After work yesterday, on the drive home, one of the local radio stations was conducting their daily "Drive at 5" music challenge, wherein they take a current popular song and play it backwards, or fast-forward, or whatever, and challenge listeners to guess the song. Yesterday's "Drive at 5" was particularly challenging, and for no reason that I can come up with, I said the following out loud:
"Boy, that's trickier than wiping your ass with a cat. (TM)"
Which, I should state, for the record, I have no experience that I'm aware of when it comes to wiping my ass with a cat (TM). But, I imagine it's probably pretty tricky. You'd have to use the back of the cat and keep the paws pointed away. Also, I suppose you could use the cat's tail for any detail--or even any internal--work that needs to be done. It would also depend on the demeanor of the cat in question. If you have a docile cat, the process would probably be pretty streamlined and uneventful, whereas a resentful, squirming cat would likely put a bit of a fight.
Whatever the case, it's got to be pretty darned tricky to wipe your ass with a cat (TM).
Which should give you an idea how tough yesterday's "Drive at 5" challenge actually was.
UPDATE: I almost let this momentous day slide without realizing today is the one year anniversary of the term ThunderJournalist. Thankfully, LEARNEDFOOT TOOK NOTE. He even made his own online QUIZ so you can see if you're a ThunderJournalist.
VIA SHEILA, we get:
The Hogwarts Challenge!
GRYFFINDOR:
[ ] You’ve never done drugs.
[x] You have a lot of friends.
[x] You get along with everyone.
[x] You love football.
[ ] You love baseball.
[x] You’re into writing and art
[x] One of your favourite music genre is rock.
[x] You believe in “innocent until proven guilty” theory.
[x] One of your favourite colors is red or gold.
[x] Good grades at school.
[ ] One of the worst things you can do is lie.
[x] You plan on going to college.
TOTAL: 9
HUFFLEPUFF:
[x]You’re content with mostly everything in your life right now.
[x] You laugh a lot.
[ ] You like to follow trends.
[ ] Politics suck.
[x] You love to swim
[ ] Water polo is awesome.
[ ] Pink is one of your favourite colours.
[x] Black is morbid & depressing.
[x] You’re an optimist.
[ ] You’re very emotional.
[ ] You believe in going steady at a young age.
[ ] You haven’t made fun of anyone this month.
[x] Loyalty is the MOST important thing in a relationship.
TOTAL: 6
RAVENCLAW:
[ ] You’re depressed to a certain extent.
[x] You love to read.
[x] You appreciate theatre & arts.
[ ] Sports suck.
[ ] Hate is completely unneeded.
[ ] Indie is one of your favourite genre of music.
[x] Every once in a while you have little anger outbursts.
[x] Lying is sometimes okay.
[ ] Blue is one of your favourite colours.
[ ] Knowledge is the key to power
[ ] Sarcasm is the best kind of humour
[ ] People should know what they’re talking about before they talk.
TOTAL: 4
SLYTHERIN:
[x] There’s at least one person you hate.
[ ] Basketball is a good sport.
[ ] Football is amazing.
[ ] Black is a cool color.
[ ] You’ve lied about something serious
[ ] You’re a very deep person
[ ] You are not very loyal.
[ ] You like heavy metal.
[ ] You make school seem more important than it is.
[ ] You’re scared to grow up.
[ ] Anger is one of your primary feelings.
[ ] You have trust issues.
[ ] Guilty until proven innocent.
Total: 1
Honestly, who would say water polo is awesome?
Jody says: I think Reg and i are going to the grand canyon in September
Jody says: crayon...canyon...look too much alike
Ryan says: The Grand Crayon would look considerably different from the Grand Canyon.
Jody says: I wonder if it would be taller or narrower?
Jody says: depending on if it was laying on its side
One thing I'd like to be able to do during my impending vacation to Yellowstone is to be able to post about our daily (mis)-adventures and experiences, including pictures. I think that would be kind of fun and entertaining.
However, I'm not particularly sure how to go about such an endeavor. Firstly, I don't have a laptop. Nextly, I don't imagine WiFi is all that plentiful whilst camping amongst the bison anyway.
I suppose there may be Internet cafes dotted here and there along the plains, but that probably would only be good for text posts and would do nothing for my desire to post pictures.
Or, maybe I should just divest myself of all such thoughts entirely and focus instead on, you know, being on vacation. I don't know if that's possible. So many consecutive days cut off from the online world will probably drive me nuts. I don't know. I guess we'll see.
I really didn't think human beings were capable of stupidity bordering on neanderthal until I started reading YouTube comment threads. Honest to God, you're forced to wonder if their education consisted entirely of reading and re-reading a single National Enquirer from 1982.
As a person who writes and edits for a living, it's enough to make me ill.
Yes, you may have noticed some changes to this ThunderJournal over the last week or so, or year, whatever.
I'm trying to finally figure out the language of the Internet, which started when I purchased "HTML For Dummies" back in 1999, which I never actually read, but figured I'd learn it because I owned it. Oddly enough, that wasn't the case.
Since then, there's been XML and WebSphere, and some other such weird stuff I've never tinkered with, but sort of known about, but never explored, and now I'm attempting to do that.
There was a time when I was a pretty good golfer. I actually received a varsity letter in golf my 8th grade year. I'd been golfing so long, I didn't even really think about it, which is really one of the key aspects of the sport: to be so familiar and comfortable with it, you don't even think about it.
Well, around the 2001 timeframe, I fell away from golf and started focusing on martial arts, including hapkido from 2001 to 2005 and Brazilian jiu-jitsu from 2005 to the present. The result being, when I do deign to weild the golfing blade, I find myself thinking about way more than I probably should.
When you think too much when golfing, you set yourself up for all sorts of crappy shots. If you think, for example, about how you want to avoid going out of bounds, chances are you'll go out of bounds. If you don't want to hit that nun crossing the street, there's a 90 percent chance your ball will seek out and hit that nun crossing the street.
Putting presents its own mental hang-ups. Starting around 2003, I developed a debilitating mental block when it came to putting. No matter how hard I tried, for any putt longer than 10 feet, I'd pull my putter toward me just at the point of contact with the ball, sending the ball in completely nonsensical direction nowhere near the cup. I tried a variety of pathetic fixes to counteract this disastrous effect, including using a chipping iron on the green, which must be against the rules, but I didn't care.
This year has been the first in ages that I've been able to get out regularly on the driving range and the putting green, and for the most part I've managed to smooth out my erratic golf game, although my putting problems still crop up from time to time, and I find myself thinking far too much when it comes to whacking the ball.
There was a time when I could golf nine holes in the low 40s and consider that an "okay" round; while yesterday I hit a 43 and felt like I deserved a parade. Until I realized I had been golfing with a 70+ year old man who also hit a 43, at which point I was humbled.
I can't believe I lettered in 8th grade.
