My Greatest Fear

Giant Squid, hands down.

What's that? You're laughing? You ever hear of a little guy called Captain Nemo, or Jack Sparrow, or Sperm Whales, or Samuel L. Jackson's character from the movie Sphere? Those guys are all terrifed of giant squid as well. Who's laughing now?

Some of you might think that living every day in mortal fear of being attacked by a giant squid is irrational, even silly. Some of you might roll your eyes because you think it is very unlikely to be pulled into the depths of the ocean by one of these gargantuan nautical beasts, and therefore it's hardly worth even giving it AH thought, let alone many thoughts that would necessitate an entire fear. Even more of you might scoff because you think giant squid are a "myth," relics of the rumors spread around by sailors in the days of yore (yore=~1600-1800). Well, in the words of the great Kenny Powers (Easbound and Down), listen up you beautiful bitches, I'm about to bitch-slap you with some truth.

Giant squids are not only as real as they are horrifying, they are everyone's problem. Don't believe me? This story was recently shared with by via link by my 2 of my good friends, separately, as they are both aware of my fear. They take the majority view of poking fun at my terror, and I believe they shared this with me in jest.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99FNF0O0&show_article=1

Jumbo squid invade San Diego shores, spook divers

After reading the ensuing story, however, I proceeded to defecate myself.

For those of you who were too lazy to click on the link, read the headline next to the picture. For those of you who are too lazy to do that, let me give you a quick summary of the story. There are squid, in San Diego that are attacking swimmers and divers for no apparant reason except that they enjoy attacking people.

Consider this "hypothetical" scenario, which is all too real for many San Diegans. . . San Diego-ites . . .whatever the hell they call themselves. You are swimming at the beach with your friends, sharing a few brewskis, a few laughs, havin a nice little Sunday-Funday, and you get a little too far off shore. Or you go on what you think is going to be a delightful little shore dive, you strap on your tank and mask, hop in and kick around for a while, admiring the enchanting underwater forests of kelp. All of a sudden BAM! A 10 foot squid comes out of nowhere and clamps onto your FACE with its 10, count 'em 10, tentacles!

Some of you skeptics out there might be thinking, "oh, it's ok, it's not like it's a shark, I'll just peel the tentacles off of me, the squid will realize it's made a mistake, we'll have a laugh together and we will swim out separate ways in peace and I will continue staring at some kelp, maybe even gather some to take home and grind into some shampoo or eat in an exotic homemade salad."

EHHHH. Wrong again, suckafish! These squids tentacles, if not ghastly enough on their own, are filled with thousands of little suction cups. Oh, did I mention that each little suction cup is filled with tiny razor-sharp razor things that will tear the shit out of you. Why? No big reason, just so the squid can more easily devour your flesh in its huge, also-razor sharp hideous beak-mouth. Or, just to cut you up cause the squid is a sadistic sociopath and it makes it feel like a bigger cepholapod to cut up its victims. Maybe their fathers didn't love them enough. Who knows? Who cares?

The truth is that there are roving gangs of squid terrorizing San Diego as we speak. Who's to say they will stop there--why not Huntington Beach, Manhattan Beach, Malibu, San Francisco BAY? Ponder that for a minute. Not so hilarious or irrational now, is it?

Some of you might still be skeptical, thinking, "ok, I'm still not that worried about a 10 foot squid, even if it fucks people up for fun." We'll I'm about to drop a bomb on your complacent, blissfully ignorant world now, so you might want to duck and cover if you are near a school desk.

They have found not one, but multiple GIANT squid out there as well. Check out this link: http://www.cryptomundo.com/wp-content/ap_squid_061222.jpg.

What's that? You want a little scale by which to judge that crackin? Here you go: http://www.extremescience.com/images/giant-squid.jpg. That squid, caught by Japanese scientists, was roughly 40 feet long, and was not even fully grown.

Here's another image that haunts my dream:

This squid is just a toddler, according to reports. Do you want a moody, self-absorbed creature of this size swimming below you and decide to play with you? Have you ever seen a toddler get mad at one of its toys? I rest my case there.

Giant squid, or Architeuthis hartingii (which is Latin for "holy fucking shit that's the scariest thing I've ever seen!") can grow up to about 60 feet, according to science. They fight WHALES for fun.

As if that wasn't enough, there are even bigger squid out there, whose technical scientific name is COLASSAL SQUID. These make the giant squid look like a bunch of pansy bitches at a massive 8o feet! They have 8 arms and 2 longer tentalces, each inch of which can grow to over 10 inches (think about it). Their eyes can be up to a FOOT in diameter. How would you like to be swimming and see THAT looking at you? That would make the T-Rex eye from that scene in Jurassic Park look like a kitten's peeper.

I don't know about you, but that makes me whimper like a dog in a Chinese restaurant, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Compare my "irrational" fear of giant squid to the most common fear for people, speaking in front of a crowd. While arguably frightening in its own right, speaking in front of a crowd is not going to grab you with a 30 foot tentacle, pulvarize you and chomp on you with a beak the size of an elephant's torso. You don't walk into an assembly as a key-note speaker carrying a harpoon, I'll tell you that much (unless, of course, you are giving a lecture about the history and development of the harpoon, but then it's more for educational rather than protective purposes).

I hope this has knocked some sense into you poo-poo'ers out there. Giant squid are a real, terrifying thing, and I will take my fear to the grave. As for me, I'm going to go change my pants and put down the rubber sheets before I go to sleep tonight.

Mikee P

The New What It Is (suckafish!)

I thought about whether I should address the sudden, drastic and possibly awkward changes that I made to the blog, or if I should have just continued writing as if nothing was new.

On the one hand, I don't know if many people even read this, and thus if anyone would notice or care, save a select few. That would seem to point in the direction of not taking the time to acknowledge the changes, and would suggest that I am just doing it because I am bored or because I need to somehow explain myself to, well, myself.

On the other hand, there are, I hope, at least a few people who read this blog semi-regularly. For those who do, coming to the blog and seeing a new title, 2 new pictures, a profile, and about 10 new apps on the side might be a little bit like having a good friend who you see every day, and one day you go over and see them and they've shaved their head, gotten a nosejob and braces, tattooed an eagle on their face and gotten those contacts that make your eyes look like cat-eyes. And they just start talking to you as if there's nothing new or different.

To me, that would be a little awkward, might kind of make you go "huh," so I decided that I would post this short little acknowledgement. "What It Is" is now called "What It Is, Sukafish?!". The concept is the same, it's about random things, random stories and interesting ways to waste time, but as I am a new blogger, I wasn't fully aware of all the cababilities/gadgets you can add to your blog to make it (hopefully) more interesting/interractive.

I first started this blog knowing that I wanted to blog, and that was about it. I knew I was probably going to make it about the random things I have done, seen, observed, etc. After about a 2 week trial run, I feel like I'm starting to close in on a little bit more of a focused theme.

I thought about what I enjoy in a blog/website. When I am sitting in the law school library for hours, or just rounding hour 2 of a 3 hour lecture, what do I crave the most? The answer is obvious--something that is funny or interesting enough to hold my attention for a while to take my attention off the mind-numbingly boring crap that is being spewed at me.

Thus, the new and improved What It Is blog. It still features random stories and shares good movies, books, songs, links. However, I'd like to draw your attention to the new features of What It Is, Sukafish?!

First of all, you will note the pictures. The first one is a dead blowfish that me and my friends found on a beach while in La Paz, Mexico. This one one of the most memorable, fun trips I can recall, but that is another story for another time. Anyway, it's not like it died with the sunglasses on--this isn't Weekend at Bernie's. We put the glasses on the fish. Why? Good question. I guess we thought it would be funny. And it was, at least to us.

The purpose of the addition of this picture to What It Is is four-fold: 1) I changed the name to What It Is Sukafish!? and it's one of the only pictures of a fish that I have. "Sukafish" is a saying that was coined by my brother Toogie (not his real name in case you were horrifed at my parents) and his best friend who is our brotha from anotha motha (and father), who I will call Booget (he knows why). If you want to know why, it's because one summer me him and Toogie were all working doing oddjobs for my grandma, Nans at her place of work. What we didn't realize was that the work entailed scrubbing stacks and stacks of chairs with cleaning chemicals in a small confined closet with little-to-no ventilation. The ensuing 8 hours a day of fumes led us to come up with some really weird shit which we found hilarious at the time, one of which being the term "Booget." As I recall, booget is a homonym whose dual meanings are "a fried fish nugget (like a chicken nugget, but fish)", and "a slang term referring to Laotians (people from Laos)". It's not meant to be a derrogatory term, but rather merely a descriptive one--we were young, and bored--I think I speak for all of us when I say we have absolutely nothing against Laotians or the country of Laos--I daresay I know hardly anything about this country or its people save that it is in Southeast Asia near Vietnam and Cambodia. Feel free to enlighten me if you know more.

Anyway, Toogie and Booget coined the term "Sukafish" when playing a videogame. It is a general term whose meaning is closest to that of "sucka!" that you can insert at the end of any sentance to add a little sass/pizazz. Example: "How was work today?" "It was fine . . . SUKAFISH!" or "Who did you vote for?" "If you must know, I voted for Obama . . . . SUCKAFISH!" You get the idea. I added Sukafish to the title because it is a term that is near and dear to me, and it gives the blog some attitude, which I felt it needed. And now you all know about the term, "sukafish!" and can use it as you see fit--I know Toogie's goal was to have it spread around the globe.

2) reason 2 for the fish picture. As I said before, the picture was taken in La Paz, during spring break of sophomore year of college--one of my favorite trips. It's one of my favorite because of all the memories (and lackthereof, in some instances). It serves as a reminder to all of us that life is made up of memories, and you need to remember the good times, the good friends, and all the fun you have because, in the end, I believe that is what is important.

3) On a similar vein, the fish picture is symbolic of this blog--it takes something relatively uninteresting/commonplace, like a dead fish, and makes it hilarious/titilating (by adding sunglasses). I'm not saying that you need to add sunglasses to everything to make it more interesting, but the point I'm trying to make here is that this blog is all about taking relatively commonplace, everyday experiences and finding/creating the humor or significance in them. Not everyone is going to walk on the fucking moon--especially since there hasn't been a manned mission there since 1972. Most of us will be pretty successful (some you, extremely) and not famous outside of our local bowling alleys. But there is great humor and significance in each of our lives--you just have to look for it.

4) Finally, and again semi-related, I want to blog to be a reminder not to take things too seriously. The fish is dead, but it can still be funny if you put sunglasses on it--again, I cite Weekend at Bernie's. Obviously, there are some things that are very important to take seriously, like open-heart surgery, the economic crisis facing the US and the world, and giant squid attacks.

But just because there are serious things out there doesn't mean you have to be serious all the time. I'm happiest when I'm not having to be serious, and I think a lot of people feel the same. That is why so many people love reading FML or watching "Leave Britney Alone" or seeing Bruno. Who doesn't browse funny websites or play mindless online games when theyre in class or at work or landing a Boeing 747? Exaclty.

Thus, this blog will both serve as a means of distraction in-and-of-itself, but it will also be featuring what I consider to be great means of distraction that I want you to know about as well, so that you don't have to sit and fret all day long about how California's budget cuts 12 billion in funding to such essential services as public education and Medi-Cal, and really only pushes the problem down the road and might culminate in the entire state government collapsing. You can still fret about this, but take 5 minutes off. Listen to this song from Monty Python's Life of Brian, sung by a man who is being crucified next to Brian, who is mistaken for Jesus--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo, it pretty much sums it up.

Wow, I really wrote a lot more about the fish picture than I thought I would--I guess that's the English/psychology major/law student in me--I basically have been trained my entire academic life to find meaning in the smallest, stupidest thing and ramble about it for pages and pages.

Anyway, another new picture is the Mikee P picture. For those of you who might be a little slow, this is me. I don't remember what I am staring at, but it looks like it was intriguing/confusing. Anyway, thought it might be good to put a name with the face.

You might also notice that I have added the "subscribe" feature. If you do this, What It Is, Sukafish?! will show up on your homepage, like igoogle or yahoo home. Each new post will have a link, so that you don't have to always search the blog or wait for me to notify you of an update.

I also added a little "about me" section, in case you wanted to know more about yours truly (me, to the lay-person). If you feel like you know too much already, too bad, because you've only seen the tip of the iceberg, SUKAFISH! Below that, is the archive, as always, where you can search for old posts, in case you missed one or stumbled upon this later on and want to read more. Below that is a "search this blog" feature, which should be pretty self-explanatory to all of you who speak English. At the very bottom of the right-column is a cool feature that I discovered and added in the spirit of this blog's dedication to distraction: How Are People Wasting Their Time? It is a link to the most watched youtube videos--thus, you should be getting to watch some pretty interesting stuff, and you might have a few more things to shoot the shit about with friends/co-workers/therapists/pet parrots.

At the very bottom of the blog, below all of the posts, I have added a permanent and hopefully ever-growing list of my favorite websites on which to waste time/be entertained. On there right now is

hulu.com, where you can watch select movies/tv shows for free, such as It's Always Sunny in Philedelphia, The Simpsons, SNL, and a variety of movies.

IMDB.com is a database of every movie ever made, cross-referenced by actor, director, writer, etc. Basically, if you want to know anything about any movie, or see what your favorite actor has acted in their career, use IMDB.

Addicting Games is a website dedicated to fun, easy, and often mindless games you can play online for free. I recommend Pac Xon or Monster Evolution to start--both are great if you still need to pay some attention to whatever you are doing, but want something to occupy that ADHD side of you while doing it--great for class, customer service calls, and driving a semi-truck.

The Onion, if you don't already know, is a hilarious fake news source--I consider it to be the greatest source of modern satire in existence. Literally everything in each edition is laugh-out-loud hilarious and spot-on. In addition to fake newspaper articles, there are fake radio feeds and fake TV news stories. You could spend days on this site and never stop laughing. Give it a shot.

Slate Magazine is kind of like the Onion, but real news. It is real news written by funny people in a funny way--read it if you like being actually informed and up-to-date but are looking to an alternative to the horribly bland standard news sites out there.

Funny Or Die is a website similar to youtube created by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay--it features hilarious videos. I recommend the Landlord and Good Cop, Baby Cop to get started.

Finally, the Fail Blog, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is an incredibly simple and funny site. It features pictures and captions of things that have "failed" at what they attempt to do. It is hard to describe, but worth your time, so check it out.

Anyway, this was a lot longer post than I intended--and to think I wasn't even going to mention the changes at all. I hope the re-vamped look and content of What It Is, Sukafish?! make it even more enjoyable and help to facilitate your need to distract yourself when life is getting to boring or heavy.

As I have stated before, I would love it if you readers would share similar websites, videos, new movies or artists, and/or stories with me and the other readers--another hope I have is that this site can become a forum of great entertainment and time-wasting, and as I have said before, I am always on the lookout for new and funny/distracting things.

So, let me leave you all now to contemplate the changes that have taken place here at What It Is, Sukafish?!. Just like when Mount Rushmore was re-carved to add in Teddy Roosevelt's face over the lesser-accomplished Millard Fillmore's (I think they had to ship in extra granite from Italy), it's the same basic idea, but much more improved and worth visiting.

Take it easy, everyone. Try not to get too focused in life.

Mikee P

Also, please note the important change in the blog's URL: it is now http://whatitissuckafish.blogspot.com/, no longer whatitis916.blogspot.com. Please pass this on.

When An Old Lady Screams F*$% You, You Best Get Out The Way

One day when I was 4 years old, I was out playing in the backyard. I'm not saying there was only one day when I was 4 when I did this, I'm just focusing on one particular day here. I don't remember exactly what I was playing--probably getting into some typical 4 year old mischief like climbing the trees, kicking the soccer ball around or playing "tease the rattlesnake," where you and a group of others take turns trying to provoke a rattlesnake until the point of striking. There were a lot of rattlesnakes around my yard, which kind of makes me wonder why my parents let us play out there alone at age 4 while they were at work all day. No one ever got bit, though which was really lucky, or it could have had to do with the fact that I think they were earthworms and not rattlesnakes. I always get the two mixed up. . . which one do you eat?

Anyway, I was out there harassing rattlesnakes or earthworms, or whatever, and my dad called me over, and told me to sit down and listen. "Son, you're gonna see a lot of things in your life. You're not always going to know what to do, and I can't always be there to hold your hand and tell you how to handle every situation. But there's one thing I can tell you--when and old lady screams F*#@ you, you best get the %&@# out of her way."

After I stopped crying my dad let me get back to playing in the yard, and I never really thought about that day until a couple of weeks ago.

When I'm not living anywhere else, which is most of the time, I live in San Francisco. For those of you who also live in San Francisco, my "neighbs" if you will (shout out here to my original Neighb, who is now also living in San Francisco and my actual Neighb as well), you are likely aware of the 47/49 line Muni buses that travel up and down Van Ness. These buses run the same course from Fisherman's Wharf pretty much all the way to Mission-ish, and then the split off--but for a good chunk of the route, they are interchangeable and so it doesn't matter which one you catch. And as with most of the Muni lines, you get quite an eclectic bunch of fellow passengers when you choose this bus as your means of getting from point A to point B.

This is often one of the joys of public transportation, if you are into the whole people-watching thing, or the whole reflecting-on-how-much-of-an-amazing-testament-it-is-to-the-American-Melting-Pot-that-so-many-different-people-can-coexist-in-such-a-small-area thing, or the whole being-smashed-between-the-short-loud-woman-on-the-cell-phone-and-the-huge-bald-dude-with-B.O.-for-20-blocks thing (I personally enjoy the third one the most--uh . . . ah . . . I mean . . . ).

Anyway, before you get the wrong idea (I don't actually have a bus fetish), back to the wise words that my good old dad had the foresight to pass onto me when I was just a youngster and couldn't appreciate until 20 years later.

One day, I was walking to the bus. Just to clarify again, there wasn't just one day that I was walking to the bus--this happens every day, I'm just focusing on one day in particular here. I was walking to the bus, and I got to the bus stop.

The end.

Ok, just kidding. That would be one of the worst stories ever, and I do mean ever. I mean it has a beginning, technically a middle, and an end, but man, otherwise it just blows. Where's the antagonist? Where's the rising action and the climax? Where is the character development? No, I wouldn't waste your time with that kind of bush-league crap-story. Please forgive me and read on.

So I got to the bus stop, and, as is my custom, I checked that little screen that tells you when the next bus is coming. I forget what it said, I know it was between 5 and 99 minutes, probably more in the ball park of 7 to 11 mins if you forced me to narrow it down. Now, I don't know about you, but I do NOT like waiting at a bus stop for more than 3 minutes tops, especially if I'm only riding it say, 10-15 blocks. At that point, I can usually walk to the place where I am headed and either beat the bus I was waiting for, or get there right at the same time.

And at least walking, you get some exercise and feel productive, can I get an amen? I know there are many of you who would heartily, and possibly violently, disagree with me. And I see your point--it is kind of stupid to try to walk all that way when the bus is clearly on the way, and you don't get there any faster, and you could be sitting rather than walking. But for some reason, to me it just feels like I'm acomplishing something by walking, even if it literally does nothing in the way of saving time. Maybe I should take that as I sign that I need to lead a significantly more productive life, and do whatever version of that I think I should.

If it at all makes it seem less stupid, I usually take it on a stop-by-stop basis, re-evaluating how close the bus is each time--if it is very close, I will actually give in and just wait. This method can backfire, though, if you are cutting it close (like I tend to do) and the bus actually passes you when you are between stops, come to a halt at the stop 20 feet ahead of you, and pulls away right before you are close enough to try to make it. Then, it's like, who has 2 thumbs and feels like a total jack-ass? This guy!

So on this particular day, I saw the bus at my normal stop was 7 minutes away, and I started walking to the next bus stop. I was listening to my ipod and it was early in the day, so by the time made it to the next stop, I was kind of spacing out, probably reminiscing about harassing rattlesnakes and resisting the urge to bust out into the Stand Still and Pump Both Fists Dance to the song I was listening to. By the time I made it to the stop, I was in my own world, barely aware of what was going on around me.

That made my surprise all the more palpable when I heard someone scream "F$@#!!!" at the top of their lungs a single time. No sentance, no string of expletives, just a single F-bomb so loud I heard it over the Eve 6 blasting in my headphones.

I looked around the bus stop, but no one was there but a little old lady sitting on one of the fold-out seats clutching a cane, her little old legs dangling above the cement as they were too short to reach all the way. I remember thinking there was no way that bellowing F&#$ came out of that sweet little 80 year old bat's mouth--it must have been someone from an apartment above that I didn't see.

I shrugged it off as the bus pulled up and we both got ready to board. What you need to know here that buses in San Francisco have the ability to "kneel", i.e. lower hydraulically so that people with disabilities have an easier time boarding. Generally, the driver will do this upon request or when it is blatatntly obvious that the person needs help.

I hopped on first, cause who wants to wait on the curb for an old lady with a cane to get on before you? Now, either the bus was too crowded, or he was in a hurry and not paying total attention, or something, but for whatever reason, the driver just didn't see this lady's cane and the fact that she needed a little extra help getting on. I was about to point it out to him when all of a sudden this tiny, frail, elderly woman screams "Lower the F&%#ing bus you f&$#ing asshole! I need to get on!"

I am not joking or exaggerating this part. Everyone on the bus kind of stopped and looked up at the front, wondering if they actually just heard our driver get shut down by an old bag with a cane. The driver, stunned as everyone else, kind of tried to sputter a pseudo-friendly comment to brush off the insult, like "Hey, sorry, darlin, you know all you got to do is ask."

"I shouldn't have to ask, I'm an old lady," the woman retorted, climbing onto the bus and grabbing an empty seat that had been vactated by a grown man in a suit fearing her wrath and fleeing her path. Most of the time, the story would end there--we would all have been shocked, but laughed about it when we got to work/school and told everyone this minor incident that occurred. But it wasn't over yet, not by a damn sight.

This old lady must have been pissed at this driver or, possibly, she was actually trying to provoke him because she just sat there for 3 blocks saying "you're a F%#@in asshole," over and over again to the driver. Now, I usually get a huge kick out of an unusual and absurd situation like an old lady cussing out a bus driver, so I paused my ipod and paid attention, but I don't think anyone saw what happened next coming.

There was another old lady sitting across from Old-Lady-F-Bomb, and she must have a son that's a bus driver or something because she got really pissed at the cursing old lady, and she said "You need to shut the F%#$ up."

Not phased in the slightest, the first old lady turns on the second one and screams her loudest "Fu@# you!" yet at her. And, not to be outdone by the first old lady with a dirty mouth, the second came back with a hearty "No, F$@% you!"

At this point, I think no one on the bus knew whether to burst out laughing or jump in the middle and try to break up what would have turned out as the slowest rumble in the world. Seriously, what would you have done? Finally, the driver decided he'd had enough of trying to get a grip on the cognitive dissonance of sweet-looking old ladies screaming some heavy-duty profanity, and threw the first old lady off the bus at the next stop.

Not literally--that would have really topped the story off to have seen a fiesty elderly lady get thrown from a moving bus.

In the eerie calm that followed the F-bomb-dropping-old-ladys-ejection, I thought back to that fateful day 20 years earlier that my dad had uttered those words and had to wonder--what the holy hell had happened to him to make me warn me about these situations?

Meditate on that.

Mikee P

Random Stuff:

If you havent seen it yet, check out The Fail Blog at http://failblog.org/. Seriously good time waster at work, and there are some that will make you laugh out loud.

The Best Eve 6 Song, "Anytime," which can be heard here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwcFu9Kewo. (For more on this band, please refer to my balanced and neutral evaluation in the blog post "Sucks to Be White and Love Dancing" http://whatitissuckafish.blogspot.com/2009/07/sucks-to-be-white-and-love-dancing.html).

Old But Classic Will Ferrell Clip: When he is "The Architect" from the 2003 MTV Movie Awards Introduction--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra5-H9ZBS1U&feature=related. A great line, "Ergo . . . concordantly . . . vis a vis. . . you know what, I have no idea what I am saying. I just thought it would make me sound cool."

Another one of my comedic heros, Chris Farley, in my favorite clip of all time: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&tab=soapbox&vid=aec9c00f-a642-459a-9140-4b63f831f251. I miss him.

Everyone's favorite angry old lady--the Wedding Crasher's grandma. She doesn't hold a candle to the one on the bus, though. http://www.entertonement.com/clips/fjxmnzglfq--I-can-do-it-myself-asshole.

Again, please feel free to share random stuff with me. I love a good laugh and a good timewaster.

With Your Powers Combined, An Inconvenient Hilarity

I know there are those of you out there that think global warming is not a laughing matter. I'm here to tell you it is.

There's multiple reasons why, if you really think about it. I'm sure if most of you stopped and thought about global warming, you'd be able to come up with 2 or 3 reasons why its hilarious. I'm sure some of you are laughing about it right now, on the inside, and a few of the naughtiest of you are actually chuckling out loud.

Let me just say something to you Gaia-haters out there who did laugh out loud at your own sick imaginings of why global warming might be a laughing matter:

Gaia, or to the lay-person, "Mother Earth" is weeping right now because of your actions. If you don't even know who that is, then you are a bastard who probably goes around spraying 2 cans of Pam/spray paint/Redding's Whipped Cream at a time straight up into the air just for the fun of it. You probably drive a Hummer with twin-chainsaws on either side through entire square-miles of the rainforest, chopping down trees and running over all kinds of peacocks, insects, and disease-curing fungi, all the while pumping hundreds upon hundreds of grams per kilometer of Co2 emissions into the atmosphere. You probably get some kind of sick satisfaction from hiding all of the Fair Trade coffee at Starbucks way back behind the other coffees so that no one will buy them even if they want to.

You probably even eat non-compostable food like twinkies that you keep in custom-made single-serving styrofoam containers, which you throw into local creeks or playgrounds after you are done consuming your death-snack like a jackass instead of recycling them like everyone knows you should.

(Disclaimer: Don't actually try to recycle styrofoam containers. It's not that I care at all--I just don't want to be held responsible for the severe emotional distress you will likely suffer after you try this and a hippie or wannabe-hippie sternly lectures you for 10 minutes about how they can't believe you don't know what you can or cannot recycle. This lecture also has a high likelihood of leading to severe boredom, as it digresses into a self-righteous rant--not even necessarily to you anymore, but just anyone who will or will not listen--about how they cannot believe there are people out there who don't recycle at all! With all we know about global warming, they will say, how could a person not recycle? It just goes to show what a nation of consumers we are, and we don't even realize it.

At this point, in the lecture, you most likely will zone out, or actually fall asleep--this can lead to additional physical as well as emotional trauma, especially if you were standing, walking, sitting with dangerous tools or animals in your hands, or driving a vehicle--though, I really don't know how or why you were trying to recycle anything whilst driving. The point is, you will be very sorry you tried to recycle styrofoam, and probably will regret even opening that twinkie, and I don't want you coming back and blaming me).

Which reminds me of what I was yelling about (you might not have even been aware I was raising my voice since you are only reading this, but trust me, I was yelling), if you are opening the twinkie and trying to recycle styrofoam, you are one of those bastards who doesn't know who Mother Earth (or Gaia, as she is more affectionately known by I have no idea who, but probably anyone who clings to ancient Greek mythology) is.

Gaia is a hot Native-American-ish woman with a gold headband a la Wonder Woman who sometimes shows up when Captain Planet needs additional help battling such villians as Hoggish Greedly, Sly Sludge, or Captain Pollution--his grotesque, pollution-powered foil. If you don't know what I am talking about, you probably didn't grow up in the late 80s/early 90s, and you missed out on one hell of a quality cartoon. Here is a link you can click to find out more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet. This should clear up any confusion.

So back to why global warming can be funny.

I just unwittingly (or was it?) mentioned one reason I came up with--it gives us an excuse to revisit the show Captain Planet, and all of its campy gloriousness. This show was as hilarious as it was uninformative.

I think it really confused the hell out of kids, "so . . . let me get this straight. . . . if we all touch rings together and say one of the ancient 4 elements (and the lamest-ass possible 5th one--Heart? Give me a break) out loud, a giant green man will appear and kick the crap out of unnecessarily evil bad-guys who gratuitously pollute the Earth just for shits and giggles?" No amount of public service announcements at the end of episodes designed to give kids practical avenues for saving the planet could undo the knot of whimsical bull-plop that each episode itself created. If anything, it probably directly and significantly made the problem worse because kids sat inside all saturday morning watching this show and eating twinkies out of disposable styrofoam containers and, instead of recycling them, waited around for the styrofoam to turn into a pollution-monster so Captain Planet could show up and smite it.

Also, I don't want to get started on that Heart kid (the 5th Planeteer with the "awesome" power of "heart"), but I can't help it. Heart is probably the least badass 5th element they could have added. Think of how suh-weet the other ones are--earth, wind, fire, and water. Each one could seriously wreck your proverbial shit on its own, let alone all combined. Even only combining 3 elements--Earth Wind and Fire, could create a seriously groovy song. (Such as, Let's Groove).

But heart. Love--really? That's your weapon? What, does the kid act all into the bad guys and then stop calling them for no reason so they feel bad about themselves? I guess in the hands of an immature teenage girl, love can be a formidable power, but it hardly stacks up to the sheer destructive force of a tonrado or a rock-bashing.

They also made the Heart-kid (or as he's known on the show, Ma-Ti) about as lame as he could possibly be. He's a 12 year old Brazillian that telepathically communicates with animals--sounds like a semi-decent Disney movie plot, but a pretty unimpressive Pollution-Battling Warrior. Maybe, maybe, Heart would be tight if he did something crazy and heart-related, like he actually ate the hearts of his enemies, or even performed risky and unncessary heart-surgeries on them under the guise of being a 3rd-world doctor.

But no, we are stuck with the whiney twerp who just goes around feeling empathetic towards everyone, including his enemies, and petting his damn monkey-friend. Not only must this bug the crap out of the tougher, more useful Planeteers, I bet that monkey probably carries around all kinds of fleas and lice and ebola, which is irritating and dangerous to everyone involved.

I guess Captain Planet getting ebola from the pet Capuchin of the weakest member of his own team would really be a tragically ludicrous way for him to be defeated, and would thus be a global-warming situation that would warrant laughter.

Another obvious reason why global warming can be hilarious is that it gives us a chance to listen Al Gore's astute and often well-timed acerbic witticisms in such films as An Inconvenient Truth. I've heard of dry humor, but this guy takes the jokes, Sham-Wow's em, salts em, bakes them for 18 hours in a kiln, places them into ziplock sealed bags and salts em again before dishing em out--I'm talkin' dry!

Anyway, if you are interested in 2 visual representations that offer drastically different approaches to solving the hilarious crisis of global warming--one that highlights the effectiveness of seemingly minor acts of individual responsibility like checking your tires' air pressure frequently, buying products with less packaging, and changing light bulbs, and another that emphasizes the lesser-taken route of enlisting in a coderie of multi-cultural ring-possessing teenagers that can summon metallic green super heros to battle pollution-bent foes--then check out Captain Planet and the Planeteers and An Inconvenient Truth, respectively.

Either way, it will help your chances of scoring with the hottest Earth-spirit you and I have ever seen, Gaia.

In conclusion, let's all try to live in harmony with the ozone. Recall the age-old motto of our 1960s bretheren, Shave the Whales--all that hair can be used to help the lagging wig industry--and remember, THE POWER IS YOURS!

Mikee P

If you are actually interested in doing what you can to stop global warming, here is a simple yet the only truly effective method--stop doing anything--consume no more energy, and create no more waste--don't even die ever because your body will have to be decomposed. Since that's probably impractical for most of you, here is what others have suggested: http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/.

Theme-Appropriate Quote:

Hippie: You can't, like, own property man.

Professor Farnsworth: I can. But that's because I'm not a penniless hippie.

(Futurama, "The Problem with Popplars")

Al Gore (after the universe imploded): "I don't know where we are, but I know dang sure where we aren't--the universe."

(Futurama, "Anthology of Interest I" voice actually performed by Vice President Al Gore--what did I tell you--humor as dry as a 68 year old Miami sunbather's skin, right?)

An Inconvenient Truth: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Captain Planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Planet_and_the_Planeteers

Gaia: http://thatissophat.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/captainplanet7.jpg

Futurama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama