Karma

Today, I woke up a few hours after finishing the last episode of the first season of the ninth iteration of Dr. Who. (Or, mathematically W=tn(((t1*ef*s1*D^9)^grogginess)-1), where Y is a function of my sanity, FDR is the 32nd President of the United States, and Q is a non-repeating flight of starlings.) My sister introduced me to the series a little less than a week ago, and I've been hooked since. At least, to the most recent version. I've no current interest in venturing back in time to the early 60s to see what the original was like.

After waking up, I went to meet my Grandmother for lunch, where we talked about all sorts of things. Mainly, she told me what to do with my life and what she did with my life, and I noted everything diligently and will do as she says with expedience. It is best not to disregard the advice of someone who is indirectly responsible for your existence.

In the interest of not telling you everything about my life, I took a nap, went to work, got off work, and broke my car. My front right tie rod snapped and so the right wheel began turning independently of the left one, and by that I mean the right one didn't turn and the left one did. This is a minor complication in the field of driving, as it is best to drive with all wheels facing the same direction. Having one wheel going left and the other wheel going right, much like running a three-legged race out of step, will inevitably cause epic failure. Luckily, nothing serious happened and it got towed alright. Unfortunately, it had to be towed, and will have to be repaired, so I'm out a bunch of money, and a car:(

Why did this happen? Oh, it could've been wear and tear, or I could've hit something, but those are unimportant. For you see, I am a firm believer in karma. I believe that when I am lucky, it is either because at some other point I was unfortunate, or that soon I will become unfortunate. If I do a good act, good things will happen, and if I do a bad act, bad things will happen. However, preventative measures can be taken to counteract the karmic imbalance of the universe. For instance, if I get a sliver, I will likely get a good night's sleep. Or, if I club a baby seal for sport, I must plant a tree sometime later. It's like playing around with a cosmic suction cup. Nature abhors a vacuum, and thus all things must end up at equilibrium. So, either I ran over someone's mother by accident, or I will find a bag of money in a garbage bin.

Q&KaBAM! Time

Cheng Li of Kowloon, Hong Kong writes,

Q: "Commodore, what causes lightning? Do you believe lightning is affected by global warming?"

KaBAM!: "Lightning was invented by Lorenzo di Medici in the mid-Precambrian era after he created the moon. The way Medici did this was by harnessing a falling red dwarf star and putting it into a giant cage at the center of the Earth. Our own sun is magnetic, and is attracted to the star at the center of the Earth. Electricity, in the form of gamma radiation, explodes from the sun all the time. However, because the Earth is made mostly of iron, chalk and water, it conducts electricity very well. The gamma radiation is exchanged as ozone, and in the process becomes lightning, traveling to the center of the Earth. I believe lightning will be affected by global warming, as the depletion of ozone will only anger the red dwarf star, unable to nourish itself off of lightning. Therefore, lightning strikes will become more and more common, as will shark attacks and chupacabra sightings."

GA Comes to Visit... Not the State, but My Grandmother.

Today, I woke up at 9AM, which is the earliest I've been up since... well, last week when I had to sing for graduation, but before that I hadn't been up that early since... well, the week before that when I had a final at 8AM. Okay, so I guess waking up at 9 in the morning isn't that spectacular.

What was spectacular was seeing Grandma Anne! She's up here from Albuquerque for about a week to hang out with her family, and tonight we went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Guthrie. It was really cool and had lots of acrobatics and singing and colorful costumes. Grandma Anne was really thrilled to see it. And really thrilled to see us all too. Tomorrow, we are having brunch at our house, which means I have to clean.

The only downsides to big family gatherings such as this are that 1) we have to have like a dozen of them and 2) Dad inevitably takes a million pictures of everything. If civilization ended and were, thousands of years from now, aliens to stumble upon the ruins of humanity, my family would no doubt have more than a few museums in our honor due to the quantity of preserved memorabilia. Okay, I'm exaggerating. Everyone's family is like this. Maybe if Dad had life-casts of us made, and set video cameras in every room in the house on continuous feeds, and we were to journal everything we did, then maybe we'd be especially documentative. Even so, I'm leaving a note buried in the foundations to the alien explorers that we deserve a museum and if we don't get one, we'll haunt them.

Q&KaBAM! Time

Lindsey Wickland of Plano, Texas writes:

Q: "Commodore, recently I saw Iron Man. Tony Stark seems like an ordinary man aided only by his ingenuity and his suit. What a rip-off. Do you have any super powers? Like genuine super powers?"

KaBAM!: "Lindsey, were I to reveal all of my superpowers, no doubt any number of assorted supervillains would come and hunt me down. I'm not talking about just the fancy ones either, like Lex Luthor or the Green Goblin. I'm talking about all the miserable, demoralized, out-of-work supervillains that normal comics have either rejected or dropped. The Masked Masker, Comatose Drooler, Little Woman, Def Leppard, Prickly Poinsettia... The list goes on ad nauseum. But yes, I can shoot lightning from my finger tips like Emperor Palpatine, and I can crush anything into a diamond."

Eat your vegetables.

The Annual Fund

So on Monday, I was informed via Facebook by my friend Allison that I was to have started work at the Annual Fund that day. This, having escaped my normally spot-on attention, was not a good thing. However, after clarifying things, I ended starting work on Wednesday.

As a youngin', I was never exposed to raising money for causes such as athletic teams or overnight field trips, and so I have never had great comfort with asking people for money except my close relatives. They will either say yes, obligingly, or no, and qualify it, at which point I usually throw a hissy fit and they hand my a fiver. Last summer, I decided it would be a fine idea to work for the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) as a door-to-door canvasser. For any of you who are considering doing this, I would like you to first break up with any significant other you are with, get yourself disowned and then possibly ask a neighbor to shoot your dog. If you can tolerate the emotional stress related to those events, then you're fit to be a canvasser. Coming from my well-padded world, it was hell for me. I quit after two months and went to Southern California on vacation.

So I was terrified to be working for the annual fund, where Martha is nigh-on a living legend. Everyone asked me 'Oh, are you Martha's brother?' which granted, is something I've experienced since slightly past birth. After nervously being trained in, I went to the phones. In spite of sweating profusely, the evening went off without a hitch. I even raised $40! And yesterday, my second day, I secured no less than $150 in pledges from the parents of various alums.

I have lately been reading In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson, which is about Australia. I like it a lot. Also, Dad took the cats outside for the first time ever today. We got them in mid-winter, so they obviously couldn't have gone out then, but now since it is so pleasant, he decided to let them explore for a bit down by the dock. They quickly had their senses overloaded and were crawling around carefully and slowly, as though a crocodile was lying just behind the next blade of grass to eat them. Dad had other things to do, so he took Molly inside first. Upon finding her sister missing, Nataly got really freaked out and started wanting in too. I think I got her inside just in time, as she was mere second away from calming her nerves by sinking her claws into my chest and testing how elastic my skin is.

Saturday is my Grandfather's 85th birthday, and also the day when my Grandmother comes into town from New Mexico, and is the day my friend Emilio's mom Patti moves to California. Wow! It will be busy.

Q&KaBAM! Time

Bura Kalakashvili of Tbilsi, Georgia writes:

Q: "Commodore, I am a 67-year old pensioner and live by myself with no family or friends. The only company I have is a small parakeet. Recently, it has stopped talking to me. I believe that evil spirits have taken its tongue. How can I save my poor bird?"

KaBAM!: "Once, while traveling through the Kangojango River Valley in Mbuntoland, I discovered a tribe of pygmy shamans who taught me their healing rituals. They later made me a god and tried to eat me so that I would remain with them forever, but that is beside the point. First, you must take the bird and knock your index knuckle against its breast thrice. Then, pluck a single feather from it tail and burn it with brimstone and pine sap. Then, you must make a poultice of herbs, gathered from the highest mountains of the Caucuses. At dawn on the 20th day of the last moon of the year, the bird will be healed. Or, take it to a vet. It probably has avian laryngitis."

Long live the King of Spain!

Hah! The Rockstarship is Go!

Gentleladies and Gentlemen, I have built me a rockstarship to carry me across the all the wide world. There's room for one and all, so please come with me and let's have us an adventure.

If I had more time or patience, I would let this blog age for a bit, gain some character, you know. However, I am a man of action, and while not actually an Action Man, I certainly won't let a good blog go to waste. Furthermore, I will never refer to this as a blog again. Along with ganglia and ululate, blog is one of my least favorite words in existence. Instead, I'd rather refer to it as...

PETER'S SPECTACULAR ADVENTURE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, EXPLORATION AND RAZZ-MATAZZ WHIZZBANG'RY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For short, I'll just call it my adventure journal.

Due to my long-standing friendship with Ted Turner, the Pope and Madame BBC, this blog is being transmitted around the world to every monarch, paleontologist, chimneysweep and everyone in between. If you have problems accessing the site, please consult a time-zone map of the Earth. At mid-day over large population centers, such as China, the East Coast of the United States or the Hidden Kingdom of Shangri-La, no doubt hundreds of millions of frantic fans will be trying to log on to read what I have seen, encountered, eaten and possibly even been chased over a gorge by.

Even though I haven't actually posted this blog, I have already received a considerable volume of mail regarding my adventures. At the end of every blog, I will hold a brief Q&A session. Or as I like to call them, Q&KaBAM! sessions, because my answers can only be described in terms of equivalent tons of TNT.

I decided to start an adventure journal because:
1) my sister Martha has an adventure journal (or blog, as she calls it) and it is genuinely A+ quality.
2) I'm going to France come August, and an adventure journal is a convenient way of relating what I am doing to all of my relatives and friends without sending out a million e-mails and leaving an equal number of telephone messages. I get frustrated when I have to repeat myself once.
and 3) because I figured it would be cool. Why not do cool things? Warning! DO NOT play with liquid hydrogen. Kids, you will severely damage your hands and your dog.

This entry is getting long. The Rockstarship needs more power to the shields at the moment, as I am exploring the inside of the Sun. So to conclude...

Q&KaBAM! Time

Dr. William Magillicutty of South Beach, Florida writes,

Q: "Commodore, this is a double-header. How did you come up for a name for your bl... adventure journal, and if you could breath underwater, would you be interested in seeking out Atlantis with me?"

KaBAM! "Dear Doctor, naming an adventure journal is like naming a child. Well, not a legitimate child certainly. Okay, maybe not even my own progeny. More like speculating on the name of a baby across the street from you while you peoplewatch, waiting for the bus. I decided I wanted a name that captivated my personality. I search for quotes or phrases from literature, but since no one has written (extensively) about me, nothing fit spot on. I decided instead to describe the adventure journal itself. It is true that as you read this, my adventure journal is TRANSMITTING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT! Also, I would be much interested in seeking out Atlantis. Meet me by Pier 37 in half an hour. Bring harpoons."

Rock on!