Okay, full disclosure: there are no pancakes OR tampons in this week’s missive.  Sorry for misleading you.  I just thought of the word “random” and then the first two words into my head were pancakes and tampons, so there you go.  Speaks volumes about the state of my mental well-being, eh what?  Forgive me, it’s been a strange week.  I flew a plane, for God’s sake.  Seriously.  They let me have the controls of an actual goddam airplane, and I lived to tell the tale.  See, the lesson was only one dollar…but the landing cost me a hundred-forty-nine bucks!  ZING! (That’s a pilot’s-license-instructor joke.  It absolutely has ’em in stitches at the airport.)  And you know what I learned about flying an airplane (other than it’s fuggin’ AWESOME?) It is EXACTLY like every video game you’ve ever played.  Only, you know, more terrifying when you stall.  Fact.

Anyway, there’s no point to the blog this week.  I just wanted to point out that this place is now conveniently called turnerwatson.com!  How ’bout that!  SOOOO much easier to ignore! Notice that I’ve changed the look a bit, too.  Yeah, that’s me.  Keepin’ it fresh and real like a goddam Wendy’s!  YOU KNOW WHEN IT’S REAL, BITCH!!

One of the other things I did this week was pay one more visit to the Ft. Wayne’s Children’s Zoo.  For the uninitiated, that’s an actual zoo full of animals, NOT a collection of ragamuffins and street urchins.  If that were the case, no one would go to the Africa exhibit because it would be sad and depressing and full of flies.  And the England exhibit would have loveable scamps playing footy and picking pockets while shouting “‘Ello, guv’nah!”  The fish & chips would be bomb-diggity though, yo.

Anyway, one of the rides there at the Ft. Wayne’s Children’s Zoo and Orphanage is the Australian Outback River Ride.  Basically, the zoo got a deal on some old Cedar Point log flume ride parts and threw together a meandering little teenage make-out session on water.  It’s kinda cool, and you get to see Black Swans and they always remind me of cheap-but-tasty Australian wine. As the family (the wife, two kids, and myself) wrapped up the ride and got ready to disembark, I had a brilliant idea that would be sure to liven the day of the poor minimum-wage kids running the damn log ride day after day.  I tell you this now at the end of the season so that maybe they’ll forget about it by springtime (as if anyone read this blog anyway, amirite?)

I’m going to need an accomplice, but here’s the plan.  I’m going to get into one of the old Abandoned Saw Mill Mining Town Log Ride Boats (formerly the Australian Outback River Ride) and about halfway through, once out of sight, I’m going to bail out.  Yep.  Leave the goddam path, so to speak and find out if Nedry turned off power in the ‘Raptor paddock.  This is where the accomplice comes in.  He/she will have been in the boat one or two spaces behind me, and I’ll hop in THIS person’s boat.  “That’s it?” you’re asking yourself.  “Big friggin’ deal!  Gosh, I thought there was more to this.”

Ah, but here it is!  The reason I need another boat is because I would have left the following items in my original ride:  One (1) mangled athletic shoe, four (4) children’s teeth (My oldest son is losing his baby teeth.  We don’t just throw those away once the tooth fairy comes, do we?) one (1) hunting knife, and five (5) clumps of animal hair (likely from my fat-ass cat, Keyser.) All of these items will be covered in copious amounts of fake blood, or deer blood if one of my huntin’ buddies bags and guts a deer.  I actually just realized that I’ll need a second accomplice to videotape the reactions of the zoo employees, as that’s the whole point: to scare the living shit out of some poor pimply-faced kid who sees a vacant log boat filed with blood, carnage, and signs of struggle wash up on his landing. God, that’d be priceless. “OMIGOD!!  A WALLABY MUST’VE GOT LOOSE AND TOTALLY NOMMED ONE OF THE VISITORS!!!”  Fuckin’ wallabies, man.  They’ll fuckin’ GET ya.

Of course, if someone executes this plan before I get a chance, well…as an agent of chaos, I’ll sit back and smile quietly.  Perhaps I’ll even clap, slowly.

And wonder why I never get any work done.