This excerpt from a Lovecraftian “Choose Your Own Adventure” story, unpublished and partially complete, was submitted to The Correctness anonymously.

You are an intrepid adventurer! You are Dr. Louise Klimt, Professor of Antiquities at the Miskatonic University near Arkham. You are well respected, and you have an impressive knowledge of arcane matters and the occult. You are also a sincere looking brunette woman with knowing doe-eyes. Maybe you are a red head, but most likely you are a brunette. Whatever the case, you are an implausible knockout babe. Just to be really clear, you are not a blonde. Oh, and you paid your way through grad school by being a dancer- a legitimate one- maybe not- no, definitely not. Yeah, actually, you were a stripper, but in a self- actualized kind of way, you know, like you were really comfortable with your sexuality, so you could strip and still not get caught up in the awful culture of that trade. Only once or twice did you seduce one of your fellow strippers, and it was all in good fun.

Today a letter arrived at your door. It was an urgent missive from a friend who had journeyed to the deepest heart of the Amazon. It contained a dire warning.

“Dear Dr. Klimt:

I fear things here have gone horribly awry. Half of the archaeological team is missing, and Jenkins seems possessed by some ancient spirit- it’s hard to say if he stumbled upon some jungle hallucinogen or not, but he keeps repeating “h’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” and I fear that means our team is in great peril. Please send assistance as soon as humanly possible, we will need your expertise most urgently!

Sincerely,

Jonothan Buckmueller”

What do you do?

If you would like to hastily arrange travel to the Amazon, flip to page 17.

If you would like to reminisce about your lesbian experiences in college, flip to page 29.

Page 29:

Terrified for your Friend Jonothan Buckmueller, you arrive at your home in the historic Klimt Manor and make your way to the library. There, you will have the privacy to think and consider your options.

To take your mind off things, you slip into something more comfortable than your fitted academic garb, opting instead to change into your favourite costume piece from your days at the club, and elaborate and lacy French maid ensemble.

Able to relax for a moment, you find yourself in a meditative state, able to recall in precise detail the night you delicately seduced a new young dancer with your wiles, wanting, in a way, to both punish and sensually reward her for the charm of her naivete.  She was fresh from a small town, and had no idea how to cope with the overwhelming sexual authority you exuded. So easily you unlaced her corset and ran your other silk gloved hand up the soft skin of her inner thigh, kissing the side of her neck.

If you want to rush to the amazon now, flip to page 27.

If you want to become visibly aroused, and be interrupted by the milk maid who, alarmed by your saucy attire, spills cold, fresh milk all over herself, flip to page 18.

ConCERNed? Ha! Seriously, Large Hadrons, and the End of the World.

We here at The Correctness are not physicists. OH! Wait- No, I looked around again, and we are not physicists, but what we ARE for certain is correct, and we’d like to offer some advice on your impending doom. So, regarding your horrifying death: When CERN finally fixes the Large Hadron Collider in November, we can guarantee you that the first large hadron collision will set in motion the destruction of all life on earth, most probably by terrifying creatures from dimensions beyond, but possibly, and somewhat optimistically, just from a massive gravitational collapse that will swallow our planet. Let’s explain a bit about the LHC.

Understanding the LHC, and Subaru AWD:

Again, we’re not physicists since “the incident”, but the elementary basics of the LHC can be easily understood. A particle accelerator, which is what the LHC is- in fact, it’s a humungo one-  is tasked with smashing things into other things so we can find out what’s inside of things.  I repeat. This multi-billion dollar scientific device, requiring the cooperation of many nations to build, and the finest minds in particle physics and engineering,  is a machine which smashes things into other things. Specifically, its job is to make with the smashing of tiny subatomic particles into each other to see what’s inside of them, and create images of the microscopic aftermath.

Now, if you’re like me, and the particle collider process sounds akin to smashing two Subarus into each other, head on, and counting the flying parts to see how the all-wheel-drive works, then you , like me, aren’t that far off the mark.  This highly scientific sounding process takes high speed images of the shit that flies off of other shit when you wreck it hard- like, speed of light hard. That’s one hard wreckin’. Like, as hard as I would wreck Ellen Page if she wouldn’t be outrageously offended at the suggestion, and especially if I wasn’t so scathingly asexual lately. If you wrecked your Subaru at the speed of light- wait, I’m going to stop this article and do some high school physics calculations here- let’s say you wrecked your Subaru at the speed of light by smashing it into, say, a populated area, the resulting impact would be , carry the one- um- AWESOMELY HUGE IN A MICHAEL BAY KIND OF WAY. To take it back to Star Wars (and you know we like to), it would have been way easier for the Death Star to obliterate Alderaan by lobbing a couple of Subarus at them out of high orbit rather than charging up that big old laser (see: Item 7 of TBinns article http://www.thecorrectness.com/movies/25-things-wrong-with-the-star-wars-universe/ ) In fact, tossing a surplus star destroyer at a planet would be extremely effective at high speeds too, and this is technology that only requires you to have a nearby sun or planet to fling shit around. What I’m getting at is when you smash things fast, they go smashier.  The LHC smashes things the very smashiest. Guess I lost my chance with Ellen Page, huh.  I have a friend who saw Ellen Page in a video store, and she was kind enough to warn them off on a film they were considering renting.

Now, we will be returning to the topic of your inevitable tortuous death momentarily, but if you will allow some further clarification…

Two things:  One: I have been informed that you don’t have to worry about the operation or results of the LHC, because scientists are people we can implicitly trust because they are never, ever wrong. We defy any reader to give us historical evidence of science ever being incorrect about anything, for any reason.  No, wait,  actually, no, I can think of a couple of minor ones.  Actually, some major ones.

Two: Fortunately for all of us, the scientists at CERN’s LHC are talking about smashing very tiny protons into one another, or on special days, lead nuclei. So that’s nice small stuff to smash, not Subarus. One brief pause here- Relative to size, on the proton/lead nuclei front, this is something I find funny. Imagine a baseball. Now imagine, I know it’s not used for baseball or football anymore, the Astrodome. Now, on Thursdays, we throw baseballs at each other. And on Fridays, just for giggles, we throw Astrodomes at each other. That’s the size difference between a proton and a huge old lead atom- and even just the lead nucleus is like each of us hurling 204 baseballs at each  other in two big 204 baseball lumps. That’s a lot of damn baseballs to catch square in the crotch, because that’s where you were aiming,  wasn’t it, Greg.

The Goal: Gathering Sand on a Beach

In any case, what can come of smashing this tiny stuff? Well, it’s back to school for 30 seconds. You were 8, and the smallest things in the world were molecules. Then, you were 12, and the smallest thing in the world was atoms, which made up the molecules. Then, you were in high school, and you were masturbating a lot, but also, the smallest thing in the world was the protons, neutrons and electrons that made up atoms.  Then, you were smoking up at university with your physics buddies, and they promised you that the subatomic particles are made up of groups of even smaller particles, and that was the smallest thing. CERN is trying to tally up these smallest things by making them go smashy. We have built the Lego Star Wars kits, we have engaged them in battle, we have tired of them, we have hurled them into each other in Dave’s basement, we are gathering and tallying the pieces by colour.  Some of the pieces have flown behind the shelf, and one of them nicked his sweet TV screen.

The Probable Outcome:

Let’s leave behind the science for a moment, and get practical. Whoah,  that was an ironic statement. Anyways, let’s do that thing I just said. If you think nicking Dave’s TV doesn’t sound like so big of a problem, it is probably because you are insensitive, and you can’t afford to replace his TV.  But when the Large Hadron Collider hits Dave’s TV, it TEARS A HOLE IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE AND CAUSES MICROSCOPIC STABLE BLACK HOLES TO OPEN UP, THROUGH WHICH WILL COME THE GREAT OLD ONES. The speeds of these collisions are so fast, and so intense, and so energetic, and cause such dramatic funkification of spacetime that most assuredly we will awaken the Elder Gods who slumber in a parallel universe, needing only the faintest crack in our reality to slip through and strangle us all with their hideous tentacles.

Inevitable Monster Movie:

Hasn’t anyone read Steven King’s “The Mist”? Or seen the film? Or really any of the other books which refer to “the Mist” including the entire Dark Tower series?  Or read Frankenstein, or know what Frankenstein is? REPEAT AFTER ME: When we mess with science shit, we always, always, always end up battling creatures we can’t control. We have learned this lesson time and again, from Jurassic park, from Event Horizon, from, uh, Spongebob Squarepants I guess.

So, let’s say the tiny black holes don’t crack open interdimensional gates- which, we assure you as non physicists, they absolutely will-  then maybe the tiny black holes just continue to grow and grow and grow until their immense and unstoppable gravitational pull sucks you in and you die at the event horizon fatter than you’ve ever been- well, more massive- anyways- well, the same mass but feeling bloaty-  you’ll die, and you will feel seriously ugly.

AT BEST, there is the possibility of the production of a “strangelet”.  A strangelet is two things: One, it is obviously smaller and cuter than a strange, because it is called a strangelet, just as we know that a couplet , in poetry, is a small, cute couple, just like Ellen Page and I would be. Two, it is a type of  subatomic particle which, if it did hypothetically interact with regular matter, could make all normal matter into “strange matter” in a weird chain reaction.  Now, nobody can explain to us how that might change things, but it sound DC comics enough to us, so it seems okay.

But to get down to brass tacks (a phrase for which the etymology eludes me completely) the MOST LIKELY situation is that once microscopic black holes create a gateway into the hidden realm of unimaginable horrors that will drive you mad to even behold with the faintest flicker of one glance, that’s when shit gets all doomy. Scientists at CERN have conducted two, count ‘em, two safety reviews, and they are confident, as the scientists who are in charge of the multi-billion dollar operation that would be a colossal waste of money if it failed, that none of these things will happen. I think we can all agree that when scientists who are beholden to their international investors to produce results on massively expensive experimental devices tell us something, it’s worth taking their assurances with several grains of salt. An ASTRODOME of salt, which could be then hurled at high speed towards another astrodome of salt, producing salty astrodome particles which can be counted and categorized, finally allowing us to know how effective the Astro’s coaching staff was in 70’s. Anyways, prepare to be eaten , not just eaten but DEVOURED by the Cthulhu.

Spotting the Cthulhu:

You may be interested as to how to spot the Cthulhu as they pass through the colourful interdimensional vortex from the place we would understand as a “city” of R’leyh. First, some basics on Cthulhu:

- They are the ones that when you look at them, make you go completely insane.

- They have tentacles on their awful, repulsive, squid heads, and are drooling hate like a retarded baby camel drools drool.

- They desire not only to consume your flesh, but your soul, so they have special teeth to chew up your soul.

-Dudes will be chanting the following: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh C’thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,

- You feel insane, because you looked at one.

And that’s about it. Once those things start coming through and devouring your very life force and tormenting your fleeing friends with horrors they cannot fathom or comprehend, it’s Doomsville. No amount of knowledge about the so called subatomic particle zoo will protect you from the grasp of a slick spiky tentacle and the maw of a giant creature with breath that reeks of decay and infinity, if indeed the nameless horror has breath to breathe!

Doom 2012 is right on schedule, thanks again Science for nothing. Fuck you guys.

7 things we hate about Weddings:

Lest we start to sound unromantic, let us first say that we here at The Correctness have no objection to the notion of making a lifelong vow to your partner who you deeply love.  No, we think marriages are a lovely idea, and fully 2/3 of  The Correctness are happily wed, and a mere 1/3 of us are hopeless bachelors who screw up every relationship we touch like some kind of reverse King Midas (See the Hollies 1968 “hit” entitled “King Midas in Reverse” if you would like to see this metaphor extended into meaninglessness).

No, sadly, though weddings sometimes make us cry- in a totally manly way, like when we get fully wailed in the gnards- and we have attended a few fun ceremonies, we have some basic concerns about the execution of your dream day.

So snap away with your table’s own disposable camera from which nary one good photo will be developed. With love in our hearts, and hope for the future, here are seven things that are awful about weddings.

1. Wedding Speeches- In General.

Who gave your drunk uncle permission to ramble unceasingly about your childhood? Everyone else got asked to keep it short. You know what? That time you hit your head on the swingset, and you went specifically to your uncle’s house to get an A-Team band-aid? That would have been a story worth hearing if we could have seen you clock yourself on video, or live, right now, but even the loose reference to the A-team is not enough to help us enjoy the 12 minute tangent about how hard it was to grow up in small-town such and such, and how glad he is that somebody built an ice-rink.  We’ve MC’d our fair share of weddings, and as entertainers, we are all awkwardly standing near the head table praying for you to drunkenly shit yourself so you’ll wind it down.

2. Specifically wedding speeches that start “wow.” said like nothing exciting happened at all.

Dig us, peeps, dig us: You should say “wow” with an exclamation point after it like: “Wow, I won the lottery!” or “Wow, there’s a fucking pterodactyl in my house!”.The phrase “wow!” is fundamentally exclamatory.  Never, ever, EVER, say “wow” like somebody’s whole litter of puppies just died. “Wow, what a magical day…despite our inevitable death at the hands of cruel time.” Here’s what we assume happened:

You wrote your flowery speech to sound exciting, but then you wanted to draw on all of your years of fine arts training because you know serious stuff is categorically more important and relevant than amusing stuff- especially at a wedding, which is a fun celebration of love that should be brought down a notch to a dour reminder of mortality . This certainty you learned before you dropped out of your liberal arts program and started working part time at a “paint your own pottery” store, Janet.  “Wow” is simply not a word loaded with gravitas. Want to bring the serious? Try starting your speech with “Abortion…”. Better yet, why not try “Websters dictionary defines abortion as..” and really rock the house.

3. Stagette parties

Ladies, let us clear up a little mystery for you. This is what happens at a stag party: The boys go out, everyone gets drunk, they see some strippers that your fiancée is WAY too drunk to fuck, everyone stumbles to the nearest couch. That’s it, with the exception of the lighting of various things on fire, but this is not a behavior reserved for stags, just drunken maleness.  We say this, Ladies, because again, as entertainers, we here at The Correctness have dealt with more than our fair share of stagettes, and they are THE WORST thing to see coming in the door of our performance venue.

First, we know it’s Tina’s special day, but for the love of God and all that is holy, don’t drunkenly come up to us at intermission and ask us to tailor our set specifically  to Tina. You know what? Other people are here, and not hammered, and they don’t give the slightest shit about Tina- Now, that’s going to blow your mind for a minute, because you’re drunk, and Tina’s been your best friend since elementary school  (until a month ago when she snubbed you for bridesmaid because she “really needed your planning skills” on this bachelorette party) .  It might be Tina’s special day, but everyone else in the world doesn’t care. And don’t bother telling us how to identify Tina. We can spot her from here. Tina is the one in the dildo hat with streamers coming out of the tip of the dick- We clarify that because you are ALL wearing dildo hats, and you all have t-shirts that have “part time whore” or “porn queen” written in black marker. We get it.  You know what negotiation technique won’t work? Putting your drunk breath right in our faces, grabbing our hypothetical crotches and telling us :”It’s Tinash speshul day”. Why do you look all offended when we back away?  Did you think you could manage a coy seduction after 7 crantinis? Nobody at the show cares that Tina is getting married, and nobody here cares that you didn’t get to be in the wedding party. Suck it up. P.S. Don’t touch The Correctness’s junk, please.

4. Presumptuous slide shows.

Okay, we were all young once. It’s amusing to see pictures of you dressed up as a ghostbuster at Halloween in 1986.  It’s charming to see the sepia tones of the faded, scanned photographs of Christmases past. Heck, it’s even kind of fun to scan the windows desktop of the slideshow laptop for .wmv files that sound like porn you recognize while they are booting up powerpoint.

We get touchy about the slideshows that display you in a tutu at your first recital, and have hilarious captions about how you are going to be a dancer- nay, a prima ballerina!  There is an overwhelming emphasis placed on your sporting and artistic prowess, and you know what? It’s just depressing.  It’s depressing because neither you nor your spouse turned out to be athletes, nor are you artists, and the full bulk of the evidence of your creative failure is being projected on a screen 20 feet high. You are not a dancer, you are not a football star, you are not a musician, you are an accountant, you are a florist, you are a stock boy.  We’re failed comedians, and you can join us down here our spooky misery. What possible reason could your friends and family have for setting their expectations of you so high? We think it’s because they hate you, and this ceremony legally binds you to someone else.

5. The “right” wedding gift

We’ve known you for ten years. We introduced you to your spouse! Now it’s time to buy you a wedding gift. Right off the bat, you are already spending assloads of money on a wedding, and you can obviously afford it, because you have everything else. We know you have everything else, because we still haven’t returned your air compressor we borrowed when we redid our baseboards in the living room.  Now,  to start your new hypothetical life together- because you’ve been living together for three years, you sinful heathens- you are requesting gifts from the local homesupplyregisrty.com or Ikea, or whatever.

We care about you very much, but we find it difficult to express our admiration for you and your relationship with most utensils or appliances. Which says “I love you guys a lot” more: A gravy boat, a coffee grinder, or the crystal salad bowl? And furthermore, when are you ever going to use a 12 serving crystal salad bowl? You haven’t invited us for dinner since we set you up. You know what? Fuck it. We’re just getting you the gravy boat. That’s $75 dollars, and that’s enough. Christ.

6. Your hilarious MC determines the buffet order

It’s 8:30 at night. The wedding party was an hour and a half late from photos (haha, they’re all jumping in the air! haha, you guys are the wackiest! haha NO! FAIL!). All we want, ALL WE WANT, is a single, grim slice of roast beef, and some soapy green beans from the steamer tray. Then we will be able to socialize at your insidious dance, which we would have been looking forward to, if not for the hour and a half delay for an already late, already cold, already shitty dinner.

BUT THEN, your MC has downloaded a list of wacky “who goes first at the buffet” games from awesomewedding.com, or insufferablewarcrime.com, or webstersdictionarydefinesabortion.com, and he (sometimes she, but typically, he) wants everyone to answer trivia about who gets to eat first- or recite a poem, or dance! Just one look at the crestfallen table of out-of-towners and you know they’re waiting until dead last. Nobody at that table knows anybody else well enough to give them the confidence to sing Tina’s favourite Abba song. And you know what? This meal cost us a $75 gravy boat already, and it’s already going to suck.  Haha you guys! First table with an amusing story about the couple gets to go up next? I refer you you to A: wedding speeches, and B: the inaudibility of Aunt Margaret without a microphone. And oh, oh, woe is us, you got Aunt Margaret started, and she realizes the story about the time she caught you two doing it in her pick up truck is totally inappropriate, but you can see her trying to make the story go PG as she gets closer and closer to the uncomfortable ending- Oh yes, it would have been amusing, but she can’t say “cumstains” with all these kids around can she? Watch as the recently betrothed blood drains from your faces as Aunt Margaret changes it to ‘kissing” from  “hardcore fucking”, and all the amusement floods out of the tale. The  MC gets everyone to give her now purposeless story a round of applause, and we all look around wondering why she thought that was an amusing enough story about you two to warrant meal permission. Haha, you guys, name that tune and you go next! Like you can hear me shout the correct answer in this vacuous rented community hall? Here’s the answer, it’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” by grammy award winner  SUCK MY DICK !

7. Your soundtrack

Etta James “At Last”. WE ARE DONE WITH IT. Do people want to dance to this song because every other wedded couple plays it as their “first dance”, so nobody else is able to dance to it? I want my chance to dance! Etta James! Etta James! Etta James! It’s become as trite as “Here Comes the Bride”.  Why not pick a song form that Dave Matthews concert that couples inevitably attend together? Or, throw us a bone because we waited 2 hours for our turn at the buffet- How about NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton”?

The Correctness thinks weddings are great. We just think there are a few simple things you could avoid, and make everyone happy. In fact, in any relationship worth celebrating, your friends will totally get it if you elope to Vegas, and tell everyone about it when you get back. It’s cheaper, easier, and we appreciate it.