Buncha copy cats

Yesterday NASA used one of these:



To hit one of these:



There were, however, some key differences between their bird collision and the one I spoke of in the previous article. I'm pretty sure that they did it on purpose. In fact, I found a transcript of the shuttle radio traffic on a very reliable website.
Shuttle Commander:Dude...
Ground Control: What?
Shuttle Commander: You hit it!
Ground Control: Shut up!
Shuttle Commander: No, serioulsy!
Both: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Woooooooo!
Now you can call PETA. You know what's a funny phrase? Fajita PETA.
The other difference is that I do not believe their bird survived. I don't know, you tell me:

Anyway, that's how I wanna die. When I get old and terminal I'm going to buy a single engine plane and buzz around Kennedy Space Center until WHAMO! How cool would that be?!?
Guy #1: Hey, you remember Jason?
Guy #2: Yeah, what ever happened to that guy?
Guy #1: He got nailed by a frickin' space ship!!!
Yeah baby. That's what I'm talkin' about.

Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hot on your tail!

[public announcement] I haven't started talking funny. That title is a reference to a Genesis song. There are problably 12 people in the world who would get it. [public announcement]
Yesterday we packed up the plastic wagon and made a trek to the park. Lots of stuff happened. but the one event that blots out everything else that I might otherwise have remembered was this:

We used one of these,


To hit one of these.



Right out of mid air. It was glorious. Two things. First, the bird was not hurt so don't be callin' PETA. Second, it was not on purpose so don't be callin' PETA.
Bird was just flying along, minding his own business and WHAMO! Out of nowhere he gets biffed with a freakin' rocket. I wish I had it on tape. I could have sent it to all the news stations and they could use it as an ultra low-budget "dramatic reenactment" of a surface to air missle strike on a plane.
Anchor woman: The attack was sudden and vicious.
Roll Footage: [Bap! Squaaaaaack!]
Anchor man: Disturbing images, Kelly. A tragedy indeed.
That poor bird had to have the same sense of surprise that I do when I'm walking down the stairs and there was one step less than I expected. You evere done that? You're already on level ground and you plant your next step like you're cracking walnuts with your heel. It's surprising the force with which people walk down stairs. If we could only harness that energy we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil. All we gotta do is build big warehouses across the country and fill them with people taking 16 steps down 15 stairs.
Oh jeez! Look at the time. I haven't taken my meds.

I got my ass kicked by a "Fruit Snack"

I thought I was pretty bright until I took the test. Fruit By The Foot snacks now have little quizzes printed on the paper in which the fruit is rolled. If you don't know exactly what Fruit By The Foot is, I'll explain. In the interest of general enlightenment, I'll let you in on the entire process so that you can make your own educated purchases. [DISCLAIMER] This account contains descriptions of the real-life treatment suffered by our friends, the fruits. If you are squeamish, please do not read.
Apples, oranges, pears, etc. are raised in small cramped quarters, sometimes as many as sixty per two-foot by two-foot cage. They have no room to spread their leaves. Often the larger fruits will bruise and even break the skin of smaller fruits leaving them all to eat, sleep, and mate in puddles of their own sugary juice. They endure these deplorable conditions until finally they are taken out of their prison and cruelly dispatched by inserting an electrode into their stem-hole. The lifeless flesh of the produce is then crushed to a pulp and mechanically flattened into long strips while the skins are used to make hats and day planners. I'm not sure how they get rolled up but I've seen midgets and firemen walking in and out of the factory hand-in-hand at all hours of the day and night. I've got a hunch that they have something to do with it. I wanted to show what the finished product looks like so that you could bear witness to the final horror. That is why I selflessly took 11.3 seconds out of my morning to do the Google image search for fruit by foot. Here is the result:

So I'll just describe them. They are flattened strips of fruit corpse about one inch wide and six feet long pressed to a piece of paper with the same dimensions and rolled into a tight little package.
As I said before, the paper is printed with little questions and answers to make you feel stupid. I hadn't noticed the freakin' college entrance exam written on the backs of these things until my niece, out of nowhere, asked me how fast a kid can run. I said, "Let's find out." and chased her around the yard with a lizard. Okay, so that part is a lie. I do that because I am a liar. What I really said was, "Oh, I guess it depends on the kid. About thirteen miles an hour I suppose. Why?" No answer, just another question. "How fast can an emu go?" At that point, I noticed she was looking at one of those Fruit By The Foot wrappers (Wouldn't it be cool if there were fruit by the foot rappers?) There was a list of organisms printed down the length of it. It seems the good folks down at the Fruit By The Foot factory, knowing exactly how fast each one can move, (smug bastards) were having a go at pushing around all of us poor souls who do not know the speed of an antelope compared to that of a cockroach. They even teased us with a list of speeds given in MPH from which we could choose and apply to each animal. You tell me, is it a bear that goes 38 MPH or a tortoise? What if you toss the tortoise off the top of a Ferris wheel? I'll bet that sucker's doing at least 38 MPH when it's 2 feet from the ground. See? Not so easy, is it?
The point is, we got 2 out of 8. How humiliating is that? That's 25% or, in the language of education, an F- - -. I'll bet those sadistic freaks implanted each pressed snack with a tiny microphone just so they can sit around the office and laugh at adults having long and spirited debates with little children about the running style of ferrets. Well, I fell for it. My niece and I talked over each animal with an unwarranted degree of seriousness and, in 6 out of 8 cases, screwed up. I hope that the guys down at the factory had a good laugh. They just better run if they see me coming at 'em with an electrode and/or a lizard.

Please, oh please click this link.

I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect that this is the greatest thing ever in the history of everything.

Taters

What is it with classes that have "management" in the title?

You may remember that I took what I thought was the world's stupidest class last quarter. Well, I have to take two classes this summer to finish up and I found a class that is even worse: Stress Management for Healthy Living. There's this chump and she's teaching me how to remain calm. Our first assignment was to tell her how we typically manage stress. "Ya know? I chew staples and jump out of trees." What kind of question is that? I pack all the stress into a little black ball and shove it in my gut like every other red-blooded American.
But she has different ideas. The next assignment was to practice some "relaxation techniques". First I was to sit in a chair and, get this, breathe. Chump has a flippin' PhD and that's what she gives me. I bet people come into her private practice all the time, "Doctor! Doctor! My face is blue and it's getting harder and harder to talk!" To which she insightfully strokes her chin and queries, "Have you tried ---- breathing?" The patient goes, "GASP! AAAHHHHH! GASP! AAAAAHHHH! Oh yeah Doc. You sure know your stuff!"
Actually I am misrepresenting the technique. When you inhale, you are supposed to say out loud, "I feel heavy." When you exhale you say, "I feel warm." Yeah, I'm gonna work that into my daily routine. Diane will yell to me from the across the house, "Jason! Can you please help me get these kids under control so I can give them a bath?" I'll yell back from the other room, "I feel heavy! I feel warm!" I'm sure that will really help take the tension down a notch in the house.
But, I'm a wacko about grades. It really doesn't matter what I get in this class as long as I pass but I still get all obsessive about the grade. That's why I sat there listening to her recording, breathing, saying to myself (and feeling like an idiot) "I feel heavy. I feel warm." And then she lost me with the next thing. I couldn't put up with it anymore when she said that I was to (I am sooo not kidding) shoot a beam of negative energy out the top of my head through a hole that, to my best reckoning, does not exist. At that point I had an epiphany. She gets paid the big dollars to make stuff up. She can say literally anything and people well buy it. If it sounds stupid enough, she wouldn't dare say it if it didn't work, right?
Patient: Doc, I just lost my job, and my wife left me, and my neighbor bit me, and my corneas fell out, and I've just been indicted in a pyramid scheme, and my shoes are too tight.
The Good Doctor: (Again, thoughtfully stroking her chin) Have you dipped your elbows in blueberry marmalade?
Patient: To be honest I hadn't thought of...
The Good Doctor: Well? do that!
Patient: Thanks Doc! Here's my checkbook! They're all pre-signed!
Seriously, this class is the most pointless thing I've ever been subjected to and I've watched Sheriff Lobo. This class is gonna make me gag. Then you'll see a beam of negative energy shoot out of a hole in my head.

Don't cheap out on your seeing eye dog.

I'm thinking that I probably had enough propane to get me through a single BBQ, but I wanted to fill the tank anyway. I mean, if you run out of propane on the Fourth of July you might as well pack up your crap and move to Cuba. You know why? Because you're a communist, that’s why. On my way to the gas station I was treated to a little show put on by the world's lousiest seeing eye dog. I think maybe the poor guy picked it up at one of those sleazy used seeing eye dog lots where they sell any dog that can see because it has eyes as a "seeing eye dog".
Blind Guy: I don't know. My social worker says I should stick with a "Seeing Eye Dog For The Blind" brand seeing eye dog.
Salesman: Oh well la-dee-da, Mr. Rockefeller. I didn't realize you were a slave to labels.
Blind Guy: It's not that. It's just that, well, this one has bitten me twice already.
Salesman: Oh that? They all do that when they're new. It'll settle down after a couple of miles.
Blind Guy: I don't know....
Salesman: Listen. If you're not interested, I have another blind guy coming down this afternoon who already made me an offer on this exact dog over the phone.
Blind Guy: I'll take it!
And that's probably why the dog stepped off the curb against a red light and sat down in the left hand turn lane. Of course the man didn't know exactly what was going on, but he could tell that something wasn't quite kosher. He was very agitated and yelled something at the dog. My windows were up so I couldn't hear him but I imagine it was something along the lines of, "Pardon me, faithful hound! I would like to safely reach the other side of the road!"
The dog slowly turned its head and looked up at his master with the same expression I would get from a sixteen year old sales clerk if I walked into Hot Topic. (For those of you who may not know, Hot Topic is a mall shop that sells individuality paraphernalia. That's how you can tell who the non conformists are. They wear the same clothes and have the same tattoo on the small of their back as all the other non conformists.) I'm sure that the guy could feel the dog turning to look at him because he shut up post haste. Since your seeing eye dog could walk you off a cliff if he chose to, I imagine that living with a seeing eye dog would be a lot like living with that kid from The Twilight Zone who could send you to the corn field if you did or said something that he didn't care for.
"It was great the way you stranded me in traffic, Patches. Yep, it sure was good that you did that."
Finally the dog stood up, yawned, checked his watch, and casually strolled his master out of the road. Now, I ain't no expert, but I think that maybe he should take his dog back to the dealership. He can get himself a nice brand name dog, maybe one of those models with a "For The Blind" tattoo on the small of its back.

Cold blooded, man.

Diane pays DJ twenty five cents every time he kills a bug in the house. Tonight the boy pocketed fiddy-cent for waxing two spiders. Diane says to the kid, "Good job, bug killer." DJ, being all business the way he is says, "I'm not a bug killer. I just do my job. That's my job. Kill."
I'm sleeping with the lights on tonight.