I grew up doing historical reenactment with my family. Not only was I involved with one of the more historical aspects of the Renaissance Festival (Irish Cottage),but we also did a lot of reenactment with the MN Scottish Clann Tartan. The Clann would travel to different festivals and Rendezvous, setting up canvas tents and demonstrating crafts of the time.

As a kid, I got to learn all sorts of old-school skills. Sewing, embroidery, singing folk tunes, carding and spinning wool into yarn. I loved helping out at the cooks fire most. Somewhere out there is a picture of 9 year old me being dangled over a HUGE cauldron.

Sometimes, I helped my dad play historical doctor. I learned a little bit about how licorice root was used as tooth brushes and mint for calming stomachs. One time, I got to play nurse on a battle field reenactment. My doctor father was running around helping the wounded. Set up ahead of time was a bit involving the fake amputation of a guy with a real prosthetic leg. It was fantastic.

As a reenactor, you get asked all sorts of questions. “Are you hot in those clothes?” “Where do you sleep?” “Is that a real fire?” As someone who has had to put up with stupid comments and questions, I have become a huge fan of the new web series “Ask a Slave”

I’m a little jealous that she gets to handle dumber questions than I did, though. Cause racism.

Go, watch, and learn a thing or two about how stupid we can be.

So after many talks about the state of our relationship and reflection on how the relationship was failing and how that failure was affecting us, Jena and I decided to get a divorce.



I’ve never divorced anybody before so I’m not sure of the exact protocol on how to break the news to friends but since this is the age of social networking and oversharing we just posted that shit to facebook. Here’s what Jena posted. It’s very thoughtful, well written and lovely –







and here’s what I posted –

…yeah.

– Yes, we’re going to be friends. We still like each other. We still love each other. That love isn’t enough to make a life partnership work. We found that out before we stuck to it too long and started hating each other. That would have eventually happened.



– If you want to know the reasons our marriage fell apart, they’re complicated, intricate and boring. If you’re still curious, take one of us out for a couple of drinks and we’ll tell you.



– It’s totally the child’s fault.



– Gays being able to marry are also to blame.



– We would both like it if you didn’t trash talk the other person. You may think it’s helping but we still care for each other. If anything, wail about what fools we are to give up such a perfect mate.



– This website will still continue indefinitely with both of us updating but possibly with less frequent updates. Mon-Wed-Fri worst case scenario. Most of Jena’s info will be moved over to jenayoung.com .



– No you don’t get your wedding presents back. We spent the Target gift cards and one of the two rice cookers is already ruined. In fact, divorce gifts would be great since we need to split our possessions now.



Thanks for all your kind words. Now we’re both on to new chapters in our lives.

The NFL regular season has started this week according to facebook statuses on my feed from people who care about that sort of thing and I am just bursting with apathy for the 2013 NFL season!



I just can’t stand football. Don’t like it. Never have, never will. I hate the fact that plays take 45 minutes to line up and then last about 3 seconds. I hate the set of rules that make Quidditch look simple. I hate the fact that people lose their fucking minds over this sport more than any other.



There’s a hundred reasons for me to hate football and not a lot of reasons for me to love it since I’m in Minnesota and our team seems to eat shit every year.



Even though I can’t stand the sport, I always end up in conversations about it. At work, with friends, at a bar or on the road there’s always going to be conversations about football just because that’s what guys talk about. I’m almost convinced that other guys don’t like football either but it gives them something to talk about with other guys. Without football we’d all be looking around nervously, breaking the silence occasionally with awkward little statements like “So… that Syria thing’s pretty complicated.”



So, rather than throw a monkey wrench into conversations by saying something boring and pretentious like “UH ACTUALLY I DON’T CARE MUCH FOR THAT SPORT I THINK IT’S FOR TROGLEDYTES HOW ABOUT WE DISCUSS WORLD POLITICS HHHHMMMMM?” I’ve just learned how to blend into football conversations without knowing anything about football. It’s a little tricky in a one on one conversation but pretty easy in groups of three or more. Here’s a few tips and tricks.



Christian Ponder sucks – You only need to find out one player in the whole league who is awful and then just use him as a punching bag in conversations. According to my facebook feed, this year it’s Christian Ponder. Berate him, mock him, verbally eviscerate him. He is our sacrificial lamb. Serves him right for playing poorly or whatever.

“Derr I’m Christian Ponder derp derp” Shut up Christian. I hate you for some reason.

I remember when I was a little kid, and my peers all wanted to be astronauts. To go to space and eat space ice cream and do space things. We would come up with all sorts of things that had to be done differently in space, like drink water and brush your teeth.

It’s pretty much the coolest thing in the world.

But if you had told those kids how difficult one task was, they would have said things like “eeew!” and wrinkled their little noses, and giggle at the idea of it like the the 5-7 year olds that they are.

Apparently, on of the most complex things to do as an astronaut is go to the bathroom.

Well, shit.

Let’s start with the human body in space. Specifically the kidneys. One of the many things they do is act as a kind of “potty gauge,” to keep an eye on your bladder’s urine levels and let you know if you getting too full. One of the essential tools it uses to do this is gravity.

So when someone gets shot into space, the kidneys loose their grip on how full they are and start signalling to the rest of the body that they need to find a rest stop after about 2 hours or so. And it doesn’t matter how much mission control reminds them to use the potty before they go. Astronauts all become that whiny 4 year old in the back seat, crying “but MOM! I need to go to the bathroom NOW!”

Gravity is also an important factor in toilet function. We always talk about things going down the drain, but without gravity, there’s no “down” for things to go, and nothing to pull things into a container an hold them there.

There’s nothing to keep your shit together. Ahem.

So of course scientists have created very high tech toilets to circumnavigate this issue. For urine, they have a hose attachment with a light vacuum to pull the pee into a container. Each person gets a different personal funnel to use with this hose.

Apparently, even male astronauts are dudes at heart and continually ask for the largest funnel before getting properly fitted.

The shitter (technical term) also works off of a light vacuum technology. It’s a toilet seat with a 4 inch hole that you very carefully position your asshole (usually literal, but sometimes metaphorical) over. It’s such a precise piece of technology, that the astronauts have to go through classes on how to use it.

That’s right- astronaut potty training.

Come on, you guys. This isn’t rocket science!

I love all my childhood games. Up until 5 years ago, I still owned my apple IIe with 300 baud modem, and old floppy disks with games like Wishbringer, Oregon Trail, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

International criminal and a snazzy dresser.

First off, I think my son’s childhood is a little less awesome for not having the Carmen Sandiego game show growing up. He told me they were going to start some kind of Carmen Sandiego cartoon, but I’m afraid it’ll end up like Dora the Explorer. Or Go Diego Go.

Go, Sandiego, Go. I can see it, and it makes me sad.

Luckily, it looks like they may be rebroadcasting old episodes. Which really pleases me. A lot.

To celebrate, I bring you a few emulators for the old classic games.

Let’s start with the 1990 version for you 90’s kids. It’s a good emulator, though the Java Applet is a little wonky if you scroll at all.

For you Nintendo kids, there is the slightly later (1992?) release of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego. I played it a couple times as a kid, but it never felt quite right to me. Still, I won’t begrudge you your nostalgia if you don’t begrudge me mine…

One of my favorite sites, Virtual Apple, has the exact game from my childhood. As soon as I booted the disc and got those midi gunshots, footsteps, and police sirens, I was 8 years old again at Dad’s computer.

*sigh* I remember the days I used to be nostalgic.

One more note: I discovered you can follow Carmen Sandiego on Twitter. That just seems like cheating.

The internet is done. It has completed its task, to come up with the most awesome thing ever. We can all go home now. It’s over.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Gif Dance Party.

It starts off with Smooch the bear and that 4 year old girl pumping it.

And then, you can add all sorts of animated gifs. People:

And stick figures:

And WFT?:

You can resize them, move them, and change the beat.

This is it. The absolute we can do as a people. The pinnacle of humanity. We may as well go back to flinging poo with the other moneys.

We’re done.