House of Pain - Coming to a Town Near You!

There is a certain class of supposedly fun things that I've never managed to derive much pleasure from. It's the sort of things that people don't so much "enjoy" as "endure". The things I have in mind, such as horror movies, hot foods, or roller coasters are all intentionally designed to create a sense of mental and physical discomfort, anxiety, or fear. How this translates into a fun experience is beyond me. However, I would hate for my shortsighted understanding to inhibit my potential, so I've decided that if I ever come into a large sum of money and am looking for a risky (but potentially lucrative) investment opportunity, I'm going to open a theme park targeting people who like this sort of thing. At the risk of giving away my best ideas, take a walk with me through the next great theme park experience - The House of Pain!

One of the basic components to any good theme park is thrill rides. The House of Pain will be no different. I want the tallest plunges, the fastest coasters, and the highest bungee jumping around. I want the worlds first roller coaster that positions riders upside down, suspended by their ankles while they're flung around like rag dolls. I want people to have to sign medical release forms before they even get into the park. We'll have paramedics on duty at all times, but only to add to the show of danger. Everything will be entirely safe, of course.

As for food, the hotter the better. The food stands at House of Pain will serve hot wings, nachos with extra jalapeños and BBQ sandwiches covered in sauce that makes your eyes water. In addition, the drinks will never be served at the same stands as food. In fact, I'll place all the drink stands in hard to locate, distant corners of the park. If you overestimate your tolerance for spicy foods, you'll have the added adventure of having to locate a frozen lemonade stand. Also, hot wings will only cost 25 cents each, but a bottle of water will set you back $10.

It might seem redundant to have a haunted house at a place like this, but ours will be a little different. Of course, there will be things jumping out when you least expect it, but we won't have any gory, violent imagery. Zombies and vampires are blase. Instead, we'll feature things you should really be scared of. My house of horrors will feature pictures of skin diseases and surprise encounters with middle aged hookers in tube tops. At the very end you'll be accosted with creepy photoshopped images of really improbable things like a lamprey's mouth superimposed onto the tip of someone's finger.*

To put the icing on the cake, I'm going to take the overall discomfort to a whole new level. This theme park will be impeccably clean, but the smell will be excruciating. Have you ever walked down Bourbon Street in New Orleans or perhaps Beale Street in Memphis? You know that aroma when it gets really hot and you can smell the humid fumes from last night's debauchery? It's a mixture of alcohol and urine and vomit. We're going to have vents that pump that smell into the park. I'm thinking we should even have aroma themes for different areas of the park. One area might give you the Beale Street experience. Another area will reek of skunks and we might even have a "fart zone" for the truly daring. The aroma vents will be clearly marked and you'll win a prize if you can stand directly in front of one of them for longer than 90 seconds.

This idea is still in development, but you can see that I've already got a pretty solid plan in the works. If you're interested in investing in the House of Pain, please let me know. I'm also accepting ideas for additional attractions that might go well with the theme. Do you think people would stand in line to get maced? In any case, I always imagined that if I owned a theme park, I would go there every weekend and skip to the front of lines or get free food. However, if this idea pans out, I'll probably just spend my weekends at home rolling around in all the money I'm going to make. All that wonderful, stinking money.

* Please do not google that unless you really think you can handle it. I thought I could, but after seeing it, I couldn't touch anything for days without thinking about it. You have been warned!

NASCAR and Twilight

I've been trying to put together a post on NASCAR, but I'm not sure what to say about it. A couple of months ago, I started a journey of trying to figure out why it's so popular and have found that it's starting to grow on me.  Translating that into a post, however, is proving difficult.  There are sports like football or baseball that allow for underdogs to come from way behind and win it in the end. This makes for exciting, tear-inducing movies, but NASCAR is more like tennis. You win by avoiding disaster and making your move when it counts. You have to develop an appreciation by understanding the rules and learning the strategies. But I don't want to write a blog entry that makes NASCAR sound like it's a fine wine that you have to develop a palette for. I mean, come on, it's a bunch of guys driving around in circles. 

Maybe I just haven't been watching NASCAR long enough to get my head around exactly how I feel about it.  Right now, the only thing I can think of is how much NASCAR reminds me of Twilight.  That may seem far-fetched, but I think the comparison is sound.  For starters, there's the drama.  Of course NASCAR is dramatic.  There are cars going close to 200 miles an hour with mere inches between them.  There is the constant threat of contact and crashes, the pressure on pit crews to shave seconds off their time, and the grudges that can form between drivers over the course of the season.  As for Twilight, that story is just oozing with drama.  Not drama over anything that people seriously have to worry about though.  It's drama about things like whether a young girl should go to the prom with a vampire or how to keep her father from finding out that her best friend is a werewolf.  I don't remember having to worry about that stuff when I was in high school.  

Another reason NASCAR reminds me of Twilight is people's reactions.  While there are people who seem to hate each one, I’m thinking more of the fans.  Fans of Twilight, and I'm talking the hardcore fans here, feel very strongly about it.  They have picked a side and they root for Jacob or Edward, regardless of the fact that they already know who "wins" in the end.  Then there are NASCAR fans.  They have their favorite drivers, their least favorite drivers, and given the chance, they'll pack up an RV and spend the weekend camped out on the infield of the Bristol Motor Speedway.

NASCAR and Twilight also have crazy merchandising.  In NASCAR, this is obviously evidenced by the cars and drivers themselves, which look like are moving billboards.  Every inch is covered in a logo or slogan.  You can tell a car a mile away just by seeing the huge M&Ms characters or the Miller Lite logo.  And if you think the sponsors are all major corporations and beer companies, you might want to talk to this guy:

That’s Mike Bliss next to the Kim Kardashian car.  But NASCAR doesn’t stop there…they’ll sell you anything they can put a logo on.  Twilight is the same way.  Let's see how they stack up:

 

	NASCAR	Twilight
Lunch boxes
Figurines
Jewelry
Underwear

So there you have it.  I can’t really explain why I’m starting to like NASCAR except by comparing it to one of my other inexplicable likes.  I don’t have a favorite driver, and I certainly don’t plan on ordering any of the merchandise seen above, but I did add Days of Thunder and Talledega Nights to my Netflix queue, and come the weekend, I’ll tune in to see who takes the checkered flag.

My New Hobby

Last night, Daniel and I had the pleasure of going to Outback. Toward the end of dinner, I realized I had a small speck of steak stuck between my back molars. Being in a public place, without even the meager privacy of a booth, there was only so much I could do to dislodge the steak. I dug around with my tongue, swished around some water....but I didn't have a toothpick and I wasn't about to unhinge my jaw and dig around with my finger. I tried not to think about it while we waited for our check, but once I know there is food stuck in my teeth, and once I've tried unsuccessfully for a couple of minutes to free it, it's hard to just drop the matter and stop thinking about it. Thankfully, we weren't there much longer so I was able to grab a toothpick on the way out and dig around on the way to the car. Once that little bit of food was out, I felt so relieved and triumphant. You'd think I'd slain a dragon.

Sitting in the car, basking in the victory of clean teeth, I realized this might be the feeling people chase when they're biting at their fingernails or picking their noses. You get this idea in your head that there's something there that shouldn't be and soon there is an obsessive need to get it out. When you finally do, it's like coming alive again with shorter nails and a cleaner nasal passage. Realizing what a positive feeling people are chasing when they engage in these undesirable habits, I decided I would harness this same obsessive need to sluff off bodily dross and use it for good. I decided I would start flossing.

I've never been a habitual flosser, and because I do it so infrequently, it hurts when I finally get around to it. Besides, once I've brushed, my mouth feels clean and fresh enough that flossing just seems unnecessary. But if you want to find out how untrue this is, eat a big steak, brush your teeth, then floss. You'll be amazed at how much brushing left behind.

It would be nice if I could adopt flossing simply for the inheirent benefits of the activity, but in the 25 years I've been responsible for taking care of my teeth, I've never been a regular flosser. Now, however, I'm coming at it from a new angle. It's like a quest deep into uncharted caves where I need to excavate as much as possible. Perhaps I'll even come across some rare artifact that I can show off to Daniel before tossing aside. I haven't told him yet about my new hobby, but i'm sure he's going to LOVE it.

There's a Reason They Call it "Classic"

We're considering getting a minivan and it was kinda freaking me out. I was getting all stressed about what sort of impact this would have on my self image, my style, my general psyche and outlook on life. I was even asking friends who drive minivans what sort of effect it'd had on them. I was worrying way too much about it. I told one person I was afraid it was going to be my first major step into midlife and that I feared there would be no turning back. I was a bit surprised when this person pointed out that perhaps I already had my toes in the water of midlife. I had to sit down and think about it, but in the end, I'm afraid they're right. Let me lay out the evidence for you:

• I have a baby and a mortgage
• I don't remember the last time I ate ramen
• When I go to the movies, I'll choose a Saturday matinée over opening night every time
• I watch more VH1 than MTV
• All the country songs I know the words to are on the "Classic Country" station

I had all this in mind when we went to test drive a minivan. Then the more we drove around, I started to realize that for every reservation I had about the situation, the minivan had an answer. I thought about "classic" county, it had magic stowaway seats. I tried to remember what ramen tastes like, the van had dual power sliding doors. In the end, the van had answers to questions I hadn't even thought of yet. So now we're on the lookout for a good used van. I'm completely over the anxiety of buying a minivan because the thing they don't tell you about getting older is that the only people who think you look "uncool" are the people half your age trying to look cool. So I'm done worrying about how I'll look when the windows are rolled down. It only took one test drive to realize that part of getting older is caring less about whether I look cool and more about what makes my life easier.

If you don't know me by now...

I would make a horrible celebrity. I would be the kind of celebrity who shows up looking fantastic on the red carpet, but doesn't want to go on Oprah or be interviewed by Diane Sawyer or say anything public about my private life. In other words, I would be a very boring celebrity for my throngs of adoring fans. I discovered this about myself when I recently re-started this blog during a rash of blogging by some friends. My friends new blogs are wonderful and insightful and provide a peak into their thoughts and lives. I, on the other hand, blog about babies riding in boxes and speak philosophically about the differences between the menus at McDonald's and Taco Bell. There is nothing wrong with either kind of blog, I've just been stuck by the differences and it's shown me something about myself that I always kind of knew but never really put words to. I rarely let people in on the details of my personal life. I love hearing about other people's lives...their thoughts and hardships and joys...but I'm not liable to ask any more than I think they want to tell me or tell much more than they ask. It isn't that I'm embarrassed about my life or have some big secret I'm hiding, I'm just a "good fences make good neighbors" kind of girl. But even Frost wrote that "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" and maybe he was on to something. Maybe I should be more forthcoming so that the people who know me feel like they actually know me. With that in mind, I'm making two offers. The first is that I'll try to be more forthcoming in general with the people I hold near and dear. The second is this...if there's anything you want to know about me, now's your chance. Any takers?

Vroom Vroom

I used to think that people who worked at liquor stores had access to the best boxes, but now that I’m buying a box of diapers every couple of weeks I’m rethinking that position. I still think a liquor store employee is your best friend if you’re moving anytime soon, but I think that what moms lack in sheer volume of boxes, we make up for with quality. Diaper boxes are the perfect size, they’re made of glossy corrugated cardboard, and , they have cut-outs on the sides for easy portability. I even tested a diaper box this afternoon and learned that it can even double as a baby sled, if necessary.

If I Plant It, Will They Come?

Now that I'm staying home with Emily, I'm always on the lookout for free or low-cost things to keep us busy. Not that Emily doesn't keep me busy enough as it is, but I like to have things that give me goals and routines. Otherwise, E and me just end up in the floor playing with blocks all day. While she may not mind that, I'd rather take the initiative to go to storytime at the library or make a trip to the zoo. My newest idea for a productive activity is to grow some vegetables. The spots in our back yard that get the best sun aren't the spots I wanted to tear up to plant vegetables, so I picked things that could planted in containers. I've got a tomato plant in a 5-gallon bucket, some peas, some carrots, basil, and oregano. I'm not sure if I have a green thumb or not, but I'm two days in and so far nothing has sprouted. I'll keep you posted.