A Quick Fix to a Giant Problem
Thought up:  7.29.03 – 10:03pm
Written: 7.30.03 – 1:27am
#14

Last night was the start of a new facet in my life.  Things have been going somewhat slowly, and I had a few bucks saved up, and decided to let ‘em fly.  I was going to get certified in scuba diving with my friend Laurie.  She asked me about it like 3 months ago, and I didn’t do any of the work that I was supposed to do up to the start date.  I didn’t buy my stuff, I didn’t read the material, I just paid the fee when I was there, and had to show up to the class.  Done.  Easy cheesy.  So when I get to class, as I expected, I was supposed to read some stuff in the book, and I thought we might have a quick quiz or something.  I know I can’t flunk the class; because I paid 300+ bucks for it, but it still irks me a little that I didn’t read this stuff.  The we start going over the introduction of who everyone is, and what they do for a living.

One guy is a larger than average lawyer, one guy has bad knees and talks more than a baby dumps, one lady cracked her teeth on a tuba last week and can’t train with us, one guy didn’t say anything.  He just kind of stood there and smiled and very certainly could have been a little light in the loafers.  The students started telling what they did.  One little girl was 13, and going on her  21st Caribbean cruise with her old man, right next to her, another father/offspring next to them who were going to Hawaii again for the 92nd time, a married couple, a lady doing it by herself, me and Laurie, and these 2 middle-aged ladies.  One of the ladies was already happily married, and just looking to get over the fear of diving.  She wanted to “experience a world she hadn’t before.”  The other lady said first thing, “Let me start off by saying that I’m scared to death of this, and I’m not looking forward to doing it, but my fiancée is REALLY into diving, and wants to go on our honeymoon in Hawaii.”

Now, I’m not sure how to take this lady at first…  Do I feel sorry for her husband that he married a lady with such a dim outlook on something?  I mean, she has the audacity to follow through with it, or so it seems, but just belaboring the fact that she is scared to death of this.  The instructors try calming her down a bit, talk for 15-20 minutes on how this’ll be “the greatest release of your life”, and “it’s like a massage when you’re in the water.”  She just doesn’t buy it though, clearly.

We get to fixing our scuba gear, and setting it up, and low and behold, she’s complaining again about how she doesn’t understand.  Once again, I shrugged it off, lo and behold, I’m excited to go.  I get to the pool, strap on my gear, and I’m off in the water, ready to start getting busy.  Everybody is ready to go except for - yup, you know who…  She’s threatening to get out of the pool because she’s “had enough”.  I’m sitting there, just begging for her wish to be granted.  I wanted whatever the result was to be that exact wish, or else to have her liver eaten out each day by some monster.

I guess much the same as Prometheus, from the point of view of Zeus, of course.  He had an eagle gnawing at his liver.  Come to think of it, I wished that she WAS Prometheus, not because she’d save the human race, but because she’d be in pain and too busy to scuba.  Zeus slammed him up on that rock so many years ago for a reason.  He gave fire to the infidel human race.  This caused all sorts of havoc in the Ancient Mythological world.  Much like this lady was doing do us.  I sat there in the water and begged ol’ Zeus to have a pterodactyl or whatever picks people up out of the air these days, and chain her up to a rock.  Her fiancée might be sad at first, but really, look what he has to live with for the rest of his life.  Zeus would be doing this man a favor.  Give him 5 or 6 days and he’ll be well over her.  Prometheus eventually (eventually, of course meaning, a few hundred years) got off the rock by way of Hercules, and was whisked back to Mount Olympus.  Let’s examine the good in all this:

1.    This lady would learn her lesson not to be such an inconvenience and a sissy.
2.    Her fiancée could find something/someone that would compensate for this lady much better, like a volleyball, or a chainsaw, or maybe a rancid bowl of fish guts.
3.    The rest of the class wouldn’t have to listen to Ms. Slappybuttnugget talk about how she’s never going to scuba anyway, and she hates it.
4.    Zeus hasn’t picked on anyone in a while I’m sure.
5.    She could be immortalized in books, footnoted as a whiney baby.
6.    Better than drowning.  Wait, no it’s not, she’s getting her liver eaten by a eagle each day, never mind.

Nothing but joy and happiness for all parties involved I’d say.  I’m trying to think of an “as the old saying goes” quote, but none are coming to mind…  Maybe, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  But that clearly doesn’t pertain because she’s broken, and odds are, can’t be fixed.  Maybe “Even the best laid plans go awry.”  We could be talking about her parents, and this one certainly has more validity.
So really, I guess we should be blaming this all on them, but it’s not really their fault.  Unless, of course, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  Then, again, it’s their faults.   But it could just be ONE of their faults, which leads me to believe clearly, “you sleep with dogs, you get fleas.”  So it’s REALLY the fault of the fleas.

I guess, overall, this is a really simple problem to fix that I just overlooked.  All I needed to do was to find Emmett Brown, using the flux capacitor, hop in the DeLorean, go back a couple decades, and just use a small dab of RAID bug killer to solve this conundrum.  All this time, you thought it killed bugs, and in actuality, it was a top-secret plan by the government to take out people in 30-45 years.  It all makes sense now, but I’d imagine RAID would sell more if their ad slogan mentioning something about killing idiots in the future…

P.S.  I didn’t really care for this lady…

Yea, a little weird…  which is funny…

More Technology, More Nerdy Glasses, Less Cool
Thought up: 7.28.03 – 7:41am
Written: 7.29.03 – 10:17pm
#13

So these new “hybrid” cars that they have out now are supposed to reduce smog pollution, give better gas mileage, travel faster because they’re aerodynamic, and can recover braking energy. Super, those are all really nice advantages for these machines. Above that, they all cost around 20K… Not bad for a brand new machine that will save you money in the long run. I can see the point, most people wouldn’t mind having this vehicle in their lives – saving the planet and whatnot. They’ve even come out with an SUV hybrid now.

I’m not sure as to the horsepower of the vehicle or anything, but I can imagine those engineers working on the project have done some thinking with it. They probably sit there day in and day out, on their computers, sending ideas back and for to each other. I’d say there are about 28 or 36 of them in a big room - swapping ideas, email forwards, pens, pocket protectors, video game hacks and cracks, eating donuts, wearing short-sleeve striped shirts with blue ties, Coke-bottle glasses with HUGE rims talking about last night’s episode of Star Trek the mini-series. I’m sure they’re really smart guys, I mean, I bet one or 2 of them have even seen a real live girl in their houses! And I’m not talking about non-internet-girlfriend either:

CutieJulie183: Hey, are you serious about how you are a multi-millionaire inventor / space ship pilot / writer / movie star / yoga instructor / stripper / pro baseball player?!?!?

HugeAssNerdKart: Hey honey, I’m whatever you want me to be. But, yea, basically, that’s what I am… I know it’s a hard life and all, but I’m a RAD dude. No, really, RAD! What’s your favorite Star-Trek episode?

CutieJulie183: Oh, you’re a real hunk for sure… Wait a minute. What are you talking about? Star-Trek?

HugeAssNerdKart: Yea, last night Captain Kirk really let those Volgorons have it with his Z-892K space de-modulizer! It was amazing! I remember back in Episode 128b, (NOT 128a where, of course, the Jaie people needed the transport unit moved to quadrant 4-38C) when the Z-892J came out! I couldn’t even BEGIN to believe it!

CutieJulie183: My my, look at the time; I really have to go and straighten out my stereo cords! And after that I have to re-lace a few of my shoes, so I’m gonna be busy for the next 17 years.

HugeAssNerdKart: So at any rate, I didn’t have time to read your last message to me, I had to get in a few levels of Warriors of the Unknown Corn Werewolves on my Playstation X4… I just love that game, however, not as much as…

Anyway, I’m sure that they’re really good guys and all, but it’s VERY apparent that God skipped them when he was passing out “style” genes. These guys have NO idea. It’s so obvious as to why NOBODY is driving these hybrid cars! I’m sure when people go to the lot to look at cars, me being one of them, I’m like, “Gee, I wish you guys had some really mid-priced cars that got good gas mileage, that look really really stupid and boxy! Have any of those on the lot?” I don’t have a lot of money, but I have a super trade in! I just got this new refrigerator and the box that it came in fit really nicely on these 2 wagon wheels that I found! It’s not really fast, granted, nor is it aerodynamic like the advertisement says, but BOY is she a beauty!

It’s really quite comical on the advertisement side as well. They advertise the vehicle next to kids being trendy. Surfing and partying, and then they show this car that the kids are driving in to be something really awesome that everyone would want to be around. Dancing and jumping off it and all, when the best thing that you could really do with it is to paint it yellow and write “SCHOOL” in big letters on the front. Granted, it’d be a bit shorter than even a short-bus, but only the designers would be the ones driving it, and that way, we’d know to ridicule them when we saw the Ass-buses, as they would clearly be called, driving by.

It all brings me back to a memory when my Pops was building his new house. He had a room specifically for his television, and the one he had just wasn’t big enough, and he could never see the scores of the game, or the sub-heads that would be on screen, so he’d always ask me the score. Got to be a bit of a pet peeve. So one day he said to me,

“Andy, I’m 50 years old, and I can’t see the TV. I reckon there is only one thing that I can do about this. I’ve been dreading it for years, but sometimes you just have to realize when your eyesight has gone bad. A lot of people my age get like this I suppose…”

“Yea Dad, maybe it’s time you get some glasses. They wouldn’t hurt, everyone has them and you can quit bugging me to read the screen for you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!? I’m not getting glasses; I’m getting a big screen TV!!! I don’t wanna look like a nerd!”

And from that day forth, I had a new outlook on life, a new quote to follow, much unlike these style-less guys building the hybrids cars… “Looks aren’t everything, except when you’re talking about hybrid cars, well, not even just hybrid cars, more like any cars. And while we’re on the topic of cars, we might as well say houses, and everything else cool that you might need in your lifetime, like guns, computers, clothes and nachos. And on top of that, don’t wear glasses, they’ll make you look nerdy; instead get a big-screen T.V.”

one of these might be yours someday…

They’re good at software, but someone needs to help them with spelling class; Hopefully they’d get a lot of “partcipants” in the class…

however…

Worse Fates
Thought up: 5.13.02
Written:  7.17.03 - 1:41pm
#12

I can’t think of many worse fates than being a bearded woman in circus that just got fired.  That must be a tough break…  Guess you could go to another circus and see if they had any job openings…  I can imagine a bearded lady’s resume:

Olga Svonaiieka
822 W. Skiakile Road
East Helena, MT  59602

OBJECTIVE:
Elementary school grad looks to enhance her skills in the bearded lady industry.  Looking to contribute to a fast-paced well-organized circus.

SKILLS:
Being a lady with a beard.  Once ate an entire pig.  Knows car parts.

EXPERIENCE:
January 1989-present
Bearded Lady
I started out just being a mustache lady, pretty dark, thought it looked cool.  Turned 14 and started getting some cool sideburns.  Didn’t want to shave them.  Got teased a bit about it, but I liked chicks anyway.  By the time I dropped out of school I had a full-fledged beard!  Learned the techniques of combing a beard, and freaking out people.  Couldn’t work anywhere, they all thought I was a liar.  On the application it’d ask, “M/F”…  I’d circle the “F” for female, but nobody would believe me, and NOBODY wanted me to prove it to them.  I didn’t understand.  Found out about the circus needing bearded ladies.  Knew this was the job for me.  Since then I’ve been really enhancing my skills.  I can walk both to the right, and to the left.  I can gross out both men AND women with how strange I look.

December 1988 - January 1989
Lemonade Sales
I got into this industry to pay for my Copenhagen addiction.  3 cans a day is my staple.  Learned quickly how to sell, and how not to sell.  Well, mostly to myself.  Didn’t sell to anyone else, but learned how I enjoyed my lemonade in the middle of winter.  Needless to say it didn’t pan out.  Got out for personal reasons, and because my parents said I couldn’t go outside of my house.  They wanted me to sell it outside the neighbor’s house.  I obliged.  Neighbors kicked my ass and stole my lemonade.

EDUCATION:
Four Georgians Elementary School
1st through 5th grade
September 1976 – June 1985
Toughest nine years of my life.  However, learned more than 32 numbers, and all 24 letters in the alphabet.  Learned in 4th grade that I can’t eat Miracle Gro and raw hamburger for lunch anymore.  Decided on forgoing my final 10 years of school to attempt professional career.

REFERENCES:
Absolutely none.