What if couch potatoes were drifters who became entranced by television shows?
What if pleasure and pain didn’t exist, but everyone wanted bananas?
What if intelligence was malleable from moment to moment and breathalyzers could determine your intelligence at any given time? What if you weren’t allowed to make decision unless you blew a 100 IQ or better? What if the intensity of emotions hindered IQ, whether the emotions ranged from elation to despair, and thus you could only make decisions when your emotions were within a certain equilibrium range? What if you had to just sit and stew until you calmed enough to make a reasonable decision? What if you could only sit in bliss until you calmed enough to be relatively at peace before making a decision? What if an electric shock was delivered to you whenever you tried to make a decision without blowing into a breathalyzer and even then when your IQ was below 100? Imagine taking a test at school, giving a presentation at work, or driving in a car while having to constantly blow into a breathalyzer whenever you wanted to make a decision? Even sitting at a bar you couldn’t make the decision to pick up you glass of beer unless you blew a 100 IQ or better? Do you think the world would be a better place if these things happened?
What if mangoes were made from French fries that had rotted in McDonald’s dumpsters?
What if I’ve created the greatest music of any kind that has ever existed, but I chose not to share it with anyone because I didn’t think anyone in the world besides myself was worthy of listening to it?
What if “handicapped parking” was considered so politically incorrect that no one ever parked in those spaces because everyone had free reign to slash the tires of any vehicles parked in them?
What if handicapped parking was placed as far from buildings as possible and disabled drivers were only allowed to park in handicapped spots?
What if loving another person only caused pain for the person loving and the person being loved?
What if everyone believed breathing was a sign of cowardice?
Would being law-abiding be considered legal or illegal if a law was passed outlawing adherence to laws?
What kind of person eats hamburgers only on Thursdays?
What if being born poor was the only way anyone could become rich? Would you become poor, assuming you weren’t, before your child was born, just give him or her a chance to become rich? Would a person born poor decide not to have children after becoming rich or allow a child born while rich to be doomed to poverty?
What if all women had vaginal openings half a meter wide and all men had penises no bigger than an infant’s big toe? What if the penis-toe could only ejaculate when a nearby woman sneezed and women could only sneeze when they were on ladders while the moon was full?
What if giant testicles ruled the earth?
What if flies held the secrets to immortality but could only communicate with humans in pairs while each rested in nostrils for thirty seconds? Would we ever know? Has it ever happened, two flies simultaneously resting for thirty seconds in a person’s nostrils? Ever? Throughout the history of homo sapiens sapiens?
What if black widow spiders were thirty feet long and had wings with wingspans of ninety feet and could fly at a thousand kilometers per hour but had six-foot-long stingers that inserted only feelings of joy whenever they stung any living thing? Would we all clamor to be stung? Would we worship them as gods? Would we make it illegal to kill them? What if they only stung persons who were masturbating? Would children begin masturbating before puberty? Would public, open-air masturbation become socially acceptable?
What if nothing has ever happened nor ever will and everyone who has ever existed has been entirely wrong about everything because they have believed that things have happened and will happen?
What if marshmallows were the only source of nutrition for humans?
What if fire was a hoax?
What if “gash” meant “hope”?
What if piousness was considered hedonism and walruses ate only underwear?
What if watching one hundred minor league baseball games was the only way to achieve enlightenment, but no one knew it until it happened and they weren’t allowed to tell the rest of us?
What if rugby was a religion instead of a sport?
What if the only true religion was determined each year through a Texas hold’em poker tournament?
What if “when,” as an adverb, conjunction, noun, or pronoun, was eliminated entirely? Would we still have clocks or say, “Meet me tomorrow morning at eight”?
What if wearing a robe of any kind, whether man, woman, or child, was the only way to determine whether a person was or wasn’t lying? Would pants and dresses cease to be made and worn?
What if only mothers and fathers could be a person’s girlfriend or boyfriend? Would the concept of “incest” disappear?
What if “Jones” was the only last name that existed … everywhere on the planet, even for animals, insects, and plants? What if it was also illegal to kill anyone or anything with the last name of “Jones”?
What if Santa Claus was a termite?
What if parrots had the sentience of humans and humans had the sentience of mice? Would there have been a Bronze Age?
What if Mohammad’s name had been Doofus?
What if Jesus was a hermaphrodite?
What if Alexander had been known as the Mediocre?
What if Larry Flynt was God?
What if Mao Zedong had been a poet instead of a dictator?
What if Karl Marx had invented Cheesism, the belief that cheese would free the proletariat from the evils of capitalism?
What if Adam Smith had written a cookbook instead of The Wealth of Nations?
What if Google searches always came up with a list of sites related to root beer floats?
What if massive quantities of bees were required to build computer microchips?
What if proximity to an anthill was the only place where humans could think?
What if acne was considered to be the only source of human beauty?
What if gerbils replaced dollars as U.S. currency?
What if Africa was transported to one of the moons of Jupiter and an earthlike atmosphere developed instantaneously when it did?
What if oceans and land masses switched places and the Pacific Ocean, for example, became a continent while North America, for example, became an ocean?
What if Japan was a verb?
What if evil was idyllic?
What if China developed Weapons of Mass Hilarity?
What if Mexico existed only as a watermark?
What if bee stings were the only source of pleasure?
What if giants are sleeping under glaciers on Greenland and will wake up as the snow and ice melts over the next century?
What if rabbits around the world grew to the size of Manhattan and became marble statues?
What if sexuality was reduced to eating apples?
What if virgins weren’t?
What if Senegal became a sea overnight?
What if Argentina had never provided amnesty to Nazis?
What if Israel was located in the Caribbean?
What if the Grateful Dead had been named the Grubby Frumpers?
What if music was something you could taste?
What if horses owned donkeys as slaves?
What if dogs had humans as pets?
What if no human had ever noticed the sun?
What if moonlight was a source of electricity?
What if cow manure was a girl’s best friend?
What if diamonds hardened into coal?
What if shit was something to be admired?
What if cats could only mate with mice?
What if watching horror movies was necessary for defecating?
What if hippos lived inside bellybuttons?
What if whales had four legs and lived in deserts eating cactus?
What if jaguars could communicate telepathically with sharks, but sharks didn’t have a way to respond?
What if human women only gave birth to adults?
What if the number six didn’t exist?
What if alphabetical letters were distinguished only by scent? What would be the version of braille for those without a sense of smell?
What if every person’s beliefs were untrue? What if the opposite of what every person believed was true? What if the truth was specific to each person and was always the opposite of what each person believed? What if a person believed that gravity existed and therefore it didn’t and if that person changed his or her mind to believe gravity existed then it didn’t? What if you believed you saw a tree but because you believed you did ... you didn’t ... and when you believed you didn’t see a tree that, therefore, you did? What if the exact opposite of everything you believed was the truth no matter what you believed at any time? What if you believed you were always wrong and, because of that, you were always right and, in which case, the only time you ever believed anything that was true was when you believed you were wrong? This, more than any other belief that anyone has ever believed, is dada and, thus, Anti-Dada.
