Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

Take the song Yakety Sax from Benny Hill, mix with sped up video footage, and let hilarity ensue:

From Star Wars Episode I (the fun begins about a minute in):

From Star Wars Episode IV:

From Pirates of the Caribbean:

Lord of the Rings:

and even The Matrix:

and from the original TV show for reference:

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

A man was killed and four others injured during a stampede at a Wal Mart yesterday (via). At what point did people lose their humanity? I saw no reports about the store closing due to this tragedy, nor anything that indicated people cared about anything other than getting their cheap Chinese-made crap. Wal Mart obviously did not do enough to prevent this, but what about the herd of people? What made them think it was OK to just charge in like a pack of wild animals? What ever happened to civility?

Ah, the day after Thanksgiving. As we awake from our Tryptophan induced comas let us revel in some truly random stuff:

Everyone watching the parade got Rick Roll’d:

The Swedish Chef prepares a turkey:

Can you guess who drew these hand turkeys on Abstruse Goose? My favorite was the Mathematician one.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I am thankful for a lot of things, foremost my wonderful family and friends. I am thankful for the opportunities granted me through my employment and education. I am thankful to live and work in such a nice area. And so much more!

I’m not sure why I thought of this story, maybe because of Thanksgiving coming up, but I was thinking back to a time at least 12 years ago, when I was still an undergrad. I had gone home for a break, maybe it was Thanksgiving break, maybe Christmas, I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t summer.

I had brought my friend Ian’s guitar home for him because I had room in my car for that. So one afternoon I left my Mom’s house, guitar in hand, all set to drive to Brooklyn to deliver the guitar and see my friend when as I closed the front door I had the realization that I was missing something. My keys! Dammit! I left my keys in the house and guess what, I’m locked outside now! Luckily for me I had a spare key to my car door, just the door not the ignition since the key was in case I accidentally locked my keys in my car, so I locked Ian’s guitar in the trunk so I didn’t have to lug it around all day. Then I decided I would walk to a pay-phone, remember this is in the days before everyone had a cellphone, and call my Mom. I told her I locked myself out of the house and would be at the Diner down the street if she could pick me up on her way home from work. I also called Ian and told him I was an idiot and couldn’t get his guitar to him until tomorrow…

I then walked down to the Diner and hung out for a couple of hours. I don’t remember if I had much money with me or what, but I know I didn’t order much. And you can only take up a table for so long before the waitress wants to get someone else in. So I walked around and eventually wound up hanging out in the lobby of the diner.

Now, you have to remember, while the substance of my character was much the same my outer appearance was less mainstream than it tends to be these days. My hair was down to my waist, my beard was bushy, I was in my normal clothing, which was jeans, T-shirt, flannel, with my leather jacket and either Chucks or combat boots (I don’t remember exactly what I was wearing). It was an interesting sociological experiment. Most people ignored me. Some looked on with disgust. But one group of people were the Good Samaritans, and it struck me as ironic. They were the stereotypical looking biker gang. From the tough-looking guys to the bad-ass gals, society would have you think they’d just as soon rob you than help you. But of all the people who passed me by it was the bikers who actually stopped to talk to me. They asked if I was all-right. They offered me a ride if I needed to go someplace. They were genuinely concerned about me. I knew I would get home soon, so there was no problem, but it was nice to have at least one group of people notice that I was there. I find it most gratifying that it was the seemingly least likely group who did stop.

I’ve told this story before, because I like it and its don’t judge a book by its cover twist. Still all these years later, I still remember it. Thank you anonymous group of bikers, you made my day that day!

It’s Willie, it’s reggae, it’s all good!

There’s also a version with Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash that is really good.

Welcome to Western New York, where the gas is the highest price in the contiguous 48 states. New York has the third highest gas prices, just behind Alaska and Hawaii and WNY has the highest gas prices in NY state.
Right now our prices are $2.37/gallon, which is still better than the over $4 we were paying, but is still almost $0.40 more than the national average.

Current State Average Gas Prices

Average Gas Prices Falls Below $2.00

more animals

Since Chinese Democracy is being released tomorrow, Dr. Pepper is honoring their statement that if the album was released in 2008 they would give everyone in the USA a free can of Dr. Pepper.

Details from this news article. You can listen to Chinese Democracy on GnR’s MySpace.

So, I was talking with someone yesterday about ways of spending time on things that aren’t really that important. Note I didn’t say wasting, I’m assuming you know why. I thought about a week about 12 years ago when my friend Justin decided to run an AD&D campaign in one week. He is an excellent story teller and game writer so he had it down perfectly. We played it like a job. For an entire week, Monday through Friday we’d start gaming at 8:00 AM and play until noon. Then we’d take an hour for lunch and game again from 1:00 until 5:00. That was one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had. It was so much fun. I often think it would be fun to try to do something like that again, but realistically that would be impossible. Even if I somehow wound up with an excess of time the chances of finding a group with a similar amount of time would be near impossible. I think that scheduling is the biggest barrier, which is probably why single player games are so much more appealing to me now, no need to try to find convenient times for a group.