When baiting a dragon, the best bait is dragon meat; Fresh, if you can get it, which you can’t, unless you have tiger blood, which you don’t. When baiting the rad, you must use only the raddest of baits, and therein lies my trouble. How does one of less than spectacular Tubularity attract the attention of eyes not used to focusing on things less wonderful than a drunken Pegasus hitting on a unicorn?

     With these challenges in mind, I’m putting together a list of pledges. Lists, really; I need pledges to do both before the inevitable purchase of the house, for the purpose of persuasion, and after, for the purpose of immortalizing the act. The second list is actually easier than the first, as seen with these tantalizing tidbits of that which is called the rad:

     -Charlie will be treated to a dinner at our new home, if he likes. If available, badger and manatee will be served in the finest of saffron sauces. If unavailable, we will have to recourse to the significantly less rad beef or chicken, but it will strictly be referred to as badger, in an effort the minimize the loss of awesome.

     -I will commission a large heavy metal-style airbrush of Charlie and Bob Dole, bound hand-to-hand with hemp ropes, knife-fighting on a log suspended over a pool of unicorn milk. Bob Dole’s knife will be made out of Mithril, of course, while charlies will be one which he makes by closing his eyes and willing a knife of pure energy into existence, spontanious telekinetic sword-smithing being the only method of arming oneself compatible with his all-fantastic-all-the-time credo. Charlie will, of course, be clearly and substantially winning.

     -I will watch an episode of Global G.U.T.S, the seminal nickelodeon american gladiators knockoff, every day for for two years, in an effort to determine where radness begins in a young person’s life. If available, I will buy charlie a piece of that glowing rock which formed G.U.T.S mountain, so that he can feed off it’s energy like a plasma leech.

    These are all just a start, obviously. I want to pay the purchase of the house forward in a number of rad ways that even I can’t think of yet; but with time, I will develop my rad sense to a razor suitable for carving statues out of the most bitchin’ marble available.

-Ben

    Charlie Sheen’s very nature demands that he only does that which is Rad in the raddest fashion possible. Other peoples cars get stolen, but Charlie’s fly off of cliffs, exploding in an appropriately spectacular fashion. Some men dream of the companionship of a beautiful woman; Charlie is assembling a herd of them. When he did drugs, he didn’t half-ass it; by quitting, he has reportedly created a quantum singularity over Columbia that will threatens the very fabric of the universe(citation needed.). However, this singularity is also reportedly the raddest possible, spewing out amazon women riding magical jaguars and bearing flagons of the finest ale.

    With that being said, why would Charlie do something as mundane as buy a house for a random dude who is monogamous, doesn’t party either all night or every day, and is by all accounts only somewhat rad, at best? To understand this, we must delve into the emerging field of higher Radness theory, which was developed in the late nineties by Scott Baio and a sentient motorcycle named Gnarley.

    There are three basic types of Radness: Unilateral, Multilateral, and Omnilateral. The easiest to understand and attain is Unilateral, where a person attains complete mastery of one field. Evel Knievel is a good example; he could jump a motorcycle over a series of buses or a river in the raddest fashion imaginable, but you rarely if ever heard about him getting in a barfight with a dinosaur.

    Multilateral Radness is harder to attain, but still common enough examples aren’t unheard of. In Multilateral Radness, one must become rad in two or more fields. Gene Kelly is a good example, as he could sing, dance, act and act. The extra “act” didn’t make him a quadruple threat, but he was of course eligible for the elusive double Oscar. Where other triple threats were content to do these things with humans, Gene chose to do these things with a cartoon mouse, thus cementing his place in the Radness hall of fame.

    As amazing as Evel and Kelly were, neither of them attained Omnilateral Radness. Omnilateral Radness demands not only that everything that one chooses to do must be rad, but that one chooses to do every rad thing possible. To be Omnilaterally rad, an examination of all aspects of a person’s life must generate uniform reports of radness. A Unilaterally Rad person might be one who has seen a unicorn, for instance, while a Multilateral Rad would both see and tame it. An Omnilaterally Rad person, however, would see and catch a unicorn, then ride it to a battle with an evil magician and rescue a princess. The Omni-rad hero might then marry the princess and all of her female relatives, and set up a traditional pub with the unicorn called “The Horn and Awesome”.

   Charlie Sheen is on the cusp of Omni-Rad status, preparing to breath the rarefied air breathed by such greats as Genghis Khan and Han Solo. To stop cusping and plunge himself into the sparkling waters of the universally awesome, however, he lacks two key components. The first, a totally bitchin’ van, is easily attained. The second, however, is key and often overlooked: A Omni-Rad must be Rad in the exceptional as well as the mundane.

   While Charlie’s performance in the extraordinary is undeniable, it can only be part of the equation. There is a huge demographic that understands why 24-7 parties are awesome, but there is an equal or perhaps larger segment of society to which that brand of radness has no specific appeal. To these people, a more broad approach is necessary.

   I’m not suggesting Charlie needs to do an equal amount of extraordinary and mundane things; a grain of the mundane would counterbalance a ton of the extraordinary. I suggest that buying me a relatively cheap house would do this nicely and that the current charlie-crazy media would distribute the news nicely, putting him that small step closer to the valhalla of the truly rad.

Tomorrow: Pledges.

    Charlie Sheen has tiger blood. People laugh about this statement, but its apparently(if metaphorically) true; by all accounts he pounds rocks harder and faster than John Henry. He has mythical parties where Zeus boxes Thor on a platform made of kneeling women bound together with golden chains while David Bowie and Snoop compose epic songs commemorating the event on the spot with perfect form.

    I, on the other hand, have a distinct and conspicuous lack of any type of large-feline hemoglobin. My blood is by comparison closer to that of a meerkat; I’m wily, non-predatory, and I live in a hole. I mention the hole because the other thing I lack in a real way is a house; I’ve condemned myself due to a string of non-winning behavior to a streak of apartment living.

    Charlie Sheen, it should be noted, could buy me a house, but whether he should buy me a house is, in my mind, contingent on whether or not it can be proven that such actions would be significantly radical; my quest, then, is to first explain in substantial terms why this would be awesome on a level equal to the Sheen and then to draw the eyes of the man himself down to these writings with some kind of vigorous internet semaphore.

    Today the project begins: tomorrow, justification(and perhaps a house. Probably not tomorrow, though, unless the internet is more magic than I understand it to be.)

-Ben