Have you had your mind blown in an insignificant way lately?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I’m 27, and I’ve never heard the Alice’s Restaurant song. I’ve heard of it, but I never realized til this thread that it has some connection with Thanksgiving. I’ll ditto the “who listens to the radio on Thanksgiving?” sentiment.

I was reading Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories in the lunch room the other day at work, and my coworker asked me about it. He’d never heard of Salman Rushdie! Who hasn’t heard of Salman Rushdie? For heaven’s sake, there’s a Far Side comic about him!

Although, to be honest, this is par for the course in my office. Other things my coworkers are unaware of include:

that Ireland is an island
that Washington, DC is not in any state
that Poland is in Eastern Europe (this was from a woman whose grandmother is a Polish immigrant)
that you shouldn’t call Hawaii when it’s 9.30 am in Chicago
what lentils are. (When I said “what, you’ve never had lentil soup?” my coworker responded, “oh no, I’m not Jewish.”)

And so very, very many more.

22

And creating a nuisance.

23

No, there were 27 eight-by-ten color glossy pictures, with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.

24

A lot of people don’t know that there is another recording of “Alice’s Restaurant” on the Original Motion Picture Score album, which has been out of print for about 30 years. Same story, different reading, in two parts. I just last week remastered it from the record to add to the regular commercial CD as bonus tracks.

25

Well, it wasn’t untill I was 27 untill I heard “Alice’s restraunt”. Furthermore it wasn’t untill 35 (that is to say about 5 seconds ago) that I learned “Alice’s Restraunt” had anything to do with Thanksgiving radio.

Eh, all I got is; up untill about six months ago, I thought “etc…” was spelled “ect…”

Not really sure how I went so long without noticing I was spelling it wrong. :smack:

26

I have a friend who’ll be 32 in February, and still has never heard The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

27

New guy started working with my husband last week. Upon hearing his accent, dude asked my hubby, “Are you from Sweeden?” Uh, no… Scotland. This is one of the funnier questions yet.

Others include–
To me:
“Does he have an accent?” [Gee, what do you think?]
“Does he wear a kilt?” [Of course! Every day!]

To him:
“Are there farms in Scotland?” [WTF?]
“What language do you speak in Scotland? SCOTTIAN?” [I’m NOT making this up.]
"Scotland is on the border of Ireland, right?’
“Do you have rock music over there?”
“Is Scotland a town in England?”

I think we’ll keep a log of these questions & send them to his family. Well maybe that’s a bad idea. They’ll be left thinking Americans are a stupid lot.

28

Several things, some less significant than others. Long post, sorry.

Near the end of this last semester, I started talking a lot to one girl at my junior college who was obviously not girlfriend material but would have made an awesome booty call. Considering her fondness for privately showing me pictures of her naked arse and subtly finding opportunities for me to grab said (clothed) arse, I figured she felt the same way about me. I texted her one night and asked her what she would be doing over break. Her response is the first thing that blew my mind:

I interpreted this as either (a) rejection or (b) mind games. I had no desire to play mind games, so I dropped B and went with A. My mind was blown for a couple of days, then I forgot about it, figuring there was no use getting worked up over it.

This event, which occurred an estimated four weeks ago, continued a 7 month streak of total sexual frustration–no hand holding, no kissing, no dates, few phone numbers, no vague hopes of gratification whatsoever.

I then started studying intensely (this was two weekends ago) with two classmates for a final exam. One was a new buddy my age, the other a married woman ten years our senior. I called “MILF” on it, new buddy agreed, and soon we were in a strange triangle. I kissed said MILF (and noted it in the “When was your last romantic kiss?” thread), then she decided she liked the buddy more, then me, then the buddy, set to the background of an absurd kissing contest. This was in the process of blowing my mind thoroughly, when said MILF came up with the idea of bringing a young, cute female friend along when the three of us went out one night–the idea being that either me or my buddy would hook up with the young friend, and the other would hook up with the MILF, who BTW had never cheated before. Both girls involved were native Spanish speakers, and both me and the other guy involved native English speakers with minimal education in Spanish. The MILF was a lot more confident with her English skills and the young one pretty much only spoke Spanish.

Well, my bud and I sort of symbolically passed the two girls back and forth all night in little ways (no play of any kind going on, BTW). We were all drinking, and I had drank enough that I was becoming a lot more confident in my Spanish, so my friend decided he would try to pair me up with the young one. Well, you could say it worked: myself and said attractive young female spent the rest of the night attached by the mouth in between sweet nothings exchanged in Spanish. (FWIW, I am convinced that Spanish sweet nothings are far superior to their English equivalents.) This–signifying the end of what felt like an endless brutal winter–blew my mind. Well, I got blue balls that night, but still had a grand old time–the full monty could wait, anyway. I went home. My new date went home.

I found out the next morning that the other two finally did the deed, and they discovered afterwards (after turning on a light) that she had spurted more blood on him than a legion of Evil Dead zombies. This surprised her as much as it did him, and seemed to have no basis in logic (Aunt Flo was apparently not in town). The blood soaked through every article of clothing he could find to don, and he basically looked like he had murdered someone with his penis. This blew my mind, and it really blew theirs.

That night (Sunday), I went to a drive-in movie with the young bonita, where my car failed and we had an approximately two-movie-long makeout session which in and of itself blew my mind. She and I are currently wrapped in a whirlwind of amorous emotion–which, by the way, is blowing my mind in ways it has never been blown before–in which, after the movies, we expressed an exclusivity commitment to each other.

I got in my car and headed home. Checked my voicemail—and what did I find?

A very, very obvious booty call from the first chick I mentioned earlier. Woah.

That blew my mind. I deleted the message and forgot her number (intentionally).

So, in short, life is blowing my mind like a motherfuck continuously.

(And I’m learning a hell of a lot of useful Spanish.)

29

I’m 27. Never heard of the song *Alice’s Restaurant * my whole life until just now, reading this thread. Never heard it, either. Never heard the name “Arlo Guthrie” before. And I’m a music lover, and my father would quiz me regularly on songs of every genre from the 60s to the present since I was a wee stump. “Guess this song or artist in three seconds or less!” I guess he wasn’t a fan of Arlo Guthrie. :smiley:

What blows my mind lately? Well, my mother going to pieces because she thinks my brother is going to commit suicide. So, I spoke to my brother myself, being quite concerned over this news. He was pretty confused about this “news” himself. He says he would never commit suicide, and then I got a quick overview of his beliefs concerning life and death, in which it became quite apparent to me that he had no immediate plans to leave this plane of existence. What he did say to our dear, fragile, impressionable mother was this: “I want to succeed on my own or die trying.” I guess she took it literally. :smack:

Nothing like sending the whole family into a tizzy, mom… er, bro… er, mom. Or bro? Seriously, people.

30

I had my mind completely shot out of this universe tonight when my 17 year old son showed me a pair of skimpy shorts he had purchased for his current squeeze for Xmas.

Firstly, I was astonished because I could never imagine how her bum would fit into them. :stuck_out_tongue:

But more importantly, he’d paid NINETY BLOODY DOLLARS for a bit of elasticised cotton about the same dimensions as the bottom-part of one of those boy-legged bikini thingies. :eek:

He’d paid the equivalent of a whole weeks wages from his part-time job to buy them.

I still can’t think of the right words to explain just how WRONG this is, on so many levels.

:rolleyes:

31

One of the guys in one of the comics chat rooms I go to was reading Deathstroke the Terminator, and commented that it was a good book, but his bell bottoms were silly.

Absently, I corrected him - ‘those aren’t bell bottoms, they’re pirate boots.’

Silence for a moment, then he responds ‘I’ve never seen boots that fold over like that.’

I’m flabbergasted. They’re pirate boots, for heaven’s sake!

So’s one of the other guys in there, and we spent the next five minutes listing ways to see pirate boots (google image search and pirate movies being the two most obvious).

32

Oh…and it should be noted that this guy’s about 5 years older than me (in his early-mid 30s)

33

It’s especially odd since there are several other comic characters that wear them, Captain America, Captain Marvel and Hawkeye being three that immediately come to mind.

34

I’ve heard of Arlo Guthrie, don’t know whether I’ve heard the Alice’s Restaurant song (it’s possible I have), but not hearing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald? That’s wrong.

I was helping a co-worker (she’s 20 years older than me) set a watch she’d bought for her nephew on Thursday, December 8. It’s one of those with a date built in, so I explained that to get the date to turn over at midnight (as it should) and not noon, it’s easier to advance the date to yesterday’s date, then move the hands until it rolls over and then set the correct time. She was fine with that. Then she looked at the watch and said, “But what’s this 8 for? I wanted one with the date!”

I looked at her like she had three heads. “You’re not serious, are you?”

Turns out she’d gotten mixed up and was thinking the 8 indicated the month, not the date. I wanted to explain that the watch kind of has to expect you to know what month it is, but didn’t. Figgered my look and question was probably enough.

She is blonde, but it’s of the bottle variety.

35

How about his father Woody? I’d be surprised if you’d never heard of him.
A minor mind blowing: a year or so ago I was going through some CDs that a friend was getting rid of as part of moving across country. I didn’t really recognize any of the bands except one. While I was doing this another friend came by and said “anything good?” (or something like that, I can’t remember the exact words of the conversation). I said something like “well, I don’t really recognize any of these bands, except REM, of course.” She was like “who?” I was sure she was kidding, but it eventually became apparent that she had never heard of REM! This from a music major.

I mean, OK, so she might be a bit young to catch them when they were really popular, and just because you re a music major doesn’t mean you know all kinds of music, but I figured just about everyone had heard of REM, especially if they were into music and below a certain age. I should add that she wasn’t a music major with the intention of playing classical, she actually wanted to be like a pop or rock-star.

36

I’ve never heard of Alice’s Restaurant or The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, nor was I aware that there were special songs for Thanksgiving, nor that people listen to the radio on Thanksgiving.

I wrote this post, then forgot about it and started flipping through channels, at which point I saw a movie called “Alice’s Restaurant”, apparently starring Mr. Guthrie, on some channel I don’t have access to. That’s a little mind-blowing in and of itself.

I’m not even a music major, and the History of Rock class I’m taking next semester covers REM in its textbook.

37

I’m going home now, to hug and comfort my copy of “Alice’s Restaurant”. It’s feeling a bit neglected all of a sudden.

38

Wow. I can’t believe all the people who aren’t worshiping Arlo every Thanksgiving. I time my drive to Grandma’s specifically so that I’ll be in the car at noon to hear it!

39

What about the rakes and shovels and implements ooooooof destruction?

Just last week, someone tried to convince me that a person offering to be available for a booty call (in those exact words) was NOT making an offer of sex. Apparently, the guy in question alleges that he just trying to boost the confidence of the lady in question by offering her sex… but it wasn’t an actual offer of sex. He was just trying to be nice to her, really!

It wasn’t that the guy who offered the booty call would try to say his offer was innocent… it’s that he convinced the woman in question’s boyfriend that he wasn’t offering his girlfriend sex. WOW. Someone should tell her boyfriend that GULLIBLE is written on the ceiling right over his head. My god.

40

Just a few months ago I learned of a Christmas carol I’d never heard. It was published in 1827, for heaven’s sake, and I’ve spent 40 winters listening to Christmas music, voluntarily or otherwise, yet somehow this one never came to my ears. It’s called “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning”, and it’s actually pretty sweet, in a creaky earnest kind of way.