Atomic Nerds

Sorry for the light content; between overall block and being wrapped up in various projects that consume time but don’t produce much in the way of commentable material, the blog hasn’t been as priority as it should. I HAD something to rant about- namely how completely ludicrous the administration’s crusade against Fox News has gotten- but the news item I was planning to hang it all on is now in question, so that the whole thing remains stupid but the outright insane part may not be true.

So, with that idea having therefore been blown apart, here’s a random assortment of things I have learned over the course of watching MTV’s Scarred. For those that have not yet discovered this little gem of distilled schadenfreude, Scarred* is one of those video clip exploitation shows, in this case of skateboarders, BMX bikers, rollerbladers, and other practitioners of applied physics getting horribly fucked up on camera. While these kinds of shows are a dime a dozen, there’s just something about this one- and it’s the part where the victims apparently sent the tape of themselves getting horribly mutilated and screaming for their mothers voluntarily, and usually go on to say cheerfully that taking an entire handrail up the ass hasn’t daunted them in the pursuit of doing physically improbable things on other people’s property. Their sheer immunity to aversive conditioning is somewhere in that uncanny valley between heartwarming and horrifying.

In any case, after a few episodes there are enough similarities between accidents that they all start to blur together unless the self-victimizer managed some sort of uniquely nauseating wound or managed to shriek in a new and record-setting high pitch. Either way, I feel I’ve learned a few things from these similarities, despite remaining firmly ground-bound at all times when using wheeled transportation.

1. If you are about to do something that relies upon precision timing and control in order to pull off without having gravity make you its bitch, “just going for it” is a bad idea.

2. Likewise just going for it after you roll up on it a few times to appreciate the physical improbability of your task more fully.

3. Friends with video cameras in such situations are the single most useless lumps of carbon in existence when gravity wins out. You may well have to dial 911 with your own shattered limbs because they’ll still be standing around going “DUDE! SICK!”

4. It is also a bad idea to, immediately upon finishing months of physical therapy subsequent to surgery that involved multiple staples, pins, and plates, try the exact same stunt again just to see if the laws of motion have changed during your time off.

5. Operating wheeled transportation on objects and surfaces owned by someone else that are not designed for such use and whose maintenance records you don’t know is also a bad idea. Unwanted encounters with The Man are FAR from the worst thing you should be worrying about; having the rail you were grinding enter your scrotum after the welds fail is.

6. Helmets are useless when your primary point of impact is your face.

7. Hauling the video camera out with the purpose of making a demo tape is also an extremely bad idea when you are not at a skate park doing stunts that you’ve practiced dozens of times while wearing full safety equipment, but rather at some random rail or set of stairs with nothing but a bad haircut between you and the aforementioned gravity.

8. No matter how many layers of reinforced filth is in said haircut, it will not function as a helmet.

9. Setting your video to metal music will not make it awesome. It will just be apt when something brutal happens to you.

10. There is an inverse relationship between the degree and number of horrific orthopedic injuries sustained and the likelihood that the injured will have a paying job.

*Link to show includes links to full episodes. Enjoy.

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