Category: Luke

  • Voluntary Tasering

    Voluntary Tasering

    I love foosball… it can appear to be extremely haphazard and frantic to many people watching. But there are moments in a foosball game where the game has been building up slowly, no goals for ages, a few near misses, some amazing blocks and desperate acts of defense, but no goals. The players know that this cannot go on for ever and the tension will be building. People can be talking to the players and they will probably respond but their mind is at the level of the little red and blue men on the field. You can be in the middle of a conversation with the girl of your dreams, Gandhi, a white shark, buddha, your most feared enemy, it doesn’t matter, you are liable to wildly scream in their face and risk punching them as you flip out after scoring that goal you have been waiting for so long. Here is a time that happened to me…

    It was freshman year in university and Pat (I think) and I were playing foosball at the Phi Psi house. While we were playing we are listening to Tele and a sorority girl talk about her sororities male beauty pageant. Tele, being the stud that he is, is supposed to participate but alas he is sick and is unable to participate. They are trying to figure out who should fill in his spot. While one of these intense foosball moments I previously mentioned is going on, I suggest that I will do it. She tells me I need a talent. I consider the situation while blocking an endless onslaught from Pat on the mini soccer field. I half jokingly say that I will get tasered (stun gunned, whatever). The idea is well received by everybody around but I don’t care as I think I am about to score with a fantastic shot from the right back, but Pat’s goalie is up for the challenge. She says we need two people. Nuthead says he will dress up as a cow and beer bong some milk half jokingly. This idea is as valid as the previous one and suddenly everything is solved. I scream “GOAL, BOOYAH MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!” to Pat and the long string of tension has broken after wrapping itself around us for at least 20 minutes. I look up and then ask the pageant planners, “OK, so what happened?”

    So the day of the pageant rolls around and Nuthead and I need to prepare as we have done nothing until this point. The format of the pageant is in four parts: swim suit, knowledge quiz about the sorority, formal dress, and talent portion. Nuthead had a cow outfit for some reason and there was always a beer bong around the house. Milk would be purchased right before the event. His swimsuit was something rediculous like board shorts, a wife beater, and an inflateable ducky around his waist. His formal dress was some killer 70’s/80’s looking suit. My swimsuit was my roomate Geoff’s speedos which had a waist of size 24 while I am easily a 32 with huge legs due to me playing soccer 7 hours a day with a stunning tan right above the knees. My formal atire was purchased at the salvation army that day and ended up being pretty slick considering it was thrown together last minute. We went to Grants for Guns to purchase a taser. They were happy to give us one since we claimed it was a gift for Nuthead’s sister. We got two 9-volt batteries and we were ready.

    Right before we goto the auditorium we decide to try the taser real quick to make sure it wouldn’t kill me or something on stage. We put the batteries in, turned it on and this thing was mean! We barely touched eachother with it and didn’t want to feel how it would be if you jammed it into your side. The sound is the worst part about it as it sounds like somebody is slapping a lardy thigh with a ruler 5 times a second with fury.

    We show up backstage and find our lovely “coaches” from the sorority. They tell us the answers we need to know for the knowledge quiz and then give us a bag of goodies. The best goodie in the bag by far was the gatorade bottle with the label removed and replaced with a homemade label with pleasing pictures and encouraging words and the contents of the bottle were replaced with pure Captain Morgans spiced rum. Nuthead and I decide that since the pageant was soon we should drink all of the rum so that it would take effect by the time we got to the more difficult talent portion of the contest. A great idea of course.

    The social science lecture hall was absolutely packed with people overflowing out the back and people sitting on the floor. Thankfully we had a large contingent of Phi Psi’s claiming a good chunk of the seats in the middle left. I come to find out later that the arts department was having a very rare kegger party and our very non-artistic friends had found their way there and practiced the art of drinking so they were floating on the same level as Nuthead and I were after our special gatorade. I gotta say I was feeling a little nervous at this point. The pageant starts and its all bells and whistles and lights and flash. The guys are announced and they walk out on the stage in their swimwear and take a little turn on the catwalk. Everyone else other than Nuthead and I had boardshorts on from what I can remember and with heavy concentrations of muscles on the upper body. My legs looked ludicrously large with this tiny speedo (the first time I had worn one) and who knows how the package looked but I felt that I got a good reaction from the crowd.

    We are then told to sit down, without changing cloths I might add, and prepare for the knowledge portion of the pageant. The questions were things like “When was our sorority founded?” and “Who was the chapter advisor?” Nuthead and I were drunk at this point. We didn’t do well but the scoring was obviously not important as they were just arbitrarily claiming how much each question was worth.

    We then all go back stage to change into our formal attire. Nut much to say for this round other than we both looked good and we both were more drunk than we were during the quiz round.

    Now for the talent portion. I think there was some buzz in the crowd as word had trickled out as to what was going to happen even though we were trying to keep it somewhat of a secret. Nuthead goes first. He walks out in a cow outfit, udders and all, with a beer bong in his hand. He then pours a half gallon of milk into the beer bong and then proceeds to drink it to completion. Amazing! Takes a bow and walks off the stage. The crowd loved it and applauded him as he gracefully found the nearest trash can and then yakked it all out, backstage. The other guys were doing things like playing the guitar, or building them letters, or singing, you know… real talents. Then my turn comes. I come on the stage in my formal 70’s gear lip syncing to “When I think about you I touch myself” and the plan was to do this for only 30 seconds or so. Of course Nuthead let me sweat and this lasted for a minute or more as I performed some weak dance moves. Finally I waved him out he comes in his cow outfit and tasers me in the side until I fall on the ground writhing in pain. The crowd is gasping and laughing and applauding I think. Then in an effort to not lose the crowd, Nuthead comes over and stuns me again with a prolonged 3 second stun with me twitching on the ground the whole time. Then follows up with one final blast just to make sure I am done which I relay to him through some contorted facial expression that I was definately done. The crowd now is not really sure what to say or do as they seemed to feel my pain and were not sure if I was alright. I got up, bowed and stumbled off stage. Good thing I was drunk.

    In the end we did not win. It was all rigged and the guy who was not that exciting who built letters for the girls won. It was not important to us. However, our section of the crowd was getting a little rowdy and the outcome was the final straw. Kamran gets his hands on the taser and starts stunning anyone he can reach in his area of the crowd, strangers or not. Bodies are hurdling the chairs two at a time and girls are screaming. Kamran finally gets the taser wrestled away but only after getting a few of our friends for good measure, especially Phil. This cleared the whole auditorium and needless to say the sorority was not pleased with our actions. I think they banned us from any more events like this or at least they didn’t tell us about them.

    I had some hardy scars on my side for about 6 months after that night but it was well worth it and a very good memory from university. I would take a tasering any day over mase which will need to be discussed in another blog.

    If anyone has any pictures or movies from this event PLEASE get in touch with me. Mine were lost in the great picture deletion of junior year.

  • Running with the Bulls

    This entry was pulled from my travel journal from Europe summer expedition 2003…

    July 12th

    For Justin, Jen, Mike, and myself, this was our first hard day of travel. An outrageously uncomfortable Ryan-air flight to Pau in the south of France. Get lied to by a taxi driver who said there was no buses to the train station. Our first encounter with the impatient French while trying to buy and then change our train tickets.

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  • Tomatina!

    Six years ago traveling through Europe I heard about this event called Tomatina which was described to me as a giant Tomato fight. At some point I saw some travel TV show at the Tomatina and at that point it made the list of things I had to do before I depart this Earth or at least settle down in some white picket fence house with 2.5 children and a golden retriever. In the summer of 2008 I made my pilgrimage and here is the story of how it all came to be…

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  • Olavarria Bike Race

    I show up in Buenos Aires and I am antsy for some racing action on mi bicicleta. I go online and look for whatever I can find and come across a very helpful website at http://www.infobiker.com.ar. I look on the calendario for wahtever I can find and see that there is a race in a province of Buenos Aires in a city called Olavarria. Perfect! So I am staying in the province of Capital Federal in the state of Buenos Aires. Olavarria is in it’s own province in the state of Buenos Aires. This basically means that the place I had to go was 350 kilometers from where I am living. No matter, I was committed.

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  • Being Chased

    I seem to be having quite a few dreams recently where I am being chased either by some sort of evil force or as if I am a fugitive. Last night I had one where it seemed we were in a mountainous area which reminded me of my buddy Len’s old house at Lake Nacimento. Pretty much the yeah buds group was having a great party and then it all turned sour and I needed to run. I successfully got away through a hidden gap I knew about in the fence and when I got through the other side I was captured indicating that someone had ratted me out. (more…)

  • I Wonder Why Taxi Drivers Have a Fire Extinguisher in Their Car?

    In most of the cars here and in Brasil and possibly most of south america, there is always a fire extinguisher. Many times a rather large extinguisher. All I can figure out is that there is a large propane tank in the back of the taxi’s which I suppose could be considered flammable and likely at some point in the past, a child and un perro pequeno were trapped in a burning wreckage outside of some politicians house screaming for a fire extinguisher. That politician then became rich with some legislation and a friend in the fire extinguisher industry. (more…)

  • Random First Impressions of Argentina

    First of all, I love this country. I knew I did when I visited this place 1 year ago and I am glad to see that I picked wisely. Granted there are still some 193 countries I still need to visit. I am glad that I have decided to make my first offshore residency here. I have a friend who happens to be in town right now, A Mr. John Finch, who describes this place rather succinctly. “They have everything that we do, just not as good.” This is very accurate but I am sure there numerous things that can be traded back home. (more…)

  • Fingernail Biting Habit

    Since as long as I can remember, I have been biting my nails. My mom said I was biting my nails as a baby. Before I was even talking. Although apparently I didn’t talk until I was 3 years old and that is long enough to cause some worry in the parental units around. People thought I was going to be a mute. And then one day I just blurted out a whole sentence, none of this “mamma” bullshit. But I digress… (more…)

  • Loska the Cat

    In my apartment in Argentina there are two cats. I am a fond lover of cats and I considered this to be a selling point on this place. One is a white cat that is not allowed inside due to the general attitude that the black cat is upset by its presence. The black cat, called Loska, must be about 22 years old by the way it moves and it’s general smell of urine. The only good thing that this cat has going for it is that it somehow knows to pee in the drains which unfortunately are in the house and not too far from my bedroom door. I should just let the white cat in and see what happens… whats the worst that could happen? An elderly black cat gets mutilated by some thug white cat while it is peeing on a grate?

    Loska Peeing on a grate

  • An Uninformed Campaign Reform Suggestion

    It has become clear during this election that the populace has started to consider two notions that I have not been exposed to before.

    • I am sure this has been prevalent for many years but the concept of having a two party system is pissing people off. This comes from the fact that both options do not exactly get you to jump out of your chair and wave a hockey mom sign.
    • This idea that “I will vote for Obama just to make sure McCain does not get in even though I dont really like McCain either.” (This example works in both directions of course.) Another extension of the two party system because people are beginning to realize that their party does not do everything for them but due to the lack of options, they stick to its side. What better way to do this than to vote against the perceived opposition. (more…)