This, for those of you keeping track at home, is the fifty-first edition of the Gory Details. Why is this important you may ask. Because fifty-one tells us something profound about the human condition that 51% of us already know. (There are slightly more women then men.) Oh sure, thirteen is unlucky and forty-two needs a question but fifty-one, now there's a profound number.
I know what you're thinking "Oh great. The Gore Monger is about to waste my time with a bunch of crap about Area 51." Wrong! I will only say that, during the cold war, the US government had a secret site in Nevada called Area 51 and they got very weird if you tried to go by or take a picture. Whatever they were doing there can't be half a strange as the people you meet if you look Area 51 up online. According to the internet, there's a dimensional portal out there and aliens and germ warfare labs and much much more. It's a great placed to get "probed" if you're into that.
No what I'm talking about is the cool, freaky and downright scary way fifty-one confirms a profound human truth.
Did you like the movie "Species?" Ever read "The Andromeda Strain?" These and every other movie or book that's ever toyed with DNA and natural selection owe a nod to Photo 51. You've probably seen it. It's a sort of fuzzy picture of an X looking thing. A woman named Rosalind Franklin took it using x-ray refraction technology. It was the first evidence of the true structure of DNA. Weirdly, a pair of men named Watson and Crick got the Nobel Prize for the discovery a few years after Franklin died. Can you say, "men are pigs?"
Another of my favorite 51's happened back in 1986. The space shuttle Challenger was ready for its tenth launch. Everything seemed fine but unusually low temperatures in Florida that morning had allowed ice to form in a seal on one of the solid rocket boosters. When the engines were lit, the seal did not shut correctly and hot gasses began to burn through. She was doomed before she left the pad.
Seventy-eight seconds and several miles into the flight, the burn through caused the main tank to rupture and the shuttle vanished in what can only be called the largest man made firework short of an atomic bomb. The shuttle was shattered and spilled down over a pretty wide piece of the Atlantic. Amazingly, some of the astronaut's oxygen tanks indicated that they lived long enough to hit the water.
At the time of the explosion, brave divers were shown going into the water while the debris was still falling in hopes of finding survivors. Later though, when the debris was being recovered from the sea floor, several divers got busted for stealing personal affects off the bodies. They were men. Say it with me now, "men are pigs."
What's the fifty-one connection? It was the fifty-first shuttle launch, technically known at Space Transfer System Mission Fifty-One.
Here's one. When the United Nations got around to handing out war crimes accusations in Sudan after a civil war there, they gave fifty-one, that's right, fifty-one accusations, including rape, murder and torture to one government minister. You may see this one coming. Was it a girl minister? Nope. Men are pigs.
Or how about this? There's a very expensive liqueur out there named "51." It's made by a very expensive drink maker named Pernod Richard. The freaky thing about this is that it is anise flavored. That's the flavor of black licorice. Now who in their right mind says, "I'd like to take that disgusting senses abusing flavor and make it into a thick liquid with alcohol so that it can assault all of my taste buds at once?" Why not save yourself a bunch of dough and just drink Niquil? I don't know if this guy qualifies at a pig, but what a weirdo.
To me there's nothing more phallic than war. Let's look at say guided missiles. We take a long cylindrical object and fire it at a target. When the missile arrives, it penetrates the target and explodes in an unrepeatable orgy of destructive energy. Very macho. Now for the trick question, how many guided missile cruisers do you suppose the US Navy has cruising the world's oceans. That's right; fifty-one. Say, if we could only get someone to design fifty-one floating condom ships maybe we could have a little peace. Now, who in The White House orders the flying phalli flotilla around? Not the first lady. The first man. Men are pigs.
Finally, there's a group out there who wants to help with all this man trouble. It's the Chapter of the American Psychological Association dedicated to the study of men and masculinity. They actually have their own scholarly journal; trying to understand what it is to "be a man." I imagine they have tests where they give a guy five dollars and he has to decide whether to buy a six pack of Bud or flowers for his girl. Or maybe an exercise where they wake him in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and then deliver electric shocks if he doesn't put the toilet seat down.
Whatever their goals and methods, I don't hold out much hope for their success. They are, and you can look this up, The American Psychological Association Chapter fifty-one.
The number fifty-one; proof that men are pigs. Now get out there and write.
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