Mystery #111 - Global Warming

About a year ago I subjected you all to a rather graphic rant about Santa and projectile vomiting (Mystery #137!!!). It's been a long time, so I figured I owed ya'll a blog. Merry Christmas from me to you.

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #111 - Global Warming

Just last week I was standing on my porch wearing shorts and a t-shirt and watching the rain. My Arizonan readers will know, of course, that rain outside of the summer months is extremely rare. My sane readers will know, of course, that shorts weather days before Christmas is a ridiculous thing. “My,” I thought to myself, “This certainly is a Great Mystery.”

These days you’re always hearing the cons of Global Warming: “the glaciers are melting”, “we’ll all get skin cancer”, “the polar bears are dying”. You need only turn on your TV and be flooded by propaganda. I just can’t help but feel it’s all just a touch one-sided. 

“But Joey... polar bears!” cry the zealots. Well you know what? Polar bears terrify me. Sometimes, I wake up in a cold sweat, thanking my sweet Lord for his ongoing protection from the White Menace. If you ask me, any enemy of the bears deserves our gratitude.

And know what hasn’t done a thing to protect us from polar bears? The freakin’ rainforest. Lame.

Mystery #112 – Fire Safety

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #112 – Fire Safety

The fire alarm in the MU went off today.

Now, most of you will remember the Great MU Fire of ’07, a particularly nasty blaze which threatened tens of thousands, few of whom managed to escape with their lives [citation needed]. I myself was inside at the time, diving through the flames just as the roof collapsed with no less than twelve asphyxiated orphans clinging to my back, all of whom I single-handedly resuscitated before reuniting with all their long-lost families (most of whom were wizards).

Well, I can assure you that when that fire started, we knew it. Flashing lights and blaring alarms sprung to life throughout the building; the grating RRRGH- RRRGH- RRRGH sound most of us associate with lining up on the basketball court. The MU was closed for a long time after that, during which administration assured us the building was being remodeled and outfitted with a new, improved fire alarm system.

There is a distinct possibility that I am partially deaf, my handicap only being the exact pitches emitted by new, improved fire alarm systems, but I doubt it. When the alarm went off today, a flashing light began to blink every few seconds. From the basement there was an automated announcement I could faintly hear as I passed the stairwell, but on the main level… nothing. Some people looked around, confused, and most didn’t notice at all.

It finally took a woman in an ”ASU staff” polo to get people moving, “Fire alarm, everybody out of the building!” She yelled it over and over, kind of like, you know, a fire alarm. I didn’t check her for a control panel or a power cord, but I probably should have. It is, after all, a new and improved fire alarm system.

I was already headed out, so I suppose I’ll have to wait and hear how the Great MU Fire of ’08 panned out, but I’m not that optimistic. While “whisper quiet” sounds good in a car, vacuum, or bulldozer commercial, I’m not sure it should be the selling point for a new, IMPROVED fire alarm system. I imagine the singed, exhausted robot woman going home to her robot family. It’s been a long day at work, and she’s not sure she did her job to the best of her ability. She’ll cry oily robot tears as her husband gingerly clamps her shoulders. “It’s ok, wife-bot, you couldn’t have saved them all. That place needs four, five robot alarms minimum. They’re completely understaffed.” But she’ll just keep blaming herself, keep thinking... if only…

I mean, heck, the boy’s bathroom! She can’t even go in there.

Mystery #114 – Mosquitoes

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #114 – Mosquitoes

I enjoy the weather in Arizona. It’s hot, but in the way my oven is hot. China, however, is hot like a hobo’s armpit: it’s warm and sticky and there are bugs here.

Which of course means mosquitoes. Like every other sane person on the face of the planet, I hate mosquitoes. They drink your blood and give you pimples without the silver lining/pastime of popping. Did I mention the blood? They also, I sometimes fear, might have the power to turn me into a mosquito vampire, which would be like a regular vampire except I’d be repelled by DEET and my castle would be in a bayou, which is lame. If I’m going to be transformed into a creature of the night for all eternity, I’m not spending it in Louisiana.

To protect against this (and, you know, itchiness) I’ve developed a talent for snatching bugs out of the air with my bare hand and crushing them. I used to do the same at home with flies and gnats, only without the crushing. However, I feel obligated to kill the mosquitoes – and quickly – lest my pastime become counter-productive.

It’d be kind of like an all you can eat buffet violently abducting a passing fat man, it’s magical forces depositing him before a silently whirring soft-serve machine. “Feed,” it would command him, it’s voice cold and metallic, “Drain me, and find sustenance.” His trembling, flabby hand would reach for a waffle cone, apprehensive but all too willing.

So yeah, crushing it is.

This was all well and good until the other day, when a mosquito made it through my defenses to score a direct hit. I was so angry, I caught him, grabbed a lighter, and held him by the wings with a pair of tweezers while burning him alive. That prompted a good look in the mirror. Just, ya know, FYI. Don’t bite me.

Mystery #115 – Supercalifragilisticexmymomidoceous

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #115 – Supercalifragilisticexmymomidoceous

As far as Greek Mythology is concerned, there is no greater status for a mortal than to be the offspring of a god. All the cool, trendy Greek kids would have told you that only half-human was the way to be. In fact, any myth not exclusively concerning gods was pretty much reserved for these guys. They were human, but they were still way better than you. Hercules was really strong, and eventually ended up being 50% the god of asbestos. Achilles was raised by centaurs, freakin centaurs, because no man was hardcore enough to be his teacher. I mean we’re talking a populace at near this-is-Sparta levels of testosterone, and they had to bring out the centaurs. When you were still getting action figures and legos for your birthday, Perseus’s relatives gave him a sword and some magic armor, and then sent him to go kill a gorgon. The closest I’ve ever come to that was finally beating the goron race in Majora’s Mask. Sure, that’s almost the same, only I didn’t get a dismembered head out of the deal.

But like Spider Man’s dead uncle once said, it ain’t easy being king (or something like that). Hercules, having pissed off his stepmother by existing, had to… uh… lift a bunch of stuff. There were goats in there too. Achilles inherited his mother’s superhuman powers in the “being a stuck up jerk” department, and had to not die while simultaneously pissing off every soldier in Troy. We won’t even get started on Phaëton. Basically what I’m trying to say is that having a golden chromosome may have benefits, but you get a whole load of other crap to deal with at the same time.

This has been on my mind a lot, as it was recently brought to my attention that my mother is the goddess of awesome. I probably should have gotten wise when she blew through nursing school, which I assume she accomplished by arm wrestling every test into submission while the Rocky soundtrack blared in the background. After ripping MCC a new one - literally - she proceeded to land her dream job in a local ICU, presumably by jumping through a skylight before announcing to the terrified staff, “bow before me, mortals, your souls are mine”. Then she shot lasers out of her eyes. At a bear. No, strike that, at an undead army of bears, which she then defeated and made her slave minions. Also, she’s good at yahtzee.

I’m working on living up to that legacy, which unfortunately probably means less days spent watching cartoons and eating Captain Crunch. Dang.

Mystery #113 – Yankee ingenuity

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #113 – Yankee ingenuity

I didn’t sleep much last night, which meant I was up at an ungodly hour today (see Appendix C: Dawn). My dad is an early riser, the poor man, and so we found ourselves awake, together, and in need of morning foodstuffs. Being a great and devoted lover of pancakes, and knowing full well my father had purchased syrup and bisquick last week, I reckoned I’d fix me up some pan to the cakeses. My dad took off to run some errands, leaving me to my kitchen hijinks.

Background. When my dad moved from Suzhou down here to Dongguan, his things got shipped back to the US until he could re-establish residency with a new visa. However, the Olympics are like high-grade antiheroine for China’s bureaucracy, which means the drawers of kitchen supplies with which I would make my sweet morsels are currently trapped like flies in a web of Chinese red tape.

Dramatic irony: I had freakin’ pancakes for breakfast today. My first step was to fashion a griddle out of a metal tray found in a cupboard. That part was easy. We don’t have measuring cups, but I did find a water bottle with ounce markings on it. Luckily we did have a spatula, so I didn’t have to rig one out of hemp and banana peels or anything fancy like that. I mixed my ingredients in a beer mug and stirred them with a chopstick. When all was said and done I had a plate full of funky, deformed, delicious friends. Like most of my other friends, I decided to smear butter on them and drizzle them with syrup.

That’s about when I realized we didn’t have clean forks. 

I earned that pancake.

Mystery #116 – Wisdom teeth

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #116 – Wisdom teeth

I’ve known for a week now that I was going to write about this, but I had to give myself some time. When I first heard from my dentist that I had to get my wisdom teeth out it was just kind of an “eh, no biggie”. They weren’t bothering me, but preemptive strike and all that, I understand, and I figured getting them out now would get it over with.

Having (pretty much) gotten through it all, I’m now wondering why a loving God would have given me wisdom teeth in the first place? If I was of latino descent, I would probably feel the urge to fall to my knees and shout this question to the heavens, but I don’t even own a bumble bee suit so that’s not really an option. Left, then, to contemplation, I fail to see how wisdom teeth could either...

a) have evolved through natural selection (nothing about chipmunk cheeks will get you laid) or…
b) be the product of intelligent design. More like “inattentive, if not vindictive” design. Maybe God just procrastinated on the whole mouth thing and pulled an all-nighter the night before it was due. Yeah, He told his mom he had started last Wednesday, but really he had wasted all his time on that dang World of Warcraft. He knew it was important... but those Sparkle Orcs weren't going to slay themselves! 

If that’s the case, I guess I can’t really point fingers. Except I will point out that my English essays don’t bleed for a week when I leave out a quote. All in all, I guess it comes down to common sense. They’re called wisdom teeth because anyone stupid enough to pay another person to cut their mouth open doesn’t deserve to be called wise.

 

**BONUS MYSTERY: SOLVED!!!**

In old movies, “tooth ache” is always signified by a character having a bandage or white cloth wrapped around their face, under the chin and over the top of the head. I never really got this until the day after my surgery. By then, the swelling had set in and when I walked my cheeks were jigglin’ like slutty cafeteria girl going for seconds at the salad bar. It got to the point where I would hold them in place to keep them from moving (one word, stitches). So, I may be wrong on this, but as far as I’m concerned it isn’t just a fashion statement. It’s a face bra!

Mystery #117 – Subconscious

Joey Presents: Great Mysteries of the Universe
Mystery #117 – Subconscious

As many of you know, my nose has recently gotten me into trouble (see Mystery 118). Here’s a review for you guys real quick: my dentist cut a little too deep when taking out my upper left wisdom tooth and poked almost into my sinus. I blew my nose, raising my sinus pressure, which ended up breaking this thin remaining division. Now I’m stuck at home sniffling and taking antibiotics.

Obviously, it’s a situation I’d like to end as soon as possible, and so when Dr. Heap says “no blowing your nose, sneezing, etc.” I take him VERY seriously. The last thing I need is for this to nearly heal and somehow land myself with another two weeks. No sneezing, got it.

This morning I woke up and I had to sneeze. I panicked. I tried grabbing my nose, kind of massaging it to get the tickle out, but nothing happened. I thought of how you can “ruin” other people’s sneezes, grabbing their arm a split second before it comes out so they get distracted. The sneeze just goes away. But how do you distract yourself? I had a second to act. I knew I had to do something to stop the sneeze. Before I could realize what I was doing, I was yelling out loud.

“There are bees in the merchandise!!!”

…I know, right? Freud would have a field day with that. I just yelled it, loud and proud to my empty room. Going back after the fact, I can kind of deconstruct my thought process, but this all literally happened in a split second and I really only had time to pick it apart once it had happened. I’m pretty sure… and I don’t know here, but I think I may have cycled through some word association. I think I got “bees” from “distraction”, because, I dunno, bees are distracting or something. And then I’m pretty sure my lightening wit decided something random about bees would do the trick. All in all it probably looked something like this.

Sneeze?
Nooooo sneeze
Stop (grab)
Not working
Sneeze stop?
Distraction?
Bees.
There are bees in the merchandise!!!

On one hand, I’m REALLY glad I found some way to avert that crisis. On the other, I’m more than a little troubled that there’s stuff like that floating around in my subconscious. I swear, being alone in this house is driving me crazy…