Smokers on the Beach

As a wizard, I reserve the right to be cranky frequently.  However, I managed to subvert my ranting nature for a year or so while I made the transition to a Florida lifestyle.  Now, you may think that the warm sun, the temperate climate, and constant beach access would be enough to mellow even the crabbiest of wizards, but we wizards love to be crabby.  It comes with the wand and robes, so to speak.  So, on with the rant...

The sun was beating down on me as I relaxed near the ocean.  I had exchanged my typical wizardly attire for a swimsuit to better blend in with the Floridians around me.  Of course, I kept my glaring expression as it is one of my trademarks.  People avoided talking with me, which was my primary objective, while I collected some incredibly important shark's teeth from the beach.

(We wizards love shark teeth for various components, association with death, and general awesomeness!)

Suddenly, a foul, fetid odor washed over me like the waves I had been enjoying.  Now, being a wizard, I am familiar with troll flatulence, dragon belches, and ogre arm pits.  Yet, none of these could match the grotesqueness and putrid nature of the smell that wafted up my suddenly flaring nostrils.  Immediately, I put on my fiercest glare and searched for the demonic pit that opened to create such a stench, but I found, instead, someone smoking nearly 30 yards down the beach.

I fought the urge to summon a whale or meteor, and looked for something more pleasant smelling to place under my nose, like rotting fish flesh.  So, this rant is born.

Smokers... this is for you.  You have every right to suck on your cancer sticks in your own house, but you won't will you?  No, because you hate the smell too.  Instead, you bring out your rectum rods in the open air and light them up to share the very thing you hate with all those around you.  It is the most disgusting, childish, asinine habit.  So, next time you are on the beach, feel free to light up ad suck it in.  Just don't let it out.

You never know, maybe I will save some of my own body odors up in a jar, bring it to the beach, and let it blow over you!  Nuff said!

Stupid People and Their Carry-Ons

The quickest way to invoke the crabbiness of any wizard is with abject stupidity and ignorance.  Thus, I was sitting in an airport recently, for no more than twenty minutes, when I was reminded, once again, why I keep hoping for an alien invasion that wipes out the whole of humanity.  Let me explain.  You see, I have come to the decision that passengers wanting to travel by airplane should be required to take an IQ test relating directly to their ability to understand baggage size and number.

I witnessed idiots with dufflebags the size of a college man's laundry, women who consider their purse as part of their freaking anatomy rather than a separate entity, and imbeciles that cannot look at a small compartment, already near capacity, and know that their elephantine suitcase cannot be compressed without divine intervention ro the suspense of natural law.

To begin with... Women... your purse is actually a bag that does count as a carry-on and should not be considered as something you can pretend is not there along with the other 60 items you think no one notices you bringing onto the plane.  Stuff the flipping hand bag into another bag and live with it.  In fact, rethink the concept of why you need a purse on a plane to begin with.  No one cares about your make-up, finger nails, lip balm, etc.  So, shrink it and sink and limit yourselves to two actual carry-ons.  Ladies, learn to flipping count!

Young people... you are next... the ridiculous, enormous duffle bags you bring on the plane, regardless of the lacrosse shirt or ripped jeans you are wearing, impresses no one and is simply a sign of the massive drop in common sense affecting most of humanity in these days.  If you want some respect in your younger years, try opening yours eyes and (gasp) your mind to the possiblity that rules exist for the ease of everyone.  Then, you might stop lugging on the impossibly large and obviously assinine bags you think of as a clever alternative.  Let me posit that your duffle bags are not only offensive in general but also reveal that your maturity level is still that of a third grader who lives with the slogan "he who dies with the most stuff wins."  Stop trying to pull one over (it isn't working anyway) and be part of the solution you morons.

Finally, humans in general... unless you are a higly trained and crabby wizard... There are laws of physics and nature under which we all must operate.  As such, when lugging your already over-sized and under-countered bags onto the plane, take note that space is limited.  Moreover, realize that other people also need some of the precious speace and may have breakables in their bags.  So, when you bring your crap on, be gentle when trying to re-size the universe to get your own garbage to fit into the compartments.  Everyone is just as privileged and probably more deserving than you to use the space about them.  So, either check your bag or pack smaller, more applicable luggage.  Seriously, are you that egotistical and ethically blind or just that horribly inbred.

Rant done.

The Disappearing Bag Fee

I know it has been a good while, but, hey, its my blog, and, if you didn't already know this, wizards, especially crabby ones, are very busy finding things to complain about.  That is what inspired this new entry.  I travelled the airlines over the past few weeks, and the expierence left me far less than satisfied.

There were delays, disgruntled passengers, and I sat by someone whose smell of stale cigarettes and body odor was bad enough to make maggots gag.  However, my ranting digresses.  The real rant I want to post is the mystery of the disappearing bag fee, or, as I have subtitled it, airline stupidity.

Yes, I know... what else is new.  Well, I compacted all of my clothing, using secrets known only to wizards, into a bag that would pass all of the requirements for a carry-on item.  My reasoning, as you can bet, is that I am a cheap son-of-welsh-woman.  As such, I refused to pay the exhorbitant $25.00 fee for checking a bag.  So, I make it through the warm hands of airport security, and I am waiting impatiently at my gate when the airline employees (I think of them more as zookeepers) make an announcement...

"Our flight is very full.  We will check any carry-ons to your final destination for free."

Suddenly there is this mad rush of people, who are carrying massive bags that should have been checked in the first place, to check a $25.00 bag for free.  I also took advantage of it, but c'mon!  What is the airline thinking!  If they had offered it to begin with (say check 1 bag in for free, 2nd bag for $25.00, etc.), the overstuffed bins above all of our heads would not be an issue.  I liked the idea but found my inner crab infuriated by the bass-ackward thought process of the airlines.  Now, the zookeepers have trained the animals to simply bring more un-carry-on-able bags in hopes of having them checked for free.  Grrrrrr... annoying!

Mobilized Evil

Evil... They are truly evil.  And, yes, I am talking about cell phones again.  This time, I want to rant for a moment of time on the tiny evil spirit that dwells within each phone.  These are more sinister than demonic forces.  For they prey not on your soul but your last nerve, driving you ever closer to foaming-at-the-mouth madness.  Let me give you several examples...

I am walking through the store, desperately trying to get my phone to unlock.  to do so, I must depress a series of buttons in the exact right combination and timeframe, or, like some diabolical video game from the pit of Tartarus, I have to start over.  I make several attempts, but I cannot do it.  The phone, in its electronic silence, mocks me with its faded screen.  Finally, I manage to subdue the hideous, little demon and make my text message.  Then, I wait patiently for the screen to lock, and drop the irritating creature into my pocket.  Seconds later, I bend over to pick up a coin I dropped.  Suddenly, my phone, the same blasted, hell-spawned unit that I could not unlock with both hands, starts dialing outer Mongolia without any trouble whatsoever.  I take it out, and it has unlocked and dialed.  How?!  Evil spirits...

Example two...  I try unsuccessfully on numerous occasions to get the unbelievably simple speaker phone properties to work.  I depress all the unlocking buttons, push this button, switch that button.  You name it, and I try it.  Nothing... Again, the phone taunts me, but remains silent.  So, I walk into a quiet service in my church.  What happens?!  The demonic forces cause a woman's voice to erupt from my pocket asking for commands.  Truly evil!

Finally, I try typing text messages, wanting to simply add a carriage return.  I am certain that I press the correct button, or at least the one that worked the previous time.  Instead, the phone sends my incomplete message.  Then, when I try to send using the same button later, the evil monstrosity glows pleasantly at me and adds fifty carriage returns for the fifty times I have tried to send the message.

I can sense the pervasive evil in the device.  I just cannot figure out how to exorcise the darkness.  Instead, I wake up at night, watching as the device lights up, does some form of ritual update, and wait for the day it takes over the world!  Evil!

Time Travel

I know... I know... nothing new for a while...  Well, wizards lead busy lives you know...  Anyway...

Someone asked me the other day whether or not I felt that time travel was possible.  I mean, what kind of question is that to ask in the middle of a conversation about nothing in particular.  Well, in all honesty, I was waiting for my superhero character on DC Universe Online to heal.  So, I suppose it was as good as anything to ask while we stood there on a Gotham rooftop.  Anyway, so I thought, what an excellent topic to opine upon.  So...

I love the show Doctor Who, and I have since it started.  No, not in the last few years, but all the way back in 50's.  The entire series is awesome!  However, it is founded on a fundamental principal that is quite challenging: time travel.  The idea is easy, of course, but the truth of the idea is beyond complexity.  Set aside the amount of sheer power involved, whether under the laws of physics or magic, and you are left with how to control the passage through the temporal barrier as well as how to contain the rift necessary.  So many dynamic pieces to the equation, but there is a point above all else that must be acknowledged...

Time travel, as we think about it, is simply impossible or, at least, it ends up being a one way journey...  (Of course, time travel is forbidden by God save by Himself and those he chooses.  However, setting that aside...)

Let us create a scenario in which we assume time travel to be possible and feasible.  Our target, the elimination of Adolf Hitler.  We throw the switch or activate the spell, whatever, and here we go...

Now, we are in baby Adolf''s nursery, a gun in our hand.  We have no qualms, so, we end the monster-to-be's existence.  Now, a ripple occurs in time itself.  A wave of change travels forward to our future selves who are just getting ready to jump into the time vortex.  Suddenly, they have no clue as why they are heading to the past because the monster they were trying to kill never existed.  So, they never travel to the past to kill Hitler.  Thus, we vanish and the timeline repairs itself.  Hitler is born, and the whole thing starts over again.  Any moment we could choose to alter would correct itself back to its original pattern.  Absolutely maddening.  So, is time travel possible?  Sure... maybe... But, would it do you any good?  No.

Now, the truth of time travel is that it could only be done in such a manner that your efforts could change nothing, at all.  Otherwise, you run the risk of a temporal ripple that would erase what you are trying to do as described above.  However, remember that the addition of a single molecule or electron could cause an alteration. Of course, it might not.

There you go... clear as mud!

Professor X Could Kick Superman's Can...

When I think of great comic books, only one brand comes to mind.  So, I say, until Wolverine starts running a day-care, make mine Marvel.  Now, you may ask why I choose Marvel over DC.  Of course, you may not care at all, but, either way, allow me to expound.  You see, Marvel simply has more believable superheroes.  It's true.  The Marvel universe has heroes and villains that, while possessing all kinds of powers, have foibles and problems.  They mess up, and they scheme.  They jump back and forth across the line of good and evil, and, more than that, they take out their enemies like you and I would.  Just look at Wolverine.  He is the best at what he does.

Now, let me tell you about the humanly-challenged heroes and villains at DC.  Let's start with Superman.  I know, a measly wizard taking on the Man of Steel?  Well, I do not need Kryptonite.  However, that is where I plan to start...

Ok... you are the most powerful meta-human on the planet.  You can survive in most environments, and you are practically indestructible.  You can see through solid objects and have friends that have all kinds of cool gadgets.  Yet, you have never done a full sweep of the Earth for the one element that can kill you?  C'mon.  If I were the big guy, I would scour the globe, round up all the kryp and destroy it.  Problem solved.  Next, Lex Luthor.  I know the big boy scout can't kill him.  So, send him to phantom zone or lock him up in the fortress of solitude.  Anyway, a totally unbelievable character.

Next, the Caped Crusader, or Batman.  Him, I actually like, but his villains are just totally inane.  He is not a meta-human.  So, why can't seven or eight villains gang up.  Why can't they hire a super-villain like Darkside?  It makes no sense.  Anyone could throw napalm on the bat or trap him in a room without oxygen.  But, they never do!  It makes no sense.

Anyway, just a small rant for the moment... someone find me some kryptonite... now!

Giant Footprint in Africa

Recently, a fellow explorer in the realm of strange and unusual sent the following link for a YouTube video (Giant Footprint).  In the video, Michael Tellinger, an author and explorer, is standing next to what appears to be a giant footprint in, according to Tellinger, solid granite.  The footprint is upright, seemingly the work of some past geological upheaval, and appears to show where a massive foot (belonging to someone over 7 meters tall) stepped in soil in the past and left this fossilized record.  The imprint even seems to depict where the toes had dug in and pushed up the mud at sometime in the past.  So, the question is... Is it Real?

To begin with, before we answer the first question, let's back up and ask a more fundamental question:  Is it at all possible that giants existed?  Now, that is a much more wizardly topic... is it not?  Ok... so, let me adjust my glasses to the end of my nose and appear more scholarly...  there... now...

Oh... let me just state that, for clarity's sake, a mythology, to me, is a religion that has, for all intents and purposes, failed.  Otherwise, it is a religion with extant believers...

Anyway...

We can look at a number of mythologies/religions to show that, at some point in the collective memory of humanity, giants imprinted themselves on our minds, suggesting that there may be some basis of fact for our large, hominid cousins we think of as giants.  For instance, Judeo-Christian scriptures speak of giants in the book of Genesis, and Norse mythology speaks about the Frost Giants (or Jotunn) from Jotunheimr that intermarried with, but often stood in opposition to, the Norse gods.  In Greek and Roman mythology, we have Titans, Cyclopes, Laistrygonians (or Laestrygonians) and myriad of other gigantic hominids revealing themselves.  Pangu (or Pan Gu) appears in oriental mythology, and in Celtic mythlogy, The giant/god Bran led the giants of Wales in battle.  Finally, giants also appear in Native American and Mayan/Incan myths as well.  I will not go into anything specifically here, unless I get asked to.  However, I think the concept of giant hominids is pervasive enough to suggest that they once walked the earth.  Perhaps they still do (bigfoot, sasquatch, yeti, that guy who played chewbacca...oh forget that last one.)  Anyway, I think we could safely argue that it is possible that giants existed.  Now, let's get back to the footprint and our first question... Is it Real?

Ok... (putting on my Science Hat).  To begin with, if the footprint is real.  It could not be in granite.  Why?  Well kids, granite is an igneous rock (and you thought third grade science would never come back to haunt you...).  It forms from magma in the very belly of the earth (ok at least a mile deep).  So, if this giant existed and the rock is granite, the giant must have put its foot in cooling magma a mile or so deep in the earth's crust (I know... a thousand hollow earthers just punched the sky).  Or, the giant had the ability to produce extreme heat as it walked (titans?).  Either way, it is somewhat doubtful that the rock is granite.  Sadly, then, this opens up a great deal of speculation since most other rock is fairly carve-able and can erode quickly (in relation to granite).

Secondly, if the print is real and depicts where the toes pushed the molten magma up... why didn't the years pushing up through the surface flatten the overhang?  Again, maybe if it was granite... but granite can be carved as well (Stone Mountain and has been for centuries, almost as long as we had senses of humor and wanted to play practical jokes.).  So, I find myself believing in the possibility of giants, but... I do not think the footprint is real.

Of course, I don't believe in Donald Trump either... I mean, his hair is more gravity defying than the toe-push in the giant footprint.

Fee Fi Fo Fum....