Ride The Lightning

I was lounging about the house reading the paper this morning when I noticed that Cabelas lists a fabulous sale price for a device called the "Thunderbolt" personal lightning detector in the "Bargain Cave" section of the paper.

I don't think I want one.

If I'm sitting in my boat, fishing, and my Thunderbolt Lightning Alarm starts furiously screaming at me - what am I going to do? There's no escaping a lightning strike - thats an act of God. There I am, sitting on top of 1,500lbs of plastic and metal, surrounded by electronic gadgetry and looking at 20,000 acres of nothing but water - if God wants me dead by lightning bolt, I'm ready. Lets do this thing.

They may as well bill it as a "God-detector", because thats basically what you're working on - figuring out if God wants you to die right away...or sometime later. And to be honest: I don't want to know, 10 seconds before I get hit by lightning, THAT I'M ABOUT TO GET HIT BY LIGHTNING! That sort of ruins the whole point of getting hit by lightning in my opinion.

I'm not exactly sure what the manual says to do if your Thunderbolt Alarm goes off (because even at $39.95 I didnt buy one - I bought a $90 tackle box instead that wasn't on sale); but I know whats going to happen to me - the same thing that ALWAYS happens to me when things go awry on a boat: I'm going to fall in. The alarm is going to ring and sploosh: I'm going over the side in a panic at high speed, and my pants are going to come off.

Then, because I will have forgotten to hook up the kill switch on the motor - the boat will keep going, run over me, and I'm going to drown. Why? Because I got hit by lightning? No, an electronic gadget cheated me of going out with a bang. Instead: I'm going to be the idiot that fell out of his own boat and let it run over him on a blue sky day....

....all because the "low battery" warning went off on his Thunderbolt Alarm.

Thats a big shortcoming with technology and scientists: they're obsessed with knowing ahead of time whats going to happen to us. The worst part is - they can't ever seem to figure out FAR ENOUGH ahead of time to do me any good. 10 seconds before my lightning ride leaves the station, I want to be thinking about how great dinner is going to be, or boobs, or something generally happy - not "The Lightning Bolt That Is About To Kill Me."

Come on guys. Build me a device that makes gum never lose its flavor, or brings Michael Jackson back from the dead, or something else useful like a real lasergun.

I bet you can use parts leftover from a Thunderbolt Alarm.