The Mystery of the Emergency Button

Have you ever pondered the deeper mysteries of life?  Where did I come from?  Why am I here?  What does the fox say?

These are the mysteries that man has sought to solve since time immemorial.  Today I'd like to add another mystery to this list.  What does this button do?

To give you some context about this button, it's located at Gold's Gym in Orem, Utah.  There is a room with a swimming pool and a hot tub.  It is about 5 feet from the hot tub.  I would have given you a picture of the hot tub with the button in the background so you could see it in context, but the people in the hot tub were giving me weird enough looks when I was taking a picture of the button.  They probably would have started rioting if I took a picture of them chilling in the hot water.  (But maybe they would have considered my creepy picture taking to be an emergency.  They could have pushed the button and solved the mystery.)

So, I'm trying to figure out what exactly this button does.  How does it know the nature of your emergency?  Does it drain the pool in case of drowning?  What if it's a chocolate emergency?  Does it dispense chocolate?  Does it put up the bat signal in the sky?  Does it call the button pusher's mom?  Maybe it just says some soothing words.

If I were designing an emergency button, I think one of the first things I would have it do is notify the staff that there is an emergency.  The staff would be able to determine the nature of the emergency much better than the feeble skills of the simple button.  But the one thing that we know about this button is that it doesn't notify the staff.  They want the pusher of the button to do that manually.

The only comforting thing is that the sign doesn't say, "notify Jack Bauer if used."  That at least leaves some hope that the button notifies Jack Bauer.  If there's anyone who knows how to handle an emergency, he would be the guy.

But I ask again, what does this button do?

Naturally, we spoke with some of the staff to see what they knew about it.

"Don't push it."

"But what does it do?"

"Just don't push it, it's for emergencies only."

We went around in that circle for several minutes.  The lady was very adamant that the button was not to be pushed.  She also was very adamant that the result of pushing the button was not something that mankind was ready to know about or comprehend.

I can only assume it's some sort of Doomsday device.  If the enemies of the gym have taken control, we push the button so that the gym self destructs and the precious gym never falls into enemy hands.

Or maybe it dispenses chocolate.

What do you think the button does?  I'd love to hear some theories.

The Spiderman Conundrum

It would seem my life is filled with mystery.  I still haven't figured out who loves my garbage.  And, while that mystery kind of creeps me out, this one has its own element of creepiness.

So here's the story.  I mow my line every Saturday.  I'm addicted to the ooohs and aaaahs my wife gives me when she sees the freshly cut grass.  (I've never done any sort of drugs, so I have to seek highs in other ways).

Every week before I mow the lawn I do a quick walk through and pick up any random garbage that has blown into the yard, or any items we may have left on the grass.  This week I found a particularly unique item.  See below:

I should note that while the above picture features Spider man on my kitchen table, he was not actually found on my kitchen table.  But that would greatly increase the creepiness.

So you're thinking to yourself, "What's so creepy about Spiderman?  Is it his radioactive blood?  Is it that he catches thieves just like flies?"

Those are excellent guesses, and if you were in my primary class at church I would totally find a way to spin it so that your guesses could be correct.  However, this isn't primary and you're not 3 years old.  So I'll just tell you straight, your guesses are wrong.

Think about how Spiderman arrived in the yard.  I can't think of an explanation for his arrival that isn't creepy.  Here's the scenario I've come up with.

Scene 1:  Two children are playing with their toys.
Child 1:  Look at my cool Spiderman toy, he's got radioactive blood.
Child 2:  That is really cool!  Especially since you're only 4 and you said "radioactive".
Child 1:   I know, right?
Child 2:  You know what we should do?  We should play with your Spiderman toy in the Stockett's backyard.
Child 1:  Why?
Child 2:  Because mysteriously lurking on other people's property is fun.  Plus they only have a fence on 2 sides of their yard so it should be easy to sneek around back.
Child 1:  That sounds like an incredible plan.

Scene 2: In my backyard
Child 1:  Look at my toy now.  He does whatever a spider can.
Child 2:  Quite phenomenal if I do say so myself.
Child 1:  Oh no!  The Stocketts are coming home.  Let's get out of here.
Child 2:  What about Spiderman?  Aren't you bringing him?
Child 1:  There's no time.  He'll have to save himself.

So, that's pretty much the only possible explanation for the appearance of Spiderman.  If your children are creepily playing with action figures in my backyard, tell them I appreciate the donation.  It's much better than stealing my garbage.

The Incredible Vanishing Trash Can

They say that one man's trash is another man's treasure.  Well, apparently my trash is solid gold.

About 2 years ago, I wrote about how our neighbor was stealing our trash can. We moved away from those neighbors. Not because they were weird trash thieves, but we certainly didn't miss having our trash can stolen. Of course, when we first moved to our current house, the city wouldn't pick up our trash for a month. I can only assume that they didn't want to load up what they presumed to be solid gold in the dump.

Well, it took us a while to convince the city that we really did want our trash picked up.  The city does now believe that our trash is actual trash.  However, apparently our various neighbors still see incredible value in our garbage cans.  Recently, our trash can completely vanished.  It had been a particularly windy day and we live on a large hill, so we thought maybe it blew down the hill.

I walked all the way down the hill, there were no random trash cans.  I even walked down a few side streets to see if it somehow wandered in a new direction.  There was nothing.  Someone, I'm sure was sitting in their backyard, giddy with the pure joy of having acquired all of our trash, and a can to boot.   It's possible that it originally blew away, but someone clearly took it off the street.

I called the city, they thought I was crazy.  But they don't understand how difficult it is for me to keep my trash can.  I eventually convinced them to give me a new one.

So, let me just put this out there.  We do not put solid gold in our trash can.  Sometimes we use 100 dollar bills as toilet paper, (who doesn't?) but we don't put toilet paper in the trash can.  That would just be gross.

So, please, just let us keep it.  You're free to steal the trash out of it.  Just let us keep the can.  Thanks.  It is much appreciated.

Questions That Need Answering

Sometimes in life there are questions.  Sometimes it's hard to find the answers.

Over the past couple months, every time one of those unanswerable questions has come to me, I wrote it down.  Now I have gathered them all in one place so that the good people of the internet can answer them for me.

Here goes:

1. Why are they called red grapes when they are clearly purple?
2. How does a razor remember to only cut hair off my face and not cut off skin as well?
3. What if Deja Vu meant that you lost a life and restarted at the last checkpoint?
4. What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?
5. Of all the utensils that could have been invented to eat rice with, how did two sticks win out?
6. What is a zig-a-zig-ah and why do the spice girls want it so bad?
7. If Jimmy cracked corn and no one cares, why does he keep doing it?
8. When I look in the gym mirror at myself I think "that dude doesn't look happy." So why does the gym have mirrors? 
9. When they have those restrooms that only one person fits in, why do they have a mens and womens?
10. "Love is a battlefield." What does that even mean?
11. Why do hot dogs come in packs of 10 while the buns come in packs of 8?
12. Why do we cook bacon but bake cookies?
13. Why is it that the yoke of an egg is delicious when uncooked, but if the white is uncooked I gag?
14. Why do olives taste gross but olive oil is awesome?
15. Why does hair grow fastest on my neck when clearly neck beards are gross?
16. Why do they call it cupcake wars if no one ever throws cupcakes?
17. Why is it that every person in front of me universally thinks that 30 mph is a good speed for getting on the freeway?

So, dear citizens of the internet.  I hope you can help me out by giving me some answers.  In exchange for your help I will let you look upon this awesomeness:

I googled "questions that need answering" and he came up.  The greatest question is: how did he get so awesome?  

The Mystery of the Lone Sock

There are certain questions that no human being can answer.  There are certain mysteries that can't be solved through normal thought and logic.  One of those is the mystery of the lone sock.

You see, at my house, my husbandly duties go beyond such tasks as helping to get past the most difficult levels of Angry Birds.  (Although I would never wish to diminish the importance of that duty.)  At my house, I am the official doer of laundry.  (I tried to make it sound official and important.  It's possible I failed.)

The following are important facts to help you understand the mystery.
1. I put on two socks at a time.
2. I wear two socks at a time.
3. I take off two socks at a time.
4. I put two socks in the laundry.
5. Somehow when the laundry is done there is an odd number of socks.

How is this even possible?  It makes zero sense to me.  Nonetheless, I have developed a special strategy when this happens.  I put the odd sock back into the dirty clothes in hopes that the other one will somehow show up again before I do laundry again.  Sometimes this strategy works.  I'll find a random sock on the floor and throw it in the basket where it is reunited with its mate.

Unfortunately, I have been rewashing the lone sock now since July of last year.

This could be the world's cleanest sock.

I fear the mate to this sock may never return.  But the question remains, where could it possibly be? Is there some magical place where socks without mates go to live lives of solitude?  Can they find love with other socks, even if those socks look different?

It probably left for a sock that looked like this.

Wherever the lost sock is, I hope it is happy.  Meanwhile, I'll keep washing the lone sock and hoping this laundry issue resolves itself.