I didn’t think yesterday was going to be epic, oh, but it was.

I went to work and plotted some points, and managed to leave work such that the rain started right when I opened the door to my building, and made dinner such that I was done right when the tornadoes started. After that, I read some journals, and washed the dishes, and read more journals. And then, right around midnight, Mike Brownstein left a post on my Facebook. A link to a one-line news article that said that “Touchdown Jesus” off of I-75, was on fire.

Then, like that, I grabbed the ol’ SuperFunAdventureCodex, and crossed one more item off my list.

A transcript of the list is given below.  (The items are listed in order of importance.)

Things I’d Like to See:

• Christopher Walken performing a spoken-word version of David Bowie’s “Heroes”
• Ally Sheedy naked
• Jesus Christ on fire
• solid room-temperature superconductors
• Nuclear power renaissance
• identity of “Deep Throat” revealed
• functioning and economical EUV lithography system
• destruction of the Roman Catholic Church
• a cure for diabetes
• Labyrinth II
• electric cars gaining widespread popularity
• the Kurzweilian Singularity
• the domestication of the Komodo Dragon
• old-school breakdancing making a comeback
• the identity of who killed Laura Palmer
• Sarah Palin running for office again, so we can continue to make fun of her.
• Dolph Lundgren fighting Jet Li
• Reliable jetpacks
• Gene Hackman in drag
• Concise, coherent, and preferably closed-form solution to the Problem of Evil
• Collapse of the Kim Family Regime
• Passage of the ERA
• Passage of a amendment to legalize same-sex marriage
• Men everywhere wearing fedoras and flat caps at all times, like they did in the 1920’s
• Freddy Kruger fighting Jason Voorhees
• all my friends living happy and fulfilling lives
• repeal of fireworks laws
• to see BP go under

For those of who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, a little backstory.

Shortly after I moved to Ohio to start grad school, right around the time the neo-cons and Christo-fascists went mad with power, the Solid Rock Church spent $500,000 to build “King of Kings,” a 62 foot bust of Jesus Christ facing I-75. The statue was ostensibly to help people by serving as “a beacon of hope and salvation,” but in practice, the colossal eyesore merely served as a navigational marker to lead people to the flea market. Within minutes of its dedication, the people of the greater Cincinnati area rechristened the statue “Touchdown Jesus,” for obvious reasons.

Well, last night, Touchdown Jesus was struck by lightning by the same thunderstorm that not-killed me with tornadoes, cloud-to-ground lightning, and baseball-sized hail, proving once again that Yahweh is some linear combination of retarded, incompetent, and/or drunk.

Also, their was apparently the Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was completely undamaged, signifying that Larry Flynt is truly favored by the Lord.

Also, apparently statues can catch fire.

That kinda threw me for a loop, for we tried to set literally everything in the universe on fire back in Boy Scouts. Then I found out Touchdown Jesus was made of styrofoam, and everything made sense. It was a giant metal frame, next to pond, covered in styrofoam with a fiberglass skin. Apparently it had a lightning rod, but it didn’t work. I’d like to take this time to point out that lightning rods are a proven technology and have no moving parts.

The comments for that YouTube video are priceless, by the way. I could say more about this, but I’m going to let Percy Shelley take over from here:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

A day after I published The Greatest Prank Phone Call in the History of Man, I received emails, instant messages, and phone calls from Luc, wanting to tell his side of the story. Now he will tell his side of the story, better shed better light on the unbridled awesome that was that call.

So without further ado, a reading from the Gospel, according to Luc.

–YHG

________________________

Anyone who was old enough in the nineties to know that the Millcreek Mall was never gonna be the same again when the conversation pits were filled in, was also old enough to remember that for some unknown reason, there were a LOT of tornado warnings in Erie County during that time. The people who filled the pits may have angered the gods. And for an even odder reason I have yet to figure out, I’ve always been absolutely terrified of tornadoes. You may think “Come on Luc, who the hell isn’t?” and to that I ask YOU:

Did you stash your most prized possessions under the steps when you were seven because the sky got dark at three in the afternoon? How about jumping in the bathtub at mere the issuance of a tornado watch when you were eleven? I used to be that scared, I’m more intrigued now more than anything else, but Coons called it, I was astraphobic.

I’m not sure where it came from. It could be from how I first learned what one was. I lived in a trailer park in Lake City on May 31, 1985. I remember how purple the TV screen was, how black the sky was and how awful the voice sounded (and still does) when the NWS was giving instructions on what to do if a “tomato was coming toward you” I freaked and asked my stepdad why a tomato was attacking Albion. He corrected me and told me what they were and what they did.

“Tom? How far is it from here to Albion?”

“10 miles”

“is it headed this way?”

“I don’t know”

I wasn’t traumatized by anything he said but I DO remember it clearly.

So lets talk about a certain phone call…..

I was minding my own dammed business watching the storms on the weather channel, because it was BAD out. The grass was HORIZONTAL in the yard from the wind. There was a spinner watch and I was already nerved up.

I wanna take a second to say that I don’t remember exact details from this night. But I remember the call. I don’t remember running down the street, but I do remember saying to myself: “Why would Coons go to such great lengths just to do this?”

Because he’s a damn genius.

I used to be VERY outward and nutty consistently, but somewhere in 1996, his became more consistent and mine started to come and go as it pleases.

As I heard the well-done audio of his house being blown clear to Oz, I noticed there was nothing on the TV about it, but being a master of “what if?” thinking and scaring the crap out of myself was, and sometimes still is, commonplace (and even worse if someone nudges me), I thought that maybe the NWS just didn’t see it yet and put up a warning. At that point I blacked out and I remember nothing.

Way to go for the throat.

Long ago, before cell phones, when caller ID and *69 call-back were fine luxuries only seen in aristocratic telephony, prank calling was a great way to stave off the ennui of adolescence.

For years, Ryan A. (name withheld to protect the overtly guilty) was thought to be the greatest prank caller of all time for creating the legendary Suicide Hotline Routine:

Ryan A.:           [Haggard, frantic tone, near tears] “Hello… is this… the suicide hotline?”

Chump:            “No…”

Ryan A.:           “Damn it! I can’t do anything right!”

One stormy night, in the eleventh grade, I was cleaning my room, and sorting through what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to give to Salvation Army, when I stumbled upon a wooden train whistle from my childhood.

I knew what had to be done.

I grabbed our cheap-ass cordless phone, and unscrewed the antenna most of the way before calling Luc, who is highly astraphobic, and I knew this.

I called Luc when the storm was at its peak, and screamed:

“Dude! Get in your basement dude! Tornado warning dude! TORNADO WARNING!”

“What?” said Luc. I could hear him turn pale over the phone. It was priceless.

“Dude, there’s a supercell of storms that they’re tracking on Channel 35, it’s right over the ‘Boro and it’s headed your way!”

“Shit, oh shit…” said Luc. “How far is it?”

“Dude, you need to get to your base–,” I say, as I start blowing lightly into the train whistle. “–ment and…”

Then I start blowing into the train whistle fairly hard.

“Oh shit!” I screamed. “No! Fuck no! NOOOOOOOOO–” at that moment, I pulled the telescopic radio antenna out of the worthless-ass cordless phone that I had at the time, so the line crapped out into a torrent of static. Then I shut the phone off.

The phone immediately rang. I didn’t have caller ID, and I didn’t need it to know who it was. I dashed into the other room to unhook the answering machine before the fourth ring. Then I chuckled to myself, and went back to cleaning my room.

Luc’s house didn’t have a basement. I knew this. He ran full sprint in a torrential downpour down the street to his neighbors house, who did have a basement, and frantically banged on his door in hysterics. His neighbor, from what I was told., had to spend some time to convince Luc that there was in fact, no tornado. Luc walked home alone in the rain, knowing that he had been had. Rather than holding this against me, Luc bowed to my skill.

I’ve never prank called anyone since, because until someone, somewhere can top this story, there is simply no reason to do so.