Though my Tivo purchase continues my streak of throwing money around like I actually have some (new car + new cell phone + TiVo), the newest innovation in home entertainment technology only set me back about $350... to have TiVo forever. I'm serious - no monthly fee, no renewal fees, nothing. Just 350 dollar menu hamburgers to watch TV for all of eternity.

Why would somebody who almost never watches TV need Tivo? Well that's exactly why. Now I can watch my favorite shows (Simpsons + Arrested Development + Japanese people getting wrecked by obstacle courses (MXC)) whenever I want. In other words, at 3 in the morning.

Also, if I ever intend to write for TV, it would be helpful not to be so painfully unaware of what's on. So far I've discovered the joys of Golden Girls reruns, and Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.

Now excuse me, I'm going to go get drunk and watch poorly dubbed Japanese people crash into each other.

How to Go About Killing a Lion With Your Bare Hands - 7/3/05
Inspired by some comments on last Wednesday's post, my brother and Alex and I set about trying to answer the all-important question: How exactly would 42 midgets kill a lion with their bare hands?

We both finally agreed that the only way to do it would be to choke the lion out. Of course you could gouge its eyes out first, or kick it in the balls, but these would merely impair a midget-hungry lion, not stop it. You'd have to choke it out. Unfortunately, midget arms aren't very big, so it might take 2 or 3 midgets linking hands to group-strangle the angry lion. The other midgets could also bite the lion in the legs and torso to distract it from the choking midgets.

This fantastic and completely relevant topic reminds me of Sam's discussion last 4th of July about how many eight-year-olds our friend Nathan could beat up. The final answer was 13 eight-year-olds, if the eight-year-olds could ride dogs and have sticks, but Nathan could breathe fire.

As you may be able to tell, 4th of July weekend posting material is being generated faster than I can drunkenly jot it down, so bear with me over the next few days as I get caught up. This is but one of the many completely inane discussions we've had so far; others have involved what blueberry juice would taste like (see Thursday's post), and where Stella's groove goes and what it does during that middle part of the movie, before she gets it back.

Stella's Groove vs. Raccoons - 7/5/05
For those interested, this latter conversation eventually spiraled into speculation that Stella's groove goes out at night and forages through garbage cans while she's asleep, because she doesn't really need it during those hours, and we all know that groove never sleeps. Also, Stella's groove occasionally gets in fights with raccoons, and who wins is determined by whether or not the raccoon has its groove, and if so, whose groove wanted it more.

This is what happens when too many Jurys get too messed up on blueberry juice.

Blueberry Juice - 7/7/05
What does blueberry juice taste like? Well, that very question was posed during one of our marauding nights this past weekend.

Everyone knows what apple juice tastes like. And orange juice. Even grapefruit juice, pinneapple juice, and cranberry juice get their due. But why do blueberries get the shaft into fruit under-represented-ness? Why isn't there blueberry juice?

In one of those "what if?" conversations gone wildly out of control, Gabe and my brother Alex make a 11:35pm emergency run to Vons Saturday night to get 4 packs of blueberries, which were immediately thrown into a blender. We considered adding water, then decided against it, as we wanted to get the raw, unadulterated taste of straight blueberry. The result was, as taster Rob Luchow put it, "a little bland".

We decided to add milk and honey, believing that blueberry juice should have a right to the same sweetening supplements that other juices have. Not having any honey, we used brown sugar instead. The result was, as taster Elia put it, "still a little bland."

Then we decide to add vodka, hoping it would somehow combine with the liquid blueberries, milk and brown-sugar to become something delicious. It did not. The creatively-named "Bluedriver" was, as taster Gabe put it, "absolutely fucking terrible."

The pitcher full of Bluedriver sat in our fridge for two days until I finally threw it out. Now we know why there's no blueberry juice.

See here for a complete and hilarious photo documentation of the event.

Ultimate Beerpong - 7/8/05
I've been recapping the events of 4th of July weekend in little bits, so far. Here's another great bit.

At 8:30am, 4th of July, we began the greatest game of Beerpong ever to be played. 100 beers. 448 cups. 14 players, subbing in and out. 3.5 hours. It was magnificent.

Or course, an occasion like this can't be captured in words. So here you go - a photo-montage of the most ridiculous drinking game of all time.

4th of July Recap... in Pictures! - 7/9/05
Most of this last weekend's recap has been taking place in picture form so far, so I'll keep giving it to you. The following photos pretty much sum up the weekend:

A pre-4th orgy	Goddamn	The semi-annual Jury bros forty challenge... 71 seconds: a new record... and an animated gif!
Shark attack challenge... not nearly as fast as the forty challenge	The middle one's me	And the notorious Night of the Blueberry
Treem makes good use of the hookup closet	The best thing ever	Mark
	And the 4th of July oddsboard, after the weekend

Did I forget to mention this? My roommate Brian and his girlfriend Adrienne spontaneously got married this weekend. They came home from the bars and beach Saturday afternoon, announced they were driving to Vegas to get married, and proceeded to do just that. They came back the next day with the rings and marriage certificate to prove it. Which leads me to...

TOP 5 THINGS NOBODY SAW COMING THIS WEEKEND
#5 - More games of Flip-Cup were played than Beerpong this weekend (though one of the Beerpong games was the greatest ever)
#4 - 7 grown men spontaneously brought blueberries and made blueberry juice at 11:30pm Saturday night, instead of going to a party.
#3 - These same 7 grown men then spent an hour watching "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" with the sound off, while waiting for a cab to come to take them to said party, all messed up on blueberry juice. Said cab never arrived.
#2 - Brian and Adrienne got married.
#1 - Brian was unable to drink Jaeger for 10 solid minutes afterward, because he was preoccupied about having just gotten married.

So there you have it.

Goddamn, I can't wait 'til next 4th of July.

Random - 7/11/05
This has nothing to do with anything, but a while back (when I had a Spacemobile) I wrote a post about what I would fix if I could take the Spacemobile on Pimp My Ride. Stuff like getting a gun turret like that Libyan van in Back to the Future, having a monkey-butler co-pilot, you know. Stuff like that.

Anyway, a couple weeks later, I received the following email from a girl named Roberta in Albany:

<<<
Dear Paul-I'm in Albany NY. Need to contact Xzibit immediately.. i HAVE A FRIEND WHO NEED HER RIDE PIMPED. Hoping to hear from you ASAP>> Thanx Roberta
>>>

Roberta, if you're reading this, I just want you to know I just talked to Xzibit on his cell, and he'll be there just as soon as he gets back from tour.

Own3d, again - 7/14/05
Another while back, I did a post on people getting own3d. As my boy Pat Stack can tell you, getting own3d is the 21st century equivalent to the 1990's "getting punked", the 1980's "getting wrecked", and the 1930's "getting Hindenburged". In other words, getting totally messed up, either by some accident, some person, or something else.

Anyway, Pat recently send me possibly the best video of people getting own3d, ever, including both the Randy-Johnson-hitting-a-pigeon-with-a-fastball clip and the bear-mauling-woman-on-Ukranian-talk-show clip - two of the most legendary ownages of all time. Some of it's pretty hard-core - viewer discretion is advised.

Check it out.

Porn Truck - 7/16/05
There's a porn truck parked outside of our house right now.

I just thought I should point that out.

Helpful Information To Any Web Stalkers I Might Have - 7/18/05
Tomorrow will represent a temporary slowing of posts; I'm about to head off on my 3-week summer vacation tour of Idaho, Minnesota and Chicago for a wedding, a cabin trip, and general chicanery. During said adventure, my internet access may be a little intermittent, but I'll try to at least keep posting at least once a week or so.

In the meantime, Tuesday I crash at Sam's before driving to San Francisco on the first leg of my journey - he lives close to my security job and close to a freeway heading north, so it saves me some time not having to drive back to Redondo. Crashing at Sam's is always a good time - we have it down to a system now where I know the key-code to his building, and he leaves the door to his apartment open for me when he goes to bed. Security risk though this might seem, we've actually discussed it and realized that there's actually only a 45 minute window between the time he goes to bed at 6:30am and the time I get there. A potential burglar would have to A) know what day I was coming, B) find a way into the building without anyone seeing him, and C) do all of this within three-quarters of an hour when it's generally light outside. And then, the most they could do would be to steal a TiVo box and possibly have their way with JD. As Sam put it, this is one low pay-off heist that would require "an incredible amount of casing."

Anyway, this represents a far superior method of early-morning crashing than the system we have in place at Gabe's house, where I throw my keys against his 2nd story window until he wakes up and lets me in.

In conclusion, any stalker trying to get the drop on me would have a tremendously difficult job keeping up with my bizarre and sporadic schedule. Unless of course they are an internet stalker, in which case their job just got a lot easier.

Mules - 7/19/05
My good friend Tiff came over last night, and we had a lovely improvised dinner of peas and potatoes. I'm leaving this morning, but in the meantime we enjoyed our meal and had a lovely and topical exploratory discussion on the subject of…

Mules. They're sturdy, they're reliable, they're co-stars with Juan Valdez in coffee commercials. But they're sterile. Mules do not beget mules, in fact, mules do not even naturally exist in nature, because of a twisted fact that many people know: mules are what happens when a horse mates with a donkey. The mule is a genetic experiment that actually worked out to some good, unlike certain other ill-conceived hybrids like broccoflower, crystal clear Pepsi, and Christian Rock.

But the phenomenon of the mule raises one very concerning question. The fact is, that of the mule's two parents, the horse is clearly a much more attractive animal than the donkey. So just how do they get this to work? If you were a horse, would you mate with a donkey? I certainly wouldn't. What kind of unlucky horse gets that job? You could be racing in the Kentucky Derby. You could be starring in an Anheuser-Busch commercial. You could at least be getting ridden around by a cop in Canada. But no, you have to bang donkeys.

Is the horse the father? If so, do they have to get him drunk beforehand? Maybe riding a donkey is what's left after you strike out with the phillies at the horse bars. Still, I'd rather head to Taco Bell and call it an empty night than have to go and plow a donkey. Maybe they put a bag over the donkey's head?

Is the horse the mother? If so, what kind of self-respecting female horse allows herself to get rammed by a donkey? He better be extremely charming, or rich, or funny or something; otherwise, you just gotta feel like a horse-slut after letting that happen. Maybe she closes her eyes and imagines it's Tom Cruise?

Maybe it's artificial insemination? If so, the person with that job has an even rawer deal than the horse who has to pork a donkey. I've heard such things exist, though; perhaps if you were unfortunate enough to be in this line of work, you could at least sell your story as a sequel to the movie "The Horse Whisperer," entitled "The Horse Jerker." I'm sure it would be Oscar material.

These are some of the things that come up in conversation when we're up too late eating peas and potatoes.

Christian Science - 7/25/05
I was down in Seal Beach the other day and, having nothing better to do, I wandered into a Christian Science Reading Room.

I could say that I mistook it for a library, but the sign

was pretty obvious. The real reason is because, well, I was curious.

Inside I found what most closely resembled a small book store, with a kindly white-haired woman named Mildred seated behind a desk. Upon my entrance she immediately put down the book she was reading and asked how she could help me. After some hesitation, I just came out and said it: "I have a few minutes to kill and I'm curious about what exactly Christian Science is."

And she explained. In 1866, a woman named Mary Baker Eddy had a terrible fall on some ice. Several internal organs were badly injured, and doctors said she wouldn't live through the night. The fact is that she survived and recovered; the story is that her injuries were completely healed after one hour of prayer. Eddy then set about trying to figure out what had happened to her, and in the course of this she pioneered a new branch of Christianity, focusing on the healing powers of God.

Christian Science is fairly Protestant - the main difference is that Christian Scientists feel that faith in God's ability to heal is all the medicine one needs. Contrary to common misconception, Christian Scientists are not anti-medicine. They simply believe that medicine is unnecessary. You can take drugs if you like, but it's kind of like taking Tic-Tacs for a headache.

Now I know what you're thinking, and no, this is not going to turn into an entry where I humorously bash Christian Science. I personally believe that no religion is any more right or wrong than any other, and that if one particular sub-division of one sect of one religion had it totally pegged, God would have told more than .05% percent of mankind about it. But since I'd wandering into a Christian Science Reading Room and was curious myself, I figure perhaps now's the time to expound a bit on their ideas. And if it's humorous... well, laughter heals, just like God supposedly does.

A mainstay or the Christian Science view on medicine is that "Jesus didn't take medicine, so we shouldn't either." While I believe modeling behavior after an ideal examplar can be productive (say what you want about Jesus - you have to admit he was a pretty good guy), I think this idea misses something in terms of historical progression. Times have changed... I think Jesus would understand that some things are a little different now. So Jesus didn't use medicine. Jesus didn't use sunblock, either, but I bet he would have loved to get his hands on some SPF 40 in that hot Galilean sun. Also, keep in mind that "medicine" in Jesus' day typically involved leeches, and black and yellow bile. Actually, check that - I don't think medicine in Jesus' day had even reached the level of leeches and bile yet. Medicine in Jesus' day pretty much came down to "die from stuff."

On the other hand, this line of logic goes against one of my main reasons for not being a vegetarian, specifically "if it was good enough for the cavemen, it's good enough for me."

If I have one objection to Christian Science, it's that it seems to be doing this:

Religion and medicine shouldn't be mutually exclusive. I say try them both. If I have leukemia, I don't care if it's Jesus or chemo that helps me. If your arm gets chopped off, and you're hoping God will heal it for you, is it really so bad to help Him out with a couple stitches first? I was always taught that God helps people who help themselves, so go ahead and sew that wing back on and have both your doctor and your priest visit your bedside.

I'm probably going to hell for writing most of this from the upstairs library of the Christian Science reading room, but those are my thoughts. I'm probably already going to hell anyway for other much more offensive things I've said or written. I can think of about a dozen right off the top of my head. But I respected and appreciated everything Mildred had to say. One thing we did have in common was tolerance for other religions. Though she had her particular perspective on things, she readily admitted that she was just one person, and could be wrong. Although scientists many times aren't the most spiritual people, at least science has built into it the disproof principle; in other words, openness to other ideas. If religion is going to share space with science, it should be willing to do the same.

What Would Jesus Drive? - 7/26/05
Yesterday's post reminded me of a much less sermonizing topic, which passed through the public eye a year or two ago, but in my opinion never got it's proper due.

A while back, a Christian minister and environmental advocate decided to combine the two ideologies and published a piece entitled "What Would Jesus Drive?" encouraging Christians to do their environmental duty and drive fuel efficient cars, staying away from SUVs and Humvees.

Well, it wasn't long before the satirists got a hold of this, and a journalist named Ostler published a response answering just that question, with proof from the primary source itself:

"...One of Ostler's readers theorized that Jesus would tool around in an old Plymouth because 'the Bible says God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in a Fury.'

But our research department found several other scenarios. In Psalm 83, for example, the Almighty clearly owns a Pontiac and a Geo. The passage urges the Lord to 'pursue your enemies with your Tempest and terrify them with your Storm.' (We're not sure how a Geo Storm could be considered terrifying, unless it had those scary shooting flames painted on the sides.)

However, there is debate over whether the vehicle had bumper stickers such as 'Save the Humans,' 'My other car is a flaming chariot' or 'Honk if you love me'..."

You can read a closely-adapted full-version of the article here.

Barter - 7/28/05
A couple months ago, Brian and I went to Costco to stock up on house supplies. Somehow, we ended up buying $60 worth of toilet paper. Maybe I was inspired by my 24-pack purchase of cans of chili.

Anyhow, we decided to split it evenly, and since I paid, the roommates thus each owed my $15. I owed Brian some money already, so we called it a wash, and Kolleen promptly paid me, which just left Noah. Now, $15 isn't really a sum worth calling in one's debts over, so he's been paying me back bit by bit, over the past few months.

Since Noah goes to Taco Bell at least 2-3 times a week (this week he's gone 5 days in a row), we've gotten in the habit of just picking up a Beef Baja Chalupa and bringing it back to me each time he goes, and I knock $2 off his tab. We're just about even - we're quickly approaching the 7.5 Chalupas it will take to equal 150 rolls of TP.

I love that we're bartering Chalupas for toilet paper.