Point-Counterpoint: Doomsday Preppers

I just started watching this reality television program Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel. It’s about people that are preparing for a cataclysmic event. These people then get graded by a team of survival specialists on their likelihood of surviving said event.

I’ve got a lot to say on the subject of Doomsday prepping.

In the two episodes I’ve seen, most of the fears are based on natural disasters, disease outbreaks, massive oil shortages, etc. I have to be honest, part of the reason I like the show is the suspense before each vignette, because eventually someone is going to just straight up say, zombie apocalypse. I’m preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

When that happens, I’m going to do a Tiger Woods’ fist pump, then call Joe Daniels and talk to him about it.

Point: Doomsday Preppers are on to something…

These people are nuts, but not THAT nuts. Yes, it seems mostly silly to live your life planning for the end of days as a full time endeavor, but I don’t think it hurts anyone to have a contingency plan in place.

1. The first segment was about a retired couple that created a self-sustaining compound out of shipping containers. They had a mini farm, built backup solar powered generators, ran evacuation drills, and shot a bunch of guns for target practice. Unusual, yes, but when my Grandpa retired, he sat around and watched bowling all day. At least these people found a hobby.

2. Experts don’t know shit. The show always ends a segment with the likelihood of the event happening. They’ll say something like, this blah blah blah event has 1.3% chance of occurring. Bullshit. No one knows when the next super volcano is going to erupt or the next asteroid is going to hit the earth. Some egghead is just pulling numbers out of his ass. I know, we can smell our own.

And I don’t care if the probability of an event is .0000013%, it could still happen. The odds of winning the powerball are like 1 in a billion but eventually someone always wins.


Counterpoint: Nope, Doomsday Preppers really are Looney Tunes.

1. The show gets weird when they show the outwardly-normal suburban families preparing for disaster. These people have basements and bedrooms packed with food and supplies and seem to spend most of their free time stockpiling even more rations. I bet the camera people double dip and recycle the footage for the next episode of Hoarders. Winning, said the Nat Geo TV Executive.

2. I think it is really funny when these people claim that they hope their event will never happen, they just want to be ready for it. Again, bullshit. Nothing would make these people happier than to be vindicated from all the dirty looks of their neighbors. If said event never happens, then they are delusional and possibly have OCD. If said event does happen, BINGO.

3. Methinks that some of these Doomsday Preppers are making too many pre-emptive raids on their food pantries. The majority of the people seemed to be terribly out of shape. Perhaps they should worry more about heart failure and less about the Earths north and south poles reversing.

Conclusion

The moral of this blog is to not judge these characters so harshly. Maybe keeping a couple cases of water and a few weeks of canned goods in the basement is a good idea. And it never hurts to challenge yourself with hypothetical scenarios and mental exercises for an armageddon event. What would you do, where would you hide, who would you save, what would be your reason to keep on living?

Not to get too sentimental, but with that special time in mid-February fast approaching, I don’t need to tell you what I’d be fighting for...

This Is How Hollywood Happens

Last Friday morning, I was dicking around on grantland.com, one of the many websites I like to dick around on when I don’t feel like working. The editor is Bill Simmons, one of my favorite writers for ESPN. You may recall that I once aspired to be featured on one of his mailbags, so far unsuccessfully.

But I got on there today!

Sort of. One of Bill Simmons underlings does this feature every day where he glosses over yesterdays sports news and adds a pretty consistently funny commentary to it. Every Friday he asks readers a question and then on Monday he posts the best answers. Last Friday he asked readers for their best heckling stories and I answered the call.


Here is the link to my response. My answer is at the bottom. Just win, baby.

In case you doubt the authenticity that I was the author, you will notice the paragraph was written in haste and missing key random words, a hallmark Brain Litter trait.

I have to come clean though, the story is not totally true. I spiced it up because I wanted Bill Simmons and America to think I was really cool. I’m only partially really cool.

I did go to San Francisco and I did see the Brewers get swept by the Giants. I snuck a flask of brandy into the game so my memory is slightly fuzzy. I’m positive I yelled out Global Warming is Just a Myth and something about Ronald Reagan. But nobody threw a plastic wine glass at us. People were drinking wine in plastic glasses, I remember thinking how weird that was, but nobody threw one at us.

There, I said it. What you read is the Hollywoodized version of a brewer game I went to four years ago. But I totally get Hollywood now. Most true stories are boring. They need a little zip. It’s like a turkey sandwich. You can add honey mustard to enhance the taste, but it’s still a turkey sandwich in essence, and it’s not hurting anybody. So why not?

Right now, I suspect Bill Simmons and the editorial staff are drawing up some sort of lucrative contract for me to become a freelance writer for them. So long spreadsheets, you’re outta here. I just hope I don’t get James Freyed over the plastic wine glass debacle. That would be a total nightmare.

Best Football Play Of The Year

With the playoffs looming, I started reminiscing about this years football season and how we got to where we are today. I remember the spectacle of hosting the Saints for the home opener, going to the monday night Vikings game with my bro and getting free scarves, watching Rodgers carve up the Giants D in the last two minutes to keep their undefeated streak alive, and of course, missing the fantasy football playoffs by one point on a Tuesday because of a"scoring adjustment". What a season!

Looking back at my favorite play though, it curiously wasn't a Packer play. No, my favorite play was a certain orange-clad player who performed one of the most acrobatic touchdowns I have ever seen. Here is the clip.


Craziest Touchdown Of The Year.

Yep, my favorite football play of the year was by Tigers football star, Johnny Rico in 1997.

If you were thinking of this bullshit play, you would be mistaken.

Biggest Bullshit Touchdown Ever.

Jerome Simpson ain't got nothin' on Rico. Rico clears Zander by at least 2 feet whereas Jerome grazes his defender during his touchdown flip like a chump. Plus, for all his moxy, Simpson was a fantasy bust so I guess this blog post is my way of venting my frustration. The ball's in your court, Simpson.

Thanks, Pinterest!

Attention dudes: Do you have a significant other? Do you like it when she cooks for you? She doesn’t? Sick of me asking rhetorical questions in this blog?

OK, duly noted. But back to the cooking thing. No worries. Here’s a great link to forward to your old lady.

Pinterest is the greatest thing that ever happened to me in the last three months. Three months ago, if I would have said, Hey babes, how about you cook me dinner tonight, I would have been laughed out of the kitchen. Jess would say something along the lines of, You wish, go take a hike, you big bologna!

But then, on her own accord, she discovered this website and now I’m eating stuff like Salsa Chicken Casserole with Southwestern-style rice for dinner.

I think the genius of Pinterest is that the website combines tasty, colorful food recipes alongside pictures of the two things women love most: kittens in boxes with funny captions and cute boots. The combination creates a warm fuzzy feeling in the center of their brains which creates a halo effect for the food recipes which translates into awesome meals for me.

The ramifications of this Pinterest Discovery are staggering. I have a hypothesis that I plan on testing tonight.

This week, I’m going to suggest to Jess that she takes out the garbage. When she says no, I’m going to ask again, this time holding up a picture of two little cute kids dressed up in light blue/orange tuxedos like Lloyd and Harry from Dumb and Dumber in a wagon that looks like the Mutt Cutts van. I’ll let you know the results.

Sometimes I wish there was a Pinterest website for men but then I remembered we have about 50,000,000 of them. Except our Pinterest websites come with annoying pop ups and we aren't allowed to look at them at work. Also, we can't login and "pin" our favorite items on a community bulletin board. Thank God. Gross.

The Most Annoying Christmas Tradition

Some traditions need to go away. I’m talking about you, red hots on my Christmas cookie.

Does anybody like these stupid things? What do you like about them, the crappy taste or the feeling like your teeth are cracking when you bite into one? I bet you liked getting those crappy taffy things wrapped in the black or orange wax paper on halloween, too.

The most common sight you will see at a Christmas party is a platter full of crumbs and one or two Christmas cookies left over with about a dozen red hots on them each because a small child made them and didn’t know any better. It’s not the child’s fault, we as adults need to take responsibility and stop buying red hots to put on Christmas cookies.

I mean, I get it, sometimes you need something red to make a Rudolph nose or buttons on a gingerbread man or holly berries on a wreath. But can’t we use red M&M’s for that? Or some other red candy that isn’t spicy cinnamon based? Nothing? All of these options are better than red hots.

Now I know what your next question is. Ben, what is your stance on tiny metal ball things on Christmas cookies? Excellent question.

My stance on tiny metal ball things on Christmas cookies is that I’m okay with them. Yeah they’re still hard on the teeth but at least they are basically tasteless. Plus there is no substitute for tiny metal balls except for bb gun ammo. I don’t recommend eating bb’s although they are preferable to red hots.

I know traditions are important to honor the olden days and our ancestors' ways of doing things but enough is enough. Hell, in the olden days we used to let the British govern us from across the Atlantic but we bucked that tradition and it seems to be working out pretty well for everyone. I say we do the same for stupid red hots.

And while we’re at it, let’s stop doing the chicken dance at weddings, too. Thanks, World.


I dare you to find the cookie in this photo that won't be eaten. It's not difficult.

Crazy Target Lady

I started watching TV again, last night to be exact. I didn’t want to take any chances viewing any more commercials with that Crazy Target Lady, who has been giving me night terrors since last week. I don’t know where the ad wizards at Target found this woman or why they selected her to be the face of their Black Friday promotions but rest assured, they will NOT be getting my business any time soon on the off chance that I might run into this woman at their store. I feel like she would have no problem shoving a shiv into my side while making a bee-line at a bargain priced, off-brand flat screen.

Honestly, they need to make a horror movie starring the Crazy Target Lady. Does it take any imagination to envision the camera pulling back in any one of those commercials, and seeing a bunch of people chained to various torture devices along the walls in her house, like in a scene from Hostel? Eli Roth should be all over this. They could call the movie…wait for it…Black Friday. This movie writes itself.

I’m kidding of course. Not about being afraid of the Crazy Target Lady or Black Friday being a really good idea for a horror movie. But we did go shopping at Target and the mall that Friday night when all of the diehard Black Fridayers cleared out and left us to pick through all that commerce carnage. The night was uneventful but there was a tinge of fear and excitement in the air knowing Crazy Target Lady might be lurking behind that stack of $9.95 electric griddles…



Freddy Krueger ain't got shit on this chick.

25 Years of Zelda, 25 Years of StnkyNts Domination

I just picked up the new Zelda game for Wii. It’s the 25th anniversary of the game since it originally debuted for Nintendo in all of its gold plated cartridge glory. It’s probably my favorite video game franchise of all time, Rad Racer excluded, so for the anniversary of the game, I’d like to revisit my greatest Zelda memories.

Fall 1987 – Dad comes home with the first Zelda for me after Mom made me return Double Dragon back to the store because it was too violent. I would have been outraged but Double Dragon was hard as shit and I couldn’t make it past the second level anyways. Stupid Abobo’s…

Summer 1988 – Accidently erased David Dimmer’s entire quest when he was at the 9th dungeon. Apparently I didn’t hold down select or something when I turned off the system. In any case, our friendship today would best be described as strained.

Winter 1991 – Zelda debuts for Super Nintendo. This marks the first incident of me naming my Link character StnkyNts which is the name I’ve used for every Zelda game ever since. And every other game that allows you to name your character. Incidentally, I still think this is hilarious and laugh every time some mystical elder within a game tells me that, I, StnkyNts, am the chosen one.

Deer Hunting Camp 1994 – Started playing Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy while sitting in my deer stand to stave off boredom. Literally saves me from quitting deer hunting because sitting in the woods with nothing to do all day really stinks. I’ve vanquished Ganon more times than I’ve vanquished a whitetail.

1998 – Ocarina of Time comes out for N64. What a time to be alive.

Freshmen Year of College – Dude’s cousin Brian, in the wee hours of the night, high, dungeon music in the background, leaving messages on our answering machine asking how to find missing triforce pieces. During finals week.

2010 - Bought original Zelda on Wii game store after haven’t playing the game in over 10 years. Found every heart container, rupee stash, and secret item without a moment’s hesitation and beat the game in under four hours. Did I mention I forgot my mom’s birthday a couple of years ago?

So now I’ve got new memories to make with Skyward Sword. Being the Wii though, it makes you perform various physical actions, like in order to charge your sword, you have to raise your Wii remote i.e. your sword in the air like you just pulled Excalibur out of the stone. This is cool to do, but to a casual onlooker, like my fiancé for instance, I imagine this doesn’t look cool.

I don’t know where I’m going to find time to play this game without Jess being around. I think somebody is getting a full day spa package for Christmas this year…

The Dog Whisperer Part II

Whoops. I almost forgot about following up with this post.

On Saturday morning, I called up Deb the pet psychic. The consultation did not start off well. She forgot I had an appointment with her. Psych! She totally remembered.

So the first thing she did was “channel” into Cheese’s head to hear his thoughts. My guess was that he was thinking about biscuits. But I was wrong. According to Deb, he was worried that we were going to abandon him after the wedding. She then took a few minutes to tell Cheese telepathically that everything was going to be fine.

Then I told her about the blender problem and some other behavioral stuff. Deb again talked to Cheese and then assured me he wasn’t going to act like a doofus anymore when we make smoothies.

Deb then channeled out of Cheese and channeled into Skits. This took several minutes. She said Skits was never going to get along with Cheese because she feels she is like an English nanny and that it is her job to administer discipline to all those who dwell in the household, including Jess and me. I thought to myself, yep, that sounds about right, actually.

I told Deb to tell Skits to stop pissing on Cheese’s bed and to like me more and she said ok, no problem.

The results? About an hour later, if that, Cheese goes berserker on me when I attempted to unload the dishwasher. Good job, Deb.

But I will say this, Skits has not whizzed on Cheese’s bed since. AND, out of nowhere, she started sleeping on my side of the bed for some reason. Did I mention I was allergic to cats? I just wanted her to stop hissing at me, this was too much. Dammit, Deb, you’ve screwed me again.

But seriously, even though there was a lot of nonsense, Deb was a very sweet woman and you could tell she legitimately loves animals and really wanted to help me. She did give me some good, non-magical advice too. I’m going to stop making fun of her now in case she finds about this blog and places a hex on me.

Speaking of loving animals, I hope I kill a deer this weekend! Wish me luck!

The Dog Whisperer

About a year ago, I went to this benefit auction thing and I made a silent bid on a basket of dog stuff like treats and toys and things like that. I made the minimum bid of $25 and I won. Sweet.

It also included a free one-hour session with a dog psychic. BONUS.

Ok, technically it’s called Reiki Energy Healing. The brochure states that it is a non-invasive energy system that yields powerful results in the body, mind, and spirit. Call it what you want, I’m just hoping this lady can get Cheese to stop spazzing out whenever we try to use the blender.

I’ve been sitting on this coupon for over a year, but seriously, this blender situation is getting out of hand. I called the psychic up tonight and set up an appointment for later this weekend.

I asked where we should meet but she said it wouldn’t be necessary because she would be able to communicate with Cheese telepathically over the phone. Talk about efficiency!

My only concern is that the Reiki Energy Healing purportedly works better over a landline phone and we don’t have one. If the Reiki doesn’t work, it will probably be because of that.

I gotta tell ya, I’m getting pretty excited about this. I had to send the psychic some pics and some background info on Cheese tonight so she could prepare. She also requested I send a picture of Skits, Jess’s cat.

Presumably, if we can bang this blender problem out under an hour, we might be able to tackle this other situation on our hands. I’m referring of course to Skits and her love of constantly peeing in the middle of Cheese’s bed at inopportune times. I don’t know though…I don’t know if there’ll be enough time.

Hey Oh

Sorry this was locked before, Brain Litter was on hiatus due to me looking and finding a new job and I didn't want to get googled and have a potential employers mind blowned and somehow miss out on an opportunity. I'll try to update soon.