The Time I Almost Died

This is a story about the time I almost died.  I was probably 10 or 11 years old, and my family decided we should have a little weekend vacation. Instead of going on a normal people trip, they thought it would be a good idea to go on a "float trip", which is code word for "Be really bored in a hollowed out tree on a river for about 5 hours."

 Even less exciting when it's actually a tree.

The trip went about as you would expect for the first 31/2 hours. Laying there, doing nothing. The highlight so far was stopping on an island to have a picnic, which was only exciting because I had to pretend we were deserted there and were going to have to live like we were on Survivor or Man vs Wild. But then I remembered they eat bugs and drink their own pee and things went back to being boring again.

Stuck on an island? Better drink my own... no, actually

I think I'll stick with the Kool Aid.

I made the mistake of thinking I wanted things to be more exciting, but little did I know how much I would pay for this.

We were floating down the river, minding our own business, when we hit an intersection in the river. We could take the wide, calm watered route, or we could take the route with 40 mph rapids with a tree hanging across half the river. I put on my best Rambo (Sambo?) face and paddled headlong into the rapids.

An accurate representation

Bam! Crash! Onomatopoeia! In a sudden whir I notice that I was hanging for my dear life onto a branch of the tree, with every memory flashing before my eyes, including a few other people's memories. This was it. Any minute now my grip would falter and I would be swept into the current of death, with no hope of survival. I then actually looked to see my dad only no more than waste deep in water, when I realized I could easily touch my feet to the ground. The day was saved!

And that's why you never EVER go on float trips.

Job Search

I really want to consistently blog. I really do. But two things have taken over my life lately. Portal 2, and searching for a job. Lucky for me, I beat Portal 2, so now I have nothing else to help me procrastinate from looking for a job other than this! Yay!

Searching for a job is kind of like Portal 2: It's puzzling, 

and there's probably a giant robot computer thing trying to kill me.

But who knew that finding a job could be so frustrating! You have to like go places and fill out applications or go online and fill out applications and they have like really long questionnaires about whether you would help a customer or if you've committed murder or steal puppies or kill stolen puppy customers and it's really boring and stuff. And then you do all this for them to be like "lol no" and you don't get the job and you live as a hobo.

Also some sort of mutant clown-Waldo or apparently.

 

 

So I end up between a rock and a hard place and also theres like a hobo clown-Waldo hitting me with his scarf: Do I spend time trying to get a job when all the good jobs don't want me and all the stupid ones are stupid? Or do I just give up and deal with the constant nagging from parents?

That Rock-Author star doesn't seem to be too impossible of a job after all...

I'm Back!

Hello blog world! After a while of not blogging (my older post's self fulfilling prophecy being self-fulfilled), I'm back to do some more bloggifericationing. With any luck, this time I will be here for AT LEAST 2 weeks. Or 1. Or a few days. Hey, I got one post out at least!

So anyways, today I'm going to tell you about one of my earliest memories! This experience severely traumatized me and I'm pretty sure that any normal person would have schizofreniparanoiahysteriopsychosis after this.


Picture in your mind being 3 years old. Or maybe 2. Or even 1 and a half, I don't know my memory doesn't have a calender, it really should go buy one. Anyways, you're 3-2-1&1/2 years old and in the far distant jungles of Africa. And by jungles I means zoo. And by Africa I mean San Diego.

Anyways, you're there with your mom and dad who promise to love you and care for you and never do anything to intentionally get you viciously mauled by wild animals, and then suddenly they're gone. They've disappeared, and you're lost forever. All you can think about is how evil all the animals around you are that are going to eat your face and maybe one of your arms and like, use your legs as chew toys. Remember how my dog saw the fly in the last post?

Yeah. That thing has an SMG, a knife, and a laser cannon. And it was staring straight at me. My mom and dad, who in my 3-2-1&1/2-year-old mind had magic gun/knife/laser-wielding-panther fighting abilities, were nowhere to be found. Naturally, I did what any brave soul would do in that sort of situation. I sat down and started bawling my eyes out. The next thing I know, my parents rushed to the rescue, and the evil gun/knife/laser panther turned back into a cardboard cut out of a lion. The day was saved. But I couldn't ever trust my parents to take care of me ever again. They claim they were trying to "teach me a lesson" and that "they were there the whole time" and that I "kept wandering off," but I know they're secretly in the GKLWPLWPWHTC (Gun and Knife and Laser Wielding Panther League With Parents Who Hate Their Children).

The GKLWPLWPWHTC: Kinda like the Justice league but instead of Batman it's 

"Gunknifelaserpantherman" and Superman is like, "Parentwhowantshischild'sfacetobemauledoffman"

Evil flies from outer space.

My dog is slightly retarded. But at the same time, he's extremely smart, like, he could totally pass one of those doggy I.Q. tests with flying colors or at least with a score of "good enough". I guess he's like a sevant except sevants are good at only like one thing and my dog is smart with several things but then he can be really, really stupid sometimes like running into walls stupid. My dog runs into walls.

So when my dog was younger (like five minutes ago) he was afraid of flies. Yes. Flies. He is a fully grown, old man dog and he is terrified by these things.

Except when my dog sees, them, they must look something like this.

Or this

So if you are a small, buzzing creature, please stay away from my dog, or at least stop telling him that you're going to eat his soul. Because whenever he sees flies or similar insects, he goes into a frenzied panic mode and then runs upstairs as if the fly doesn't have you know, wings or something and can't make it up that high. And then he lays down and pants a lot exhausted like he just escaped from the battlefield in 'Nam or something because he has a thyroid problem or something and you shouldn't make fun of him because it's rude.

And now for your viewing pleasure, a picture of my dog Riley. With a hat.

P.S. I just now realized that it looks like he's wearing a blue pope hat in the picture but it's not I promise even though that would be awesome. You know what? Just pretend that it's a pope hat.

Short Attention Span

I have a ridiculously short attention span. Not so much with stuff like school, or doing work, but with important stuff like training to become a famous rock star or author or rock author star.

What seems to happen is I will run full force into practicing guitar and I'm going to be the best guitar player ever except not do heroin but then I get like fifteen minutes into practicing and realize I can't do it and get bored and decide to go watch TV. The same thing goes for writing. I have written one chapter of tons of books. I think I made it to the third chapter once, and that's because I decided to make the first two chapters really really short so that I could make it to the third chapter. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I don't ever update this blog again after this post or even just stop in the middle of


















Did you get it? Because I like, totally stopped in the middle of my sentence making you think that I lost attention and it was a great joke and not extremely lame because you've seen people do or say something like that a million times and the Simpsons probably did it.

Having a short attention span is detrimental to my future. Because what sounds awesomerer? "Hi, I'm Sam, I'm a doctor." Or, "Hi, I'm Sam, I'm a kung-fu fighting robot killing rock author star who also is an actor and best friends with all the famous people." I'll let you decide that one.

It seems as if my attention span is out to get me. Like it has some sort of vendetta against me and it doesn't want me to have fun or do anything neat ever. Because I can focus on boring stuff perfectly well. Slightly well. Okay I can't focus on boring stuff all that well either but I can magically remember what happened when not paying attention to boring stuff so it's like I payed attention. But really cool stuff loses my attention fast and I don't remember them as well. It's like you can either chose to sit through all of Click or you can watch five minutes of Billy Madison instead. It's a terrible, awful decision that no one should ever have to make. I mean, on one hand, Click was a terrible Adam Sandler movie, and Billy Madison was terrific. But on the other hand, you'll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that you only got to watch five minutes of Billy Madison. You didn't even get to hear the "Back to School" song or that one line about snack packs or souls that God has mercy on.

My attention span is like V and the British government is really cool awesome stuff

But probably the worst of all is exercising. It's not something awesome to me, but it's awesome for me so I guess my attention span hates it too. But I'll go in super healthy feeling like I'm going to be the greatest exerciser but then I'm like "wait didn't I just run yesterday? I'll do it tomorrow" and then tomorrow I'll forget that I didn't do it yesterday, because remember I told you that my attention span is short? And so I won't ever exercise again because I just did it yesterday and I don't feel like it.

And that's how I have self diagnosed ADD.


P.S.:

Bloggingerest

Hello, and welcome to This Totally Happened or Something, a blog about stuff that totally happened. Or something. And I promise that it will be the most bloggingerest blog on the internet. Or it will at least be better than one that someone made because they thought they were going to start a blog and then didn't even make one post because it was too much pressure or they got busy and forgot or they couldn't find the "New post" button (not as easy as it sounds). I at least have a post.

Puppy

When I was about eight or twelve or sixteen, my brother and some friends and I totally were spending the weekend at my grandparents house. And even better than my grandparents house, is their barn. And not barn like "hey look at all the animals cows and horses and wait what is this I just stepped in poop why in the world would you keep poop in a barn" but instead it's a bed and breakfast that we just call the barn because it's a lot easier to say than the place where you say "hey look at all the animals cows and horses and wait what is this I just stepped in poop why in the world would you keep poop in a barn."

 While there at the barn and breakfast, we were outside doing manly stuff in the pasture/yard thing like throwing footballs and hitting each other in the face and eating raisins or something.

While out there, we found a small bunny rabbit. So naturally, we put it in a box with grass and leaves so, in the words of Mitch Hedberg, "it'd be like its natural habitat." If you don't know who Mitch Hedberg is then you need to go to google and type in "Mitch Hedberg" because he was one of the greatest comedians/stoners who ever lived. Ever. Times infinity.

So we named the bunny "Puppy," because that's the only logical name for a woodland creature like that.  After a while, we decided that puppy had lived in its natural habitat long enough. So we decided to let him go and chase him because after being traumatically captured by giant two-legged freaks, any one of you would love to run around the yard followed by them. We weren't chasing him for no reason, we were trying to guide him back to his home to be back with his rabbit family and his rabbit mother who I'm sure misses him and has probably called the rabbit police or whatever they call for rabbit emergencies.

Then. The horror. Before I go on to the next part of my narrative, I need to get you familiar with my grandparents' dog Blackie. Not Blackie because they are racist but just because he is a black lab and they were born in a different time and you shouldn't judge them. Blackie is huge. No. Blackie is enormous. No. You know what, I think this picture is a pretty accurate representation of this dog.

Imagine that, but thirty billion times fatter. Now imagine that moving at two hundred thousand miles per hour. Two hundred thousand miles per hour straight towards Puppy. I didn't know something that huge could move a tenth of the speed he ran. Then poof. The rabbit is gone like David Blaine or something. And he didn't even put it on our bodies. He ate it. He ate Puppy. And to an eight or twelve or sixteen year old who has never really seen death live before, this was a traumatic event. I think I'm a curse to small animals.

Moral of the story: Don't let bunnies loose if you're in the general vicinity of Blackie. Or any dog. Just leave all bunnies alone forever.

P.S: Fun fact! It took me about three tries to spell raisin. Raisen? Raison? ...Raisan? Raisin. Nailed it.