This article will be in three parts and is dedicated to my best friend, Blake who is over in Korea until he breaks the 37th paralell and gets sent home. The only thing missing from it is that he wasn't there to help me stupidly risk my life.

There are certain steps to follow to do anything properly. For instance, to get a good grade on a test you cheat off someone who's smart. To make more money off an already popular franchise just make worse movies than the ones you made before. And to fix the roof over the room you rent use the cheepest and easiest possible method.

In that spirit I taped some duct tape over a few cracked shingles. A few weeks later there was water coming in through the hole in the cieling. You see since this is an old leak it ate through the cieling and so a 4 X 1 rectangle of rotted insulation and cieling was cut out. I put in some new insulation and some coardboard over the hole but then it began leaking again.

My first instinct was to commit sepuku for having done such a shoddy job. My second one was to say "screw it" and get on the internet. This plan was perfect as it didn't require me to do anything. I augmented this plan with a bucket and for a long time Operation: Internet Bucket was a huge success. Then, not so long ago, I was out at a convenience store and I remembered a universal rule I learned in school.

For one thing, gum is the universal currency in school. Everyone wants it, even that Ecuadorean kid with no lower jaw. Its prestige is only heightened by the fact that teachers hate it so much. "It makes you look like a cow!" They'd say. "It gets all over the carpets!" They'd say. "Popping it in class is disruptive!" They'd say. "Why are you stealing my trash can?"* They'd say. Yeah, well we proved them wrong, right people?

*A science teacher said this to me because I was stealing the trashcan at the time. Our old teacher was kind of a stoner so we took random stuff from his room and put it in our hideout beneath the stairs. The popular kids got all the prime real estate so we had to lurk there like trolls.

The illicit gum trade was what gave me my first experience as part of a revolutionary cell. When you consider it contraband substances are likely to be at the heart of any liberation movement. Hippies need pot, freedom fighters need guns and C4, etc etc. And so you can see why it's so important to learn how to traffic gum. This knowledge can later be applied to drugs or anything else.

                                   Above: The stuff I used to smuggle during gradeschool. I learned how to keep from being seen handling it and how to ensure that no authorities knew I had it. I would later learn how to put things into condoms and swallow them, but that was in high school, and not with gum.

But why did the teachers REALLY hate gum? Because it makes an excellent tool for patching your roof, of course. It's a well known fact that the Teacher character class is a sub-class of Roofers. The two are so closely related it's a wonder I never realized it before! Yes, it all makes sense now. Teachers are trying to inhibit the production of chewed gum (chewing and human saliva unleash its magical powers) in order to keep roofers, plumbers, furniture reupholsterers, and the entire defense force of the United States in business.

You probably don't believe my suggestions. Oh sure, you say, chewed gum is great for insulating electrical wires or fixing that crack in your engine block, but how can it defend America? Well I'll tell you. Consider replacing Fidel Castro's (a noted threat to the united states because his small south american nation does not want to be a part of the united states) cigar... with gum. He'd get gum all over his beard and be pissed! "Damn those yankee devils and their disregard for my nation's sovereignty and basic human rights!" He'd say. And what about Hussein, Hitler, Gadaffi, Bin Laden? All enemies of the united states have lots of facial hair that can fall victim to the destructive power of gum and shoes as well.

                                                     Above: A terrorist about to flee the scene of a carbombing, realizes that due to the awesome power of American gum he's now going to be a suicide bomber.

And have you ever noticed that most decent god fearing Americans dont have facial hair? For instance, I have facial hair, and you know what a commie I am. That's proof right there. And so you can see why it's necessary to the military industrial complex that gum be suppressed and marketed only as something to chew, and not as the cure-all that it is. Medicinal research to see if gum can help cancer or glaucoma patients has been stymied because the American Medical Association won't give me funding and called me "A crazy assed nut job, medically speaking." Yeah well fuck you guys, at least I know the truth!

With those words ringing in my diseased little mind I went and bought myself a 5 pack of Bubblicious Blue Blowout flavored gum and a 15 pack of Wrigley's Extra Wildberry Freeze. I knew it was time to "stick" it to the man while simultaneously making Operation Internet Bucket obsolete. But when I looked at how high off the ground the roof was I realized I may have bitten off more than I could chew...

Go on to part 2, for a death defying good time!