[11/27/2002 8:00:28 AM | Jason Hunter]
Heart-warming crap

I hate it when people try to get to your emotions by writing campy little "heart-warming" poems or stories. Most people who write them have no skill whatsoever at writing. The prose is poor, their rhymes are terrible, and they do not get any particular point across throughout their ramblings. They usually try to pack in so many instances of heart-warmingness (not really a word), that the whole thing turns into a primordial soup of drivel. I don't mind really well-written ones, but those are harder to find than a Democrat in Utah. There are some authors out there who have come up with some really good stories, poems, and allegories that are very thought-provoking and emotion-evoking. Wow, look at that. I just used the words 'provoking' and 'evoking' in a sentence. Maybe I could try to rhyme them into a poem or something. Anyway, I have come across a lot of terrible poems. Billions of them came out after 9-11. Most of them came to me through email. Just like the regular mail service, I get junk mail in my inbox. Some of them came to me with the heading that "This poem is great! Whoever wrote is has a keen grasp on the emotions and events of 9-11. They are a genius." The poem was signed as 'Anonymous'. The person who wrote the heading was obviously the one who wrote the poem and was just trying to saturate the email world with his own poem with a pretend "thumbs up" from a supposed outsider. I am on to your little game, and I refuse to play it. I re-wrote a couple poems that I received, adding in my own comments, sarcasm, and sense of humor... mostly as a satire on the original work, rather than trying to get out a message of my own.

Rachelle sent me one recently. She works at the animal shelter here in Provo, and came across this web page that is dedicated to the loving memory of our departed pets. That's great! I have had some very beloved pets that have passed on. I have an ode to one of them on this site in one of my archives. But this web page has gone sappy. They came up with an imagined place where the animals go to, tried to tug at our heartstrings by using words like "special friends", "bright eyes", "eager body", and "rainbow". Ah, doesn't that imagery just make you want to grab a bowl of ice cream and curl up in front of a fire and watch a chick flick? I'd much rather do all of that than have to read these poems of such poor quality. Hey, I'm not saying that I could do any better. But I'm also not grinding these things out and emailing them out to everyone with my own recommendation at the top. Here is the one that Rachelle sent me.

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.
You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.
Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Here's the one I remade. Again, my only point was to mock the original, not to tug at any strings... heart or otherwise.

Just this side of heaven is a place called Happy Daisy Sunshine Bridge of Doom. It isn’t really a bridge, because it doesn’t connect any two things. It is more of a mere location. But calling it a bridge makes it sound more romantic or something.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Happy Daisy Sunshine Bridge of Doom. All the others just go to hell where they rot. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable. Unfortunately, there is no one to clean up the mess that comes from having plenty of food and water. Mountains of dog crap are everywhere. And all of our special little nocturnal friends like “Scratchy the Possum” go mad with all the sunlight.

All the animals that had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind. There are a few animals that brought their special friends with them, like “Squinty, the seeing-eye dog”. Squinty walked right in front of a bus full of nuns, dragging his special friend with him. They came to the Bridge after a month in the ICU.

The others who didn’t bring friends with them all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. He starts to “make water” all over the ground. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster. He has to be careful, because some people have lost Eagles as pets, and they like to eat little wiener dogs that break away from the group.

You have been spotted. You start to run in fear. What is this place you are in. They didn’t tell you that Heaven was like this. Mounds of crap everywhere and dogs as far as the eye can see. This must be Hell. Then you spot your old wiener dog running at you. What was his name again? Oh yeah, “Piddles”. You hope he doesn’t remember that you were the one that took him to the pound because you were too lazy to clean up after him. Looks like no one cleans up after him here either. Oh no, there are all your other pets too: “Floaty the goldfish”, “Stinky the snake”, “Flappy, the unholy hybrid of a vampire bat and a tortoise”. It looks like this place has wiped their memory. That, or they never really had a memory, or much of a brain, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The people who were lucky enough to die without ever having a pet go to heaven and hang out with their people friends. You’re stuck here in this limbo. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.
Then you cross The Happy Daisy Sunshine Bridge of Doom together... Your Hell is just beginning.

Maybe I am just in a bad mood, but I hate knowing that there are people out there who come up with this stuff. Maybe there are people out there that appreciate it. I hate them too. By the way, I hate anyone and anything that doesn't agree with me. Well, ok not really. But I really don't like cheap, campy drivel like this. If anyone has anything of quality to send me, I would appreciate it. It might change my mind about having my heart strings pulled.

[11/21/2002 5:50:54 AM | Jason Hunter]
My New Toy

I got a new toy delivered yesterday. It isn’t the kind of thing that comes to mind when people mention ‘toy’. My definition of ‘toy’ has changed through the years. It used to be that I was quite content with wrapping paper or a box. My parents would spend a lot of time shopping for the perfect toy. They would research it to see if it was proper for a child of my age, they wanted it to stimulate my creativity and mechanical skills, make sure that it would last. Then they would box it up, wrap it, and put it under the tree. When Christmas morning came, I would come crawling out and, with their help, unwrap my perfect toy. They would hold it up in front of me so that I would see how great it was, and then I would promptly turn my attention to the wrapping paper that I just tore through. I would look at them as if to say, “Who cares about that thing, didn’t you just see that colored paper I just tore through? This is the best Christmas ever!” And then I would spend all day playing in the piles of paper or sleeping in the boxes, while my parents played with the toy so that their money wouldn’t have been wasted. This is a parenting lesson that I don’t have to learn the hard way. The only thing that my kids are getting for their birthdays or for Christmas is going to be wrapping paper. I figure this should last them ‘til they are 12, and then I can worry about buying them more traditional toys.

The toy I got yesterday is my new grill. I am big into cooking, and collect things like cookbooks. One of my cookbooks is dedicated to grilling and the author recommended a Weber grill. I checked into it and found that Weber grills are considered the best around. They are well-made, well-designed, and have a 10 year warranty. Most cars don’t come with a warranty like that, and you don’t even light fires in them all the time. If this thing can withstand the amount of grilling I am going to do for 10 years, then I am sold. Well, the thing with buying the best is that you normally have to put out some money for them. I have seen cheap grills before. They wobble, fall apart, and some of them stick to the food so badly that you’re better off serving the grill along with the meat. This is not one of those grills. This one retails for $250. That’s a lot of money to pay for something that is essentially a metal fire-holder. Heck, some people just dig a pit in their yard and cook over an open flame. That’s a lot cheaper, though not usually legal, and a little inconvenient. Well, I found one online that was an open box item, and it was on summer clearance. I ended up getting it for $49. That’s not much more expensive than a box of wrapping paper. And it lasts longer when you cook with it. I bought it right away.

It took a while to get here, what with the lower-rate shipping and all, but it did come. I got home from work to find my beautiful grill sitting on my porch. They must have thought that they charged me too little for it and wanted me to do some work for it, because they booby trapped it for me. Ok, maybe they didn’t so much trap it, as they set up obstacles for me to pass before I could get my grill. Maybe they just wanted to make sure that a mechanically minded person was going to be operating this grill, and not just some uncoordinated schmuck. They had the grill sitting on top of a wooden pallet of doom, and strapped down my thick metal straps of impassibility. I looked at it carefully, planning how I would launch my attack. I tried to bite through the straps. No good. At least I didn’t break my tooth again, Dr. Ford would have been angry. “Have you been eating rocks again, Jason? Or was it metal straps of impassibility this time?” Dr. Ford can see right through me. I then tried wire cutters. No good. The straps just laughed with contempt as if to say “you can’t even get to the box, and you think that we’re going to let you grill? Ha ha ha ha.!” I knew I would never defeat the straps. After all, they had been imbued with a spell of impassibility. I would need to take on the pallet of doom.

I went into the garage and grabbed a saw and stared my attack on the pallet. It screamed with diabolical fury as I started in. I sawed through on one side and started on the other when the wrath of the pallet hit with full force. It broke my saw. I was so close to getting through that I could already smell the meat grilling. I was desperate, but not out of ideas. I went back into the garage and grabbed a tire iron and started beating the pallet. I finally broke through the wood, coming out with a couple bruised knuckles and missing some skin, but I got through. The pallet demon left in a cloud of smoke and left me with the straps, which were easy to get off now. I had passed the test. I had been deemed worth to grill. Or at least worthy to attempt to assemble the grill. That turned out to be very easy, and in about 20 minutes, I had my grill. I put a couple of things on upside down, but that was easily fixed. It is still sitting in my living room, looking pretty. It is a shame that I am going to have to get it dirty with charcoal and stuff. We’re going to be grilling fish and chicken this weekend. Maybe I’ll get the fire going with some wrapping paper as kindling… just to usher out the old era of toys and usher in the new. I think I am going to like the new era. It has more fire.

[11/19/2002 11:54:32 AM | Jason Hunter]
Viruses

I hate viruses. I have one right now. It is the Epstein-Barr virus, otherwise known as mononucleosis, or the kissing disease. I have no idea how I got it. I wish that I would have gotten it from kissing someone, preferably someone like Shakira, because then it might be worth all the pain I am going through. But when I first got it, 2 years ago, I hadn’t kissed anyone in 6 months or more. Well, I thought I had tonsillitis, or something like that. My tonsils were all inflamed and swollen and I was running a fever. I used to get tonsillitis all the time as a kid. It was as regular as the season changes. I hated the seasons. People would get all excited about it starting to turn to summer, and all I could think about was that as soon as it did become summer, my tonsils would swell up like tennis balls and I wouldn’t be able to even eat yogurt for all of the pain.

That’s what it was like 2 years ago. I went to the doctor hoping that he would just take my tonsils the heck out of my body and burn them. He looked at me and told me to go home and rest and to come back if it continued. Boy, a lot of help that was. Well, it did get worse, and I went back. He did a strep test and said that it came back negative, so he told me to go home again and to come back if it got worse. Well, it got worse and I went back to the doctor a third time, quite irate that he hadn’t done anything except tell me to go home. Maybe it was partly my fault for paying him each time. If I didn’t pay him until I was satisfied, maybe things would have gone differently. But he figured he had quite a racket going if people would come in, pay him money and then go home when he told them to without really doing anything. He looked at my tonsils again, which by this time had started growing tonsils of their own with tonsillitis, and he said that he wanted to do a mono test. I was shocked. I couldn’t have mono. That was something that people got from going around kissing a lot of people. And unfortunately, I had been doing no such thing. And besides, weren’t you supposed to be tired when you got mono? I wasn’t tired. The test came back positive and I had to deal with the fact that I had mono, and I always would.

Mono is like a lot of other viruses. Once you get them, you never get rid of them. They just stay with you all of your life. You finally get over the symptoms and you rarely have a reaction to it again, but it is always there. What is it with those buggers? What purpose do they serve in the eternal scheme of things? I think that I should be able to do away with them if I can find no purpose. I mean, I don’t like flies, but they do serve a purpose. But I can’t find anything good about mosquitoes. They just bite you and make you itch like crazy and sometimes give you diseases that kill you. What’s good about that? Then there are viruses. They don’t do anything good. Have you ever seen a virus? I mean a picture of one from under an electron microscope? They aren’t even cute. They look like those old floating mines that took out ships during WWII. I hate puppies too. They do no good and are always pooping everywhere, but at least they are cute. But viruses aren’t. And what kind of thing tries to kill the very being that is giving it life? A virus. It isn’t even symbiotic or parasitic in its relation to us. It tries to kill us. It can’t exists without us, and yet it tries to kill us. It is like an unborn child trying to kill its mother. It is a lose/lose situation. Viruses are losers. And yet, they live on.

The Epstein-Barr virus, not to be confused with the Roseanne Barr virus which also causes much pain and discomfort when it sings the National Anthem, will always be with me. I supposedly can’t pass it on to anyone anymore, so I am perfectly safe to kiss Shakira. But I can’t help but wondering if it might make another attack on me. I think that it has done just that. I have had swollen tonsils and a fever for the last few days. I am not going to go to the doctor just to have him tell me what I already suspect is happening. Mono is trying to get me again. It knows it is a failure and it wants to prove itself. It feels like Rocky did after his big loss. Here was Rocky, trying to prove himself and he goes into the big fight, and loses. Then he came back in Rocky II and wins, I think. I never actually saw it. But who would go to a movie to see Rocky lose again? And I have no idea what happened in the other Rocky movies, though I know he fought Mr. T in one of them. Well that is what is going on with me now. Mono is trying to make a comeback. He has been ridiculed for having lost the first battle and wants revenge. He won’t get it though. He thinks that he’s all big and tough like some giant, and he wants to squash little old me. Well, this is one giant I am going to beat. It will be like David and Goliath all over again, except that this time, David will win!

[11/18/2002 12:53:47 PM | Jason Hunter]
Klondike Derby

I have mentioned before that when I was a Scout, that we did a lot of fun things. When a Scout says that he did something fun, it means dangerous and/or deadly. One such event was the Klondike Derby. Dictionary.reference.com says that 'Klondike' is: A region of Yukon Territory, Canada, just east of Alaska and traversed by the Klondike River, about 145 km (90 mi) long. Gold was discovered here in August 1896, leading to the gold rush of 1897-1898 in which more than 25,000 people sought their fortune in the frozen north. Small quantities of gold are still mined in the area.. Ha Ha Ha, those stupid gold rushers! This information is only partly right. 25,000 people made it up the golden staircase, but over 100,000 attempted it. Most of them turned back or died. Basically, the odds were not good at making it there. 1 in 4 people made it, and very few of them made any money at it. The only people who made it rich were the store owners that sold stuff to the miners. I know at one point, a single egg was selling for $2. Ouch! That's a markup if I ever saw one. Even a hundred years later I don't pay that much for a dozen extra-large eggs, let alone just one egg. If you've ever seen the movie "Paint Your Wagon", you'll know kinda what it was like. Unfortunately, this is one movie starring Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin that isn't a shoot-'em-up. Lee Marvin actually sings, which in my mind is enough reason to start shooting things up. But that's just me.

So that's what the original Klondike was. I don't know why we as Scout chose to have a camp where we commemorated such a thing, but we did. They told us that we were going to be camping in the snow, in caves that we were going to build ourselves. We were going to be at a camp with a lodge and everything, but we were going to sleep outside like real men and not try to keep warm and dry in a lodge like little boys. I hate the cold, so I wasn't really looking forward to the whole being cold part. And it turns out that there weren't any parts of the campout that weren't cold. I was cold the whole time. Well, we got there and started digging our snow caves and putting our stuff in them. Snow caves actually heat up quite nicely once you are in them. Maybe those Eskimos know what they are doing after all. Once we got our caves made, we went sledding. There was this big ol hill that came down the mountain and ended up on a small pond down at the bottom. We would trudge up the hill just like the klondikers of old, sit down on our sleds, and just like the klondikers of old, go screaming down the hill. The screaming came because it was a steep hill, you couldn't control yourself, and the other scouts climbing up the hill would throw snowballs at you as you went rushing by. Tell you what, nothing stings as badly as a snowball in the face as you go whizzing down a hill at the speed of sound. No wonder most of those klondikers of old turned back. I would have too. Most people wouldn't make it to the bottom of the hill. They would get hit by a snowball and go tumbling from their sleds. One lucky guy did make it all the way to the bottom. He had managed to miss getting hit by the snowballs and rode his sled all the way to the end. Only problem there was that he then fell through the ice of the pond at the bottom of the hill. He had to be fished out and taken to the lodge to warm up. It turns out that our little Klondike derby had roughly the same mortality rate as the real one. Talk about sticking to details. If I wanted to survive the night, then I was going to have to go to bed and keep warm.

Before going to bed, I went to the lodge to get something to eat. Here was something else similar to the original Klondike. They were charging $5 for a baked potato. You even had to pay extra to get anything on it like butter or chili or something. I wasn't even up there looking for gold and they were trying to get rich off of me. I paid them their cursed money (I really did curse it before I gave it to them. They should have all turned into trolls by now) and ate my potato. Then I went to bed. Notice that I didn't say that I slept. I didn't. And neither did anyone else as far as I know. It was cold. It was really cold. It was so cold that my watch quit working. That or it slowed it way down, because there is no way that time really ticked by that slowly, unless it was colder than I thought, in which case time could have slowed down, not having any built-in antifreeze. The next morning, I got out of my sleeping bag and tried to put my pants on. No good. My pants were frozen solid. They had gotten wet while sledding and running around in the snow, and as long as my legs were in them, they did not freeze. But they were frozen now, and I was not getting them on any time soon. I wasn't the only one with this problem. Everyone else in camp that had lived through the night also had frozen pants. So we got a bonfire going just to thaw our clothes. Picture about 20 kids all hopping around a fire while trying to hold their pants close enough to the fire to thaw them out, but keep them far enough away so that they didn't catch on fire. There is a thin line between thaw and burn. It was hard to tell if what was rising from your pants was steam from thawing, or smoke from them burning. One kid was thawing his pants and started to tell us that a bear had been through camp that night. We all started to look around nervously should the bear decide to come back for some frozen treats. But, it was at that moment that his pants caught on fire from him standing too close. Well we all knew then that he was just a liar-liar, and forgot about the bear.

Well, most of us made it back from the trip ok. But we all learned some things that the original Klondikers should have known. Take your own food. The markup on anything to eat out there is ridiculous. Or, bring plenty of food and start selling it. You can mark it up enough to make a profit and still compete with the other sellers. Also, sleep with your clothes on. They may be a little damp, but they will stay warm that way and you won't have to risk being seen dancing around a fire in the wee hours of the morning wearing nothing but your shorts. And then, keep a journal about how miserable you were out there, so that no one can ever trick you into doing something like that again. Believe it or else, this was not my only Klondike derby, despite the fact that I hate the cold. I think I did at least 5 of these things. I think the cold must have affected my memory or something. I will probably never do anything like that again, until I have kids of my own that are in Scouts. But until then, the only thing that I will be doing out in the cold like that is ice fishing... even though I fell through the ice last year. That was really cold. I hate the cold.

[11/14/2002 1:28:42 PM | Jason Hunter]
50 Miles of Fun

When I was a young lad, I was in the Scouting program. I was always lucky enough to be in troops that did exciting things like backpacking trips, target shooting, and putting out large fires that enveloped entire camps. We were also the ones that started those fires that got out of control. It isn't easy to start a fire. I have a friend that can do it the old fashioned way with just two sticks. I could do that too, if I wanted. But I prefer the Scout way. You only need 3 things... wood, a match, and some scout water. Scout water is also known as gasoline to most people. But to a scout, it is as basic of a necessity as water is. Well, our fires usually got fairly large and we tended to do what most Scouts do with fire, and that is to see how many objects we could find that were flammable, or would explode. I never took part in this. I have a healthy respect for fire. But my fellow Scouts would throw in things like aerosol cans, bullets, other Scouts, and fireworks. I wasn't at the camp where they lit the whole mountain on fire, but I heard about it. Scouts are not the environmentally friendly boys that everyone thinks they are. If you look closely at Smokey the Bear ads where he is saying that "only you can prevent forest fires", he has a bloody Boy Scout patch sticking out from under one of his claws. He knows that the only way to prevent forest fires is to do away with the pesky little Scouts.

But we didn't always mess with fire. We did other things too. Granted, they were usually just as stupid and/or deadly as playing with fire, but that's just the joys of Scouting. One time, we went canoeing on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. This was at the same time that O.J. was arrested, because we listened about it on the radio on the Rush Limbaugh show. Well, we spent an entire weekend on the river and had many adventures, but there was one that sticks out in my mind... The Evil Cave of Doom. I don't know if that was its official name or not, but it should have been. Scott Rogers, one of the leaders on this trip, knew of a cave along one section of the river. It was not visible from the river and was pretty remote, so no one really went into it. We found the spot that he said to look for and parked the canoes for a bit. Then we started heading through the underbrush along a small creek towards the cave. It reminded me of something that Indiana Jones would go through. There was little light coming through the tall trees around us, and we picked our way along the slippery rocks, untangling ourselves from the bushes as we went. Then we were confronted by the Guardian of the Evil Cave of Doom. It was a water moccasin. It was a small one, but to a bunch of stupid Scouts, it was huge. It kept getting bigger as we told the story to other people later. Snakes tend to do that in stories. We would have felt safer had the Crocodile Hunter been with us, he being a herpetologist and all. Plus he's crazy. He would have gone up to the snake. gotten in its face, and in his thick Australian accent said: "Ain't she a beauty? This here is a North American water moccasin, or cottonmouth. They may not look very big, but they pack a wallop. And they'll tag ya if you muck with 'em" And then he would do just what he said not to, and muck with it. He'd pick it up and admire it with a big grin on his face and then let it go. But we didn't have Steve Irwin with us, we had Scott Rogers. He threw a big rock on top of its head. I told you that Scouts weren't ecologically friendly. So we continued on.

We got to the mouth of the cave from which the small creek flowed. There was a big wrought-iron gate with a sign, blocking us from getting in. It said that the cave was home to an endangered species of bat that shouldn't be disturbed. There was also a curse saying that all who entered would die a horrible death by either freezing to death or being bitten by a rat monkey and later, turning into a zombie. We were going to turn back, but then Scott said that it was really cool inside. So we started climbing over or squeezing under the gate. Remember, Scouts don't care about endangered bats or rat monkeys. The cave was your typical hole-in-the-rock with hidden dangers around every corner. There were several tunnels going in different directions, some of them dry, the others were full of really cold water. We tried going down the dry tunnels first, but soon found that they closed in so tightly that only Callista Flockhart could get through them. So we went searching down the wet tunnels. We soon learned that the curse had some truth to it. The water was freezing. Ok, not literally, or we would have been walking on ice, but it was really cold. Our feet went numb as we sloshed around in the cave, our flashlights bouncing light off the cave walls in every direction like some freaky strobe light. The water kept getting deeper too. The worst was when it got waist-deep. I don't need to go into anatomy and physiology to tell you that we were very uncomfortable at that point. But being the intrepid explorers that we were, we trudged on, though more slowly, silently wondering the whole time if we would ever be able to have kids someday.

Then we got to the part of the cave that I like to call the worst part. It was a room that opened up in the cave. But it was full of deep water. And to get to the other side, we had to swim. We stuck the flashlights in our mouths and jumped in. I don't know how deep the water was, but I know it went over my head as I jumped in. And it was cold. Picture, if you will, a bunch of stupid Scouts, deep inside a cave (we had been exploring for about an hour) trying to swim across a pit of freezing cold water with flashlights in their mouths, while shivering and complaining about how they can't feel their legs. Does this sound like a good idea to you? Does this sound like a good time? Does this sound like what you think of when you picture Scouts? Me too. :-) My kids will definitely be in the Scouting program. Well, we got to the other side of the pit and found that the cave went down from there. And it was down a mudslide that turned a sharp corner like one of those curly slides in a park. If we started down, there would be no coming up. Besides, I think that's where the rat monkey lived, and I didn't want to see him. I had already nearly frozen to death, I didn't need to turn into a zombie to know that the cave's curse was real. So we started the arduous journey back outside of the cave and back to the river to continue our 50 mile journey. The river, which used to be cold, was now boiling hot to our cold little legs. We defrosted for a bit in the river and then were off. I tell you, I have never faced so many things that could hurt me at one time, then when I was a Scout. Those were the good ol' days.

[11/13/2002 11:11:42 AM | Jason Hunter]
My Marfa Lights

What are the Marfa Lights? I'll tell you, but first let me point out that the letters in "My Marfa Lights" can be rearranged to spell "His fat Grammy L". Who is Grammy L? I don't know. Why does she go by just her last initial, and doesn't calling her 'fat' make her feel bad? Wouldn’t she rather be called 'phat'? I don't know! That's just how the letters came out. All I know is what the Marfa Lights are. Ok then, so what are the Marfa Lights? Actually, I don't know. And neither do scientists. They are a complete mystery. In fact, they have been featured on the hit TV show Unsolved Mysteries, along with other such mysteries as UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and why guys never call (they are jerks). I have never seen a UFO, nor the Loch Ness Monster, but I have seen the Marfa Lights, and I still don't know what they are.

Here's what I do know. The Marfa Lights appear out in the desert of west Texas near a town called, of all things, Marfa. Marfa is a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. And by tiny, I mean tiny. As far as I know they don't even have the proverbial "one stoplight", or an ATM. There is nothing to do in a town like this, so it wouldn't be a big surprise if people in Marfa made up the story of the lights just to get people to come and visit them. But that isn't the case. What is the case is that the people of Marfa are so bored that they are constantly heading out into the desert to find something to do like 'tortoise watching' or 'extreme tortoise watching', which is exactly like the first one, but with more beer to make it tolerable. It was on one such outing about 150 years ago that some guy first saw the Marfa Lights. It was dark, and he and some buddies had gone out to do some extreme tortoise watching, when they saw some glowing orbs of light out on the prairie. The balls of light were lots of different colors... green, white, blue, gold, red, etc. And they bounced all over the place, sometimes stacking on top of each other, or just darting back and forth for a while. The guys tried to go after the lights, but could never really get close. They just wandered around in the dark for a while and then fell asleep. They were never heard from again. No, just kidding. The next morning, the town came looking for them because they didn't come home last night and they didn't call. Remember, this was a small town 150 years ago, they would get used to behavior like this from guys in the future, but it was new to them at this time. They found the guys where they had fallen asleep on the ground and listened in astonishment to the story they told about the lights. Then the townspeople saw all the beer bottles lying around and figured that Ol' Marfa Tom (not his real name) and his buddies had imagined it all.

To make a long story short, (too late, right?) other people went out and saw the lights too. The lights would be there almost every night. Some nights there would only be a few of them, and at other times, there would be thousands of them. This has gone on until the present date. Well, when I was in high school, I had a really cool English teacher named Ms. Hext. She was one of those teachers that didn't just lecture from the textbook, she taught from her own experience and from the experience of others. She was also a little bit crazy (fun). She had a picture on the wall of two guys playing ball. One of them was throwing the ball, the other was poised to catch it. Their names were: Henry David Thoreau (throw), and Henry David Catch. Ha Ha, get it? Anyway, we were all in class one day and she brought up the subject of the Marfa Lights. We showed enough interest in it that she decided to bring in the episode of Unsolved Mysteries for us to watch. We were currently studying about Emily and Charlotte Bronte. We would have shown interest in dirt had the topic come up. So we watched the episode and showed genuine interest in it... so much so that she suggested that we all go to Marfa to see the Lights. That's the kind of cool teacher she was. She wasn't bound by the scholastic traditions of her forefathers, believing that learning belongs in a school, and not on a 15 hour road trip into the desert. She did all the work and got permission from the school district, and we were off.

We got to Marfa and stopped to rest at a Dairy Queen, or something like that to get a bite to eat. We were surprised to find some guy sleeping in the bathroom. We thought that things like that only happened in big cities like Dallas. We also thought that "sleeping in the men's room" would be a good name for a band. We then headed out into the desert to look at the lights. We drove to the official viewing area and sat down to watch the things of which we had heard so much about. After a while, we saw our first one. It was a small gold light that appeared out on the horizon and danced around. We saw others that night too. They were all different colors and they all did different things. Some just sat there, others zipped around and others stacked up on top of each other. It probably wasn't as exciting as when they were first discovered. We were high school students and couldn't legally have beer. Notice I say "legally". I think that one or more beer cans made it on the trip. We stayed for a while and watched the lights and then went home. Ok, it wasn't that simple. We spent the entire weekend out there doing different things like visiting the McDonald Observatory, Ft. Davis, rafting on the Rio Grande, eating dinner in Terlingua (home of the Annual World Chili Cook-off), and staying at the Prude Ranch. But those are all stories for another day. Maybe I'll get around to telling them some day. Maybe not. But just so you know, the Marfa lights are out there for anyone to see. They just might be a little more exciting for you if you take along something to drink.

[11/12/2002 1:58:29 PM | Jason Hunter]
Human Battery

Wouldn't that be a cool name for a superhero? I don't know what his powers could be. Maybe he could store lots of energy and then release it all of a sudden, or he could touch objects and power them with his energy. Maybe his arch enemy would be the sinister Blackout. Blackout could cause power outages all over the place so that he could loot and plunder. Then the Human Battery could come along and turn the lights back on so that the cops could catch Blackout. He would have weaknesses, like becoming low on power and needing to be recharged, or getting his polarity messed up, but I think he would be a cool superhero. Maybe not.

I was just thinking about that because I noticed a battery on my desk and started thinking about how I could be compared to a battery. I was really tired after this last week. I worked too much and got too little sleep and food. That wore me down. I felt like a battery that had been stuck in a CD player that had been left on for too long. I felt like I was winding down and my thoughts and actions were getting slower and slower. It got to the point where I would look down at my arms and legs and they wouldn't move. I would tell them to move, especially when someone was throwing a box at me to catch, but they wouldn't. They told me that it was my fault that they were that tired, and I could just go ahead and get hit by a box for all they cared. Last night I actually got some food in me and got some sleep, and I feel a lot better. I got recharged, if you will. Those aren't the only similarities between me and a battery though. Check this out... I was looking on the battery and read the warning label, it is weird how many of the warnings for the battery also apply to me.

Advertissment: Ne pas jeter au feu, recharger, installer sans respectar la polarite, ouvrir, utiliser avec des piles usees ou d'autres types;... wait a minute, those are the French warnings... HA HA HA!. Those French. They are always putting things on batteries that no one can understand. "installer sans repectar la polarite" Ha Ha Ha! I have no idea what that means, but I bet it has something to do with eating snails or frogs. Whew. Anyway, Here are the English warnings: 1. Do not dispose of in fire. Yeah, that fits me too. I burnt all the hair off my knuckles the other day when lighting the BBQ grill. Being disposed of completely in a fire would not be good. 2. Do not disassemble. I can't tell you how much that applies to me. I am not to be disassembled. I have tried to do that to myself on a number of occasions, either by crashing on my bike or trying to cut off my thumb while taking the child lock off of a lighter. I do not disassemble well, and the doctors are always putting me back together. 3. May explode, leak, or cause personal injury. Yeah I am all about that. Mess with me and you risk having me burst open and cover you with battery acid. I am a bunch of stored energy just waiting to go off. Either use me properly or risk having me blow up in your face. I don't really have a polarity to worry about. At least not a physical one... my mental polarity is always going off, especially when I am bored or tired.

So you see, I am a lot like a battery. I don't think that I would want to be a superhero called the Human Battery. He's a pretty lame superhero unless he had some other powers or abilities like being able to fly or be really strong or something. But I do have my strengths and weaknesses. When used properly, I can be a power for good and accomplish much. When I am overused and allowed to run down, I am of no use at all. I tend to let boxes hit me in the head when thrown at me. You also have no idea how many typing errors I have made in this, and had to go back to change. I need to finish recharging. I am going to go home and eat something and then plug myself into my bed for some nice recharging.






[11/11/2002 1:33:58 PM | Jason Hunter]
Mailbag Day

I think they should have a holiday called Mailbag Day. And I think that everyone except government workers should get the day off. In fact, I want extra mail delivered on that day. I hate not getting mail. It is bad enough that there is a holiday that neither of my two jobs let me stay home to celebrate, but then when I do get home, there is no hope of any mail. It isn't like I get a lot of exciting mail. I mostly get bills, or credit card applications/rejections. I get rejected for credit cards that I don't even apply to. They just like to write me and let me know that if I did apply, they would reject me. Gotta love hypothetical rejections. We do get movies through the mail. My roommate subscribes to Netflix and we get movies in the mail often enough. But not today. I got a letter from my girlfriend the other day that totally made my day. She's in basic training for the Army National Guard. I don't get to see her for several months. All I can hope for is a letter. And the government would deny me that hope today. The government would tell me "We don't care that you work 90 hours a week at two jobs that don't let you stay home on a government holiday. We don't care if the only thing that you look forward to each day is getting the mail. We say 'No Mail For You'. Take it or leave it". I take it because I don't want to move to Cuba or some other place where they would deliver mail, but it might not be your mail, or it might be someone trying to kill you. You never can tell with Cuba.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't celebrate Veteran's Day. I think we should do more with it. But I think that we should have mail delivery. And it isn't just Veteran's Day. It is Columbus day, and Flag day, and every other government holiday. And banks should be open too. That was one thing I despised about Puerto Rico. I longed to get mail while I was there. But Puerto Ricans have this custom that I love. They love to party. They'll use any excuse to party. "It's Thursday!", they'll exclaim "Let's party!". And "party" usually means "drink beer". When they say "partay", they mean "drink rum". So they are always looking for an excuse to party. And I loved that about them. But I hated that they didn't deliver mail. For some reason, they not only didn't deliver mail national holidays off like here in the States, they also have their own Puerto Rican holidays when they don't deliver mail. They like to party so much that individual people can just declare a holiday whenever they like and get time off of work or school and go party. Sometimes this even affects the mail. So quite often, I would go to my mailbox only to find that it was 3 Kings Day, Luis Muñoz Marín Day, Wednesday, or some other day that should just be called No Mail Day. I would scream at the top of my lungs, "You use the U.S. Mail system! You can't just stop the mail any time you want to! Don't you understand?!" They understood, but they didn't care.

So here I am, back in Utah, where there should be mail service every day. I can see taking Sundays off. I am all for a day of rest. But the rest of the week should have mail service. And there is no reason that UPS or FedEx can't deliver on Saturday. I'm not sure which one it is, but one of them likes to take a 2-day weekend. If I ordered something and they are shipping it through UPS, they dang well better deliver it to me on a Saturday! So that's why I propose that we have a holiday called Mailbag Day. I am taking the name from a sketch on Space Ghost, so we may have to call it Mail Day or something not copyrighted. But On this day, everyone except the government gets the day off. And government workers can all send us notes to tell us how much they love us, that way everybody at least gets one piece of mail that day. Until that happens, I will just go home to my cold, dark house in the hour that I have between jobs, and stare at the wall. Because there will be no hope of any letter from my girlfriend, no letter saying that I may already be a winner, and no letter saying that I would be rejected were I to send in a credit card application. My life is so hard.

[11/8/2002 12:17:12 PM | Jason Hunter]
Just For The Taste Of It

Diet Coke. Is there anything to drink out there that tastes worse than Diet Coke? Maybe Tab. But that's just Diet Coke with a different name. As far as I can tell, people buy Diet Coke because it has "just one calorie". I can't think of anyone that would buy it "just for the taste of it". I could be wrong here, but I don't think that anyone took a sip of Diet Coke for the first time and liked it. I think that the people who drink it do it because it has fewer calories and they are trying to watch their caloric intake, which is fine. I am doing the same thing right now. People who watch what they eat are used to torture. They sit there and watch their friends eat chocolate sundaes with enough calories to keep the sun burning for an extra year. They pass up on the extra slice of pizza while their friends have a contest to see how many pizzas (not slices) they can eat before throwing up. And they tend to go hungry when they would rather eat something satisfying. So to most people, watching caloric intake = suffering. Thus Diet Coke. When you drink a Diet Coke, you feel like you are suffering... because you are. And therefore you are watching your calories, and thus losing weight or maintaining weight or whatever. So by suffering through a Diet Coke, you feel better about yourself. I don't hate myself enough to drink one just to feel better. Maybe they should change their slogan to: "Tastes like reindeer sweat".

There are diet drinks out there that taste tolerable. I just got through drinking a Diet Vanilla Coke. It was good. I wouldn't drink it just for the taste of it. If I wanted something just for the taste of it, I would buy a drink that tasted like a bacon cheeseburger with fries. I would drink it for the lack of calories, and I would do it again without worrying about the suffering. I also just drank a Diet Mountain Dew. It was good too. I also like Fresca and Diet A&W Rootbeer. I could drink these all day long without suffering and without worrying about the calories. I would have to worry about kidney stones and tooth decay, but we all have to make sacrifices. Some people like to tell you that you should drink water. These people want you to die. Water is bad for you. Why do you think the famous author, What’s-his-name said "Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink."? Because he knew that water was deadly. Almost every drowning death occurs in water. Shipwrecks and oil spills all happen in water. Floods are all composed of water. Water is bad. You never hear of Rootbeer causing any of these things... diet or regular. The government also puts things into water to kill you slowly... like lead, arsenic, chlorine, and fluoride. You think fluoride is good for you, right? Wrong. It causes cancer. That's why there is a limit to the amount that they can put in toothpaste. Aren't any of you scared when they tell you that Colgate has MFP (maximum Fluoride Protection)? They cannot put any more of it in there by law, because of how poisonous and deadly it is. And yet we still use it. Would you buy something or drink something if they advertised that it had the maximum dose of arsenic allowed by law? Even if it cleaned your teeth? I do. But I don't really have a choice. I have to brush me teeth, and I have to drink water. I just hope my kidneys can keep up.

So, when choosing something to drink, do whatever you want to. I just think that Diet Coke tastes nasty. So I won't drink that. But there are things out there that do taste good. And if I want to drink something "just for the taste of it" this holiday season, I am picking eggnog. High in calories, sure. But you can't beat the taste.

[11/7/2002 1:53:47 PM | Jason Hunter]
Robots

Robots are pretty cool. They do exactly what they are told, they can do things faster and better than humans. They can do work that is more dangerous or tedious than what a human can do. They can play games and do some really cool things like shoot lasers out of their eyes. They are just a lot better at a lot of things than humans are. There is one robot that makes me angry. It is a dumb robot that sits on a shelf at Toys R Us, named Kasey the Kinderbot. I hate Kasey. I want to test the bullet-proofness of Kasey's armor. Kasey has some kind of motion sensor that detects when someone walks by. It then emits a horrible sound to get your attention. "Hi, I'm Kasey the Kinderbot. Push the white button to start my program." Or something like that. I never get past the "Hi" part. I scream to loud to hear anything else out of it. I walk by that thing all the time and it keeps saying Hi to me. I yelled at it to shut up the other day, but it just kept talking. It must not be a very smart robot. It has a motion sensor, but it should be built with an annoyance sensor as part of it's survival program. Because if it were in my house and could sense the annoyance level coming from me, it would know that it should either shut up, or expect to be run over repeatedly by my truck. "Hi, I'm Kasey the Kinderbot. I am being run over by a trghahdnf...(sound of breaking plastic)" I bet that whoever invented that thing is laughing in his grave. There's no way he is still alive. Some enraged parent out there had to have hunted him down by now. And he's laughing because he knows that his invention is out there avenging his death every time someone walks by. I would have destroyed the robot by now except that I want to keep my job there.

[11/6/2002 12:32:36 PM | Jason Hunter]
Braindead

Not only is that how I was feeling this morning, but it is the name of a movie I saw last night, also titled Dead Alive. I think that Nora recommended it to me. I'll get to the movie in a bit. But this morning, I was feeling completely out of it. I get up at 5 to come to work every morning. And then I go to work at my second job right afterwards until about 10 every night. If I were to go to bed right when I get home, I would be fine. But I rarely do that. Last night I got home and saw that we had Dead Alive waiting to be seen, and despite the fact that I had vowed to get some sleep last night, I decided to watch the movie. That put me in bed at about 12:45. I found out that I cannot function correctly on only 4 hours of sleep. That is unless I have some kind of mental stimulant. I talked with my contact this morning and told her that I was in desperate need of waking up. She placed an alarm clock in front of me and set it off. She realized how desperate I was when I destroyed the alarm clock by bashing it to pieces with my head. Then she brought me a Mountain Dew and a caffeine pill. Normally caffeine doesn't do anything to me. I can drink a 6-pack of Coke right before bed and sleep like a baby. It must have been the pill, because in about 10 minutes, I was feeling really good. Not the really good like when you are on nitrous oxide at the dentist, but awake and refreshed kind of good. I am not going to rely on that to wake me up every morning, I am not in favor of being reliant on things like that. I swear that I am going to get some sleep tonight. That is unless I get coerced into watching another movie. I think we still have Chocolat at home.

But getting to the movie. Nora recommended that I see it. I looked it up on IMDb.com and found some interesting things about the movie. First of all, it is directed by Peter Jackson of the Lord of the Rings fame. This film is nothing like Lord of the Rings. I would say that it is a horror movie, except that IMDb has it listed as Horror/Comedy/Romance. What a combination! The synopsis is that this lady gets bitten by a "rat monkey" (simian ratticus) and gets turned into a zombie. She then turns other people into zombies and has to be taken down. But the movie doesn't just jump right into the horror part. The first part of the movie starts out with a romance between the two main characters. It was so typical in that aspect that had I not known it was a zombie movie, I would have thought that it was an actual romance movie. The movie takes place in Australia, but the main girl in the movie is a cross between a gypsy and some Latin nationality. She's actually pretty cute. Well, just as their romance is blossoming, the guy's mother gets bitten by the "rat monkey" and starts turning into the zombie.

The guy is a total momma's boy. He takes his mom home and tries to nurse her to health. She eventually dies and then turns into a zombie. She then kills the nurse who had come over to help, turning her into a zombie too. Just so you know, this movie is VERY bloody. But there is so much blood and the gore is so ridiculous that it is laughable. Thus the comedy genre. Well, instead of trying to kill the zombies, he locks them in his basement and goes looking for a tranquilizer to keep them sedated. He finally lets his mom have a funeral and be buried, but then goes to dig her up later to bring her back home. While in the graveyard, his mom reanimates and turns a couple of people into zombies. The local priest comes out to see what is going on. Just when you think the guy is going to be turned into zombie meat, he leaps off of a wall and starts kickboxing a zombie around the yard. He then stops to say his line: "I kick butt for Jesus!". He then goes out Jackie Chan-style and takes out one zombie completely and does a pretty good job on the other one when he finally gets bitten. Then it is too late. But that whole scene was just hilarious (bloody). Now there are 4 zombies.

This momma's boy takes them all home and ties them up in his basement and feeds them custard with tranquilizers in it. Why is he doing this? Why does the girl keep trying to go out with him? There are too many questions. One of the zombies gives birth to a ghastly-looking zombie baby who looks like a Cabbage Patch Kid that has been dipped in acid, and laughs like a Tickle Me Elmo that is low on batteries. This stupid momma's boy takes the zombie baby to the park in a carriage. the kid is surrounded by a make-shift cage of barbed wire. Well, the carriage rolls out of control and the baby gets out and starts crawling towards some normal kids to bite them. But momma's boy catches up to it and starts pummeling it in full view of the other parents in the park who look at him with fear and disgust. The baby is thrashing around and he is hitting it on the bars of the swingset and finally stuffs it in a sack to get it home. Why did he take it out of the house in the first place? Why is he feeding zombies in his basement? Why am I staying up late to watch this movie?

Well, the zombies get out and turn about 100 houseguests into zombies during a party. Then this guy and his girlfriend go around and battle zombies. He finally takes them out with a lawn mower that he straps to his chest and runs into them all, turning them into a pile of zombie parts. This was the best use of an appliance to battle evil since Ash strapped a chainsaw to his arm to battle the Deadites in the Evil Dead movies, though not as powerful as Ash's converted Buick-turned-evil basher. Again, this is VERY bloody. I was laughing the entire time. Well, in the end, the girl set the house on fire and it burned up all of the zombie parts. The last scene was the two of them silhouetted against the burning house, bathed in blood, and embracing in a victory kiss. What a movie. It was the best Horror/Comedy/Romance that I have seen all week. I recommend seeing it if you can stand blood. Remember, this is not blood like you would see in a war movie. This is a ridiculous amount of blood going EVERYWHERE. There are also some kind of gross effects. There is not even one swear word in the movie, and no sexuality at all. But there is a lot of blood. So if you are in the mood for a good Horror/Comedy/Romance, get Dead Alive... or Braindead as it might be called and be prepared to laugh. You won't need any caffeine to stay awake for this movie.

[11/5/2002 10:38:14 AM | Jason Hunter]
This is Heavy

No, I'm not saying you're fat. I'm referring to one of my favorite movies, Back to the Future. Today is the 47th anniversary of the invention of the flux capacitor, the thing which makes time travel possible. According to Doc Brown, on November 5th 1995, he was standing on his sink, hanging a clock in his bathroom, but the porcelain was wet and he fell and hit his head. when he came to, he had an epiphany, a vision, a picture in his head. A picture of the flux capacitor. That little invention caused so much trouble for Marty and Doc. I was thinking of making flux capacitor-shaped pretzels or something in order to celebrate. But that would have taken a lot of effort, and it really isn't worth it to me. I just like going around a wishing people a Happy Flux Capacitor Day.

I already told you what I would do if I could go back in time. I would go visit the cavemen and be their god. I guess it is a popular idea because the on the Simpson's Halloween special, Homer came back from the future to warn the citizens of Springfield about the evils of guns. Moe then shot Homer and took the time machine. Then he said "alright, now to get me some cave man hookers", and he vanished back in time. I TOLD you the women were hot back then. I have seen the movies. And so have the writers of the Simpsons.

Today is also election day. Time for people to go out and vote for the person that has spent the most money telling us what we want to hear. This year, there seems to be a common theme among politicians, namely: I am not a politician. That sounds dumb, but that is what Americans want to hear the most. Second place was that they are giving away free beer just down the street. American are tired of politicians. They think that all politicians are corrupt, immoral, unethical, lying jerks that would sell their own mother if it meant a higher approval rating. Only 27 have actually been known to have done this since the last election. But the average American is tired of this. The average American wants a higher approval rating, and can't really do anything easy like selling his mother to do it. Americans get a lot of flack around the world by being the most violent, the worst at school, the worst on welfare, worst on crime, immigration, foreign policy and everything else. We would like to think that we are great, but we keep reading that we are not. We want to change that. But every American knows that the people who got us where we are now, are politicians. Why would we want to elect another one just to continue us on the same path that we are on. We want one of us, an ordinary Joe... or Tim perhaps, to lead us. And that seems to be the trend in political ads.

I saw an ad for some guy running for some position in a state that I think is located somewhere in America, though I heard that Russia has states now too. It obviously wasn't all that important to me since I don't remember anything about him except that he said that he wasn't a politician. His main points were: "I am not a politician. I am just like you. I make mistakes. I will make mistakes if voted to whatever position I am running for in whatever state I live in. You should vote for me." I have to say that at first, I liked his honesty. But then I thought about it and I wondered what kind of campaign promises he was making. He promised that, if elected, he would make mistakes. Aspire higher, buddy! We know that you'll make mistakes. Everyone does. But we don't want that to be your campaign platform. We want you to promise to take us out of the mire in which we are wallowing. We want to be lifted up. You have to be above us to lift us up. I don't think I would vote for this guy. I'll probably pick some guy that will lie to me about how well he will do. Lies are easier to take than the truth anyway.

Then there is Elizabeth Dole, for whom I have a lot of respect. Her campaign is also centered on idea that she is not a politician, but a hometown woman that could easily be living just down the street from you. She bakes, visits the elderly, like her husband Bob, and is involved in small-town politics. The closing statement in her ads shows some withered old grandma sitting in a chair. She puts down her knitting and says: "I think that Liz Dole is just like me". And then the lady started staring into space, drooling on her knitting. Yeah, Liz Dole is just like every other woman out there, as long as every other woman out there has been the President of the Red Cross for years and years and years, graduated from Duke and Harvard, served as Deputy Assistant to President Nixon for Consumer Affairs, served six years (1973-1979) as a member of the Federal Trade Commission and two years (1981-1983) as Assistant to President Reagan for Public Liaison, and sworn in by President Bush as the nation's 20th Secretary of Labor in January 1989. Lots of women do that, right? Nope. So despite everything that this woman has done, and she has done much more than what I listed, she chooses to let some old random woman speak for her campaign. "I think Liz Dole is just like me".

So, I need to go out today and choose my poison. It isn't like my choices for State Senate are between God and Satan. That would be an easy choice. I would choose Chester, the independent. Because bipartisan politics are just too ridiculous. I don't have to choose between good and evil. I have to choose between ok, and slightly better. Now that I am a lifetime member of the NRA, they sent me a list of candidates in my area that have voted in favor of gun owners in the past and asked me to vote for these candidates. Why not? That is more than any other group has done. And since I have not had time to review the issues, what with my 2 jobs and all, gun control is now the only issue that I am aware of. And if these guys are opposed to gun control, then I will vote for them. Remember, the people that get voted are the ones that spend the most money telling you what you want to hear. So go out today and vote. Or don't. But remember, if you don't vote and things turn out badly, It will be our fault. You can't go back in time and change things. The flux capacitor was never really invented. That's Heavy.

[11/4/2002 1:00:01 PM | Jason Hunter]
Grilling Machine

I am a grilling machine. I don't have my name on a grilling machine like George Foreman does yet. But I, myself am a grilling machine. This weekend, my roommate and I decided to have a few people over for a BBQ. We were going to be in charge of the meat. What is it about guys that requires them to eat meat when they get together? And what is it that requires them to cook it over an open flame? You never hear of a group of guys getting together to make salads, or quiche. Though I know some guys that make very good salads and quiches. Guys also never get together and see what they can sauté. That is too girly or something. Though wouldn't people that cook over an open flame be considered 'flamers'? I don't quite understand it. Though when Scott and I were trying to figure out what to make, beef was the first thing that came up, then pork, then chicken. It was just assumed that we would cook on the grill. I was trying to come up with alternatives and was looking through some of my cookbooks. I mentioned that we didn't necessarily need to cook out on the grill. There was a dead silence as Scott just stared at me. "What do you mean 'we don't HAVE to'? We ABSOLUTELY HAVE to." That's when I put down the cookbook I was looking through and picked up the one on grilling. We were going to grill.

So we went shopping for meat. We were looking at different types of roasts or steaks, but finally found some boneless pork ribs for really cheap. What we didn't understand was why the ribs with bones in them cost about 50 cents more per pound than the boneless ones. We didn't stop to ask any questions. We snatched up the meat and went looking for sauces. We had 3 packages of meat... about 10 lbs. in all. So we decided on 3 sauces, one for each package. We looked for a traditional bbq sauce for the first batch. Of all the sauces there, only one stuck out at being manly enough for us and out ribs... Jack Daniels #7. What is more manly than Jack Daniels? Or the number 7? Jack Daniels brings images of large burly men drinking whiskey while doing manly things like lumberjacking, hunting, or crying from a hangover the next morning and not remembering how you wound up on a golf course wearing a tu-tu and snuggling up with another burly man. Ah alcohol. And 7 is the minimum number of years you get in prison for most of the manly things that occur while drunk. So that's why we chose the sauce we did. I made the other marinades. One was a combination of Worcheshire sauce with brown sugar and pepper. And the other was an olive oil and vinegar with roasted garlic and salt. Also manly sauces. You can't beat the manliness of garlic or Worcheshire sauce. You should consider yourself a man if you can even spell that. And by the way, it is NOT pronounced 'wooster'. That is a very un-manly way to say it.

Now we were ready to grill. The last time I grilled, I used ordinary kitchen matches to light the grill. It is our landlord's gas grill. He paid a lot of money for a really cheap grill. It works, but I wish that I had a charcoal grill. I have my eye on a really nice Weber grill. It is a 22 1/2 in platinum series. They have a decent price on them at Amazon.com...if only I weren't trying to save money right now. So I am stuck with his gas grill. And like I said, last time I used ordinary kitchen matches. I also burnt off all the hair on my knuckles and hand doing it. This time, Scott let me use some really big fireplace matches. That way I could stand back several feet and still light the sucker. I lit it without any loss of hair or limb and started cooking. The traditional bbq and the brown sugar/Worcheshire sauce went without incident. But the moment that the oil and vinegar hit the grill, flames leapt up around the meat so high that it may have been visible from space. I could have turned off the gas at that point and finished cooking the meat just on the fire that came from the oil. I jumped back a few feet making sure that I still had my eyebrows and cursing at the fire. Though according to a Captain Morgan commercial (alcohol again.. the cause and solution to all of life's problems) they would have you believe that an uncontrolled fire is very manly. "Do you think a bonfire isn't a bonfire unless you can see it from space? Then you, my friend, might have a little Captain in ya."

Needless to say, the food turned out great and the other guys brought potato salad and baked beans to go with it. We will definitely be doing more grilling in the future. Scott was wondering why we didn't buy the entire supply of ribs at the price they were advertising. We should have also bought any future shipments of it. We will probably go for beef next time though. And if we ever do a chicken, I will do it beer can style. That's when you grill the chicken stuffed with an open can of beer. It is supposed to be REALLY good. But I can't do that on the gas grill. Not enough room inside. So that will have to wait for the Weber if I ever decide to buy that. In the meantime, my manly cooking will be on our gas grill. Scott suggested moving it directly in front of his patio door in the winter. That way we can stand inside and grill outside at the same time, even if it is snowing. That's another manly thing. To find a way to defy mother nature. "It may be cold and snowy outside," you can yell at her, "but we're here in our man-made house with the heater on and grilling meat on our doorstep. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha." Just be careful not to piss off mother nature too much, or she will strike you down somehow, like with lightning, a tornado, volcano, or dyslexia. She'll let you defy her, but only so much. And no gloating about it.

[11/4/2002 5:56:19 AM | Jason Hunter]
The Tooth Is Out There

I hate teeth. I can't be the only one that hates them. Dentists have the highest suicide rate of any profession. They must really hate teeth. I hate them because they are so high-maintenance. You have to brush them, floss them, whiten them, pay lots of money to get them fixed or straightened, and then you still have freaky dreams about them getting broken or falling out. I swear, I have never had so many nightmares about any other part of my body as I have with my teeth. I never have dreams about my eyes falling out. They must be there for a reason, and I mean other than biting and chewing, because you could mash your food with two rocks and then eat it, or swallow it whole and let your gizzard break it down. Except that we don't have a gizzard. Or we could just use disposable false teeth. George Washington had a few sets of those. Why are they there? And why do we have to deal with 2 sets of them? Though I guess we are luckier than elephants who have 6 sets of teeth. They usually starve to death after the 6th set wears out, because they haven't heard about my idea of mashing food with a rock.

They are supposedly covered with the hardest substance in the human body... dentin. And yet, I have this one tooth that keeps breaking. Granted, the tooth part only broke once, and then the dental fixture they keep putting on there is what keeps breaking. But they tell me that it is just as hard as my natural tooth. I have had this fixed about 9 times now. I can understand it breaking if I was chewing on rebar or biting on rocks. But I'm not. The hardest thing I ever put in my mouth is a carrot. And if that is what keeps breaking my tooth, then I want to have a word with those carrot growers and tell them to put less iron in them. But I guess that biting on rocks is popular, because when I went in to see the dentist this last time, that's exactly what he asked if I had been doing. "Have you been eating rocks?" He asked. "Oh no" I said, hanging my head, "you've discovered my secret shame." He was serious though. He wanted to know if I have been biting on rocks. I guess that is the number one cause of tooth breakage. The 2nd, is trying to eat a Now and Later.

Maybe you have seen these evil little candies. They claim that they are edible, and come in lots of cute fruity flavors. But they should be called Tooth Suckers for what they do to you. One time, I was on a trip to Yellowstone with my family and I was given a Now and Later to chew on. I bit down on it, and it immediately stuck to both my upper and lower molars. I couldn't open my mouth, (parents of noisy kids take note) it was like a finger trap for your teeth. I tried loosening it by wiggling my jaw a bit, but that didn't work. Then I tried really hard to just open my mouth. It worked. My mouth popped open. But only because one of my teeth popped out with the candy. There it was, lodged in the candy, my beautiful molar. I wasn't a quick learner back then because I repeated this process 3 more times on this trip, successfully removing all of my back molars. It turns out that it was a blessing in disguise, because they were actually suicide molars of death. When they came out, I put them in the ash tray in the van for safe keeping overnight. I came out to the van the next morning and found that they had shattered into several large chunks. Had they been in my mouth when that happened, I would have had a mouth full of dentin shrapnel. That would have been unpleasant to say the least. why they decided to go against me, I don't know. But scientists were later able to determine that they had been recruited by Russian spies (this was back when Russia was the bad guy) while I was asleep. They would relay information about me back to Russia, and if ever discovered, would self-destruct. I had the rest of my teeth checked out and they swear that they didn't know anything.

I still hate them for that. And because they are high-maintenance. I still think we can take a clue from our founding father, George Washington, and have our teeth removed and put in fake teeth made of wood, or for special occasions, goat teeth. If he can found a country, then he can advise me on my dental hygiene. Besides, I doubt that any of George's fake teeth were ever recruited by Hessian spies. Fake teeth are loyal like that. And goat teeth can bite through anything, hence the rumors that they are always eating things like tin cans and '78 Plymouths. If my tooth breaks again, then that's what I am going to do. Put in fake teeth and be done with it. That or a whole jaw of spikes like TrapJaw in the Bond movies. But that's going a bit overboard.

[11/1/2002 12:13:45 PM | Jason Hunter]
Cave Man Friday

It's one of those days. I'm glad that it is at least Friday and I can sleep in tomorrow. Tomorrow I don't have to worry about anything except the basics... food, and shelter. I have to pay my rent tomorrow and then go grocery shopping. I'm also going to help a friend replace the inner tubes on her bike. But other than that, I can just lounge around and do nothing. I don't have to worry about putting on any particular clothes. If I want to walk around all day wrapped in tin foil, I can do that. I don't have to go to work. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. Shelter and food. It's going to be cold, so I am going to eat soup and stay inside. You know what? Those are also the same things that cave men had to worry about. But they could do it all the time, and not just on the weekends. This is one of those days where I wish I were a cave man.

If I could go back in time, I would probably do something more productive than just go hang out with cave men, like buy a bunch of stuff really cheap and then bring it back and sell it on eBay as antiques, or buy into Wal-Mart stocks when they first came out. But for the argument of today's topic, I would go back in time to be a cave man. I would of course have to ditch my name and go by Grog, or Grrrrrrrgh. Cave men weren't known for their great linguistics. so I'd have to stick to words that sound like grunting. Speaking of which, my roommate and I were watching part of Young Frankenstein last night and were impressed with Peter Boyle's performance of the monster. He delivered such lines as Grrrrrr, ehhhhhrn, and arrrrrrgh with such feeling that I think he should have gotten an Oscar for it. It also made us think that we should try to go an entire day just grunting ad see how we do. I decided that it would have to be a weekend, since I couldn't get away with answering phones at work with just grunts.
*phone rings*
Me: grrrrrr.
Caller: hello?
Me: arrrrrrng!
Caller: Hello, is this Dentrix?
Me: Unghhh!
I'd probably get fired for that real quick, so I told Scott that we'd have to do it on a weekend. But if I went back in time, I wouldn't have to wait. I could do that all the time.

Also, cave men could wear what they wanted to. They usually chose to wear clothes made of wooly animals. It's amazing, but from every movie I have seen, cavemen had the same modesty values that we do. They seem to cover up just enough of the right places. It is like walking down a beach in Cancun, except that the suits are more wooly. They also got to live in caves. I can't say that this would be the best part of being a cave man. I like my house and my bed. I like the fact that I have AC, and a heater. But, if I lived in a cave, I could paint on the walls and build fires in the corner to cook my meat. The last 3 landlords I have had kicked me out for such things. "Fire belongs outside!" they yelled at me as I slunk away grunting something under my breath. So caves have some benefits. Also, somewhere down the line, my cave drawings would become priceless pieces of art or something. I doubt that anything I do now will be that important in the future.

There would be a few skills that I would have to learn. Building a fire, for one. From everything I have seen in movies, they didn't have matches. They either waited for lightning to strike a tree, or they fought other cave men for their fires. They mostly used fire to dance around. I never see them cooking their food. Or at least not using pans. They also never use spices and have side dishes. I like side dishes. Meat is good, but I want some other tastes with my dinner. I also don't think that they had root beer. Maybe when I go back in time, I can bring some of those things with me and I would be the greatest cave man ever. They would hail me as their god. They would also eat better. Then, if one of my fellow cave persons gets caught under a glacier and discovered 20,000 years in the future, the scientists can cut him open and find out what his last meal was. "It looks like he dined on wooly mammoth meat, served medium rare with a béarnaise sauce and a side of mashed potatoes spiced with cilantro and buttermilk, with a fudge brownie for dessert. We also detected large amounts of root beer in his system. We are speechless." That would be worth it right there. To go back in time and mess with things just to get scientists all worked up. Stupid scientists.

Also, if movies have served me well, the females were really hot. And remember, they wore wooly bikinis. And apparently, they were the aggressive ones. They would come around, stalking guys like me. And then they would club the guy over the head and drag him back by his hair to her cave for some cave lovin. I guess back then that it was the guys that complained of having headaches. What I don't understand is why the girls would have to go to all that trouble to get a man if she were so hot. But movies don't lie and I should just accept that it worked out somehow. Except that you don't see any little cave men walking around anymore, so maybe it didn't work very well. Scientists will tell you that we evolved from monkeys, but that we didn't come from Neanderthals. They were a different species altogether. And monkeys aren't? Again, I think scientists need to have things shaken up a bit.

Anyway, it is one of those days. I want to get out of work and go home and be a cave man. I don't have any wooly mammoths to make my clothes out of. And I am not going to make them out of duct tape. Maybe I'll just wear jeans and a t-shirt and my fuzzy slippers. If Scott gives me a hard time about wearing fuzzy slippers, I'll just tell him "arrrrrrrgngh!"