It has been around three weeks since I last posted an entry here at blogoramma central.  There are a few reasons (excuses) for my lack of typing.  If it will make you any happier with me choose one of the following:

• I was abducted by the Christmas/New Year season.  I was blindfolded and driven to an unmarked location where I was forced to assemble toys for my children, host holiday festivities, drink my body weight in egg nog, perform a last minute comedy show (with Ozymandian) for a room full of people who had decided to bathe in various forms of booze, catch a cold that is lasting longer than M*A*S*H*, all while trying to paste a Joker like smile on my face.
• I was recovering from a birthday dinner that left me in a state of utter gluttony.  If I would have my dinner at a cave thousands of years ago with my cro-magnum friends UGG and ARRRG they would have been offended by my lack of dinner grace.  I shoved more red meat in my joke maker then Jaws did in all his movies. 
• I have been playing way too much Rock Band 2.  If you drive past my house and hear the mating sounds of a Wookie just know that it is me attempting to get 5 stars while singing "We got the beat" by The Go-Go's.\
• I am not sure what it is I want to say. 
• I have been spending all of my free time monitoring the Yellowstone Caldera. 

Ok.  That last one is not really true.  I have only been paying attention to it half the time.  Like I said the other half has been spent with me doing my best Belinda Carlisle impression. 

Have you ever heard about the Yellowstone Caldera?  If so, awesome...you must be like me and watch the Discovery Channel while waiting for Desperate Housewives to start.  If not, well get ready to get Roeducated* on the subject.  (*Roeducated is a word that I just made up.  Sweet..huh?)



This is a picture of Yellowstone National Park that lies in Northeastern Wyoming and Southern Montana.  It is an amazing and beautiful place, and I highly recommend you pay a visit to it!  It is filled with geysers, mud pots, waterfalls, and incredible wildlife.  There is truly no place like it on Earth.  It is a major sin that I a lifelong Wyomingite have only visited it a couple times in my life.  That is like living in 80's and not watching Miami Vice.  What you may not know about this wonderful slice of nature pie is that four miles underneath all of this beauty is a forty mile wide pool of molten rock.  (on a side note: during my brief run as a professional wrestler I went my the name Molten Kid Rockk.  Yes the other K is there on purpose.  According to my manager it was supposed to add some intrigue to my persona.  It never happened.  It turns out that there is not a market for 5'2 wrestlers who are afraid of conflict.)
Just think of that....forty miles of angry magma that is searching for it's Huckleberry.

If that were to ever fully blow it would be considered a "Super volcano".  (Which, come to think of it, would have made a much better wrestling name)  If that Caldera were to explode it's 600 mile blast radius, two week eruption, and the million tons of pure ash would reshape North America and the climate of the world.  Please keep in mind that the chances of that ever happening in our lifetime are more remote then me buying the winning Powerball ticket while riding a Unicorn that was being repeatedly struck by lightning.  Or in other words the chances of Yellowstone Super volcano are as likely as The Detroit Lions winning a Superbowl.   (cheap shot?  yep.)  So do not let my fearmongering get to you.  The beast ain't exploding anytime soon. 

The last such monster eruption was figured to have happened over 600,000 years ago.  They have had smaller eruptions since (like about 70,000 years ago) but even those are very unlikely to happen in our lifetime.  Even though the chances are less then remote that it will ever happen I had always been fascinated/horrified that I lived near such a geobomb.  (Geobomb...is another incredible wrestling name.  "Now introducing in the blue corner  "The Amazing, slightly rotund Geobomb!")  I am often a person who buys trouble and I worry about things that make no sense to worry about.  So you can imagine my nervousness when on Dec 26th I read about how Yellowstone had over 100 minor earthquakes in one day!!  I remembered from a really scary video I saw once on Discovery that one of the first signs of the Caldera bringing it's heat topside is Earthquake swarms.

Immediately I put on my Tommy Lee Jones costume (am I the only one who remembers he played a seismologist who studied Volcano's in the cheesy 90's flick "Volcano??) and went to work trying to figure out what was going on.  Over the next few days Yellowstone had almost 500 mostly small earthquakes that seemed to travel northward through and past Yellowstone lake.  Since my house is 470 miles away from the heart of Daddy Magma (theres another one!) I knew that I was in the suburbs of lavatown.  So in true Roedel manner I started to go from worry level 1 to worry level 55.  I did not go as far as to actually go all Y2K, but I did keep my eye on the news. 

You might remember stories like this one from Time.

Of course the Super volcano never came, and since the 4th of Jan most of the activity vanished.  However since my unrational fear of sulphuric clouds is now subsided I am left with volcano hangover.

The reasons why Volcanoes explode is to let out the pressure of what is building beneath them.  It is healthy.  Venting of yucky gases, molten rock, and the steam that is buried inside is natures way of going on an "Oprah-endorsed cleanse".  I just wish that there was another way for the Earth to let it all out.  Maybe The Yellowstone Caldera should visit Dr. Phil?

I think I am a Caldera...we probably all are in someway or another.  We burying things inside.  We conceal pressures and hide trouble deep inside the bedrock of our heart.  On the outside we smile and make ourselves look pretty...while in the inside we might be struggle.  The surface may look calm, while underneath there are plates grinding against each other, and steam building. There is only a matter of time before sooner or later we all erupt.

That is not a bad thing either. 

It is important to let it all out and to get rid of all that poisons us.  Unlike Captain Yellowstone we have the ability to control how it is we explode.  We can erupt in joy and decide to let all of the needless anger go.  We can explode in creativity and find ways to vent our frustrations with some sort of project.  At New Years we make pledges to ourselves to do this or do that...and at least for me a year later I am making the same pledges.  Maybe I am not getting rid of all of the crap that is stored up four miles deep inside of me.  Maybe in order to do that I need a spiritual Super volcano explosion.  One that reshapes my own landscape, and changes the climate in my life. 

I think that a good venting every now and then is good.  Don't be like Yellowstone and wait over 600,000 years to go off.  Waiting to long is when we can cover people around us in emotional ash.  Just find a way to let go of whatever is bubbling inside.  It is doing no good down there.

Like the earth beneath us we are changing and moving everyday.  Perhaps in order to move where it is I want my life to go I need to just let my Caldera blow. 

Hmm..  Johnny Caldera.  Now that is the name of a wrestler.  I wonder if it is taken?  Or how about a new Rock Band 2 name?  I like Johnny Caldera and the New Age Lava Monsters.


See the people walking down the street
Fall in line just watching all their feet
They don't know where they wanna go
But they're walking in time 

We got the beat 
We got the beat
Yeah 
We got the beat