1. What social customs do we need to retire? Shaking hands. It is so cold and formal and icy and frankly, after 20 months of a pandemic, it seems quite unsafe.
2. What is one invention that you are 100% sure was only invented to annoy you? Loud deep subwoofers in cars
(Cars – can we talk about cars? My car got raped this weekend. Overnight on Sunday, someone stole the catalytic converter right off the muffler – just a big ol’ rip right off the manifold. )
3. What food would taste absolutely disgusting if you added canned tuna? Oh, so many things. I say popcorn – it would totally ruin two of my favorite things.
(Seriously though, the converter ripped right off. $800.00 later old Trogg is back up and running and purring like the kitten he is )
4. What do you think is the biggest animal that you can win in a fight barehanded?
A penguin – I am pretty sure I can take one.
(So, these converters are lined with platinum and palladium, and other rare metals and sold for scrap metal. )
5. How do you fall asleep? A couple of drops of THC tincture under the tongue. My stepdad makes it and it will kick your ass.
(That’s right, someone tried to send Trogg to the scrap heat but he survives – up off the matt and ready to go – take that you criminals!)
I think I would really enjoy computer programming but I am pretty dyslexic and would probably suck really bad at it.
3. What’s your favorite Olympic sport?
I like watching table tennis and badminton.
4. Have you ever found yourself stuck out in the rain?
Not very often. I grew up in the high mountain desert and Denver doesn’t get a lot of rain very often. There have been a few commutes, especially when I worked downtown where i got caught in an afternoon thunderstorm but I never got soaked in the rain.
5. What does the tooth fairy do with our teeth?
They are used to feed the fire that fuels our dreams
1. If you could design your life exactly how you’d like, how famous would you be? I don’t think I would like to be really famous – like everybody knows my name famous – but maybe a famous writer and philosopher-king with a series of bestsellers and sold-out book store book signings.
2. How often would you travel? As little as possible. I like other destinations – I hate planning trips and the obligation of having to go through with those plans and hate the traveling that is part of travel itself. That is why we need to double down and get serious about Star Trek technology and give me a transporter.
3. How many people would live with you? Very few.
4. How often would you eat out at restaurants? Quite often – it is nice to have other people cook for me.
1. What’s Something That You Can Say During Sex, But Also At A Job Interview?
“So, how is it going so far?” “Want to see my reference?” “This is so better than the last time!”
2. What do you think won’t exist in 2030?
Television networks. Life/culture will continue to get more and more and more segmented due to technology and social blending that tribalism will so refract that there will be little nationalistic and perhaps even familial and nationalistic identities will dissolve. 3. What smell is the most nostalgic for you?
My mother’s fresh baked bread cooking and my father and the faint scent of his recently smoked tobacco pipe.
4. Who is your favorite Clem?
There are very few Clem’s in the world. I worked with a Clem at a grocery store back in my high school days. A decent, nice guy. Not my favorite Clem, probably. A Clem is that kind of buddy who is there always, day-night whenever you need that friend. I think my favorite Clem might by Donny from is “The Big Lebowski. “Yes – now that is a definition of a Clem.
5. Where’s the most unexpected place you’ve run into someone you knew?
I think a version of this question has appeared before, but I was in a Stuttgart subdivision park just strolling along and ran into a school chum from Craig, Wade Allen, who was an exchange student at the time and going to “uni” just down the road. Pretty odd to find a high school friend randomly on the other side of the world.
1. What food/drink recipe/thing made you ask “how the heck did humans discover that?”
Alcohol – I mean look back through time – it is pervasive in every culture – Asian, African, Europe, North and South American – Aboriginal natives from the dawn of time realized that soaking plants and foods and letting them rot would make hooch – it baffles the mind. I am no antrhopologist but beer, wine, and liquor all have roots in mead like and ale like native pre industrial experiments in catching a buzz.
2. What is your favorite fruit that is hard to obtain locally?
With the internets and all that, it is pretty easy now to get most anything, but I have searched my beloved Denver and no Mexican restaurant crafts this dish we used to have in my hometown of Craig. There was this place that made crab stuffed chili rellenos – they are simply a dish to die for. And unfortunately you can’t even get them anymore in Craig as that restaurant has closed it’s doors.
3. What are some foods people usually buy pre-made that are worth making at home?
Breakfast – it is so dang easy to knock out a decent breakfast. Egg Benedict with homemade hollandaise sauce is so damn easy to whip up, why pay $15.00 for a sub par version at any eatery.
4. We all know the moon is made of cheese. You now have the ability to permanently engrave anything into the moon, what do you choose?
“Turn on you blinker!” I have this theory that because of Covid lock-down for 18 or so months, everybody has seemed to forgotten how to drive – just the basics seemed to have been lost in our brain clouded heads.
5. What is that meal/food that you were obsessed with as a child?
I had the “sandwich” that I used to make – I would take two Pringles potato crisps and put a piece of iceberg lettuce between them and snack away.
1. You must decide what the eighth deadly sin is, what is it?
Failure to use your turn signals in your car while changing lanes in traffic – there ought to be no absolution for this sin. Just a quick little flick of your wrist to tell your fellow travelers what your intentions are can be so helpful in keeping the traffic moving. I am on a bit of a rant here as I have noticed that as we have down off lockdown and started commuting, working outside of the house, and generally getting back on with our lives, people have seemed to gotten worse about driving and forgotten any semblance of basic driving etiquette.
2. You wake up tomorrow with Jeff Bezo’s current net worth ($209 billion USD) what do you do?
I’d put aside about $0 billion for me – that seems like more than enough. And there are about 8 or 9 billion people on the planet, so I would give everyone $1 billion dollars and focus the rest of the infrastructure and economic upgrades throughout Africa, South American, and the poorest part of Asia in order to get us all on somewhat of an equal sitting. And figure out a way to stop global climate change – makes more sense than just hoarding your dough and designing penis rockets.
3. I was recently watching “Fantasy Island” reruns on YouTube the other day and it go me thinking – what is the best television theme song?
The Rockford Files – that is a fine example of a theme song that just rocked.
4. What is something that should be free in society but isn’t?
Insulin. When Insulin was first developed it was given to the world as free open-source technology but then so asshole bought it, licensed it and it now costs upwards of $800 to $1,000 a month just to keep diabetics alive. It should be a crime.
5. What’s the most common thing stolen from your workplace.
Of the eight or nine folks who actually read this blog, I am probably the only one who goes into the office every day and thus has access to things to pilfer from the workplace. That being said we have this nifty soda machine in the break room (which doesn’t help with my Coke Zero addiction) but anyway – so on Fridays or so, I will take home a bunch of ice from the soda machine because my ice maker at home can’t keep up with us during the week. Maybe not the highest crime to take home a few big gulp sizes cups of ice but that is my crime.
[Questions this week with the always thoughtful Kevin.]
1. Wanna go to space? I mean, really. I can get you a ticket for 1 year from today. You’ll need to train and stuff. Actually, training for it will be your full-time job for the next year. And… you aren’t going to take selfies and knock out a Plimtpon’s-esque memoir. You are there to work. It will be about a week. 20% chance you don’t come home alive… or ever. *** odds slightly different if Matt Damon is responding. You in?
I have given this a lot of thought. I am a child of the 60s and 70s. I was five years old when we landed on the moon. I had toy astronaut action figures and accessories and was obsessed with Space comic books and sci-fi as a child and teen. As an adult – no I don’t want to go to space. As I age I think I am getting a bit claustrophobic – I need space, not outer space.
2. You are going to space to save mankind? HA. Not exactly. No. But – you may certainly tell your family that. You are going up to.. basically… jiggle an antenna on a broadcast satellite. Not entirely different from what you had to do to get UHF. You still in?
Maybe, if it was more mission-oriented and short-term you could convince me but probably not. Don’t get me wrong, I am still fascinated with the idea of space and studying space, and following NASA missions and sci-fi movies.
3. You get a bring a book and a record. You won’t be leisurelyreading, but you get to leave a record and a book behind in space. What book and record?
“Moby Dick” is a nearly perfect book that all of the universe needs to read. Album, John Prine’s “Great Days – a compilation” because he represents the best of mankind.
4. You get to go back in time to the constitutional congress, late 1700’s, NE United States (er… what will be NE United States). You are with all these luminaries – Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Lin Manuel Miranda… you have about a paragraph to explain to them your mission. Ideally, you might touch on – the future, jet airplanes, outer space, television, and cell phones. Yes, television needs to be on the list, it’s why you are going to space. Think of it this way… you need their funding. You have to sell them on the whole idea.
This will be a pickle trying to explain the value of what is to be had exploring the heavens the home of The Lord when the British are still giving them such a pickle. It goes against all we are currently trying to do in space on a mission of peace, but I would share with them the benefits of weapons and military superiority as a way to beat back the tide of King George.
5. You get to take one of them with you- whom? They don’t have to be listed above but do have to be of that time.
James Madison – the author of the US Constitution and a generally deeply intelligent and fascinating man.
6. Lastly, and I know we are at 6 questions… What do you bring to the mission? Are you handy? Are you funny? Maybe you are a super fast thinker on your feet… a la all the stuff that had to be fixed on the fly on Apollo 11. Just real quick again… why did we bring you?
I am a quick thinker, I can easily adaptably lead teams and if I do say so myself I am pretty funny. And I just invented Twister/Corn Hole – a whole new game that would be excellent to play in zero gravity. More on that exciting new American Pastime to come later.
1. Your username is your actual name now, what happens to you?
Majikwah – I am a down on my luck Las Vegas – off the strip – magician. I perform my act nightly in between dancers at a seedy stripper bar and play only for tips.
2. It’s 1990 again, where are you?
Living La Vida Loca on the bucolic campus of Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado.
3. What is the most bizarre Wikipedia page out there?
Arthur Dent from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.”
5. What’s the most beautiful place within 50 miles of where you live? Show us a photo?
Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Previously a nuclear Superfund clean-up site that used to manufacture triggers for nuclear weapons it is now literally where the deer and the antelope play in the northwest Denver metropolitan area.
