amanda_lodden

Today, I want to talk about assumptions.

I've encountered links to this video several times now. Probably, you have too. God knows it's been passed around a lot. But there's never really been any explanation of what it is, other than "it's funny, watch it". And the title doesn't really help-- "Vader Dances To Hammer You Can't Touch This D[the rest always gets cut off]". I'm left to either watch it to figure out what it is, or guess.

Previously, I'd opted to guess. I've been to science fiction conventions; random geeks dressed up as stormtroopers and sith lords is nothing new to me. If you've ever wandered into one of the dances at those conventions, you know that people tend to forget what they're wearing and just dance, and it's not uncommon to see Legolas dancing with Superman. Also, I've seen the sort of crap that Hollywood is passing off as funny, and I don't find it funny to watch others make fools of themselves. So every time I'd encountered this, I'd shrugged and said "I don't care to waste my time watching some poor geek dance poorly while wearing a costume."

I don't know what finally made me click on it this time. And that's when I realized how completely and utterly wrong I was in my assumptions.

It's not a single geek getting his groove on, it's a choreographed dance. And it's not done poorly; the moves are pretty good, especially for the song. And yes, it's funny. But the humor comes not from watching some poor schmuck who doesn't know he's pathetic but rather from the dichotomy of a serious character doing a not-at-all-serious dance. And from hip-hop stormtroopers. Especially from hip-hop stormtroopers.

As you may have noticed, SE Michigan has been covered in snow again (is it spring yet? How 'bout now?). As it typical of our "is it spring yet?" snows, it's the wet, dense snow that just refuses to move and weighs approximately 5 tons per cubic inch.

John parked in the driveway yesterday, because we weren't expecting the snow until Tuesday. That, apparently, is the price for not checking the weather forecast every 15 minutes.

Riding in with John this morning (I'm killing time until I pick up my car from the repair shop), he stopped at a light. The snow on top of his car did not. A strip about three inches high slid down onto the front windshield. A second or so later, the snow that was being held back by that front strip also slid down the windshield, and then a second or so after that, a third layer slid down until the windshield was completely covered. The windshield wipers couldn't handle the load and refused to move. The light turned green. John rolled down his window and cleaned off the edge he could reach, which didn't do enough. The car behind us honked. The light turned yellow. John sighed, flipped on his hazard lights, and grabbed the scraper. The light turned red. John got out and "brushed" off his side (which implies that the snow moved, which it did not. It was more like shoveling the snow off with an implement not designed for such actions). John got back in and turned on the windshield wipers again. They moved about a half of an inch before groaning and going back down. I took the scraper and got out. I shoveled off my side. John turned the wipers on again. The wipers cleared the rest of the snow. I got back into the car. The snow that was left on the roof gave way, and covered the windshield again.

Shamelessly stolen from Wondermark

I pulled up near the barn to drop off some things that had been rolling around in the back of my car. I shut off the engine, removed the keys from the ignition, and hit the button to unlock the hatchback. Then I dropped my keys into my pocket and got out. As I was walking towards the back of the car, the engine turned on.

... What the ... ?

I double-checked, and the keys (the ONLY set of keys) were still in my pocket-- I hadn't spaced out and left them in the ignition or anything.

This, boys and girls, is how I learned that one of the buttons on my key fob is a remote start button, and that it's best not to put my keys and my cell phone in the same jeans pocket, lest the antenna on the cell phone push random buttons on the key fob.