Jason Vorhees’ Arsenal: Can A Murder By Road Flare Teach Us Railroad History?
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Jason has killed a lot of folks with a lot of different tools. His victims may wonder, “Who is this man? And why is he murdering me?” Meanwhile, we the viewers want to know, “What is that tool he’s using? And what’s its history?”
Wonder no longer.
Today: Road Flare
As used by Jason in: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
Victim(s): Vinnie (Lit flare is forced into his mouth)
What do you get when you cross strontium nitrate with a bunch of boring crap? That’s right! Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” covered in strontium nitrate! I would have also accepted “the Arctic (or Indian) ocean filled with strontium nitrate!” “A road flare!” or “Lunchables!” Yup. Typical red-flamed road flares ignite and burn by way of strontium nitrate mixed with a stupid fuel source like dumb sawdust. Or moronic charcoal. Or something extra retarded called a “polymeric resin.” Most flares ignite at around 375 °F and burn at a wicked pissa hot 3,000 °F – the exact temperature of Satan’s bones (for this reason, most Mormon’s refuse to use them).
YOU CAN DRAW SORT OF! Some people have gone as far as to call strontium nitrate “The Best Nitrate” due to its use as the colorant in red fireworks. Can you draw red fireworks? Good. Can you label the picture “fireworks” so people don’t think I asked you to draw a bunch of buttholes? Perfect. Now, go ahead and draw a butthole next to the fireworks. It’s okay. People will just think it’s another firework. Really, though, it’s a butthole. And the butthole is watching fireworks.
What you know as “road flares,” your dead hobo grandparents knew as “fusees” (or “railroad flares”). On ye olde raily ways, when no one had radios and everything was crashing into everything else and then catching on fire and exploding, a train travelling an unsignaled line would drop flares to announce its existence to the train behind it. If that train encountered a burning flare, they stopped until the flare went out. Often, a conductor would use this time to quickly grope as many sleeping passengers as possible. Conductors would share their numerical groping stats with other conductors at the conductor bar. The conductor with the most gropes from a single flare wait won a day off. This is where we get the phrase “groper’s holiday.”
YOU CAN DRAW SORT OF! Railroad flares had spikes attached to them so they could be embedded in wooden railroad ties. Draw whatever you were actually thinking about when I was telling you that boring fact. Extra points if it has more than eight nipples or fewer than one head.
Road flares are also used to prevent forest fires via controlled burns – li’l baby fires ignited to clear away excess plant debris and keep fire breaks intact. Flares are also used in backfiring, a wildfire fighting technique that employs localized, low-intensity blazes, which burn off a progressing fire’s potential fuel sources. Like Smokey the Bear says: “Only you can prevent forest fires. And sometimes that means setting forest fires. But don’t set forest fires. Unless they’re the type of forest fires that actually prevent the other, non-preventative forest fires and… ugh. I tell you what – how about everyone just lights fires in sets of three and we’ll just count on it sorting itself out.”
YOU CAN DRAW SORT OF! Fighting fire with fire! That’s crazy! But sometimes it works. Draw a scene where something you’re afraid of is defeated using more of that thing. Examples might include an erupting volcano placed upside-down on top of a second erupting volcano so the volcanoes just erupt into one another, 2 police lieutenants shooting each other in the face, or something with two sandwiches. Maybe they have flare guns.
You tell me it’s a firework exploding a firework, but all I see is two buttholes inhaling each other.
Thank you, Jason, for helping us learn through murder.
Join me again soon for another thrilling installment of Jason Vorhees’ Arsenal!
FUN WITH YOUR PARENTS’ STUFF! Breaking ice without an ice pick can be really hard! Try it! All you need are ice cubes and some of your PARENTS’ STUFF! Try crushing the ice with your mother’s jewelry box or the butt of your father’s handgun… try to chip it on the computer keyboard or smack it with the buckle of the Time Out Belt… try as hard you can to break it against the big window in the living room. See why ice picks were so useful?




