The Fountain

In the world we live in today, the only heroes of the world are comedy stars. Children of the world are trying to find suitable models in Seth Rogen and Ben Stiller, when these men are making nothing but innuendo jokes and farting here and there. I'm not one to talk, knowing my friends and I watch these movies all the time. Zoolander is pure hilarity. At one particular movie session, my friends and I were downstairs in my friend's basement, watching a movie the atmosphere of which was not commonly experienced. At least not by our social group. This movie was 'The Fountain', a strange independent film the likes of which the world has never seen before. The film consisted of three narratives of different characters. The first, Tomas, is a Spanish conquistador who has disgraced several Mayan Gods, and has unleashed a grim Pandora's Box of curses and darkness that constantly plague and pox him like a plague...or a pox. He is seeking the Fountain of Youth. The next story is of Tom, played by the same actor. He plays a modern time veterinarian who is involved in a romance with a strangely naive daughter of a corporate executive. This bit of the movie is shot in one camera, and has very low production values. It gives off the feel of a second rate soap opera. They probably spent all their money on an extremely lifelike model orangutang which is featured heavily. The third part of this film focuses on Thomas, a space traveler who is stuck on an island with only a tree. This part consists mainly of the protagonist peeling bark off the tree, chewing it, and turning it (somehow) into ink. In the end, it turns out the 'Fountain of Youth' takes its own form in everyone's lives. For Tomas it is in the form of the real Fountain of Youth, discovered in an old Mayan tomb. For Tom it is the naive daughter of a corporate executive he loves so much (this revelation consists of a scene where he quite literally drinks her). And for Tom it is the tree has has forever lived with, and its water was the ink that formed from his saliva. What a twist!
Whew. That took a while. Blog done.

Chain Mail

Chain mail, I love you so. Why do people send it out? Who knows. Does it matter? Definitely not. People I know become so angry upon the mere sight of it that they fall all over theirselves swearing and screaming before realizing how funny the mail could be. Especially when they bring it upon themselves. Yes, it's very possible to send out a massive chain mail. All you have to do is, when making a contact list, including all your contacts in it, thereby sending out a mass email to everyone you've ever known through friends, as long as they have an e-mail. Soon enough, this mass mail will transform into a conversation of gigantic proportions, all parts of which will be sent to your family and friends, all of the teen humor and language still intact. This will then cause the sender of the mail to be extremely irritable, having had 'worlds collide' by their mail being sent to their parents and friends. Even the creepy ones you find are hilarious.
'Send this email to 100 different people or you will DIE'
However, now that this has begun, chain-mailing has spread to the outer reaches of the world wide web. Now, it has begun to become so popular that it appears on YouTube. Some of the more avid watchers definitely know of this, but to all you greenhorns, when a message says 'do not read', DO NOT READ! It is tolerable, and even fun at first, but when chain-mail quickly becomes less funny and more creepy, it evolves from a harmless inconvenience into a dangerous and irritating menace.

Bikes

One of the largest things I missed in life was riding a bike without the handlebars. Sad, isn't it? That a human could be denied such a thing as exclaiming to his raptly and faithfully staring father
"Look, Pa! No hands!"
Shocking. Another thing. Though people might have you believe you can never forget how to ride a bike, the annoying truth is you simply can. From the ages of six to twelve, I never once touched a bike. My parents were trying to teach me how to ride, but it always got put off. Not only could I not ride the bike, I had no chances to. Not to say I would have loved to, of course, because I was putting it off as much as they were. But, sure enough, one freezing Seattle autumn, my father decided to just teach me. At first he thought the myths told about never forgetting were true, immediately sending me off on my own on a somewhat stable mountain bike. That was until I made a horrible crash into a lamp post. So, after school, over the next few days, I slowly gained skill, and, eventually, my dad was ready to let me go up a hill. An ordinary hill.
But this was no ordinary hill! It was (from my perspective at the time,) the steepest hill I had even SEEN, let alone biked up! But, being the tremendously courageous young boy I am, I traveled upward in any case. Not so hard. Then I went down.
There I was, zooming past bushes and trees going as fast as four hundred miles per hour! Okay, maybe it wasn't that much, but it sure felt like it. Suddenly, halfway down the hill, I realized. This wasn't scary. I wasn't going fast. I was enjoying myself. And so I had learned to ride.
Recalling the past, it was the most horrifying experience of my life.
Maybe that's just what biking is.