It's All About the Benjamins

Jump to Comments You know, I never even really write non-weekend things anymore, so I should probably get more creative with the titles of these things, but whatever.

See, the dudes from church and I went on a retreat thing to Craplinburg and did church stuff. This should not be confused with the thing the Presbyterian Church seems to have done over the weekend, called “The Awakening”– how creative, but more on that later. Yeah, so, like, 8 hour bus ride to Smokey Mountain National Park and Seedy Tourist Trap. Mmmhmmm. The whole religious thing is quite enjoyable, although somewhat difficult to explain to non-Campbellites, because my idea of Christianity seems to differ from the other sects. All I can say though, is Jerome Williams is a true master of the leading of songs. ONE MORE TIME XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD

Yeah, so, anyhow. I stayed in a room with El Baile and the Zack, which, unfortunately, was not the venerable Bon Air Lodge chalet, but was, in all reality, a superior room. Did I mention that we are the prince of all pranksters once again? Because, you know, we are. So, like, Mikey gave us our own room and me the spare keys to every other room, and Zack a two-way and the title of pseudochapperone– it was like he was wanting us to pull something! FUAHAHAHAHA. But it was all unneccessary, because we had the master prank worked out long beforehand.

See, it all started out about month ago. The churchies and I were coming into Neuhaus when somehow this idea evolved out of conversation. Now, I can’t remember why everybody was over– it was the evening, but I don’t think it was a Friday. I’ll have to czech calendars or something, I dunno. I digress. See, this idea formed– Craplinburg, almost like the Principality of Zionsville, has an inexplicible abundance of certain buisinesses, buisinesses one would think would not be in such abundance due to the free market. However, instead of our bizzarre aggolmeration of Banks, Dry Cleaners, and Antiques shops, Gatlinburg contains exeedingly silly amounts of sword stores, unwholesome food dispenseries, Ripley’s Believe It or Not People Pay to See This Crap outlets, and, finally, Wedding Chapels. It is this final category from which the prank spawned. See, I forged up ourselves some marriage licencage for El Baile and Megs, because Mikey seems to think they like each other, or something. It consisted of a PDF of the Hawaii Marriage License Application, of which I modified the state identification (the form lacked the requirement of notarization, which simplified things), and a 2-meg TIFF of a Courier and Ives Marriage Cetrificate litho, circa 1850, courtesy of the Library of Congress website. HE SO BOUGHT IT FOR FOUR HOURS, or whatever it was before it was revealed to the group as a whole (those not in the know also so bought it, stupid middle schoolers) and then shown to be a fake. Furthermore, we set up a 4:30 AM wakeup call for the girls (who had somehow secured from Mike the Chalet against its habitual inhabitance by us of the male persuasion). r0xx0r.

So, uh, due to this STORM OF THE CENTURY, we ended up stuck in a little forsaken part of Southeastern Kentucky by the name of Corbin, as opposed to Korben (Dallas), Sunday afternoon into Monday morning, instead of returning to Naptown. Everyone was put into their regularly scheduled rooming assignments; our room was in some ways nicer, and in some ways cruddier– the beds were those smaller hotel doubles instead of regular doubles, and we lacked a balcony, but the overall quality of the Farfield Inn Mariott subgroup is top notch. My dread of encountering local dialect was assauged when after going to a fine Mr. Gatti’s establishment for dinner, I found every worker I encountered to speak perfect North Midland. Oh, and, they had this multi-game motion control system arcade machine with AN ARCADE VERSION OF MECHWARRIOR 4. SO EXCELLENT. It sticks you in what amounts to be a pretty standard-loadout Summoner with some lasers, an autocannon, and some LRM. Not my personal favorite, but it’s got the jump jets, and does the job. If anyone runs across one of these, I dare them to score 450,000 points on their first try. Yeah, that’s what I thought. FUAHAHAHAHAHA. Apparently, Molly fell asleep at the establishment, probably because dorks like me were wasting their cash on stupid arcade games for upwards of two hours. Poor girl. Oh well, THOSE STEINER SCUM GOT A TASTE OF BURNING DEATH THANKS TO THIS ACE MECH PILOT, so it’s all good in the parenthood.

After we got back to our room, Mikey came by to tell us all that we had committed the absolute best prank EVAR. I was quite pleased. The phonebook the room was equipped with was even smaller than that of the Mentone-Burket-Palestine-Etna Green zone in which my grandparents live, and had about half a page full of people with some bizzare last name that started with ‘M’. Also, the Mormons decided to drop off their crazy crap in addition to the Gift of the Giddeons in the nightstand drawer. HAHE ROBBLE ROBBLE 8D

Didn’t do much of anything that night, and the bus ride home was exceedingly boring. We watched, uh, Big Fat Greek Wedding, Remember the Titans, and Newsies on the way back, in addition to Count of Monte Cristo and The Rookie on the way down there. I can’t think of anything eventful to say about this bus ride back, so I won’t. I think some of the girls were keeping a journal of stuff that happened on the trip for the benefit of those qho couldn’t go; I’d like to get a copy of said document and put it up on the site, if they’ll permit such a thing. Speaking of putting stuff on the site, I freaking misplaced my photocds with the pictures from birthdayage, but I promise I’ll get them up on here someday. UGH!

Yeah, had some of the people over Monday evening as El Baile wanted to watch the Finale of Joe Millionaire or whatever. Now I knwo why I don’t watch this reality tv garbage. Apprently, Molly didn’t come because she had initially had plans with some other friends, which she tried to creatively disperse; however, these folks are apparently ex-gestapo so, you know. Eyeroll.

Oh, yeah, apparently some of the churches in town do some sort of Jesus-related event this weekend, too. It’s appearently a lot more of a song and dance, but that’s something I’d expect from hatted Protestants. I also heard via second hand sources that certain persons we being all condescending to persons who did not go, saying things like “ooh, you don’t know yourself, because, like, I thought I knew myself, but I didn’t until this weekend” and all this kind of PhilosoBS. Sorry to get preachy here, but, this is my personal website, after all, and if there’s any place in which I’m entitled to be preachy, it’s here, dangit. Now, if you ask me, it’s blatantly against the principles of written Christianity — that is, the instructions given in the New Testament — to do all this high-and-mighty you suck schtick. However, it seems to come up time and time again throughout the history of the practiced religion. Why cannot people just read the dang book and at least give an attempt to do as they are told? There’s nothing in there about slaughtering the Infidel, or some sort of organized church structure with major political power and the ability to dictate doctrine, or belittling somebody because they didn’t go on some stupid retreat, or even wearing freaking hats, for that matter. It’s about being nice to people, helping those in need, serving, being fair, and spreading the idea of doing such. Certainly, there’s more to the religion than that, but that’s the outward interaction of it; communion and repentance and baptism and all that are inward aspects that have little immediately to do with behavior towards one’s fellow man. I get the feeling sometimes that maybe I’m missing something, since it seems far more important to most other people even within my dorky little flavor of the thing to debate choirs or women preachers or whatever. I think that silly ol’ Rodney King fellow really had something when he asked ‘can’t we all just… get along?’

Zaat’s eet foah toodaaay.