Chuck Norris can divide by 0.
Chuck Norris counted to infinity. Twice.
Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because the only element he recognizes is the element of surprise.
Find out more amazing Chuck Norris facts, before he roundhouse kicks you in the face.
Overheard standing in the line at the gas station.
Dude 1: Dude, check it out. The newspaper says 85-year-old woman gives 100 liters of blood.
Dude 2: At once?
I’ve never understood the appeal of lighting fireworks.
This can be partly explained by the fact that I lived most of my life in California, where the Fourth of July is typically celebrated by the cooking of hamburgers, the imbibing of beer, and perhaps by the watching a brief montage of fireworks wedged into the midst of the Twilight Zone Marathon whilst simultaneously singing Lee Greenwood’s Proud to be an American or Niel Diamond’s (They’re coming to) America in a drunken fit of patriotism. Actual live fireworks were always banned, since they involved heat and explosions and Southern California consists entirely of kindling, charcoal briquettes, plastic surgeons, and smog.
I remember one year as a kid we celebrated Independence Day as a family at my grandmother’s house. After the sun set, one of my uncles revealed that he had smuggled in sparklers from Mexico, and promptly handed them out to the children so that they might know the magic of multicolored arson. We promptly lit them and watched in fascination the showery explosion of light and sparks that flew off the end of the stick, which promptly burned my grandmother’s house to the ground and inconveniently forced us to watch the rest of that year’s Twilight Zone marathon at the neighbors. The following year, that same uncle smuggled in some Flowers, and no sooner did he light them that the little cylinders scuttled across the street in a blaze of multicolored light and burned the neighbor’s house down instead. The year after that, we stopped doing Independence Day as a family gathering.
Simply put, I don’t understand risking life and limb — well, mainly limbs, I guess — to play with explosives whose only purpose is to make a razzle-dazzle display of bright pinpoints of light and percussive blasts of noise, particularly when I can reasonably simulate that effect by, say, rubbing my eyes particularly hard while listening to Aphex Twin.
Of course, it’s different in South Dakota.
In South Dakota, by contrast, the only point of Independence Day is the intoxicated igniting of dangerous incindiary rounds. Now while live fireworks are banned within the city limits where we live, in neighboring Rapid Valley the lighting of fireworks is not only permitted, but is in fact a standard CC&R in most suburban developments. Coincidentally, it was in Rapid Valley that the Queen B, the Ladybug, and I went to an Independence Day party with friends and friends of friends, and so I made it my point to understand the appeal of lighting fireworks.
After an evening of pleasant conversation and all manner of consumed meat animals, we moved to the drive way to commence the pyrotechnics. As the sun dipped below the horizon, people up and down the block emerged from their homes like freshly risen vampires, clutching bags of multicolored bombs and rockets the likes of which would almost certainly lead to UN sanctions if they were discovered. Withing minutes, the sky was alive with fiery explosions and sonic blasts so loud they felt like stakes driven into my ear canals. Sure, the lights were pretty, but they’re just as pretty when you view them at, say, a professional fireworks display at the Civic Center — and here they were a helluva lot louder, and after a few minutes of it, then entire street was basked in an eery asthmatic funk of gun smoke. The Ladybug, who was initially delighted by the lightshow, quickly tired of the noise and smoke; clearly that could not be the appeal of fireworks.
I decided instead to ask around. It did not go well, initially.
Most of my initial requests went something along the lines of “I’ve never lit fireworks for the Fourth of July… What’s the big deal?,” and these were greeted either with incomprehension or patriotic indignation. As one partygoer announced between angry chugs of his Budweiser, ”Fireworks are our Second Amendment Right, man! [ Chug ] The Second Amendment grants us the right [ chug ] to bear arms [ chug ] and by arms [ chug ] they refer to all manner of explosives [ chug ] then it stands to reason that it ought to grant us also the right to blow off our own arms with said explosives. [ triumphant chug ] God Bless America, and give me another Bud!”
In fact, after watching the haphazard fireworks show for a while, I realized the he had in fact revealed the main appeal of fireworks…
Beer.
Lots and lots of beer.
Apparently, beer is crucial to the personal fireworks experience for several reasons.
First off, many of the fireworks launched require some sort of cylindrical “launch vessel” in which they can be placed to maintain a vertical orientation during the lighting of the fuse, and the typical beer bottle is of optimal dimensions for this task. Hence, if you wish to launch several fireworks in rapid succession, you need to have lots of empty beer bottles at your disposal. Thus, to adequately prepare for the lighting of fireworks, one must drink copious amounts of beer beforehand.
Secondly, the attending beer buzz not only heightens the aesthetic appeal of the lightshow (oooh! aaah!) and also conveniently impairs one’s judgment so as to make the lighting of potentially deadly high explosives seem somehow safe and fun, thereby allowing the process to continue.
Thirdly, it’s beer. Beer adds to the appeal of anything.
Satisfied with my conclusions — and recognizing that the Queen B was in the midst of an asthma attack from all the burnt gun powder in the air and the Ladybug’s ears were bleeding from the noise — the Komplexify family said its goodnights, piled into the car, and carefully drove off into the night.
As we drove through the neighborhoods of Rapid Valley, illuminated under the stroboscopic glow of a sky caught on fire, evading errant bottle rockets from the air and erratically exploding firecrackers and smoke bombs on the ground, I realized a second, and more profound appeal for fireworks: they reminded me of all the reasons I love living in the United States by making it, for one very special night, look and feel like Iraq.
Imagine you have a time machine, but its only works sporadically, and at any given time you can only go back in time to a single, specific moment. That’s the basic premise of Chronotron, an addictive puzzle game in which you must complete levels back repeatedly going back in time and using the help of you “past doubles” (who live out their past timeline selves independent of your new arrival) to escape a number of rooms.
It’s like Primer, but without the headache.
I just got my new Tablet PC.
Well, a replacement for my old one, anyway. Somehow I’ve become the guru of effective Tablet PC use in the classroom, a title of dubious distinction that seems to have been conferred upon me by the simple fact that I carry my Tablet PC with me everywhere on campus, and I only do that because, well, it’s where I keep my stuff. Nevertheless, a perk of this conception is that I’m somehow at the top of the queue when faster, better versions of the Tablet PC become available, so I’ve swapped my old, clunky, chalk-dust covered computer for one that’s supposed to be sleeker, faster, and better.
It’s certainly slicker that my old one. It’s jet black with silver trim, and it has a fingerprint security lock, which allows you to bypass typing in usernames and passwords by instead swiping your index finger over a little scanner. The process by which it works is rather interesting: you place your index finger over this little red sensor and swipe it done, after which a small window pops up saying:
You then repeat this maneuver anywhere from eighteen to forty-seven times, after which you give up and simply type in your username and password. I live in fear of the time they decide to replace the fingerprint sensor with either a retinal scanner or a rectal probe. For all intents and purposes, they could replace all these high-tech features with the following extra key on the keyboard without sacrificing any of the functionality:
As with any upgrade, it takes a while to get everything set (or rather, reset) just as you like it. I’ve been mucking around the Control Panel, fiddling with security and power saving options, without much success. If only I could find this menu and disable it:
An added bonus is that this new computer comes equipped with Office 2007. Now, I hated Office 2003 for a large number of reasons, including (but not limited to)
that wretched paper clip.
Indeed, the only thing Office 2003 had going for it was its ubiquity: it was everydamnwhere, so that even if you didn’t like it me (Hi! Nice to meet you!) you were force at least to be somewhat familiar with its operations.
If you haven’t seen it, the 2007 version preserves all of the worst features of the previous Office suite while simultaneously eradicating the familiar interface, making it damn near impossible to use. I would be most obliged if someone would take Bill Gates out and shoot him. Twice, preferably.
However, in its favor, the new Tablet has a much improved pen-to-screen interface, which means I can play Line Rider with great fluidity, ease, and artistic expression, and really, isn’t that the only thing that matters.
