“Where was the strangest place you’d ever had sex?”
“That would be in the butt, Bob.”
(laughter from audience, urban legend begins to form)
“No, I mean, there was this giant colon, you see…”
“My friend spent the day inside a giant colon, and all I got was this slightly stinky t-shirt.”
I missed this earlier. It’s been a bit of a rough week.
As you may have already guessed, Desire’s realm may be reached through the giant heart in the Franklin Institute. What is less obvious is that there are gateways to the domains of all the Endless in the museum.
Obviously simply physically entering the heart isn't enough. If it were, all the museum's visitors would vanish inside. As with all the gateways in the institute, a ritual is necessary. In this case you must perform a certain dance, the movements must be as perfect and precise as kabuki. During the dance, you must recite a certain chant. But even this is not enough. While dancing and chanting, you must paint certain glyphs upon the walls of the heart. The brush must be of a certain wood, tipped with the bristles of a certain animal. The paint must be a mixture of your own blood, sweat, and tears. If all is done correctly, the heart will grow warmer as you work. At the climax of the ritual, the chamber will close about you. When it opens, you will be propelled into the veins of Desire's realm.
The gateways to the others are not so plain.
What is despair? A feeling of being helpless. The certainty that all things come to dust. A final surrender. The musuem has a simple exhibit on randomness. One section is a dial and a tube. Within the tube, a piston hits a marble causing it to bounce. But the piston hits with random force and the marble bounces to random height. The dial allows some control of the piston. But not enough to bring order out of chaos and make the marble bounce in a predictable pattern. Here, there is a short mantra that must be said each time you adjust the dial. You must also accept, not as an intellectual fact but as an emotional truth, that no manipulation of the dial will ever bring a pattern to the bouncing.
Feel, deep inside and with certainty, that it is impossible. Then, give up. If the ritual has worked, a sense of utter hoplessness will fill you and you will weep. When your eyes are free of tears again, you will see that you are in the realm of Despair.
Destruction is simple. What is the single greatest force of destruction in the museum? The lightning generator. Usually the staff demonstrate by splitting pieces of lumber. A greater spectacle is required to reach the realm of Destruction. First, find a suitably porous volcanic stone. Then, soak it in a mixture of water and certain other ingredients. Just place it beneath the lightning generator and hit the switch. When the smoke clears, you’ll find yourself in his realm.
As those two awful films commented, death is our final destination, one we can be sure we'll all find no matter how lost we usually be. What exhibit is a guide to journey's end? The light house array. The lamp is gone, but the great focusing lenses remain. Turn off the lights. Set a mixture of the right herbs inside the lenses. Note that these must be fresh. Indeed, they must still be alive. Set fire to the mixture. The light will grow brighter and brighter. It will quickly be too much to look at with your eyes open. Then it will be too bright to look at with your eyes shut. At the moment when it seems the light will blind you, it will vanish. The smell of dirty laundry and old pizza means you've entered the realm of Death.
Insanity is many things. A simple definition is that it insanity is when beliefs and perceptions do not conform to reality. Clearly, the hall of optical illusions is the place to go. While Despair’s gate taxes the body, Delirium’s gate taxes the mind. The chant requires that you twist your usual thought processes the way Escher twisted space and perspective. While doing that, you must look at the various illusions and try to convince yourself that your perception, though demonstrably false, is reality. This may take hours. The next step is to convince yourself that the people around you are illusions. If you can do this, you will drown in confusion. Nothing will be real, clear, or definite. Everything around you will shimmer and blur. Your mind and your surroundings will be a prismatic jumble. The confusion will soon pass. The cloud will then solidify into the realm of Delirium.
Humans often attempt to define or explain the universe by finding patterns. We find them even where they don’t exist. Destiny does no such seeking. He knows how things truly are. Find the model of the constellation Orion. From the front, the model is simply Orion as it appears in the night sky. From the side, it is those same stars seperated by vast distances. There is no pattern here, just balls of burning gas and frightened men huddling in the dark. Return to the front of the display and begin to write. Of course, no normal paper or ink will do. But, as with the other rituals I will not reveal the proper formulae here. You must start at the moment of your conception and write out your entire life. When you arrive at the present, when you write of the very words you write, stepped to the side of Orion. In the instant before you enter the realm of Destiny, your words will shift and move. Look closely and you may find the true path your life has taken all these years.
Dreams are unreal. They are intangible. Yet they drive us. What are the largest, most concrete things in the Institute? Dreams can be seen but not held nor touched. What exhibit runs on such fuel? Go to the lower floor, to the locomotives. Open the burner and place the bundle within. I will not tell you its composition, save this: it must contain a certain type of lotus, its petals blue and black, the colors of sleep, but with one petal fiery red for dreams, and it must be wrapped in a pillowcase upon which you have slept for a thousand nights and a night. Set fire to the bundle. Climb atop the train. Breathe the smoke as it exits. Visualize the smoke in your lungs. Feel the smoke grow heavy and solid as you become light and insubstantial. Within moments, you will vanish like a morning fog. Then, like evening dew, you will be given weight and form by the ground of the Dreaming.
[sub]Note the first- I don’t know how accurate this is, Though I like Gaiman’s work, I only own 5 or so issues of Sandman and have read less than 20.
Note the second-The above post was a piece of fiction based on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. I am not actually claiming that any of the procedures or entities described above are real.[/sub]
First, rc… somehow, that just doesn’t seem appetizing to me. 
Though, more seriously, I was going to head for Fado at around 5 or so, with a brief stop at the bank for money. Anyone wanting side trips is fine with me. (And are you coming today?)
Next, Doc, that was perfection. I’ve read every Sandman I can get my hands on so it seemed pretty spot on to me.
i’m hopeful about getting to a dinner soon.
i’m slightly considering the colon tomorrow.
i am amused by the pink fountain in front of the colon entrance.
::MsRobyn checks the bank balance::
::MsRobyn debates the educational value of exposing Aaron to a giant colon::
Hmmm…
Robin
Why should a giant colon in Philly be considered a new event?
When I lived and worked in the city, I saw a couple of assholes make their way to the top job-one is there, now. 
I’ll be there tomorrow.
…that isn’t the goatse guy
Would anyone else die laughing if vandals cut it into two semicolons?
me!
Cervaise, you know that the goatse guy is a hermaphrodite, don’t you?
I’d link you to the evidence, but I have no real desire to be banned.
You know, I really should check things. Now there’s a denial, so I retract my previous post.
The giant heart is cool. Do not mock the giant heart.
Don’t you know anything? Giant periods come from giant vaginas.
Actually from giant uteri, but I am nitpicking now…
Perhaps this will lead to a new theme park ride. Imagine doing a giant colon crawl, only to be washed out by a torrent of water.
New at Six Flags Great Adventure - The High Colonic!!
“C’mon, Daddy-I wanna go crawl up the colon again! Puhleeezeee?”
A competing park could use the vaginal idea posted above:
Ride the Wild Douchebag!
:eek:
Once again proving that I have way too much time to think about things.
twickster:
Save that for the Giant Scalp.
Chaim Mattis Keller
The next time one of you crawls through the giant colon, would you mind keeping a watch for my giant gerbil? I seem to have misplaced it somehow…
I wonder whether the Giant Colon has Giant Polyps?
“No, dear, those aren’t sea anemones…” <shudder>