Category Archives: Humor

How To: Avoid Greenpeace

It’s springtime which means that Greenpeace is out in full force. If you are like me and desperately want to avoid them, read up.

Here’s some strategies for avoiding being stopped by those crazy petitioners:

Talk on your cell phone.
You don’t actually have to be talking to somebody on the her end, just act busy enough so they feel guilty stopping you.
Look Hot.
I mean if you’re beautiful and can make people forget what they were saying…
Travel in large groups.
Make sure to all look away from the Greenpeace member and laugh or something such that they understand you don’t want to talk to them.
Eye contact.
Look at them like you are about to stop and talk to them. Open things up with “How are you doing?” or something like that. Of course they’ll respond, at which point you’ll be just walking past them. And then it’s too late for them to start their “Do you have a moment for Greenpeace?” spiel.
Be an asshole.
Just ignore them completely.
Politely decline.
A quick “No thanks.” Make up a good excuse like you’re late for class (which you usually are) or that you have an important midterm.

This list is not exhaustive and I’m open for suggestions on how I can better avoid the plague that strikes the U of M every spring and fall.

Tontie

I stumbled across Tontie a few weeks ago. Let me tell you it is one addictive flash game. The general premise is that you use the numberpad to in a “Whack-a-mole” fashion, however it rapidly gets much harder than that. I never got past level 8 or so, although Dave managed to get to Level 11 a couple of times.

Squirrel Fishing

Leave it to Nick Stein to do crazy things like go Squirrel Fishing. As I understand, the concept is to bait the squirrel with a peanut tied to the end of a string, and then reel the squirrel in as if you were fishing. It’s quite bizarre and probably only works on the ultra-tame squirrels we have here at the U of M.

Squirrel Fishing

Honestly, it reminds me of those times at camp that we baited squirrels with peanut butter and captured them under plastic wash bins. It was quite amusing. Apparently some of the others transfered the squirrels into plastic garbage bags and hauled them out to the lake and dumped them in the water.

Page 23

Drew told me to:

  1. Grab the nearest book.
  2. Open the book to page 23.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  1. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

From a book called Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson:

Godfrey: “Tortured?”

That didn’t quite work out like I had hoped, but it is still interesting nonetheless.

QotD: April Fools

Question: What’s the best April Fools prank that’s been pulled on you?

The one that tops my list is one that some of the girls on my floor pulled on my this year.

To setup some background, about a week ago 4 of us guys were bored sometime after dark and decided to go exploring. We got onto the roof of Ferguson Hall (easy), and then tried the Social Sciences building without any luck (damn the locked doors).

Getting bored, we headed out onto the bridge at which point we boosted Dave up so he could pull himself onto the top of the bridge. He was greeted with the “Cease and Desist” sign on top of the bridge and decided it was a bad idea to go further (the sign is there to keep people from stealing the flags that line the top of the bridge).

So we headed over to the East bank to try to get on some of the roofs of the buildings in Northrop Mall. From there we got on the roofs of Tate (out a window), Murphy (out of a scary roof hatch), and Kolthoff/Smith (out of an unlocked door).

By far the Kolthoff/Smith roof was the most exciting (lots of places to go, including walking all the way around Smith on a quasi-narrow ledge).

Anyway, this leads to the point of the best prank ever. Today in my mail, I received a letter from UMPD:

March 28, 2004

Bradley Froehle:

On the night of Wednesday, March 24, UMPD security cameras captured your image trespassing in two University buildings: Smith Hall and Kolthoff Hall. This is against University policy, as detailed in Article IV, Section 3.4 of the University Code of Conduct.

In light of this violation, your presence is requested at the University Safety and Transportation Building, located at 511 Washington Ave SE. We ask you to please contact Nancy Simms at (612) 481-2365 within twenty-four hors to arrance a preliminary hearing before Judge William Ford. Failure to respond within the designated time period will result in further legal action. We hope to resolve this issue in a timely manner.

Thank you for your cooperation.

[signature of Chuck Miner]

Lieutenant Chuck Miner
CID Division Manager
(612) 379-8890

Being the gullible individual that I am, I bought it for a little while.. enough to actually call the telephone number (which turns out to be April’s cellphone). Coincidentally, the phone number at the bottom is a pizza place, although I didn’t end up calling that one.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.