Head of the Class

So I see where the collective intelligence of teenagers was raised slightly yesterday. Seems a budding young genius went head to head with the Batman coaster at Six Flags over Georgia and came out a head shorter.

Naturally, the media is playing up the sensationalist aspect of this story – Teen Decapitated by Thrill Ride – and is generally ignoring the responsibility angle. It wasn’t until today that I saw any account that mentioned the fact that the boy had to climb TWO separate six-foot fences emblazoned with warning signs in order to get under the tracks.

Two.

Once under the tracks, he jumped up to try and touch the feet of the riders passing by, thereby learning that Mr. Darwin often employs Mr. Newton.

I hear the ticking of the countdown until this kid’s parents show up with some bottom-feeder attorney to try and sue the park for negligence. They’ll claim that SFoG didn’t do enough to prevent this, and they had to have a closed-caskets funeral as a result.

Did I mention there were two fences?

It would be nice if the parents released a statement admitting that their son was a moron in general, and this doesn’t really come as a surprise; I won’t wait underwater, though. It’s obviously tough to lose a child, but to lose a child in such a spectacularly tragic manner, where it’s obvious that it was entirely his fault, has got to be even tougher. You can’t really expect a whole lot of sympathy in that case.

I’m annoyed by the constant use of the word “accident” to describe this event. An accident is defined as:

1.
an undesirable or unfortunate happening that occurs unintentionally and usually results in harm, injury, damage, or loss; casualty; mishap: automobile accidents.

2.
Law. such a happening resulting in injury that is in no way the fault of the injured person for which compensation or indemnity is legally sought.

3.
any event that happens unexpectedly, without a deliberate plan or cause.

See that? “Unintentionally”; “no way the fault of”; “without a deliberate cause”.

He climbed two six-foot fences and jumped up between the tracks as the cars passed overhead. Case dismissed.

You know who I feel bad for? The folks in line. They paid their forty dollars, stood in line patiently in the hot Georgia sun, and didn’t even get the chance to ride because of this idiot. And what about the folks in the car that removed him from the gene pool? Deep psychological scarring, there. Or at the very least, a dry-cleaning bill.

I wonder if Six Flags is enjoying the media attention. Last year about this time they were in the spotlight because one of their rides cut off the feet of a little girl. At least this one wasn’t their fault. A small consolation, anyway.

A thought just occurred to me: What if this is some Marketing ploy by Warner Brothers to promote The Dark Knight? Would that be really clever, or really repulsive?

Should I be concerned that I have to ask that question?

This has been an important...something or other

You know how to measure the IQ of a mob? Take the lowest IQ of all of the participants, and divide it by the total number of people in the mob.

This goes double for government.

This afternoon, my wife was watching one of the approximately four thousand episodes of 'Law & Order' she missed when we didn't have cable, when that piercing metallic drone they use for alerts comes on. Naturally, being good Pavlovian subjects, we turned our full attention to the message crawling across the screen. Here it is in its entirety:

Civil Authorities have issued a child abduction alert for the following counties: North Carolina. Effective until 6/25/08, 6:48 P.M.

How much more fucking useless can this be?

Which Civil Authorities? Volunteer firemen? Voting station staffers? Boy Scouts? Whoever they are, they apparently want our help in finding this child. It might...just might be useful to...oh, I don't know...describe the child, perhaps? Boy or girl? How old are they? What were they wearing? What's their name, for God's sake? And North Carolina is a state, you morons, not a county. Good old NC has one hundred counties covering almost 50,000 square miles. You wanna narrow it down a little bit more? Or should people in Asheville be calling anyone they know in Wilmington? And you either expect to find this kid within 26 hours, or they're on their own after that. Otherwise, why set an expiration date on the alert?

Is it now a prerequisite to get a lobotomy before you can work in the government? It helps me when it comes time to vote, that's for sure.

Salmonella is for Wimps

I’m writing this furtively, hoping I can get it posted before she comes back in. Ostensibly, I’m cleaning the den, and I’m pushing the vacuum-cleaner back and forth with one foot as I type. I have to tell someone, and I hope the readers who stumble across this online will get it to the proper authorities.

I think my wife is an agricultural terrorist.

Looking back, I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to catch on. The clues were there for anybody to see. The only defense I can offer is that I lacked the context. I mean, it’s practically a stereotype that the first couple of years of marriage produces a few at-the-time-devastating-but-later-on-laughable culinary disasters.

“What’s in this Tupperware container, honey?” I call from the depths of the refrigerator.

“Open it and see,” comes the reply.

“I have. It didn’t help.”

She comes over and looks at the pink, rubbery, translucent mass, which I assumed was some sort of gelatin dessert that failed to gel.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s…uh…tuna, I think.”

I nervously place the container in the sink and back away, because it’s starting to react to the heat of my hands and is twitching slightly. She pats my shoulder and promises to clean it up. Later that night, as I’m snuggled down in the bed, I think I hear her on the phone, complaining to someone about something not being stable at room temperatures, but I assume I’m dreaming and ignore it.

A few years pass.

We’re in a new house, just grooving on being domestic. She’s tinkering in the kitchen, making a breakfast-for-supper meal of pancakes, bacon, and boiled eggs. I’m in the yard, picking up pinecones and playing with the dog. I start to head back inside, but the back door is locked for some reason. I knock, and she comes and opens it. I start to step inside, but she takes my arm and walks me back into the yard.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” she asks. “Crisp and clear; slightly cool. Which reminds me, let’s check the level of oil in the tank while I’m thinking about it. Over here. Away from the windows.”

I shrug and agree. We want to be prepared for the winter, after all. We check. It’s full. She meanders around the yard a bit longer, picking dandelions and commenting on the landscaping we’ll undertake next Spring. She kept checking her watch, but I didn’t think anything about it. Again, no context.

We finally go back inside, only to discover the kitchen is covered in egg fragments. The pot has boiled dry, and they’ve gone off like two little hand grenades. I’m dumbfounded, of course; starkly amazed that such a little food item can cover 150 square feet. My wife is laughing (in hindsight, it seems a little forced). “Let’s measure it!” she cries. “Or no one will believe us.” She sets me to work with the measuring tape, while she notes down distances and idly tries to calculate force, direction, and exothermic equivalents.

“Good thing it wasn’t an eggplant,” I joke, “or we wouldn’t have a house anymore.” She gets this distant look on her face, and my arrogant assumption is that she didn’t get the joke.

God help me. It was only a joke.

There have been a few other indications over the years. Little incidents that meant nothing by themselves, but appear to be part of a disturbing pattern. For instance, she insists on using all of the milk before the date printed on the side – anything remaining gets dumped - but has been known to keep vegetables in the refrigerator until long past usability. She sneers at canned fruit, opining that ‘you get more bang for your buck’ out of the fresh variety. An endearing sentiment that I assumed was based on vitamins being lost during the canning process. She follows any story of contaminated food products carefully.

Then came the incident this morning.

I’m pulled from sleep by a muffled thump. It sounds like a piece of furniture has fallen over in a distant room. Since my son has recently begun to try and climb tables, chairs, and shelves, I jump out of bed to see if he’s hurt. I take the direct route through the kitchen, only to find my wife standing in the middle of the room. She is looking around proudly, but when I come in, the look changes to one of confusion.

Our watermelon has exploded.

As we’re cleaning the walls, ceiling, windows, and floor, we’re theorizing about what could’ve caused this. My speculation is that the morning sun coming through the window heated up the melon, building up pressure inside. She scoffs and mutters something that sounds like ‘amateur’, but I’m too intent on getting pink goop out of the molding to pay much attention.

She made a call to her ‘brother’, laughing about the incident. But it wasn’t an ‘oh my goodness what a crazy world’ kind of laugh. It was more of a ‘we have done it long live the glorious cause’ kind of laugh.

Even so, I may not have been compelled to send out this message. This is all conjecture, hindsight, and possible paranoia. But there’s a newspaper clipping stuck to our refrigerator door now.

There’s a watermelon festival next weekend.