T-Rex: The Menace of the Afterlife

As you begin to grow older, the idea of mortality looms over your head, creeping up on you when you sleep and of course any time you just aren’t paying attention.  We all know how distracting infomercials for the shake weight are…  Some ponder the existence of life after death, but just as a basic post-survival-survival issue, I think we should follow the logical algorithm:

It is important that we address the  pressing question here: Will there be tyrannosaurus rexes in the afterlife?

Rubbish you may say!  But I pose this argument to you.  The name tyrannosaurus rex arises from kingly origins.  Tyrannosaurus comes from the Greek words for tyrant and lizard.  Rex means king in Latin.  Tell me, have you known of any tyrannous king who was not evil?  Does not the word tyrant convey a meaning of evil incarnate?  One who oppresses and rules unjustly certainly would be evil in my perception.  To speak of a tyrannous lizard king, how can the phrase itself not elicit thoughts of an animal with a soul?  Something cannot commit evil acts if it has no soul.  Evil without a soul is just an unfortunate mishap with no meaning.  Envision a t-rex chasing down a pre-historic person or an innocent vegetarian dinosaur.  To prey on such innocence is no unfortunate mishap!

So how does one prepare for encounters with t-rexes in the afterlife?  Very carefully.  Be sure to explicitly instruct your loved ones on how to prepare you after you have died.  I have drawn up a rough list of what needs to be buried in your casket with you:

1.       Banana peels.  Tripping a t-rex is obviously the best anyone can hope for.  With those tiny arms, there is no way he will ever be able to catch himself before he falls flat on his colossal face.

2.       A lasso.  Another good way to evade being eaten to death by an enormous lizard is to hitch a ride on his tail.  With limited flexibility and agility, he will never be able to remove you from his tail without harming himself.  I submit that a lasso is the best ride hitching equipment available. 
 
3.       A helicopter.  Quick escape is an essential survival tactic, and the helicopter can take you far away from the reach of a t-rex’s tyrannous jaws.  Since a helicopter obviously won’t fit into the casket with you, there are two ways to arrange its arrival to the afterlife with you.  First, have your family bury you in an Egyptian pyramid.  A helicopter will obviously fit in there.  Or, you could substitute the traditional casket for a helicopter.  It would at least make for a very interesting funeral.

4.       Last but not least, an Indiana Jones hat.  I mean really, what harm can it do to at least look like a BAMF while you’re evading enormous lizards?

Although there is really no way to know whether or not there is life or lizards after death, all we can do is diligently prepare and hope for the best.

Misadventures of the Humorous Type

There are some moments in life during which you can’t help but think, “Is this seriously happening to me?”  I had one of those moments yesterday.  I had just gotten home from work and I had a productive evening all lined up: house cleaning, exercising, other menial yet necessary tasks…  Anyway, Lady, our Labrador, had her Husky friends over to play in the back yard while I was at work yesterday.  In the usual fashion, the dogs managed to remove one of their collars, and this time, it was Lady’s turn to be nude.  So after AJ picked up the Huskies, I let Lady into the house and I went to the backyard to retrieve her collar. 

Much like an idiot, I closed the door behind me, completely forgetting that we did not yet have door knobs on our newly installed French doors.  Now, usually we utilize a little ghetto-ingenuity to open the door by sticking a flat head screwdriver into the internal door hardware, and rotating the screwdriver, using it as a door handle.  I didn’t take a screwdriver with me into the back yard (I mean really, why would I need a screwdriver for that task?).  So with collar in hand and no screwdriver to reenter the house, I began my resourceful thinking.  

First, I looked for any sort of tool that might have been accidentally left in the backyard.  No such luck.  Then I searched for a small piece of wood I could use in the same manner I had been using the screwdriver.  I found one and carefully poked it into the square hole and turned.  This caused the wood to disintegrate in my hand.  Okay… next idea… Maybe the side door was accidentally left unlocked.  I walked over and turned the door knob.  Dang it!  No.  

It is imperative for you to understand that we currently have no working gate to our back yard.  One was broken and made Lady a flight risk, so Nathan screwed it shut.  The other side is a brand new fence, and the addition of a gate is on the to-do list, but has not been installed yet.  

At this point I was running out of options.  As somewhat of a last resort, I decided to climb our 6 foot wooden fence.  Barefooted.  I was teetering at the top, trying to position one of our city issued garbage collection blue plastic dumpsters on the other side of the fence so I could step on it to get down without overturning it and necessitating an emergency trip to the hospital—impaling the back of my neck with untreated pine dog-eared fence picket did not seem like an enjoyable outcome to me.  I couldn’t just jump down because I feared the rocks and sticks on the ground 6 feet below would not have been kind to my bare feet, and the concrete sidewalk didn’t look any more inviting. 

As I was putting my right foot on the top of a Big Blue, I heard from the neighbor’s front yard, “Uhhhh, do you need some help?”  I then proceeded to tell him the story about the door and the screwdriver and the tragic lack of gates.  Then, I climbed down from my perch and in a pitiful and slightly embarrassed voice, I said, “Do you have a flathead screwdriver I can borrow?”

The end.