For those of you that have read my recent Cracked article The Most Mindblowing Things That Can Be Found Underwater, you'll be pleased to know that there is a little bit more where that came from. I present to you the entry that was cut from the final list, in all its glory (pictures courtesy of neptunesociety.com):
A Cemetery
The "official" reason for creating the Neptune Memorial Reef is to promote the local marine life, but here at Cracked, our first thought at the idea of building an underwater cemetery is: "Thank God someone is taking precautions to make sure our dead stay dead." And if those precautions include the ever so slight risk of creating zombie sharks-- well, scuba diving was never for us anyways.
The reef is the largest man-made reef in the world, and the cemetery thing all started when questions about funding arose. Then someone had an idea: people paying to be buried there. And the rest is history. We hear it's to dive for.
The layout is remeniscent of a traditional cemetery, complete with benches so that you can take a load off when those fins get tired.
Just don't sit on uncle Ted.
There's a bunch of choices for after your cremated remains have been mixed into the cement: you can be cast as arches, columns, and other marine life statues. According to Stephen Ziadie, the Chief Operating Officer, "The most popular are the marine placements. Everyone wants to be a shellfish or a starfish or a brain coral.”
That's right: any type of marine life. Also lions.
The Neptune Society website even has a video tour. A tour that is narrated by someone who is way too happy. It's creepy:
Apparently burial at sea is a hot commodity because it currently has enough space for 850 bodies, but the Neptune Society wants to expand to 125,000. The reef aspect of the project has also been a huge success. Marine life in the area has gone from almost zero to thousands in the span of two years! Thousands of confused fish, mind you.
It's been a month since I've posted. Sorry about that. Christmas, writing for Cracked, and work have all been vying for my time, and far too little was left to work on my blog. But the desire remained, festering deep within until it grew too large to contain. Then it burst out. Or to explain it in Alien terms:
viatvtropes.org
Everything should be explained in Alien terms.
In other news, the New Year is here: the last year, if you believe that Mayan voodoo mambo-jumbo. I haven't made any New Year's resolutions-- not because I can't better myself in any way, but because, hey, when do those EVER pan out? I'd much rather just take life as it comes, and if that means my teeth rot out of my head because I practically inhale Mountain Dew, so be it. I could try and stop drinking so much, make it a New Year's resolution if you will, and revert back to my old habits in a month or two. So why not just skip all the hassle and keep right at my bad habits?
Let's rewind a bit. Christmas went well for me. We got a television so big that when I watch the Walking Dead, I can see every last skin cell on Daryl's wonderful, wonderful face.... I mean, every single drop of blood with forensic precision. Yes. That.
via www.series-stars.info
He's even dreamier than he was in the Boondock Saints.
(I'm not gay. I swear.)
As for the other things I got for Christmas: a veritable mountain of candy, several video games that I wanted, socks and underwear (gotta love the classics), and a 32 inch television for my bedroom. I would have gladly traded the television for a new laptop. Typing 2, 5, o, p, k, and using backspace is hard for me. But whatever. The TV has it's advantages, and I don't use -k that much anyways.
This is the actual keyboard for my laptop. Note the missing keys.
I've also stared watching a new TV show recently: Dexter. For those of you that don't know, it's about a serial killer that works for the police as a forensic blood spatter expert. He isn't a madman though. He only kills people that actually deserve it-- which is seen as wrong by some and vigilante justice by others.
A lot of people have opposed this show because it "glorifies murder" and blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening at "will make young people think murder is ok." I'm sorry. Bullshit.
To these people, I say: "I know where you live. And Dexter has trained me so well. Maybe you'd best keep quiet."
TV's chief exports are violence, boobs, sex, and Dora the Explorer-- though not necessarily in that order. Anyway, for those of you that realize that television is television and has one main purpose: entertainment, give Dexter a watch. It was surprisingly good. I promise it has no ulterior motives, such as corrupting and brainwashing our youth. It's just good TV.
I know, I know. I'm up during normal hours. But don't fret. The zombie apocalypse hasn't come yet, and I'm not being forced to stay awake and on the move-- lest the undead devour my succulent flesh. Yet.
Instead, I'm awake because Thanksgiving and Black Friday have seriously done a number on my sleep schedule. You see, since I work at Spencer's, I had some odd working hours on Black Friday: 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. Normally this wouldn't have affected me. I'd have just slept in until five p.m. the night before, and I would've been fine. The problem was: I couldn't do that since had Thanksgiving dinner that evening, so I had to be up by at least noon.
via igourmet.com
Plenty of tryptophan for your late-night drive to work.
I still would've been fine if this was it. I'd have come home and gone to bed at nine in the morning, woken up at three or four, and all would've been well. But no. My friends and I had an all-day video game party planned for Friday. I went straight from work to there and didn't wind up at home until two in the morning. For those of you keeping score, that's 38 hours straight with no sleep, and five of them were work hours.
I don't even remember much of the gaming party. It's one giant blur of animated blood and violence, people shouting the word "noob," and me dying a lot because I was too tired to play. I eventually got my second wind and woke up enough to play an RPG (Eternal Sonata) for a few hours. That game, despite it's cutesy-wutesy appearance, is actually incredible. I highly recommend it to any fan of RPG games.
via wikipedia
Yes, there's a rainbow on the cover. It's a good game. I promise.
My sleep schedule still hasn't returned to normal. You see, I went to bed on Friday night and had to get up at 6 a.m. for work the next day. And when I got home, I still couldn't go to bed because we had people over at the house for my brother's birthday. Then, my brother insisted that we spend the night at my cousin's house as part of his birthday celebration. We got to playing video games, and I didn't get to go to bed until 6 a.m.
Let's stop and check the score again. That's 38 hours with no sleep, then 4 hours of sleep, then another 24 with none. That's almost three days with only 4 hours of sleep. To say that I was exhausted was an understatement. My brother went home that night, but my cousin asked me to stay another night. Another whirlwind of pixilated death and destruction later, and my head hit the pillow at nine in the morning.
This brought the grand total to 9 hours of sleep in 4 1/2 days until I could finally get a decent night's rest.
To my surprise, I woke up at ten in the morning the next day and couldn't sleep any more. Even stranger, I got tired around ten or eleven at night, like a normal person. I've gone on like this for a couple days, and I hate it. After eleven, it becomes difficult to concentrate on even the most menial tasks without nodding off.
via HolyTaco.com
I decided to put my new-found, wakeful morning hours to the most productive use imaginable: watching movies. I don't know if I was still groggy or if the morning sun had baked my brain with its devil rays, but Snakes on a Plane actually seemed like a decent movie. Perhaps it was so bad that it was good.
The greatest line in that movie, as I'm sure many of you know is when the TV version tries to dub over Samuel L. Jackson's "motherfuckings" with other word's that begin with -m and -f. For example, "Enough is enough! I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane," becomes:
"I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!"
Seriously, who would ever think that's what he's actually saying? Did they just get lazy from all the dubbing they had to do (Samuel Jackson swears A LOT) and say, "Screw it. Just pick words that start with those letters. That'll work."
But above all, the funniest thing about that movie is seeing Samuel Jackson hold a snake up by it's neck and try to identify it to a biologist over the phone. What an immense amount of snake knowledge he possesses.
via howstuffworks.com It appears to have murder-fending scales on its mostly-fuchsia body.
