This started when I just typed in something legit to search for, then I realized it’s pretty wild that you can see the most popular searches of most categories if you wait a second after you start typing. So when I typed a “How to..” phrase into Google this morning (“How to secretly bypass a Websense server”), Google tried to finish my sentence with the most popular and frequently searched phrases that used the same words.

What is scary is that the #1 searched phrase was  “How to secretly get pregnant“.

Really ladies? This is kind of scary. Maybe this should be looked into more because If women can secretly get pregnant and are serious about this enough to research it on a mass scale, we may have a problem on our hands.

The second  most popular search was “How to secretly kill a tree“. I’m not sure I really understand why anyone would want to secretly kill a tree. What did that tree do to you, and why does it have to be secret?  I’m not really into tree killing.

The rest of the searches were pretty much what I expected, like “How to secretly grow weed“, and “How to secretly open a letter“, etc. But I can understand these being in this list. It’s just the top two that I find pretty disturbing.

Last night I ordered a pizza from Domino’s. No big deal I know. I have already told a couple of my friends how I think ordering from Domino’s Pizza online is superb. Basically, the whole experience of ordering a pizza on their website is better than any humanly way to order a pizza with the exception of being able to smell it baking in the oven.

First of all, they show you what the pizza actually looks like, even if you make a custom pizza. When you click on a topping, it throws the topping on top of the pizza so you can see what an actually real picture of that topping would look like on it. That may seem unimportant, but once you start clicking different toppings, it’s kind of addicting and you start to feel like you are King of Magical Pizza Land. It’s pretty rad. Once you decide what type of pizza you want, you enter your login info, address, and credit card info to pay, etc. and then place the order.

But this is where it gets psycho and cool at the same time.

Once the order is placed, you are presented with a screen kind of like a timeline. It’s called the “Pizza Tracker”.  It tells you totally unnecessary  information which,  for some reason, you still find interesting and important.  It’s a real-time monitor of the status of your pizza. It tells you when your pizza is being prepped, when it goes in the oven, when it’s being boxed up, and not only that, it tells you the name of the Domino’s employees who are doing these tasks for you. The final step on the Pizza Tracker is “Out for Delivery”, where it will tell you something like this:  “Jared left our store at 10:38 to deliver your pizza”.

The Pizza Tracker adds so many possibilities! I kind of wanted to wait until I saw Jared drive up and open my door as he was walking up and yell out, “Jaarrreed, you sly dog you! You got here in exactly 22 minutes, I’ve been timing you like a crazy pizza lunatic, oh and while you are at it, tell Susan to take it out of the oven a little sooner next time.”  Would he have an expression of complete bafflement?  Then I could say “It’s okay Jared. I have the Pizza Tracker.. big brother is always watching don’t be alarmed”.

But in all curiosity, what’s next Domino’s? Lets take this to the next level.  Lets get completely dope and install web cams that follow my pizza so we can watch it being made. If I see Sally not putting enough Banana Peppers on my pizza pie, I should be able to press a Red Button that gives her a low voltage shock. I would also like a Green Button that I can press if I see them put extra toppings on.  When I press the green one,  rainbow Skittles candies will drop from a tube and fall into her mouth.  (you know, simple psychology behavioral modification). I even want a webcam installed inside the oven so I can see how crispy my pizza is. And finally I would like a GPS tracker on Jared’s car so I can see if he gets lost. I don’t think this is too much to ask?

I came across this on the internet a while back and I was completely blown away. I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. I don’t know whether to laugh or feel sorry for this dude.

These are my theories:

1. He joined one of those online dating sites and wanted to impress the ladies. So he went to his room and laid out all the things that he thinks make him a really cool guy. Then he asked his mom to take a picture, and then posted it on the site.
2. He could be completely doing this just to be funny. If that’s so, then it’s hilarious.
3. He could be forced into doing this as a bet or dare, and then was blackmailed by his cousin Jed. When he didn’t comply, by not giving him his Rusty Wallace hat, the picture was then thrown onto the internet.

If anyone has a better idea let me know.

This whole Michael Jackson thing…While I’m kind of suprised about the death like everyone else, I imagined Michael Jackson dieing an old man, giving Larry King interviews about his old hits and scandals. What bugs me is all these people that used to talk so much shit about him during the whole child molesting scandal, yet now that he has died he’s the greatest thing that ever existed.  I blame the media mostly, but when it comes down to it….people realize how badass Michael Jackson really was. When I was about 8 years old, I watched the movie “Moonwalker” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095655/) like every week. I thought it was probably the coolest thing in the world at the time and I thought Michael Jackson was the coolest person in the world and was devoted to kid coolness. I know the guy is a weirdo, but i never wanted to believe the child molester thing. I just couldn’t. I think he just has some fucked up issues that we don’t understand. Billy Jean, Thriller, Beat It, Bad, the list goes on… and while I don’t know what Michael did behind closed doors at Neverland ranch, I can’t deny that some of his songs changed my life and will live forever inside us. I’m choosing to see the beauty in this, so God bless Michael for giving us those songs and for what he gave us.

So these past two weeks I’ve driven back and forth to Atlanta from Columbia multiple times and it dawned on me how completely utterly insane clueless some of my fellow drivers are on the road. Not just in the way they drive, but their complete human existence is questionable. This feeling has been brewing inside of me for a long time now, and these past two weeks have confirmed it. But don’t shrug this off as just me spewing road rage on a keyboard. I’m trying to be proactive here. Here is my roadrage shitlist and if you didn’t know, now you know.

1.  Learn what it means to be in the FAST lane and SLOW lane. There are two lanes for a reason. On the way back and from Atlanta I drove at about 80 to 85 mph. This is 10 to 15 mph over the speed limit, which requires me to drive in the fast lane. The problem is, that you have people that are going 75 mph instead of 70 mph and they seem to think they are”fast lane drivers” all of the sudden. No you aren’t. You still yield to faster drivers. But instead they stay in the lane as if it’s their legal right. If you see someone coming up on you in the fast lane then try your hardest to move over into the slow lane to let them pass. I set my cruise control and every time I have to hit the gas to slow down for your gimp ass I lose gas mileage. And then I get pissed. My term for this is called a “Double Lane Cock Block”.

2. AT LEAST go the speed limit. Just because you left your house early this morning and decide to drive slow and have a grand time doesn’t mean that I did the same. I woke up late and am trying to get to work on time and you are blocking my progress from hitting the next green light. Just because you are on a Sunday ice-cream drive doesn’t mean you are allowed to travel 20 mph on a 35 mph road. I don’t care if you are on the phone or doing your makeup or slapping somebody in the face. If I can ride my bike faster than you my road rage comes out.  The speed limit is there for a reason, not just as a limit, but as an indicator of how fast to go. And I never ever get mad when people go fast. My term for this is a “F***in Douche”.

3. Don’t ever ever ever….ever drive a PT Cruiser. Don’t even say you like PT Cruisers or I will punch you in the jaw. Not only are they the ugliest possible car ever made in the world, but they seem to magnetically attract the worst drivers around. When I see a PT cruiser, I just go ahead and suspect that the person driving is a douchebag so I take considerations ahead of time. On my way back from Atlanta I saw a bright blue PT Cruiser with wood paneling and fake chrome wheels and I thought two things. 1: I silently gagged a little bit in my throat.  2: I followed my PT Cruiser rules. Sure enough he ended up speeding up and then slowing down and then pulled a Double Lane Cock Block on me. The concept known as PT Cruiser should be abolished. Just let it go. My term for this is a PT Loser.

The 1930’s called. They said, “You’re a douche”.

*SIDENOTE* No offense to anyone that I know or that may know me who also happens to drive a PT Cruiser. Just go ahead and start looking for a new car and we’ll be gravy.

4. Come to the realization that you may be too old to drive.  The funny thing is that old people will total fuck up big time while they are driving but they always seem completely unaware that they just fucked up. Both hands on the wheel looking straight ahead completely oblivious. It’s ironic that we have rules of age for new drivers, but not for old ones. A thirteen year old kid jacked up on Ritalin could be a safer driver than some of the old people I’ve run into on the road. No offense to our nice old people and  grandmoms and pops, but sometimes you gotta take one for the team and realize it might not be safe for you to drive anymore. When you have trouble walking from your car to your front door and your glasses lenses are as think as your windshield then it might be time to hang in the towel.

Cute? ……or Deadly?

*SIDE NOTE* There are exceptions to #4.  Some old people drive fast as shit and miraculously drive perfect. Scientists have yet to explain this.

5. Fake chrome wheel covers dont’ look good. I have never understood what is going on here. Why would you imitate $2000.00 wheels with $20.00 wheels?  I’ve even seen fake spinners. Dude by putting these on your car, you are basically outright telling everyone that you are a complete poser and can’t afford what you want. On top of that by underestimating the intelligence of all other drivers who you imagine may think those are real spinners…well you are just insulting all of us. Take em off.

You must be a real balla.

Something else to keep in mind:

• Mexicans always drive slow. There could be a few reasons for this, such as: They recently got their license and the road is intimidating. They can’t read the speed limit signs. They have illegal immigrants in the back and are afraid of getting pulled over.

I haven’t written a blog in a really really long time. It feels kind of uncomfortable actually, like it might not work right. But I feel like this is one of those time when you just have to let something out. Lately I have had a slight obsession … no, lets go ahead and say full-blown obsession, with mountain biking, and I want to explain why. I’m hoping that maybe my close friends and people that know me will have more of an insight into why I’m a lunatic about it and why I love this sport so much.

Rewind to when I was 10 years old…

I used to ride my bike all day and never get tired. I know a lot of us did. For me it was groundbreaking. The feeling of having two wheels to get you anywhere you wanted to go just filled me with excitement and gave me a huge sense of freedom. I could ride wherever I wanted to, away from parents, down different neighborhoods, across jumps and down hills. Totally in control of my path.

Fast forward to last year…

I was given a brand new kickass mountain bike as payment for a website I did for a bike shop. I hadn’t ridden a bike in more than 13 years, but I figured I’d give it a try. It was a nice bike to have even if I didn’t ride it much, and I thought “hey, I can always sell it.”. I decided to hang on to it and give mountain biking a shot, obviously pumped up about having a pretty cool bike.  So I take my journey out and discovered the Harbison Forest trails first on recommendation from someone I met. I’m really pumped up thinking I’m just gonna shred these trails up like no tomorrow and it’s gonna be badass, etc.

And so…I got on the first trail I came to and rode for a few miles and it basically kicked my ass and felt awkward as hell. Even turning felt awkward. I even almost hit a tree a couple times while I was going pretty slow. But the main problem was that I was completely out of breath. I felt like I had an asthma attack or something. So I blamed it on smoking cigarettes. Fuck it. But then I remembered that my friend TJ smokes Parliments like a champ sometimes and he runs like 20 miles at a time. So I gradually came to the realization that my cardio sucked ass. Lets get one thing straight first before I continue: I hate running and jogging; could never get into it. When I run I get bored out of my mind and I start thinking about shit and I’m like “What the hell am I running for/from/to?”. It’s just not for me. I don’t work out a lot apart from my pull-up bar, push-ups, and my ab wheel. Basically what it amounted to was that I needed to get in better shape. Luckily, riding the trail was a lot of fun even though it kicked my ass, and it didn’t drive me into an insane bored stupor. It seemed completely different in mind, body, and soul than running was.

Now around this same time, my friend Jason got a new bike that was similar to mine. We decided to take up  mountain biking at the same time and started riding together. We started going on a regular basis and we made it a goal to ride every trail at Harbison and practice and get good enough to where we could go up the climbs and not have them kick our asses anymore. It was me against the trail and myself, and I couldn’t let me down this time. As I kept going riding again and again, trying different new trails over time. I could see how this was affecting me and the improvement I saw is what continued to motivate me. I started to really like mountain biking. Instead of dreading the ball-busting climbing and long miles, I would start to welcome it as a challenge. One that I wanted to complete. Instead of crappily scooting around the trail like a fucking bum, I started to feel like I really felt like I was in control and that I was starting to master my bike. But I still needed to get way better…I needed to do REAL mountain biking.

Fast forward to the present…

I think it’s the combination of things that really gives me a passion for mountain biking.  I feel 100 percent alive when I’m on the trail. It awakens a feeling inside of me that cannot be described. You could call it exhileration, but it’s more of a primal fury; one that is a combination of excitement, fear, adrenaline, determination and joy, all smushed into one feeling. Whatever you may decide to call it, it’s one of the best feelings that I have experienced in a long time. To ride miles of climbing up a mountain while looking over a beautiful view of the Appalachians feeling like you might just pass out, then ride 4 miles back down in a 20 minute pure adrenaline rush. To feel the cool shade of a singletrack trail under your wheels and seeing the trees fly by you avoiding roots and rocks and launching off of tabletops and berms. To hit that switchback wrong and fly off your bike in a crash that made you proud of your helmet. The accomplished feeling you get after riding 15 miles, crossing rivers and waterfalls and actually “making” it with just a scratch or two. The feeling as if I am 10 years old but instead of neighborhoods I have mountains and woods; instead of parents I have bosses and city life.  Theres no one thing that makes it great. It’s a combination of many things. I look back on when I first started and I can’t believe how far I’ve actually decided to take this mountain biking thing.

These days I go out of town to mountain bike on bigger and better trails. These days I push myself harder. These days I might worry more about what kind of fork or hydraulic brake I prefer, rather than worrying about making it around the trail. But one thing is for certain and will never change. I will never stop mountain biking.

I leave you with this video, so you might come closer to my view.

This all started when I was thinking about getting a fish tank. Not just a regular fish tank, but what they call a “reef tank”, or sometimes called a “Nano Reef”. But that’s beside the point and it’s not what this blog is about…

I went to a local pet store and figured I would look at their “fish” section just because I started thinking about fish ever since I became interested in getting the reef tank. I was browsing around just looking at the different aquarium sizes for sale and what not. Then I got to the section where they sell the fish. It was probably one of the most depressing things I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe it was just this store, or maybe it wasn’t. But it was just plain bad. I got to one shelf where they were keeping about 20 different beautiful fish alone, each in a glass smaller than a wine glass. Almost half of them were dead lying at the bottom of the glass. I wonder how long they had been there with no water circulation, food, and inadequate lighting (all things that fish need). Then I got to this one tank with frogs and some other strange looking fish. They all looked like they were starving and going crazy. There were about 3 of them dead at the bottom of the tank and I swear one of them looked at me and said, “Please, we will die soon. Do something”.

I know what you’re thinking…

Your thinking “But it’s just a dumb fish. They are too low on the food chain to care. They don’t even have a brain. Get over it.”

For one thing, that is not true, and what I’m about to write is not the main point I’m trying to make in this blog, BUT to clarify, most fish and other seemingly retarded sea creatures, despite what people think, have very complex social systems, can feel fear and pain, and can sense many other things that you might not know. For instance, a very small 2-inch fish called a Chromis (a type of Damsel fish many keep in aquariums) have social circles where usually many of them gang up on the smallest fish in the bunch or have disputes that can last several days over food, some are nice and some are more aggressive. The more you learn about fish, the more you learn that they all have unique personalities and habits. There are even miniature shrimp who offer services to small fish to remove certain bacteria out of their mouths, and the fish do it. They know somehow that the shrimp will clean it. Lobsters in the wild live to be around 100 years old and have nervous systems almost identical to humans except that they feel more pain because they can’t go into shock. They also care for their children exactly like Dolphins do and lead them many miles walking together under the ocean. What I’m saying is that a lot of these creatures aren’t as stupid and insubstantial as you think.

Now, with that in mind, I question why humans think we have the right to take things out of the wild and make them “pets”. Then once we make it our pet, we don’t ever consider the crappiness of the environment or unnaturalness (if that’s a word) of their situation. What makes you think a freakin Iguana wants to sit in a damn 24″ tank day and night 24/7, never get the chance to run free and catch insects or find a basking spot on a rock, and then have to stare and deal with all your friends coming over staring and prodding at it? Trust me it doesn’t.  Don’t keep a fish in a fuckin 5oz. cup. Don’t have a dog if you can’t walk it and treat it well with the attention that it needs. Don’t make an terrarium that becomes a tomb. Don’t keep a bird, who is meant to be flying free in the sky, in a damn 1-foot cage and clip it’s wings. Don’t take your cat’s claws away, those are it’s fingers. Don’t put a hermit crab in a miserable cage to die after a month (they are meant to live under the ocean). Don’t randomly kill bees because they have the potential to sting you; some people have this mentality to just kill every insect creature in sight. The list could go on and on…

It doesn’t matter how small or insignificant an animal or creature is. It’s just the principal, and it’s a mindset. A blatent disregard for nature and it’s inhabitants. It is where it is for a reason, and nature doesn’t need humans messing with it to make pets. If you do want to make something your pet, don’t do it unless you can give it almost everything they could experience in the wild, otherwise you are just breaking nature while supporting the people who are taking these animals from the wild and selling them to any moron who comes by with some money.

I find it really messed up that most people aren’t even aware that a worldwide experiment took place last night. It could possibly end up being one of the most important experiments taken place in our lifetime or even in human history. But it could also be very dangerous.

A plane’s view looking down at CERN, with a white trace over the picture where the underground tunnels are.

It took place last night in Geneva Switzerland at the highly advanced CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)facility. It was with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). 10 years in the making, and costing 40 countries over 8 billion dollars, the LHC is a worldwide project formed to answer questions that have been puzzling humanity for decades. It is attempting to “unravel the thread of the universe” and to possibly even find other dimensions through evidence of something called a Higgs Boson particle, otherwise known as the “God particle”. The crazy part is, the scientists all agree that we will no-doubt find something very groundbreaking. The experiment has shown particles that “leave our dimension” and not return. They are looking for the carrier particle called a “zee star”. Physicists think that the zee star particle may be able to move between our own three-dimensional world and other hidden dimensions. Some scientists left the project claiming that the experiment could create a black hole that would swallow up the Earth, but most scientists say that it could never happen.

The scale of the tunnel is huge. Look at the dude standing down there.

This seems like scary stuff indeed.

It could change the way a lot of us think about the universe or give humanity new ways to measure or control matter, possibly leading to anti-gravity or a form of free-energy. Many scientists claim that this experiment will lead to the next major discovery by humanity, trumping even electricity, antibiotics, and atomic energy.

What exactly is the LHC? Well, it looks like something out of Star Wars, and it’s probably the biggest man-made thing also in history. It is a huge tube buried over 300 feet in the ground that goes in a circle 17 miles long. When I say it’s big, I mean really big. They first cool the temperature down in the tube to -271 Celsius to simulate the temperature in deep space. That’s -455 F (insane cold). Then they send high powered beams of protons around the underground tube at the speed of light and the collide them with eachother and see what happens. It’s almost like little boys crashing toy cars together for fun, except they are scientists and they are…ok it’s not like that at all. It’s serious stuff, and may end up changing our lives big-time.

You can’t see Luke Skywalker in this shot, but he’s in there. It’s kind of like Where’s Waldo?

The experiments will address questions like: “what gives matter its mass?”, “what is the invisible 96% of the Universe made of?”, “why does nature prefer matter to antimatter?”, and “how did matter evolved from the first instants of the Universe’s existence (the big bang theory)?”, just to name a few. I hope it finds out something cool and good, instead of something to be used as our next weapon.

So yesterday I saw a person who reminded me of a Fraggle. I said “hey, that girl kinda looks like a Fraggle“, and the person with me was too young to have experienced the wonder known as “Fraggle Rock”. They said, “Fraggle? what the hell is that?”. I just shook my head in wonder and thought to myself, “that’s a shame…”

True younger 80’s kids will remember them, and if for some reason you don’t, you were depraved. It was a really cool show. It aired from 1983 to 1987 on HBO first and then on some other stations later. It was all the creation of the famed mastermind Jim Henson.

So while us kids were thinking we were just watching a cool kid’s show, Henson had other ideas. He had a vision, and he wanted the progam to have an effect on kids in a special way. Henson’s vision was to create a world with a complex system of relationships between different “races” of creatures, comparable to the human world, where each group didn’t know how interconnected and important they were to one another. This made the program entertaining and amusing while, at the same time, it seriously explored complex issues of prejudice, spirituality, personal identity, environment, and social conflict. Fraggle Rock refused to simplify or “dumb-down” any individual issue, and instead showed the consequences and difficulties of actions and relationships. So yeah, it was pretty deep, but we never knew it…

Here are the main Fraggle characters:

Gobo

Gobo is the main character or the “leader”. He was the really level-headed one. Most of the time he went on expedition to explore the outer caves of Fraggle Rock. He felt it was his obligation. On the show he had a Canadian accent.

Mokey

Mokey was the tree-hugger, artistic hippy. She always recited poetry and painted. She would always help people see the “bright side” of things.

Red

Red was totally opposite of Mokey. She is super “A.D.D.” energy. She is really athletic and into sports. She can also be kind of insulting to others at times, but she doesn’t mean to be.

Wembley

Wembley is kind of my favorite, I don’t know why. I always felt sorry for him because he was such a pansy. Whoever did the personality for him really made the character believable. He is always nervous about everything and  indecisive about everything because he never wants to step on anyone’s toes.

Boober

Boober was the dude that always depressed and worried about everything. The main thing he always wanted to do is “wash socks”. He’s pretty much always negative, is a hypochondriac, and is allergic to most things, especially dogs.

There were a lot of other Fraggles that were in the show too like: Cantus, Convincing John, Henchy Fraggle, Large Marvin, Marlon Fraggle, Side Bottom, The Storyteller, Uncle Matt (the traveller), and The World’s Oldest Fraggle.

But let us not forget the small Doozers. The Doozers were little construction workers that built all these crazy little towers out of crystal. No one really knows what the towers were for or why they existed, but I think maybe the Fraggles ate some of the crystals. There were a lot of particular Doozer characters, but mostly you just always saw them working around the tunnels.

Why are they building this? No one knows, just accept it.

Last but not least, we can’t forget about Marjorey the Trash Heap. See…anything outside of the Fraggle Rock caves was considered “outer space”. Outer space was inhabited by Gorgs who were big tall creatures, and Marjorey was also outdoors on the edge of the garden. Marjorey was literally a being composed of trash and leaves, but was considered the “wise oracle” to the Fraggles. They didn’t worship her, but they would go to her for advice and guidance to solve the problems that Fraggle Rock faced.

Marjorey with her rat advisors in the Gorg’s garden.

I hope this blog brings back some memories for you if you were a fan of Fraggle Rock back in the day. If you never watched it, then you were just introduced to one of the best kid’s shows of all time. I think you can still buy the DVDs these days. Fraggle Rock is something that I would love for my children to watch one day, so if you have a kid, think about picking them up for them to watch. They will love you for it later.

You can buy all the seasons HERE. (Amazon.com)