The Weather Man's blog: "What I've Learned"

1.
Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do
five simple tricks—he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a
coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and
two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't
learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's
doing these five tricks with real magic. it's not an
illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can
move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely
limited in scope and influence.
Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?

2.
Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has
his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with
thick rope. he is conscious and standing upright, but completely
immobile. And let us assume that—for some reason—every political
prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released
from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty
minutes. Your are allowed to wear steel-toed boots.
Would you attempt to do this?

3.
Let us assume there are two boxes on a table. In one box, there is a
relatively normal turtle; in the other, Adolf Hitler's skull. You have
to select one of these items for your home. If you select the turtle,
you can't give it away and you have to keep it alive for two years; if
either of these parameters are not met, you will be fined $999 by the
state. If you select Hitler's skull, you are required to display it in
a semi-prominent location in your living room for the same amount of
time, although you will be paid a stipend of $120 per month for doing
so. Display of the skull must be apolitical.
Which option do you select?

4.
Genetic engineers at Johns Hopkins University announce that they have
developed a so-called "super gorilla." though the animal cannot speak,
it has a sign language lexicon of over twelve thousand words, and I.Q.
of almost 85, and—most notably—a vague sense of self-awareness. Oddly,
the creature (who weighs seven hundred pounds) becomes fascinated by
football. The gorilla aspires to play the game at its highest level and
quickly develops the rudimentary skills of a defensive end. ESPN
analyst Tom Jackson speculates that this gorilla would be "borderline
unblockable" and would likely average six sacks a game (although
Jackson concedes the beast might be susceptible to counters and
misdirections plays). Meanwhile, the gorilla has made it clear he would
never intentionally injure any opponent.
You are commissioner of the NFL: Would you allow this gorilla to sign with the Oakland Raiders?

5.
You meet your soul mate. However, there is a catch; Every three years,
someone will break both of your soul mate's collarbones with a Crescent
wrench, and there is only one way you can stop this from happening: You
must swallow a pill that will make every song you hear—for the rest of
your life—sound as if it's being performed by Alice in Chains. When you
hear Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio, it will sound (to your
ears) like it's being played by Alice in Chains. If you see Radiohead
live, every one of their tunes will sound like it's being covered by
Alice in Chains. When you hear a commercial jingle on TV, it will sound
like Alice in Chains; if you sing to yourself in the shower, your voice
will sound like deceased Alice vocalist Layne Staley performing a
capella (but it will only sound this way to you).
Would you swallow the pill?

6.
At long last, someone invents "the dream VCR." This machine allows you
to tape an entire evening's worth of your own dreams, which you can
then watch at your leisure. However, the inventor of the dream VCR will
only allow you to use this device if you agree to a strange caveat:
When you watch your dreams, you must do so with your family and your
closest friends in the same room. They get to watch your dreams along
with you. And if you don't agree to this, you can't use the dream VCR.
Would you still use it?

7.
Defying all expectation, a group of Scottish marine biologists capture
a live Loch Ness Monster. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, a bear
hunter in the pacific Northwest shoots a Sasquatch in the thigh,
thereby allowing zoologists to take the furry monster into captivity.
These events happen on the same afternoon. That evening, the president
announces he may have thyroid cancer and will undergo a biopsy later
that week.
You are the front-page editor of The New York Times: What do you play as the biggest story?

8.
You meet the perfect person. Romantically, this person is ideal: You
find them physically attractive, intellectually stimulating,
consistently funny, and deeply compassionate. However, they have one
quirk: This individual is obsessed with Jim Henson's gothic puppet
fantasy The Dark Crystal. Beyond watching on DVD at least once a month, he/she peppers casual conversation with Dark Crystal references, uses Dark Crystal analogies to explain everyday events, and occasionally likes to talk intensely about the film's "deeper philosophy."
Would this be enough to stop you from marrying this individual?

9. A novel titled Interior Mirror
is released to mammoth commercial success (despite middling reviews).
However, a curious social trend emerges: Though no one can prove a
direct scientific link, it appears that almost 30 percent of the people
who read this book immediately become homosexual. Many of these new
found homosexuals credit the book for helping them reach this
conclusion about their orientation, despite the fact that Interior Mirror is ostensibly a crime novel with no homoerotic content (and was written by a straight man).
Would this phenomenon increase (or decrease) the likelihood of you reading this book?

10. This is the opening line of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City:
"You are not the kind of guy who would be in a place like this at this
time of the morning." Think about that line in the context of the novel
(assuming you've read it). Now go to your CD collection and find
Heart's Little Queen album (assuming you own it). Listen to the opening riff to "Barracuda."
Which of these two introductions is a higher form of art?

11.
You are watching a movie in a crowded theater. Though the plot is
mediocre, you find yourself dazzled by the special effects. But with
twenty minutes left in the film, you are struck with an undeniable
feeling of doom: You are suddenly certain your mother has just died.
There is no logical reason for this to be true, but you are certain
of it. You are overtaken with the irrational metaphysical sense
that—somewhere—your mom has just perished. But this is only an
intuitive, amorphous feeling; there is no evidence for this, and your
mother has not been ill.
Would you immediately exit the theater, or would you finish watching the movie?

12.
You meet a wizard in downtown Chicago. The wizard tells you he can make
you more attractive if you pay him money. When you ask how this process
works, the wizard points to a random person on the street. You look at
this random stranger. The wizard says, "i will now make them a dollar
more attractive." He waves his magic wand. Ostensibly, this person does
not change at all; as far as you can tell, nothing is different.
But—somehow— this person is suddenly a little more appealing. The
tangible difference is invisible to the naked eye, but you can't deny
that this person is vaguely sexier. This wizard  has a weird rule,
though—you can only pay him once. You can't keep giving him money until
you're satisfied. you can only pay him one lump sum up front.
How much cash do you give the wizard?

13.
Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you
are the guest of honor. No one will be in attendance except you, the
collection of your former lovers, and the catering service. After the
meal, you are asked to give a fifteen-minute speech to the assembly.
What do you talk about?

14.
For reasons that cannot be explained, cats can suddenly read at a
twelfth-grade level. They can't talk and they can't write, but they can
read silently and understand the text. Many cats love this new skill,
because they now have something to do all day while they lay around the
house; however, a few cats become depressed, because reading forces
them to realize the limitations of their existence (not to mention the
utter frustration of being unable to express themselves).
This being the case, do you think the average cat would enjoy Garfield, or would cats find this cartoon to be an insulting caricature?

15.
You have a brain tumor. Though there is no discomfort at the moment,
this tumor would unquestionably kill you in six months. However, your
life can (and will) be saved by an operation; the only downside is that
there will be a brutal incision to your frontal lobe. After the
surgery, you will be significantly less intelligent. You will still be
a fully functioning adult, but you will be less logical, you will have
a terrible memory, and you will have little ability to understand
complex concepts or difficult ideas. The surgery is in two weeks.
How do you spend the next fourteen days?

16.
Someone builds an optical portal that allows you to see a vision of
your own life in the future (it's essentially a crystal ball that shows
a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty
years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you
finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two
decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football
game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your
chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian
Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You
are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical
moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that—for some
unknown reason—you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And
this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed.
The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly
come across a preseason CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?

17. You are sitting in an empty bar (in a
town you've never before visited), drinking Bacardi with a soft spoken
acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks
into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who
the new man is. "Be careful of that guy," you are told. "he is a man
with a past." A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he
also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who the new individual is.
"be careful of that guy, too," he says. "He is a man with no past."
Which of these two people do you trust less?

18.
You have won a prize. The prize has two options, and you can choose
either (but not both). The first option is a year in Europe with a
monthly stipend of $2,000. The second option is ten minutes on the moon.
Which option do you select?

19.
Your best friend is taking a nap on the floor of your living room.
Suddenly, you are faced with a bizarre existential problem: This friend
is going to die unless you kick them as hard as you can) in the rib
cage. If you don't kick them while they slumber, they will never wake
up. However, you can never explain this to your friend; if you later
inform them that you did this to save their life, they will also die
from that. So you have to kick a sleeping friend in the ribs, and you
can't tell them why.
Since you cannot tell your friend the truth, what excuse will you fabricate to explain this (seemingly inexplicable) attack?

20.
For whatever the reason, two unauthorized movies are made about your
life. The first is an independently released documentary, primarily
comprised of interviews with people who know you and bootleg footage
from your actual life. Critics are describing the documentary as
"brutally honest and relentlessly fair." Meanwhile, Columbia Tri-Star
has produced a big-budget biopic of your life, casting major Hollywood
stars as you and all your acquaintances; though the movie is based on
actual events, screenwriters have taken some liberties with the facts.
Critics are split on the artistic merits of this fictionalized account,
but audiences love it.
Which film would you be most interested in seeing?

21.
Imagine you could go back to the age of five and relive the rest of
your life, knowing everything that you know now. You will re-experience
your entire adolescence with both the cognitive ability of an adult and the memories of everything you've learned from having lived your life previously.
Would you lose your virginity earlier or later than you did the first time around (and by how many years)?

22.You
work in an office. Generally, you are popular with your coworkers.
However, you discover there are currently two rumors circulating in the
office gossip mill, and both involve you. The first rumor is that you
got drunk at the office holiday party and had sex with one of your
married coworkers. This rumor is completely true, but most people don't
believe it. The second rumor is that you have been stealing hundreds of
dollars of office supplies (and then selling them to cover a gambling
debt). This rumor is completely false, but virtually everyone assumes
it is factual.
Which of these two rumors is most troubling to you?

23 Consider this possibility:
a. Thing about the deceased TV star John Ritter.
b.
Now pretend Ritter had never become famous. Pretend he was never
affected by the trappings of fame, and try to imagine what his
personality would have been like.
c. Now, imagine that this person—the unfamous John Ritter—is a character in a stuation comedy.
d. Now you are also a character in this sitcom, and the unfamous John Ritter character is your sitcom father.
e.
However, this sitcom is actually your real life. In other words, you
are living inside a sitcom: Everything about your life is a
construction, featuring the unfamous John Ritter playing himself (in
the role of your TV father). But this is not a sitcom. This is your real life.
How would you feel about this?

The dumber the man, the louder he talks.
If you drink good teguila and only good teguila, and are disciplined enough not to think, 'Why, a glass of red wine would taste nice right now', you will not be hungover in the morning.
And water. Lots of water
Lesbians make the best breakfasts.
When you talk about golf, you run the danger of everyone in the room, and especially all the women, thinking - no, being fairly certain - that you are an asshole.
Nothing good has ever been done ironically.
One morning at breakfast in Austin, Lyle Lovett's girlfriend, got up from the table, and as she did, Lyle rose from his chair. Lance Armstrong was also at the table, and he asked Lyle about his gesture. Lyle said this: "When you look like I do, you need every advantage you can get." I think that applies to us all.
Bill Murray is one of the very few things we can all agree on.
The most intellectually satisfying pop song ever written is "Everyday I Write the Book."
It's hard to look good in a photo when all the other people in the photo are taller and/or thinner than you are.
What humans can achieve when they're not sidetracked by religion or political ambition is simply breathtaking. I saw a thing on TV once about the U.S. woman's Olympic softball team. As a hitting exercise, their coach wrote numbers on tennis balls and fired them out of a pitching machine at them at seventy or eighty miles an hour and told the players to yell out what numbers were on the ball just before they made contact with them. It took a couple of weeks, but eventually they could do it.
And pole-vaulting. That's just amazing.
The best thing anyone ever said to me was, "Lovell, you're easy to underestimate."
My dad used to look at me when I was a little kid and say, "Doug, sometimes I wonder about you." He always said it with a smile on his face. That might have been the best thing anyone ever said to me.
Very little good comes from looking back longingly.
There is nothing wrong with a barbeque in the park that a pinata can't fix.
You can't live off of yesterday's orgasms.
If you must keep a journal for purposes of sanity, adopt an illegible hand.
The best lovers are poets in the sack.
Most Greeks have never visited the Parthenon. Most French people rarely look at the Eiffel Tower. How many New Yorkers have actually visited the Statue of Liberty? Everyone wants to enter someone else's monument. That's why men will never stop cheating on their wives.
Nobody hates war more than a soldier.
I'm a realist. Whether the glass is half empty or half full, eventually it will need to be cleaned.
Nothing in life is more underrated than a good nap.
There are two types of people in this world, and one of them puts ketchup on their eggs.
Smokers always have something to do.
If a woman says her friend is pretty, she's fat. If a woman says her friend is hot, she's hot.
If you want to get to know someone, lend them money.
Everything before the "butt" is bullshit.