The Big DumpTruck

Throwing Little Thought Pebbles at Your Windshield Since 1996

Category: coolness

So You Want To Be a Superhero

Welcome to lesson one of the self-paced training session “So You Want To Be a Superhero”. This course consists of 25 lessons, which should be completed in numbered order. You should never attempt to jump to Lesson 15, Stopping a Moving Vehicle with Your Feet” until after you complete Lesson 5, “Verifying Your Personal Strength Limits” and Lesson 9, “Are You Invincible?”

WE CANNOT STRESS HIGHLY ENOUGH THAT SKIPPING LESSONS MAY CAUSE BLISTERING, HEARING LOSS AND/OR DEATH.

Also, lesson-skippers will be blacklisted at the Justice League of America and superhero employment opportunities will simply not be available to you.

Lesson 1: Introduction to Superheroing

Many people who sign up for this class are under the mistaken impression that just about anyone can be a superhero. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not everyone can be a superhero. Some people can’t even be heroes without proper adult supervision.

Here are some questions we would like you to consider before you continue on with your lessons:

Am I Likable?
While not a requirement, it really does help you run your superhero empire if people naturally like you. If you are hateable, people will question your motives, and are likely to try to sue you for the damage you’ll do in the line of duty. Put a whole in a building to stop bank robbers and a likable hero will get a medal. An unlikable one will get a bill for repairs.

 What is My Motivation?
Did bad guys do you wrong? Are you trying to avenge something? Or are you taking this class because you hate math and thought it would be a good way to get on television? Being a superhero is not easy. You’re never fully off duty. You want to go on vacation to the Grand Canyon? You’ll probably spend your time there preventing some villain from trying to fill it with quick-drying cement.

How will I look in Spandex?
This question should not be ignored. Superheroes are attention magnets. You will receive lots of press exposure, and looking good is part of the gig. Nobody wants to be rescued by a guy with a beer belly stretching the limits of his uniform. Are you willing to commit to do the work it takes to keep the spandex lump-free?

 Do You Overheat Easily?
How do you handle warm weather? Do you sweat a lot, get a red face and just generally feel miserable when you get warm? Go get a refund on this course right now. Almost all superheros have alter-egos to hide their true identity. Those alter-egos are nice normal people who wear nice normal clothing. You, however, will be wearing the equivalent of long underwear under your street clothes 24 hours a day. Do you know how hot that can get? Try putting on a shirt and pants over that uniform. Layers suck in the summer. You cannot get away from it, because you need to be in uniform at a moment’s notice. Sure, some superheroes decide to just forgo the alter-ego and be in uniform all the time. They don’t get a single moment’s peace. Everyone needs something every minute of the day.

Are You Prepared to Trust No One?
Nobody but nobody is trustworthy. Your girlfriend? She’s been mind-controlled by your nemesis. Your parents? They have been infected with a toxic mind mold by the League of Doom. Your “best friend”? He’s turned to the dark side and become the Green Goblin. You can never really fully trust anyone. Maybe even the people teaching this course.

Think about it.

2 Comments by on January 10, 2012
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Christmas Music Purchases: 2011 Edition

I own a ton of Christmas music. I will not apologize for it. I used to have a page on the site that documented it all, with links to Amazon. Back when people used to care about me, my link was on page 1 of the Google results for Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack. THAT was how much I ruled the universe.

These days, people don’t need me to find that CD. But, I still have many many (many) fans sitting in their dark and dirty rooms, lit only with the light of a laptop monitor, the buzzing of traffic their only companions, wondering: “For baby Jesus’ sake, WHAT CHRISTMAS MUSIC DID JODY ADD TO HER COLLECTION THIS YEAR??!!”

I will only document complete albums, not individual songs, unless the individual songs are kick-ass. Actually, I’ve downloaded so much free stuff that I don’t know which individual songs are kick-ass yet. (Please, before time runs out, check out the Amazon MP3 site for their 25 free songs – maybe one of them will appeal to you?)

Albums/CDs I purchased this year, in no particular order:

  • Christmas Remixed: Holiday Classics Re-grooved
  • Christmas Cheer – Straight No Chaser
  • Cello Music For Christmas – The Christmas Cello
  • Merry Flippin’ Christmas Vol 1 and 2 – Bowling for Soup
  • This is Christmas – Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler

So the musical Christmas spirit is alive and well Chez Dump. Keep on singing!

2 Comments by on December 21, 2011
filed in coolness, lists

Peeing Like a REAL MAN

I love the people on my project team. I cannot express in words how much I love them all. Friday, 4 of us were stuck in a tiny conference room, and topics ranged from giant horrible spiders, how to properly poach an egg, farting, and whether ladies rooms are dirtier than men’s rooms. These are pretty typical topics, by the way. The men’s room topic morphed into a discussion about how great it would be if women could stand up to pee (it would be) and my project sponsor mentioned he’d heard a story on the radio about a product that helps women pee standing up. Of course, that became the most important thing ever.

I let one co-worker get so far as typing “Female Urination” into his work laptop’s Google search before we pointed out that pressing Enter would cause every security person in the building to come bursting through the door. I pulled up search on my iPhone – the single greatest reason to own a smartphone on the planet is to be able to do searches without invoking the “red corporate security screen of death”.

We found the product in question – the “Go Girl“. At the time, Amazon had it for $4. How could I NOT buy one for $4? Plus Amazon Prime’s $3.99 overnight shipping meant I’d have it today. Oh, yes. Yes indeed.

UPS dropped off the package before I was even out of bed this morning. My room is over the back door, and I heard my friendly UPS driver yell out “UPS!” and I knew it was my lucky day. Sent the boy to fetch the package and ripped into it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That looks vaguely, um.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is the booty: a plastic storage bag (for after you use it), two squares of toilet paper (obviously, not enough) and taa-daa, the Go Girl.

 

I don’t have photos of me using it, but I did use it, right before I took a shower. It was weird. It worked fine; no, uh, spillage. It would be awkward to have to do something with it immediately after use (“excuse me while I put this urine-covered silicone funnel in my purse.”) The real test will be trying to use it while I’m dressed. I’m tempted to go out in the woods with it, to simulate a real-world scenario. It would probably be good to have friends giving me beer and encouraging me – you can’t get more real-world than that.

1 Comment by on September 17, 2011
filed in coolness, humor, photos, stuff

BDT Report: Timekeeper Praised for Her Clock Skills

Ellen Sojka, official timekeeper for the Littleton Tigers 7th grade football game on Saturday, was the star of the show. Her timekeeping skills were praised not only by friends and family, but by the booth. Also, it was noted that game officials were using HER time as official time, showing a great respect for her accuracy. Ms. Sojka has been asked to maintain these duties for the rest of the season, as nobody has done nearly as good a job.

Ellen RULES!

[My niece  is looking for a little search engine love because her brother gets more hits for his name than she does for hers so I am adding some stories about her so that the world will see these if they search for her name.]

No Comments by on September 6, 2011
filed in coolness, Uncategorized

BDT Report: Littleton Native Saves Lives

Ellen T. Sojka of Littleton MA has saved the lives of countless bugs and flies by letting them out of the house instead of killing them the way her heartless brother (who shall remain unnamed so this will not show up under him in search engines) squishes them. That is because Ellen is a wonderful human being who is way more special than anyone else in her family.

No Comments by on July 9, 2011
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I’d Rather Be in New Zealand

I was looking at my iGoogle page, to see what depressing weather forecast they had for me. The odd thing is that I saw “Marlboro” listed twice. The background on Marlboro is that is where I used to work, in Massachusetts, until my company moved my department down to the Smithfield, Rhode Island campus. It’s an awesome building, and I love it. It’s just not in Marlboro. (Trust me, I’ve done all the testing to verify it.)

I don’t know how my iGoogle weather gadget came to have Marlboro listed twice. More importantly, I don’t know how it came to have Marlboro listed twice with two entirely different forecasts on it. One of them, specifically labeled Massachusetts, says it’s 48 degrees right now, and that it is raining (it is) and that it will be raining tomorrow, and that it will only be about 58 degrees. Yay.

The other Marlboro says it’s currently 68 and sunny. Well, that is odd because it’s not sunny at all here right now. It’s quite dark, given that it’s 9:30pm. And it says it’s already Wednesday. Hmmm.

Clicking the link to Mystery Marlboro opens up a map that I do not recognize. I don’t know any of the place names. I have to back out to see more of the map to realize it’s an island (Oh, how I WISH I WAS ON AN ISLAND IN THE SUN ENJOYING 68 DEGREES!)

Marlboro is a region in NZ that covers mountains down to the pacific ocean. There are apparently a lot of wineries in this area. I’m thinking Marlboro NZ kicks Marlboro Massachusetts’ ass. They have an aviation museum and a sheep sheering attraction. I’m pretty sure Marlboro MA doesn’t have that.

So New Zealand, you have won this round. But our summer is coming and yours is leaving, so I’ll be checking in again in a few months.

1 Comment by on March 30, 2010
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Weekend Accomplishments

I think I did okay for myself. I didn’t discover a cure for cuticles, but I did wash the kitchen floor and buy a new floor mop for the wood floors. I also made a really awesome chicken dish, signed up for a new stock photo website and uploaded 10 photos to see if I have what they’re looking for. I shopped for things online and didn’t buy all of them, because some of the things I don’t need yet.  I made a really awesome chicken dish for lunch – the kind of thing that a real cook might make. I didn’t even take a full-blown nap this weekend, even though I REALLY WANTED TO.

Oh, and I updated my website, which actually took many many hours of my weekend. Taa-daa. I was going to reward myself with a glass of wine but it’s too late and I’m tired and some joker made arrangements for tomorrow to be Monday. Last week for my group to work out of the Marlboro office before moving to the Smithfield RI office. I think it’s going to be REALLY weird in there this week, what with all the packing, etc.  I think I’m going to bring in lots of canned goods and make them move them all down to RI. Just because.

3 Comments by on February 28, 2010
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Jody vs. the Target Shelving Unit

I am not a handy person. We should get that out of the way early. It would be a lie to present myself as the kind of person that Home Depot would ask to write a “How To” guide. More likely, I would write the kind of guide that they were selling at Lowe’s that will apparently cause you to do something that could burn your house down.

But one of my hypothyroidism side effects is the whole clutter thing, and my addiction to buying storage materials that don’t always solve the problems they were intended to solve. My most recent purchase was not storage bins, interestingly. It was actually a small metal shelving unit thingy that I bought to put in the hall closet so that I can store some of my “I have no place to put this” pots and pans.

This shelf looked to be a good size to just tuck into the closet, and the box said “No tools required!”. I have some tools, but any time I don’t have to use them, I’m happy.
Today, while the oil company guy was doing my annual burner cleaning [no cavities!] I decided to put the shelves together. After all, the box had been sitting in the kitchen for a few days now. All the parts appeared to be included. More than enough, in fact. There were 3 extra snap-one-y things, and there were 8 little caps that served no known purpose (they weren’t listed on the parts list, nor did they logically have any place in the assembled shelving.) Speaking of the parts list, the drawings for parts C and D were indistinguishable. So that was helpful. Imagine two 2 inch lines. That’s basically what they showed me. Lastly, there were 4 parts missing, I believe because between the instructions being printed and the materials being packed up, they decided to go with a different model for C and D and there was no longer a need for a separate part to connect them. They had built-in connectors.

Okay, so I figured out all the parts and pieces. I started to read the directions, which clearly said “2 people required for stable assembly”. You know, there are a lot of different ways to interpret stable assembly. I’m pretty stable. Would doing this alone make me unstable?

The directions also highly recommended I use a rubber mallet to complete the last steps of assembly. Okay, show of hands: who here thinks a rubber mallet is actually a tool and therefore the “no tools needed” claim on the outside of the box is pure crap? Ya, that’s what I thought.
It was getting to be time for me to go to work, because the oil burner guy was done. My shelving was pretty much the most unstable thing I’ve ever built at this point. I didn’t have time to get a rubber mallet before leaving, so I’m just hoping the dog doesn’t try to climb on the thing while I’m gone.

If you want to try to simulate the stability of my shelving, get 4 sharpened pencils and a piece of paper. Jam one pencil into each corner of the paper. Stand this up on your table. Voila. You have a paper shelving unit from Target, with no tools required!

1 Comment by on January 12, 2010
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