Outcome Altering

How about that stock market?  I accidentally dropped a dollar into the sewer today and cried.

That being said, I’m sorry not to have posted, but work’s been hectic.  I’ll assume all’s been forgiven and forgotten (*crickets chirping*).

Anyway, I’ve had an interesting idea.  Mainly, it revolves around the fact that the Internet has incredible potential to anyone wanting to get a message to invade culture.  I don’t mean advertisements, that is something that has pretty much met its full potential on the Internet (I mean to say that if it were to go any further I’d swear myself off the Internet for good).  I mean a message with some meaning could be spread across the nation and further.  Lolcats and rickrolling are examples of this, but imagine if whoever made the next lolcat-type meem had an agenda.  What message would he spread?

Could he spread a good message, one that will tell people to save the world from global warming or some other nonsense?  Could he send a bad message, one that would taint the reputation of a presidential candidate and turn the tide of an election?

Look up the Church of Scientology protests and maybe it will become a little clearer.

Cottonelle for Kleenex

This morning on the bus, I overheard a conversation.  I did not have a newspaper to read or a Blackberry to keep me busy, so I kept busy on the personal lives of all the other passengers.  Unfortunately, I wish I hadn’t heard it.

A man and a woman to my left, further back in the bus, sat in silence until the man broke it with “My ass hurts.”

The woman was probably at least a friend of his, and asked, “Did you hurt it by sitting on your fat ass too much?”

“No, but I’m pretty sure how.  It kind of sucks.”

The woman was amused at his pain.  She asked, “What did you do?”

“Well, a week ago I didn’t see that there was only one sheet of toilet paper on the roll.  When I used it, I was stuck on the toilet.  I leaned over to get another roll from under the sink, but when I looked, there wasn’t one there either.  I thought for a few minutes, and then I grabbed something else from the bathroom.”

“Eww! A Towel?” She was horrified.  So was the woman next to her.

“No! No, I tried a tissue.”

She looked at him, and he looked back with sincerity.

“It was actually kind of comfortable.  Much softer than toilet paper, but– I don’t know, I guess I must have had a reaction, because I’ve had a rash off and on for the last week.”

Everyone within earshot was wiggling in their seats.

Pranking at the Restaurant

I’ve recently hurt my left index finger, so it may take a while to learn how to replace it with my middle finger while typing.  Anyway, I’ve recently had some funny ideas on how to prank an eating establishment.  Why would you want to prank a restaurant?  Maybe you know the manager, maybe the service was horrible, maybe the waitress has an attitude– you provide the reason, I provide the pranks.

Warning: A lot of these pranks are a bit juvenile and some of them can get you banned from ever coming back to the restaurant (it has happened).  Seriously think about it before trying and do not do it if it is too extreme.  Some of these even I will not do.

Waiting

Some restaurants force you to wait.  This is a perfect first opportunity.

• If calling ahead for reservations, call with a complicated foreign name or almost dirty sounding name (careful, some may hang up thinking its a prank call).
• Or, even better, say it like “Ka-Noots,” but then spell it “K-N-U-T-Z” even if they don’t ask you to.
• When you get called, chances are it will be someone other than whoever answered the phone.  Make sure you make a big deal out of him/her mispronouncing it.
• Tell them your party is twice as large as it is, and the others are still coming.  Sit separated from each other as if the others will show up soon.  When you order deny you ever mentioned your party was larger.
• Have your entire party bring handkerchiefs.  Cough, sneeze and wheeze into them, pretending to fill the entire waiting room with germs.

Ordering

Chances are, your waitress/waiter is used to quirky people.  That’s why you have to take it up a notch.

• When ordering drinks, make sure you express a lot of interest in the soup du jour.  Ask the waiter about every ingredient and act as if you are savoring it.  When ordering the food, forget all about it.  Ignore the waiter when he mentions it.
• When the drinks come, switch orders with your party.  Pretend that you ordered the iced tea and your friend next to you ordered the Coke.  Make sure you make the waiter do all the switching of glasses.
• Try to see if you can order an entree as an appetizer.  Insist on it.  When it comes, wait for everyone else’s entree to come before eating.
• Insist on seeing the dessert tray before you order an entree, even if the restaurant doesn’t have one.
• If there are a lot of people in your party, have one person order something and have everyone else, one by one, say they’ll have what he’s having.  Each time, he’ll have to make a new number on his pad.  Likely, the waiter will have to check if they can serve that many of a particular entree.  Even if he comes back to say it’s okay, have the first person change his order and, one by one, have everyone else change their order to that entree.
• Try to use coupons for fast food restaurants (for things your restaurant has), like free coffee or medium soda.

At the Table

Sometimes food can still be a long way off at this point.  Try to see how much you can get away with without being kicked out.

• Everyone fall asleep at the table.
• Go through all of the bread in the shortest amount of time possible and keep asking for more.
• Play the Left-or-Right game with waiters and waitresses carrying trays of plates and meals.  Basically, walk through the aisles aimlessly until you and the waitress are walking toward each other.  Try to block her path by figuring out which side she means to pass you on, and then walk towards that side.  Then switch simultaneously with her.  See how long this can go on.
• Take out McDonald’s Happy Meal toys and play with them at the table.
• Be loud and obnoxious until the manager comes out.
• Light stuff on fire with the candle at your table.
• Play sword fights with the bread sticks.
• Have one member of your party change into a grim reaper costume in the bathroom.  When he comes back, have him stand behind another member of your party for as long as possible.  Have everyone ignore him completely.  Either stay there for the remainder of the meal and exit with the rest of the party, or have a watch alarm go off and walk out alone.
• Transform the table into a mobile office.  Do your best to bring laptops, land line phones, a cork board with papers and pictures tacked on to act as a cubicle wall, pen cups, staplers and as much other stuff you can think of.
• Take out food you brought with you and start eating it.

Eating

Here is what you’ve been waiting for.  Hopefully, you haven’t completely filled up on bread.

• Make “OMNOMNOM” noises as you eat.
• Ask for extra napkins (if paper napkins).  Hide them when you get them (most restaurants give you hundreds to begin with) and ask for more.
• Treat your non-paper napkins like tissues.  Blow into them very loudly.
• If you are a man, ask for the ladies’ room.  For a woman, ask for the men’s room.  Do not make it seem like you are asking for someone else.  Then, go to the correct room (they’re usually near each other anyway).
• Take a blender from out of your bag, find an outlet, and puree your food.
• Wear rubber gloves while eating.
• Drop anything you can find at your table into your drink.
• Count every french fry and complain that “there are only 56 fries.  Last time you gave me 61.”
• Don’t eat any of your food, have it wrapped, and have the waiter send compliments to the chef.

Paying and Tipping

The waiter and management thinks this is their big payoff, but it’s actually your big payoff.

• Sign your name as something goofy on the check.
• Doodle all over the merchant’s copy of the receipt.
• Tell your waiter the mints were the best part of your meal.
• Instead of the pen they provided, use a pink pen.
• Better yet, use red ink and mark the check with a circled “C+,” noting all the poor quality foods on the check itself, and marking “good improvement” on the bottom.
• Leave the waiter grocery store coupons for tips.
• Leave the waiter a gift card for the restaurant you are at, if they have one.

The Exit Prank

Only do this once you are ready to leave.  I’d advise against actually doing this because the ensuing chaos could be dangerous and I am pretty sure it is breaking some law.

Disperse your party amongst the restaurant’s empty tables.  Before any of the wait staff realize this, walk a few steps into the kitchen so that you cannot be seen by anyone.  Count to five slowly in your head, and once you have reached five, come out and scream “Someone has poisoned the soup!” at the top of your lungs.  At this cue, have everyone else in your party scream and run towards the exit.  Hopefully, the entire restaurant will do the same.

This is my most epic post ever

Vacation Over

So, I took another long vacation without telling my adoring fans (*crickets chirping*).  Anyway, the results on my first test are in, and after two weeks of waiting… only one person who searched with one of my adjectives came to the site.  “Unexplained thing in the air” is not at all interesting either.  As a matter of fact, this person could have searched “ufo” to say the same thing.  Uggh, failure.  Hopefully my second test will yield more satisfying results.

To make matters worse, two bad things happened to me recently.  First off, the power adapter to my laptop stopped working while I was on vacation, trying desperately to find a wireless internet connection to hijack.  According to my girlfriend fiancee, there was a spark; I only heard a pop and fizzle behind me.  This post is being written at work after hours– how pathetic.

Secondly, there is a boa on the loose in my building.  The upstairs tenant says he went missing a couple days ago, and that he might be getting hungry.

Psych: Coolest Video Ever

You have been directed here thinking that this post has something to do with what you searched for.  Perhaps it was cool tennis balls, crazy trampoline sports, or the hottest gophers.  I’m just going out on a limb to say you did not type cool, crazy, or hottest in the search box alone.  Chances are, though, that your descriptor is a word on the left of this post.

I am conducting a test to see what sorts of words follow those adjectives.  It is in the world of the Internet that a blog post listing just “birds” does not keep the average user’s attention.  It is only by calling it the “coolest bird ever caught on video” does it seem to be worth a net surfer’s time.  I will post a follow up to this later.

Thanks to learnenglish.de for all the adjectives

Psych Studies

I’ve kind of had this piqued interest in psychology, specifically Internet-based mentality, recently.  Therefore, I propose to create a few tests to satisfy my curiosity.  I already have a couple tests planned out, one of them you will find out about soon.  The other one may require a bit of setup before I post it.  I should wait before saying anything else.

This is truly exciting.  On a separate note, yay 25th post!

Comic Anxiety: Public Restrooms

So I’m doing my business.  I’m in the first stall in the row and the only other gentleman currently in the room is in the stall on the opposite side.  I remember being amused by a vandal’s posting on the stall’s wall: “Toy Story II was O.K.“

That’s when I heard a pair of sneakers walk into my room, an unseen hand push against my stall door, and then on the one next to mine with more success.  As he sat down, I grabbed some toilet paper.  Then I heard a loud sound of liquid streaming that I was not quite expecting; it sounded as if he had been standing.

I looked under our conjoining wall and saw those sneakers defying my expectations; he was in fact sitting down.  I pondered the short list of possibilities and checked them against my small knowledge of pee physics, and concluded there was no explanation, unless…

I had acquired a somewhat nervous sweat.  I half wished that a woman had accidentally entered the men’s room, but I knew the chances were slim.

Now, I know that public restrooms are not an easy topic for those whose bottom parts do not match the rest of their gender’s.  Still, it was unsettling for me to encounter this and so I write about it, not to offend anyone, but to recount my embarrassing experience.  With that, I write on.

So I hastily continue grabbing toilet paper and I hear the loud piddling noise stop and he starts unrolling toilet paper.  As I get up, I see him get up too and confirm that there was no mistake.  I cannot remember if I had flushed or not, because I was too busy focusing on him and how to get out of the bathroom before him.  I do not want to have to face him.

Unfortunately, he and I came face to face at the sinks.  He noticed me looking at him and said, “Hey.”  I did not say anything. I came this close to the door when I slipped.  I think I banged my head, but I got up right away and said, “Sorry.”  I’m not sure what the thought process for that was.  My head hurt, so I guess I had an excuse.

As I left, the janitor entered.  He brought a “Wet Floor” sign.  When I got home, I remembered that I forgot my briefcase in the stall.

I’m not so sure I like this dark theme anymore.  Still deciding.

Newsroom Snickering

I am a night owl, as most would clearly see by the time I am writing this post.  The news just before late night TV shows give me all the news I can afford to watch, coupled with another half hour of reading the Times before going to work.

But I’ve noticed something recently between the anchorman and anchorwoman on WCBS’s 11:00 news.  At first, it was just a little bit of teasing that both parties were guilty of, but now it looks to be jokes not unsimilar to those tossed around between fictional newscasters on Family Guy.  The other night, I heard the anchorwoman ”Coming up, a publication that [anchorman's name] has his heart set on joining,” or something similar.

Sure enough, the story was on the new FDNY calendar, where New York’s finest firefighters pose to help fund raise, I guess.  After the story, the anchorman stated he took offense to the earlier comment, and she said, “Oh come on!  You love to look at yourself.”  And then to sports.

I figure someone should record the news every day to keep watch of their antics and edit them together.  I see this getting more and more juicy.

The Smart Phone

I know you have all been eagerly awaiting my Smart Phone idea for a while now (yeah, I know, no one really cares).  So here it is, the ultimate home office/small business phone.  Just keep in mind that this is just an idea I came up with, not an actual prototype or anything.  I could never afford to actually build one, though I believe all the technology is out there.

My original idea: a phone that is useful to the home office or small business owner and has the same power as a large corporation’s answer system plus a ton of more features and personalization options.

Features:

• Usability as a normal, run of the mill, house phone
• Ability to hook up with any computer with installed software and a USB port
• All phone features are also capable of being accessed on computer including answering (which enables phone’s speakerphone), holding calls, forwarding calls, call waiting switch, switching lines, sending to answering machine, turning off phone’s ring or switching volume levels 
• Caller ID LCD screen and the power to save a list of all calls with time stamp on your computer (and a list of most recent calls on phone itself if not connected).  List viewable on computer and phone.  Caller ID can show on computer itself.
• Phone is capable of making calls through Skype
• Can use a non-DRM protected MP3 as phone’s ringer as well as several built-in rings
• Can be connected to other Smart Phones through LAN
• Can use computer software for several answering options including: regular answering machine that plays recorded message and stores messages on phone or on computer, a text-to-speech translated “robotic” answering machine that reads from a text file off your computer that can then forward the call to another line, a touch-tone enabled phone answering system, or a combination of any of the above ideas.
• Waiting music comes from a set playlist if enabled
• Call forwarding easy for transferring a call to cell for when you need to leave
• Dialing gets easier with keyboard shortcuts
• Finding numbers gets easier with phone company Caller ID lists and on line directories both integrated
• Of course, phone still functions when computer is off

Now you can see why I added the Creative Commons license yesterday.  I’d be honored if someone actually made this phone, though.  If you take the challenge, let me know first.

Aaron Watch: Days Five and Six

Aaron is no longer under my care after tonight.  That’s all I can say.

Also, in hindsight, I wish my fiancee could have seen how much of a trooper I have been.  Too bad she had to travel for work.