Appease a Centipede

We Are Losing!

Centipedes get so tired when they're clinging to the cieling above your head.My apartment has proven to be a yearly biological experiment in the arms race of evolution. We don't have much of a mold or fungus problem here and the closest thing to a roach infestation we've ever had was that false alarm when I saw a pillbox beetle. No, the magic of evolution happens when the yearly brood of centipedes hatches and begins to grow and grow. Sort of like beautiful flowers only they move really fast, have about ten thousand legs, and like to take naps on the ceiling right above your head. Sometimes those cute wittle centipedes just get soooo sweepy they snooze off, give a little bug yawn, and then fall right on your goddamn neck. The sensation of a centipede on your neck is roughly as comfortable as wearing a leather jacket made out of broken vials of acid and your mom's flayed skin.

What makes the yearly tide of centipedes even more fun and exciting is that they are getting bigger with each passing of the seasons. When I first moved in here the centipedes were hideous little scurrying bastards maybe an inch long, two inches on a bad day. Three years later and the first centipede of the year fell off the tree measuring in at just shy of five inches. It's not even funny to me anymore, nor is it scary. I look at these leg-laden bug-beasts, the way they crawl so effortless across walls and ceilings, how they scurry so blindingly fast when threatened, and I know my time is coming. It's fatalism, because whatever retromutagen ooze these sons of bitches have been sipping is a lot more potent than the vodka I've been drinking to drive away the nightmares.

Humans have this great organ that Bibleman tells me is called a soul and this has for many decades been our edge over the beasts of nature. They can be venomous or cunning or just have skin made out of rocks or whatever, but as long as we have technology and the power to appeal directly to God through prayer, they will never be our match. Or so I thought before this year's crop of centipedes. In their tiny glassy eyes I can see mankind's downfall. I can see that centipedes, through sheer evolutionary luck, can and will eclipse us. Based on their present rate of evolution that will probably happen in about six or seven years.

Sure, we'll fight a war to stop them. We will mass troops and wield the greatest weapons that man can muster, but it's already too late. They have come too far to be stopped and by that point we'll just be putting on our oxygen masks as the plane crashes into Tower Two. The centipedes will just crush our tanks, swat our planes from the sky, and pull legions of soldiers screaming into their insatiable mouths. Then they will tear open the soft belly of human civilization and feast on the mewling innards of mankind. All of Bibleman's fabled souls will be nothing more than seasoning on the delicious sweet meats of our flesh.

We're lost. Unless we start making peace overtures now while we're still negotiating from a position of power. That is precisely what I have done with my new Befriend the Centipedes Program. I think it would be a great project for you to start in your own centipede infested home or office. But don't let me get ahead of myself; let me tell you about just how you can Befriend the Centipedes.

TheBefriendtheCentipedesProgram

Centipedes have to get things done just like you or I might if we had jobs and families instead of the hollow emptiness of sociopathy and anxiety disorder.Centipedes might seem creepy or icky to me and you, but that's because of something that collegeicians call "racialism". Racialism is a demon that lives inside the breast of every man and woman and it comes from our primordial fear of things different from us. Did you ever notice how those negroes seem sinister? That's racialism! Don't you think dogs are inferior? Racialism again! Isn't that lamp sort of tacky? Hello racialism!

Once you realize that racialism is at the root of so many problems you can begin to overcome it and then overlook the differences between yourself and others around you. This will help you not want to smash or burn centipedes when you encounter them. You will be able to empathize with them as surely as the White Kings of Atlantis learned to understand that the negro feels pain almost like humans do. Thus the White Kings stayed their cruel scourges from the tortured backs of the negroes, sailing away on their glorious golden galleons into the stars and the pages of the history books. Like those shining white path-finders of yore, you too will set sail on the seas of understanding to self-actualize your way into the history book entitled "Getting to Know Centipedes".

And what do we know about centipedes? That's a great question Johnny, let's take a look at some interesting and exciting facts about centipedes.

Sometimes centipedes like to get a little exercise by climbing all over your face like crazy little kooks! Oh man, that looks fun mister centipede!FACT: Despite their name centipedes cannot fly!

FACT: Each individual centipede has many names, but only one true name, and in knowing the true name you control the power of the centipede.

FACT: Centipedes loooooooooooooooooooove back bacon.

FACT: Centipedes have small houses only a few inches across, but they call them "yurts".

FACT: If you enlarged a centipede with some sort of matter enlargement ray until it was the size of a 747 jet then one of its nine penises would be as long as a regulation baseball bat if you had used the same ray to enlarge it to the size of a foam hotdog costume.

FACT: When threatened a centipede can seem to run almost as fast as lightning.

FACT: Centipedes cannot open doors or drawers, but if they try really hard they can open tent flaps and zippers.

FACT: Centipedes do not use toilets because they go to the bathroom out of their eyes!

FACT: A centipede cannot drive a car or fly a helicopter, unless we designed a tiny car or helicopter with tiny working controls, but that's simply preposterous. If you can do this you probably should try.

FACT: I wonder if a centipede can cry. Oh wait, it cries poop!

Those are some amazing tidbits of information about centipedes and I hope they helped you develop a better understanding of our multi-legged brothers and sisters. A word of warning before we continue: watch out for millipedes. You may mistake them for centipedes because they have a lot of legs, but millipedes are an evolutionary dead end with absolutely zero chance of out-breeding and outgrowing mankind until they rule over us from the chitin throne of Neo Tokyo. If you curry favor with the millipedes the centipedes will grow jealous and destroy you when you least expect it!

We've learned a lot about growing to understand the centipede but now it's time to take action and actually begin befriending your local centipedes. The Befriend the Centipedes offers three quick ways to woo a centipede. These are just guidelines, and may not work on every centipede, but try them out and have fun with them!

They will rise! They will judge us just as Anubis weighs the bloodied heart of the dead! Love the centipede now, for one day soon they will be our masters! IA! IA!#1 Do a Favor for a Neighbor!

The average centipede has a lot to do during its regular working day. It has to hunt food, run around crazily up and down walls, maybe jump on your neck a few times, and then there are all the commitments at home. That yurt is not going to take care of itself. That's where you come in! Take the time out of your own busy schedule to help a centipede mow the lawn or clear out the rain gutters. Maybe you can clean the centipede's car for it or even, if it lives where it works, help it with its trade while it is asleep in bed. What centipede wouldn't want to wake up next to a pile of finely crafted wooden shoes?

#2 Watch That Language Sailor!

Just because you're little miss longshoreman with the potty-talk doesn't mean that's the sort of garbage that centipedes and their brood want to hear. You have to remember that you immense size in comparison to a centipede makes every word out of your mouth like a foghorn going off somewhere deep inside whatever the centipedes have instead of eardrums. If those words are curse words it becomes a doubly horrifying experience for the centipede. Try to replace swear words with acceptable substitutes. For example "you fucking cuntcock" could become "you funny crabcake" and "dickshits your ass fuckler" could easily be replaced with "dump trucks your eye cooker". Those centipedes with young ones to look out for will definitely thank you.

#3 Let Them Have Their Way

When centipedes aren't hard it work they love to just scurry around like hilarious little scamps. The last thing you want to do is rain on their parade by chasing them off or, Centipede God forbid, killing them with a Kleenex or broom. The centipedes might want to swarm all over your plate of food at the dinner table, they might want to crawl all over your face, or they may even want to nest and spawn inside your vagina. Whatever they're up to, just let them have their way. They're probably not going to hurt anything - only 20% of centipedes carry communicable diseases - so just listen to the pitter-patter of hundreds of tiny feet and try to enjoy it.

Those are just some suggestions on how you can make amends for the millennia of oppression and racialism that you have subjected the centipedes to, but be creative! If you're lucky perhaps they will pass down legendary folktales of your generosity for the seven or eight hundred generations it takes them to evolve dominance over us. It may not seem like it to outsiders like you and me, but the centipedes have a proud oral history that is always being revised and updated.

God I Love Being A Turtle!

Josh "Hot Dog Day #28" Boruff here announcing a brand new Photoshop Phriday. This week I tasked my goony friends on the Something Awful Forums to create Photoshop images celebrating the glorious history of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Like most sane people, we appreciate the profound social and cultural contributions of the Ninja Turtles, and were eager to show just how much. As you might have guessed, the goons did a bang-up job like always!

This is a two part series concluding next week, but that shouldn't stop you from reading part one!

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)