Punkin Chunkin

apparently there’s a shortage of pumpkins this year for halloween. maybe i’m talking out of line, but i feel like i heard that somewhere – probably from a reliable source, but who knows. anyway the point is, i love pumpkins. pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin ravioli, pumpkin whatever-else-you-make-from-pumpkins. except for jack-o-lanterns kind of scare me. they didn’t used to until i got a little tiny pumpkin last year with full intention to make the cutest jack-o-lantern known to man. so of course it had big doe eyes and a little smiley smirk and maybe some little elfish ears because i heard those were cute. it was the freakiest thing ever. looked like an anime teletubby – not pleasant. and then it looked really scary once it started getting wrinkly. i couldn’t even throw it away because i was too afraid to get too close to it. it was for sure some sort of evil spirit vessel.

you know what i wanted to do with that thing? this

punkin chunkin is a sport (did you know “sport” is the word used for a hamster that is genetically different from the rest of all hamsters? makes the phrase your dad used to say to you – “hey there sport!” a little less endearing doesn’t it?) where all the world’s geeks (nobody else is smart enough – no offense) create pumpkin launchers. there are apparently a few cities that have nationally known punkin chunkin contests. other cities (aurora colorado) are in training (and free!!) i initially thought there were probably rules and limitations in how you could create these things, but after we saw one of the pumpkins get launched riding a rocket, now i’m not so sure. i also initially thought these pumpkin launchers would be pretty makeshift – lobbing the poor defenseless pumpkins up about 25 or 23 feet and then dropping down no more than a few footsteps away from where they started. um…one of these launchers sent a pumpkin 1,400 – yes 1,400 feet!! they could probably start a company – their clients would be people like me with demon pumpkins. their slogan can be something like “launching your demon pumpkins 1,400 ft so you don’t have to be haunted by their anime eyes.” something like that. i’m still working on wording a little bit.