Tag: fire

you need fire for success

I like to collect quotes.   So many of them are filled with nuggets of wisdom, while others are humorous.  But then there are some that I just don’t understand.   Like this one:

“Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion.  You must set yourself on fire.” ~ Arnold H. Glasow

Maybe that’s success for him, but personally, I don’t consider setting myself on fire to be “success”.  I reckon we just have different goals.  But since his is so strange, he shouldn’t make a broad statement like that.  But I will say this — as a hobby, setting things on fire is fun, but most experts agree that it’s typically not in your best interests to set yourself on fire.

Success for most people would probably involve inheriting or winning millions of dollars, acquiring your own private island, having all the latest technology, and sitting around eating Cheetos and playing video games all day.

a new jack o’lantern for Halloween

Once again it’s the Halloween season.   Well, not really a season, because it’s just one day of trick-or-treat, but I suppose some folks do lots of decorating for it.  It seems like the “spooky” decorating is becoming more rampant each year.  But I digress…

Are you going to go to the most sincere pumpkin patch to wait for the Great Pumpkin?  Each Halloween night, he rises out of the pumpkin patch to scare little children, er, I mean, to give them candy and presents.  That’s what I hear anyway.  I haven’t ever been to one of those sincere pumpkin patches.  Maybe I’m not sensitive enough to know if one is sincere.  Whatever…  Let’s get to the point of this story…  I’m digressing again…

One Halloween holiday tradition I’m trying to get started is putting a flaming pumpkin of poop on someone’s front porch.  I mentioned this a while back, but it has yet to catch on for some reason.  I know, creating a jack-o-lantern out of poop is not ideal, so here’s an update (consider it version 2.0).  Take a standard jack o’lantern (however you want to spell it), and cover it with poop.  Take it to a friend’s porch.  Then you set it on fire.  It’s a guaranteed good time!

Some of the staff here voted and nominated Mango-Man’s house as the first place to try out this new Halloween decoration.  I’m sure it’ll draw trick-or-treaters to his house, with all the bright fire on his pumpkin.  He’ll have to let us know how it turns out.  🙂

the Swedish Christmas goat

Swedish Christmas straw goatI forgot about writing on the giant straw Christmas goat in Sweden this past Christmas.  They build one every year, a big 43 foot tall one which weighs 3 tons.  Almost every year it is burned down by vandals.  Last year they put some special fireproof materials on it, and one of the officials said, “not even napalm can set fire to the goat now”.  To me, that sounds like a challenge…

So I looked online to find out what happened this past year, and I found out there are two giant straw goats built there each year.  One of them was burned down this past year (2007).  I also found out there are people who make bets on when the goat will be burned down.  And in the mid-1980s, there was a guy named Gunnar Hedman who built a 41 foot goat with the help of other village peoples, then after Christmas they burn it down.

Swedish Christmas straw goat on fireI want to build a giant straw Christmas goat, too.  It would be a huge tourism attraction.  This was discussed some last year, when we decided to build it in Mango-Man’s yard, since he has a few acres and lives outside the city limits (so we wouldn’t be subject to city ordinances and such, although they may not have laws against giant straw goats).  We’d sell nachos and hot chocolate, and we’d build bonfires where you can roast marshmallows.  And then at some point we’d burn the goat down, since that’s part of the tradition. It would be a great time.  We could even sell miniature straw goats that people can put under their Christmas tree and then burn whenever they want to.

Sadly, Mango-Man has thus far failed to see the ingeniousness of this plan, and he’s resisting.  But we will keep after him, until he relents or a more suitable place is found.  Someday this will happen, though, and it will be awesome.  (And you heard it here first!)  It can become one of our holiday traditions.

FYI, the Guinness world record for a giant straw Christmas goat is 49 feet high, held by the same people that build one every year.  I’m thinking we can break that, and then we’d be famous.