Great new tv series idea

I think this could totally work: Extreme Weddings.

mda met yesterday w/Kevin & Allison. K&A are part of that pseudo-Wiccan group that we see in the big city pretty much every solstice and equinox (or around there--next equinox party is Oct. 8--go figure). Anyway, he met w/them at his cabin in order to have some alone time w/them, b/c he's going to be their officient. They're getting married at the edge of a path in a state park about an hour from here. mda mentioned that there are big rock faces creating this secluded cavern like feeling (it ends in a little waterfall). We were trying to figure out how the bride & groom, and their families, will arrive at the destination, since there's only 1 way in. mda suggested to me that they should rapell down the rock faces, which led to some speculation on how Allison's mom would feel about that.

That's how we came up with the idea for the reality tv show, Extreme Weddings. Each week, a different wedding in extreme situations. So far, we've come up with weddings while surfing in Hawaii, parachuting, being on top of a volcano, walking a tightrope between two high rises, scuba diving, on top of Mt. Everest, and something in the Amazon.

mda would be the officient for all of them. We imagined some of the problems he might encounter. Being bitten by a sea turtle in the surfing wedding, having the soles of his shoes melt on top of the volcano, and "I just don't like the Amazon, ok. I don't like it." He'd have to stop smoking if he's going to perform a wedding on the top of Mt. Everest. The public would love him, and he'd get to go on David Letterman.

Who have I made happy lately?

Happiness is being well-off with poor friends
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 15/08/2005)

Money can indeed buy you happiness, but if you want to stay happy it is a good idea to have relatively poor friends, according to new research.

Prof Glenn Firebaugh, a sociologist of Pennsylvania State University and graduate student Laura Tach of Harvard University studied a representative sample of nearly 20,000 Americans from 1972 to 2002.

They found that in working out how rich they are, people tend to compare themselves to their peers of the same age. Their happiness, therefore, depends on the relative success of that group. This meant "keeping up with the Joneses" and the need to continually increase one's own income.

One alternative strategy would be to "hang out" with poor people, according to the findings.

I think, actually, that among all (or most) of my friends, we probably engage in a round-robin style trading of happiness vs. poverty. It all works out in the end.

I feel like I have a purpose in life!