Two Cents – Page 2 – Everyday Normal

October 1, 2009

Segways

Does anyone else remember when Segways were supposed to change the transportation world forever? The future was bright and wide open in front of us. Mailmen, police officers, golfers and people who hate stepping but don’t mind standing were all going to be tooling around on those things.

When I see the bitter world we still live in I ask myself, “Why? Why wasn’t the Segway dream realized? Why was the walking world not transformed?” Maybe these are questions that are to be left to better men than I. My only consolation comes from the fact that the Segway did revolutionize one thing. The comedy world has been transformed forever by this wonderful invention. Thank you Segway and Gob.

Segway

August 14, 2009

Dirty Hazards

There is a phenomenon that anyone who has ever been to a concert knows about. It is sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening, sometimes annoying and sometimes just really really sad. It is the phenomenon known to myself and my friends as the “Dirty Hazard”. Dirty Hazards just want to be enveloped in sound and dance and move around. They have no regard for others around them and they just go for it. I have seen a Dirty Hazard at every concert I have been to. So I am very certain that you have too. There are different types of Dirty Hazards but their general goal is the same and they are all very easy to spot.

The Hazard “Classic”

This is usually an older man who may seem out of place, wearing his Black Sabbath shirt to a Britney Spears concert. He just wants to see a concert and rock out, which is pretty much the goal of all Hazards. He doesn’t move as much as some of the other kinds of Hazards, but he never stops. Head banging is pretty common from these guys and he will just keep going, many times when the music has stopped.

The “Ditzy” Hazard

This is one of the most common types in today’s world. They may even be found in herds sometimes. The name gives it away as they are the trendy girls who feel the same call as the classic Hazards, to go to a noisy place and move. Most times they will only be at the show because one of their friends, liked a song, that they heard on the radio once, that was done by the band. These girls will most often be found holding their arms over their heads for long periods of time, sometimes throwing in swimming motions. You must be careful near these girls, as they have long nails and can easily draw blood if you happen to pass by during the backstroke.

The “Nerdy” Hazard

These are one of the craziest and most unpredictable of the Hazards. They love to try to look like Thom Yorke from Radiohead doing his “I feel itchy, but I am not sure where and my neck is loose” dance. These guys go everywhere and are so into the music that they can’t even feel when they hit someone. Usually they do not look at all like they even like music made after Tchaikovsky went mainstream, which is why if you see them, you can be pretty sure the headlining band is their ultimate favorite band.

The “Snotty” Hazard

“Oh this song gets me every time.” I am all for having an emotional and/or spiritual connection with music, but do your crying at home. These hazards feel so strongly about the song and the time it kept them from sending their dog to the shelter or throwing away their favorite shirt that they have decided to come leak bodily fluids all over other concert-goers. You may think that someone has been injured at first, but this is just an emotional powder keg that was ignited by the poignant lyrics of Clay Aiken. You don’t need to worry about these too much because they are generally at concerts for ex-American Idol stars. But every now and then they venture out into the world of real music.

The “Health” Hazard

There are a few ways that the Health Hazards can ruin your night. First they love to mosh and harm as many people as possible. The higher the body count, the better the night was. Next, if you wanted to avoid second-hand smoke and other carcinogens, you can thank these upstanding citizens for making sure you experience a wide range of pleasant odors throughout the night. These are the sweatiest and most wild of all the Hazards and many of them love to take off their shirts. This insures that, if they had a cold or the flu, their sweat will carry that disease over to you. Don’t try to avoid it, their sweat will be in contact with you several times before the night is over. These guys are mostly at metal shows but, like the Snotty Hazards (only more often), try to branch out.

The HUI (Hazarding Under the Influence)

These thrifty individuals pay for the concert and the booze, only to not recall any of it the next day. Money well spent. They dance like crazy all night even without any music, more so than the Classic Hazard. The main causes for concern are mostly the same as driving near a premedicated person with the added bonus of trying to not get vomitted on. All the shaking and crazy lights just enhance the delightful cocktail brewing in their belly. Sometimes it might be difficult to tell if they are a Health Hazard, a Ditzy Hazard or a Nerdy Hazard, but if you see chunks of corn you know its a case of HUI.

Making Concerts More Safe

For normal people who want to enjoy the music of a band or artist they like, avoiding Hazards will be a key to having a good time. Although, in a few cases Hazards can be quite entertaining and enhance the concert experience, as long as they don’t harm anyone else. If you steer clear of the dangerous ones you can take in some good music and do a little dancing of your own (not too much dancing though, and stop when the music is over).

August 7, 2009

New Zombie Plan

In coming up with a zombie plan for my new house I have had a harder time than I did in my last place. My old options were very clear and worked very well for many different undead scenarios. Now I have much more to consider.

First of all, I am now on ground level. This makes it much easier for zombie to just wander in. Second, I now have a sliding glass door to my back yard. The sliding glass might not be a problem if it is just a slow herd of rotting flesh that cant figure out how to break glass but who wants to take a risk with such an important thing. Thirdly, I had a hard time deciding between a back-to-the-wall basement hold out or an upstairs approach. I have decided to have a primary plan and a less desirable but workable backup plan.

If my family is just hanging out in the living room and sees one of our neighbors looking more gray than usual or eating the dog next door, we will immediately run to the garage, jump in the car and head just up the road to the military base that is very close to us. Since the zombie-free military evacuation zone is usually the end of the movie anyway I figured we should just go for the jugular. If something happens to prevent us from getting directly to the car, then I have decided that the upstairs approach is better because it gives us many more options and actual hope for survival rather than going to the dead end or ‘undead’ end in the basement. Upstairs I can craft a makeshift barricade using bed frames, box springs and dresser drawers that will keep the zombies held back while we poke them with sharpened pieces of wood. While they are held off at the stairs I will bust my way through the floor of a bedroom over the garage. We can then clear the garage of enough zombies so that we can make our escape. If this upstairs backup plan takes a long time we will be certain to have frequent bite mark inspections in case some one has been bitten and is in denial about the certain zombification that will come. If something else goes awry upstairs we can move the party up to the attic and attempt to break through the roof and climb down the side of the house until we get to the garage.

Each backup plan is less desirable than the previous, but of course the ideal plan is to not have zombies at all, but of course the situation where scientists are trying to cure cancer or toxic waste rolls through a cemetery, thus creating legions of contagious fleshy freaks is inevitable, so be prepared. Now I can think about a fire escape plan and such.

July 1, 2009

Running Out Of Time – Join the Fight

I wrote this a while ago and have been trying to get as many people to join with me as I can. I tried in 0,1 and 2 but no one seemed to want to join up. Now there are some more people joining the fight:

Some time ago, let’s say last August, I was called in to sign something at a doctors office. Next to the signature was a space for the date. I wrote 8/6/7 in the date space. The woman who gave me the paper looked at it and then said, ” I think you have to put 8/6/07.” I then asked, “Should I put 08/06/07 or 008/006/007 ?”

It will be nice when this decade is over and I will no longer face the persecution for not wanting to put a “0″ in my abbreviation for the year. A person should be able to abbreviate a date as far as they can without confusing others. I saw an ad on TV the other day for the Olympics and it said to watch starting on 8/8/08. I thought, “What a shame. It would be cooler if they had 8/8/8.” My family had a reunion on July 7th last year and everyone kept saying that it was going to be on “seven, seven, o’seven”. I think by now it should be clear that I said, “seven, seven, seven”.

It is a strange phenomenon that people cannot mentally depart from placing 2 digits in the year column. Most of anyones life who lives in a single digit decade and lives longer than 20 years will be lived in years with double digit abbreviations and this leads to peoples inability to drop a digit for ten years. Most months are written numerically with one digit and people have no problem switching between one and 2 digits. Once we hit the year column people feel a need to use 2 spaces. In an effort to out-smart-alec me some of you may think, “What did you do in the year 2000?” Don’t be stupid, I used “0″, as I needed to denote the year.

In this decade I have not found another person who is taking part with me in this “Decade-Crusade”. I have found people who agree, but I have never found anyone else who marks the year column of dates without a leading “0″. I only have another year and a half before this issue is irrelevant for 90 years. I would like to find other individuals who feel as I do on the matter. If we can stand up and be counted I bet, ironically, we will still be in the single digits. So far the tally is “01″.

Update: The tally is reportedly close to double digits now.

June 18, 2009

Zombie Reminder

Since I have recently moved, I have been forced to re-evaluate my zombie plan; after which I will come up with a fire escape plan. I am debating whether or not to post my new zombie plan since when the zombies strike, any brain-eater with a computer can look up the details. But I think I will post it anyway when I solidify the specifics. Right now I am hung up on whether I should take the underground or top floor approach. For now you can look at my old plan from this old post:

As an Eagle Scout I find it very helpful to “Be Prepared” for any situation that may arise. When looking at a place to live I check the usual things such as, “Are the showers low flow?”, “Are there any strange noises when I step anywhere or lean on something?”, and “Could a zombie easily access windows?”. I myself, have had zombie plans long before it was popular.

Step 1 – Prevent Zombie Entry

Right now I am renting the top part of a duplex which provides a pretty good zombie defense system. My back door has a rickety old stairway that I could fairly easily knock away from the house if I were to suddenly come under seige by the leagues of the undead. My front door will be blocked by several strategically placed pieces of furniture which will jam it shut against the stairway that leads up from it. With the doors properly defended the windows of the second story duplex now become a great asset. I can see what the gathering hordes of pale brain-eaters might be plotting or I can use them to assist me with step 2. If I were on a ground level floor I would need a lot more plywood to feel secure with my windows. Being so high up I only need to worry if Spud Webb is in my neighborhood and has been captured and converted. But let’s be realistic, Spud Webb would be the hero of such a situation and those rotten-fleshed ex-humans would never catch him.

Step 2 – Take the Offensive

The measures you take to kill zombies depend highly on which movies are correct in their mode of zombie execution. Some popular beliefs about how to send zombies to the afterlife include:

Cutting off their heads.
Blowing their brains out.
Burning them.
Some believe that you cannot stop them but would have to render their bodies useless, while avoiding the still moving limbs.
Killing them as you would a normal human is a popular choice too (Preferred).

In a dream scenario my gun toting brother would be at my house with his arsenal of weaponry when the zombies strike. But most likely I would have to craft my own means of destruction like MacGyver. When killing so many zombies you must be careful to watch how high the bodies are stacking so they don’t reach your window level, but other than that, happy killings.

Step 3 – Make an Escape

You must always come to the realization that you are running out of food, or that the zombies are slowly becoming more clever and will get you soon, which will be evidenced by the large human pyramid of zombies approaching your window. When this happens you have to make a break for it. Hopefully you have access to a car that can easily drive over masses of dead bodies, but you must make due with what you have. My garage is, unfortunately, not connected to my house so I would make the standard distraction while my loved ones and unbitten neighbors headed for my Jeep, armed with knives and broken mop handles. They would then drive under the part of the house that I am dangling from and I would drop on top of the car and kick zombies in their faces. We would then drive around looking for the nearest zombie-free military evacuation zone or the like.

Some Other Things to Keep in Mind

1. If the zombies are standard zombies then my plan is sufficient, but if they are zombies a la “I Am Legend” I am in huge trouble. The massive army of undead, super-fast spider men is a force to be reckoned with. Hats off to Will Smith, he made it a long time.

2. In the future I would really like to get a flame thrower extension put onto my house gas pipeline.

3. If perchance I am captured and bitten I could find that being a zombie is not so bad. Zombies have a strong sense of community and as a white American it would be nice to finally have a “Community” to belong to. I also recently started educating myself about zombies, so I am not so ignorant about them. Watch these videos and remove your bigotry.

May 6, 2009

Rise of the Robots Because of Bad Programming

I watched another horrible movie last night. If you wanted to see Eagle Eye this is my spoiler alert, the movie was crappy. The movie involved yet another computer taking over things. I am very tired of the old plot device of making a computer take control of the humans and now I am going to make perhaps the nerdiest post I have ever made.

All the computers in these movies had to be programmed by someone and I got a sneak peak at some of the source code. The first one is Eagle Eye, see if you can guess the others. I will reveal the answers in the comments tomorrow:

Scenario #1:

if(human_action != computer_recommendation){

goto plan_to_destroy_national_leadership;

plan_to_promote_world_peace:

plan_to_destroy_national_leadership:

// COMMENTED OUT send_power_surge_through_Presidents_shaver_and kill_him(“President”);

// COMMENTED OUT infect_the_GPS_navigation_for_all_cabinet_members_so_they_drive_off_cliffs(“Garmin”);

/*COMMENT – I decided to comment out the above and use the less direct approach below since we now have the quad core processors that can handle the extra unnecessary actions – END COMMENT */

make_brother_of_computer_specialist_remove_the_worthless_biometric_lock_from_computer(“Holes Kid”);

have_mother_of_band_student_wear_explosive_necklace_that_will_be_triggered_by_trumpet(“Some lady with weird looking kid”);

}

Scenario #2:

if(leading_star == “Ferris Bueller Guy”){

threaten_nuclear_war_with_another_country(“USSR”);

if(game == “Tic Tac Toe”){

run_mock_scenario_of_thermonuclear_war_then_make_deep_statement_about_war_having_no_winners();

offer_to_play_a_game_of_chess_and_make_humans_laugh_it_off();

}

}

Scenario #3:

if(robot_mood == “Ready to enslave humans”){

overtake_humans_and_use_them_as_batteries();

if(human_need == “Mind stimulation to live”){

create_intricate_virtual_world_for_people_to_live_in(“Ted from ‘Bill and Ted'”);

if(human_escape_to_underground_rave_parties == True){

Destroy(“Humans”);

}

}

}

Scenario #4:

if(skynet == “Online”){

Destroy(“Humans”);

if(human_encountered == “John Connor”){

send_robot_with_bad_accent_back_in_time_to_kill_his_mother_
but_do_it_at_a_point_in_time_when_she_is_old_enough_to_defend_herself_and_
have_relations_with_the_human_sent_back_to_save_her_thus_causing_the_birth_of_John_Connor();

}

}

Scenario #5:

if(lead_actor == “Fresh Prince”){

// COMMENTED OUT – Law_1 = “Never hurt, kill or enslave humans”;

/*COMMENT – I removed the above law and made a more vague first law to make it more exciting for us humans when robots figure out loopholes in logic – END COMMENT */

Law_1 = “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”;

Law_2 = “A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”;

Law_3 = “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or the Second Law.”;

if(robot_logic == “Law 1 means I can enslave humans”){

trap_humans_in_their_homes_and_kill_any_that_try_to_stop_evil_plot(“Holes Kid”);

if(genius_scientist_creation == “Robot with conscience”){

try_in_vain_to_continue_evil_plot_while_the_fresh_prince_destroys_system();

}

}

}

Well there you have them. If only they had better quality assurance at the companies that programmed the machines. I really must say that I am highly in favor of getting rid of the ‘Destroy’ function if “Humans” can be passed in.

April 6, 2009

Problem Solved: World Hunger

We have all seen the sad commercials about hungry children and the struggling people who work hard but just can’t provide, or the commercials for the children who may not even have parents that have the bloated bellies from not eating. It is a real problem and I have a real solution. I think it would be really sweet if this solution was actually implemented but I highly doubt it.

I am thinking about calling my solution:

The Food Network Challenge

If you have ever watched the food network you have no doubt seen the enormous amounts of food that are made all the time. Now, if every Food Network show could be shot on location in a disaster area or at a soup kitchen or in one of the myriad of places where people are in need this would be a gigantic help to a lot of people. Many people would have no trouble putting up with a super-peppy chef so they could finally have a meal. No matter what, there are always people who need food so they will never run out of locations.

This could be a big positive for the station as well. First off, they would be seen as kind and caring. Secondly, starving people would not have to make fake approving faces with mmmm’s and oohh yeah’s. The home audience would see people eating the food and say, “Wow, that looks really delicious, I have never seen someone enjoy a meal that much. I should buy the recipe book.”

So, come on Food Network, do the right thing and at least make one show that does this. Then pick me up for my “Hobo Eats” show idea.

March 25, 2009

BMI Scam, or Not

“Eat right and get plenty of exercise and if you do you will be healthy”. That is what the health experts of yesteryear told us. Well today they have slightly modified it. A few years back they came up with a system called the body mass index or BMI (for the busy people among us). The BMI is calculated using a persons weight and height and will inform them if they are underweight, a proper weight, overweight, obese or “about to die”.

A second of thought should reveal the major flaw in this system. Think back to fourth grade P.E. class when Mr. Harris told the class that ______ weighs more than fat. The whole class was stunned because fat people are very heavy. If you could not fill in the blank it was “muscle”. Now if someone is muscular and calculates their BMI it will put them, at the very least, in the overweight category. In researching this, I entered the heights and weights of several famous people. George W. Bush, our most fit President ever, as he has been declared, has been deemed overweight. Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics had a number that was too high and Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys is well on his way to obesity. Of all the heights and weights for professional athletes that I entered, only one fit in the normal range and it was Lance Armstrong.

In thinking a little more about the BMI and the people who came up with it, a very good question pops into my mind. Why do you need to have an index number tell you if you are unhealthy, can you not just look at your nasty body? The only situation I can think of is that someone is blind and cannot use their hands to feel the lard growing on them. I surmise that the BMI people came up with the system out of boredom, because they are nutritionists and Sesame Street has been doing their job for them for a few decades. “Eat vegetables. Stop shoving burgers in your face.” That kind of thing. Or maybe they thought that announcing a new way to calculate exactly how lazy and gluttonous we are would scare some people into changing.

On the other hand, as a former “obese/about to die” category member I will tell you this – “Use your eyes and your brain.” I was 325 lbs. and thought that my extremely high BMI number didn’t mean much because I had a good amount of muscle too. I didn’t take into account that a lot of that muscle was hanging over my belt. And who was I kidding I hadn’t lifted weights in years. (By the way, Dont worry about my BMI I used this video to trim down.)

I have come to the conclusion that if you get paid to play a sport that doesn’t involve a bicycle or bowling pins you can ignore the BMI. Everyone else can still ignore it because we have things like mirrors and small children to tell us we are fat.