View from the Halfway Point (I Didn't Make it to the Top)

The Force is Strong with this one

For the record, Adam, I have three lightsabers. Just so you know.

Peak Performance

I'm not sure what happened to it, but I'd posted a rant about my trip to Pikes Peak last weekend on Wednesday...I think Adam accidentally erased it when he uploaded his post. Oh well. I'll give you the short version--I didn't make it to the top because of altitude sickness (not because I was out of shape, oddly enough). A word to the wise: when you're preparing to do a hike that's 13 miles long, starts at 7,000 feet and goes up to 14,000, and you're from a flat state like Oklahoma, do some preparatory hiking first. Do a few short hikes in the area, then go hike the Peak. You'll throw up less, I promise. But aside from that, the whirlwind trip to Colorado last weekend was fun, and I'm now more determined than ever to get to the top of the Peak next time. But first, we're going to the Grand Canyon (next summer...wooo!).

Beatlemania

Anyone who really knows me and my obsessions knows I am a huge Beatles fan. They have been, are, and will always be my favorite band. Their music and their sense of style and composition are amazing, and really nothing I could say here hasn't been said before by people much more eloquent than I. Thing is, I was watching the Beatles Anthology DVD last night (on loan from Uncle Randy, aka Gert [short for Gertrude]...I believe the nickname was my grandfather's way of telling him he needed a haircut). Now, as stated, I love the Beatles. Their music is the consistantly the best there is. I can sing along to virtually every single song they ever released, I can name any song of theirs that you can play, and nine times out of ten I can tell you which Beatle wrote it. The word "obsession" very accurately describes my passion for this band.

But what I've never understood was the phenomenon known as Beatlemania. Don't get me wrong, I love their music, I cheer at the 1964 Tribute shows, and I sing along with every song (a woman behind me at the show this past February actually commented on that fact). But what always gets me is seeing the old footage of the Beatles' live performances, and watching all these girls screaming constantly throughout the songs, sobbing, fainting, etc. There's always the old rumor/myth/possible fact about the girls even experiencing sexual gratification just by listening to the band. Now, I've said I think they're the greatest band ever. I don't think I've ever needed to change my shorts after hearing a Beatles song, though. And I've always wondered about the screaming. I mean, how could they hear the music? Cheering is all well and good, but what's the bloody point of going to a concert if you can't actually hear the music? Really, I want to know how four men could have such power over a good percentage of the world's population like they did. I want to know how they did this, and then I want to bend that power to my own nefarious schemes...that is, make people fall in love with Cross-Eyed Yeti. C'mon, tell me "Yetimania" doesn't have a nice ring to it.

Proudest Monkey

Adam is, in fact, in love with himself, and just doesn't want anyone to know it. The thing also is, he's also the laziest person I know, in a special, sad sort of way. This is the man, after all, who was too lazy to take a hand out of his pocket to scratch his nose once. He's the guy who created Slacker Nirvana. He also must clean really freakin' slowly, because it really shouldn't take all week to clean your house, I don't care how messy it is. It's the sort of job that takes maybe fifteen minutes, tops, not including the bathroom. And from the sound of it, he's already done that. Anything lying on the floor that's not something you want to keep goes in a large trash bag. Everything you want to keep is put in stacks and shoved into a corner of the closet for organizing at a later date. C'mon, Monkey, you are but one man--how much of a mess could you possibly have made? I mean, it's not like you're Vander Leest.