Psychic Powers

Ah, Psychic Powers. The daydream of every middle class American that becomes too restless at work. Your boss requests a file and then yells at you for not making the margins 1.2 despite his never telling you to do so. You mentally retort "What do you think I am, a mind reader?" Ten minutes later you're being ushered out of his office because you've drifted off in thought about the different ways that you could use your powers for personal benefit, starting with forcing him to give you a raise and ending smeared in blood and pancakes after waking up from a blackout that you'll never full be able to explain or comprehend.

Psychic ability has a rich history of being part of every civilization known to man ever. Really, look it up. The word itself is Greek in origin, but the idea of the psychic has been around since time immemorial (I really just wanted to use that phrase). Considering in some included aspects of psychic ability include astrology and determining if somebody is sick, this is probably less impressive than one would think.

Of course, when we think of "psychic powers" we think of things like the X-men. Nobody cares if you can make guesses while looking at the stars or if you can accurately predict that I'm going to die in a week because science hasn't progressed far enough to treat my bear wounds, but we sure as hell care about the ability to steal thoughts, move things with our thoughts, predict the future, and blow shit up with our minds.

Woman, I predict that if you don't get me my scotch that I will psychically bitch slap you so hard your bra will come off. None of that mental backtalk, either. We've had enough movies, comic books, and comic book movies to ensure us that there is a definitively awesome side about psychic powers, much like cinema showed us the way that an explosion can really brighten up any decor. Unfortunately, there are always gypsies and Sylvia Brown to remind us of the more boring aspects of the psychic world, like tarot cards, crystal balls, and reuniting families with their lost loved ones.

The hands on aspect of this review didn't go so well. I've spent many walks attempting to read people's thoughts or trying to psychically command them, as I'm sure anyone as crazy as I am has (Turn around if you can hear my voice. Okay don't. Reach for that donut if you can hear me. That's not the donut I meant, I meant the other one! No you don't even care! Augh!). Along the same lines, inducing head explosions was met with similar results. I did try to move some things telekinetically, starting small with a pencil. After grunting at it and twitching for about an hour with no response but some weird hallucinations about Tom Cruise, I gave up with nothing gained but disappointment and some indigestion.

You're right, Tom, you were the greatest samurai ever! And you're so handsome, too!

Psychic powers are something that are half awesome, half mundane, with more grounds in the mundane and no proof in the other half. As much as I'd like to believe in it, it just ain't happening. They get a 5/10 for not living up to their potential.

Although if anybody can start me on fire with their mind, feel free to do so and that score will rocket up a few points.

Balls

Balls. As a child, everyone played with them. Some of us discovered them sooner than others, and some of us never had our own, having to rely on the neighbor kids or the generous workers at the local Y. Some are used for sports, some are used to ride on, and some are used for chucking at people and then getting caught by your parents and being forced to sit in the corner for 10 minutes. Ever since the first time a spleen rolled out of a mammoth incision and bounced along, manking had been fascinated with the rolling, bouncing device. There are depictions of circles in cave paintings, so we can't be quite positive what those indicate. Knowing cavemen, the circles could've been a ball or their children, we're not quite sure what cave spawn looked like back in those times (although we're led to believe they look similar to our own infants). The first mention of a ball in its modern English usage as a device to be played with can be found in Laȝamon's Brut (Chronicle of Britain) being used in 1205, but evidence such as the ball courts in the blood-thirsty Aztec ruins (the ruins themselves thirst for blood) indicate that the orbs had been around long before the greatest language in the world had a word for them. Balls today are used primarily in sporting events, even though some of the less boring ones (see: hockey, curling, spelling bees; not basketball) don't use them whatsoever. The variety of shapes, sizes, and materials used in sports alone demonstrate the flexibility and adaptability of the ball to any area that it can be fit into.

In-YOUR-end-o

Balls have also found uses in keeping children entertained (those huge rubber ones are awesome), machinery (what do you think ball bearings are? Squares?), medical therapy (balls are used in muscle memory, muscle relaxation, and coordination exercises),B.B. guns, juggling, pachinko, and probably other fields that I can't quite think of at the moment.

Now, as with paper, I've had plenty of opportunities to play with any balls that were made available to me. Recently, I actually purchased a three pack of balls, in a variety of colors (green, pink, and yellow are a variety). I attempted to juggle with them, but apparently this isn't something that you just can pick up in 5 minutes, so I decided that it wasn't worth my time. Much fun was to be had with the other activities involving the balls, though. It began with simply throwing it at the wall, a rather rudimentary procedure. Then I moved on to more advanced maneuvers, such as throwing it at things that were not the wall. This proved to be exhilarating. On a mad high of throwing the ball at things, I began throwing the balls at things with the intent of knocking them over, and in some cases, off of the furniture that they were resting on. Within minutes I found myself in the hallway whipping balls at the faces of people that I knew, indiscriminate of whether they wanted balls in their face or not.

No horses were harmed in this beating.

Balls are overall quite versatile, able to go from blissful childlike fun all the way up to maniacal bloodthirsty ball thwomping. I'm sure tons of you enjoy them for their sports or sports-like applications, but for me, nothing will beat the look of pleading "why?" in the eyes of my ball-destined victims.

Of course, that thrill only lasts for so long, and balls can deflate and aren't edible, no matter how hard you bite (apparently). In the case of sports it's not so much the ball itself as the sports that are being played that amount to the excitement, so the ball is just taking credit for a team effort.

That sort of bad sportsmanship nets the ball an 8/10 in my rulebook.
Rule number 1: There are no rules.
Rule number 2: Cooler Ranch Doritos are better than Nacho Cheesier.

Paper

For those of you not in the "know", Wikipedia describes paper thusly:

Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets.

Paper was invented millions of years ago, by the Egyptians probably, or maybe the Chinese even. I'm not sure. What I do know is that they both had it at some point ages ago, and that the Egyptians called it papyrus which is Egyption for "really crappy paper." The primary utilization of it as a surface to doodle on and the occasional replacement for when you'd run out of two-ply hasn't really changed much in the current age. The Chinese were at least a bit more inventive and made small, useless paper animals and flimsy cups that I can't ever get to work right.

What good is a toy that you can't take into the bathtub, honestly?

Paper is an invention that single handedly spurred progress. People could finally write down their ideas on it (which at the time must have consisted of "find more whores and slaughter my enemies"), they could draw things on it instead of needing to find an empty spot of cave wall (this also allowed them to carry it around showing people their pretty pictures of the moose they killed that afternoon) and they could fold it into airplanes and spit wads of it at their teachers.

Over time this led to the invention of books (as stacks of paper would fall over comically and scatter in between classes) which in turn led to the printing press (because monks are slow at copying things and they charge exorbitant prices), as well as computers (because using the printing press was hard work and evolution guides us back toward a sedentary lifestyle) and eventually into digital paper which is essentially a flexible tv screen that you can write on, and that's pretty cool.

Paper itself has come a long way since the days of barely usable pressed wood chunks. We still make papyrus for some reason, and the much flimsier recycled and construction papers. The paper technology has advanced in useful directions as well. We have loose leaf binder paper which is designed specifically to give as many papercuts to grade-schoolers as humanly possible, and synthetic papers that are smooth and plasticy that have made their ways into numerous school textbooks. Wax papers and carbon transfer papers, and durable printer paper with glossy sides. We've even developed a paper that can be printed on using heat, which should encourage a trend of kids breathing heavily onto their tests to obscure their poor grades.

Paper has even progressed as far as making pre-printed images that we can apply adhesively to other things, such as jackets, walls, textbooks, little brothers, and trapper keepers.

That's right, stickers.



Has there been a greater invention?

In essence, paper is possibly the greatest discovery of mankind, so to rate it any less than a 10 would probably not do it justice.

I'm giving it a 9.8 though, because to the best of my knowledge you can't eat it, or at least you can't digest it, and everyone knows that the perfect technology would be edible as well as-

What's that?

Edible Paper?

Well shit. Alright, 10/10.

Bravo, paper, keep up the good work.