Category: Random

finding humor around you

Normally I write something that is (hopefully) amusing to you, but if I may, today I’ll write about finding amusement around you.

This morning I was riding my bicycle and drove through a pile of leaves that had fallen from a tree. It’s autumn here, so this is happening a lot. I enjoyed the sound of the leaves crunching under my tires. Made me feel like a kid again. I also enjoy seeing leaves scatter around the road after I drive through them with my truck. And it’s neat to see leaves falling from the trees. And I enjoy the fall colors.

That’s a lot of talk about leaves, but this isn’t about leaves. Rather, I found amusement in my surroundings. This is something I try to do every day. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with enjoying content created for YouTube or funny/silly videos promoted by the algorithms on social media (like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.), I don’t want to lose the ability to enjoy everyday life in the natural.

That may sound absurd to think it’s even possible, but it could happen. I’ve noticed kids cry out “I’m bored!” instantly when denied time with a screen on an electronic device. That should not be! I’m certainly not against enjoying videos or video games, but if my amusement requires content to be spoon-fed to me by some algorithm, that’s not acceptable.

It’s also easy to pick on kids regarding screen time, but adults are susceptible to it, too. (And it doesn’t help that social media algorithms are using psychology to entice you to stay on their site so they can make more money showing you ads.) Notice how often you pick up your phone when you have a few minutes to wait. Many (if not most) adults now instinctively grab their phone when there’s a moment free that they can. You can see it at traffic lights (or even while they’re driving), at a restaurant with their friends, at a sports game, etc.

Again, it’s not wrong to enjoy online content. But are you missing out on your actual life? Are you enjoying your actual life, or mostly being entertained by social media? Do you regularly see the humor and joy in your family and friends and life in general? It’s worth thinking about what matters most to you.

Sorry for the serious rant there… at least it’s about humor, so not totally off-topic.

You may now return to your regularly-scheduled life. Try to enjoy it!

how to create custom sound effects in your car

Car horns are very one-dimensional. We might use it for multiple purposes, but it always sounds the same. So what if you had different buttons for different types of car horns to serve various purposes? For example, if the car in front of you at the traffic light fails to notice the light turned green because their phone is interesting, you can let them know. Or maybe you want to get someone’s attention but it’s not an angry or dangerous situation. Mark Rober has designed an upgrade for the standard car horn that I really like.

It looks doable for even novice engineers and not very expensive, so it would be a good DIY project. But why stop where he did? His is built for functionality, which is good, but what about fun?

Notice that he said you can load any wave file you want. (A wave file is like an MP3, just uncompressed. It’s just a file that contains music or sound effects.) Wouldn’t it be nice if you had some buttons in your car that played certain sound effects or music clips on-demand within the car? There’s much potential for fun here. A couple of ideas:

1) The obvious idea is fart sounds. Your passengers would be amused (or maybe annoyed in an amusing way), and you could use it to punctuate your conversation. A few people have “Active Gas On Command”, but most of us don’t, so if you haven’t experienced that, just imagine someone saying, “Every time Donald Trump speaks it makes me feel like” [pushes button] PHVRRRT! (Yes, some people actually have the ability to do that.)

2) Dramatic music — This could be clips from movie soundtracks to set the general tone for a few seconds, like if you wanted to activate stealth mode (e.g., the Mission Impossible theme), or you need to speed up to pass someone, or if you’re in a hurry.

3) Sound effects — Back to the idea of adding emphasis to your conversation, you could have the losing sound from the TV game show The Price Is Right, or the buzzer from Family Feud, or the pseudo-sad sound of a trombone going wah-wah-wah-wah (with the pitch going lower each time). I’d have a clasp of thunder for dramatic emphasis. (That would be so cool!) You could also have a thunder clasp followed by The Count from Sesame Street laughing, for anytime you say a number. You could have the transforming sound from the original (G1) Transformers cartoon. Maybe you’d want different car engine sounds — like a muscle car revving up or broke-down-barely-running sounds.

4) Vocal clips from movies and TV shows and YouTube videos:

  • “We’re in hot pursuit!” by Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit
  • “YEE-HAW!” by Bo Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard
  • “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” from the classic meme
  • “Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?” from Dumb & Dumber
  • “Crazy Taxi!” from the arcade game Crazy Taxi (story in the comments)
  • “MUWAHAHAHA” — an evil laugh from a mad scientist or evil genius
  • various sayings by KITT from Knight Rider
  • “Inconceivable!” from The Princess Bride

5) Prank sounds — If you have friends who strongly dislike certain sounds or songs, you could have it queued up for the right moment. Regular blog visitor Mango-Man would certainly hear the Sanford & Son soundtrack — I don’t know why it bothers him, but it’s a good time to play it around him. You could also have general-purpose clips, like to Rick-roll someone with that Rick Astley song. Or play part of the Macarena.

This would be the audio equivalent of an animated gif in a text message. It needs to happen…

Let me know if you have any other ideas.

why southern weather makes no sense

In this video (below) there’s a person scheduling the weather for the South (meaning southern United States, from part of Arkansas to Florida). Attending this meeting are the four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. What will happen as they try to figure out what kind of weather the South should have this year? (This is comedy, if it isn’t obvious.)

While that’s exaggerated, there is some truth to it. My favorite part is winter planning a few snowflakes to shut everything down. That actually does happen. I know people in the up north don’t get it, but in the South there are very few snowplows or trucks to salt the roads. Also, southerners typically don’t have much experience in how to drive in snow, so there’s that danger. But it’s all okay, because snow is so rare here, so it’s a special occasion. I have a friend that grew up in the South, then moved to Colorado. She said most people there take snow for granted, because they see so much of it. Many of the people there didn’t have any interest in throwing snowballs or building a snowman (or snow castles or snow monsters, which deserves its own post).

While there is a lack of snow most of the winter, it also means much of the winter is somewhat mild. It does get below freezing at times, but that’s usually just for a day or two, then it’ll be back to the 60s by the end of the week, so you can return to shorts and T-shirts. The only bad part is the middle of summer, where extreme amounts of heat and humidity mix together for a rather unpleasant atmosphere. But it’s just two months that are really bad. The same people made a video about that, too:

If you haven’t experienced southern humidity, then you might not get it. There are summer days where you walk outside and within seconds you are sweating. Sometimes it seems like sweating starts instantly. I don’t know how quickly the body can respond to the change in temperatures, but that’s not something I particularly want to research. (I will add that I am extremely thankful for air conditioning!)

There’s a saying in the South that if you don’t like the weather, just wait a day or two and it’ll change. That is mostly true, except for July and August, where there’s a 99% chance of it being hot and humid every single day. So for those months, the weatherman’s job of making the forecast is easy — really hot, with a 20% chance of thunderstorms, almost every day.

What is LOL supposed to mean?

Did you know some people type “lol” without actually laughing out loud? Crazy… Well, now there’s a device that ensures someone actually laughed when they typed it: the LOL Verifier. It’s a USB device that goes between your keyboard and computer and only lets you type “lol” if you truly laughed out loud. There’s a short TikTok video on the page that shows it in use, in a humorous way (by trying to not be humorous).

Does the world need this? No, not really. But the world does need to stop saying “LOL” if they aren’t actually laughing. I still remember the first time I experienced that nonsense. [cue flashback sequence] I was talking to a teenage girl, and I made a joke. She replied, “LOL”, but didn’t laugh. So what does that mean? Was I funny or not? (Probably not.) Was she trying to humor me? Perhaps. But it’s still ambiguous and illogical.

Rant aside, either way, people need to laugh more. It would make the world a better place. And it would make your life better. Well, perhaps the laughing itself isn’t the key factor here, but enjoying life enough that you are laughing is good for you. Although laughing does help you actually feel better. Some say that laughing is like jogging on the inside. 🙂 If you go through a day without laughing at all, ask yourself why and if you want to live that way. Just don’t say “LOL” outloud, please. Only authentic laughing helps.