Friday, January 22, 2010

Living With WTF Syndrome

For those of you who don't already know, I suffer from Word To Form (WTF) syndrome. Some helpful commenters helped me to identify my peculiar malady before I even knew it had a name, when I apologetically published the results of my first episode of WTF:


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Those nice people helped me to understand that I wasn't alone, and that knowledge allowed me to reconcile myself with my disease. So, what is WTF syndrome? It is characterized by thinking or saying something odd, followed by the thought, "I wonder what that would look like?" The next phase of the disease involves compulsively answering that question by manipulating existing images to provide an actual visual of some sort. The final stage of the syndrome requires the afflicted person to publish the aforementioned result online or at least show it to some friends or coworkers. Since I want to keep both my friends and my job, I have restricted myself to posting the results of my WTF online only.

WTF is a funny thing. I can go for months without an episode. When it strikes, I am caught completely by surprise, like with the bizarre and moronic PSA about cement trucks:

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WTF can also be sneaky. I didn't even recognize it the time it caused me to create a freakish movie poster:

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Anyway, as you may have guessed, I have been stricken by WTF again. On a recent post of mine, frequent visitor and commenter Steve A, owner of the blog dfw point-to-point, thought that one of my videos would have been even better had it featured dwarfs and squirrels. I think he was referring to what has become my personal White Whale, the racing dwarf I met once, and a video in which I spoke of squirrels' love of bikes as opposed to cars. He also teased me a little about the relatively warm weather in Texas. His taunting prompted me to threaten him with a squirrel and dwarf attack squad, and WHAM! WTF syndrome hit me hard. What would a squirrel and dwarf attack squad look like?

click image to enlarge

original image links here and here and here and here and here and here.



Sadly, I know just how this looks. Pity me. I must publish it, even when I fear it might cause people to think me mad, stupid or weird. WTF requires it!

Well, thanks for letting me get that out. I do appreciate those who travel with me as I continue to live and learn from my syndrome, sharing in my journey of pain and healing and lunacy and joy and hunger and laziness and stupidness and sleepiness. Before I go, I need to show you two pictures that showed up when I did a google image search for "dwarf warrior":

source

source

Good God! WTF syndrome? Hah! I am way boring, almost even normal.


Have a Great Weekend,

R A N T W I C K

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Oof!

In a recent post I recommended riding "almost as fast as you can" on snow covered streets because momentum is good. That remains true when it is all snow, but as you can see below, carrying bare pavement speed into a patch of snow isn't necessarily recommended...



When I'm losing control, I instinctively drift right, in this case right into a snowbank. I was gonna say it was nice that nobody saw me, but that wouldn't make much sense after posting a video of the event, would it?


Yer Pal,


R A N T W I C K