phone home atari

There’s an urban legend of a treasure. A treasure that would make pirates scream like a giddy girl on pizza day. A treasure that would make tigers purr like kittens in teacups! A treasure that would make gold coins look like a pile of yellow underwear lint!

A landfill where it is rumored Atari dumped a bunch of cruddy video games (mostly E.T.) in 1983!

I had an Atari 2600. It rocked. I also had the E.T. video game! I’m not sure if it belonged to me or my brother. It most likely belonged to my brother because he was older and smarter and had a job building a time machine for the government when we were kids, so he had lots of money to throw around.

At least, that’s what he told me. If I disagreed, he would beat me up. I generally agreed.

I can still remember TO THIS DAY that I could NOT understand what to do in E.T. AT ALL. I guess nobody else could figure it out because it is considered one of the worst video games of all time! Atari was so embarrassed by it that they took E.T. (and possibly a bunch of other awful games) and secretly dumped them into a landfill in southern New Mexico.

The story says that 10-20 trucks FILLED with games were buried with hopes that they would just die a quiet death there.

NO SUCH LUCK! A Canadian production company is going to film a documentary with them digging through the landfill for the games! I don’t know why. I guess Canada just got the Atari 2600 and can’t find any games for it. Sometimes things happen later in Canada.

I also remember a game called Track and Field. I think it gave me carpal tunnel. You had to move the joystick back and forth REALLY fast to get your character to run. I would put my palm on the top of the joystick and shake my hand back and forth like crazy to get a good time. Like I was waving at the floor really, really fast.

I may have gotten a good score, but now my hands can’t stop shaking. The doctors say it’s a genetic disease. I say it’s post Atari stress disorder.

There’s a possibility that this is all false. Atari has never said that ANY of this is true. Hopefully it is. I would like to play Yars' Revenge again.

I’m off to track and also field.

Enjoy Everything.

-dj

reverse my mortgage

I saw a commercial the other day for a reverse mortgage. I don’t remember what I was watching, but it was very late at night when I couldn’t sleep. Also, I was taking medication for allergies. So the whole night is sorta blurry and fuzzy and pinkish.

I’m pretty sure this commercial was real. I also did a search online for reverse mortgages and found out that they do exist!

The commercial said that you don’t pay your mortgage anymore. They pay YOU the monthly mortgage! And you still own your home!

Why isn’t everybody doing this?! I’m no genius, but if somebody says that they’ll give me the title to a house AND pay me the monthly mortgage payments, I’m going to take that deal!

You know what else should be reversed? My electric bill. That would be awesome. The electric company should be paying me to use their electricity! They should be thanking me taking all that electricity off their hands!

I mean, really, what are they going to do with it? Shock stuff? If I didn’t siphon all that electricity away from them to power my electric razor and electric toothbrush and electric spoon and electric chair and electric door and electric soap, things might just explode!

I’m doing THEM a favor!

Oh! I have an idea! I’m going buy, like, 67 houses and turn all the lights and vacuums and microwaves on and stuff!

I’ll make TONS of money! Just sitting around doing nothing!

Then, I’ll make a DVD that I’ll sell on TV telling people how they can get rich just like me!

Then I’ll buy a yacht and sail the world with a bunch of friendly chinchilla pirates who love to count money and eat baby carrots!

I know that earlier I said, "I’m no genius." Strike that. Reverse it. I’m totally a genius.

I’m off to take more allergy meds.

Enjoy Everything.

-dj

beetles of the caribbean

I have heard that sailors from ye olden days used the stars to navigate the world. In my head, all sailors from those days were also pirates. Because that's cool.

Therefore, anything that uses the stars to navigate is a pirate. Like the dung beetle. The PIRATE dung beetle!

Turns out they use the Milky Way to navigate their way around South Africa! People who study dung beetles (fun job) noticed that they use the moon and the sun to get directions. But what about those nights the moon is hiding? The Milky Way does the job!

They do a little dance to figure out where they are in the galaxy. The Milky Way is kinda like a dung disco ball for the beetles. Once they know where they need to go, they make a run for it! Dung beetles are very possessive of their dung balls.

Researchers grabbed a bunch of dung beetles and brought them to a planetarium. When they turned the Milky Way on, the beetles knew where to go. When they turned it off, they got lost and ended up in the Jupiter exhibit 2 floors down.

This was, literally, stinky for Jupiter. Since they now have to clean up dung balls not JUST in the planetarium room, but in the elevator and on Jupiter, too!

Of course, as pirates, the dung beetles were kind of ignored. Their "booty" (as pirates would say) was less a pile of gold and jewels and more a pile of dung.

They did have great galactic disco parties, though. Andromeda is totally jealous.

I'm off to disco under the Milky Way.

Enjoy Everything.

-dj