Idea shortage

It’s Tuesday so creativity be damned. I’m just going to do a numbered rant…

1) 80,000+ digits of Pi memorized? My God, that is seriously hardcore. I mean there are ways to do it (it’s a lot of mnemonics and effectively making a story out of the numbers) but the amount of focus that requires is mindboggling. You seriously have to have absolutely no life whatsoever that could cross over into your stream of thought for it to work. On one hand I’m impressed by stories like that and on the other I’m really, really frightened.
2) More congratulations to NASA for successfully crashing a dishwasher into a comet. Ok, there were a lot of cameras and scientific measurements involved but that was the experiment in a nutshell: send a spacecraft millions of miles and drop a dishwasher on a comet and see what happens. That’s the part of science that I enjoy, the “let’s blow stuff up” aspect of it all. It is incredible when you think about it, the precision that is involved to make it all work. I’m still amazed that the Mars rovers are still working. The fact that we can send machines to another planet and have them roll around the surface for over a year is quite a feat.
3) I’d like to thank the people in my neighborhood for deciding last night that one in the morning is the optimal time for the finale to their backyard fireworks show. As a kid I didn’t have a problem with my neighbors who lived across the alley doing that every year. It’s awesome to a ten year old. Last night all I was thinking was “Come on, I have to be at work in the morning.” That’s sad, isn’t it?
4) I’ve been holding off on telling this story for a month. There is the best concert ever coming to town next month. Def Leppard is playing Kansas City. And not just anywhere in Kansas City, they are playing the minor league baseball stadium. (That’s not where the Royals play. KC has its own minor league team. Look, don’t make me explain these things. My head hurts enough as it is.) See, this is what I mean about bands reaching the point where they’ve become parodies of themselves. Talk about being one step away from complaining about being billed below the puppet show.
5) I only watched about five minutes of the Live 8 concerts. Turned it on and saw Destiny’s Child and thought that they had just broke up so I was really wondering what the point of the whole thing was. It just didn’t seem like something that was going to keep me glued to the set all afternoon. That was the problem, you couldn’t really understand what the overall purpose was. I mean, debt relief for Africa is a noble effort but I can’t put a picture to it. Live Aid was great in that you knew exactly what the cause was and how you could help. Plus, they just had better tunes. Phil Collins notwithstanding.