Nepalese Government considers Everestland theme park

The Nepalese Government has lodged a planning application to turn the sacred site that houses Mount Everest into a massive theme park, complete with a summit roller coaster, an inflatable north face, and eventually a 5-star hotel on the Chinese side of the jumbo-sized mountain.

Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on the planet and has long been considered a symbol of adventure and exploration, so it is no surprise whatsoever to anybody that it is now being slated for conversion into a big, western, capitalist cash cow.

Everestland will operate much like the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida, where a working space centre somehow operates in tandem with fun theme park rides and character astronauts.

Journeying to Mount Everest is a right of passage for many adults who are suffering a mid life crisis and need an existential / transcendental / embracing of their own mortality experience to make it through the rest of their lives.

A spokesman for the Nepalese Government said, "people can still come here to question whether their life has any purpose, meaning or value, but they might have to queue for a bit. Although if they come between 2 and 3pm they will be able to access a fastpass to get up to Existential Corner before the evening onslaught".  
 
The Everestland brochure recommends that anyone in this position plan their midlife crisis for the off-peak season.  Alternatively, they can purchase the Everestland Existential Crisis Package.

Prolonged isolation is a thing of the past for expert seasoned mountaineers, as they will soon undergo an excruciatingly long climb past hordes of screaming overtired sticky children, and pass through the centre of themed restaurants serving deep fried glacier sticks and frozen pizzas, on their way to the Summit Cafe at the peak.

The spokesman said, “this is part of the attraction. Diners want to see people haul themselves up dangerous slopes and across gaping crevasses when they are eating their cheeseburgers, fries and coke. This is real entertainment”.

The spokesman added, "we will be dealing with the lack of oxygen issue at a Planning Meeting next month.  We are thinking of rebranding oxygen as Everest Air or something like that and charging our guests for the right to use it, sort of like the model they use for wifi in Australia. 

Also, we don't want parents to think that their child might die at Everestland through altitude sickness. It's not really something we are worried about though. The American theme park tourist well run deep".

It is believed it will be left up to parents to decide whether they think their child will be okay walking around a mountain at the cruising altitude of a 747.  

Other planned attractions and experiences include a cliffhanger ride, wave pool, glacier challenge and the Hunt for the Yeti.  There will also be character actors dressed as Sir Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the first climbers to reach the peak of the world's highest mountain.   

The icing on the cake, so to speak, will be the ice sculptures immortalising these two pioneers at the  highest point of Everest, sort of like twin angels wedged atop a Christmas tree.

While there are currently only two main routes to the summit, tourists will soon be able to access the peak via an endlessly long travelator. Guests will be given a sleeping bag when they embark as it will take approximately 16 hours to reach the top.

But for the clients who have paid mountaineering companies exorbitant amounts of money to get them safely to the summit, some up to USD$250,000, it's the suffering that really counts. 

The Nepalese Government spokesman has confirmed that no-one has had the balls to tell China about any of this yet.

I watched Home and Away.

Putting aside the piece of chocolate cake that I stole from colleagues last week at work, I'm a good person. And sometimes bad things happen to good people. For example, tonight I watched Home and Away. Here's proof.

Straight off the bat - mere minutes into the show - Number #1 girl uses a big word. I can't remember what it was but I was actually impressed.

Number #1 girl undoes all her good work during an argument by turning to her pantry and placing her face in such a distressed arrangement that made me think that someone ate her 12 pack of twisties. She must have been really sad or angry or frustrated or something.

Here's Number #2 girl. Another Oscar winner in the making. She's super sad or frustrated or depressed or something and I don't even know what she's going through because she also has no facial expression.

Now I feel like a bitch because expressionless lady actually lost her twin babies in her womb. But that doesn't change the fact that her only facial expression is expressionless. Who hires these people?

Watching teenagers sitting around in their lounge room watching AFL on television and drinking vodka cruisers and beer and making out and being bitchy to each and doing all the teenage angst things. I hate them all within seconds.

Spoiler: This guy doesn't do this show anymore.

Yay ad break. Head to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and find a hot poker that I can have on standby in case I need to gouge my eyes out.

Number #3 girl is concerned or angry or sad when she finds out her boyfriend of two weeks has "commitment issues". He's 20. His name is Tank.

The most concerning part of this scene is my realisation that those precious minutes it took me to watch it are lost to me forever. And now I have to live with that.

Number #3 girl gets home 18 seconds after her curfew.  The parents are waiting in the dark on the driveway with a location camera crew. Cue boring argument. Jesus, this show.

Whatever happened to Brax (pictured in the picture), the feared member of the River Boys? Just googled him. The car transferring him to jail ran off the road and plunged into a lake but HIS BODY WAS NEVER FOUND...

Ooooooh, ahhhh, ooooh, ahhh, the sun is rising over the ocean. That's a bit pretty.

Oh great, actors have just walked onto the beach and decide to speak. Sunset ruined. Oh great, here's more of them. It's a morning beach sunrise-ruining congregation. This scene would improve enormously if the actors went away so I could just watch the sunrise in peace.

More teenage angst. I feel like I'm not the target audience.

Thank the lord that's over.

A Tale of Two Warring Tribes

I’m off to the big football game on Saturday. The one where they play with oval shaped balls.

Collingwood versus Carlton at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the World, THE UNIVERSE.  

Should be fun, if I don’t die in the crossfire between two warring tribes.

I’ve made a lame attempt to learn a bit about these tribes, so I can negotiate my way out of a blood-soaked armed combat situation if the need arises.

Back in 1892 (or maybe it was 2189, I forget), a bunch of tribes joined together in Melbourne, Australia to create a new form of entertainment for the masses, to replace the previous form of entertainment that involved watching people die of bubonic plague or something. I don’t know; I was unalive then. 

One of these tribes was known as Collingwood, and everyone dressed in black and white and stripes and nothing else. They all looked very much like human zebras but they’d bust your chops if you said that to their faces so no-one did ever. 

The Collingwood tribe took fortress in a crowded, unhygienic place with historic buildings and, like modern times, most people worked in places and did other things when they weren't doing the work things. 

This tribe grew and grew until it had over 300,000 likes on Facebook which is important because Facebook likes meant everything to everyone in 1892.

The other tribe was known as Carlton, and to this day do much the same thing as the Collingwood tribe with their days, but they have only 225,000 likes, so what even is the point of them. 

Back in the day, both tribes spent much of their free time engaging in hobbies such as breeding rats and suffering from typhoid and cholera and other health related conditions. It was the fun, carefree days.

And since 1892, on one day of the week, both these tribes gather in sports grounds and watch men throw their balls, while they engage in cheering and alcohol drinking and the ensuing violent tussles and then go to bars to discuss all of those things in gratuitous detail. 

Both tribes still obsess day and night about the hunting and gathering of the points earned at these sporting fixtures with the aim of bragging about it the next day at the work places and while they huddle in shops to purchase caffeinated beverages. It’s just what they do.

I had a great thought the other day.

I had a great thought the other day.  It was pretty epic.

Not a Kim Kardashian inconsequential brainpop, but something great passed through my neural pathways.

Like something Einstein may have come up with if he hadn't spent all his time watching pink lady apples fall from trees. Where was that leisurely activity ever going to take him?

This shit happens to me often.  My brain did that thing where it cuts out like a hairdryer when you pull it away from the wall socket, sometimes mid-sentence. Actually more often that not mid-sentence.

Unfortunately the great thought eludes me to this day. Oh well. I might go and sit under my mum's lemon tree and see if the great thought returns.

Sequel to this post: Return of The Great Thought.