I can’t quite recall the first time I heard the name Aron Ralston. I beleive I was first introduced to Aron’s story by Maddox, though it appears his description of what happened in May of 2003 differs slightly from Aron’s account. According to the man himself, while canyoneering (whatever the hell that is) in Utah, a boulder fell on his right forearm, crushing and pinning it against the canyon wall. For over 5 days Aron was trapped; completely unable to free his arm or move the boulder… and he eventually made the (insanely ballsy) decision to cut off his own hand. He knew it was the only way he would be able to get out of the canyon, so he took out his dull multi-tool and got to work.

GOD. DAMN.

Now, reading a description of an event is one thing. I’d heard this story for years… but hearing the man himself describe in detail every moment of his “home” surgery is something completely different. After watching this video of Aron describing how he was able to break the bones in his arm and cut off his pinned, decaying hand, all I can think is, “oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my dear fucking god.” I can only hope I would be able to follow in his example if in the same situation… but honestly, I really hope I never have to find out. Check out the following video and tell me you don’t feel the same way:

RECAP: I’ve been collection all of the movie tickets for every movie I’ve seen in the theater for the last 11 years. A few weeks ago, I decided to take all of the information on these tickets and create a spreadsheet to find out exactly how much money and time I’ve spent on going to the theater. For a full description of what this madness is all about, check out this previous post.

Well, the results are in! I’ve successfully tabulated all of the movie tickets in my collection, the first of which dated all the way back to April 11, 1997. It was long, monotonous, boring work, but damn it, it was something that needed to be done. I’m sure I missed a few tickets here and there throughout the years, but this certainly paints a pretty clear picture of my theater-attending habits. Here are some of the results:

Number of Movies Seen: 258
Total Spent on Movies: $1,602.25
Total Amount of Time: 498 Hours 39 Minutes

Okay, now let’s break this down. 258 movies means I’ve essentially seen a movie every other week for more than the last decade and during that time I’ve spent nearly 500 hours watching them. Dizamn. That’s nearly 21 straight days spent in a theater seat being bathed and in the majestic glow of a movie screen… which is roughly 2 straight days a year. Mind you, this doesn’t include any time watching previews, though more often than not, that can be offset by the fact that I didn’t sit through the full credits on most of the flicks on the list. Then we have the fact that the $1,600 figure doesn’t include the thousands I’ve spent on concessions while seeing these movies… as any proper film-fanatic would agree, popcorn is absolutely required to properly view a movie in the theater.

Here are some more interesting facts I established while making my list: