Saw this in a story about a kid who got separated from a hiking group over the weekend:
Grayson watches “Man vs. Wild” on the Discovery Channel every week with his brothers and his dad. On the show, host and adventurer Bear Grylls strands himself in the wilderness and then shows viewers how to survive the sticky situations.
That’s where Grayson says he learned to leave clues behind to help searchers find him.
Really? Leaving clues behind is something Bear Grylls taught him?
Maybe if the little shit would’ve spent more time reading and less time in front of the TV, he wouldn’t have needed to watch a man drink his own urine just to find out about leaving a trail of bread crumbs. That probably could’ve been learned by, oh, I don’t know, reading Hansel and FUCKING Gretel.
This story just adds to my disdain for that ridiculous show that Discovery Channel tries to pass off as educational television. My old roommate tried to sell me on this, but I was having none of it.
I mean, to whom is this show helpful? Odds are, if you’re the type of person who watches Bear Grylls to learn something about surviving, you’re probably not the person who leaves the couch unless ultimately necessary. Conversely, if you’re already someone who backpacks through the Amazon, then I’m pretty sure you don’t need a walking jackass to tell you how to do your thing,
Let’s just stop pretending he’s teaching us something when he’s really just there for entertainment.
And kid, read a fucking book.
Filed under: Bright Orange Seats, Dennis Bunnicelli, Must Be Friday, YouTube
No writing around here this week. What’s up with that?
Well, for starters, I’ve been swamped at work. Deadlines and piles of work do not lend themselves to a lot of creative writing. The time I have been able to touch fingertips to laptop have been spent over at Bright Orange Seats, where I was asked to do my first radio interview on Tuesday. Yes, it was a lot of fun. And yes, I did milk it for all it was worth. Since then, my traffic has jumped and I’ve been forced to put a little more effort into the site than usual over the last few days.
As for life away from the computer screen, there’s not all that much going on.
This Sunday is my softball championship. I’m not sure if winning that would make me really cool or an unfathomable loser. Losing would obviously provide the easy answer.
Anyway, it’s Friday, and even though I seemed to be slacking off this week, I’ll still leave you with some Dennis Bunni… oh wait. Nevermind.
Watch this instead:
Filed under: Holy Fuck!, Photo That Will Absolutely Make You Wet Yourself, Photography, WTF?
Not too long ago, I took up photography as something to do to keep myself occupied. Also, because I kinda love photography. Whatever the reason, though, I find myself wandering the pages Flickr more and more nowadays. Some of the things I find are interesting, others ridiculous, and every so often, I find something that’s scary enough to make me soil my underwear.
This week’s Photo That Will Absolutely Make You Wet Yourself is brought to you by the Flickr stream of one, Tomatito Rodrigues.
(Please, click the image to view it at the scariest size imaginable. Trust me.)
The other morning, I woke up and stumbled into the living room. It was still dark and so my vision wasn’t exactly all there, but when I looked down, I noticed something crawling toward the kitchen of my new apartment.
My first roach! Fuck!
I looked for a shoe, but there were none in sight. If I didn’t do something quickly, he would’ve scurried into the closet and I would never have been able to find him. I’d spend the next week and a half surveying the floor before I entered any room. There’s no way I could let that happen.
The only other option was the can of Raid, which I really didn’t want to use because the entire apartment would smell like crap. It was my only hope, though.
I reached down and misted his back, but he didn’t speed up. Normally, a roach will haul ass as soon as it catches a whiff of insecticide. This dude just kept walking along at his own slow pace.
I sprayed again.
That’s when I realized that this thing was no roach.
On the top of what appeared to be it’s head, two bright green lights began to glow, like giant radiation-filled eyes. What the fuck? I was no longer fighting an insect; I was up against a fucking alien.
After standing, mesmorized, for a good 15 seconds, I came back to my senses, found a shoe and beat the piss out of it. Those green lights slowly dimmed and eventually faded, signaling his unfortunate demise.
But, really, what the hell was that thing?
A few minutes of Googling led me to my answer–a click beetle. Holy hell, are these things awesome. From Wikipedia:
They are a cosmopolitan beetle family characterized by the unusual click mechanism they possess. There are a few closely-related families in which a few members have the same mechanism, but all elaterids can click. A spine on the prosternum can be snapped into a corresponding notch on the mesosternum, producing a violent “click” which can bounce the beetle into the air. Clicking is mainly used to avoid predation, although it is also useful when the beetle is on its back and needs to right itself.
So, not only can they glow, but they can basically do all sorts of weird shit with their bodies. Awesome. Here’s a video of these bad boys in action:
Now, I’m truly sad that I smacked that little bugger with that shoe. He’s so gosh darn cute. And entertaining. Perhaps he and I could’ve been friends.
Maybe next time.
