Some of the satire in the above explained

Man, the whole orchestra is tuning up for the blast. This one is actually not my satire; it came from a Sea Hunt story. Here's the scene. Some important diplomat was flying into our country in an attempt to improve relationships with the two countries. Well, the State Department (or whatever) got word that someone (God knows who) was planning to ruin everything by planting a bomb in the harbor. Naturally, it was (our hero) Mike Nelson's job to find the bomb in the nick of time. Only trouble is he's got a serious problem. There's a beatnik chick in the way, who has eyes for him. It was that chick who told him, "Man, the whole orchestra is tuning up for the blast." Needless to say, Mike Nelson's idea of a blast (the bomb going off) was completely different from her's (the party for the diplomat). Man, I tell you friends, if that's not satire, I don't know what is. Back to blast

Hey Big Daddy, like remember that crazy happening we had a few months ago? This is also not my satire. It comes to you from Playboy Magazine (or was it Penthouse?) Anyway, my father had this stash of girly magazines that he clamed were for some sociology course he was teaching (god knows what his real intent was) but the day came when he wanted to get rid of them all, so I went through them and saved everything that pertained to the Haight-Ashbury. I found this cartoon of a Beat Generation cat sitting in his one room pad smoking a cigarette and drinking wine, and in his doorway is this chick who's obviously pregnant, reminding him of that crazy happening that got her pregnant a few months ago. Back to happening

Boy that cleaning lady really started to freak out when she saw Colin drop that tray of food all over the carpet. That bummer happened to me at Eastfield College, when somebody dosed me without my consent about 25 years ago. It happened to me right before my last class before lunch. Anyway, when I finished that class, I started wondering why everything was strobing. I got my lunch and was walking up the stairs with my tray of food, headed for the freak balcony, where all the Hippies ate. I missed the last step and fell flat on my face on the carpet, food tray and all, and some student thought it cute to say, "Another stoned Hippie bites the dust." A cleaning lady was running an upright vacuum at the time, and she looked up and saw the goddamn mess and really did freak out, because they had just put that new carpet in when we were out for spring break. The biggest bummer though, was I still had one class to go, and it was a lab final. I don't know how I pulled it off, but I managed to make a "B." If it hadn't been for the acid, I probably would have made an "A." The obvious moral to this story is don't dose people against their will. Seriously folks, a lot of people have lost their lives over such pranks, Pigpen of the Grateful Dead probably one of them. Like me, he got dosed without his consent at least once, but unlike me, he wasn't used to acid tripping. The time they dosed him without his consent, they put so much LSD on the rim of his beer can, it might have physically harmed him, and we're talking about milligrams of acid here, not micrograms. I just hope this message prevents events like this from happening in the future. Back to freak out

You know, they're the little red capsules they like to dole out the night before shock treatment day.
Mental institutions have gone full-circle. Back before they had the major tranquilizers, they used electro-shock therapy like crazy, because it was one of the few ways they had of getting uptight patients to cool it. Then, when they got the new medicine, they started using electro-shock therapy less. This happened a few years before Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest book came out, and he mentions it in the book. Well, some time in the late 80's, they found out that the new medicine, the so-called wonder drugs, were turning patients into vegetables worse than the electro-shock therapy was. They found that the medicine destroys the part of the brain that produces dopamine, so now electro-shock therapy is back in vogue...and that's where the little red capsules come in.

The night before shock treatment day, they like to dope up all the patients who are going to get them with Seconal (the little red capsules) so they will be real woozy the next morning and won't put up such a fight when they drag them screaming and kicking into the treatment room. The only trouble is that the patients learn all too quickly to associate the little red capsules with the shock treatments, so they spit them out. Then, the next morning, they really holler when they drag them into the shock shop. When that happens, they have to put them on saline drip IV the night before the treatments, to make sure they get dosed. I guess it's about time for Kesey to take another job in the loony bin so he could write another novel to keep us up to date on all this. Back to reds or you can visit the Shock Shop.

...that funny looking ward building with all the bars on it that goes by the name of Disturbed.

Every mental institution has one. It usually looks like some goddamn nightmare (or freakin' hallucination) that came right out of some Nazi Death Camp. They usually put it at the very back of the funny farm so the visitors won't be likely to hear the screaming. Man, I tell you friends, Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest book just doesn't do this ward building justice. Leading up to the front door of the ward building is a ramp that makes the job of dragging screaming patients in there easier. That's why they call it Disturbed, man. If they were about to drag your ass in there, you'd be disturbed about it for sure. You've heard of death row, man. Well, Disturbed is like lobotomy row, because it's where they stash all the patients they don't know how to fix. I mean like these patients are so out of touch, they're likely to spit out their medicine, or even throw a chair at someone on the ward. You can see why the Big Nurse doesn't have any choice but to try to convince the doctor to ship them over to Disturbed and see if they can fix them over there.

First, they try to fix them with a little electro-shock therapy. Some times that works and they can transfer them back to the ward they came from. Sometimes it takes a lot of electro-shock therapy to fix them, but other times, some patient will come in that simply won't respond to the electro-shock therapy. When that happens, the Big Nurse has to convince the doctor to ship the patient over to the operating room over on MS (medical and surgical), where they chip away at your brain in order to turn you into a vegetable. Then they roll you back into the ward on a Gurney that says Lobotomy on it, sacrificed for the good of all the other patients, so they will get the gestalt of what can happen to fella who refuses to be a constructive member of the Therapeutic Community on the Big Nurse's ward. Back to Flip out