Free Adrenaline Fun Time

Optional adrenaline supplements will be popular as long as daily life is drudgery. Forever. But extreme thrill-seeking behavior requires time and money. Until now, thanks to Cheap Fool.

Caveman adrenaline was plentiful, chasing and wrestling down dinner, or running to avoid being dinner. Large-scale agriculture made life so easy, crazy stunts were devised to get the fix, like warfare and orgies.

How effortless now! After interminable cartoon hours brawling alien trolls, jumping off high places for no reason, and running from nazi dragon zombies, video “gamers” are as shaky and excited as if they had left the couch. But not cheap.

Some folks’ adrenaline switch requires more than cartoons and wrist movement. But speeding and reckless driving require a running car. Rock climbing, hang gliding, bungee jumping, need gear and a shiny truck. Shooting, parachuting, shooting parachuters, or shooting while parachuting, all cost for logistics.

Therefore a public service announcement. The following may induce extreme adrenaline thrift:

1. Power tools. Loud, dangerous, and easily borrowed. Don’t bother reading instructions or safety warnings. Remove all guarding. Drink heavily if someone buys. Use inappropriately, like an electric saw to trim toenails. If possible, spray blood about; nearly all who see it get a free adrenaline shot.

2. Non-swimmers trying to swim freak right out. Under-inflated “floaties” nearby help narrowly escape drowning. Swimmers get the same effect with ankle weights.

3. Poor planning on a foot voyage. Lack of food water or map switches you to the near-death terror track. Lost, hungry, thirsty—and energy to run ten miles.

Hike to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in a snowstorm!

4. Admit to your frightened community that you are atheist, communist, muslim, gay, or whatever the latest trendy boogeyman. Now, adrenaline pumps when anyone approaches, since no one actually believes in love--not for those people, anyway.

5. Run and run and run. Sooner or later, that “second wind” will kick in--and you can run some more.

6. Have “unprotected” sex with strangers. The adrenaline of anonymous hook-up plus a second jolt, AIDS fear, like the pre-antibiotic millennia. Not recommended for the married; divorce lawyers, judges, and furious spouses are expensive adrenaline.

7. Verbally abuse bar bouncers, police, and angry rednecks--often the same one person. Sticks and stones may involve pricey broken bones and malevolent jail adrenaline. But name-calling will provide a good run for the easily angered as well as the panicked name-caller (see #5.)

8. Participate in a sport and pretend like winning actually matters. Convince yourself, try hard, and it might be possible. If so, the whole team gets a shot, double if exhausted (see #5.) Third shot if in a stadium full of rabid fans in full adrenal froth.

9. Pedestrian auto dodging is less deadly with modern computer-assisted disc brakes. With practice, both you and school bus driver get adrenalicious as wheels lock up. The kids get a shot too, the highlight of their week, or longer if a tooth’s knocked out.

In short, induce humiliation, exhaustion, imminent death, or sudden loud scary noises. Learn your kids’ video games if you want to do it from the couch. A life without adrenaline would be too dull to survive. Ask any hunter/gatherer. And it’s free to all!

Redneck Dip-Dung Wood-Getting

Stump, before

Firewood, after

Mild adrenaline infusion from wrongful and slightly intoxicated woodworking. A juniper stump, abducted from public land, attacked by screaming electric saw. The rest beat apart with a splitting maul. (About a week’s home heat in that stump, after all.) Later, another dose, unsafely sharpening the worn out blade on a bench grinder. Yes!