choose your own katventure

start here

2006-01-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

in the three years of reading my blogs have you ever had the nagging suspicion that you could live my life better than me?
hu.
i'm not surprised.
i can respect those feelings.
in fact, i can enable them.
you are now in charge of making my choices.
good luck.

NEXT

skip, ditch, sluff... no matter what you call it, it's the same thing

2006-01-18T00:00:00.080-07:00

"cough cough... i'm sorry but there's no way i can work today. i'm sick. very sick."
excellent.
you should act or something. like, maybe do some community theater, because that performance you just gave was amazing.
you now officially have the day off.
excellent.

and you intend to take full advantage your truancy so you...

DRIVE TO LAS VEGAS
SPEND THE DAY IN THE CITY

viva

2006-01-18T00:00:00.079-07:00

you are so going to take advantage of your new life of leisure.
you get in your car and head south and by evening you're in las vegas.
the bright lights, the noise, the crowds... it's terrifying really, but you stuff yourself at a buffet (what a bargain!) and wander the strip.
as evening turns to night you start to feel at home, what with the warmth and the people yelling at you for no reason.

you decide to spend your night at...

THE CASINO
A SHOW

i'm an excellent driver

2006-01-18T00:00:00.078-07:00

you've never really gambled before and as you look around the casino you more or less lose your nerve and head back outside.
as you reach the door, you look down and see a quarter. you and pick it up and, oh, why not, you put it in the slot machine.
the slot machine starts chiming and it lights up and you're worried that you broke it or did something wrong but it turns out you won the jack pot.
you won 114 million dollars.
what are the odds?

and sure, a huge chunk of that gets taken out for taxes but you're still left with a heck of a lot of money which you...

INVEST
BLOW ON A CRAZY SHOPPING SPREE

danke schoen

2006-01-18T00:00:00.077-07:00

you call up your best friend cameron and make him come pick you up so you can spend the day in the city.
you go to a swanky restaurant and an art museum and you lip sync to a beatles song on top of a float.
and even when cameron freaks out and kicks his dad's ferrari and it goes flying out the window of his garage, it doesn't ruin your day. besides, the flying ferrari's kind of a break through for cameron and i don't mean that it broke through a very large window (although it did). i mean that emotionally cameron had a break through. it's like he finally understands what you meant when you said,

"life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around once and a while, you could miss it."

THE END

today's geeks are tomorrow's... well... older geeks

2006-01-18T00:00:00.076-07:00

you have always wanted to see david copperfield in person.
in fact, you used to always watch his tv specials and get kind of freaked out when he would do that interactive thing with the tv audience where you would pick a number between 1 and 9 and times it by 7 and if it was a double digit number you would add the two digits together and then he would guess the number you ended up with and he was always right(don't worry, i won't tell anyone what a big fat geek you were)!
seriously though, how did he make that bus disappear?
when you see that he's performing live, you immediately buy tickets and i know you were a geeky david copperfan before, but watching him in person has you convinced that he has magic powers.
for one of his tricks he asks for audience participation and, like a miracle, he chooses you. you go up on stage where he blindfolds you and has you stand against a wall while he throws flaming knives at you.
it's terrifying, but strangely liberating.
after the knives you feel up to anything but it kind of catches you off guard when david copperfield puts you in a box...

and makes you disappear.

THE END

don't touch the hair!

2006-01-18T00:00:00.075-07:00

nice.
i like you so much.
in fact, i just want to say that it's been a pleasure doing this whole "choose your own katventure" thing with you because you make the best choices.

you go out and buy everything you ever wanted. clothes, cars, an airplane, and a john travolta to fly it. you travel all over and stay in swanky hotels with swanky people sucking up to you.
the money lasts about 6 months. it's a really good 6 months too.

and john travolta only gets mad at you once (after you spend an entire day trying to get him to complete the phrase "up your nose...")

THE END

dude

2006-01-18T00:00:00.074-07:00

you invest all your money in the stock market and it's amazing because everything you invest in makes crazy amounts of money and before you know it you've tripled your winnings.
the weird thing is that while your monetary life keeps getting better and better, your personal life seems somehow jinxed.
your grandfather dies.
you buy a house for your mother but then when you take her to see it she breaks her ankle.
and then the house burns down.
and cops arrest you for being a drug dealer or something like that.
so you figure the money's cursed, right? but then you remember how you used to be in an insane asylum and that one guy there used to always repeat that series of numbers over and over to the point that the numbers have always stuck with you.
"one... eight", he used to say, "one.. eight... one... eight..."
and then you remember that when you found that quarter you put it in slot machine #18.
the numbers must be cursed!
freaky, hu.
then you travel to sydney and on the way back your plane crashes.

and it more or less sucks for everyone involved.

THE END

i lava you

2006-01-18T00:00:00.073-07:00

you follow the group towards the volcano, careful to keep your distance. when the group reaches the volcano they disappear inside.
freaky.
but you've come too far to back down now. you walk up to the volcano and see a secret entrance. you go inside, making a mental note to have a secret entrance put into your apartment because man they're cool!
inside the volcano (which is actually more like a corporate office than a volcano inside. mostly due to the lack of lava, i'd say) you see your boss go into a room. you follow him and manage to stay hidden which, considering the fact that you're in a high security, secret, volcanoey lair, is earning you major stealth points. you mostly hide behind a very large ficus plant while your boss sits quietly, waiting for someone. from behind the ficus you hear the door open and close, and see your boss stand up to greet... val kilmer.
you knew it! you knew he was evil!! there was no way that val kilmer was not going to be evil.
and that's when you realize that the whole "chocolate factory" thing is nothing but a way to ship the stupid dvd versions of his stupid STUPID movies to stores like walmart where people don't intend to buy crappy movies but can't help themselves once they enter the store and get a whiff of the discount prices and go into a kind of trance where they lust after everything kirkland brand and suddenly feel that getting "at first sight" free when they buy "red planet" might be a good deal after all.
oh my gosh!
that diabolical fiend!
you can't take it anymore.

you pull out your cyanide pill and take it.

THE END

welcome to the jungle

2006-01-18T00:00:00.072-07:00

you follow the group into the jungle, getting closer to them gradually so they don't realize you haven't been there the entire time. unfortunately your boss isn't one of the group.
ah well, what can you do?
you strike up a conversation with the person next to you but immediately regret it because he's some crazy mathmatician guy with a bunch of theories and opinions and original thoughts and if there's one thing you can't stand, it's a person who's passionate about what they do.
all of a sudden you hear a loud roar and a crashing noise. the trees around you fall as a HUGE dinosaur comes towards you.
one man shouts, "hold still! it's vision is based on movement!"
you stand as still as you can but it seems like a pretty stupid and suicidal plan so you push one of the annoyingly resilient kids towards the t-rex and while it's busy eating the kid you run.
back through the jungle.
back to the plane.
and back to the baggage compartment.
you crouch there for about five minutes before you realize... you're not alone.
at first you're worried a dinosaur has gotten inside, but it turns out the mathmatician ran back to the plane as well. he starts rambling about "chaos theory" and "the laws of nature" and it's just so annoying! which is why you throw a suitcase at him and run back into the jungle.
where you live very happily.
for about 2 minutes.

until a velociraptor eats you.

THE END

i never really liked me much anyways

2006-01-18T00:00:00.071-07:00

you go visit yourself at your home.
not too shabby. i guess you've done pretty well for yourself. you must be rich. and powerful. judging from all the ostentatious art and useless knick knacks and very large entertainment system.
all your kids look just like you which you make a mental note of in case you have to come back at some point and get your kids out of a jam by pretending to be them.
as you're sitting in the living room, you walk in. you both jump and then you tell you that you're from the past and you wanted to see how you were doing and how ARE you doing anyways. you say you're fine and then you have a nice long chat and you comment on how young you look and you say thanks and you don't look too shabby either.
everything's going great until you ask yourself why you got so snobby. and then you say, "hey! what's that supposed to mean??" and you say, "nothing. you just seem really full of yourself now that you've got all the money and the prestige." and you say, "whatever. you're completely full of yourself. so if anything, i just haven't changed."
and it pretty much deteriorates from there. let's just say there's a lot of name calling.
and then, when you think it can't be going any worse, you hit yourself over the head! (you probably should've seen that coming)
you kick and throw things.
meanwhile, you do the windmill.
interesting fact: you're both hair pullers.
sadly, things get out of control and before you can stop it, you stab yourself. which is really a shame because if you die, then you'll die too.
apparently you're not that bright.

but you should've known that.

THE END

unbelievable

2006-01-18T00:00:00.070-07:00

are you kidding me?

you're supposed to choose your own adventure.

so go back and choose the ADVENTURE this time.

go BACK to look yourself up

i am serious... and don't call me shirley

2006-01-18T00:00:00.069-07:00

good. not only did you catch onto the very subtle allusions i was making to "speed", but you've also seen the movie and taken it to heart.
smart move. smart move.
you swerve off the freeway and drive around the runway until the police sneak you off the car.
after the whole ordeal the cops question you forever about the bomb guy and what's going on and you figure that the whole ordeal is not quite over.
and really, one high speed adventure (get it? high "speed" adventure?) is all a person really needs in one life time.
so when the cops aren't looking you buy a ticket to beijing, where you live happily for many years.

it really is beautiful out there this time of year.

THE END

well... jackie chan could do it

2006-01-18T00:00:00.068-07:00

looks like you're going to have to jump. you open your door and prepare to jump out before you can really think about it because if you give yourself a chance to think about it, you'll think about what the chances of surviving hurling yourself out of a speeding car are.
here's a hint.
not. good.
crap, you just thought about it.
but exploding isn't going to feel very good either so you need to jump. you need to just do it. like nike.
frantically, you look around your car and spot your basket of dirty clothes.
you set the cruise control and jam the steering wheel so that your car will go straight.
you dump out your dirty clothes and put your feet into the empty clothes basket, grab hold of the seat belt and jump out of the car.
now, this is the part of the adventure where you wish you'd learned to water ski on a semiprofessional level because you're holding onto the seat belt as tight as you can while the car drags you behind it. you manage to somehow stay upright in your dirty clothes basket.
well done.
you count to three and let go of the seatbelt. and now this is the part of the adventure where you wish you'd learned to surf on a semiprofessional level.
you gradually slow to a complete stop.
and there you are, standing inside a dirty clothes basket.
in the middle of the freeway.
as your car continues driving towards the gridlocked traffic.
and then as your car drives into the gridlocked traffic.
and explodes.

so...
maybe your "jump out of the car" plan wasn't the most altruistic thing you've ever done.
but it could be worse.
i'm not really sure how.
but there's definitely a slight chance that it somehow could've been worse.

in any case, you'd better get elsewhere.

THE END

do not attempt to grow a brain

2006-01-18T00:00:00.067-07:00

of course the freeway's the fastest route. because you can drive really fast on it. psh... obviously. some people say you drive erratically. you choose to say that you drive with purpose. you're doing just that when your phone rings. you answer it and a voice you've never heard before says, "mwahaha! i've planted a bomb on your car! and once you hit 50 mph it will be armed! mwahaha!"
"um... i passed 50 mph a long time ago." you say.
"well then it's armed! mwahaha!"
"what's up with your laugh?"
"what?"
"your laugh. your diabolical disney villain laugh?"
"sigh... look. there's a bomb on your car and once you slow down, the car will explode."
"oh... hey! why'd you do that?"
"haHA! because i will not be ignored! i gave 40 years of my life to the pcpd (provo city police department) and i was summarily dismissed with nothing but a watch to show for it and now i've used that watch as a timer for the incendiary device i attached to your car! you thought you had gotten rid of me, but you see that i've only just begun-"
"-wait. do i know you?"
"don't you remember? i planted the bomb on the elevator the other day, but you saved all the people in it and that's when i swore my revenge against you..."
"....um .... no."
"wait. is this officer jack traven?"
"no."
".... well, this is really awkward. i put my revenge, retirement watch bomb on the wrong vehicle."
"what?"
"bye."

you look up and see that there's a traffic jam up ahead. talk about bad timing, right?
maybe you can buy yourself some time by getting off the freeway and going to the airport.
on the other hand, maybe you should focus on getting out of your compact, deat vehicle asap.

you...

DRIVE TO THE AIRPORT
GET OUT OF THE CAR

back in the ussr

2006-01-18T00:00:00.066-07:00

that's right, it's time to broaden your horizons.
you've heard rumors that a certain computer company is coming out with some new games in a few months. and you want to play those games. right now.
it takes some doing, some super ingenious hackin in fact, but you finally guess the right password and get into the system and your computer asks you, "do you want to play a game?"
after scanning the list you choose "global thermonuclear war". sounds fun, right?
and it is fun. full of excitement and adventure but it's not too long until you realize that it's not a game.
you've hacked into the government's central computer and you've started a war between the u.s. and russia.
awkward.
you consider trying to undo your mistake and coming clean to the government and stopping world war 3 by challenging the computer to a game of tic tac toe...
... but it's getting late.
so you play text twist a little more and then head home, thinking you should probably start learning russian.

because it'll probably come in handy soon.

конец

i believe you have my stapler

2006-01-18T00:00:00.065-07:00

you go to work and sit down at your computer.
you don't really have anything to do so you catch up on some emailing and play "text twist".
you're really good at text twist.
like, frighteningly good.
because you've had an inordinate amount of practice.

after a few hours you...

PLAY A NEW GAME
GO HOME AND WRITE A BLOG

food won't fill that emotional void

2006-01-18T00:00:00.064-07:00

you get another sausage and egg mcmuffin.
and another.
and another.
and then a big mac because they stop serving breakfast at 10:30.
and another.
and another.
you never leave. you become the crazy person who lives at mcdonalds and can't even be kicked out because you've gained to much weight and to get rid of you would involve permits and a CRANE.
silver lining? someone becomes really famous for making a documentary about you.

because you're just that fat and gross.

THE END

table nine

2006-01-18T00:00:00.063-07:00

mmm... the sausage mcmuffin.
without the invention of the sausage mcmuffin, you might have been a hyper punctual person.
with normal cholesterol levels.

and how much fun would that be?
seriously.
people like people who make them feel better about themselves.
and you are that person to so many people.

after the sausage mcmuffin you...

ORDER ANOTHER
FINALLY GO TO WORK

new leaf

2006-01-18T00:00:00.062-07:00

after you talk to the cops and the reporters you decide that the best way to really turn things around is to start fresh, so you sell all your possesions (except for your tv) and quit your job.
you pursue your dream job... motivational speaker.
you save up your money and buy a van which you live in.

down by the river.

THE END

government cheese

2006-01-18T00:00:00.061-07:00

after you talk to the cops and the reporters, you sell all your belongings except your tv, quit your job and accept the fact that you lead a very simple, but kind of pathetic life. you have no more need for life's extravagances. you intend to focus on the things that make you happiest.
you start giving motivational speeches.
and at night you go to your new home down by the river. yep, you guessed it...

you live in a van.

THE END

i once thought i had mono for an entire year. it turned out i was just really bored

2006-01-18T00:00:00.060-07:00

hu.
that's boring.
you have super powers and you choose to go to work.
ok... i didn't really foresee having to actually make something up for this option.
um... ok... you drive to work because you have some sort of insane dedication to your job.
unfortunately, you get food poisoning from breakfast.
that's right. apparently your pancakes were chalk full of salmonella.
and unfortunately your intestinal tract is, like, your achilles heel.
and you die.
maybe, if you'd had some sort of physical activity, say... oh, i don't know... saving an entire city from the wrath of a super villain. or even trying to destroy a city as a super villain. maybe the adrenaline would've somehow saved your life.

but whatever.

THE END

sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads'!

2006-01-18T00:00:00.059-07:00

wow.
who knew that someday you'd turn to the dark side?
that's fantastic!
you're like a super villain and there are very few things cooler than that.
you work towards total world domination. or at least to start, total domination of the little town you live in. so, total domination of provo. hu. that's kind of cool, i guess. gotta start somewhere.
and who knows, maybe someday you'll acheive world domination an then you can rule with and iron fist and have people do your bidding!
OR maybe you'll become someone's arch nemesis and spend most of your energy trying to take them out.

either way, at least you've got a plan.

THE END

if i could turn back time

2006-01-18T00:00:00.058-07:00

very noble.

you run into the bank where everything is completely paused. which makes things pretty easy. you take all the guns away, and handcuff all of the bank robbers. you unfreeze time and disappear in the confusion. for the next few weeks the newspapers are full of a lot of unexplained phenomena. but as time goes on, it becomes necessary for you to create a mild mannered alter ego because you are just the most fantastic super hero ever.

THE END

the kids who fall in a vat of toxic waste, get their powers as soon as the very next day. or... they die

2006-01-18T00:00:00.057-07:00

mmm... good choice. nothing says, "look out world, here i come!... at some point... when i get up the energy" like a big, pancakey breakfast at ihop.
you pull into a parking spot and get out of your car just in time to see a semi truck swerve out of control and run into a pole. the pole, including some power lines comes crashing down on you. you jump out of the way just in time. unfortunately, you jump into a puddle of water with power lines in it.
yep. you get electrocuted.
it is not pleasant.
but by some crazy miracle you survive. not just survive, you walk into ihop completely unharmed. well, you have some major hair issues, but that's pretty much it.
so, you're enjoying your pancakes and you realize that the electrocution did something to you. besides giving you mad scientist hair, it somehow gave you the ability to pause time.
think evie in "out of this world".
this could've totally come in handy way back when you were hitting snooze.
you're sitting at your table pausing and depausing time when you start listening to the breaking news report about a bank robbery thing going on.

you ...

PAUSE TIME AND STOP THE BAD GUYS
PAUSE TIME AND JOIN THE BAD GUYS
IGNORE IT AND EAT YOUR PANCAKES