The only problem I have now is that occasionally I’ll discover partway through my day that I’m wearing my shirt backwards.  This little sacrifice in fashion is a small price to pay for comfort.

Just needed to rant for a moment.

The key to successfully finding an answer to this wriddle is in getting the wording correct:

Angry and hungry are two words that end in ‘-gry’. There are three words in the English language. What is the third word? Everyone knows what it means and everyone uses it every day. Look closely and I have already given you the third word. What is it?

For the answer, see this essay.

“Fun and interesting: occupy a geek for hours by asking how many TIE fighters would be needed to take out the Starship Enterprise.”

Well, that’s just too interesting of a question to go unanswered.  I don’t have the time to actually figure out how many TIE fighters would be needed to take out the Starship Enterprise - so I have to go with my gut on this one.  I think it would take around 463 TIE fighters to take out the Starship Enterprise.  The important thing to take away from this is that the TIE fighters *would* take out the Enterprise.  Don’t get me wrong - I’m a fan of the Star Trek multiverse.  However, on some deep level I just know that if the two worlds were to ever collide, Jedi’s with the Force would waste the crew of the Enterprise with their phasers.  The ability to beam around to different places would definitely be an advantage to the Trekkies, though.  Why didn’t the Star Wars universe ever think of that?!  I guess it’s because too much power makes a hero uninteresting over time.  Take Superman, for example - how many times can you take a storyline that involves the arch-nemesis being the same thing over and over: a green rock from some other planet.  Wolverine is a borderline almost-too-powerful superhero, since he can heal from just about anything.  But that’s what keeps you coming back for more in his case, you never know for sure whether he’ll heal from whatever wounded him.

Sorry, I digress.  Back to the question at hand - Star Wars would win over Star Trek, ’nuff said.  It’d be cool to see a Wookie versus Klingon match, though - that might be a toss-up.

At one point in my high school experience, we happened upon an old 2-door, beat-up Datsun B210 that my dad was able to purchase from the owner for a whopping $50. I remember taking pride (oddly) in the fact that I had to pay more for insurance than we had paid for the car. As guys often do, my friends and I gave the vehicle a name - calling it the ‘Nuclear Tomato‘.

It had been red at one time, but by the time I was its proud owner, the finish had long since disappeared and the paint had faded to sort of a burnt orange color. It had a chalky texture to it, and if you rubbed up against it with a white shirt, you’d come away looking like you’d just been hit with a well aimed shot of Tang. It had 4 white mag hubcaps.

For anyone that was lucky enough to witness its passage, it screamed that we were at the upper echelons of lower class teenage children. Its greatest feature was the fact that it was missing 3rd gear, so we’d drive around town with the engine RPMs nearing redline all the time in second gear, and occasionally we’d quick-shift into fourth gear while passing girls so they wouldn’t be overpowered by the high whine of the engine. I don’t remember what eventually happened to the car, but it had a very short life. I think it eventually lost fourth gear as well, and I believe we ended up selling it and still making a profit on it.

When my son’s old enough to drive, I’m looking for something similar to the Nuclear Tomato. It didn’t do much for my dating life (the passenger door only opened from the inside, I just remembered that), but it increased my coolness factor with my buddies in the way that only things like broken bones, belly button lint, and never-been-washed T-Shirts can.

As far as names go, I’ve always thought that we had dibs on the coolest name ever given to a car. Saying that you were heading out to go somewhere in the ‘Nuclear Tomato’ always elicited fun responses.

Can you identify these 11 famous cars?

Here are some nicknames given to some famous movie and television cars. How many can you identify just by their name? See if you can recall where they appear before clicking to find out. FYI - 8 of these are from movies, and 3 are from T.V.

• Chitty-chitty-bang-bang
• Greased Lightning
• Christine
• General Lee
• Lightning McQueen
• Ocho
  
• Kitt
• Bluesmobile
• Ecto-1
• Eleanor
• Dragula

What other famous car’s are out there with well-known names? What are some of your better nicknames you’ve had for your own cars?

I wonder why they haven’t created a solar powered TV remote control yet? Sure, it’d still have to use batteries at night, but if we can harness the power of the sun to calculate the square root of pi, then why can’t we figure out how to use it to flip to the Daily Show?

I am located in Idaho and know two of the programmers on Aaron’s team really well - which is how I first heard about the experiment and met Aaron. I’m amazed at what they’ve accomplished and at their ability to realize an idea. Wish I could be with them this week in California as a fly on the wall - it’ll be fun to hear their stories first-hand when they return.

Good luck guys! I like the pseudo-realistic plastic airplanes they sell in the airplane gift shops, if you’re bringing back souvenirs

Or, more likely, they know that the percentage of bags stolen will be more than made up for by those who forget they purchased a bag of ice by the time they walk outside.

Retail genius, if you ask me.Those poor saps drive home and then realize afterwards that they forgot their key to icy cool refreshment. Then they probably sit and wonder whether anyone would think they’re stealing if they returned to make good on their purchase … (sigh)

I guess I’ll end up paying double for that bag of ice … again. ]]> http://www.dearmisterjones.com/wordpress/2008/02/04/losing-the-key-to-icy-cool-refreshment/feed/ http://www.dearmisterjones.com/wordpress/2008/01/26/i-went-to-the-woods-but-ended-up-playing-guitar-hero/ http://www.dearmisterjones.com/wordpress/2008/01/26/i-went-to-the-woods-but-ended-up-playing-guitar-hero/#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:25:13 +0000 mister jones http://www.dearmisterjones.com/index.php/2008/01/26/i-went-to-the-woods-but-ended-up-playing-guitar-hero/ “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Then I got cold, and a little hungry. So I came back home, made myself a turkey sandwich, and ordered the book so I could go to the woods vicariously from the comfort of my couch. Since it would take several days for the book to arrive, I played Guitar Hero and got my highest solid note-run ever.

Pretty productive day, I’d say.

Some other articles that you might find interesting:

• Go on the Guitar Hero Tournament circuit (seriously)
• Careful, you can hurt yourself playing Guitar Hero (this guy broke his knee!)
• How to play Guitar Hero (because it’s so hard)

“Wait, you’re that guy?!”
“Yes, I’m that guy …”
“Dude … I’m sorry.”
” It’s okay, I’m over it now - just don’t ask me to do the voice, okay?”

The guy who did the voice for Chewbacca, however - he’s probably invited to enough parties to be swimming in chips and guacamole every day of the year.

“Come on, do the growl one more time!”
“Well, it’s actually more like a gargle and clearing the throat at the same time.”
“Whatever man - do it like where he’s mad and ready to go wookiee and rip my arms off!”
“Oh, all right …. (growl/gargle/clear throat)”

Funny story - I just did some searching to find out who ‘owns’ the voice of Chewbacca, so I could link him in above. Well, it turns out that the voice of the Wookiee was actually a mix of sounds put together by sound designer Ben Burtt, and consisted of animal sounds from walruses, camels, bears, and badgers.  One of the more important voices was that of Tarik, a black bear from the Happy Hollow Zoo in San Jose, California.  Kind of sad, really - to discover that there’s not a real voice out there that is responsible for the voice of Chewbacca. Despite, that, however - that hasn’t stopped just about every young man from the age of 12 to, um, 99 from trying to wookiee up and make the sound themselves.

This guy seems to be closer than anyone else I’ve ever seen: