Update

So, as I had feared, the workload of "doing a thing" everyday and writing about it has begun to take its toll. I started this week strong at the Mall of America, but failed to take into account how long reading the entire newspaper would take. Thus, I'm behind on all posts, exhausted, and I haven't even touched todays thing yet.

I still really enjoy the idea of the site, and love the opportunity to write and draw, but the whole process needs a bit of an overhaul.

Hence: I'm going to relax for the remainder of the week and figure out a new, more feasible schedule. I want to continue to do things and post interesting and humorous perspectives, but I'm afraid the current schedule will result in sub-par posts.

So I'm going to enjoy the next few days, come up with a game plan, and come at with with fresh eyes on Monday.

Sorry to all ten of my disappointed readers.

O:DAT – Week of January 9th through January 15th

Monday – Walk around the Mall of America for three hours

Tuesday – Read every word in the newspaper

Wednesday – Accomplish three life-improving tasks

Thursday – Put together a one year time-capsule

Friday – Draw on a shirt

Brevity & Levity

Have the best day of work ever


This isn’t a particularly interesting post. I’m quickly learning that some things, however valuable they may be, aren’t worth writing about.


I work in the mornings as a recess monitor at a middle school and in the afternoons as a one-on-one in an after-school program. This being the first week back from a two-week holiday break, the children have been a bit insane.

In both jobs my primary goal was to stay calm, enforce the rules, and have fun.

Notable occurrences:

-       I calmly let a group of sixth-graders know that teasing a small autistic girl was not appropriate behavior.

-       I stood in front of the door and made a screaming mob of eighth-graders wait an extra five minutes before they could go inside.

-       I played 4 games of chess, 3 games of kings corner, and 17 matches of foosball.

And that was pretty much it. The day was calm and uneventful; I focused on positive thinking, and drove home with a smile on my face. No real story here, but if I went into work with this mentality every day than I think I would lead a happier life.

Vicious Viscous

Build a marshmallow mask

Marshmallow mask was an idea that looked fun on paper, but proved difficult in reality. First off, is it a mask that looks like a marshmallow or a mask made of marshmallows?

Here was my final result:

See, I drew a marshmallow shape on a piece of paper, the I cut it out and… No, I’m kidding. That would have been lame.

I picked up the following supplies:

1 needle

1 spool of thread

1,500 toothpicks

1 bag of small fruity multi-colored marshmallows

4 bags of medium marshmallows

Initially I tried stringing together the mallows like you do at Christmas with cranberries and popcorn. My plan was to then coil them all up into a mask-like shape and reinforce with toothpicks. This proved to be the slowest, stickiest task imaginable.

I abandoned the thread and started using a tremendous quantity of toothpicks. It then became apparent that I would need more marshmallows, so I ran back to the store and purchased three more bags.

Finally, I sharpied on a face and quickly attached the separate hair and face sections. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

This is what the resulting mess looked like:

Not wanting to be wasteful I conducted the following experiment:

What happens when you microwave 280 marshmallows for 10 minutes?

Results:

Next: Have the best day of work ever.

Absurdity Ad Nauseam

Discover an Absurd Phenomenon

So it turns out that the phrase “Discover an Absurd Phenomenon” is incredibly vague and open to wide interpretation. This is what happens when the week’s planning process consists of me coming up with random word combinations and making projects out of them, (more on this in the marshmallow mask post).

In the loosest definition, this Do a Thing required me to learn of a senseless or illogical occurrence. Initially I had envisioned this as unlocking some instance of pop-culture correlation, like The Nostalgia Critic did for Big Lipped Alligators. But it could also mean me finding out about something strange I was previously unaware of, or observing a bizarre moment out in the world. So I’ve put together four potential completions, just to cover all my bases.

1)    Discover a strange pop-culture correlation:

All Disney-animated annoying comic-relief characters are dudes.

I know that critiquing Disney movies on a basis of gender roles is a bit played out, but I’ve never seen anybody else cover this. It seems like, in at least one of the fifty or so films they’ve made there would be one funny female sidekick.

Little Mermaid: Two dudes, three if you count the seagull. Beauty and the Beast: Clock-dude and Candle-dude. Aladdin has a whopping five dude sidekicks, (Carpet is clearly one of the guys). Even characters that act like girls, talk like girls, and have girl names turn out to be dudes, (I’m looking at you, Flower from Bambi).

I’m sure I’m missing one somewhere. I haven’t seen every Disney movie, and there are several I barely remember. But even if there’s an obscure funny female sidekick in there somewhere, the tremendous unbalance of it seems like an injustice.

2)    Discover a bizarre moment in my everyday life:

I saw two crows chase a squirrel into the street where it got hit by a car.

That’s kind of it.

3)    Discover a strange cultural movement that I was previously unaware of:

Vore (Vorarephelia)

While randomly surfing Youtubes I stumbled upon a video entitled Voir Clips. It is a bunch of short scenes involving people being eaten my monsters and frogs. Underneath it I found the following unsettling comment:

According to Wikipedia, Vore is “a sexual fetish and paraphilia where arousal occurs from the idea of being eaten or by the process of eating. The fantasy may involve the victim being swallowed alive, and may or may not include digestion.”

Here was my reaction:

But I don’t want to judge other people and their interests, so I will leave it at that. Wikipedia also tells me that if I want to learn more, (which I don’t), I could check out the book Le sexe bizarre: Pratiques érotiques d'aujourd'hui. Which is kind of an awesome name for a book.

4)    Watch the film Phenomenon:

It was really bad.

Haiku Review:

Man with brain tumor

moves pen with mind and then dies.

Schmaltzy as all hell.

Next: Build a marshmallow mask.

A Rimy Run

Run five miles

As far as I can tell, “do a thing”s end up falling under one of three categories:

1) Goofy art project

2) Thought problem

3) Life betterment

That last category ends up being the most personally satisfying, and the most difficult.

I’m no stranger to running. I “played” cross-country from second grade through twelve. I’ve run at least fifty 5ks, and a handful of half marathons. At my very best I was able to clock a mile at 4:24.

The problem, however, is that all of these impressive running events occurred a significantly long time ago. Seven years, to be precise. While a sense of endurance is never lost, things like cardio strength, muscle mass, and general fitness dissipate rather quickly when neglected. So when I decided on Sunday I should run five miles, it was based on a fuzzy recollection of fun warm-up runs and not on the reality of my current physique. Also, I somehow forgot that it is freaking January. That’s how I ended up running a very painful 5.3 miles this morning in -7° temperatures around a frozen lake.

This is the route I took:

Blue Dot: My House

1) Lake Calhoun

2) Awesome Cemetery

3) Businessy District

4) Obscenely Nice Neighborhood

5) Nice Neighborhood

6) My Neighborhood

Here is what I probably looked like while I was running:

I bet you want a close up:

(Not pictured: It was so cold my eyes kept tearing up and little ice crystals formed on my eyelashes and would occasionally flake off and land of my chest.)

While exhausting, and significantly longer than I should have committed to, it was a wonderful run. There’s something magical about a jog that seems to wipe away all worries and clear the mind. I’ll have to do this more often.

As a bit of an aside, Lake Calhoun is a wonderful running destination in the city of Minneapolis. Typically it is surrounded by a wide variety of bikers, skaters, joggers, and walkers. However, in the dead of winter it becomes a bit empty. In my run around the lake I encountered only three living things. Here are drawings of each:

 Hipster in disguise I bet.

Either a large man in one coat or a very small man in ten.

Dog in jacket. I’m pretty sure it was judging me.

Next: Discover a new absurd phenomenon.

Mechanical Mayhem

Make a robot out of spare things in the house

Ladies and gentlemen and artificial constructs, we bear witness to a wonderful birth. At the beginning of this evening my living room was but a mess, littered with cardboard, pvc pipe, and random novelties.

But now, with nothing more than a roll of duct tape and a pair of scissors, a miracle has occurred. Behold: the triumph of the WhoaBot.

Allow my to highlight a few of its many features.

 - Five independent wheels, allowing for fluid navigation and quick travel time.

- An all purpose cup-holder, for safe containment and easy transportation of liquids.

- Intense aviator glasses, serving as both sunlight regulators and style enhancers.

- A Viking hat and a spoon, providing both the image of furious intimidation and an easy means of soup consumption.

- Nitro brand snappers, for the best of surprising, annoying distractions.

- Wolf eye and attractive woman eye, imbuing the powers of wolf and attractive woman vision.

- A guitar, in case a sweet riff becomes necessary.

-Wings and streamers, for the utmost aerodynamic awesomeability.

- A knife, for stabbing.

The WhoaBot will serve as a faithful addition to our household, valiantly protecting us from wrong doers. Here is a picture of him on our front porch, threatening predators with his cold robot eyes of a wolf and an attractive woman:

Notice that his knife was replaced by a metal claw. This is because one of my housemates claimed they “didn’t want the neighborhood kids to have access to a knife.” Pishaw, WhoaBot relinquishes his weapon to no one.

Next: Run five miles.

O:DAT – Week of January 2nd through January 8th

Monday – Make a robot out of spare things in the house

Tuesday – Run five miles

Wednesday – Discover an absurd phenomenon

Thursday – Build a marshmallow mask

Friday – Have the best day of work ever

Saturday – ?????

Some quick notes:

I really enjoyed this last week, and I plan to continue doing things into the indefinite future. That said, with a week of experience under my belt, there's some aspects of the adventure I need to tweak.

My goal of playing in the snow for two hours this past Saturday did not come to fruition. The chief reason being that in the last week all of the snow melted and then froze into giant slabs of sharp ice. I was loath to skip doing a thing, but I was also fairly busy with the holiday and with finishing up the posts on my other goals.

In the future I'm going to leave Saturday up in the air until Saturday morning. Reasoning: I usually do a thing with friends on Saturday, and I would hate to miss out on an exciting event because I arbitrarily decided a week in advance that I would be reading the entire dictionary that day. Also, they might be lame easy things like, "Eat a delicious sandwich," but whatever, it's Saturday.

Also, I would like it to be known that, while I may not get around to finishing a post until a day or two after I do the thing, I'm definitely doing a thing on the day that I say that I'm doing a thing. Except for the playing in the snow thing that I never did. But whenever we get snow again I'm going to shoehorn that one into the do a thing schedule too.

And I'm realizing that even though I think that using the word "thing" over and over in my posts is funny, It's probably kind of confusing too.

Mythology of Midnight

Create a mythos for New Years Eve including symbols and traditions

The Story of Old Man Time

Long, long ago, when everything was just beginning, the universe was a very different place. There was space then, and stars, and planets with their mountains and seas, birds and trees. There were even a few people. But there was no time. No seconds, minutes, months, or years. No holidays, vacations, birthdays, or bicentennials. It was an absolute disaster.

The planets could not rotate and so there were no seasons. Some places were always cold, while others were always hot. Night and day were frozen too. Caterpillars stayed caterpillars, tad-poles stayed tad-poles, and small children stayed petulant and annoying forever. Clocks and pocket-watches were utterly useless, as the hands had no seconds or hours to tick away. People would have been constantly early or late for appointments, but even that was difficult because earliness and lateness did not exist. Even the past and future were impossible, which lent an uncomfortable air of immediacy to everything. It was a dire state of being, and it bred serious people, always uptight and focused on urgency and exactness. One such individual was Old Man Time.

Even then he was quite old, a crooked man with withered arms and a wrinkled scowl. Every busy, he spent his days tinkering and puttering away in his workshop. It was in this way that, late one never-ending night, he came across a most miraculous discovery.

While dismantling a stopwatch, Old Man Time stumbled across the smallest sliver on an instant. With a pair of needle-nose pliers he pried it free. After studying it in great detail with a magnifying glass he constructed a rough copy out of materials lying about his workbench. To his great surprise the two instants folded together to create a moment. Old Man Time busied himself creating more instants and, after a bit of work, arranged them into the fundamental building block of all time: the second.

The minute, hour, and even the day arrived not long after. People all over the earth marveled at the ingenuity of Old Man Time’s creation. They were finally able to take the time to relax and refresh. Plans were being made and appointments were being missed. Butterflies were everywhere for a while, and the first teenagers begin to appear, though sullen and sarcastic. Eventually there was an outcry amongst the populace for more ingenuities of time, and they received the week and, after a long wait, the month. Life and progress began in earnest around the earth.

But all was not perfect in the world. A great many creatures that had previously remained frozen began to stir and slink and creep. Gremlins, goblins, bogies, kobolds, monsters, and other mischief-makers began to cause havoc around the world. Worst of all were the Time Imps.

They came in a variety of shapes and sizes, with claws, talons, fangs, tentacles and beady little eyes. While Old Man Time arranged time carefully and orderly, giving each minute the same amount of seconds and each hour the same amount of minutes, Time Imps would steal moments willy-nilly, sticking them back where they didn’t belong. Time might slow down during an already long lecture, or it might move twice as fast in the morning before the bus arrived.

On top of it all, the constant requests for weeks and months were beginning to take their toll on Old Man Time. He could barely make enough seconds to keep up with the demand, let alone manage to offset the destruction the Time Imps were causing. Thus, Old Man Time made up his mind to move his workshop to a more secluded location. After fashioning enough hours to cover his trip, he began to dig a tunnel deep down into the earth. Though it wasn’t long before the Time Imps, missing their stolen seconds, followed him.

As everyone knows, the earth is made up of several layers. If one were to dig down into the earth’s crust now, they would discover the following:

1) The Mantle

2) The Outer Core

3) The Inner Core

4) The Realm of the Time Imps

5) The House of Old Man Time

Old Man Time build his house as far away from everything as he could, at the very center of the earth. Although, even there the Time Imps found him, surrounding his yard and pestering him with a yowling, shrieking racket. But in his basement, wearing earplugs and two sets of earmuffs, Old Man Time finally found the time to work on his final invention. After weeks and months of delicate calibrations he finally perfected what no one else had dared to dream of: The Year.

Twelve full months all packaged together, including four distinct seasons. What’s more, it was designed to be fully recyclable, packaged in the finest of hourglasses. At the end of each full year, Old Man Time needs only to flip it over, and let the seconds begin to fall again.

And so, after a great deal of time and bother, Old Man Time retired to his bed to sleep away the ages, enjoying the results of his effort. Unfortunately, this is where we come in. For all the gifts he has given us, the old man has a tendency to sleep deeply and for too long. And as he is deep down at the center of earth, wearing earplugs and two earmuffs, surrounded my miles of yowling Time Imps, it can be difficult to wake him. This is why each December 31^st we stay up late into the night, yelling, banging pots, and twirling noisemakers. If we make enough of a ruckus we can wake him. Then he’ll mutter, climb out of bed, stumble over to his workbench, and turn the hourglass for another year.

And if the worst should happen, If Old Man Time turns over in his bed and we never get another second, remember to kiss a loved one at midnight, as it might be your last chance.