$3 Flip Flop Fiasco

The Cart-Wheeling Super Humans of the Future

Before I start you’ve got to go to one of these links; the first one is kind of long (8 minutes), the second one is much shorter (2 minutes), but both are equally worth watching.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=515642196227308929

http://www.guzer.com/videos/amazing_jump_skills.php

The reason I bring this up is that I’ve known that these crazies existed for some time, but I’ve resisted making a public statement about this sect of humanity.  So overcoming this hesitation, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions, and I will share them with you, enjoy.

First I think this shows the world the next step in human evolution.  Imagine a whole society of people just running around at the mall, doing back flips in to the GAP, silly round house summersaults in line at Chic-fil-A, and folks recklessly jumping off escalators into pants they intend to try on!  Chaos going end over end at high altitudes, all to the tune of your favorite hip-hop songs over played at your local radio station or on your Ipod.

If you had asked scientists years ago which way evolution was going to swing (trust me baby it swings) and what sort of mutations we had to look forward to you’d most likely hear something like “Oh definitely we’re TOTALLY GETTING SIX FINGERS”, “Ten years from now we’ll all look like Cat Stevens” or my personal favorite “Mankind will evolve into forming a natural allergic reaction to corduroy”.  All of these scenarios I was kind of looking forward to, except looking like Cat Stevens, he was a little to “earthy” for me, plus he was a dirty hippy!   But no one saw the back flip gene emerging.  I was surprised, six fingers, yeah I can see that, I hate corduroy and a planet full of ugly hippies.  All of these scenarios the people of the world could handle.  So basically over time we will all turn into ninjas!  Sneaking around, running with scissors, causing destruction! 

Imagine of course the reaction of over protective mothers, in response to the cart-wheeling super humans of the future.  “If all of your friends did a half gainer off a ten story building onto a moving train coated in axle grease, would you too?”  Having to ask questions like “Did you stretch, you better before you go rolling all over those buildings, you don’t want to pull a Hammie” (I know Ma’), “Have you been tossing yourself off the Johnson’s roof again, your father and I didn’t raise a tosser!”  “If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times no more six story balcony hurtles!”  Although dropping the kids off for soccer practice could get a lot more exciting and thusly the babysitting industry will go through some heavy changes. 

Secondly if we all evolve into superheroes, what will this do to law enforcement?  If the first generation of superheroes are obviously going to start off as kids, unless we can evolve straight from childhood into adulthood completely bypassing puberty and being a teenager.  Then cops will never be able to stop or catch the aerial antics of kids today.  Imagine you spend an entire career running down teenagers, then all of the sudden they’re running up and over walls eluding you.  Basically it’d be impossible to stop a race of Spidermen swinging from the roof tops, knocking off 7 elevens left and right.  Depression spreading quickly over the flatfoot community and support groups forming.  “Hi I’m Todd (Hello Todd), I’ve been a Cop for 7 years now and I feel so empty and worthless because I haven’t caught a bad guy in six weeks.”  (It’s okay to cry Todd) No it’s not Todd, get a jump rope or something and get in a gym!  All of these grown men crying and hugging one another, all because of some kids all hopped up on Nike Commercials, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and drinking the Gatorade. 

In addition to changing crime fighting as we know it, it could also bring about a virtual cornucopia of new sitcom ideas!  Remember 21 Jump Street ?  Now throw in the back-flip brothers, that guy from CSI, some beakers of blue and red crime fighting fluid, and BAM instant hit!  Of course there will be the spin offs, CSI Ohio, the not so popular CSI New Hampshire, 21 Jump Avenue “The Rookie Years” and so forth.

Knowing what we know now I’m going to invest a large sum of money into sneakers and knee replacement surgery technology.  I may not be able to understand what the kids are into these days, but at least I can remember the time before all the jumping, people effortlessly rotating their posteriors over their heads, an overly emotional police force, chaos and the what-not. 

Chi High

Chi High!

I’m trying to begin the blogs with something more exciting than statements like “Well I found some quarters today” or “So…Tennis anyone?”  It’s a work in progress I think.  As to give you the ever constant reader (man that’s an egocentric comment) an idea as to what my idea is for this blog is to share my experiences here.  That being said I will omit any experiences that I feel will scare my wife, friends, family or violate any expressed written consent from the National Football League.  If there is anything really cool that happens, I will leave to share over a couple pints at some later date.  So with that said… 

I have discovered Iraqie Tea or “Chi Tea” as they call it.  Well they don’t call it that it’s what we call it but my sandscript buttons for the computer fell off and I couldn’t type it the old fashioned way.  Let me begin on the production of this local delicacy; you start with about ¼ cup of dark Arabian Tea and 12 pounds of SUGAR!  WOW!  It’s like drinking jet fuel!  After a cup and what seems like the rest of your life, everything is at super fast forward, things go by at a blur, and you speak in one word paragraphs.  HowyadoinIamfinethanksforaskingthatsaneatpenyouhaveisithotinhereIworeshoestodayfisharefunnyanimalswasthatadwarf?  Then for about twenty minutes you accomplish every task you have for the entire day.  The other weird part is depending on your mental state or how your spending your day, it is possible (now I haven’t experienced this yet) to run through every conceivable human emotion in thirty seconds.  In short the experience is comparable to building your own house with your bare hands, watching your favorite team win the Super Bowl and watching the scene where little Billy shots Ol’Yellar all at the same time.  These emotions and feelings are so shocking to the system that your first reaction once you’ve come off the Chi High, is that of a wild animal being let loose after a couple of months spent in captivity.  You stagger around for a few moments, sniffing things, your kind of confused and then all you know is that you have to get the hell out of there right that second!  It is not really fare to compare this with lots of Starbucks either.  With coffee you sort of get excited for a while, it gets the engines going, may be get the shakes and the twitches.  The low is comparable to eating a large turkey sandwich the day after thanksgiving, you get all groggy, kind of full, basically nothing that a good nap won’t fix.  But when you’re on the “Chi” or as it’s known on the streets “C-T”, you could be fixed for days!  Unable to eat, sleep, form complex sentences like “No thanks, I’ll eat something that’s not on the floor” and “Sure I’d like some front seat tickets to $3 Flip Flop Fiasco!”  We catch soldiers all the time all hopped up on the Chi, with their good time buddies, turning over cars, looking for kicks.  What it does is create this insatiable appetite for mayhem and makes people the worst kinds of human beings, those who wear sandals and socks together.  I’d publish some pictures of what Chi does to the normal person, but I don’t really want to push the boundaries of good taste, not until the fourth or fifth post to the blog.  Then it’s basically me trying to corrupt

America

as a whole, but let’s leave that for another day.  We’ve found a local Chi dealer on the FOB and we’d kick him out, but he’ll just end up in some other FOB down the block pushing his product.  And I can’t prove it but I’m sure that this addiction reaches the highest pillars of society here.  So if you have the time please email me for the full list of what I’ve developed as a Kick-the-Chi habit kit.  Basically it’s a list of common household items that you can find around the house that can help you or a loved one if you find them in the grip of this terrible addition.  The abridged list contains the following; ¾ wrench, half a gallon of Acidophilus milk, 6 pack of Dr Pepper, beef jerky, posted notes, Styx Greatest Hits and nude pictures of Bee Arthur.  I hope this can help.

Constant Interuptions

Alright the responsibility that goes along with one of these things is to constantly create some cleaver or creative thing that people want to read and keep coming back for more.  Why I have no idea?  My sponsors are happy with my creative content, but since the Blog hit I keep getting all these suggestions and offers.  Steve Buscemie offered to appear on the blog and Letterman won’t leave me alone, but I really want to do my own thing right now.  Jay-Lo wants to do the sound track, which upon hearing this I immediately got sick.   

I have to mention this before I go any further.  If you have ever read on of my emails or had formal correspondence with me you’ll know three things; one I can’t spell to save my life, I just can’t and I accept this as part of my being.  The second is that if you’ll read through any of my letters or emails and during any point in my writing I’m distracted by a strong breeze, a shinny object, or by the fact that my space bar sticks a little, you’ll see that sometimes important words or conjunctions are missing from my sentences.  In my mind they’re there and you just don’t see them, so try a little harder.  Thirdly is that I am the reigning king of run on sentences and using synonyms in the wrong way, carelessly flinging homonyms around as if there play things and propping the uneven ends of my coffee table up with similes.  I think I hurt a kid at camp one year with a hyperbole, I kind of felt bad about assaulting someone with grammar.

Okay enough shenanigans, I had actually written a very boring paragraph here but after being constantly interrupted I lost my train of thought.  And that is just silly, I feel like I have involuntary attention deficit disorder.  So I’ll elaborate on what it’s like to be me at this very point in time.  Imagine having to complete a job that is ridiculously routine, for example putting on pants, chewing your food, or breathing.  Now imagine that same task in the eyes of some people I work with turning the routine into an ultra-emergency.  NOT just any emergency, I used the adjective “ultra”, it’s like watching an ER when all the actors are on a mixture of Red Bull and No-Doze pills, running around with sharp objects bumping into one another and all of them are screaming for some syringe filled with something important.  Just now I was interrupted about absolutely nothing, but that nothing HAD to be discussed right then and there.  This is what happens on a regular basis and I want you to know I was interrupted about talking about being interrupted!  Stop the crazy train, I want to get off!

Blog, Chapter 1

Well here we go people, I've decided to join the 21st Century and try my hand at a Blog.  I'd like to start by explaining "$3 Flip Flop Fiasco", which in my opinion needs no real explanation.  Rather it is a musical adventure Steve, Ben and I decided to take.  I figured with Steve's talents at attachiing poetry to hats, Ben's ability to survive for hours by doing nothing other than "getting ready" and my ability to jam on such instruments as the kazoo, the spoons, the large and small jug, and the radio.  So with all these ingredients you have the makings of a very semi-successful Pop Band!

Alright I'm kidding!  That was only funny to probably three people seeing the ratio of inside jokes to non-inside jokes.  Anyway...

Right now I'm in Baghdad, Iraq, fighting the war on terrorism.  As many of you have asked what my job actually is, here is a brief description of what I do.  I'd like to preface this by saying this is not as exciting I'd like it, but I'm sure my lack of excitement keeps most of you happy.  What my official job title is I'm the "Forward Operating Base (FOB) Deputy Commander", my job title in the company is the "Executive Officer".  What I'm responsible for is the overall operations of the base, what that means in English is that I'm responsible for everything that makes a base work, the chow hall, the vendors who work on the FOB, the repairs and maintenance on the facilities, and the recreation facilities.  Its not what I'd thought I'd be doing, but my seniority and rank have removed me from the leadership positions I used to have, so put simply this is what I get for climbing the ladder!

Right now my days are very long and there is never a shortage of things to do.  Which for the most part is good, I keep busy and it makes the time fly by.  I get to deal a lot with local nationals and the personalities I meet are extremely different than people we encounter.  For starters people here are very polite or they are very outwardly aggressive.  If you are one of those people who do not like to be touched a lot, then this is not the place for you.  It is customary for men who are family or close friends to be hugged and kissed on the cheek.  REALLY good friends even hold hands.  There are a bunch of other neat cultural things I've learned.  It is considered polite to touch your heart after shaking hands with someone, it shows that you are sincere.  Giving the thumbs up is an obscene gesture, along with the "okay" sign, those are bad. 

Well enough for today, I keep getting interrupted so its hard to finish a thought, I'll try and post more later. 

For all of you out there please do not worry things are under control here, I love you guys and will see you soon.

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