7 Reasons

Tag: Kayak

  • We’re Here To Help

    We’re Here To Help

    Hello there.  Happy Sunday.  We’ve been running 7 Reasons (.org) for over fifteen months now and, while we don’t quite have the internet profile of an organisation such as Failblog, for example, or Wikipedia, our profile has been steadily growing over that time.  This means that when people google things on the internet (or use other search engines that normal people can’t name), we often come surprisingly high in the results.  Search the terms “kayak across the Pacific Ocean” or “Downton Abbey series II”, and you’ll find that we come on the first page; often above far-better established and well-known organisations that have written about the same subjects.  This is down, in part, to a lot of hard work on the back end of the website (the bit behind the curtain that can only be uncovered by a small dog named Toto) and in some cases to dumb luck.  What it does mean though, is that we get a lot of web hits from people looking for information that we, as a humour site, are really not best-equipped to help with.  But today, as it’s Sunday, as a special treat, we’re going to pick a five of the search queries that people have used to find us and help some of the people that we don’t think we helped much the first time.  Yay!  Go us.

    • “how much is a pet komoda dragon?”

    In a sense, we feel that we’ve already helped you.  Now, having read our piece you’ll know that “komoda” is spelled Komodo, it ends in an o, and the k is capitalised, as it refers to the island of Komodo.  Where we feel that we may have let you down is in suggesting that a Komodo dragon would make an ideal pet.  We feel that you, a person trawling the internet, actually looking to buy a man-eating wild animal to keep around the home, may lack the necessary sophistication to understand that when we suggest that ownership of a Komodo dragon may be, “advantageous to the health” and that it is “the ideal domestic animal”, that we are not being earnest.  We are being arch and humorous.  Do not buy a Komodo dragon.  Hope that helps.

    • “Can I kayak across the pacific ocean?”

    Firstly, well done on your spelling and punctuation, though both Pacific and Ocean should be capitalised.  We’re sorry that 7 Reasons You Should Not Kayak Across The Pacific Ocean didn’t supply you with all of the answers you were looking for so, right now, we’re going to help you.  We’d like to thank you for your comment, “this was really stupid and i think that this article is not worth anyones time. revise!” and apologise to you.  We’re very sorry that we didn’t supply you with the necessary information you needed to plan your cross-Pacific kayaking jaunt (or to find your shift key).  After all, you’d gone to all the time and trouble of googling it, so you’d been scrupulously thorough.   Here, by way of apology, is a definitive answer for you:  Yes, you can.  You can cross the Pacific with only a kayak and a paddle and require no additional safety equipment or supplies.  And the great thing is that the ideal time of year to make your epic journey is now, so go right ahead!  Hope that helps.

    • “Hot women not wearing clothes”

    Beautifully written, well done.  We can’t help but feel though, that our website may have been a disappointment to you – especially as you landed on a piece in which two men extol the virtues of World War II propaganda – rather than seeing the eye-popping images of unclothed lovelies that you were doubtless searching for.  Today though, we can help.  Though neither of the 7 Reasons team is a hot woman (and we always wear clothes) we can offer you the benefit of our experience.  Because both of the team know hot women that sometimes don’t wear any clothes and, in our experience, the key to meeting them involves spending less time trawling the internet for “hot women not wearing clothes” and more time outside; smiling, conversing, making eye contact, being considerate, courteous, perhaps even flirtatious, but mostly not being seedy.  Oh, and, even though it’s 2011, flowers and chocolate are still good too.  Hope that helps.

    • “left sandal means”

    While we’re heartened to note that our website comes up second when googling this important and presumably oft-searched phrase, we’re a little baffled by it, and we realise that the piece you found about men wearing socks with sandals didn’t help.  So here is help. “Left sandal means” could variously mean; someone abandoned a sandal; a sandal for the left foot; a pair of sandals owned by a one-legged person; you have left Sandal, West Yorkshire (if you’re one of the people that has trouble with capitalisation when using the internet); the financial status of a left sandal; the intentions of a left sandal; you spelled one, or all, of the words incorrectly; you are weird.  Hope that helps.

    • “Hot women not wearing clothes at all”

    Well hello again!  Persistent aren’t we.  Given how disappointed we imagine you were when you first came upon (though that’s almost certainly the wrong phrase to use) our website, we can only wonder at the prodigious level of your disappointment now.  After all, you’ve gone to all the trouble of adding the words “at” and “all” to your Google search and still, there they are, the same (fully clothed) men biffling on about the war.  But today, we’re still here to help, so – in addition to our previous advice – we also suggest googling “how to google” and clicking on the first link that you find there.  Hope that helps.

    7 Reasons will return tomorrow, with humour instead of help.  All this selflessness and benevolence really takes it out of us.

  • 7 Reasons You Should Not Kayak Across The Pacific Ocean

    7 Reasons You Should Not Kayak Across The Pacific Ocean

    If you are one of these hipsters who likes to engage in social networking via the likes of facebook and twitter, it is very likely that one, two or maybe all of your friends have posted a ‘funny’ piece of travel advice they have found on Google Maps. I say ‘funny’ in inverted commas because it is actually a very serious matter. The matter I refer to is the ‘joke’ that tells prospective travellers to make the journey from the USA to Japan via the Pacific Ocean in a kayak. How utterly irresponsible. There are many, many reasons why one should not do as Google Maps suggests, but to save my sanity (and your life) here are just seven.

    7 Reasons You Should Not Kayak Across The Pacific Ocean

    1.  Food. An average kayaker will travel at 5mph. Given that Google Maps says the distance – via Hawaii – between USA and Japan is 2,756 miles, it will take the adventurer just over 551 hours to make the journey. That’s a touch under 23 days. That’s 23 days worth of food you have to take with you. Now, assuming – as is very likely considering the departure point – that the traveller is American, that’s 89,537 calories. Or 92.7 Big Mac Meals. A kayak has storage for about 20 Big Mac Meals. You do the maths.

    2.  Sharks. The good news is, that out of the 440 species of shark found on our planet, only 36 of them exist in the Pacific Ocean. (Approximately. I am sure others visit for a day now and then.) Unfortunately, within the 36 species is the Great White Shark. The Great White Shark accounts for 20% of worldwide shark attacks. And, just before you come back at me with the stat, ‘of the 108 unprovoked attacks within the Pacific Ocean in the 20th century, only five included kayakers,’ let me tell you that there has never, ever been a Great White Shark attack on a plane.

    3.  Paddle. You may have heard of the phrase, ‘Up the creek without a paddle’. For those of you who haven’t, it basically means you are in a very serious situation and you haven’t got a bloody clue how you are going to get out of it. If you drop your paddle between the USA and Japan, you can change the word ‘creek’ for ‘Pacific’ but you can’t change the meaning.

    4.  Iodine. The average human will die if they go for more than three days without water. Luckily, in the Pacific Ocean you will find loads of it. Unluckily, if you drink too much of it, you will also die. That’s because it’s saltwater. If you are going to survive you are going to have to desalinate the seawater. You can do this by either attaching a desalination plant to your kayak – in which case you’ll sink before you even leave the beach – or you can use iodine. You will have to leave ten Big Mac Meals behind, but to survive it is probably worth it. The problem comes when you try and desalinate your beaker of water. You’re in a kayak. On the ocean. It’s bumpy. You have your paddle in one hand, the iodine in the other and the beaker between your legs. Now, I’ve never tried desalinating my penile appendage, but if I did, the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in a kayak, is a place where I know I couldn’t possibly fail. Unless…

    5.  A Sudden Wave hits the kayak. In which case the iodine might go overboard and desalinate the whole of the Ocean. You are going to murder many, many saltwater fish. And you’re heading to Japan. A country that’s built on fish (one in ten fish is eaten there). They’re not going to greet you warmly are they?

    6.  Tankers. Generally these are big ships who have very little interest in small-fry like you in your kayak. Mainly because they are always on auto-pilot while the captain has a snooze. If you just happen to be having a snooze at the same time, you are going to get crushed. And, just a warning, if you do survive, there is no point in shouting ‘Tanker!’ at them and waving your fist, if you do, you’ll miss the giant squid that’s about to squirt you with ink.

    7.  Jovan Pestoric Will Kiss You. In doing my research for this post – I came across the following Yahoo! Answers page where Lovely had asked if it was possible to kayak across the Pacific Ocean. There were only a few answers. One gave Lovely some valuable advice and advised it was not possible. They then said ‘Have fun!’. Then Javon Pestoric announced, ‘yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg if u do it ill kiss u’. I have no idea who Jovan is and, if watching people kayak over the Pacific Ocean is his kind of fetish, I don’t think I want to know either.