American Idle

This is day one of my families Biggest Loser contest. I'll be rolling out of the gate at an hefty 197 lbs. My weight loss strategy is to not jump back into my exercise and diet too quickly. I wouldn't want to injure myself or cause my body to go into shock. I plan to spend the first few days just getting used to wearing my exercise spandex all day. My long term strategy is to make sure I'm always wearing my spandex in case an exercise opportunity presents itself. You never know, you might get the urge to play a little DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) and then you’re ready to feel the rhythm with your soul. Accordingly, you can expect all pictures posted of me for the next six months to feature me in spandex; at the opera, at church, or just swabbing out the mold that grows between my roles of fat.

Bathroom Etiquette: Number Two

OK, it looks like we're going to have to revisit this subject as I still see people acting ridiculous in the bathroom. For example, I recently saw some guy popping his zits in front of the mirror. After gazing at the pustules explode like mini-seagull poops all over the mirror, he sauntered out without washing his hands! I feel like when Moses came down from Sinai with The Ten Commandments to find The Children of Israel worshiping a golden calf.

1. I'm not sure how to generalize what the zit guy was doing, but anything obvious like that, don't do it in a public restroom.

2. Don't pat me on the back when I'm standing at the urinal. That is a very vulnerable time for me. Out of reflex I once broke a guys elbow, pushed him through the door of an occupied stall, and held his head in the toilet for like fifty-three seconds. Good luck finding someone to give you mouth to mouth after that.

3. Trying to carry on a conversation at the urinal is weird.

4. Talking while in a bathroom stall is weirder. OK, I tend to get a little stage freight when people are talking to me, and it's like trying start and stop the solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle. I believe the term is "Prairie Dogin’."

5. If you're talking on your cell-phone in a stall next to me, I take that as a personal challenge to let the person on the other end of the phone to know exactly where you are. I’ll post the sound bite sometime.

6. I know you might like to sing a little ditty to yourself while going about your business, but after that incident with that Senator Craig from Idaho, no foot tapping is allowed in public restrooms.

7. That thing where people drop the newspaper on the floor and then turn the pages as they read. Do you not realize that your paper has now been steeped in human urine? You could stick that newspaper in a cup of hot water and make pee tea. Also, I invariably start reading a comic from under the stall, and the last frame is covered by the person’s belt and I have to wait for the brief window when the belt dips during the page turn to get the punch line.

8. Those dual paper dispensers SUCK. They're supposed to dispense one role and then drop the next role except that more often than not both roles start spitting out paper and they're always made of two micro-thin plies that separate effectively vomiting four sheets simultaneously.

Free hint: I call the part of the toilet seat protector that hangs down into the water the “uvula.” If you tear out the uvula, you’ll have more than .3 seconds to sit down before the water weight from dangling in the water pulls the cover into the toilet. Leave a couple of inches of the uvula as a splatter guard; believe me, some of you need it.

10. Everybody knows when you walk up to the urinal you stare at the tiles immediately in front of you for the entire time. You may have to memorize where things are located to avoid an ungainly stare. Also, eyes drifting right or left are verboten. Also I skipped number nine on purpose, because I couldn't think of ten things, but it felt like I should have an even ten items.

International Ninja of Mystery

As a ninja, my objective is always to keep my movements on the low down. This is extremely difficult when three entire government agencies are bent on exposing me. This last week they were successful in exposing my international travel methods in the following article:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332615,00.html

Fortunately I was able to retrieve and destroy the black box which held the following conversation:

----------------------------------
Attendant Marsha-Bethany: Hun, come over here and tell me if you can smell something burning.

Attendant Lacretia: By the lavatories? Dude, someone couldn't jones for twelve hours without his weed.

Attendant Marsha-Bethany: Just come smell.

Attendant Lacretia: (choking sounds... gurgling...a gag) what's that, burning tires with a little... is that rancid mayo? Satan, Son of the morning don't reek like that! Deploy the oxygen masks!

Co-Pilot Marshal Truebeam: What's the disturbance ladies.

Attendent Marsha-Bethany: Ummm... We've got like this burning type of smell.

Co-Pilot Marshal Truebeam: I'll let the captain know we need to make an emergency landing. Have you discovered evidence of terrorism or tampering with the smoke alarms?

Attendant Marsha-Bethany: No, and the smell seems to have meandered over here. (Sniffing sounds) Yah, it seems to be coming from something near this gentleman. Sir, have you noticed an unusual odor over here?

Me: Hey, I'm not the one who decided to serve broccoli with pork and beans in the same meal to airplane passengers.
----------------------------------------------

Had information about my indigestion problems gotten out, the government could use this knowledge against me.

This ended with some tazering, and a strip-search, and then a secondary strip-search followed by more tazering, some obscenities, and then a strip-search combined with tazering. In summary, I now have an alert when I buy airline tickets that I'm only to have the "Kosher" meals.

The Way of the Hump Back

Ninja Training camps require unyielding discipline or, unawares, a simple hazing ritual can turn into Genghis Khan’s pleasure-dome. This is a picture my wife intercepted from a rival training camp incident which illustrates my point. After that, you’re pushing pause on “Sweat’n to the Oldies.” Then you have your name legally changed to Peter Pixy and your blog drifts into one of these.

http://pixyland.org/peterpan/

Word for the Year

A lot of my friends have picked a word for the year, and they will try to live their lives to match that word. I would like to thank Ninja Rencher for providing me with my word "emotionally-unavailable." I'm not really sure what the word means; I think he got it from one of those new age girls talking about their emotions magazines.

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/200401/omag_200401_beck.jhtml

I think I will learn a lot about myself as I try to discover what this girl jargon means, and I get in touch with my feminine side. My guess is that it will help strengthen my inner self to allow for more callousness in my dolling out lethal attacks (See blog post "The Haunting Eyes of the Damned", February 19, 2008). Or maybe just a way to get out of phone calls with my relatives. "I'm sorry he can't come to the phone, he's emotionally unavailable at the moment. Could I take a message?"

The Biggest Loser

A lot of people were all gaga when Charlize Theron gained and lost all of that weight for her role in Monster. I have a responsibility to advise you that you're not going to get an Oscar for your thankless charge as a ninja, even though the work you do is much more formidable and homicidal. To illustrate, I recently finished a commission where I had to gain fifty-five pounds to impersonate the Viceroy of Kamchatka for a subtrifugal assassination. I was able encourage him to asphyxiate on his own tongue from the thunderbolt of seeing me at my current heft. However, now I'm now saddled with the onerous task of regaining my consummate physique. So now my family has started a Biggest Loser contest for my benefit. This is my before picture.
I would like to thank my brother Kevin for the Nepotiz. He was able to call off his group, "People for the Ethical Treatment of Spandex." I'll post updates of my return odyssey to peak ninjaing condition. My exercise program will consist of fourteen hour Dance Dance Revolution marathons mixed with Sweatin to the Oldies, mostly in spandex.

Cold Cases

Part of my job as an Illegal Ninja is to find what the government has done to shut down fellow resistence members. If you have any theories about what happened to Bruce please leave a comment. The government claims he died by "Misadventure." To see the government's version of his final hours see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lee

A Concern for All Mankind

Let’s take break from the art of the Ninja for a moment to talk about something which concerns all of us enjoying the human experience... Bathroom Etiquette.

1. If two stalls are occupied, the first person out of the stall should be allowed ample time to wash their hands and leave before the next person leaves the stall. This way an identity is not associated with either person and the noises produced during the visit. I don't want to know who has a high fiber diet, or whose fecal fumes fanned into my personal space or who is running off at the bowels and painted the inside of the bowl. The next time I see the individual, all I'll be thinking is, "This guy pees out his butt hole."The right of way is given to the first person to pull at the toilette paper. If you need to blow your nose, wait until the end, thus not giving false signals to your stall-mate. This would be like lurching at a four-way stop every time the other driver starts to move.

2. Wiping should not be done standing up. That's just weird.

3. Courtesy flush... enough said.

4. If you chew a lot of gum you probably have buoyant productions. Wait until the "last survivor drowns" before skipping on your gum chewing way.

5. Understanding the algorithmic complexity of urinal choice merits three college credits (you may have to re-test because good luck getting them transferred, it’s a racquet). See http://gamescene.com/The_Urinal_Game.html

6. Dear public bathroom designers, The urinal trough is only slightly better than turning to the person next to you and peeing on their shoes. This is not an acceptable device. It would be better to install bushes in the bathroom.

7. Sword fights end in the first grade. After that, take the advice from The Ghost Busters, "Don't cross the streams."

8. I’ll try to handle this next one as delicately as I can. If, while standing at the urinal, your face turns purple and leaves you gasping desperately for breath, all for three little drops of pee, you have prostate issues. Go see a Doctor!

9. If your girth is so large that you have to squeeze into the urinal stall, lean against the wall with one hand, while you search with the other, you might try dropping a few pounds. Each bathroom visit should not take you to the edge of mortality.

10. Stand tall and stand proud. Women forcing men to sit while they urinate is part of a greater plot to emasculate the human male. Further more, anyone within fifty paces of the bathroom is going to know that I have a urethra the size of a McDonalds shake straw. And that my prostate could replace the flux capacitor from Back to The Future.

img 1 Flux Capacitor













img 2 Prostate / Urethra














img 3 Urethra Franklin

Other Words of Advice

In ancient times, man would squat down on his heals before doing his duty. The body is actually better attuned for having a BM from this bent over position. I've adapted the position germaphobes call "hanging high." Stand on the toilet rock onto the balls of your feet and squat down on your ankles. I call this the "Sparrow Waits for Worm" form. The job is completed nearly the moment the position is assumed. The time savings are amazing, and it improves balance and flexibility. More time savings are gleaned when the back splash speeds the cleaning process.

The Haunting Eyes of the Damned

Surprisingly, one of the most difficult steps in matriculating into the ninja brotherhood is shaking the omnipresent soul searing stares of past victims from your dreams. This can be done easily by offering some words of succor to relatives of the Damned. For example, I offered these words of support to man in this photo:


To this dude I offer the sagacious words of John Mayer:

Pain is a friend who is misunderstood
but I know the heart of life is good.
Pain throws your heart to the ground,
love turns the whole thing around.
And thought it won't go the way it should,
I know the heart of life is good."

And from Yoda

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

Finally, take a day off to grieve, but then jump back into life. This was paraphrased from:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/435659.This_Is_Not_the_Life_I_Ordered_50_Ways_to_Keep_Your_Head_Above_Water_When_Life_Keeps_Dragging_You_Down.
This works kind of like the Ghost Whisperer does; it allows the victims ghost to find "closure," and move on from limbo and into hell.

Special thanks go to Ninja brother Takei-Shihan for teaching me "The Scarlet Ribbon Gathering" move which is what I used on this man's family.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/126890

However, I would like to add an addendum to his documentation that this "Non-lethal" move becomes "lethal" when used on children under seven. I would also like to thank the double quote punctuation for making the last sentence so awesome. And finally, a very special thank you to brother Uresk for gathering supporting photography.

Ninja vs. Wild

So I was hanging around watching TV (in the attire mentioned in my last post) when I found a show called "Man vs. Wild." I laughed at what a prancing sissy this guy is. Bushwhack through some mountains and they make a show out of it? Try doing that while being hunted by a fist of Ninjas! For example how many ninjas do you see in this picture of a Ninja training camp?

Answer: none, first of all there is a cobra poised ready to strike behind the 3rd bamboo shoot on the left. As a ninja you must be poised to defend yourself from all dangers, not just the obvious ones. Also there are twenty-one ninjas right behind the guy taking this picture. Of course he was immolated alive after having is organs shived with his own femur, and the only reason the photo survived was for a warning. Also I think there are a couple of ninjas up behind the bridge on the right, but you can't see them (that's the point).
Also, the guy on man vs. wild gorged on bugs and critters. As a ninja you don't always get such an elegant buffet spread before you. Once there was a ninja from the Thong dynasty who had to crawl up the inside of the palace sewage system. It took him a week. He would have been lucky if the worst thing he had to eat was a bug.
The first survival technique is to make sure you have enough water. Survival experts will tell you that you can drink your own pee up to three times before it becomes toxic. I've found that if you switch pee with a fellow ninja you can stretch that to four. You want to make sure the other ninja doesn't spend every weekend at a different happy pagoda trying to make little ninjas, or you'll be wearing your ninja mask to cover up more than your identity. Don't make me spell it out for you. Ok H-E-R-P-E-S. He was one of the first Greek warriors to develop some of these survival tactics. He was named for his clandestine skills from the Latin hérpein, to creep or spread.

The way of the foos

Of the training I do as an Illegal Ninja, the most critical part is my foosball training. This may seem unrelated to ninjaing; your wrong and I'm disappointed that you didn't see the connection. First, the hand eye coordination and quick wrist reflexes come in handy when knocking Chinese stars out of mid-air and flicking them with rediculous velocity at your opponent.
The arm-strength and endurance are critical. For example, there was this ninja -I forget which one- and he had to hang from the underside of this emperors commode for like fifteen hours before he was presented with the opportunity of a viscous assassination (that's actually where the spelling of assassination came from, before it was 'asasination'). You can't do that without some serious arm-strength. Back then they used bamboo poles with their dead enemies tied to them and they would use a severed head for the ball. One more training technique made illegal by The Man.
Also, once you reach a certain level at foosball, you don't want to play without a cup. Ninjas should also wear a cup or codpiece as we call them. Beyond the obvious use (spare drinking cup) they can be modified to hold extra throwing stars, poison capsules or maybe a twelve sided die. I've even seen cod pieces modified into the shape of a twelve sided die. The die comes in handy when deciding if you should disembowel someone with your teeth or center your Chi. I wasn't able to find any pics of the solid steel variety, but here's some that I like to use when hanging around the house.

http://www.by-the-sword.com/acatalog/Master_Money_Pocket_Codpiece_VL-MAST.html

http://www.by-the-sword.com/acatalog/Homo_Erectus_Codpiece_VL-ERECT.html

http://www.by-the-sword.com/acatalog/Squire_Pockets_Codpiece_VL-SQUIRE.html

Possible Future Guitar Hero

My aptitude test in High School said I was going to be a Cop because I would excel at putting the hurt on Perps trying to make Crack Heads out little kids, or a Firefighter or maybe a fisherman. The obvious theme here is HERO. I've been training to be a hero of some kind but last week I found what the aptitude test was seeing. I am a natural Guitar Hero. So I'm going to quit my job to train full time, or maybe build up my down-line in a pyramid scheme until this Guitar Hero thing takes off. 

The manual didn't explain how this will save lives. I figure it must be in the same way that revolution in Tienaman square was started with Dance Dance Revolution before The Red Menace turned off the internets in China. For now I'll think of the less fortunate and needy as I master playing Black Magic Woman on expert with the guitar behind my head. For now I figure the most important thing to do is get a good band name. Here are a list of some names I've been working on. I'll set up a vote for them as soon as I figure out how.

1. Disemboweler

2. Forsaken Monkey

3. Illegal Ninja Moves From the Government

4. Christopher Perry Kapp

5. Up the Butte and Around the Corner

6. Overloaded Operators

7. Heart Puncher