new story #2 : Explorers Extraordinaire

It’s time for another free-for-all story.  [much cheering is heard in the background]  Same rules as last time, which I’ll recap for the new readers :

  • Keep it clean.  Don’t use any cuss words nor introduce any “adult” situations.
  • Write whatever you want (except as noted above), but keep it somewhat short.
  • You can write multiple times, but not back-to-back (even with different aliases).
  • If two people write at the same time and they both won’t fit in the storyline, the latter one will be deleted.  (Nothing personal; it’s just to keep the continuity of the story.)
  • Have fun!

That’s it.  Now let’s get started…

*****

Pierre and Jacques were finishing their French caramel lattes in celebration of their just-signed contract when Jean Paul walked into the room.  Pierre, the self-proclaimed leader of the group, explained the news to J.P. (Jean Paul), that their idea of exploring and documenting the world’s mysteries had finally been accepted and funded.  Just an hour earlier, they had received the call from The Exploration Channel.  The contract called for 10 episodes, and the budget for each episode was $100,000.  That figure blew their minds, because their business, Explorers Extraordinaire, had never made that much money in an entire year, and now they could make a million dollars in one year.

The three men were chosen for their eagerness about the quest and their unusual sense of humor, along with their sense of reckless abandon, as some of the future projects may be quite dangerous.  The timeline was somewhat short, because the producers wanted to bring this show to television while nature / adventure shows were still popular.

The first exploration was to discover the truth about Nessie, the .  That seemed like a popular yet fairly easy mission to start with.  They had seen a documentary on Nessie just a few weeks ago, but the people on the show never found nor caught this monster that supposedly exists.  They each thought up various ways to catch it, and they were very eager to get started.  That afternoon, Jacques and J.P. started interviewing potential crewmen while Pierre began developing a plan.  They expected this first assignment to be a piece of cake, but little did they know what the future had in store…

Square Watermelons

I’ve been meaning to post on this for some time now. 
Apparently  there  is  a new    craze taking place in
Japan for growing square watermelons.  (okay.. .not so new now… most articles referenced were written in 2001) 

The reasons given for growing a square melon?  

1) They won’t roll off the table, and 2) they can be more efficiently stacked in a refrigerator. 

Unfortunately they aren’t too cost effective to buy… at about $83 a piece (in Japan).  Read about it (here) and (here).  I also read some articles that touted the benefits of the square watermelon because it could be sliced like bread… and stated that they were preferable because they wont “roll around in the fridge”.  

According to the article (here) they will also soon be sold in the UK.  If you are interested in growing your own square watermelon you can buy a book (here) that details how you can learn to grow your own (for about $20… still cheaper than $83 bucks and a plane ticket to Japan or the UK).  But I tend to adhere more to (this) mindset of thinking:  “it’s quite self explanatory. Put a small watermelon from your garden inside a box and let it grow.”  

If you read the comments section of that last link you will see that apparently you can also grow square tomatoes or just about any fruit.  Apparently you can also do it with Pumpkins (In order to have a ‘face’ or ‘design’ be grown into it.  But one particular guy was using “cast iron molds” and apparently the “neighborhood was terrorized by them b/c they would explode like a bomb when pumpkins outgrew them.”  All in all… good stuff.

new car advice

I’m thinking about getting a new vehicle… something really nice and loaded.  What are some features I should ask for?  (This can include devices not standard on cars or even not invented yet.  Feel free to use your imagination.  Let’s have fun with this.)

viewer mail, issue #6

It’s time for another installment of viewer mail.  Once again, we will look at actual search terms people used to find this site.  (We still don’t have a form setup for you to submit your questions…  our lead designer acquired a Nintendo Wii and hasn’t had much free time lately.)  This is what people like you are searching for, believe it or not.  So let’s get to it, and perhaps we can help you with what you’re interested in.

  • building my own time machine — That’s a noble idea, but there’s a flaw in the slaw.  There are some parts you need, such as a transgalactic time discombobulator, that just aren’t available yet.  If you can somehow get your future self to go back in time to our current time with the parts you need, then you can accomplish this.  But without such intervention, you’re probably out of luck.  Well, unless you’re a super-genius and can build the parts yourself, but then you probably wouldn’t be searching with such a generic phrase.
  • how to be a ninja — I’m afraid there aren’t any shortcuts to this, if you want to be an authentic ninja.  Of course you can put on a black ninja outfit and pretend to be one, but everyone will see through your facade.  I wish there was an easy way to acquire this status, but I don’t know of one.  You will have to train really hard for many years.  (Perhaps we should start a ninja training school that offers a two-year degree with part-time study via correspondence, where you can become an official ninja from the comfort of your own home.)
  • how to get super powers — This has been a popular search phrase, and rightly so.  Who wouldn’t like to have super powers?  I sure would!  So I’ll try to answer your question.  It’s rather difficult to get super powers, which is probably a good thing, or there would be much chaos in the world (because some people would use them for evil, while others are just clumsy and would make a huge mess).  One way is to be born from another planet and when you come to Earth, you get super powers from our sun or our atmosphere.  Or perhaps your race is just naturally superior to humans and then when you come here, people think you’re all that, when on your home planet you were merely normal.  Another option is to be involved in some type of nuclear accident.  Obviously this has some inherent dangers involved, in that it will likely kill you.  But, according to the historical archives (movies and comics), falling into a pit of radioactive ooze can sometimes give you super powers.  Alternatively, the safest method of becoming a superhero is to collect and master high-tech devices.  Batman did this, as well as the bad guy on The Incredibles, Syndrome.  This is costly and requires a high degree of skill, but is possible.  (Hope this helps!)
  • cool — Yep, someone searched for “cool” and found this blog.  It is more evidence that this site is cool.  You know it!
  • scorpioneating scorpions side effects — Hmm… let’s start with the knowledge that some scorpions are poisonous.  Also, all of them have stingers on their tail, which I would not recommend putting in your mouth.  Even if they are dead and cooked, I still don’t think it’s a good idea to eat them.  However, as we discussed in a previous post, some restaurants consider them an “exotic food” and will serve them to you (for $30!).  I consider this a rip-off.  Even if you can eat them and survive, there’s no way it’s as good as biscuits and gravy with fried chicken.  Just no way…
  • +”dog poop” +”text sucker” — Somebody searched for this on Christmas day last month.  I certainly don’t have a problem with randomness, even on Christmas day, but this seems odd.  I figure most people are visiting their family and eating lots of food and playing with their new presents on Christmas, yet somebody is searching for dog poop.  I don’t know…  Anyway, we do have the answer you were probably looking for — it’s called Net Disaster.  It’s fun to play around with.
  • seibu lions stadium upgrade — They got their $51.1 million, so now they can upgrade their stadium in a big way!  We recently had an interesting discussion about that, specifically concerning the $6.02 million they plan to spend on “upgrading restrooms”.  We had some really good ideas, I think.  Click here to check it out.

That’s all for this issue.  Until next time, I’m Beppo.  🙂