Choose Your Own Adventure #100: The Worst Day of Your Life

Last time I tried a gamebook it promised espionage and high adventure but delivered TSA-style airport tyranny, shake-down rooms, the prison diet and way too much sarcastic self-awareness. After that bad experience it's time to return to Choose Your Own Adventure, where completely unaware and totally screwed up is the order of the day.

Speaking of days, that takes us to our subject. Specifically the "Worst Day of Your Life." Anywhere else I'd call this lame hyperbole to drum up some interest but with a cover that features a bull crashing through the window of a suburban house while the "you" avatar runs for cover I think there's at least a small chance it will live up to the advance billing.

Your new dream house in suburban Pamplona.

We start with some classic "I ain't superstitious" denial, despite the obvious fact that every Choose Your Own Adventure character ever suffers from cursed luck. Despite these objections, I'm starting to wake up to the reality that bad luck, sorrow and an early grave are my likely lot in life. Specifically, a "rocket" I "set off" in the backyard hit the neighbor's house. If this happened in 2013 I'd probably be picked up by Homeland Security and held without trial in an undisclosed location for domestic terrorism before being sentenced to death by a star chamber, so count your blessings, kid. I also got suspended from school for accidentally playing the Devil Music (Jailhouse Rock!) over the P.A. system. I guess the whole school board wasn't a purple gang.

Just a little side-project I'm working on.

The upshot of all this is that I have to spend the summer earning money (Yuck, Capitalism! Boo!) at Uncle Norbert's dirt farm in "Moo Mud, Ohio" while my family vacations in Hawaii. As the story proper begins I'm on the bus to the demeaning rural labor, but my lunch was ruined by bugs, the bus breaks down, I'm already late for the slop 'n' plop detail and there's tornadoes and flash floods possible. Not exactly an auspicious start. I decide to leave the bus and walk the remaining six miles to the farm, which for the average American might as well be the distance from the Earth to the Sun. 

I begin the Long Walk, trudging down an empty road while dark clouds begin to gather. Then a van pulls up and a strange man is all "Hey little boy, get in." Yeah. This really happens. I didn't think we'd get a scene like this until Choose Your Own Adventure #248: Trapped in the Penn State Shower Room.

  What could go wrong?

Morbid curiosity wins out and I get into the Molestermobile. The driver immediately starts driving erratically and turns off the main road but the obvious suspicions are proven incorrect because there's a tornado! I don't think I've ever been so grateful for the arrival of a funnel cloud. We avoid it and the driver takes me the rest of the way to Moo Mud. The lesson here is always accept rides from strangers.

It's pouring rain and the farming community has "shut down for the night." Just flip a giant switch and it all turns off, I guess. Go unplug the chickens, it's nighttime, etc. Anyways, I'm in front of a gas station, but it's closed too, so I decide a policy of randomly wandering around is the wisest course of action. Not a lot of self-preservation skills here. A sign mentions a "lost alligator" named "Snappy." I respond by falling down and being swept away by the flood waters.

The next outrageous twist: the gator gives you beer.

Given a choice to "go with the current" and probably be devoured by Pennywise the Clown, I decide to grab a floating "object" which is as specific as the book will get at this point. It's a log. After crawling through thorns and generally getting the business from Mother Nature I'm back on the road, where I hear a voice calling for "Snappy." It's this crazy old man who's all "where's my pet gator?" and "I remember ol' Herbert Hoover" and "by dicky cricky" and all the other b.s. you get out of that segment of the population. Suffice it to say I decide not to go with him.

This is pretty much what happened.

I wait for help, hopefully from someone with a better grasp on reality than the alligator grandpa. Several hours pass in the rain before I run in front of a car and flag it down. It's a Porsche (!) driven by a "woman around your mother's age" or a WAYMA, if you will. "Dear Penthouse..." Anyway, she's all "get in" and it's basically a replay of the "van incident" but totally awesome this time instead of creepy as hell. Time to get another "rocket" ready for "launch."

She takes you to her house and invites you to take a bath. Yeah, I think I know what that's code for. She even tells you to "put your clothes outside the door." Yep, won't be needing those for quite a while. I relax in the luxurious bathroom, reflecting on how my luck has changed. Knowing these books she'll probably turn out to be a cannibal or witch.

The End.

So I pick up the phone to call my friend Steve and brag about what's about to go down, but "Mrs. Barlowe" is already on the line, making a kidnapping threat (!) to your uncle. I love how these books take an already screwed up situation and make it even more ridiculous. I hop out of the tub, but my clothes are gone. Yes, this is a book aimed at eleven-year-olds, why do you ask?

Naked or not, I'm making a break. Wrapped in a towel I dive into a closet, while Mrs. Barlowe is now in full-blown black widow mode, offering "hot chocolate" before discovering my absence. I bolt out the door and keep going, losing the towel on a spiked fence. Naked, alone and pursued by a MILF-led kidnapping ring I blunder into "quicksand" and die. Yes, after all that this is my sorry, completely cliched and truly horrible death.

How many mistakes can you find in this picture?

This was hands-down the most completely fudged-up one of these books I've read so far. I don't even know what else to say. When slowly drowning in quicksand barely cracks the Top Five Most Horrible Moments you know you've experienced something wonderful. I'm honestly afraid to see what else is in this book, so I'll just put it away and we'll all forget this ever happened.

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

DotTeeVee: Vagina Power and Penis Power

Relationships are difficult, but when your primary source of guidance in those troubled waters is a thoroughly bizarre Atlanta public access program called "Vagina Power" they might as well be impossible. The show features an outspoken, quite possibly insane, woman named Alexyss Tylor and her mother (!!!) discussing topics the mainstream media won't dare to touch, like "hitting the middle" and women who have "jackrabbits" hammering away on their area all day while at work. Through the miracle of this modern age this amazing travesty has been preserved on Youtube and five years and 1.5 million views plus later it continues to be a wonder of this brilliant new world.

I had pretty much the same expression watching this.

We pick up the action already in progress as we're told "to earn your man you've got to learn your man." Sounds like a rejected Jesse Jackson slogan. Not all is well, though, as Alexyss warns of the risk of being "caught up in a man's penis power." No, penis power is not the solution to America's energy crisis, but rather it represents the ability of a man to somehow become proficient enough at sexual intercourse that it actually controls a woman rather than driving her away. Apparently the trick is "practice." Who knew?

We digress somewhat into a discussion of flashy men: pro and contra. Apparently there are decent men that wear lots of jewelry out there, somewhere. Not to be confused with the man in a "predator mode."

Predator mode...activate!

According to Miss Tylor the main target in predator mode are lonely women with beds full of toys. I'm guessing we're not talking about Voltron action figures. The mother, who has been silent up until this point is forced to make an off-topic interjection about "what drives a woman to toys?" We're supposed to be talking about dogs that hit the walls for psychological manipulation here mom, please try to stay on topic.

"What's going on in this video...oh lawd."

It's here we learn the horrifying truth that some women actually enjoy having orgasms. In fact, many working women, according to this show, have the jackrabbit on all day at their jobs. Well, that certainly explains the poor service I got at the office max. I guess the fact that she kept moaning and rolling her eyes back in her head while I was talking about ordering toner should have been a clue that something was amiss, but it seemed fairly ordinary at the time.

Mom goes 0 for 2 in getting the point as she embarks on a semi-coherent tangent about rabbits in nature during her country childhood and their tendency to jump "from here to there." Luckily her daughter is right here to explain that we're actually talking about how science adapted this naturalistic observation to create a  mechanical device that provides a steady bludgeoning of the nether regions, much like how Da Vinci got the idea for the helicopter from falling leaves or whatever. "We are living in the 21st century," says the older woman with a mixture of resignation and awe.

After being side-tracked by the rabbit trail, no pun intended, we veer into a discussion of how some male organs feel like they're on fire. I'm pretty sure they can give you a shot for that. "All penises are not created equal," we are told. So much for that U.N. resolution of universal rights or whatever that worthless scrap of paper is called. Indeed, even a man who "ain't no good" can get unfair preferential treatment via working the "hips and buttocks" and "bending" his partner like a human gumby. Life is both unfair and profoundly ugly.

This "penis power" is more than capable of destroying lives. How bad can it get? It can reach a point where the man won't even buy Long John Silver's. That's bad enough, but "that plate worth (only) $2.99." What does the woman get instead? If you guessed a mouth and/or rectum full of a certain special bodily fluid, you're correct! Good grief.

Fine dining denied due to penis power.

Perhaps with food on the brain we're told that all these men are offering is "a side of penis." This theory is confirmed when Alexyss suggests such encounters might be occurring "at lunch." Lest we should start getting hungry too, it's time to address the issue of letting a man "hit bottom." "They don't know about the bottom!" Mom interjects with more than a little desperation. Sorry mom, they clearly do which is why shrimp platter sales are down and we've got economic hardship.

Apparently the process of journeying to the center of woman, so to speak, leaves her insane. This is linked to ejaculation somehow reaching the brain. I don't think that's anatomically feasible, but then again I don't do a horrifying, sleazy as hell public access show with my own mother about how sometimes men use a mirror while "hitting from the back," so what do I know.

Next we learn about how "screwing her into submission" is performed. It's done by "using the penis as a weapon to break her ass down." Now you know and you'll be a better person. We're told the only defense against this sort of sexual mind control is to become a prostitute. Otherwise, forget it. It's a simple matter of asking "whose vagina is it" as though you're at a lost and found or something. This breaks a woman's brain and leads to a condition called being a "come freak" and we arrive full circle by explaining that this then leads to the jackrabbit addiction after the dog of a man leaves. It's a neat little package, no pun intended. 

This "freak" condition also makes sleeping difficult, causes high blood pressure and shortness of breath, as if everything else wasn't enough. Basically what we're saying is that normal male/female relations are far more dangerous than most experimental medicines in terms of undesirable side-effects.

She's making crazy faces like this through the entire video.

What qualifies someone to do a show like this, you're probably wondering. Surprisingly, our heroine does not have an extensive educational background, apart from a "Master's Degree in Being Played By Men." If I remember correctly the "Being Played By Men" department was less than impressive at the college I attended, but than again it was a state school. Harvard's B.P.B.M. labs and faculty are top notch, I'm sure.

It's time to give the floor to Mom again, who has mostly been in shocked silence during the last rant about life destruction via intercourse. She claims to have learned a lot and will be "on the watch out" for the giant, bottom-finding, flaming hot units lurking out there. She vows to stay "prayed up." After watching this train-wreck Richard Dawkins would probably want to pray.

We wrap things up with a fairly standard closing, followed by Miss Tylor cackling like a mad woman. Some music plays and she dances in her chair in a manner that resembles a bobble-head doll. A very appropriate finish, to say the least.

 Komment Korner

I'd rather not die of alcohol poisoning...

shit

PENIS ON FIRE !!!! RARR

I got to this from longboarding videos :P

        

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.