Crowd Control

So yesterday, over 340 people just died in a massive stampede in Cambodia. Apparently they were having some sort of water festival when people began to notice the bridge they were on was swaying. Panic quickly broke out, with many people getting trampled to death while police began firing water cannons to try and get the crowd to move.

This story brings up several questions that we must ponder. What could have been done to prevent this catastrophe? Why did the Cambodian government try to cover up the death count? Where the hell is Cambodia? Where can I buy a water cannon? And the answers are: who knows?, who cares?, probably Brazil and Toys Backward 'R' Us.

But all kidding aside (at least for a sentence; this is after all a humor blog so kidding is sort of required); I could have seen this coming. Reports have the head counts of this festival at somewhere between two to four million people. That is waaaaay too many people. Nothing ever good comes from putting millions of people in the same crowded area. New York for instance.

I can’t think of a worse way to die than getting trampled in a crowd stampede. Just ask Mufasa. Now personally, I sort of have a fear of crowds. Normally I’m a calm guy, but then I get in a crowded area where a lot of people are standing and I tend to tense up and get very irritable and I start to hyperventilate and then I get nervous AND THEN I START YELLING AND FREAKING OUT SO GIVE ME SOME ROOM! OKAY! Sorry, I got a little unnerved just thinking about it. To this day I avoid lecture halls, dance clubs, crowded parties, shopping malls on Black Friday and the entire country of Japan.

Let me share a specific incident. I went to a 3OH3! and Cobra Starship concert over the summer, and while I for the most part liked the bands, I was not a big fan of the venue. There weren’t any seats, just a big empty area where we were supposed to apparently arrange ourselves in an orderly fashion. Of course, since much of the crowd consisted of deranged middle schoolers, who are biologically incapable of doing anything in an orderly fashion, this did not happen. What did happen was the entire crowd just sort of sloshed around, which meant I was bumped into by people on all sides of me.

As if this wasn’t pissing me off enough, some little middle school boy was on my right, but he desperately wanted to stand next to the girls in my group on my left. Now, as I said, middle schoolers are the stupidest and horniest beings ever to awkwardly shuffle across the face of the Earth, so he just sort of kept trying to walk through me and shove me out of the way until I snapped and just started yelling at him and he ran away crying. That and some drunken idiots spilled beer on me. By the end of the concert I was so on edge that one of my friends tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention and I almost swung around and tried to punch her.

I’m not sure why I have this fear. Part of it could be that I grew up on a farm in a small town on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To say I was used to having my own space is a bit of an understatement. That and because of my tendency to wear slippers I am constantly worried somebody will step on my toe (especially these days).

And it’s not just with crowds. I also can’t stand people who have no sense of personal space. Yeah, you know who I am talking about. I’m talking about that one guy who feels like when he talks to you he needs to be so close to you that if you sneezed you would break his nose with your forehead. Hey buddy, if you’re listening, I want to hear what you are saying, not get to first base. I tend to notice that people on the mainland tend to pop my bubble more than people from Hawaii. Of course, it helps that people from Hawaii are much more comfortable shouting everything, including very intimate hygiene facts in crowded areas.

Speaking of which, I have a genius idea for solving my fear of crowds: dried cuttlefish. It’s actually a popular snack back in Hawaii, but it has a smell that is… well, we’ll call it “interesting.” On the mainland it causes people to make a really nauseated face and run away as if I had just offered them a bag of removed warts. So I have decided that when I come back to Colorado from break I will bring back enough dried cuttlefish to create a fifteen foot radius of emptiness around me. The only problem is I might cause stampedes of people running away from me.

Fire Burning

As many of you probably know, I’m a very skeptical guy. But I am now confident that the apocalypse is upon us. And I am not saying this just because Heidi and Spencer might be getting divorced (although I’m still not exactly sure who Heidi and Spencer are). I’m convinced the apocalypse is coming because there have been a lot of strange things going on recently.

As most of you probably know by now, there is a raging wildfire right now in northwest Boulder, Colorado. Seeing as I am currently sitting on a couch in south Boulder, you can see why this concerns me. This fire has been going on since Labor Day, and is still going strong. Or at least I think it started on Labor Day. I spent my three-day weekend like I do all of my extended breaks (sleeping), so for all I know this fire could have been burning since Friday.

All I know is that I finally awoke from my slumber on Monday evening and smelled smoke. I assumed my neighbors were having a BBQ, and quite frankly I got a little upset I wasn’t invited. Sure, I have no idea who my neighbors are (or if I actually have neighbors), but is that any excuse not to invite me over? Anyway, I went outside and I instantly noticed it looked like I had just walked into a gas chamber (or Los Angeles on a good day). Within a minute, my brain was able to connect the dots (okay, so maybe it was more like ten minutes, but give me a break; it was the weekend) and produce the following thought: “Fire?” After another few minutes, my brain produced a second thought: “Uh oh?”

So I rushed into my apartment and tried to figure out where the fire was and finally learned that it was located at Four Mile Canyon. Of course, this didn’t help me at all since I had no idea where Four Mile Canyon was. For all I knew, Four Mile Canyon was right across the street. As it turns out, I’m not in any immediate danger, so all of you out there can breathe a sigh of relief (or a sigh of disappointment, depending on whether or not I irritate you).

Unfortunately, not everyone was so lucky. Almost 8,000 acres and 100 homes have been destroyed the last time I checked. One of those houses actually belonged to my professor, who is homeless yet still felt it necessary to come to class and was still more prepared than me. And it does not look like this fire is going out any time soon. The governor has claimed the state has “no more resources” and firefighters reported that as of Wednesday they had “0 percent of the fire contained.” It looks like we’re just going to have to sit here and wait for the feds to come and help us, which the people in Louisiana find very funny for some reason. The only way this news could get bleaker is if it somehow involved Justin Bieber.

On the bright side, none of this matters because we are all going to die anyway! That’s right; we’re going to get hit by an asteroid. Apparently, we barely dodged two just the other day. Now, I’ve made fun of NASA, mainly because like all government departments they spend too much money on stupid projects, waste time with bureaucratic bulls**t and in general are about as useful as a lead life preserver. I got some criticism for this, but I think that this article justifies my view.

NASA didn’t know about this thing until very recently. Apparently it snuck up on them, which is unacceptable. I mean, it’s a giant rock hurtling through space, not a goddam ninja. NASA needs to get their priorities straight and stop taking pictures of pretty nebulas and start looking out for killer space spheres. If you just yelled at your computer screen, “Hey, the plural of nebula is nebulae, not nebulas,” then you also need to get your priorities straight and focus on the grave matter at hand. Also, “Killer Space Ninjas” would be an awesome name for a band.

So as we can see, the apocalypse is coming, and only the fit will survive. Not to brag, but I think I will be one of the survivors. For one thing, I have the ability to just go to sleep and ignore everything. And I think I’m going to start now.

Crying Over Spilt Oil

So, I’m not sure if you heard, but there is some sort of oil leak going on. Now, I admit I am a bit late on writing about this, but in my defense, I thought by now they would have solved this problem already. I mean, it’s been more than a month since this thing started leaking oil, and they still haven’t been able to stop it.

It’s not because they haven’t tried though. They have tried a whole bunch of strategies that, when you think about it, are a lot more comical than effective. It’s like they put the Wile E. Coyote in charge. Their first attempt was to just put a big dome over it, but that didn’t work. I have no idea why; I tried to find out but then I saw the words “methane hydrate crystals” and I decided for my safety that I should just stop reading.

Then they tried something called “top kill” which is even more hilarious: they basically just dump a whole bunch of mud into the hole and hope it stops. Now, NASA scientists helped to come up with this theory, so of course it failed miserably. But to me the bigger question is where the hell they are getting all of this mud from? So I advise all of you to be on the lookout for government officials standing in your backyard with buckets and shovels.

BP officials are slowly starting to run out of ideas. At one point, they actually convened a committee of experts, which for some reason included director James Cameron. Now, just because Cameron has hot air coming out his a**hole doesn’t mean he is an expert in energy crises. His only idea was to sink a large ship into the leak and hope that Leonardo DiCaprio’s hair would absorb all of the oil. If they want to get a solution from Hollywood, they should get those oil guys from Armageddon to fix it (by the way, how soon do you think that somebody will make a movie about this?)

At this point I don’t care if they have to shove Kirstie Alley into the hole to stop it from leaking; they just need to stop it. I mean it’s so big that they apparently can see it from space, joining the Great Wall of China, Las Vegas, and the giant hole in the middle of Kansas that BP dug up to make mud for their “top kill” plan. The oil is starting to reach the shores of Louisiana, which can already be heard shouting “No! No, we don’t need FEMA! No, just STAY AWAY! You’ll just screw things up worse!”

Of course, now that the shores are coated with enough grease to slick the Jonas Brother’s hair for the next ten years, the animals are beginning to suffer. As with all oil spills, bleeding heart vegans are rushing out the door with what’s left of your dish soap to go and wash the precious birds that were too stupid to fly away from the oil and instead dove right into it. Also, there is a fishing ban off the Louisiana coast, but I’ve had a personal policy on eating fish from the Gulf Coast for a long time anyway.

Of course, if you thought the animals were suffering, you should try being a BP executive right now. They might as well gather all of their money, put it in a pile, and light it on fire and dance around it. They basically are pumping money into the ocean, and their stock and reputation are taking an even bigger dive. There was even a Facebook group that urged people to piss on BP gas stations, which I would have participated in if I knew where my local BP gas station was. That, and the cops warned me about being naked in public again.

This is all just proof that we should never do things in the deep ocean. I’ve seen all of those Animal Planet shows, not to mention 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The deep ocean is full of giant killer squids and fish with bigger teeth than Gary Busey with weird little flashlights attached to their foreheads (although that would be convenient for all those times I get lost at night stumbling around in the dark). If we need to drill for oil, let’s do it somewhere where nothing that we care about gets hurt, like the Alaskan wilderness. Ducks are a lot cuter than moose, and unlike moose, ducks don’t eat people.

Anyway, I think that we need to learn some sort of lesson from this whole fiasco, besides figuring out that dumping mud on things stops being a viable solution after preschool. So the next time you drive somewhere to do something stupid and frivolous, like shopping or school, think of all those poor birds covered in oil. But if you do find yourself at the gas station and see me peeing, please don’t call the cops.

Fire and Iceland

While I was chatting with a friend yesterday, she happened to mention that something was happening in Iceland. At the moment I sort of just glossed over her comment, assuming by “something going on,” that it was something I would not care about, like some sort of human rights scandal or the season finale of Iceland Idol. But then I looked it up today and apparently some big volcano is blowing up the entire place.

This emergency called for quick action. First, I had to figure out where the hell Iceland was. I suck at geography. My friend also pointed this out by reminding me that in my senior year of high school I once listed Denmark as a U.S state. Of course, once I found out that Iceland is some island off the coast of Europe and is too far away for the eruption to affect me, I stopped caring. It’s not that I’m not aware of the destructive power of volcanoes. I mean I spent 18 years of my life living on an island made up of volcanoes, one of which is active. It’s more like I don’t care about what happens to Europeans. Of course my high school friend is probably yelling at me as she is reading this, since she is currently in Europe (which come to think of it might be the reason she knew about this way before me).

Anyway this volcano is wrecking havoc on the Icelandic way of life; whatever that may consist of (getting frostbite?). 500 people were evacuated from the area, which surprised me since I was unaware there were even 500 people who live in Iceland. The volcano has also disrupted local Iceland airline flights (another thing I assumed Iceland did not have). Also, they are worried that the volcano eruption might cause flooding. Yes I know that sentence confused me at first too, sort of like the first time I read the sentence “Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet.” But apparently the lava is melting the snow and ice around the volcano, which can cause massive flooding. Also, this volcano is apparently causing something called a “dirty thunderstorm.” I have no idea what that is, but judging by these pictures it is going to kill somebody. I’m no expert, but lightning is not supposed to come out of volcanoes except in Michael Bay movies.

Now as I said earlier, my home state of Hawaii was made by volcanoes, and the island I live on actually has an active volcano, Kilauea. But our volcano acts like a Hawaiian volcano as opposed to these peppy European ones, as in it moves very slowly. “Erupting” is probably too strong a word for what Kilauea does. “Ooze” is probably more appropriate. In fact, rather than evacuate people, we charge tourists money and let them go close to it! It’s part of our plan to make lots of money while hopefully at the same time reducing the population of tourists.

I’m just joking; it’s actually not dangerous at all. That stupid Man vs. Wild guy did an episode where he had to “survive” in Kilauea. He was dropped into the “inhospitable environment” of one of the largest tourist destinations in the U.S. I know, it’s scary. I mean, he was forced to survive in a barren expanse of rock where elderly tourists are often seeing walking around with fanny packs. They probably had to edit out the kindergarteners on a field trip that were standing behind him and waving at the camera. But sometimes you only get three bars on your cell phone, so there are some dangers. Plus if he tripped on the rocks he could really get a bad boo-boo that would need a Band-Aid.

The only real negative from the volcano is the occasional vog, which for you mainlanders out there, is a haze made of up volcanic ash. The vog is irritating because on bad days it makes the sky turn a little gray and it can reduce visibility, especially in my hometown of Kona. I mean, a horrible day in Kona is still better than the best day of the year on the mainland but it can still get kind of irritating. When I was a reporter at the West Hawaii Today it seemed like every other day I was assigned a story on the vog. It tells you something about how easy life in Kona is that the biggest concern to citizens was that it was a little cloudy once in awhile. I also once had to do a story trying to convince people that, believe it or not, it is not a smart idea to try and plug a volcano with concrete or blow it up.

Speaking of stupid ideas, all these people who chose to live in Iceland are really going through some hard times. I feel like as a nation we need to do something to make them feel better. Now that I think of it, apparently there is some big event tomorrow afternoon where we will at least be inhaling as much smoke as them…

Making Waves

I rarely pay attention to the news. For instance, it took me two days to realize there had been an earthquake in Haiti. It then took me another two days to figure out where Haiti was. But this past Saturday, when an 8.8 earthquake hit Chile, I was aware of it within about two minutes because the resulting tsunami was projected to slam into my home state of Hawaii. I knew this because my dad called me and woke me up to tell me this. Of course, before noon I rarely am able to comprehend simple sentences, so I went back to sleep. It wasn’t until I woke up about three hours later that I actually realized that “Holy s**t there’s a tsunami headed for Hawaii!”

At this point, I sat on my couch for the rest of the day watching CNN. Most of the coverage was about Chile, which I can understand. Most of the damage occurred there, and if you have ever seen Chile on a map, their country is so skinny that if their buildings fell over they either ended up in Argentina or the Pacific Ocean. I mean seriously; it looks like Argentina just had a phobia of the ocean and so they drew a line fifty feet from the beach and just said “yeah, that isn’t ours.”

JOKE TIME: So two blondes are getting ready to land a plane. The plane touches down and the pilot is instantly forced to bring the plane to a screeching halt. The pilot says “Wow, that sure was a short runway.” And the other blonde says “Yeah, but look how wide it is…”

Anyway, I was mainly watching the news for information about Hawaii. I mean, it can be a little unsettling hearing that a big wave is going to crash into your house, even if you aren’t currently in that house. Because there are other important things in that house that I can’t replace, like my sofa. Oh yeah, and family members too. Hawaii is not one of those places that get a lot of natural disaster scares (which is surprising when you consider that we live on an active volcano). I mean Kansas has tornados, San Francisco has earthquakes, New England has blizzards, Tokyo has Godzilla, and Oakland has the Raiders. So I was a bit freaked out, especially considering how people in Hawaii normally react to emergencies. So was everybody else apparently. There were people all over the internet who expressed their concern for Hawaii. It is nice to see that people can put aside their petty jealousy of people in Hawaii for a few seconds.

And from stories I’ve heard from my friends, it was quite an ordeal. First off, during tsunamis or tsunami drills (which happen once a month), a really loud, really annoying alarm goes off across the state. I mean, this thing wakes up dead people and pisses off the deaf, and it went off for the entire day. Then officials went and personally knocked on the doors of people in high risk areas and basically told them to get their s**t and get out. This is actually kind of funny, because the people who live in high risk areas (on the beach would be one) are either rich or tourists in hotels, neither of which is a group I am particularly fond of. So the thought of them being packed into school buses and evacuated to higher ground in their pajamas makes me happy.

Now a lot of the people I know, being the geniuses that they are, decided the best plan of action was to buy a plate lunch and go watch the tsunami. Now most of these people were high in the mountains watching from scenic points, and I have to be honest, I probably would have done the same thing. But there are idiots, and then there are people who swim on the beach during tsunami warnings, like this retard. I don’t care if you are a tourist and don’t know what is going on; when you see a nice beach in Hawaii empty you can assume one of five things is in the water: a giant shark, a swarm of jellyfish, untreated sewage, a snorkeling rapist, or a giant killer tidal wave (by the way, the “Snorkeling Rapists” would be a cool band name). Now, in this guy’s defense, getting to swim in Waikiki without stepping on five tourists everywhere you go is kind of neat. But still, when a 20-foot wave washes his white butt onto the freeway, I’m definitely not going to feel sorry for him. But at least he got a Facebook fan page out of it.

Luckily, the tsunami never came. It was just another one of those things in Hawaii that everybody thinks will be big but never really pans out, like Michelle Wie (who is actually born on the exact same day as yours truly). I figured that this tsunami was not going to be a big deal when my dad stopped texting me about sirens and waves and started asking me if I had bought him his crocs yet. Not that I am disappointed; I’m very grateful that this tsunami did not hit Hawaii. I mean, could you imagine how bad I would feel if I went back to my home in the mountains and found out that I now was the owner of a beach front property? I would be absolutely devastated.