I learned something today in the way of animal grooming- if a cat is too fat to lick its own back, it turns gross.
My grandma's cat, Abigail, is huge. Like 35 pounds or something huge. And as a fat animal, she cannot for the life of her reach certain places to clean herself, including but not limited to her lower back by the base of her tail. When cats cant clean themselves, their fur gets all matted up, causing the skin underneath to hold in dirt and flake like no other. Oh yeah, and she stank something fierce.
The time came that she NEEDED to be taken to a groomer. So my wonderful father volunteered me to grab the cat (always fun) and WRAP her in a towel (also fun), then CARRY her down to the CAR and HOLD ON to her the entire ride there.
After much fuss and a few back claws in my shirt, i got her situated on my lap and tried my damndest to reassure her and keep her calm. Remember, I'm the evil monster holding her in there, I gotta do something so that she doesnt eat me or my appendages.
Finally we get to the groomer. My dad tells me to HOLD ON and WAIT inside this car with a cat wrapped in a towel who suspiciously smells like urine. So I wait. And wait. 15 minutes goes by, I'm still waiting. The car is getting hotter, cat fur sticking to me, I'm sweaty, cat's panting, and the overwhelming aroma of urine. Just about 20 minutes rolls by, I suddenly become a genius and roll down the damn window, allowing sweet fresh air to waft into my miserable sinuses and cool my drenched, fur matted face and arms. The cat takes this oppurtunity to try and JUMP out the window. I'm a pretty strong guy, but man was it a fight to keep her in the vehicle.
Eventually my dad comes out and tells me to bring her inside. Somehow I manage to get out of the car keeping the cat burrito intact (concerned over those devilish back claws) and bring her into the groomer, a small old lady with gray spaghetti hair. I set the cat down and the groomer asks me, So what are we doing today, just a bath? I'm thinking, what the hell was Dad doing here the last half hour? Playing parcheezy? So I answer with a big, dumb, I dunno.
So she starts to comb out all the dead fur thats matted up on Abigail's back and rear. She's got the cat's head in what I can only describe as a nylon cat noose attached to a metal rod that's mounted on the edge of this table, and this nylon deal is NOT long enough to reach the floor. So when Abigail makes a break for it, all I see is my grandmother's cat hanging by her neck from this thing, and my stupid ass trying to save it, all the while getting the shit scratched out of me. Needless to say, this gave me the willpower to hold on to the cat REAL tight.
Sometime later, she finishes combing out all the dead fur, and it looks like a whole other cat's worth of fur was just pulled out with this magical comb. For a minute my dad started comforting a dead pile of fur before I told him that wasn't Abigail. (Yeah, the devil inside told me to just let him be, but I cant let him lose his sanity yet.)
So we take the cat over to the bathtub, and I ask the groomer, You got it from here? She replies, Well I may need you to hold onto her while I wash her down. I'm thinking, this bitch better give us a discount or something, making ME do an assistant's job...
We wash her down. Soap up with this HORRIBLE smelling stuff, lather her up, then rinse her off, all the while MY job was to keep rubbing her ears to keep her calm. (The cat, not the groomer.) We get her rinsed and the groomer finally takes over complete control and picks this monster of a cat up in a towel to dry her off. I step back to take a look at myself, and there I am: drenched up to the chest in cat-bath water, fur ALL OVER my arms, chest, face, and neck, cat piss all over my lap, I'm sweating my ass off from holding down this animal in a bathtub filling with hot water, it was horrible. I smelled like Steven Tyler after rough sex with an unshaven Lady Gaga. It was THAT bad.
The groomer sets the cat down and pulls out this nozzle attached to what appears to be a mounted vacuum cleaner, and proceeds to dry her off with the hot hair emitting from the nozzle. Of course my job is to hold the cat down again (you know by now the cat has not only figured out all of my physical restraining techniques, but is also tired of having them practiced on her and is figuring out ways to defeat me at this.)
I load the cat up after all is done, I have the wonderful task of HOLDING the cat ALL the way back home (at least SHE doesn't smell like her own piss), and have never been more glad to set a cat down on the kitchen floor in my life.
Did I mention the cat pissed all over me on the ride there?
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
This Little Piggy Had Half a Roast Beast
Doritos and Mountain Dew rule.
So I made a whole seperate email account for YouTube cause my current one is having problems, and I decide to use Yahoo for it because, well, I like Yahoo. Unfortunately, YouTube likes Google mail. I have a Gmail account, but I hate it. Gmail is slow, annoying, spam friendly, and overall a peice of shit. Go figure, my blog is on a Google website. So I make the email account, set up my new YouTube account, see a funny video, decide to blog about it, go to www.chrisbowlin.blogspot.com, and guess what? It says my blog has been DELETED!!! NOOOOOOOOO! I panic, I hit the roof, I shit my pants. Well, I didn't actually shit my pants, but I sure did get really mad. So I go to sign into Google, it gives me 3 different codes to enter (to make sure I'm not a robot) and I finally realize that all my precious work has not gone anywhere. Phew! That was scary. I decide to turn my adult filter on to my other blog Teh Rabbit cause, quite frankly, I don't want anyone complaining about how raunch it is. I guess it is pretty bad, I was in fact RETARDEDLY fucked up when I wrote all of it, but that was a whole lifetime ago. It still makes for an interesting read though.
Anyhoo, happy that my blog is still okay, I forgot about the video I was going to blog about so I go back to YouTube (the one that I just signed up under a Yahoo mail account), and guess what. I was automatically logged out. Could this be coincidence? I think not.
So I've come to the conclusion that Yahoo and Google hate each other, like a failed marriage and I'm the poor little kid stuck between the two and they're both giving me presents and making me feel all special but everytime I pay any attention to the other one they get all pissed off and make shit hard on me and make me feel like the asshole! You know, I live on the interwebs, but sometimes I just plain fuckin hate it.
I still forgot what video I was going to blog about and why it struck me so funny. Was it about gum? Or an end of the world prophecy? I don't know, somewhere in there.
Speaking of YouTube, I was walking down to Walmart and in the parking lot, apparently there had been a metal sign at some point that had been sawed off at the bottom, so this sharp point of the pole was poking out of the ground and looked invisible at first glance. How does something "look" invisible? The wonders never cease. Anyway, I tripped over this dickhead of scrap metal and stubbed my toe. I wear steel toed shoes, and I've always had faith that my feet were protected properly with the heavy shells covering my precious tosies. And the pain didn't hit all at once, it crept up on me, so about the time I was thanking myself for being so darn smart and safe, I slowly began to realize how oh so wrong I was to put such faith in a peice of metal. What I had actually done was, I trapped my innocent little piggies in a steel box with no escape. Then I took them on a joyride to Wally World, encouraging their devious little ways of spending money on things they don't really need (I bought Ben and Jerry's), and upon reaching said destination, I (unwittingly) slammed their tiny little cage against a protrusion about 3 inches tall (goddam gigantic for little bitty piggies) causing a rattling chain reaction throughout the death trap I've ensnared their delicate beings in, causing severe emotional harm and physical discomfort to all five of them and myself. My big toe got the brunt of the impact, digging my nail into my sensitive flesh, like my hangnails aren't bad enough as it is anyways, and now I walk like an Oompa Loompa. Thank you steel toed shoes! My toes won't be getting crushed anytime soon, but damn if they don't get stubbed before it's all over with.
Why are cats such snobs? Who's really in charge in that relaionship?
So I made a whole seperate email account for YouTube cause my current one is having problems, and I decide to use Yahoo for it because, well, I like Yahoo. Unfortunately, YouTube likes Google mail. I have a Gmail account, but I hate it. Gmail is slow, annoying, spam friendly, and overall a peice of shit. Go figure, my blog is on a Google website. So I make the email account, set up my new YouTube account, see a funny video, decide to blog about it, go to www.chrisbowlin.blogspot.com, and guess what? It says my blog has been DELETED!!! NOOOOOOOOO! I panic, I hit the roof, I shit my pants. Well, I didn't actually shit my pants, but I sure did get really mad. So I go to sign into Google, it gives me 3 different codes to enter (to make sure I'm not a robot) and I finally realize that all my precious work has not gone anywhere. Phew! That was scary. I decide to turn my adult filter on to my other blog Teh Rabbit cause, quite frankly, I don't want anyone complaining about how raunch it is. I guess it is pretty bad, I was in fact RETARDEDLY fucked up when I wrote all of it, but that was a whole lifetime ago. It still makes for an interesting read though.
Anyhoo, happy that my blog is still okay, I forgot about the video I was going to blog about so I go back to YouTube (the one that I just signed up under a Yahoo mail account), and guess what. I was automatically logged out. Could this be coincidence? I think not.
So I've come to the conclusion that Yahoo and Google hate each other, like a failed marriage and I'm the poor little kid stuck between the two and they're both giving me presents and making me feel all special but everytime I pay any attention to the other one they get all pissed off and make shit hard on me and make me feel like the asshole! You know, I live on the interwebs, but sometimes I just plain fuckin hate it.
I still forgot what video I was going to blog about and why it struck me so funny. Was it about gum? Or an end of the world prophecy? I don't know, somewhere in there.
Speaking of YouTube, I was walking down to Walmart and in the parking lot, apparently there had been a metal sign at some point that had been sawed off at the bottom, so this sharp point of the pole was poking out of the ground and looked invisible at first glance. How does something "look" invisible? The wonders never cease. Anyway, I tripped over this dickhead of scrap metal and stubbed my toe. I wear steel toed shoes, and I've always had faith that my feet were protected properly with the heavy shells covering my precious tosies. And the pain didn't hit all at once, it crept up on me, so about the time I was thanking myself for being so darn smart and safe, I slowly began to realize how oh so wrong I was to put such faith in a peice of metal. What I had actually done was, I trapped my innocent little piggies in a steel box with no escape. Then I took them on a joyride to Wally World, encouraging their devious little ways of spending money on things they don't really need (I bought Ben and Jerry's), and upon reaching said destination, I (unwittingly) slammed their tiny little cage against a protrusion about 3 inches tall (goddam gigantic for little bitty piggies) causing a rattling chain reaction throughout the death trap I've ensnared their delicate beings in, causing severe emotional harm and physical discomfort to all five of them and myself. My big toe got the brunt of the impact, digging my nail into my sensitive flesh, like my hangnails aren't bad enough as it is anyways, and now I walk like an Oompa Loompa. Thank you steel toed shoes! My toes won't be getting crushed anytime soon, but damn if they don't get stubbed before it's all over with.
Why are cats such snobs? Who's really in charge in that relaionship?
Monday, April 19, 2010
Damn British
So I was trollin Wikipedia looking for useless information to scratch that brain itch I occasionally get when I'm overly unemployed when I realized, What's up with TV anyways? I mean, I watch it all the time, have been my whole life, it's like an old friend, and yet I have no clue about its origins. Kinda like hanging out with a guy from middle school through college before you find out he's gay and all the signs have been in front of you the whole time, and now you realize why his mother's been so nice to you cause she thinks your his boyfriend and his father beats him regularly for being a damn pansy, so his mother encourages him hanging out with you cause you live in a nice home and he can go there and be safe and have sleep overs, like the time he started whispering a lullaby in your ear while you were going to sleep and it kinda freaked you out a little but you were like, Ah, that's just Joe being his weird old self, and then it turns out he's a fruitcake.
Okay, maybe it's not like that at all. But stay with me:
The original concept of television was the telephonoscope, made by science fiction writers, such as Frenchman Albert Robida, after the telephone was invented. The idea was to send light over the telephone lines to form moving pictures. This is illustrated in an 1890 book called "Le Vingtième siècle. La vie électrique" (The Twentieth Century: The Electrical Life). Balderdash, you may say, but that's why it was science fiction- the concept of TV was up there with space aliens and generic macaroni and cheese. Bollocks!
The first tangible form of television was the pantelegraph, used from 1881 onward. Using a mechanical pendulum operated scanning device, it was the first to venture into sending visual images via telegraph lines using electrical pulses. Then, in 1884, some cool ass dude named Paul Gottlieb Nipkow from Germany integrated a scanning disc into the pantelegraph. The scanning disc is a round cardboard deal with holes punched equally apart in a spiral which allowed light to pass through. As it spun, the wholes formed seperate lines on the screen. The telegraph signal would block certain wholes at certain times, all coordinated with the image it was scanning at the other end of the feed, and an image would roughly appear on the receiving screen. This was still impractical until amplifier tubes were better developed. Then my boy John Baird came along and fucked shit up for good. He revolutionized the concept and expanded it's range to up to 30 lines of resolution, crystal clear as far as they were concerned. Not only that, but he invented a way to record these visual signals onto wax discs using audio recording methods.
Now, since John Baird was Scottish, the British Broadcasting Company reluctantly took on his invention and marketed it. It was a hit until a digital device, which used cathode ray tubes, was invented that eventually replaced Baird's mechanical one, and that's what we've used since until recent technologies changed even that.
Did you hear that? The British lay claim to inventing modern TV. Fantastic, next thing you know they'll claim they created punk rock and colonized America before Americans did! Bollocks!!
How come PeptoBismol tastes like pink?
I hate using the downstairs bathroom. The fuckin toilet sits like 3 feet off the ground, when I sit down my feet dangle off the edge. All I need is my big Curious George book, and the man in the yellow hat will take it from there.
And it smells like old people.
Okay, maybe it's not like that at all. But stay with me:
The original concept of television was the telephonoscope, made by science fiction writers, such as Frenchman Albert Robida, after the telephone was invented. The idea was to send light over the telephone lines to form moving pictures. This is illustrated in an 1890 book called "Le Vingtième siècle. La vie électrique" (The Twentieth Century: The Electrical Life). Balderdash, you may say, but that's why it was science fiction- the concept of TV was up there with space aliens and generic macaroni and cheese. Bollocks!
The first tangible form of television was the pantelegraph, used from 1881 onward. Using a mechanical pendulum operated scanning device, it was the first to venture into sending visual images via telegraph lines using electrical pulses. Then, in 1884, some cool ass dude named Paul Gottlieb Nipkow from Germany integrated a scanning disc into the pantelegraph. The scanning disc is a round cardboard deal with holes punched equally apart in a spiral which allowed light to pass through. As it spun, the wholes formed seperate lines on the screen. The telegraph signal would block certain wholes at certain times, all coordinated with the image it was scanning at the other end of the feed, and an image would roughly appear on the receiving screen. This was still impractical until amplifier tubes were better developed. Then my boy John Baird came along and fucked shit up for good. He revolutionized the concept and expanded it's range to up to 30 lines of resolution, crystal clear as far as they were concerned. Not only that, but he invented a way to record these visual signals onto wax discs using audio recording methods.
Now, since John Baird was Scottish, the British Broadcasting Company reluctantly took on his invention and marketed it. It was a hit until a digital device, which used cathode ray tubes, was invented that eventually replaced Baird's mechanical one, and that's what we've used since until recent technologies changed even that.
Did you hear that? The British lay claim to inventing modern TV. Fantastic, next thing you know they'll claim they created punk rock and colonized America before Americans did! Bollocks!!
How come PeptoBismol tastes like pink?
I hate using the downstairs bathroom. The fuckin toilet sits like 3 feet off the ground, when I sit down my feet dangle off the edge. All I need is my big Curious George book, and the man in the yellow hat will take it from there.
And it smells like old people.
Ghost of Christmas Naked
I don't understand it. I just don't understand it. How do these people get so fucking popular? I'm talking of course about people on the interwebs. Have you seen the Numa Numa kid? More than 100 MILLION hits!!! All he did was record himself dancing and lip syncing to some weird Norweigen song. granted, he looked pretty silly doing it, he's a made man now. Is that all you gotta do? Act like a total ass on a webcam and let people laugh at you? Where is the justification? Well, when I think about it, a couple million bucks you could do whatever you want to me. Whoa, slow down there perv, I didn't mean like that.
Anyhoo, so I can't sleep tonight, which sucks cause I have a major teleconference in the morning. I'm not even kidding about that. I'm not trying to sound all super important, Oh look at me, big business guy making important phone calls, go do this, go do that... No, I'm contacting some super duper people in hopes of finally attaining work. The market sucks for unskilled peoples such as myself, so I have to do whatever I can to survive. Aren't we all though?
I had a Vanilla Coke today, which took me back to when I was 16 and living in a small town called Breckenridge, TX. The new flavor of Coke just came out, and my brother and I were so stoked to try it, we had to walk about 2 miles to the only store that sold it . It was hot as a mofo, but boy when we got those flavorful sodas in our hands, ice cold and sweet... Those were some good times, when life was simpler. And I think about this.
I found my old blog from my MySpace account, which I no longer use because MySpace is slow and unsafe. So I copied and pasted all of the entries worth reading into a new blog that you can access on my blogspot profile called Teh Rabbit's Blog. Pretty crazy shit if you ask me. I don't remember writing most of it, so I assume no real responsibility. If you find yourself offended, email me a complaint, and I will respond with a PDF of the American Constitution.
Have you ever used a really cheap laundry detergent that literally burned all the hairs off of your ankles and the tops of your feet?
There's a ghost that lives in my bathroom. No shit, sometimes when I'm sitting on the can, the cat (who lives in the bathroom, I guess) tracks something that isn't there. It's crazy. There's some kind of presence, but it doesn't seem ominous, just...there. We think it's a residual ghost, like someone died in the bathroom and they weren't sure where to go afterwards, so they hang around and do the same shit everyday. We don't even think it's aware of us, and if it is, it doesn't bother us. I feel sorry for it, it saw all of us naked.
Anyhoo, so I can't sleep tonight, which sucks cause I have a major teleconference in the morning. I'm not even kidding about that. I'm not trying to sound all super important, Oh look at me, big business guy making important phone calls, go do this, go do that... No, I'm contacting some super duper people in hopes of finally attaining work. The market sucks for unskilled peoples such as myself, so I have to do whatever I can to survive. Aren't we all though?
I had a Vanilla Coke today, which took me back to when I was 16 and living in a small town called Breckenridge, TX. The new flavor of Coke just came out, and my brother and I were so stoked to try it, we had to walk about 2 miles to the only store that sold it . It was hot as a mofo, but boy when we got those flavorful sodas in our hands, ice cold and sweet... Those were some good times, when life was simpler. And I think about this.
I found my old blog from my MySpace account, which I no longer use because MySpace is slow and unsafe. So I copied and pasted all of the entries worth reading into a new blog that you can access on my blogspot profile called Teh Rabbit's Blog. Pretty crazy shit if you ask me. I don't remember writing most of it, so I assume no real responsibility. If you find yourself offended, email me a complaint, and I will respond with a PDF of the American Constitution.
Have you ever used a really cheap laundry detergent that literally burned all the hairs off of your ankles and the tops of your feet?
There's a ghost that lives in my bathroom. No shit, sometimes when I'm sitting on the can, the cat (who lives in the bathroom, I guess) tracks something that isn't there. It's crazy. There's some kind of presence, but it doesn't seem ominous, just...there. We think it's a residual ghost, like someone died in the bathroom and they weren't sure where to go afterwards, so they hang around and do the same shit everyday. We don't even think it's aware of us, and if it is, it doesn't bother us. I feel sorry for it, it saw all of us naked.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
PoopSpace
I was walking my Dad's dog the other day and this thought came across my mind: Dogs have been socially networking for centuries right under our noses. Kind of a strange thought, you may conclude, but check this out: You know when you're walking your dog and he seems to be just aimlessly sniffing around for the "perfect" place to pee or poop? You may often get frustruated at your dog for being so damn picky. What's actually taking place is your dog trolling the interweb of pooches, or as I like to call PoopSpace. I would've said ShitBook, but let's keep it professional, people!
See, whenever a dog peese, he marks his territory to let other dogs know, Hey this is mine! When another dog comes along and smells it, he thinks, Aw hell nah, and leaves a comment of his own.
Make sense?
So what about poop, you may ask. Well, what about it? Everybody poops, get over it. Pooping is awesome and it's good for you. When ever a dog comes upon another dog's poop, it's the same as reading another person's blog: It's boring and it stinks, but you either pass over it briefly or get stuck on it and can't stop till you end up dropping a load off of your own somewhere.
My Dad has a female dog (please get your bitch jokes out of the way here), and sometimes when she smells a male dog's urine, she has the overwhelming temptation to roll on that spot, which we highly discourage. What she's doing is adding a friend. You may not realize it when you see it, but it's for real. By rolling around on that spot, she takes some of the scent with her to enjoy for later, at the same time leaving a little behind for him whenever he comes back next, thus making a common meeting point for each other to come back to.
As you can see, dogs really are the superior species. Seeing as how I couldn't possibly poop on a street corner without being self concious (at least while sober) or roll around in someone else's pee for fun (at least while not shrooming), that definitley puts dogs above myself in the awesome gravy train.
Side thoughts: Have you ever been to a Mexican barrio in Southern California? The laundry mats are fuckin poppin on the weekends! Whole families gather together with their BBQ grills and cervezas and just rock the block of its socks! I've never seen so many people excited about doing the laundry, to me it's just another mundane task to accomplish every week. Those guys know how to live!
Whoever invented trash bags is a genius. Making money off a product whose sole purpose is to throw it away again. And we NEED those things! Wish I was around back then to cash in on that deal.
You know what stinks? Dirty people on the bus.
--ChrisBowlin
See, whenever a dog peese, he marks his territory to let other dogs know, Hey this is mine! When another dog comes along and smells it, he thinks, Aw hell nah, and leaves a comment of his own.
Make sense?
So what about poop, you may ask. Well, what about it? Everybody poops, get over it. Pooping is awesome and it's good for you. When ever a dog comes upon another dog's poop, it's the same as reading another person's blog: It's boring and it stinks, but you either pass over it briefly or get stuck on it and can't stop till you end up dropping a load off of your own somewhere.
My Dad has a female dog (please get your bitch jokes out of the way here), and sometimes when she smells a male dog's urine, she has the overwhelming temptation to roll on that spot, which we highly discourage. What she's doing is adding a friend. You may not realize it when you see it, but it's for real. By rolling around on that spot, she takes some of the scent with her to enjoy for later, at the same time leaving a little behind for him whenever he comes back next, thus making a common meeting point for each other to come back to.
As you can see, dogs really are the superior species. Seeing as how I couldn't possibly poop on a street corner without being self concious (at least while sober) or roll around in someone else's pee for fun (at least while not shrooming), that definitley puts dogs above myself in the awesome gravy train.
Side thoughts: Have you ever been to a Mexican barrio in Southern California? The laundry mats are fuckin poppin on the weekends! Whole families gather together with their BBQ grills and cervezas and just rock the block of its socks! I've never seen so many people excited about doing the laundry, to me it's just another mundane task to accomplish every week. Those guys know how to live!
Whoever invented trash bags is a genius. Making money off a product whose sole purpose is to throw it away again. And we NEED those things! Wish I was around back then to cash in on that deal.
You know what stinks? Dirty people on the bus.
--ChrisBowlin
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Fireworks are Illegal in Ukraine
I just saw the movie "Hot Tub Time Machine". Funny as hell, loved it. One of the jokes is a Russian energy drink called "Chernobly" which was described as "nuclear". Little did I know that this was a reference to the single largest nuclear meltdown in the history of history. Check this shit out:
On April 26th, 1986, an explosion at the nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) caused a meltdown of one of its cores.
First off, when we talk about explosions at any kind of plant, whether it be nuclear, castings, or daffodils, we're talking about accountability. SOMEONE'S responsible for this shit. We won't point fingers, but let's just say a lot of people fucked up.
The whole thing started as a fire drill, clear and simple. The question was, What if we lost power to the coolant systems required to safely shut down the nuclear reactor core? The solution seemed simple, but alas it never is. An experimental procedure (that failed 3 times over and again a year after this incident) was used to bridge the gap of about a minute that the deisel generators needed to get up and running at full capacity before it could assume the workload. The theory was that the steam turbine engines could be used to produce the necessary energy needed to cover the gap.
Let's get this across now, coolant systems are very much needed when dealing with reactor cores. Even when not used to make energy, nuclear cores still produce massive amounts of heat.
Anyhoo, leading up to the fire drill, incompetence between the day shift and night shift and poorly managed systems resulted in an very unstable core and the jackasses went on with the drill anyway. A lot of the alarm bells were ignored, particularly that of the thermal hydralic parameters. I'm no rocket scientist, but that sounds pretty fuckin important.
Investigations afterward found that during the shutdown of the core, the control rods used to maintain safe temps basically fell apart, allowing the reactor to reach very unstable conditions and producing too much steam which ruptured the fuel element channels that ultimately caused an explosion within the reactor, which in turn caused a chain reaction resulting in a nuclear excursion (uncontrollable releasing of radioactive materials into the enviroment).
Radiation levels reached 400 TIMES that of the Hiroshima bombing.
And that's why fireworks are illegal in Ukraine.
On April 26th, 1986, an explosion at the nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) caused a meltdown of one of its cores.
First off, when we talk about explosions at any kind of plant, whether it be nuclear, castings, or daffodils, we're talking about accountability. SOMEONE'S responsible for this shit. We won't point fingers, but let's just say a lot of people fucked up.
The whole thing started as a fire drill, clear and simple. The question was, What if we lost power to the coolant systems required to safely shut down the nuclear reactor core? The solution seemed simple, but alas it never is. An experimental procedure (that failed 3 times over and again a year after this incident) was used to bridge the gap of about a minute that the deisel generators needed to get up and running at full capacity before it could assume the workload. The theory was that the steam turbine engines could be used to produce the necessary energy needed to cover the gap.
Let's get this across now, coolant systems are very much needed when dealing with reactor cores. Even when not used to make energy, nuclear cores still produce massive amounts of heat.
Anyhoo, leading up to the fire drill, incompetence between the day shift and night shift and poorly managed systems resulted in an very unstable core and the jackasses went on with the drill anyway. A lot of the alarm bells were ignored, particularly that of the thermal hydralic parameters. I'm no rocket scientist, but that sounds pretty fuckin important.
Investigations afterward found that during the shutdown of the core, the control rods used to maintain safe temps basically fell apart, allowing the reactor to reach very unstable conditions and producing too much steam which ruptured the fuel element channels that ultimately caused an explosion within the reactor, which in turn caused a chain reaction resulting in a nuclear excursion (uncontrollable releasing of radioactive materials into the enviroment).
Radiation levels reached 400 TIMES that of the Hiroshima bombing.
And that's why fireworks are illegal in Ukraine.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Waggy Tongues
I'm a huge YouTube fan. I search for all sorts of stupid shit, whether it be music, cartoons, science, ghosts, what have you. Somehow, I came across people who spoke in tongues. Now, if your not familiar with this practice, it may sound pretty outlandish to you, but check this out: In the book of Acts (in the Bible) the Holy Spirit came down and zapped a bunch of dudes' mouths with magic lightning that caused them to be able to go out into the street and preach the awesome news of Christ's gift for humanity in any and all languages. The idea being put across, as I've come to understand in my studies, is that a diverse group of people from different languages all listened to the dudes speaking and each person heard them talk in their (the people listening) own native language. So A Chinese guy and a German guy hear dude say "Praise God" at the same time, Chinese guy hears it in Chinese, German guy in German, etc.
Today, some churches (mainly the Pentacostal and some Baptist as well as others I may not know about) practice this "gift" of speaking in tongues, except when they do it, it's just mumbo jumbo and it sounds quite silly. I've actually seen this first hand, the first time when I was about 19. I saw it in a Pentacostal church where everyone was running around aimlessly, people were on the floor stroking out, and some folks where screaming at the top of their lungs in crazy talk. I actually started to laugh and was given some dirty looks. I asked later what the fuck that was all about, and they sat down and explained to me the dilly-o. That's when I said, "Aw hell no" and looked it up myself. Since then, I've seen it one other place in Lakewood, WA at some "Christian Community" I stayed at for awhile, where the majority of the people were black and they LOVED speaking in tongues. I think they actually practiced behind closed doors to, I don't know, come up with funnier shit.
Here's my theory: the reason people do these things is to fulfill some kind of desire to be noticed but ignored. Like if a mentally ill person talks to himself incessantly on the bus, what do you do? You ignore him, cause he probably can't help it, and neither of you would get anything out of that conversation anyway. Besides, who knows what he's capable of being crazy and all, the last thing I need is some loony bum starting shit with me then I'd have to kick his ass. Then I'd be the asshole. Same with Christians who speak in tongues: If you do or say anything about it, then they will react in such a non chalant way, it's like they know you've called on their bullshit, but the show MUST go on, they can't just stop and say, "Alright, you got me, I'm a fucking moron." That and you would be an asshole for beating up a skinny dork who's just trying to save your soul.
I don't know, it just bothered me, so I started a whole new blog about it. Welcome, by the way to Inside Chris' Mind, where I can type whatever the fuck I want. Not only can I do it, but I totally plan on doing it. Like I just did. And am doing now. Hmm. Let's see. Blippity shtom pom smear. Cooky funky bananas march on the street singing fuckaroos. Ancient chinese secret, eh?
Oh yeah, I totally went there.
-Chris
Today, some churches (mainly the Pentacostal and some Baptist as well as others I may not know about) practice this "gift" of speaking in tongues, except when they do it, it's just mumbo jumbo and it sounds quite silly. I've actually seen this first hand, the first time when I was about 19. I saw it in a Pentacostal church where everyone was running around aimlessly, people were on the floor stroking out, and some folks where screaming at the top of their lungs in crazy talk. I actually started to laugh and was given some dirty looks. I asked later what the fuck that was all about, and they sat down and explained to me the dilly-o. That's when I said, "Aw hell no" and looked it up myself. Since then, I've seen it one other place in Lakewood, WA at some "Christian Community" I stayed at for awhile, where the majority of the people were black and they LOVED speaking in tongues. I think they actually practiced behind closed doors to, I don't know, come up with funnier shit.
Here's my theory: the reason people do these things is to fulfill some kind of desire to be noticed but ignored. Like if a mentally ill person talks to himself incessantly on the bus, what do you do? You ignore him, cause he probably can't help it, and neither of you would get anything out of that conversation anyway. Besides, who knows what he's capable of being crazy and all, the last thing I need is some loony bum starting shit with me then I'd have to kick his ass. Then I'd be the asshole. Same with Christians who speak in tongues: If you do or say anything about it, then they will react in such a non chalant way, it's like they know you've called on their bullshit, but the show MUST go on, they can't just stop and say, "Alright, you got me, I'm a fucking moron." That and you would be an asshole for beating up a skinny dork who's just trying to save your soul.
I don't know, it just bothered me, so I started a whole new blog about it. Welcome, by the way to Inside Chris' Mind, where I can type whatever the fuck I want. Not only can I do it, but I totally plan on doing it. Like I just did. And am doing now. Hmm. Let's see. Blippity shtom pom smear. Cooky funky bananas march on the street singing fuckaroos. Ancient chinese secret, eh?
Oh yeah, I totally went there.
-Chris
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