Legendary Woodsman

Over the weekend, someone shared a YouTube video with me featuring former wrestler, former governor, Jesse “the body” Ventura on a show called Conspiracy Theory. The episode in particular featured HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. The Man may say that the facility does research but those in the know tell a completely different story. According to these “knowledgeable” few, HAARP is secretly a weaponized weather machine.

It’s ingenious. It can create earthquakes, tornadoes, lightning, swarms of bees… and your insurance wouldn’t cover it because those things are usually considered ‘acts of god.’ Noah, build an arc, I’m turning the HAARP to devastating deluge.

I, personally, find it rather unbelievable. It just feels like it’s too much… too much to have control over. I know that science fiction tends to have the amazing invention created flawlessly on the first go and maybe I’m a cynic and believe that inventions go through a series of trial and error. What would the result be when you are putting an amazing weather machine through trial and error.

Picture this:
Three scientists are standing around the HAARP control hub. The hub is covered in control dials, knobs, and multi-coloured buttons… none of them are labeled. It’s time to beta test it.

The first scientist turns a few dials and flips some switches and a flash flood sweeps through his home town and kills his family. Whoops. Now they know what that does.

The first scientist sobs in grief and the second scientist steps forward. She adjusts the knob to 20 degrees and pushes all the buttons of the rainbow. KABOOM. Lightning strikes and destroys a hospital for infirm kittens. Yikes. Now they know what that does.

The last scientist is worried. What tragedy could befall his choice? The power of X-Men’s Storm but without the talent of Halle Berry. He turns a few switches and flips a couple of dials and… nothing. The scientists are livid, “The machine doesn’t work!”

They tear it apart to figure out what went wrong. Little did they know that the series the last scientist dialed up was for “partly cloudy.”

-tony

My name is Tony Esteves. I like my name. I’ve had it all my life and I’ve grown fond of it. Some people do not feel as fortunate.

When I was starting elementary school, the biggest challenge with my name was how people pronounced it. My family originates from Portugal and if I have interpreted it correctly the faux-phonetic way of pronouncing my last name is Ee-shtivzh (two syllables and the “zh” is like the sound from Zsa Zsa Gabor).

That isn’t how people would pronounce it though because it’s near impossible to pronounce for the majority of English-speaking North Americans. Imagine me at 5-years-old, waiting to hear my name called and they would instead say:
Ee-Stee-Veez
e-Stee-Veez
Ee-Stee-vez
e-Stee-vez
e-Steevs
Ee-Steevs
e-ste-Veez

And finally settled on e-ste-vez, thanks in part to Emilio Estevez.

That’s right, I owe a lot of thanks to the fictitious coach of the Mighty Ducks and Charlie Sheen’s brother. So one would imagine that I would not take offense if my name was misspelled to resemble his… but for some reason it does indeed irk me. I suppose I should take it in stride.

If my name was John Stuart, Aaron Smyth, or Shawn Thomson, I’d see a whole lot more spelling mistakes with my name. I’m lucky my name is only mistaken for a Brat Pack alum.

-tony