Gone Viral

In  1989 the following memo was sent out to IBM Engineers:
 
"Mouse balls are now available as FRU. Therefore, if a mouse fails to operate or should it perform erratically, it may need a ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should only be attempted by properly trained personnel.
Before proceeding, determine the type of mouse balls by examining the underside of the mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ depending upon manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be replaced using the pop-off method. Domestic balls are replaced using the twist-off method. Mouse balls are not usually static sensitive. However, excessive handling can result in sudden discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be used immediately.
It is recommended that each replacer have a pair of spare balls for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction, and that any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing these necessary items."

This Memo is still circulating today, due to it's obvious sexual innuendos.

The next E-mail gone Viral is The Bill Gates Beta Test,
Here is one version of that Email:

Subject: FW: Microsoft and AOL merger
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999
I'm forwarding a forwarded message...read on, it it works you may get $$ from Microsoft. Certainly Bill has enough to share-maybe today we'll be blessed financially!
I am forwarding this because the person who sent it to me is a good friend and does not send me junk. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet company and in an effort make sure that Internet explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $5.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $3.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $1.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a check. I thought this was a scam myself, but two weeks after receiving this e-mail and forwarding it on, Microsoft contacted me for my e-mail and within days, I received a check for $800.00

This email has been in circulation since 1997. This shows how gullible Americans are. Over 10 years, and this is still around!

The shake weight has also gone viral. Videos like the one below have millions of views, just for the sheer comedy of how it looks when it's used. According to Wikipedia "Infomercial clips of the modified dumbbell have gone viral as a result of the product's comically sexual suggestive nature.^"



My personal favorite Viral ads are the Old Spice commercials.

There are tons of these ads on YouTube, some only a few seconds long, which add to the hilarity. One of the most famous lines from these commercials is "I'm on a horse."

The game Line Rider is one of the most popular internet games to date.

You can play this game at Linerider.com. I remember in middle school this all people did when we had time in the computer lab. Many schools have blocked the game, do to the obvious distraction of students.

The photos entitled "Bert is Evil" have become wildly popular. Look below, and have a chuckle.

Tandem Bikes

http://www.40kradio.com/archives/1135

Tandem bikes seem like a lot of fun.

Or they seem romantic.  

They're not. They're terrifying. My neighbors rented a tandem bike a few years ago, and rode it up to our driveway. They rang our doorbell, and when we opened the door, we were very excited to see this mutant bicycle in our driveway. My neighbor asked me if I wanted to ride on the back of it. I did, and I think I screamed in his ear the entire time. The first thing we did, was roll down our steep drive way, then took a sharp turn to the right onto the road. The bike tipped precariously and righted itself at the last possible moment. My neighbor kept pedaling faster and faster, I had no choice but to hang on and hope for the best. At the end of the road he made another sharp turn to go back up the road. I screamed some more. I yelled "let me off, let me off." He laughed and steered the bike back up the driveway. I leaped off and thanked god for my life. 

Children and Glow Sticks

There were seven children. It was the kind of babysitting job where I was told to put them to bed "when they felt like it" and one parent told me they could play outside, and one told me to keep them inside. There were six boys and a girl, making for a very rowdy bunch. They were jumping on the couch (the very expensive couch, I might add) right in front of their parents, who didn't seem to mind. I sighed, knowing I was in for a long night. When my patience was wearing thin, I found the glow sticks the parent had left for us to play with. I opened the packages, and in a matter of a few seconds all the glow sticks were gone from my hands, the kids rushing off to the basement to play in the dark. One child was in the bathroom when I was being mauled for glow sticks, so he had none. I led him to the basement and asked each child to give him two glow sticks. You think this wouldn't be a big deal because the other children had at least 25 glow sticks, but it was a battle. I had a stare done with many children. Finally the issue was resolved, and 7 glowing children were happily running around the basement. One child had a brilliant idea to combine all their glow sticks and build a huge glowing circle. All the children agreed except one who decided to make his own smaller circle. Soon six of the children were sitting in the large circle. They were taunting the 7th child saying "You can't come into the circle!" I walked by the circle, and one of the children yelled "Don't come in the circle of death or we will kill you!" The other children cheered. I pretended I was going to walk into the circle, taunting them back. As I walked away a child ran from the circle, pulling me towards it. I, being bigger, could still walk away, but then multiple children grabbed on to me and dragged me into the circle of death. I was promptly tackled and sat on. The oldest child his foot on me, and said "I'm king of the world." It was quite an experience. I don't think I've ever been quite so bruised from babysitting.

The Toilet of Despair

I can still see it now, it was a beautiful Sunday in June, we were having a family reunion up at my uncle's cabin. The rain had just cleared making the roads and walkways muddy, and the grass squishy. We didn't mind much because we were dressed to go out on the lake, and play volleyball and soccer. The cabin was beautiful, with a wood burning stove, and overstuffed couches and chairs. I downed a soda, not thinking to look where the bathroom was until my bladder was nearly bursting from the carbonated beverage. I looked all around the cabin, there were no bathrooms, only a small room containing a sink. That's when I realized that the bathroom was outside. It was an outhouse, it's just what I imagined it would look like, you know, just like in the movies, with a little moon shaped piece cut out of the door. I got up my courage and I threw open the door, the stench that hit me was almost unbearable. My uncle saw my face, and made a crack about how it hadn't been cleaned out after his hunting buddies were over. The image that popped into my head was not pleasant. I saw an overweight redneck man sitting on that toilet, grunting to get out of his body whatever was creating that ghastly stench. 

I closed my eyes, and took one more deep breath of fresh air before entering the bathroom. The door closed behind me, and the outhouse was dark, except for a little light that was coming in from the window... that was right next to the toilet. I threw my hands up, and shouted "seriously" forgetting to hold my breath, and breathing in a massive cloud of the stench. I ran gagging out of the bathroom. I called for my sister and asked her to guard the window for me, so no one could invade my privacy. She complied. 

I made my way back into the outhouse, locking the door behind me. I did my business. I looked around for a sink, but only found hand sanitizer. I was devastated, I felt like I needed to shower this stench off of me. As I try to leave the bathroom, I can't find the lock, thus I am trapped inside the outhouse of despair, and I realize that I cannot possibly hold my breath any longer, and I am forced to breath in the stench once again. I am afraid I will get cancer from the stench. Finally I fight my way out of the outhouse, and I run as far away from it as I can get. I collapse in a chair woozy from the experience. From now on I'm sticking to indoor plumbing.  

How to dissolve your writers block

Lately I've been a barren desert of ideas (meaning that I have none, zilch, zero).
So I stumbled upon this storyline generator called Seventh Sanctum. Sure this really doesn't help me much in the blogging field (other than I can write a brief blog post about it), but I still found it quite interesting.
It gives a very vague idea, only the theme, main characters, and main event.
For example:  
 "The theme of this story: dark revenge. The main characters: spendthrift laborer and philosophical rogue. The major event of the story: betrayal"


I can see this story ending up having many trench coats in it, but that's beside the point. I like this website because it gives you just enough information to get the wheels turning, but not enough that there is only one way you can go with it.

Here are a few more examples:

"The theme of this story: metaphorical character study. The main characters: cowardly hermit and courageous king. The start of the story: apocalyptic event. The end of the story: repentance"


(this one made me laugh, I can just imagine the scenarios that would play out in a book such as this)

"The theme of this story: psychological relationship. The main character: fear-ridden hero. The start of the story: apocalyptic event. The end of the story: betrayal"

(I've come to find out that the creator of this website enjoys apocalyptic events)

"The theme of this story: romantic revenge. The main character: wealthy poet. The start of the story: natural disaster. The end of the story: flashback."


(A wealthy poet? That would never happen.)


Another way I have attempted to dissolve my writers block is by taking a leaf out of Anne Dillard's book, and looking at my old journals. Unfortunately my writing is a bit more trivial than Anne Dillard's. You see, I only have a 8 or 10 years full of notebooks, and most of those times I was a little girl who was more concerned about Barbie and my pets (there is a considerable amount of writing about my hamster Gingersnap). Anne Dillard's notebooks are more research and observation oriented, which makes hers infinitely more valuable.

Here is another great website: Click Me! to help you generate some ideas.
It has a list of topics, you just click the general subject area and Voila! there is a list of ideas. This is a lot more helpful for blogs because it has topics such as: body piercings, sign language, gypsies, and more.

Ablutophobia

Most have you have heard of the Broadway play Wicked. I haven't seen it, but the music by Stephen Schwartz is phenomenal. The lyrics and the swells and falls of the music are just amazing, it portrays the emotion of the show perfectly, along with adding a little comedy.
Currently I am reading the book, and it is nothing what you'd expect if you have listen to the music of the show. It has so many deep religious implications, as well as revolutionary ideals. This book shocks you at every turn, and is often very graphic and not suited for younger readers.
The main character is an ablutophobic (which means she fears bathing or washing) because she is allergic to water. This book by Gregory Maguire has weird sexual undertones througout the entire book, it explores the ties between mother and child, and pushes the boundaries on every aspect of life.

Hair Emergency!

Annually, my Grandma hosts a party to bond with her grandchildren, and some various other children that are close with my family. This year it was all girls, so we decided to have a spa weekend. We bought the essentials, nail polish, face masks, chocolate. We also bought some banana's and a cantaloupe, with the intention of blending it up and putting it in our hair to make it soft and shiny. All was going well, I had chopped them into pieces, and thrown them into the blender. My sister pressed the blend button, and the blades broke into pieces. Bye bye blender. So we put the banana's and cantaloupe in the mixer, it created a chunky pulp. We put it in our hair anyway. It looked really gross, but it smelled delicious. We let it sit for about ten minutes, then my cousin stuck her head in the sink while my sister rinsed it out for her. It wouldn't come out. The cantaloupe came out fine, but there were little chunks of banana tangled in her hair. We tried

desperately for 15 minutes to get it out, using loads of shampoo and conditioner. My cousin was soaked all the way down her back, because my sister could not controll the sprayer as she laughed. Eventually everyone took turns taking very long showers, getting most of the banana out. The good thing was it made our very soft. But we still had little chunks of banana in our hair. Luckly they all came out after the second shower. It certainly was an adventure.