An experiment in alternative power is underway in Canada. It’s called the AVE, which is short for Atmospheric Vortex Engine (so it succeeds in scaring the shit of you by name alone,) and long story short, it creates a giant tornado just to steal the energy from the wind.

If you mentally recast this guy with Willem Dafoe, this picture is terrifying.

Maybe it’s not the most efficient solution we’ve ever thought of, but it does solve a problem Green Energy has had from the very start: it’s for pussies.

Sorry guys, I want to save the world as much as the next Bruce Willis, but there’s simply nothing sexy about alternative energy sources. All of our past major fuels have had at least one important thing in common that eco-friendly power lacks; they could fucking kill you.

Take, for example, Nuclear power: It mutates life, radiates cancer, and creates the mightiest explosions in the history of mankind…and I use it to play Xbox. Even pre-Industrial Revolution power was distilled from pure badass. Whale oil was the fuel of choice, and this was at a time when whales were poorly understood leviathans. They were quite literally demons of the deep - near-legendary creatures the size of your entire god damn boat - and the only way you could read your copy of Pride and Prejudice after sunset was to slay that sea-monster with a fucking spear, and render its fat to light your lamps.

Because vegetable oil is for pussies, that’s why.

There’s an obvious appeal to our manly side present here, and it is that of harnessing a potentially deadly force to do our bidding. Gasoline is notoriously volatile and burns like a motherfucker, and yet we shove it into our cars and do something as pedestrian as drive to the store with it. There’s subconscious redemption in that dichotomy: Yes, I may be pathetically buying Hot Pockets from the self-checkout line at Wal-mart, but god damn it, I harnessed the elemental power of motherfucking fire to get here!

I am master to the inferno, and I use my furious powers to get to the doctor’s office and make sure this isn’t gonorrhea!

I rode a chariot of flames to fetch this Slurpee, and maybe these porno mags…and I will also take some of that beef jerky back there! No! Not that kind, the hickory smoked - MOTHERFUCKER.

I realize that solar power reaps the very rays of the mighty sun, but it does it too passively; you just lay out a panel and let it get warm. If you crashed your solar car in the Australian Outback and Mad Max sauntered casually up to you, looked you directly in the eye, and heartlessly tossed his lighter onto your ruined vehicle – what then? As he walks away - ignoring your screams for mercy - the flames would, at most, gently singe part of your panel before the dripping plastic extinguished them. There would be virtually no vengeance served that day, and the absence of vengeance makes Max a sad Road Warrior.

Sad Max: The Clinical Depression Warrior

By the same argument, wind farms gather their energy from the elements just as much as gasoline does from fire, but they do so with giant windmills. That’s pretty lame, guys. Now, the AVE purports to do much the same thing - the energy is derived from air turbines at the bottom of the device –but the chief difference here is that while conventional wind farms consist of giant pinwheels in rolling green fields capturing the essence of a gentle summer breeze, the AVE is a gargantuan black tower in the center of a dead lake surrounded by a giant, artificial, eternal typhoon.

This is actually what the Atmospheric Vortex Tower will look like; except the finished one will be surrounded by an undying whirlwind and, presumably, black magic.

The methodology is the same, sure, but the AVE takes the core concept of wind energy, ramps up the horsepower, slaps some spinners on it, and then jumps it off the fucking Grand Canyon while playing Rock You like a Hurricane on a quadruple-necked, skull-shaped electric guitar.

Inspired by the sheer, unnecessary, maniac awesomeness of this act, I have decided that mere electricity is simply not going to do it for me anymore. The electric company allows you to purchase alternative energy packets, wherein certain chunks of your energy bill come from specific alternative sources. I plan on purchasing a packet that powers my house on the kinetic energy from bare-knuckle, back-alley fistfights. I might supplement that by adding a few packets from Lesbian Karate Classes, and maybe a couple of kilowatts generated by grizzly bears learning to play the drumlines to Rush’s greatest hits.

Just to mix things up a bit.

EDIT: Did you think I was fucking kidding?

Here are several things that I thought were pretty interesting, but not really “paragraph” interesting. As such, I have adopted a Night at the Improv Zinger approach. I would say I hope you enjoy it, but honestly, I kind of hope you hate it so much that you punch your desk in impotent frustration.

It would just show good taste on your part.

Collapsible Machine Gun

“Machine Gun That Fits in Your Pocket”

Is that a machine gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see m-HOLY FUCK THAT IS A MACHINE GUN IT IS ACTUALLY A MACHINE GUN NOW IS FOR RUNNING.

Turtle Ship

“A turtle shaped airship is perhaps the last thing you might expect to see floating through the sky, but this eco-friendly craft might just be key to the next generation of humanitarian relief.”

To summarize: Environmentalists forgot what turtles look like.

Theorized Climate Wars

“Changing weather patterns could contribute to political instability around the world, the collapse of governments and the creation of terrorist safe havens.”

“Man, it is a scorcher today. I’m gonna pick up the kids and head down to the pool, you wanna come?”

“Nah, I’m just gonna kill some colored folk. Thanks, though.”

And then both have ice cream.

Amish Cell Phones

“The Amish are famous for shunning technology. But their secret love affair with the cell phone is causing an uproar.”

LOL U R CHURNING ME ON!

Fuck you, above sentence.

NASA is designing a new lunar rover, and this time they’re through fucking around.

The NASA Chariot is just one potential design for a new lunar rover in the works, intended to serve as the workhorse for a permanent lunar station they plan to have in operation by 2020. It may seem like announcing a permanent settlement on the moon in just over a decade would be big news for NASA, but they just kind of slipped it under the radar here and placed the real emphasis on this sweetass concept vehicle instead. I actually think that’s a good move. The hard sciences are posting increasingly lax numbers for new recruits, and promising kids that if they get good grades and work real hard they can get a job as an astronaut - where they’ll spend all of their time in a tiny metal room with no entertainment, doing math problems – isn’t exactly enticing. That’s like promising that if you eat all of your vegetables and do your chores, you’ll get grounded forever. In outer space. And if you try to sneak out, your eyeballs explode.

So, of course they’re stressing their badass new rover first. Look at that thing:

It has “crab steering,” so that every wheel pivots and drives independently. The driver - after strapping himself in mech-style to that pilot’s chamber – can then pivot 360 degrees, steering the Chariot at full speed in every direction. The damn thing even has hydraulics, presumably to court that Ivy League Cholo demographic. The expression on that driver’s face says it all; he looks like he’s making explosion noises with his mouth. He looks like he’s about to breakdance right on that little platform. He looks like he’s out for revenge, or at least some kind of street justice. And how else were they going to make Astronauts sexy again? Which do you think would be more effective, telling prospective scientists that they get to poop in a foil bag and watch ants spin, or telling them they get to jump the Space General Lee over the Sea of Tranquility?

Actually, that concept just outshone this whole post: The Space General Lee. Does anybody have Hollywood’s number? I don’t think I could stop writing that script if I tried.

Bo-Bot bent down to adjust his jet-boots. The solar winds blew grit into his intake valves. He stood and surveyed the surroundings, desolate and unyielding.

“Git yer butt movin’, boy” said Rosco 2.0 “Boss Hoggzyl don’t like to be kept waitin’, hear?”

“I hear ya, Sheriff. No need to get your parameters in a twist.” He stepped reluctantly onto the containment platform of the Gamma-Wagon. He would miss the moon summer, sipping Lemon-rays with the boys at the old watering hole, skinny-dipping in the Seas with The Daisy Collective. He knew he couldn’t get away from the law forever, but a bot could hope…

A dull roar broke the silence. A trail of pale gray dust rose from just beyond the lip of a far crater. It was coming this way.

“Now what in the sam hell-” Rosco 2.0 began, but was abruptly cut off.

“Yeeeee-haw!” Luke-Tron’s distinct cry echoed all around them, but where was it coming from?

“Good lawd,” Rosco 2.0’s hologram jaw slackened. Bo-Bot followed his gaze upward, just in time to see Luke-Tron and the Space General Lee hovering inches above his head.

“Sorry, Sheriff. Time for these jet-boots to fly!” Bo-Bot took his cousin’s hand as Luke-Tron gunned the throttle. The engines roared into life, covering Rosco 2.0 in an explosion of debris. As they soared off beyond the horizon, laughing, Rosco 2.0 sputtered and flailed in the half-light of the lunar day. He threw his hat to the ground, and stomped on it in frustration.

“Jjjjjjjjjjuuuu-” the cylinders on the Proto-Waylon began to spin up, “uuuuu….uuuu…Just two good ol’ bots, never feelin’ no guilt. Beat all you ever saw, been in trouble with the law since they day they was built.”

Yeah. You’re welcome for the most awesome idea in history, Planet Earth, it was my pleasure.

EDIT: Also, there’s a new Cracked article by me up today, The 7 Creepiest Real Life Robots. Read it, maybe give it a digg if you like it. Or just build tiny shrines to me in your secret heart. That is good as well.