Prior to landing at Heathrow Airport in the UK, the flight attendants handed out a Landing Card to anyone who had citizenship outside the EU. I took one and filled it out with relative ease: name, occupation, nationality, and address of destination. The only one that gave me a bit of a dilemma was the inquiry of my “occupation”. This seemingly innocent question of my identity invades my life quite often in oral and written form, ranging from cocktail parties to credit card applications. Some people are very comfortable and quite confident of who they are and what they do. The reason I hesitate to answer this subject is because I’m not sure of who I am or what I do exactly.
My life is similar to Bruce Wayne and Batman sans billions of dollars, having un-murdered parents, a kick ass car (or even a car for that matter), and pectoral muscles (quads, delts, calves, etc…). By day, I have a Johnny Punchclock job that pays the bills and provides health care but that is not who I am. By night, I pursue “who I am” as a comedian but I’ve decided to limit my roadwork (read—paid gigs) and have concentrated on being in NYC as much as possible (read—unpaid or next to nothing gigs) to create relationships with casting agencies and the television networks. I wish they would breakdown the “occupation” question into two parts: “occupation of desire” and “occupation of necessity”. I don’t even want to throw in the labels of “writer”, “blogger” or “actor” into the mix or my known issue of bipolarized occupations will escalate to schizophrenic.
Putting aside my own existential issues and insecurities, I’ve become timid of filling in the word “comedian” on official forms because it always seems to create a dicey situation of no return because if you start to back peddle you appear like a liar. Credit gets turned down, premium rates go up and the automatic assumption that you would love to hear lame over told jokes from that point on.
He’s a health food fascist. If unsaturated fat was Jewish then he would be the Gestapo. I’ve diagnosed him with orthorexia nervosa (the act of self-righteous eating). I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t confess that I’m a “label-reader”. I try to stay away from corn syrup, unbleached enriched wheat, genetically enhanced food, red-7, etc…Perhaps that’s why I only weigh 169 pounds and stand six inches shy of seven feet. Frightening. I occasionally slip but more out of necessity than lack of discipline. If it comes down to eating something bad or passing out then I say eat the plain bagel with butter.
My girlfriend and I decided to pick up some groceries, stay in for the evening and cook a meal. Fortunately, her eating habits are similar to mine. We decided to at least try to eat healthy. So we bought the following ingredients: Ronzoni® Healthy Harvest Whole Wheat Pasta, fresh garlic, fresh spinach, grated Romano, plum tomatoes , Classico® Spicy and Tomato Pesto Sauce and Veggie Ground Round (a ground beef substitute made with soy and wheat protein).
It would provide the calories our body needed without doing too much damage. We like to live on the edge and risked it. So my roommate was leaving for the evening and he politely apologized for leaving his cheese† on the counter and put it in the refrigerator. As he walked by our “death” concoction, his right eyebrow went up and his face contorted as he unsuccessfully tried to conceal his want to grimace with the look of one forced to sit next to a nauseous, smelly homeless person. Due to my unresolved insecurities, I immediately cried out in defense for our faux-beef fare. “Obviously, it’s not ground beef. It’s soy”, I said thinking that would pacify his concerns for our impending doom. Yet when I said the word “soy”, it seemed like I said “nuclear waste”. He shook his head and simply said with sincere sadness and disgust, “eeehhh…Soy. Hmmm…I just read that soy farmers are destroying the rain forest.”
Whew! That was close. I thought my girlfriend and I were going to die because of our horrible diet but it appeared that we were just killing the fragile ecosystem that protects us from global warming. That I can live with—like I said before “we like to live on the edge”.
What exactly is a kWh?
According to Whatis.com, “kWh is a kilowatt-hour which is a unit of energy equivalent to one kilowatt of power expended for one hour of time” or simply power multiplied by time.
How much power is in a kW?
3,600,000 joules
(The equivalent of the amount of energy exerted by 45,000 Tanya Harding henchmen swinging 45,000 bats (80 joules per hitman)†)
What the hell is a joule?
One joule is defined as the amount of energy exerted when a force of one newton is applied over a displacement of one meter.
(One joule is the amount energy required to lift one apple (100 grams) exactly one meter on Earth)
Jesus Christ! What is a newton? Can you eat it?
No silly. One newton is the force required to cause a mass of one kilogram to accelerate at a rate of one meter per second squared. Think back to high school physics. Force equals mass times acceleration. Remember the dude that got hit on the head with the apple. That dude being the asshole who stole the title away from Leibniz as the “inventor of calculus”.
For fuck’s sake, what does this have to do with my electricity bill?
Everything. The utility company only charges seventeen cents a kilowatt-hour.
Not shabby, considering that a lightning strike generates about 250 kWh which would only cost $42.50 or a little less than two and a half hours of the average hourly wage for a U.S. citizen ($17.03).
So now when people rudely ask you how much you make, be vague and tell them you make enough money to make about eight hundred and thirty-three lightning strikes per year††.
(Hint: Your annual salary divided by your $42.50)
†17¢ seems so much cheaper than $450,000,000 ($10,000 per thug)
††This is the best way to be blown by a rocket scientist or a common nerd
My family lives in Daytona Beach and I decided to fly home for Christmas. I should have picked up on some curious cues that it was going to be an interesting ride when the pilot apologized for the delay because they had to drive the plane from the opposite side of the airport and went on to say that the plane had so many things wrong with it that they had to get it serviced immediately for a number of repairs (Here’s a thought: Maybe they parked it on “the other side of the airport” because it’s broken). Oh well…as any New Yorker, I just wanted to get to my destination. I’ll deal and respond to any crises that arises when they happen. When I need to get somewhere, I can’t be paralyzed by the fear of what could happen to me (especially if you commute on the subway everyday). I buckled my seat belt (Thank God for that, I feel so much safer with it on. I really feel the only reason they make you wear them is so that it makes it easier for them to find your body) and we were off to the Home of NASCARs, Spring Break, Bike Week, and hillbillies.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you look at it), I and fifty other people almost got snuffed out by an unexpected twister (Thank you global warming!).
Here is an excerpt from an article from the Daytona Beach News Journal:
Due to FAA radio ban, tower unaware of tornado
By MELISSA GRIGGS
Business Writer
DAYTONA BEACH - As a 50-passenger jet approached Daytona Beach International Airport for landing Christmas Day, air traffic controllers had no idea a tornado was touching down near the runway.
Comair flight 5580 from New York’s LaGuardia Airport was scheduled to land in Daytona at 1:39 p.m.
The Daytona airport lost power at 1:40 p.m., plunging the radar room and the tower into darkness. Two transmitter receivers also went out. Controllers lost contact with the pilot.
The tornado hit at 1:45 p.m.
Two controllers in the tower saw the windows start to move in and out. They said the building shuddered and they heard a low, moaning sound.
Emergency generators kicked in, restoring power. But only the tower had radio frequency. The pilot called the tower on a different frequency and the tower controllers, still unaware there had been a tornado, directed him to land at another runway.
Raulerson, who has been an air traffic controller for 16 years, said the airport narrowly averted a tragedy. “Had the small plane landed, knowing now what they didn’t know then, the controllers said it wouldn’t have made it,” she said.
“The Comair flight was approaching a runway that would have placed it head-on into the tornado’s path. Instead, it was redirected to another runway and landed about two minutes after the tornado had passed,” she said.
