Whomper

The other day something was rattling around in the trunk of my car, generally making an annoyance of itself. When I checked it out, I discovered that it was Whomper Junior, whom I hadn’t thought of in quite a long time. I smiled upon seeing him, as he brought back many happy memories of a simpler time, but I also felt a hint of melancholy, as I knew that the part of my life involving Whomper Jr. and all of his associates was now over.

Whomper Jr., for those of you wondering, is a golf club, but before I can discuss him, I first have to go back to his father, the original Whomper.

Many Christmases ago, my brother gave me a children’s golf set as a joke. The clubs were metal, but quite flimsy and short. They consisted of a driver, a putter, and a wedge. I also received some practice golf balls, which were essentially ping-pong balls, and a small plastic “hole” to putt into. It didn’t take my brother and I long to realize that this joke gift might lend itself to some serious entertainment in the form of indoor golf. That was indeed a memorable Christmas day, consisting of two individuals already out of college running around the house, hauling off on ping pong balls, and laughing hysterically as they bounced off of walls, furniture, parents, etc. I still remember us trying to chip from the living room into the kitchen, with the ultimate target being a pot of bubbling wax on the stove my Mom was going to use to make candles. (My brother managed to hit the pot once, which was as close as we got.)

At some point, either that day or shortly after, the driver got named Whomper, which is a reference to a gigantic slingshot in one of Patrick F. McManus’s stories, which I highly recommend everybody reads, along with his other works. It was a good name, and we used it as often as possible. (“All right Whomper, don’t let me down!” “This shot would be impossible for anybody but Whomper!” “Whoops, I bent Whomper in half! Wow, he’s flimsy!”)

From that point on came the golden age of mini-golf. I played it in my apartment with a couple of good friends, and it was hilarious, especially the bathtub hole, which torpedoed all of my hopes of winning. Soon the three of us were playing it outside, including on Madeline Island, which is part of the Apostle Islands, Enger Park in Duluth, and even once near the border of Canada. By this point I was calling it Cross Country Mini-Golf, and it was a hit. Then came the trip out west with the same two friends. We played at a campground named Indian Hill in Montana, which included one hole that you had to make your initial drive while standing on a gigantic boulder.

Next, we played at Yankee Jim Canyon campground, just outside of Yellowstone, where we had a serious jumble of rocks to get lost amidst.

Sadly, it wasn’t until sometime later that we realized that we’d left Whomper at the campground, and it was too late to go back and get him. It was a pretty gloomy moment, as Whomper was a good friend. We hoped that somebody nice would find him and give him a good home.

After the trip, I bought another club and named him Whomper Jr. However, it turns out that the magic of Cross Country Mini-Golf was gone. I tried to play it a couple of times afterwards, but it just wasn’t nearly as much fun. It wasn’t because of the loss of Whomper, as Whomper Jr. did more than hold his own. It was just that the entire sport had run its course and lost some of its luster. (Just like dodgeball did a few years back.) So it turns out that the Montana trip was one last magnificent swan song for a truly entertaining activity, and maybe its best that we lost Whomper there, because there’s always a chance that somebody else is using him now, having just as much fun as we once did.

Ever since then, Whomper Jr. has sat in my car, along with the other clubs, basically neglected for years. At first I’d hoped that someday the urge to play would come back, but it never did, and I’ve come to realize that Cross Country Mini-Golf was destined to be short-lived but glorious, and maybe that’s for the better. I’m probably too old to be hacking my way through some campground with golf clubs that are much too short for me, looking to the casual eye like some maniac loose with a weed-whacker.

Sometimes you just need to know when to let go.

So, does anybody need a comically undersized golf club or three? I’ll sell them cheap. You just have to promise not to rename the driver. I owe him that much.

A Pointless Challenge Involving Laundry

Every time I open the door to where my washer and dryer are located, I can’t help but snicker. Unfortunately, it’s not because Bill Cosby hangs out in there and sharpens his old material on me whenever I decide to wash clothes. Instead, it’s because there’s an empty detergent bottle sitting next to a nearly full one.

You see, a while back I realized that I was getting low on laundry detergent, so, calling upon the very upper limits of my college education, I decided the best thing to do was pick up a fresh bottle. This went all according to plan, except that when I finished up the existing bottle, I was too lazy to throw it away. Instead, I just left it there, hoping that the garbage fairy would make it disappear. However, since I no longer live at my parents’ house, it never happened.

So there it sat, and for a while, every time I opened the door, I’d say to myself: “Self, you should really throw that out.” Still, I always found it to not be in the upper echelon of items on my Daily Prioritized Activities List, which is corporate-speak for saying that I was still too lazy to do it and wanted to instead take a nap on the couch. So I’d always leave it where it was. (And before anybody can ask, yes, I somehow got my taxes out on time this year.)

Eventually, however, my thought process began to change. I’d open the door, see the empty bottle, and say to myself: “I wonder how long I’m going to let this sit here?” At this point, all was lost, because it had essentially turned into a pointless challenge, and embracing pointless challenges is something that I’ve always excelled at.

Just how long would I be able to keep the empty detergent bottle around before it got thrown away? Will it be me who finally disposes of it? If so, why? Or will it be the next resident of my apartment? Or perhaps a visiting garbage fairy? Or maybe Bill Cosby?

Anyway, this has led to me chuckling every time I wash clothes, and I’ve come to rather enjoy it and have no plans on doing anything to jeopardize it. My theory is that you should always be looking for ways to laugh, so why ruin something that does exactly that? It’s not like it’s becoming a problem, as I’m fairly certain that I’m not going to turn into one of those people on Hoarders.

Although, and I’m not making this up, I believe that I have two bottles of dishwashing liquid in my kitchen, one full, the other empty. Uh-oh.

Technical Difficulties

This is a special announcement.

This blog is currently experiencing technical difficulties and is currently unable to upload new content. The reason for this is that the head of the Blog Content Development Department is suffering from NERATS syndrome. (Nothing Even Remotely Amusing To Say) It is hoped that this is only a temporary interruption of normal services, and this blog apologizes for any inconvenience that it may have caused you.

This blog holds itself to the highest of standards, unless you include spelling words correctly all the time, and it is working overtime to rectify the situation by any means necessary. The current strategy being employed is having the head of the Blog Content Development Department repeatedly strike his cranium on a wall and yell, “Think of something you big loser!” If this fails, even more desperate measures will be taken, such as widening this blog’s content niche to include politics and origami.

However, this blog would like to assure you that it has no intention of ever lapsing into re-runs. This blog’s motto is “If You’ve Already Read It Once And It Wasn’t Funny, There’s No Way It’s Going To Be Funny A Second Time Around.”  This blog stands behind this motto one-hundred percent.

Starting now.

This Post Brought To You By...

Lately, I’ve begun to notice something about the internet, and that is that the advertisements seem to be taking over. I remember back in the early days of the web, shortly after Al Gore got it up and running in his garage, where you didn’t really have to worry about ads, but like everything that draws an audience, they soon came. At first it seemed to be mostly pop-ups, if my time-ravaged memory serves me right, but pop-up blockers did a pretty good job of nullifying them, and so life was good. However, ever since then it’s been a steady decline until we get to where we’re at today, which is complete ad saturation.

Whoops, hold on.

All right, sorry about that. Just had to pay a few bills. Anyway, it now seems that advertisements take up roughly fifty percent of every screen. It’s a given that the margins, top, bottom, right, and left, are going to be crawling with ads with headlines such as the following:

If You Drive Less Than 40 Miles Per Day, You Are Being Ripped Off By Not Using This One Ridiculously Easy Loophole

1 Weird Sleep Trick

57 Year Old Woman Looks 27

51 Year Old Mom Looks 27

Work From Your Home 10 Minutes A Day And Make One Thousand Dollars An Hour While Losing 10 Pounds In 3 Days And Sharpening Your Eyesight By 89 Percent While Also Clearing Acne And Building A Six Pack Of Abs You Can Grate Cheese On This Is Not A Joke Seriously Have Your Credit Card Ready

The sad thing is, I only made up one of those headlines. Now, while these headlines are typically amusing at first, after a while they become pretty annoying. Luckily, you can usually ignore them fairly easily, since they’re off to the side, and - whoa, hold on, gotta take another break.

Again, sorry about that. As I was saying, you can normally ignore the margin advertisements, but I’ve begun to see more and more ads that automatically splash over half of the screen, and you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can close them and actually view the content. Those ones are annoying.

There are also video ads, where a video automatically starts playing, whether you like it or not. Worse, at least in my opinion, in when an ad pops up when your mouse hovers over certain text on a website, even if for the briefest moment. It’s sort of like when somebody hides on you and then jumps out and yells at the top of their lungs, scaring the bejeezers out of you, except on the internet you can’t punch the perpetrator in order to take your revenge.

So, as you can see – What? Another one? Really? Stupid stalled economy.

Anyway, I guess the only question now is how much more intrusive will ads get? I’m wondering if it'll get to the point where you’ll have to put in your credit card number just to make an advertisement go away so you can see what’s behind it. Wanna see the punch line to the joke? Pay up! Wanna see the final paragraph to a blog? Pay Up! If you don’t like it, talk to Al Gore!