by ARTURO BIGBANGBOOTIE, Alternate Reality News Service Transdimensional Traffic Writer
“Express vernacular recon.”
At 12:37am EST, The Big Floating Heads (BFH) that appeared over 30 major cities across the world (and Paris) precisely six years and one month ago spoke. And, as we should have expected (although few of us did), what they said was complete nonsense.
Perhaps surprisingly for heads the size of hot air balloons, the BFHs did not speak in a booming bass, but a soft whisper. “I had almost forgotten the big fat head things were there,” said citizen Marilyn Monroachkillah. “It was like… the time grammy came to stay with us. Most of the time, she sat in her corner casting doom and gloom predictions about the family with yarrow stalks. Then, just when you had almost forgotten she was there – BLAM! – she’d say something like, ‘When the sun is benign, search out Consadine.’ Nobody ever had the nerve to ask her what she was talking about.”
“Concertina goiter verbosity.”
“Naah – grammy Monroachkillah never said that.”
What, exactly are the Big Floating Heads? Three different answers are given by different groups of Headologists, those who study the BFHs. The first group believes that the BFHs are projections of the consciousness of people who live in another dimension. For this group, the words are their attempt to communicate with us, although they are either really dumb or very bad at learning languages.
“Some people initially thought they were manifestations of a diety,” said Monique Mercury, an Economics professor at Wellington College with an amateur’s interest in the Big Floating Heads. “Many of them found peace in the knowledge that they were constantly being watched. In cities where the Heads appeared marriages were saved. Crime rates went down. Jim Carrey movies couldn’t be played in theatres. They believed that theirs was a loving god…
“Of course, they don’t know what to make of the recent statements. Some followers have become disenchanted with the incomprehensibility of the Heads, others are tracking down as many of the statements as possible, hoping to eventually come up with enough to fill a holy book.
“Good luck with that.”
According to Mercury, Headology was developed as a rational response to this irrational belief, and she expects Headology will supplant it. “Headology,” she explained, “is superior. Headology is scientific.”
“Citywide wagering floorboard.”
The second group of Headologists argues that the first group has to be wrong. They point to the dozens of Headcams set up to capture the existence of the BFHs, which show that they never take a break, never blink, never appear to breath, never even move their eyeballs.
“Yeah, kids will train their Webcams on the strangest things,” chuckled Aloysious Pasha Krugg-Mann, hea – err, primary Headologist in the Sociology Department of the University of Toronto. “As a parent, I should be appalled at the way my children are wasting their time, but, as a scientist, I find myself exhilarated by the research potential!”
Krugg-Mann believes that the BFHs are actually computer generated projections, possibly from another dimension, but just as possibly from another planet in this dimension. “The fact that they don’t blink could be a programming error,” he stated. “Or their programmers might have felt it wasn’t worth the bandwidth. Lord knows, we’ve all had to deal with less than optimal software that was shipped imperfect to make a deadline!”
“Bored stripe liniment.”
The third group uses Occam’s razor to reject both theories. “We don’t need to posit other dimensions or life on other planets,” Carl Rorshach, a freelance Headologist currently on a two and a half week limited contract with the Gotterdammerung Institute of Sri Lanka, commented. “They are actually projections from the unconscious of the human race. At first, we thought they represented our collective superego, but, now, whoa – what they said seems to come directly from the id!”
To say that the three camps do not get along would be to understate the nature of understatement. Two years ago, at the third Biennial Headology Conference and Talent Show (dubbed the Headcaseology Conference by Tokyo businesspeople who, in the current economy, were nonetheless happy for the business) Rorschach and Mercury got into a heated debate about whether the transdimensional projection was responsible for a distortion in the sizes of the Heads, or whether the aliens were really that big. Interpretations of what happened differ, but most versions of the story agree that Mercury had to have surgery on her left eye to remove a canape that had lodged there, while the possibility that Rorschach would be capable of having children had decreased by over 23.4763 per cent.
“Mental mauve strawberry.”
“Yeah, I heard all about the fighting between all the Headologists,” citizen Monroachkillah sadly stated. “I wish they’d get their shit together. I mean, if smart people don’t know what’s going on, how are ordinary people like me ever supposed ta know?”