.s. More to come, including an important message about the dangers of psychic robots.

¹ Mental Mapping (Part 1)

² As previously mentioned, although now the grapes are the size of watermelons. “I need to be able to carve off a large slice and eat it with two hands,” she says.

³ It is possible to have a mental map made entirely of common thoughts. But it is sad.