Category: Awesome Things

All hail the mighty brow.

Folks, I ask you: what’s not to love about these shaggy forehead caterpillars? Let’s rack them up:

1. Sweat-B-Gone. Your shiny, slippery forehead is the perfect runway for sweat to launch straight into your eyes, stinging and blinding you as you go about shoveling the driveway. Good thing your perfectly shaped eyebrows are there, staunch and hairy defenders of the eyeball, whisking away sweat and keeping you seeing.

2. Don’t look ridiculous. If you had no eyebrows, you’d sort of look like Whoopi Goldberg or the victim of a frat hazing that went too far.

3. Quiet talk. They say that 95% of all communication is non-verbal. You know, it’s less what you say, more how you say it. It’s your dress, your walk, your eyes, and the way you move your body. And if that’s true, what Body Prop comes in handier for this quiet talk than your ol’ eyebrows? Pop them up to show surprise, squint them tightly to show you ain’t happy, and maybe furrow one slightly to show you’re a bit confused. Eyebrows can help you say so much with so little.

Although we may often forget it, our eyebrows are rocking the forehead from the day we’re born to the day we die. They soldier on in the sun, sleet, wind, and rain and need to look pretty doing it. They don’t take vacations and they don’t complain.

So let’s give it up for our eyebrows, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s give it up for dry eyes. Let’s give it up for showing emotion. Let’s give it up for not looking ridiculous.

And let’s give it up for love.

AWESOME!

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AWESOME!

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Toilet bowl stains are a fact of life.

Big billowy dustballs are going to pool under the couch, crumbs will form communities on your kitchen counter, flyers and junk mail will pile by the door and, let’s just face it, once in a while your place will just stink.

But hey, it’s not you, it’s us.

We’re big, bulky animals who’ve been living in the world’s caves and jungles for a few hundred thousand years, and just recently we’ve tried moving into a prim and proper world of freshly waxed floors and central air conditioning. We fart, burp, and spread dirt across the floor. We sweat, shed skin, and shower dandruff all over the place. Sure, we wear pants, read the newspaper, and brush our teeth, but beneath it all we’re still just hairy animals who scratch ourselves a lot.

Of course, when guests come visit, most of us try to distance ourselves from our roots.

We perform the Doorbell Dash and run a Swiffer over the floor, light a candle, and wipe down the bathroom. We trade bad breath for mouthwash and sweatpants for fresh pants. We ditch our cave-selves and freshen up our place for company. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with all that.

But how good does it feel when you just, you know, don’t? How good is it when friends visit and you don’t lift a finger? I say when your visitors don’t command a freshly-scrubbed toilet, they are your Cave Brothers and Sisters. They know you for what you are and they don’t judge you, because they have hairballs on their bathroom floors and piles of dirty shoes at their front doors, and they think that’s perfectly fine.

These are your closest family and your closest friends. People, if you visit somebody’s place and they don’t clean up for you, consider yourself lucky. It means you’ve got some great friends who are relaxed and comfortable being themselves around you. And that’s 100%

AWESOME!

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There are a few types of Frisbee tosses out there:

1. The Sideways Roller. Even the best frisbee tossers can’t avoid the occasional Sideways Roller. This is when the frisbee hits the ground almost immediately, and then rolls away in a sharp, spinning circle. For some extra points, it’s always fun to chase it around and around and then half-heartedly give up and wait to see where it stops.

2. The Boomerang. Oops, too high, way up in the wind there. Careful though, that thing’s coming back, straight at your throat.

3. The Fancy Fudge Up. After a few tosses, someone might get cocky and attempt a novelty forehand throw or under-the-leg toss. These usually end up flying way off into the distance and then rolling into the sewer. Don’t get too cute out there.

4. The Laser. A classic sharp, shooting toss right at the chest of your partner. They can usually catch it without moving an inch, but might jam a finger or two in the process.

5. The Flying Saucer. And lastly, the highlight of the day, everybody. It’s gotta be that Flying Saucer. A nice, airy toss that just seems to pause in mid-air and slowly hover down into your waiting hands, like a spinning plastic angel from heaven.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

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Okay, straight up: you know those big kettle drums you see in the symphony? The ones being pounded with padded drumsticks by a bald guy in a tuxedo? Well, the sound of rain from inside the tent feels like living in a kettle drum.

Now, let’s be honest. The best thing about the sound of rain inside the tent is that it means you’re inside the tent, not outside in a thick and wet T-shirt, on your mud-splattered hands and knees, trying to hammer some plastic stakes into the mushy ground. Yes, putting up a tent in the rain is pretty high up there on 1000 Annoying Things, a non-existent netherlist which also features #1000 Walking into spider webs and #999 When someone says the punchline to the joke you’re telling.

The sound of rain from inside the tent feels safe, secure, and sort of comforting. After all, you’re out in the elements, safe from the elements. You’ll get the marshmallow roasting sticks later, you’ll build a fire tomorrow, but for now it’s just time to lay back on the bumpy sleeping bag, put your hands behind your head, and smile.

AWESOME!

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Stress level goes up.

Stress level goes down.

AWESOME!

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See ya later, pins and needles. Welcome back, blood.

AWESOME!

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When it’s a dark, summer night, and you’re cruising around town, bass thumping, head bumping, rocking out in the backseat, let me ask you something: what feels nicer than slipping your hand out the window and letting that cool breeze wash right over you?

If you said not much, baby, then you got it.

Listen up, Auto Industry — to get our summer groove on, we need those backseat windows to drop down all the way. None of this half-way, quarter-way, all-the-way-but-an-inch business. We won’t have it. We The People need that non-stop, all-drop window. Window makers, you heard it here first: stop stopping, start dropping.

Because there’s nothing quite as frustrating as a window that stops short. Have you ever tried to dangle your arm out a stopped short window? Welcome to a world of cut-off circulation and cold, blue hands.

Also, think of the poor children. The poor nauseous, carsick children sitting in the backseat on a swervy freeway. A world of car windows that don’t drop the full drop is a world of hot, splattery, autumn-colored doors. I know it’s not pretty, but you know it’s the truth.

Backseat car windows that go down all the way make life a little bit sweeter. They blast us with wind, let us rock out with our elbows out like the front seat crew, and give our spinning stomachs the occasional sweet relief it needs without messing up the ride.

So let’s ask the car companies to give us all the full roll down. We deserve it. We can handle it. And let’s be honest: no one’s going to throw the baby out anyway.

AWESOME!

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After a lot of pinching, tweezing, and biting out pops that annoying little sliver of wood, leaving behind only a tiny, satisfying puncture hole.

AWESOME!

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Ever tried to turn on someone else’s TV?

Brother, we both know that’s a tough slog, probably involving a couple of these fine moves:

1. The Brand Name Match-Up. You stare at three identical-looking black remotes on their coffee table and play Sherlock by matching brand names. You eye the Panasonic logo in the corner of the TV and search for the Panasonic remote on the table. Elementary, my dear Watson.

2. The Walk-Up. When you can’t get anything to turn on, you toss all the remotes on the couch in a fit of frustration and just walk up to the front of the TV to search for the Power button. This works until you want to watch a movie and can’t find a TV/Video or Input button on there.

3. The Out Of Order Lecture. Your buddy walks in the room and flips out when he sees you pushing buttons and Spanish subtitles scrolling across the screen. “What did you press first?,” he asks, ripping the remotes out of your hand like puppies you happen to be strangling. “You’re doing it all out of order!” He might throw in some sarcastic jabs at the end too like “How could the TV work without the cable box?” or “No, no, no, you have to flip the Input switch on the Universal first. Idiot!”

If you feel this pain, then you know how rewarding it can be when you finally master your TV remote. You don’t see yourself changing, but one day you look in the mirror and notice you’ve become an Channel Surfing All-Star. And that’s something worth celebrating.

First you ace the ups and the downs and then you ace the number pad, even after the little nipply thing wears off the 5. After you get that, there’s no stopping you. Mute, input / output, sleep, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to look and your TV watching efficiency zooms through the roof. Nobody flips channels like you. Nobody cranks the volume when someone starts vacuuming like you. And nobody pushes Mute and answers the phone in one ring like you.

Nobody can touch you, baby.

You made it.

AWESOME!

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