Chinook
by George Hosier II  - April 10, 2008

Zapped

I’m glad winter is winding down. Maybe now I can get the frizz to relax from my hair and I can grow my charred eyebrows back. If I’m lucky, the third degree burns on my fingertips might start to scar over. However, even if I’m destined to look like this the rest of my life, it will still be an immense relief to get a few months’ respite from the damage inflicted by the static electricity that lurks, quivering, in Interior Alaska’s winter air.

Static electricity costs me a lot of money each year. For example, I just replaced my alarm clock. That became necessary as a result of me zapping my previous alarm clock not too long ago. My wife had gone to bed before me, so I was trying not to wake her. Wearing my synthetic fur pink bunny slippers I shuffled across the carpet to my nightstand and slid my alarm clock button on--at least that was my intention. What actually happened was that as soon as my finger contacted the top of my alarm clock, a bolt of lightning engulfed my right arm, detonating a thermonuclear explosion somewhere in the vicinity of my right ventricle!

When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the floor wearing a splintered closet door around my neck. A sizzling blue corona was just fading from around my head, and my right armpit hair was ablaze. The top of the nightstand bore a carbonized crater where the alarm clock had rested, and the wall and ceiling were riddled with alarm clock shrapnel. In the ceiling directly above the nightstand crater a mangled circuit board was impaled, moaning out some kind of ghastly noise. Although garbled and distorted as if by the Doppler Effect, I recognized the ghastly noise as the final dying beeps of my faithful alarm clock. I lay there listening to its voice weakening until death mercifully sealed its lips or diodes or transducers, or whatever it is that makes an alarm clock beep. At that point I recovered from my daze enough to extinguish the fire in my armpit. My wife never awakened.

Perhaps I should have been angry with her for that. However, I couldn’t summon any malice in my heart toward her. She made such an endearing picture lying there with her sweet head on the pillow framed by those silken tresses, her long lashes closed in sleep. I shuffled to her and planted an affectionate kiss on her slumbering lips. The resultant detonation sheared my lips off at the gum line and knocked me through our second story bedroom window. As I lay there, pondering what had just happened, I was grateful that the snow bank in which I was buried headfirst was numbing the pain in my kisser. My bare legs felt a little chilly, though.

Not that I’m complaining. There are always pros and cons to every situation. Our family has reaped many wonderful benefits from static electricity. For instance, did you know that static electricity can cook food even faster than a microwave? Let me share a few easy recipes for those cooks who want a delicious lunch but don’t have much time to prepare:

Katzendogs. (Serves 1)

Ingredients:

1 hotdog
1 hot dog bun
Condiments to taste

Preparation instructions: Stick hot dog on a metal Shish-Kebab skewer. Make sure the pointy end of the skewer is sticking out of the other end of the hotdog. Catch a cat. Rub the hotdog vigorously on the cat’s back, using a stroking motion until sufficiently charged. Touch a doorknob with the pointy end of the skewer. Attempt to regain consciousness before the flaming hotdog has burned to a crisp. Place in bun. Top with condiments. Serve.

Snap Crackle Popcorn. (Makes 6 one-cup servings)

Ingredients:

100 popcorn kernels
1 bag Pop Rocks candy (Any flavor)
1 cup Rice Krispies cereal

Preparation instructions: Place popcorn kernels in a jar with a lid. A PVC or PET plastic jar is ideal. Play a brisk game of “kick the jar” on a shag carpet. Now place a copper bowl on a well-grounded surface. Empty the kernels from the jar into the copper bowl. Gather the freshly popped corn from wherever it exploded to and return it to the bowl. Add Pop Rocks and Rice Krispies. Toss and serve with liberal amounts of highly carbonated soft drinks. Or just toss.

Hindenburg Stew. (Number of servings depends on balloon size.)

Ingredients:

Beef Broth
Stew vegetables diced extra small
Ground beef
Salt and Spices to taste

Preparation instructions: Suck all ingredients up into a turkey baster and squirt them into a balloon. Repeat as many times as necessary until balloon is full and taut like a water balloon. Rub balloon briskly on head until your hair stands up like a punk rocker’s Mohawk. Remove your shoes and stand in a galvanized washtub on a well-grounded surface. Grasp a steel pin firmly in your bare fingers. Puncture the balloon. When the pain from the scald wounds has subsided, scoop steaming stew out of washtub and serve.

Another advantage of static electricity is its versatility as a covert sabotage tool. It works like this.

“Son, I think you’ve had enough X-Box time today. Go outside and get some exercise.”

“Aw, Dad! Not now! I’m right in the middle of a trying to kill this huge…”

“Turn it off!”

“I can’t. I’ll lose everything I’ve done since my last checkpoint.”

“Hmmm, is that jelly stain on your console right ther…” ZAWAAAP!!! “Whoa! Check out those cool red lights around your ‘on’ button. Isn’t that what the technicians call the ‘ring of death’?”

“DAAAAAAAD! You fried my game!”

“Oops, I guess we have to send it back to the factory for repairs. (hee, hee) Sorry about that. (Heh, heh)”

Another positive attribute of static is its entertainment value. Nothing beats the comedic antics that result from shuffling up behind a prim spinster aunt and touching her earlobe with a finger that is functioning as a capacitor for 500,000 Volts of static electricity. The incongruity of hearing certain succinct colorful words escape her prudish lips is hilarious. Touching a cat’s nose is almost as rewarding.

Of course, there are less politically incorrect ways to tap the entertainment potential of static. You can make rolled oats dance on a sheet of cellophane. You can stick an inflated latex glove to the belly of your flannel shirt and pretend to be a cow. You can dig dog hair out of the vacuum cleaner bag and make a fake beard. You can draw two little ink eyes on Styrofoam packing peanuts, let them stick to your face and hands and thrash around screaming, “The giant maggots are eating me! The giant maggots are eating me!” The possibilities are endless.

Perhaps the most rewarding entertainment benefit of static electricity, however, is realized during those long, insomnia-plagued winter nights. When enough static has accumulated in your bedclothes, a custom light show is literally at your fingertips. By using your fingers as wands, you can paint lines of sparks all over the down comforter. It’s almost like putting on a Fourth of July fireworks display for your wife.

As you sit there in the darkness, watching the voltage dance across your coverlets, a particularly prominent tongue of forked fire will reach out and touch your wife’s stuffed teddy bear, jolting its fur into a neon afro. Then it is that you will hear the musical melody of your wife’s appreciative giggle. When you start getting older like me, you need romantic moments like that help to keep the spark in your marriage...especially, if you don’t kiss much anymore due to having blown your lips off.
 

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