The good with the bad...

Some experiences are great, they teach you, leave you with those warm fuzzies, and you remember them for years to come, you learn, and pass along knowledge. Great

Some experiences are bad, but they still teach you, they leave you angry and confused, and wanting of your wasted time. Meh.

Then there are those experiences that just make no sense whatsoever, they don't leave you happy, they don't leave you angry and they surely don't teach you anything. Everyone has them, and they usually end up in the recycle bin forgotten as just one of life's odd mysteries.

I have more than my share of those. Some are funny, and some I will try and forget. Forever. This one was great because I was questioned by the police (innocently, I might add) and even got a rookie cop to nearly vomit. Those are braggable experiences, no?

It all started a few years ago (this whole story takes place then) My sister and I went for a little vacation to Oceanside California to visit my brother and sister-in-law while they were still Marines. It was an awesome weekend, filled with memories of the first type. We spent a lot of time at the beach, and eating seafood, which, in Utah, is something we don't tend to get a lot of.

Outside of our knowledge, sometime during that week, our 8 foot chest deep freeze failed, meaning all of its contents were baking and stewing in the mid-july temperatures. But, back to California.

The last day there, we went to the beach, and thinking I would work on my tan, decided to forgo the use of sun screen. This act would bring about the second form of life's experiences for me. It's not just bad that I had a bubbly sun burn, but when we flew back to Utah, it was 30 degrees warmer and the person that picked us up was driving a convertible.

For the record, my skin felt somewhere safely between magma, and the surface of the sun. I'm quite sure I could hear myself sizzling over the sound of the freeway speed winds. I figured I would get home and would be able to aloe my burns away. The adventure that greeted me could be smelled on the wind a city block away. I, however, brushed the smell off as random road kill, thanked our ride, grabbed our luggage and walked into the house.

I was greeted by a smell I can only describe as something like week old large animal road kill, blended on liquify with skunk, seafood slurry(I'll talk about that sometime later) and unwashed gym feet. I stumbled back away from the smell and fell down the stairs on our front porch. You know how when someone stares are you, you can tell and you don't even have to make eye contact? Well, our neighbors were staring at us. All of them.

They didn't look mad, they certainly didn't look happy, I would have to say they all looked worried. I didn't think so until later.

Well, we found the source and did our best bagging the heaps of decomposing meat a few times over and putting them in the garbage cans, which would not get emptied for another week. Life went back to normal for the next couple of days. One day, I came home from work, and I came home to one of our neighbor kids just sitting in my room playing around with some of my stuff. He didn't understand a word that I was saying, and when I shouted at him to leave, his reply was simply: que?

Understanding that this wasn't going to work, and that I was very grumpy and tired, I grabbed a replica sword from my wall, mustered up the best movie-quality battle scream that I could and charged the poor innocent soul. I can only imagine the terror this kid felt when he saw me running at him, screaming with a fake weapon less dull than an inflated water balloon. Needless to say, he ran, up the stairs, out the back door and into the arms of his mother outside, who was very concerned and very angry. At which one of us, I wasn't sure until she started yelling at him. Given that she was speaking in spanish, I couldn't understand a thing she said, but in my head I was satisfied that he wouldn't do it again, so I went in the house and got ready to go see a movie.

I don't recall the movie, but I do recall coming home and seeing multiple cop cars in front of my house, with detectives scanning the area around my house. I figured they were looking for us because of the smell, so I got out of the car and offered my assistance. The lead cop approached me, and as far as I could tell, he was some sort of detective.

"Son, can you tell me what in the world is causing this smell?"

"Yes, it's a couple week old ripe meat from our now broken freezer."

"Well, we received a couple of calls from concerned citizens that there were bodies buried in your yard"

I nearly laughed out loud, but replied to him as calmly as I could that I would show him the freezer and that he was more than welcome to check the garbage can.

He wasn't satisfied with the freezer, so I showed him to the garbage can. When he flipped the lid, he staggered back gagging and ordered a rookie to go in there and open the backs, to make sure I wasn't lying.

I've never seen blood drain from a person's face so fast in my whole life. They tipped the can over and he started rifling through nasty, soupy, rotten meat. This man's ability to refrain from vomitting was pretty astounding. I can't even image how much he hated the detective. After a haphazard search, they determined that there were in fact no dead bodies and went on their merry ways.

Lesson learned? If you're going to keep a freezer full of meat, check it out from time to time to make sure it's in working order.

Have you ever...?

I thought about leaving this post as open ended as the title, just to see if anyone would come up with something, but then it dawned on me that I haven't updated in so long, most people have probably forgotten that at times I like to write. I really would apologize, but so few people in the world are actually die-hard enough bloggers that update on a daily or even monthly basis. Don't believe me? Well, before I got here to write, I had to remember my address, it had been that long. In the meantime, I searched for different variations of my name, only to find that all the variations hadn't updated since 2008. That even predates this site. So, no complaining!

So, to finish the initial question... have you ever won a geek fight, and then was proud of said victory? If you actually have the guts to say no, I'll call you a liar, because you're on the internet, and as anyone knows, the internet is serious business. I, myself, have often caught myself falling for the internet rage and have argued with people over the most trivial and stupid things ever. Things that no human in his or her right mind would ever spout off about in public. Sadly, for me, today was one of those days.

And it was about Star Trek... of all things.

First and foremost, I would like to think I'm not actually a trekkie (or as they prefer to be called, trekker, mere semantics if you ask me, but whatever puts the power in your hands) Sure, I grew up on Star Trek, it was one of the few tv shows or movies my parents would let me watch, I even played most of the games and have recently started the online version. Would this normally make me a Star Trek Super Nerd? An a.k.a. Trekker? Well, yes and no. While this is behavior you would most often associate with Trekkers, I will always draw the lines at dressing up in whatever color of uniform and running around like a madman making laser sounds. (That brings up a side note, did you know there are Trekker dating sites? People get all bent out of shape with different religions nowadays, but really, that doesn't match the indoctrination of the standard Trekker union. I wonder if the babies pop out in different color uniforms, which again makes me wonder if the parents fear for the child that comes out with a red shirt on... but I digress)

I had an argument today on Facebook... yes, Facebook. I'm as surprised as you. This argument started when someone said that Star Trek 3 was better than Wrath of Khan. And yes, even as I read this, I heard the audible gasp. You can pick your jaw up off of the floor and breathe. Now, when I strongly disagreed with the other person, they told me I was living in a delusion. And you know what? In hindsight, I totally agree, and if Rational Jay was having this heated discussion, he would've agreed and dropped it. But no. Irrational Jay was having this heated discussion, so what did IJ do? He went to RottenTomatoes, the source of all civilized film opinion in the universe and quoted the statistics there... I won't say them, but Khan won, but there really was no surprise there.

That of course, didn't work, because critics are wrong more than half of the time, so I needed to find another source of information that would back of my claims. What I'm about to tell you should probably not be spoken, but I'm going to out of pure shame.

Someone created a statistic, long ago, that completely validates my point in a purely mathematical and scientific way.

I was shocked on two fronts. One that I was able to find said statistical survey, and two, because someone made it. And it completely makes sense.

That ended the fight by itself(either that, or the other dude just walked away, which, again, I should have done, but didn't). I was the proud victor of the Queen Mother of all Nerd Fights. It was a fleeting victory, however. It wasn't long because I realized what I had done and had then wished it all away. Those are the fights that even when you win, you lose. The thing is, I don't feel bad. I doubt there's a single person in this world who hasn't won a nerd fight, and for those of you out there who are proud of those facts, I salute you. You're braver than I am.