Mega-Bear vs. The US Air Force, Part Two

The police didn’t even bother showing at first; they left the job in the hands of the supposedly-capable animal services. Armed with beltloads of tranquilizers, and some reserve firearms in case of problems, they certainly seemed to be more than up to the task of one bear. As they hunted through the forest, the feelings of dread began to build regardless of this. The tracks, easy enough to follow, seemed to follow a shifting pattern that denoted – at best – extensive neurological damage. Realizing they would be lucky if they were dealing with a mad bear, many of the team began to ready their pistols.

Among these nervous men was one Hunter Nash. Many people tried to tell him his name was ironic, given his position, but he either openly or inwardly corrected them – his name was coincidental. To be ironic, he would have to be the hunted. This thought went through his mind at the moment and he knew, desperately glancing into the woods in search of this crazed bear, his name might actually become ironic.

At last, though, the tracks lead to a clearing – one of the grilling zones in a larger picnic area – and the bear is spotted, slumped over with dozens of empty picnic baskets surrounding him. Silently taking aim, the team deploys as it has been trained: two agents get in position with a heavy net as three more members take aim with their tranqs. The shots are fired, bringing the bear out of his gorge-induced stupor, and he panics and begins to run, knocking over the grill, embers spreading on the ground. As the animal control agents make chase, the embers grow into a steady flame which winds to the woods. The bear turns at the smell of smoke, more tranqs being shot into him. Standing on two feet, a roar, as terrifying for its contents as its volume, erupts:

“Only you. Can prevent. Forest fires.”

Stunned by this impossible event, the team nevertheless finds their bodies moving, driven by a will deeper and more primal than their own, going through the proper measures to put out the small blaze.

Hunter, having fallen behind, comes upon the scene with no small amount of bewilderment. Not one to ask questions, though, he races on after the bear, now switching to the live rounds. As he takes running shots, at best grazing the bear, he begins to lose sight of the animal until he has to resort to slowly tracking him, knowing the bear has to be several hundred feet in front of him now.

A whirring sound grabs his attention. An engine – impossible, he thinks, there’s nothing out here but woods. Paying no respect to this detail, though, a bush plane lifts off into the sky within view of Hunter. Flying the plane, and breaking the man’s view of what is possible and not, is a bear, wearing a scarf, aviator jacket, and hat.

As the plane flew into the sky, the stunned Nash stood still for some time. It’s not every day that your reality is broken. Finally, seizing upon some last vestige of stability before his psyche truly fell apart, he radioed to the police. Quietly, he explained the situation, assured the man it was in no way a prank, and eventually got him to do what he had called for – the National Guard was alerted. The Air Force began their first-ever bearhunt.

Mega Bear Vs. The US Air Force, Part 1

It was a beautiful day when Shawn Clay walked into the office. In fact, it was the first truly pleasant day of the summer, having, till then, been a mostly drab affair. Judging by the haggard look on his face, Clay’s mood had not yet caught up with the weather. “Any more sightings?” he called into the park office without looking to see if anyone could answer him back.

“Yeah, some hikers came in a little shaken a few minutes after I opened,” answered Ursula. Some people liked to joke about how fitting it was for a woman named Ursula to be working as a ranger at Bear Trail park, but she hated those people almost as much as she did her overly coincidental name. “Sounded like it was B-17 again.”

“B-17? You know, up until this last month he was always an average bear; he never cared to be around people much. I wonder what’s gotten into him?”

Ursula frowned at the numbers on her screen. Clay was a man given to worry, so she didn’t want to bring this to his attention yet, but not only had overall bear sightings increased 300% in the last month, but they were virtually all either unknown bears or almost certainly B-17. They hated having to put an animal down, but if this were to continue, their options were limited. Clay collapsed in his chair, wondering to himself if those two hunters from last month had had anything to do with it. They had come to the station, rambling and screaming about the perfect bear, and from he had been told when checking in on them had hardly stopped since. The story had caused some local commotion, but had been mostly forgotten already. “The perfect bear...” he muttered softly.

“Don’t start in on that nonsense again,” hastily spoke Ursula. “Bluejay’s wild stories never haunted you before and I don’t want you turning superstitious on me.” Bluejay was one of the few local Native Americans left, and he was also Clay’s best friend. Though Bluejay was not given to superstitions himself, his grandfather had been something of a historian and folklore collector and had prided himself on distilling nearly all of the old legends and stories into Bluejay from a young age. One of these stories concerned the perfect bear, or, more accurately translated, the all-bear, and his pact with humans to leave them be if they were to do likewise with him. The story had stuck with Clay due to the bear sightings and the boredom that comes with being a park ranger during a rainy season. Ursula continued her interruption of his meditations: “Did you get all the picnic areas ready? It looks like we’ll finally have some today.”

“It wasn’t tough. The storms hadn’t done much but drop a branch or two, no real damage. It’ll be a great day for people.”

The rest of the morning passed without incident. Neatly at 11, several families began to arrive, colorful tablecloths and blankets aplenty, making their way to one of several designated areas in the park for a nice afternoon lunch. However, almost as rapidly as they had shown up, people started running back to the station, panic in their eyes. The complaint was universally the same: as soon as they’d set up, a bear came out of the woods right at them. Knowing this time B-17 had crossed the line, Ursula and Shawn told the people to go wait in their cars or go home, after they had collected their information, and that they’d make sure to get any abandoned possessions back to them. Leaving Ursula to deal with the panicked picnickers, Clay surreptitiously grabbed a shotgun and walked out to the picnic areas. What he saw their caused a knot to grow in his stomach, knowing he wasn’t dealing with your average bear here. Picking up his walkie-talkie to contact Ursula, he viewed the scene before him: every single picnic basket was gone.

Mega Bear vs. The US Air Force -- Part 0 (Introduction)

A bear lumbered through the forest. This was no normal bear -- or maybe it was. You see, this was the most bear-like bear of all the bears in the world. There were no characteristics that were in any way unbearish. In fact, one could say this was the platonic ideal of the bear, except for one thing: no person had ever seen this bear, nor had the bear ever seen a person. It's very difficult to be identified as an ideal if nothing that can think knows you exist.

This changed one day. Hunters saw this ideal bear and, wanting such a magnificent beast for their den, took aim. Smelling something amiss in the air, the bear saw them and, rearing and letting loose the most bear-like of all roars, the hunters quaked. Some primitive part of their brains clicked into place, knowing instinctively what this creature was. This was not just a bear -- this was the archetype of bears, the bear that haunts our collective unconscious, the very bear that has inhabited every nightmare about bears since the dawn of thought. As the hunters cowered, their fear made this bear perfect, ideal, and the universe knew it.

The universe operates on a handful of principles which, for the most part, maintain stability. One important part of this stability is keeping out intruders, crossovers from other, nearby universes, which interact with ours in the medium of thought. When these intrusions happen to occur, as is wont in an imperfect system, there are ways (which deal with the impossible, so we'll not go into that here) the universe's laws will affect it in order to send it back.

This bear was now a being of such an impossibly bearish nature that it was sensed as an intruder, as belonging to the universe of ideals and archetypes. However, this was not entirely true, of course, as this bear, though impossible, really was just a bear; but who's going to argue with the laws of the universe? The bear is torn through the universe, in an attempt to place it into the ideal realm, but it did not fit there. Stuck in limbo, for an infinite amount of no time at all, with no universe to call its own, the bear tore across all the possible universes, all fiction, all history, all culture, all myth, and was spat back into our universe, but leaving behind it a greater trail of damage than has ever been caused before or since. It was no longer just the ideal bear, though; no, it was far, far more than that. As the hunters ran, not knowing what they were seeing, the bear roared a roar not belonging of this world. For this bear was now every bear, a monstrous amalgamation of every bear that has ever been imagined or feared or loved. This was the Mega Bear.

Coming soon...

Prepare yourselves, gentle denizens of the internet (known as the possibly 3 people who read this). For...Mega Bear is coming.

Natural Disaster

"Looks like rain."  Two Mexican surfers looked over the gulf at the dark storm clouds rolling in from the east.  There had been news of an oncoming hurricane, but it wasn't scheduled to come in for another few days.  Unbeknownst to these poor surfers, Hurricane Cristobal had picked up speed and was upgraded to a Category 5.  Out of nowhere, the hurricane appeared, almost as if it knew exactly where it was going.  It appeared to be making a beeline straight for...the San Martin Volcano.

Because the volcano had been dormant for hundreds of years, small villages built up around it, living in blissful ignorance of this fateful day.  As Cristobal neared the coast, a strange thing happened...any animal within 20 miles of the San Martin Volcano started running inland, as if they knew something terrible was about to happen.  Villagers everywhere saw this strange event and wondered what could be coming.  They would soon find out.

As Cristobal rushed closer to the coast, it triggered a fault line.  Plates slid past each other quickly like two fat people squeezing by each other in the aisle in the grocery store.  This unclogged the conduit of San Martin Volcano starting an eruption.  Lava erupted from the volcano with a blast.  As this is happening, Cristobal finally reached land.  As some hurricanes do, Cristobal spawned tornadoes, like minions sent out to do his bidding.  One headed for the erupting volcano.  Somehow, the tornado made it up the volcano, heading straight over the crater and lava flow.  Amazingly, the tornado began to pick up the lava, swirling it around in a cyclone of lava.  Thus, the lavanado was born.

The fearsome lavanado made its way down the mountain toward the city, leaving a path of firey destruction in its wake.  It was as if a herd of rampaging buffalo had passed through. Only those buffalo were made of lava. And, also, were rotating at approximately 150 mph.  Villagers ran for their lives at the sight of it.  Even the strongest men wept and cried for mercy to any god that would listen.  But none were spared the wrath of the lavanado.

Tales of the lavanado's destruction would be passed on from generation to generation.  As time passed, the story slowly turned to legend, until no one actually believed in the existence of the lavanado.  So they live in peace, not knowing, that at one moment, the conditions could be right again...for the lavanado.

Man Vs. Gravity and Ice

A man I working his way up a sheer ice face with a group of wealthy clients. One of the clients slips and starts to fall; as the rope that connects him to the next man up pulls tight, that man loses his grip. As the chain continues and the rest of the clients begin to fall one after another, the man takes off his gloves and punches his bare fists into the ice to hold himself there. When the tension reaches the rope attached to his belt, he does not move; unfortunately the rope cannot bear the weight and snaps off of his belt. As the man does not wish the clients to die (as he gets paid half after he brings them back), he dives down in an attempt to beat the clients to the ground. When he reaches the first one he grabs him and pulls the client up to accelerate himself downward even faster; he does this with each successive client and gains sufficient speed to gain a few seconds on them. As he approaches the ice below he lets loose a yodel that would shatter the eardrums of a normal man. This yodel has such intensity at the resonant frequency of the ice crystals that the ice below liquefies into a lake. The man then proceeds to hit the lake with enough force to break the surface tension for the clients so they do not hurt themselves landing in the water. He swims around and gathers the clients onto his back to run them the ten miles back to camp.

The Most Awesome of Eating Contests, pt. 4 (Finale)

At long last, the end of the contest had arrived. The judges, carefully selected for not only their status as gourmands, but also for their appreciation of the awesome arts and overall durability (awesome food can be its own challenge), had been gathered. While the first opponent is carefully portioning out the Caspian sea wolf sauté, the second is nowhere to be seen.

Meanwhile, over a mile away, the man wonders about how to deliver his blue whale in a sufficiently awesome manner. Sliding down the volcano, he realizes his answer. As he lands below, he delivers a series of precise punches to the side of the volcano, the reverberations causing at first a slow rumble, but soon increasing, now independent of the punches. Quickly sprinting up the side of the volcano, he leaps onto the blue whale kabob as gas and lava erupt, blasting him (and his dish) into the air, giving the whale meat a final, cajun blackening. As the pieces land for miles around, approximately one lb each land on each plate in front of the judges, as the man himself comes flying down, clutching onto a blasted portion of the kebab stick. As it lunges straight into the ground, it deflects greatly at the end, slowing as if preparing or the final catapulting of the man, as it perfectly breaks, placing him gently on the ground.

There is some delay in the eating, as one judge fainted from the awesometicity of the display and had to be revived. After that, they tasted it.

The flavor itself defied words, language as a whole, experience all together. The best description, then, would be to give the reactions. One judge began to weep, knowing that after that first taste their life had peaked, never again to reach that acme of existence. To another, it proved the existence of a Supreme Being, as science could never explain away that utter joy, that exuberance, contained in even the smallest portion. The third appeared to have gone catatonic for specific reasons unknown.

It seemed an insurmountable task to outdo it. The man, though, had confidence in his sauté -- a confidence that can only be shared between a man and his wolf sauté, a confidence which has before now gone unappreciated, unlauded in the chronicles of man. From here on, that confidence will not go unfeared.

Serving the dish in the glued-together remains of the wolves' skulls, the sauté bubbled slightly as it seemed to possess an aura all its own. Though the taste would have been nice to describe, it will become clear that an accurate description is impossible for this dish as well, though for different reasons.

It was first carefully spoon fed to the now-catatonic judge. At first there seemed no reaction, then it seemed he was drooling it out without moving. However, it soon became apparent that it was, in fact, dribbling from the bottom of his mouth where it had burnt a hole through his jaw. Before consciousness could be returned, the dish consumed the remainder of the jaw, and through a bizarre osmosis, traveled through his blood vessels and, in conflagrant glory, burst his entire body into flames. The other judges, now slightly hesitant to try, but knowing their honor depended on it, simultaneously took a bite. As the hardier one raced toward the volcano, hoping to intercept the lava en route in order to take a drink to cool his mouth, the other sat perfectly still. Slowly, his head began to shake, more and more violently, until finally it exploded outward. There, where once was his head, sat a glowing ball of energy. It began to float upward and both men could have sworn that they quietly heard, in some strange form of language that transcended traditional senses, "Delicious."

Seeing that, truly, they were both winners, as they were clearly the greatest beings on the planet, the two men silently came to an agreement, nodded their assent to each other, then raced towards the lava and dove in, racing each other to the top of the volcano.

The Most Awesome of Eating Contests, pt. 3

The first man returns on his helicopter to the private jet waiting to take him to the kitchen that has been prepared in international waters. Agreeing that the prey of his opponent would be much more difficult to move distances, the location is off the coast of Chile. A perimeter has been formed around this location of pirates hunting various less endangered species to keep Green Peace and their ilk from disturbing the cook-off. By the time this man finally arrives, the blue-whale make-shift sail boat is visible off the coast. The two begin on the task of cooking their meals.

The first decides that a good wolf meat sauté would work very well, however the heat for this must be provided in the most awesome manner of him and assistants sustaining fire-breathing on the sautéing pan. The liquid of choice for the fire-breathing for this task is of course 95% ethanol to make sure that the flavor of the wolf is not ruined by “safer” burning chemicals. This would also provide an easy solution to spices as no additional flavoring is necessary for this method (as the essence of awesome that enters the food from fire breathing would overpower all conventional spices); the man decides, however, that a bit of additional flavor may add to it and as such had an assistant fetch Naga Jolokia peppers to add something that might be able to come through the awesomeness.

The second man moves during the night to prepare his dish, he needs to go to the mainland as there is only one way to prepare a blue whale. He meets all but two of his assistants (each more awesome than the last) on the shore with the whale. The quickly move inland and into the Andes towards their cooking destination, the Llaima volcano. Here the other two assistants wait with a blue whale skewer; the two charge with the skewer and ram it through the whale. The giant beast is then propped over the volcano to begin the cooking process. Spices are applied (to enhance the awesome flavor provided by the volcano) by cannon custom designed to shoot spices in a wide spray. Other assistants in heat resistant suits fly around the whale with jet packs to rub in the spices. The man walks on the top side of the whale as it turns to monitor the cooking process from the best possible vantage point.

[cont with the finale in part 4]

The Most Awesome of Eating Contests, pt. 2

While the sea wolf hunt went on, the other contestant hunted his own soon-to-be-one-step-closer-to-extinct prey. Knowing that while the shear ferocity of the wolf might not be easily matched, the elusiveness and challenge of the hunt certainly could.

Laying the line of bait behind him, the man's raft slowly drifted through the frigid Antarctic waters. Clutching his only weapon -- a harpoon gun, tip bloodied with the gore of lesser animals from the past few days, killed for limited sustenance -- close to his chest, the raft bobbed along, awaiting the critical moment. Suddenly, from behind, a tail wider than the man arose from the water, and from above a sudden spray of water -- the prey was here! The man, unfazed by the might of his opponent, rushed toward his 100 ft meal: the blue whale.

Leaping from his raft onto the back of the whale, he quickly sprinted towards the head, his tracted boots making balance possible if difficult. Arriving at the skull, the man carefully pointed the harpoon gun down, aiming for a fatal blow through the brain. Sensing the danger, the blue whale bucked forward, throwing the man a few feet closer to the front of this monster. Lashing out once more, the whale quickly tried to lick the man off its face. Barely able to dodge the lethal 3-ton tongue, his arm is hit and, far more importantly, the harpoon gun lost to the frozen ocean. As the whale began to turn, feeling that its battle was won, the man slid down the side of its head, desperately reaching out in an attempt to grasp something solid -- and, to his surprise, succeeding. Instantly glancing up to see his savior, his eyes light upon an ancient whaling harpoon, at least 150 years old, embedded in the side of the whale. Knowing he has but seconds before his fate is sealed, with a titanic shove the harpoon sinks in a few more feet. An unprecedented roar rips across the waters as blood gushes out, the whale feebly shaking its last.

Climbing on top his prize, his own raft now destroyed, the man skins a small portion of the whale, revealing enough nutritious blubber to sustain himself during the ride home. Whale skin mounted onto a harpoon as a limited sail, the man begins the journey to the coast of Chile to begin the next portion of the contest.

[cont in part 3]

The Most Awesome of Eating Contests, pt. 1

Two men sit across from each other, both waiting to begin the contest of their lives. This is no ordinary eating contest. These two men are not going to see who can eat the most flapjacks or cram the most pie into their pie-hole. No, these two men have to travel the globe to find the most endangered species they can find, cook it with a recipe of their choosing, and split it into thirds...one third for themselves, one for the judges and a third to throw away. Because truly, what is more awesome and manly than wasting food?

The first man sets off on his quest to find the Caspian Sea Wolf. Native to Russia, the Caspian Sea Wolf lives in small packs. The man approaches the area by helicopter, but to get closer, he dons a disguise of the wolf's natural prey, the deer. As soon as he gets close enough, the wolves spot him. They break into a sprint for the "deer" while the man sits, waiting. At the last moment, the man whips off his disguise, brandishes a twelve-gauge shotgun and carefully (as carefully as one can be with a shotgun) blows the face off the wolf, killing it instantly. This scares away the other wolves, allowing the man to pick up the carcass and signal the helicopter to pick him up so he can begin on the second part of the competition.

[Join us later for part 2...]

An Awesome Valentine

A truly awesome person gives their valentine a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Of course, this box of chocolates was not a normal box -- it was an awesome box.

As she opens it, chocolate explosions go off -- seriously, not some sort of poorly-written-food-review taste explosion, but the chocolate-covered firecrackers spin off into the air and explode. Shaken but still smiling (though forced), she picks up another one and takes a bite to be met by the overwhelming taste of bacon.

"Chocolate covered bacon," says the man excitedly, "and every other form of pork's in there too -- even boar!"

Sadly, after slowly consuming 2/3rds of the box over a period of a few days, she exploded in a gigantic ball of awesome, too much awesome having built up and evolved her into a form of sentient energy. Well, maybe it was just a gigantic explosion caused by chocolate-covered dynamite, but, really, who can tell these days.

Man Vs. Dragon

A man sits in a plane sipping some water. A sudden jolt in the cabin causes the water to splash all over the him. He looks out the window to spot a red tail flash by. He knows what he must do. He quickly runs to the nearest exit and jumps out the door onto the back of the dragon as it makes another pass. The man grabs a hold of one of the dragon’s wings to prevent it from gaining lift. The dragon flexes its spinal spines to fling the man from its back. He flies up and grabs the dragon around the neck, coming face to face with the beast. The dragon exhales fire into the man’s face only to have the man shout with such force as to blow the fire right back down the dragon’s throat. As an excess of fire and air builds up in the dragon’s neck the man slams the dragon’s mouth shut with an epic uppercut. Unable to relieve the pressure, the dragon’s throat explodes. The man lands back on the dead dragon’s back, grabs the wings, and uses them to fly back up to the plane from which he had jumped. The man patches the exit back up with one of the wings and the flight lands safely at its destination.

Funeral for the Awesome

An awesome man has passed on. For unexplained reasons, his funeral was postponed for several months after his death, as per his will. As the mourners gather at the closed-casket funeral, a somber tone is over the room. The grievers find their seats and prepare for the eulogy, laid out precisely as according to the will of the awesome man. As a friend goes to give his eulogy, those there to see the man off are too overcome with memories to notice the marionette strings hanging near-invisibly from the ceiling, or the executor of the estate holding a suspicious button. As the friend clears his throat, the button is pressed, and in a split second the coffin lid flips open and the skeletal remains of the man rise, hanging vertically with an electric guitar attached in proper playing posture, a Hendrix solo blaring out through speakers as the skeletal hand appears to strum. Inside of ten seconds of this, the bomb attached to the inside of the guitar goes off, covering those shocked mourners with the dust of the awesome as the guitar noise slowly dims from the speakers. Everyone later agreed that it was the best funeral, and guitar solo, ever.

man vs technology

Typing on an iPod touch is hard. Technology wins.

Man Vs. Nile Crocodile

On a warm day on the Nile, a man decides to take a swim. Little does he know or care of the company he keeps when he does this. Seeing prey enter the water, nearby crocodiles move in for the kill. The first crocodile to him brings its jaws down with crushing force on the man’s midsection. The man does not flinch; with a quick flex of his abs, he breaks the crocodiles grip and brings his hands in between his body and the crocodile’s teeth. With another quick motion he breaks the crocodile’s jaw. Another crocodile bites at his head, but the man uses the top part of the previous crocodile’s jaw to block the bite. Realizing his disadvantage in position, the man climbs onto the nearest crocodile and runs across the backs of the assailing crocodiles until he reaches the shore. It is from here that he makes his stand against the other crocodiles. He grabs the next two that attack him and pull them to shore to grab them by their tails. He proceeds to swing these two crocodiles into the other attackers as they come eventually bludgeoning them all to death. The man moves on down the river.

Man Vs. Moth

On a beautiful summer day, a one-person round of golf is being enjoyed. Fluttering in the air are several butterflies and one moth, though the golfer notices none of these, concentrating instead on the fairway. The moth lands on the still-dewy grass and quickly expands to over eight feet tall. As the now shaken swing finishes, an ominous shadow falls over the ground and muffled screams and a single terrifying "Slurp" are heard. Returning to original size, the moth flutters off with the butterflies, leaving behind a golf bag and a potential birdie.

Man Vs. Bird

A huge bird soars through the sky, oblivious to it's impending demise.  The bird flies past a tree, where a man jumps off the tree, onto the bird.  The weight of the man causes the bird and man to fall through the sky together.  The man snaps the bird's neck in midair and the man and bird fall to the ground.  The man stands up, brushes himself off, throws the bird's carcass to the side and climbs the nearest tree where he perches, waiting for his next victim.

Man Vs. Bear

A man walks quietly through the woods. He comes around a bend in the path a grizzly bear a few feet from him. Their eyes remain locked for a moment as they wait for the other to move. The bear rises up onto its hind legs and lets loose a deafening roar. The man sees his chance and lunges at the bear. As the bear brings its body down to crush the man with its weight the man dodges to the side and swings his heel around to meet the bear’s jaw. The bear’s unconscious body drops the ground. The man walks on down the path.

Man Vs. Shark

A man is swimming quietly in the ocean. A shark is seen in the distance, but approaching. The man grapples with the shark, lifting and throwing it into the air. He dives down then rapidly speeds upwards dolphin-style, breaking the surface vertically, even gaining air. As the shark comes falling down, the man pulls back his arm and lets loose with a mighty uppercut at the perfect moment. The fist pierces through the nose, the shark splitting in twain as the man continues upward, eventually two bloody halves of shark falling from besides him as he gracefully arcs back into the water. The man continues quietly swimming.