California

Hey peeps! So right now I am at the Halifax International Airport getting ready to board a flight which will ultimately take me to California. I will post more about it in a future blog, however if you would like to follow me in realtime you can follow me on Instagram under the handle "ricdiculously". See you in the states =)

The Most Dangerous Game

Have you heard? Bird is the word! More specifically, The Birdman is the word.

The Birdman Game is a game of honor, skill, and minor inconvenience. It can be played with as little as two players and no upper limits on the maximum amount of players. It can be initiated anywhere and at any time (some exceptions apply, see Rule#13). Those who stare into the eyes of The Birdman must suffer the penalty. Those who refuse lose their honor and suffer shame. Once you play, you play for life.

I have searched the internet and their are a few posts on how to play The Birdman Game. I have even noticed that someone recently posted a wikipedia article on the subject. My post is far superior to these because I was introduced to The Birdman directly by one of it's 3 founding members. As such, I have compiled below a list of the rules for those who wish to play...the most dangerous game!

Rules of The Birdman Game:

1) Any player who looks at another player who is in the Birdman position (pictured above) must lie flat on their back, regardless of where they happen to be or what they happen to be doing. (Note: There is no specific length of time that a player has to lie down once attacked. As soon as the player lies fully down on their back they are free to get up again)

2) If however the player who is under attack manages to throw up the block sign before looking at the attacking player, he or she has blocked the Birdman attempt successfully and does not have to lie down.

3) A player who has been successfully birdmanned may take a total of 3 steps before lying down.

4) When two players Birdman each other, the effect is cancelled out and neither player has to lie down.

5) If a player is birdmanned while driving, he or she must get out of the car and lie down at the first possible opportunity.

6) Birdmans may be stacked based on quantity of attacks. For example, if a player is birdmanned more than once before laying down right away, then they may be stacked at intervals of 5 seconds each to a total maximum of 9 times. In other words, if someone is birdmanned 9 times before laying down, they must then lay down for a total of 45 seconds. The stacking rule also applies to group attacks, ie. If someone is birdmanned by multiple players then that person must lay down for a total of 5 seconds per attacker.

7) Peripherals may be used to detect an attack. As long as no direct eye contact is made the player who is under attack does not need to lie down. Abuse of peripherals however will lead to an indefinite suspension from play. Multiple abuses may result in a lifetime ban.

8) When a person looks at himself in the mirror while in the Birdman position, that person must lie down. This is known as "suicide".

9) Pictures, videos, and drawings are all legal. For example, if someone sends you an email attachment of themselves doing The Birdman and you look at it, you must immediately lie down.

10) If a player is already laying down and is successfully birdmanned, they must stand up before they can continue lying down.

11) If player 1 watches player 2 get into the birdman position with the intent of birdmanning player 1, player 1 does not have to get on the ground. However, according my friend who is a proven founding member of the game, player 1 may in fact be birdmanned while watching player 2 go into the birdman position with the intentions of attacking player 1. However, it is not important if this rule is played the original or the modified way. Whichever way is generally accepted among a group of players in a given area is ok to play.

12) The Birdman Game is a game that shatters ethnic, cultural, gender, and social barriers. No one may be denied the right to participate.

13) Play can be suspended for a limited time. For instance, if a group of players belong to church or are coworkers at their place of employment, gameplay may be temporarily halted. However, all members must unanimously agree to any such suspension of play.

Let the games begin!

Shawarma, Assemble!

Despite the title of this post I did not in fact assemble any Shawarma. Instead I went out and bought a dozen of them for my friends and I to have on our movie night. I didn't get any pictures of the Shawarma, but that's ok because I have something far more awesome up my sleeve:

Yes, you are actually seeing what you think you're seeing and, yes, you can get your very own shirt just like it. There's only one place I've come across that sells this shirt so far. It's a little pricey but it was worth every penny!

The Avengers are a group of awesome super heroes who eventually assemble into something even more awesome and who go on to save the world. Shawarma is a group of awesome ingredients that eventually assemble into something fiercely delicious and has probably saved the world? My point is that Avengers + Shawarma = one freaking sweet marriage of epicness!

Of course the whole idea behind this stemmed from the movie itself, where Iron Man (aka. Tony Stark, aka. Robert Downey Junior) tells his fellow Avengers after the action-packed final battle that he is seriously craving some shawarma. He doesn't know what it is, he admits, however he's always wanted to try it. This leads to the hillarious scene after the credits of all the Avengers gathered around and enjoying a meal of shawarma together.

I know what you're all thinking: How cool would it be if I had my OWN Avengers/Shawarma party. Well you've come to the right spot. I'll show you EXACTLY what said party looks like:

 

The moral of the story: You need a Shawarma/Avengers shirt. Also people. Plus there's a movie.

Anywho, I think we can all agree that my shirt looks pretty sweet. Speaking of sweet, I had a few friends over the next night, and one of them brought a few props. Why couldn't I have had these on Shawarma night?

 

So that's essentially how Shawarma Avengers Night, and the ensuing after party, went down.

Fun With Trivia

Here in Nova Scotia we have this little flyer you can get at most coffee shops and fast food places called the Flying Cow.

I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere but it's not coming to me right now.

In one of their recent editions they printed a different front page but kept all the other pages from their flyer last week. Each week they print trivia on the front page, with the answers to the questions usually found on the inside cover. Needless to say, it made for some interesting answers to the trivia questions. I've listed 4 of the 5 below and their corresponding answers:

1) What musical movie has the song "It's the Hard-Knock Life"?

If you answered "Annie" you are wrong! The answer is actually "80.5km", a movie about a bunch of orphans who hijack a school bus and other stuff happens and also there's Jay-Z.

 2) What drug did the University of Pennsylvania animal-behaviour clinic prescribe for depressed dogs?

The answer: "1960s". Because nothing says mind-bending drugs for canines like the 1960s.

4) Whose marriage was headlined in Variety as "Egghead weds Hourglass"?

The answer:

Iron!

What the...?

5) What two-word term is defined as "the lowest possible temperature"?

In the past I would have said "absolute zero" but according to Flying Cow I'm dead wrong. The real answer is actually Truman Capote.

So now when you feel chilled, instead of saying "Man is it freezing in here!" you can say "Man it sure is Truman Capote in this place!"

I don't know how to end this post so I will simply end it with the following picture:

 Majestic!

Also, you're welcome.

Sorry to Hear Your Grandmother Died Before You Could Bake Her a Present. That Must Have Been Like, So Pissy.

Lately I've been using the bus for all my transportory needs.  There are a few perks.  For example, money.  I've been saving a ton of it. 

Plus I occasionally get treated to a few rather amusing sights, such as this one:

I can't tell if this is an ad placement fail or a juxtaposition win. 

Of course nature has a way of restoring the money saving/spending balance.  Since I am without a car I find it hard to get to the grocery store from time to time, and have seen my fast food intake increase significantly, thus countering the money that I save.  Other examples include when I was a young lad with my first car and totalled it just as I got a nice juicy tax return that I was going to spend on some fun youthful past-time.  The irony that the few money issues I have are tied to my means of transportation is not lost on me.

I think what I love most about the bus though is the ambience and the lovely conversations that take place that I otherwise would not normally be privy to.  Just the other day I happened to be directly in front of a delightful young woman and her companion, and was treated to the following little bit of ear candy:

Girl:  So I have all these like, sculptures that I've been procrastinating on. Some of them need to be baked, a few of them still need to be glazed, and then there's this one sculpture I made for my grandma, but then the kiln broke down, so I couldn't give it to her, and then she died, which was really pissy.

Poor her.  I felt bad for her and set out to find her a card.  Hallmark doesn't exactly make a card for quite these situations.  So I went and made her my own. Mine's awesome 'cause there's a dinosaur on the front.

I didn't exactly get a forwarding address, so I hope she reads my blog.  It's all about the healing here at Science Fiction Fantasy Stamps.

Time Travel and Other Randomness

Today I began a week of vacation from work.  This will be a nice change of pace for me.  The other day at work I spent some time on the phone trying to set up someone to view their account online.  When it came time to type some in some numbers the gentleman asked me if I he needed to type in the zeroes, and I told him he did.  Then he proceeds to ask me: "Is that upper-case or lower case zeroes?"

The call lasted 45 minutes.

So yeah, this is a nice change of pace.

I was looking thru the to-do list on my phone, which has piled up quite high recently, when I came across one item in particular that caught my attention:

"7:10pm, 12/06/2011; re: time travel to Josh's car"

It was then I had remembered the lively debate me and a friend of mine were having while driving in his car about whether or not time travel was actually possible.  The discussion went back and forth until I finally told him that I was going to make a note of the exact date and time and time travel to the back seat of his car and pop up in about 30 seconds just to prove him wrong.  I was pretty disappointed when my future self didn't show up to help me out in my debate.  What a jerk!

Either that or I simply never get around to inventing backwards time travel.  In my head though I've always lived in the future or in the past and never quite in the present.  Really though we're all time travellers, moving forward into the future one millisecond at a time.  The trick is making the most of that millisecond and letting each successive one determine what our future will be like.  In other words, the key to living in the future is living in the present, and key to living in the present is learning from our past.  As Doctor Brown once told Marty McFly, our future hasn't been written yet, it's whatever we make of it.  So make it a good one.

That doesn't mean I won't still continue my work on time travel, if only to spite Josh.