36 posts tagged “qotd”

I am a farmer who raise ducks and cows. The animals have a total of 9 heads and 26 feet. How many ducks and cows do I have?
Submitted by The BlueTie.

You have four cows and one duck. And what a terrifying duck it is. Some of those heads are growing out of the most unlikely places...

What's making you smile today?

I was listening to the radio and they were talking about their favorite album of the year. Being hopelessly out of touch, I  didn't know any of the albums they discussed. Then, they got to the end and they said that everyone from the Current (the music station I sometimes listen to) agreed that one album was fantastic, some calling it the best of the year, and that was Minneapolis band Cloud Cult's Feel Good Ghosts. Then they played Everybody Here is a Cloud.

Made me smile.

If you had to write your autobiography in 6 words, what would you write?
Submitted by mitzie.

I think this kind of question is so irritating. Even if you could, why on earth would anyone want to sum up their lives in six words. Who I am today is not the same as who I was five years ago, and who I'll be in five years. An autobiography should be something that enlightens and gives real insight into who a person is and frankly, the idea that a person could do that in six words is ludicrous.

Here's my autobiography in ten words:
He likes hippos and has a blog he writes in.

If you're getting one, how are you planning on spending your tax refund?

Jenna and I sat down last night and discussed what we needed to spend our tax refund on. We came up with the following essentials:

Paying off my student loans
Paying off a small fraction of her student loans
Paying off the car
Paying off the furniture
Buying a newer, working car
Buying furniture for the first floor of the house
Buying an actual bed and dresser like actual adults have
Taking a long overdue vacation
Replenishing our savings account, which is a little worse for wear after the last six months
Starting a college fund for Aaron
Frozen custard at Culvers

I am so glad we've got some money coming back our way. I just hope we'll be getting a refund in the neighborhood of $423,000, or we may have to rethink our list.

What inspires you to blog?

All kinds of things inspire me to write in my blog. I think it's important that people know about collectible hippos, for example. And it's nice to have a place to exercise my obsession with the number five.

Lately, though the thing that's inspired me to add new material to my blog is that I'll look at what's on top and think, "I don't want people to look at my blog and see that."

What is the worst city you've ever been to and why? 
Submitted by Soup.

I spent a day in Butte, Montana that was among the worst in my life. The water in the taps ran a dull orange. The town smelled of burning sulfur and cheap booze. The weather switched from fog to sleet back to fog again so I couldn't see what I was slipping on. Rabid raccoons patrolled the streets at night, hissing and clawing at anyone in a 50 yard radius. The local news put us on constant alert for a gang of arsonists that were systematically hitting all of the hotels in the area, and the fire alarm went off four times that night. There wasn't a grocery store, gas station, or pharmacy that carried Pepto-Bismol, and the pizza we ate had clearly been poisoned to keep away the rats, who were always clawing just at the edge of your peripheral vision. Seconds after I was mugged, my mugger got set on fire by the arsonist gang. The dead rose from their graves to feast on the flesh of the living. The streets ran with blood and echoed with screams of terror and the constant shambling and moaning, moaning and shambling. Terrorists attacked every hour, on the hour. Any hopes and dreams were replaced by the urge to escape alive.

So next to Newark, I'd say Butte was definitely the worst city I've been to.

What are your rituals or traditions for starting off a new year?  

1. I madly scramble for whatever money is thrown in my direction. Or, if I'm an adult, I throw money at children, just to watch them grab it.

2. I gorge myself on Christmas cookies and leftover candy and hams and pretend I'll eat better than that at some point in the coming year. Then, and this is important, I never will.

3. I pronounce happy new year like this: "HAP-------py new year. Then I throw something (usually money). I actually will say that even if it's not new year's.

4. I start thinking of new year's resolutions, so I'll have one all good and ready by, say, January 13th, when everyone else has long-since abandoned theirs.

5. I remember to get the year right in my checkbook once. Then I get it wrong until June.

Happy new year!

What is your daily commute like?  What is the weirdest thing you've seen on that commute? 
Submitted by E. 

I don't have one.

As for the second part of the question, the weirdest thing I've ever seen on my way to work was when I was working summers in college. I was taking a well-used county road past the fairgrounds and three horses appeared from out of nowhere and started barreling toward me. I slowed down and they went right past my car. I had to tell Jenna about it immediately, because if I had not, I would have decided that I dreamed the whole thing.

Audio: What's your favorite carol or holiday song?

I need to find or create a Christmas CD that has the following tracks:

1. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings by the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLaughlin
2. Sweet Was the Song by the Concordia Choir
3. O Holy Night by some baritone who's not too warbly
4. Jingle Bells by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters
5. Carol of the Bells by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra
6. Haitian Noel by, um Haiti, I guess
7. O Christmas Tree by Vince Guirardi
8. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by the Vagabonds
9. Frosty the Snowman by the guys who sing it on that one album my parents had that I would listen to as late as March.
10. O Little Town of Bethlehem by anyone who sings O Little Town of Bethlehem anymore
11. Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire by Nat King Cole and maybe also Natalie Cole
12. Silent Night by the Concordia Choir
13. Auld Lang Syne, karaoke version
14. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas by, say, Britney Spears

And maybe some others, as long as they do not include Sleigh Ride, Winter Wonderland, and Jingle Bell Rock, because if I wanted to hear those songs over and over again until Christmas was naught but a black hole in my shriveled heart, all I would have to do is turn on the Christmas music station and in fifteen minutes, I will have heard them all, plus about as many puns on the word "yule" that any mortal man is able to withstand in one lifetime.

What video game is your personal Game of the Year? 
Submitted by SimpleNate.

I 've only gotten to Level 7 of 48, but I think I can safely say that my personal Video Game of the Year is Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. I just can't get enough of this series. It's like playing chess. I sit and deliberate about each turn, except that each turn is made up of approximately 10 moves. I will sit and think:

"What if I attack the javelin guy with my steel axe?
What if i attack him with my throwing axe?
What if I use my archer to soften him up first, and then go after him with the steel axe?
What if I do throwing axe then archer, to give my archer extra experience points for the kill?"

and on and on and on. I'm mostly looking at the amount of damage each weapon will do and the chance that it will hit its mark, but there are pages upon pages of information here. You can check your characters' lineage, their speed, their biorhythms for crying out loud. Sometimes I feel like I'm only playing 10% of the game, but it still takes an hour to get through a single level. And not only that, but if any one of your characters dies, there's no reviving him or her, so I immediately hit reset and start the level over again. Every level I win makes me feel like I successfully solved one of a series of ever more complicated Rubik's cubes.

It's a little talky though. I brought the prequel of this game to my parents' house last Christmas because I had won it with all of the unlockable characters still alive and I just wanted to see the ending. I did no playing, just loaded up my save file and watched the the characters congratulate each other for winning the game. It took 45 minutes.

My mother said it was the most boring video game she'd ever seen.

In spite of that, though, I love this series. I love multiclassing my healers so they can start fighting when there's no healing to be done. I love arranging attacks around a heron so I can get an extra turn. I love forging my own specialized mega-weapons and giving them ridiculous names and colors. If there was a FERD camp, where people basically just checked out of their lives to play this single video game for a week, with no other interruption, I'd... hold on, I just got a great idea for a camp that will make me millions.

Well, except that an overly talky, graphically paleolithic, looong army organizing game is probably not going to appeal to a lot of people. In fact, I really can't recommend this game because I don't understand why I love this series the way I do. It's not the sound, it's not the graphics, it's not the twitchy action, it's not the pick-up-and-play aspect, it's not the tightly written story. Seriously, what's the appeal?

Anyway, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Game of the Year.