Healthy Obsession or Freakish Transistor Porn?

Would a steam-powered probe be able to function on the nearly airless surface of Mars? I think not.

Obsession.

Some call it a driving force that leads to paradigm-shifting innovations on par with inventions like the light bulb, the radio, and Al Gore’s internet.

Others call it a debilitating mental disorder that leads to extremely clean hands, the hoarding of old JC Penny catalogs, and keeping an unsustainable average of 1.5 cats per square foot of your home.

The missus says I’m obsessed. I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or a cry for help.

I’m not obsessed with the things a healthy male is usually obsessed with: fast cars, loose women, self-mowing lawns.

Though I admit to more than a keen passing interest in that last item.

No, the focus of my laser-like interest (I refuse to call it an obsession) is transistors.

And are not these noble devices worthy of our attention?

Without transistors, the computer or phone you’re reading this post on would not be possible.

OK, maybe it would be possible, but then your computer would be really slow and its steam-powered operation would leave your home so humid and hot as to be inhospitable to life. Not to mention the carbon footprint of your coal-fire furnace used to generate the steam!

And clearly, such a phone would be so large as to be impractical as a ‘mobile’ device.

That’s a taste of the world we’d live in devoid of the mighty transistor. Horrible, isn’t it?

But wait, it gets worse:

Abacuses the size of a room.

A spike in eyeball trauma due to carelessly operated slide rules.

No Wincest fan-fic.

OK, the Wincest fan-fic would exist, but only the author would have access to it, because the internet wouldn’t exist!

Right now, those of you familiar with the Sam and Dean Winchester incest genre might be thinking, “Maybe we should build a time machine to go back and stop the invention of the transistor.”

Bad news, kill-joys. Without the transistor, there can be no time machines!

So for good or bad, the transistor and all the wonders and horrors it has wrought are here to stay.

I love my transistor collection. It is, if I may say so myself, almost as magnificent as I am.

I don’t mean to boast, but I actually have one of the paper clips and razor blades used by Bardeen and Brattain to create the first point contact transistor in 1947.

It still has flakes of germanium on it! Squeeeee!

The missus tends to get very flushed and throw out her comments about being obsessed whenever I take these items out of their hermetically sealed, environmentally controlled vault to admire them. I can’t tell if she’s angry or aroused, but as my amorous advances that immediately follow such outbursts always result in me curled up on the couch with a bag of ice between my legs, I’m going to go out on a limb and say she’s confused.

Don’t worry. In moments like this, to comfort myself, I spend that cold night on the couch cuddled up to the crown jewel of my collection:

The Fairchild spFDB69N12.5 ‘super transistor’.

Only twelve were made, and none ever appeared in a product catalog.

They were custom-designed and built as part of the imaging system on the Viking I and Viking II Mars landers.

The prefix ‘sp’ has long been rumored to stand for ‘secret program,’ but while this has made the history of that vaunted transistor all the more tantalizing and raises questions about the true extent of the Mars Viking missions, no corroborative facts have ever been, pardon the pun, unearthed.

Two each were put into the landers on Mars, two were put in the Earth-bound prototype, five were destroyed in an unfortunate lab fire, and one was removed from that lab before the fire to cover up its theft was started.

Through a circuitous and shadowy route that I cannot disclose here, and involving far larger amounts of money than I ever had legitimate claim to, I obtained that final transistor.

To preserve the spFDB69N12.5 for my heirs and my heirs’ heirs, it is embedded in a cube of Lucite™. To prove its provenance, this block of acrylic glass has the fingerprint of Neil Armstrong on one side. I hear his finger was quite badly burnt when his kidnappers pressed it to the still hot block of Lucite™, but such is the cost of history.

And traceability, as anyone who has worked for a government contractor knows.

This transparent thermoplastic cube which protects my Precious has the added benefit of rounded corners, so if left in the freezer for a few hours, it can serve as an excellent substitute for the bag of ice.

And that makes my night on the sofa one of pure bliss.

So I ask you, discerning readers, how is that in any way, shape, or form tantamount to obsession?

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Fanfic is DESTROYING America! (Sam/Dean/JWatson/SHolmes/HPotter/HDresden)

Sam wiped the lamb’s blood mixed with demon’s blood from the silver knife and looked at Dean, whose breath heaved with the recent exertion of killing the monster. But when Dean looked in Sam’s eyes, he realized he was ready, nay, needed a little more…exertion.

Harry Dresden ran his withered, burnt hand across his bare, sweat-glistening chest, and glared at them from the other side of the prone demon body. “Please, you two, get a room.” A thoughtful expression came over his smoldering, lonely eyes. “Unless you’re willing to share…with me.”

The boy wizard leapt up in the air, his wand already at half-staff. “Me too!  Me too!” shouted Harry Potter. He waved his wand and shouted, “Snuggigus Fantasticus Sexicus!” and a plush king-sized bed appeared in the room of the abandoned old cabin. The four heroes fell into it at once, their clothes seemingly falling away as they tumbled into one another.

“Oh, I love you my sweet!”

“No, I love you more my shmoopy boopy toopy!”

“Wait, who are you talking to?”

“Not possible, Harry dearest! I love you the mostest. Just look at me when I look at you! No, look lower!”

“So you weren’t talking to me, you cold, heartless bastard. That makes me want you more! MOAR!”

“I see the game is afoot,” the young, modern-day Sherlock intoned as he burst into the cabin, followed a moment later by the erstwhile John Watson.

“My god, Holmes,” ejaculated Watson, “there are four naked men in that bed!”

“Your powers of observation fail you yet again, my dear John,” said Holmes, languishing atop the other men. “There are five naked men in this bed, and I predict that before this sentence is over there will be si- Ah, I see I deduced correctly.”

“Oh shut up and kiss me,” said John, his hungry mouth finding Sherlock’s and kissing it hungrily. “I’m ravenous for your love, old man.”

“I don’t think Mycroft would approve,” mumbled Sherlock between gasps of sheer pleasure. “He hates when I start without him.”

“Rick! Rick! Where are you!”

“Minmei!” shouted all six men at once. “What are you doing standing there when you can be here in bed, naked, with the rest of us?”

“Oh my,” said Mr. Sulu, beaming into the cabin, sword swinging, just in time to join the festivities.

Fanfic is destroying America. And I’m not talking about the paper-thin plots, the laughable sex scenes masquerading as character development, or the wanton intellectual property theft that fanfic represents.

I’m talking about England reclaiming us.

“Wha?” ask the naive Americans out there reading this. (“Who cares?” ask the nonchalant Canadians out there reading this.)

Fanfic is undergoing a British invasion. Doctor Who, Torchwood (which is practically fanfic in its raw form anyway), Sherlock (modern AND gaslight), Harry Potter(/Snape – eew!). The fanfic sites are being overwhelmed by the British newcomers. These ‘illegal immigrants’, as it were, are robbing American fanfic stories of valuable slots on the fanfic sites.

Even our old enemy, Japanese anime, is contemplating an alliance of convenience (no-strings-attached-allies-with-benefits?) to thrust off the new threat.

How do I know this? How did I detect this saucy, saucy threat?

I looked at the numbers (all from a prominent fanfic website on the net (ahem) I refuse to name because it employs so many non-American fanfics).

Greatest American Hero: 119 (Yes, the pinnacle of American greatness, the Greatest America Hero, has only 119 stories.)

Harry Effin’ Potter: 542,277 (And I’m not kidding about the effin’ part. Holy crap, remind me to never send my kids to a British boarding brothel school!)

Knight Rider: 52 (52!!!! Come on! It’s KNIGHT RIDER AND MADE OF AWESOME! KITT/Michael fanfic practically WRITES ITSELF!!!!)

Sherlock: 4509

Buck Rogers: 3 (3!!!!!!!! You can’t get MORE AMERICAN than Buck Rogers (and we all want MOAR MOAR MOAR Buck!))

Clearly the Americans are under threat from our supposed allies across the pond. The slimy limeys are taking over, and we, in our highly aroused and distracted state, are allowing them.

It’s a damn shame.

If you’re American (or if you’re Canadian but think Americans are awesome, as we are), it is your patriotic duty to stop whatever it is you’re doing right now and write a fanfic based on an American book/movie/TV series. Unless you were already in the process of doing just that, in which case, in the name of all that is holy, DON’T STOP!

Need some ideas?

Puff the Magic Dragon is woefully under-represented in the genre. Where else can you find a more American folklore opportunity?

Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn/Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Freaky deaky!

Any characters created by Tom Wolfe or Tom Clancy. (And how about created by Wolfe AND Clancy? Tasty tasty.)

CNN is still American. Why limit ourselves to fiction? In this war on Britain, let’s draft ourselves some (American) fannonfic. Mmm, Anderson Cooper/Bernard Shaw. Yummy.

So yes, help us stop the British fanfic menace. And once we put the Brits down, we can start worrying about those cheap Chinese import fanfics. We can’t compete with their lower cost knock-offs, but we can erect a proud, tall barrier by using more and bigger penises in our fanfic.

And if you’re worried that plot will take up too much space, crowding out the giant genitalia, don’t. Plot in fanfic is like use of a condom in fanfic – totally unnecessary and rarely seen.

And once we have a perfect world of American fanfic devoid of plot or meaningful character development, free for our impressionable youth and adults to read, people will come to expect less of loftier works, such as books you buy online and at the bookstore or peruse at the library. Those can be devoid of depth and meaning too.

That’s when we’ll know we’ve won.

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