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Sophisticated Tourism
Once you get to Times Square, just play it cool and act sophisticated. Don’t be one of those dorky tourists who go skipping about like a wierdo.
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The Economy of Old Age (Part II)
Because the U.S. loves sequels, I have added a follow up to a previously successful post that portends the potential of a trilogy materializing and–who knows?–spin offs totally possible. I am combating stereotypes about growing older. I’ve gone renegade-vigilante, full of vengeance, exonerated of remorse. The stereotype I have decided to obliterate first is this: “As people age, they tend to grow wiser.” I intend to fait accompli this cliché to death by performing a variety of stunts. Take this example. I know a guy who knows a lady who can get in touch with this guy that knows about a place in Fresno, California where the whole floor is made from trampolines. Notice, I didn’t say trampoline singular but, like, trampolines. Insanity. So, you can go hopping around like crazy and performing all sorts of aerial-like-slow-motion-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-martial-arts-gymnastics kinds of stunts. Like they say in the current vernacular, I’m going to own it. Actually, they say it in more of a slang way. “I’m a gonna own ya.” Death to all age stereotypes! (P.S. Shortly after this post and the attached picture, the author incurred a mild trauma to the right shoulder after he collided with an enclosing concrete wall at the aforementioned trampoline attraction. Any considerations for follow-up posts relating to this topic have been suspended. Conversely, plans are underway to launch a series of posts around the topic of “Things I Learned the Hard Way that I Should Have Already Known about but Got Too Cocky and Tried to Do Anyway and Now [...]
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The Bias of Greeting Cards
Lady, Toby, Brownie, and Rainbow (Rainbow is the turtle; not pictured here) realized with staggering horror that greeting cards companies distinguish between Mother’s Day Cards (From the Kids) and Mother’s Day Cards (From the Pets). They meant to protest this aberration but they forfeited any further consideration to chase Spera (the cat; not pictured here), who had also come to gawk at the atrocity. Rainbow (the turtle) found herself suddenly alone and gleefully crawled away in another vain attempt to discover an escape route. Commentators are currently speculating on whether or not Spera was deployed as an intentional diversionary tactic meant to prevent any protests. Oh, cruel greeting cards companies, how devious you are. How devious. (P.S. Spera managed to elude capture but refuses to respond to accusations regarding her behavior. Rainbow, on the other hand, failed to camouflage herself adequately among the white stones outlining the vegetable garden–maybe she suffers from colorblindness or has, like, really poor self-perception–and ended up back in her terrarium.)
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The Economy of Old Age
Now that I have acquired a long, full life replete with wisdom and universal admiration, I pause to share some rather remarkable and breath-taking acumen. What I would like to share concerns the efficiency of the human body as it ages. I suspect that many of you have heard and fallen prey to certain suggestions about the peak of physical fitness arriving and passing somewhere around the mid-twenties. Don’t believe it. Those researchers know nothing. I tell you this: that I have never before experienced such instantaneous response to physical exertion. Never. I’m at my best. Why, when I was only in my early twenties, I had to run five miles to break into the first signs of minimal perspiration. Can you imagine? All that time wasted for such a picayune amount of toning? Now, at the beginning of my third decade on this earth, I only have to run about three hundred feet before my heart starts pumping like a heart attack and my knees get all wobbly like Jell-O on a popsicle stick and all the moisture in my body just about dries right on up so I’ve, like, instantaneously lost fifteen pounds. Now imagine all the bicep/tricep development I gain while dragging my collapsed and weary body back inside to lay comatose across the couch for the next hour and pray for miraculous recovery. Obviously, this all leads inevitably to the astute deduction that my body ripened to a point where it responds much better to exercise [...]
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Irony: cradling a fractured wrist against a severely scratched arm while wearing a Chuck Norris t-shirt
This is a picture of me cradling my fractured wrist (photo courtesy of my 12-day wife, Bely)–my first ever experience of broken/fractured body parts. Typically such privileges have been claimed by my accident-prone sister and, less often, by my father (watch your head around propellers!). It turns out that it hurts like crazy. Huh, who would have thought. So now I’m nearly incapable of using either arm and sedated by Vicodon (also a new experience for me). In the few minutes when I achieve relief from the excruciating discomfort, I can manage to fingertype at a tediously slow pace and bend my elbow or otherwise fanagle my joints to bring my hands up to my face, a feat that tends to favor the act of eating. I imagine that you want to know how this happened. There are three versions of the story, the first of which involves a playground full of elementary-aged children and a ferocious bear which I heroically intercepted and forced back into the woods. In the second version, I jump in front of an out-of-control car to save a hapless mother and her stroller-bound child, leaving the car in a veritable heap of scraps and rubbish–to which the driver responds by unflinching forgiveness and gratitude upon realization of the miraculous and heroic act I’ve just accomplished. The third version has something to do with riding my bike at high speeds and losing traction as I turn a corner and ride through a small trickle of water. [...]
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Fallen Sequoias
Two rules regarding your visit to Sequoia National Park, CA. First, do not let Giant Sequoias fall on your head. Second, do not rely on your brother-in-law to leverage said Giant Sequoia off of your head with a walking stick. That should be pretty obvious.
