Ups and Downs
Gorging oneself on fast food in order to lose weight is up, while Spanish sex festivals are down.
Up: Semi-obscure, confusing social activism: In what will no doubt one day be the subject of a landmark article in the scientific journal No Fucking Way!, a 24 year-old man walked the length of the state of Michigan this week -- on metal stilts -- to raise awareness for cerebral palsy. Now it seems obvious to me that for most people, the initial mental association with cerebral palsy is going to be a three-week, 830 mile trip with giant aluminum poles attached to one's legs, but apparently some bystanders have found the spectacle confusing. When you think about it, however, it's not so different from the time I swallowed a bucket full of rusty nails to promote awareness regarding tetanus. More importantly, the man was able to raise close to $64,000 for palsy charities in the process, which is probably more than I could come up with if I sold crack and robbed liquor stores for three weeks.
In fact, bring this up again in three weeks and I can give you a definite answer.
Down: Ruining a great conversation starter: If you're anything like me, you probably get upset when you cannot figure out what the hell someone's vanity license plate is supposed to mean. On average, you've got about four seconds to read and comprehend a passing license plate before you need to focus your eyes back to the bicyclist that you're about to involve in a serious hit-and-run accident. If I cannot figure out what message a plate is supposed to convey in those four seconds it will haunt me for at least the next four hours, as I scroll through every abbreviation and awkward pronunciation that I can think of. Ultimately, if I fail to ever figure it out, it forces me to question not only my abilities as an English instructor, but also my faith in a higher power and my purpose in our barren, post-modern world. So thanks, assholes.
Given that, I can only imagine how Mary Ann Hardee, a 60 year-old elementary school teacher, felt when the state of North Carolina issued her a new license plate that included a randomly-generated combination of letters: WTF. Hardee, who teaches about computers and technology but apparently has been unable to develop a sense of irony at some point in the last six decades, was furious when someone finally told her what it meant. She was so upset that she petitioned the state and had over 9,000 plates with the same letter sequence recalled. Hey, Mary, BFD, ok? Like I said above, I know how frustrating it is to feel like you don't understand what's going on around you, but now that you know, just roll with it! At the very least, it's a great conversation starter, and at the most you can assume an entirely new identity as a foul-mouthed, bar-hopping senior citizen.Up: Easy sources of inspiration: More than once this week I read a story about Chris Coleson, a business man from Quinton, VA, who lost nearly 80 pounds in the last six months eating nothing but salads and wraps from McDonald's. Coleson is 5"8 and started out at over 275 pounds, so even after losing the weight he's no shoo-in for that Calvin Klein modeling gig...but still, the story is nice. The only part that I found confusing comes from an Associated Press article which claims that Coleson's "inspiration came from his two children and from the story of a blind war veteran who rode a tandem bicycle cross-country." With apologies to Mary Hardee, wtf? How did a blind war veteran riding a novelty bicycle across the continental United States encourage this guy to eat a shit-ton of McDonald’s salads? It's kind of like saying that the story of a mute, immigrant child with incurable cancer inspired you to clean out your garage.
Down: A bad day for Spanish porn: Though most Americans don't have a clue about it, Soccer is the single-most popular sport in the entire world. In fact, it may be the single most popular thing in the entire world, outside of the sex industry. Right? WRONG. This past weekend, Spain won the Euro Cup for the first time in more than forty years by defeating Germany in the championship game (if you don't get ESPN 2, you probably didn't see this). The game was such a massive event that it drew 17 million viewers in Spain alone, and is being blamed for the failure of the 2008 Erotic Film Festival of Barcelona (which, due to some excellent planning, was held the same weekend). Last year the festival drew close to 50,000 attendees. This year, with the backdrop of the soccer game, that number took a nosedive to 15,000. The real question this should raise is simple: why hasn't anyone found an easily implementable way to combine pornography with international sports?**
**After the win, Spaniards were so excited that they took to rioting in the streets. If any of that feverish joy turns into drunken public sex, then we'll just say that it was close enough
Posted by Ryan Peters, Ryan Peters on Jun 30, 2008 @ 7:23 am
