Living in DC, I've been hearing that there is going to be a big event this weekend. Tomorrow is the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I'll be heading down there along with 5 to 500,000 others. So far, there isn't a lot known about what will be happening down there, besides tons o' fun. However, Gawker has obtained a copy of the official permit, along with a tentative schedule.
If you're also planning on attending the rally, here are a few handy guides to help you enjoy your sanity restoring and/or fear making:
WhoRunsGov.com has put together a restoring sanity "Survival Guide." It includes a handy map of places in the DC metro area where President Obama has eaten.
Colbertrally.com has a list of restaurants that have rally food and drink specials. The Passenger has a drink called the "Fear Monger", which is Kraken rum, lime and ginger beer. Awesome!
A woman outside of Philadelphia (seriously, what's wrong with this city?) drove the wrong way (in what appears to be the station wagon from National Lampoon's Vacation) on I-95, at more than 50 mph, and caused four accidents (luckily, no one was seriously injured). Seeing this I was reminded of an Ole and Lenna joke.
Ole was so excited to get a new cell phone, he decided to call when he was on his way home from town. He thumbed Lena's number as he turned on to the freeway.
"Lena put supper on, I'm on my way home."
Lena says, "Be careful because I hear some nut is driving the wrong way on the freeway."
"It's worse than that Lena: where I'm at there are a hundred cars going the wrong way!"
Zombies are everywhere these days. They’re storming the Lincoln Memorial, they’re in our video games, they’re being spoofed on Community, they're appearing in our political cartoons, and they’re coming to AMC. This weekend AMC will premier their new drama The Walking Dead. There have been ads for The Walking Dead all over the internet, TV, and I’m guessing the radio (I don’t listen to the radio ever) for weeks now, and I’m excited for the show to start, if only for the ads to go away. I’ve been seeing so many ads for The Walking Dead, I’ve started rereading The Zombie Survival Guide and making a list of items I’ll need when the zombie apocalypse eventually hits*.
Given that you can’t go online, turn on a TV, or walk through the National Mall without seeing a zombie, now is the time to ask if zombies have “jumped the shark”? The answer is of course, no, not at all. First off, zombies can’t jump (again, see Max Brook’s The Zombie Survival Guide, so there’s no way that they could literally jump a shark. Second, zombies would just eat a shark if they came across one. Finally, they will never stop being culturally relevant (In 2012, Brad Pitt will be staring in World War Z, also a book by Max Brooks).
Zombies fulfill so many different themes that we love. For example, people being put in impossible situations where they’re forced to do anything to survive; people trying to survive and then reform civilization in a post-apocalypse world; people forced to turn against the one’s that they love to survive; etc. So, get used to the fact that zombies are here to stay. Stay in this weekend, avoid the zombies roaming the streets, bars, and brain depositories, and watch The Walking Dead. You might just learn a few things that will keep you alive when Z-Day comes.
*Bolt action rifle, ammo, machete, rations (seriously, watch this video!), signaling mirror, crowbar, rope, etc.
Have you ever wanted to throw tiny pies at tiny bugs? No? Well someone has, and they've built a trebuchet to do just that. And I think that I'm bored at work.
Scott toilet paper is going tubeless. That's right, no more cardboard tubes in your TP. They say that every square is usable (even the last square has no glue on it), but I don't know how it'll work. I am imagining that it's got to be tougher or more rigid than my typical Charmin, but it's got to be worth it to not have all that wasted paper. I love technological breakthroughs that I can wipe my ass with. USA! USA! USA!
One of my favorite places to slack off online is Slate.com. It's a great online magazine that has interesting articles on politics, television, technology, etc. But one of the things that really separates it from other online magazines (I'm looking at you Salon.com) is it's ability to showcase large ideas in neat infographics.
Case-in-point, Slate unveiled a map that shows gains/losses of jobs in each county across the United States every month. The map is animated and progresses from January 2007 to August 2010, showing the beginning of the depression recession, until today. The results of the economic meltdown is as clear as day as the country starts bleeding red and then slowly starts to stop (maybe the stimulus actually did help?).
Slate's ability to aggregate information and present it in an easy way helps me actually sound somewhat intelligent when I talk to people about serious matters. Only somewhat though. Slate also has all those fun complete time wasters, like a video review of PediPaws.
Last night I went to trivia night at a local bar and realized that I don’t know about enough trivial stuff. I mean, you’d think that surfing the Internet all day and reading random blogs, news articles, and copious amounts of sports articles would prepare me to run away with any trivia night. That turns out not to be true unfortunately. What it does prepare you for is coming up with (I think) terrific team names.
My keys to coming up with a good team name are:
1.Topical – Your team name should show that you don’t live under a rock and that you’re “in the know” with current events. Try to make sure that the events are current and not several months old. For example, do not reference Tiger Woods’ mistresses any more. That is tired and is old news now. Move on because the rest of the world has too.
2.Humorous – Make the quiz master laugh, at least to him/herself, and if you can make the rest of the bar laugh when they hear your team’s name the better. Often times there are prizes for best team name, so even if you suck at trivia that night you can still win something. Plus, being funny is way cooler than being smart. Who wants to hang out with Steven Hawking when you could be hanging out with Louis CK? No one.
3.Self Deprecating (if possible it can also be self defecating too) – This ties in the other two keys to make it a triumvirate of awesomeness. Often the best humorists poke fun at themselves and point out their own flaws so others may laugh with/at them. This serves as a good defense mechanism in case you do end up sucking at trivia, because you can always say “I knew that we sucked, so we put it right in our team’s name”.
Slacking off at work and reading blogs (including this one) can help you with your trivial knowledge and take you to the top of the standings at the end of the night. But, there’s always that one category that you’re going to suck at (who cares knows if raavi* is a type of cheese or a font? Not me, that’s who), so make sure you’re prepared to dominate the only part of trivia night that actually matters by having the best team name.
Did you know there is a Netflix app for the iPhone? Did you know that this is the greatest thing to happen to slacking at work since they included Solitaire on Windows 3.0? Is this a bit of an overstatement? Sure it is, but hyperbole is a basic tenet of blogging.
With the Netflix app for my iPhone, I can watch movies and TV at my desk without worrying that some IT person is going monitor my slacking and send HR to storm my desk and stop my fun. The app works well over the 3G network and stalls infrequently. This means that I get to watch all the dorky shows that I want while having my computer monitor display email messages, Word documents, spreadsheets, etc. Right now I’m getting paid to watch the entire Battlestar Galactica series.
I think that this app is best with series, especially Sci-Fi series. I’ve watched the entire Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on the phone, and that seemed to be perfect. However, that was just an entrée into dorky Sci-Fi series. I’m excited to finish BSG and then move on to something even dorkier. Maybe I’ll start Sliders next?
I love baseball. Watching games on TV is fine, but it pales in comparison to actually going to the games in person. It’s a great time sitting in the stands, watching the game in the warm sun (a marked departure from my M-F workweek). One of the things that I’ve wanted to do is to go to all the MLB ballparks. I’ve only been to a handful, so I’ve been trying to plan a “baseball road trip” that would put a large dent in my goal to see all 30 parks.
Since I don’t have any actual work to do from 9-5, I figured I’d create the ultimate baseball road trip spreadsheet. It started as a few teams’ schedules for the month of May 2011, and grew into every team’s schedule for the entire 2011 season (it doesn’t include game times yet, but I plan on adding those when the times are released).
This is the ultimate time-filler at work. I didn’t need to worry about anyone stopping by my cube and seeing me reading gawker.com, or watching South Park online, because it looked like I was working on a detailed spreadsheet. Slacking off while looking extremely productive FTW.
Apparently Michael Bay was in town filming Transformers 3: The Dark of the Moon (seriously, that's the title) and had a run-in with the police (pun most definitely intended). Check out the clip on gawker.tv. In it Bumblebee rams into a DC police SUV with it sirens and lights on. My guess, Shia was driving and thought that there was something more then met the eye about the vehicle.
One of the best ways to waste time is to listen to podcasts at your desk and stare blankly at an Excel spreadsheet (more on spreadsheets later). I’m a big fan of The Daily Show, and one of my favorite parts of The Daily Show is John Oliver. Now you can get another fix of John via his podcast The Bugle. If you’re a person that enjoys the news and also enjoys satire, puns, and complete b.s., then this is the podcast for you.*
*If you’re a person that doesn’t enjoy those things, then screw you. Go work on being productive and being successful. Jerk.
So, you're bored at work, you have checked facebook 10 times in the last 15 minutes (why won't anyone comment on that funny video I posted?!), and are looking for somewhere else to waste time until lunch. Why not waste some time here?
I have an excellent job where the main requirement of me is that I show up for 8 hours a day. On average, I do about three hours worth of work per week. Read that again. I’ll wait while you do. Done? Good. This strenuous work schedule allows me plenty of time to find distracting things to do on the internet that are SFW.
My goal is to pass on my time-wasting skills to you so you can get from 4:15 to 5:05 (you don’t want to be the first person out of the office. The extra 5 minutes makes you look hard-working) without tackling any items on your to-do list.
