2005

Make it a great year or not, the choice is yours.

Time is on my side

For those of you facing the dark recesses of depression during the dreary winter months, chin up. I’ve got some wonderful news.

The recent earthquake in Asia was the most cataclysmic in years, scoring quite favorably on the Richter assessment. Scientists say that the quake was so severe that whole islands were moved 20-30 meters and that the excess energy caused by fault slippage actually caused the earth to wobble on its axis. But that’s not the cool part.

Now, I realize that Sunday’s seismic event was a travesty. I am not attempting to downplay the deaths of the tens of thousands of deceased; I am merely trying to extract some good from what would otherwise be a shame. Those peoples’ deaths just afforded you a little longer to live – or so you would think.

Geologists suggest that the shock of the quake actually interfered with the Earth’s rotation and, thus, caused the day to be 3 microseconds shorter.

Big deal, right? Well, actually, yes.

If you were to take the average American lifespan of 77.2 years, and break it down into days, you would find that the average U.S. inhabitant lives 28178 days, not counting leap years. If you were to multiply this number by the number of seconds (3 x 10^-6) missed each day, you get approximately .084534 seconds.

This fraction of a second, even though it is in no way technically added to the average American lifespan, appears as a faux addendum. That is, after you serve your 77.2 years, you could view it as a gift from some higher power – like Father Time, or God, or the Ghost of Richard Nixon.

Clap on…

Dear Santa,

You’ve given me some awesome presents in the past. Though I really am not into the whole idea of gift giving at Christmastide, after the fact I am pretty content. This is especially true this year, because this was the year that you gave me the best present ever.

Santa, my good friend, my new Clapper is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever given to me. I think it suffices to say that I have been more occupied with it than any other gift you’ve ever given me – even my little red and yellow Flintstones-style car back when I was knee high to a grasshopper. All day today, I have been questioning the amount of light in my room and altering the state of my lamp with two swift and consecutive smacks of my hands.

Originally, I had my doubts. But now you’ve proven yourself to me, Santa, and I believe in you.

Yours,
Casey Peterson

When the moon hits your eye

Why is it that cold pizza is so much better than the warm stuff? It’s the same pizza; nothing has been added or taken away from the pie.

I imagine it could be because you don’t have to deal with the hot pizza predicament. You know: when the pizza is just served and is so hot that the mouth naturally puckers and you scour the tabletop for a beverage to calm the raging inferno within your pallet. With a few hours of refrigerating time under the proverbial pepperoni belt, such situations are successfully evaded and the pizza can be enjoyed with no fear of burnination.

Some may say that cold pizza is the nuts because of the solidifying of the cheese. Sure, it sucks when you’re faced with the problem of stretchy, warm cheese that continually slips off of the slice. So perhaps by slowing down some molecular, gooey movement in the chilly recesses of the fridge, the problem is avoided, and the avoidance of such a problem serves as another tally in the plus column of cold pizza’s plus and delta chart.

But while these aforementioned reasons are quintessential in considering cold pizza’s dominance over its warmer counterpart, there is one reason that trumps them all. I don’t have to do any work to eat cold pizza, whereas obtaining a piping hot pie would necessitate ample work on my part. I’d have to find a place to get some pizza, order it, wait for it, eat it, and pay for it. Just walking to the icebox and yanking out a slice thats been chilling for some time, however, calls for just a few steps in the right direction and a quick yank of the arm.

All in all, I’m pretty sure that it’s the lack of work necessary to obtain a piece of cold pizza that makes eating it so appealing. Because, after all, everything tastes better if it’s free.

Bittersweet beauty

Last night I went to see The Phantom of the Opera with (in alphabetical order) Egle, Kyle, Mills, Sarah, and Vince. You wouldn’t expect any guy, much less a sans-strawin’, tree-choppin’ guy like myself, to enjoy a musical. However, upon the end of the film I was actually quite impressed at how beautiful the production was.

And trust me when I say that I know beautiful isn’t the most masculine of adjectives. Really, though, the music was eloquent, the acting was superb, and the general aura of the movie struck me as one of bittersweet magnificence.

When I say bittersweet, though, I mean it. After leaving the theater, I didn’t have much to say to anyone; I just couldn’t stop thinking about all the bad luck that all the characters had to face.

First of all, there were two new owners of this opera house. All they wanted, like any entrepreneurs, was to turn a profit. They didn’t, however, know the complexity of the situation they were buying into, and inevitably faced disaster through no real fault of their own.

Next, there’s old Christine. I don’t pity her much, primarily because she had two guys after her. But she was tricked, I guess, by that Phantom fellow, so she earns a bit of my sentiment.

But what gets me the most is the fact that in the end, the one fellow who wanted a little compassion – a little love – in an otherwise dismal world loses out and succumbs to the reality that he has made for himself. I imagine that most folks view it as his realization of contentment in happiness of that person whom he loved. But I see it as a loss for him. The one emotion for which he has striven for during his entire lifetime was denied to him. I guess his misfortune stuck with me the most, as I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how I never, ever want to end up facing either his circumstances, or the depressing culmination to a life of heartbreak.

So, I return to my main assertion: the cinematic version of The Phantom of the Opera was a beautiful interpretation of a sad, sad story. Thus ends my girliest blog entry to date.

19,898 words later

It’s been exactly one year since I started to type my musings, and to this day the first entry into this blog is by far the funniest.

Tubular, dude

People give hot dogs a bad rap. I mean, they can’t help what they are; tubes of assorted meaty goodness are by their nature unable to alter their state of being.

Sure, they’re made of a bunch of different animals and wrapped into a tubular shape with some sort of edible and fleshy material. And some people may find fault in this scheme. Not I, however. I view the hot dog as one of God’s gifts to man: an unrelenting source of nourishment and disposal in one compact, easy to handle package of delight.

In thinking about it, the hot dog is actually an efficient form of disposal. What should we do with excess animal parts? If not pack them into commercially marketed tubes for public consumption, what other alternative is there? If anything, the Oscar Meyers and Hebrew Nationals of the world are saving the world from the sticky situation of not having anywhere to put its excess cow tongues.

Plus, hot dogs are really, really tasty. I feel bad for the two poor birds that were hit by the deli folk’s rock.

The last straw

What classifies being a man? Is it chopping down trees with one swift swing of an axe? Or could it have something to do with killing a man with your bare hands? Or should it be mandated that in order for you to be considered a real man, you slap one of those bumper stickers on the back of your pickup telling the whole world of your prayer habits?

While all of these qualities are indeed conducive to existing as a man, the evolution into that state of being is wholly different.

Here’s a tip from the manliest of them all: Don’t use straws.

Yeah, I said it. Radical, is it not? Picture this: You sit down at a table, order your drink (which, at this point in my life cannot be legally alcoholic), and in a few minutes the servestress (or whomever) returns with a mug of frosty Coca Cola and a little plastic tube wrapped oh-so-sanitarily in paper. By tossing the straw to the side and swigging from the glass with your bare lips, you are exposing yourself to a world of potential infection from prior uses. But in essence by merely chugging from that glass you’ve said to that viral disease, “I’m not afraid of you, because a real man shouldn’t be.”

Because exams are over, this is all I have to think of.

Beads!

Last night I walked alongside a float full of kids from my church in the Clearwater Fun n Sun Holiday Parade. As we trudged through downtown among the bourgeois huddled alongside Cleveland Avenue, I realized that I never again want to be a spectator at a parade.

Starting at Crest Lake Park and moving west toward the heart of Downtown, the types of people along the parade route were clearly discernible. First we started with a high population of Mexicans to either side. This minority gradient soon developed into a large African-American crowd screaming for the candies and beads we were so graciously tossing to the side. When our float approached the true bounds of downtown, most people were Caucasians who had reached their Mecca of candy and plastic jewelry from the ground following their long pilgrimage from the local trailer park. Please make note that I’ve nothing major against any of the aforementioned minorities, it’s just that their division clearly denotes the division in the parade route.

One aspect of parading that is a commonality between all areas of Clearwater is the hostility that everyone holds for stupid strings with little plastic balls on them. After greeting ninety-nine percent of the folks whom we passed with a holly jolly “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” we were assaulted with the same rude, one-word response: “Beads!”

I don’t fault most kids for this; they’re young and don’t know better. But when 30 year old Juanita or Shaprice can only eek out one word in response to our generosity, I take it personally. You’re not getting my beads.

That is, of course, unless you’re a hot chick.

Hello Sweetheart

Today at lunch as I walked to the office to pick up my exam exemption sheet, I passed a couple of girls who were sitting on a bench outside the teacher’s auditorium. Then, some fellow passed and one of these young ladies gave him a fond, “Hello sweetheart.” I’m assuming they were friends – who says that to strangers?

Anyway, the guy who walked past merely retorted with, “Hi.” I guess when guys aren’t as intimate as girls would like, they go into a tizzy. At least, this one did. The girl who gave the initial greeting yelled angrily at this poor boy as I walked by, “What?! I’m not good enough for a ‘Hello, sweetheart?!’”

In an attempt to calm this young lady’s reservations about her relationship with others (read: to shut her up), as I passed our eyes met and with a smirk about my face, I greeted her with a simple, yet refined, “Hello sweetheart,” and kept walking.

What’s sad is the fact that that’s about the most intimate I’ve ever been with a girl. Perhaps we will meet again, whereupon I can propose to her – I think I have an outside shot with this one.