Thing a Week 3: Superpowers? Yes Please.

So, today it snowed again. And by "snow", I mean "six inches of why do I have to shovel this cursed blanket of malice". This has naturally led to the further development of my hunched and aching back, and to fantasies of superpowers. Unfortunately(?), I have never lived as another person, so I can only assume that my thoughts are par for the course for the rest of humanity. And my thoughts tend to gravitate consistently towards how radically kick-awesome it would be if I had superpowers. And I haven't been one of those people who idly think it might be cool if they could fly or something. Oh no, I've thought it through fully. I HAVE GOT THE ANGLES COVERED. The best superpower, of course, would be manipulation of matter, done properly. This doesn't mean that you can make a book float, or light a candle WITH YOUR MIND. Full control means... just about every superpower, really. Once you control matter at a subatomic level, you can will your body into flight, agitate molecules to flame, turn stuff to gold, manipulate peoples minds, the whole nine yards. You could adjust reality so it was the whole ten yards, if you wanted to. This is, in essence, the most twinkerifically cheatery power EVAR. Second place would selective control of a gravitational field. This means you could alter the gravity of a rock, so it falls into the side of someones head, or make a tail spinning airplane fall up if you wanted to engage in a more helpful activity. You could even make a waterfall a waterlift The possibilities are endless! Third place is spatial portals. Anyone with sense should rank this high, because it is awesome. It just is! If you've played the game, you know this. If you haven't, you should. If you don't know the game I'm talking about, get out. Now. Why are you reading this sentence, you should be packing your bags to leave on the first plane, car, train, dogsled, UFO, or velociraptor that you see. I don't even CARE if the velociraptor looks angry, I want you to GET HENCE! Also, in the off chance that anyone has read all the way this point, I have decided that the alternative title for this post will be: Paragraphs? we Don't need no stinking PARAGRAPHS!

Thing a Week 2: I fail.

I think this post will successfully set the tone for my thing a week project, being published (and written) a day after the second week. Anyway, yesterday I found out that I'm an uncle. Again. For the twenty seventh time. For those of you who don't know these things, that is a lot of nieces and nephews. Now don't get me wrong, I love my siblings children. But I have limits! I am an absentminded person, and if the reproductive patterns of my family continue at this rate, soon I'll just have to love everyone in the whole world, on the assumption that all of them are related to me. Ah well.

Thing a Week Experiment.

I've decided I want to write more, so it's my intention to start doing a thing a week challenge, inspired by Mr. Jonathan Coulton's experiment. My goal is to release one blog post per week for as long as I can keep it up, and I'm hoping to last at least a full 6 months. I haven't really thought this through (at all, as a matter of fact), so I will prolly be adding further qualifiers later on.
To kick things off, I'm going to talk about disease. Apparently, shoveling snow every day for eternity has not been good for my system, and it has responded by gifting me with something I like to call "why does the right side of my face feel like it's going to explode?" Apparently, what started out as a simple inflamed throat decided to kick it up a notch, and so now my swollen glands make it look like I have some kind of tumor going on. Sub zero temperatures for the win!

HOLY SWISS CHEESE, BATMAN!

It's a new template! I thought the old one was getting kind of boring so I decided to try a new one. Still deciding whether or not I hate it. By the way, I'm not actually going to write any funny words for this update, since I did it mostly as an excuse to unleash the horrible Batman pun on you, my faithful reader(s). HAH!

Why I Hate Shoveling (and so can YOU)!

So, I don't know if anyone else noticed, but it became winter a while ago. This means a couple of things, in my experience:
1) 'Sgonna be COLD, and
2) 'Sgonna snow.
I am pretty OK with cold. I don't like being cold, but I do enjoy being warm when it's cold everywhere else. And I really, really hate being hot, so I don't mind winter much in that respect.
As for snow, I actually enjoy it. It's like fluffy bits of ice that insulate your flesh! The problem with that is it tends to land on my houses driveway. And its sidewalk. And its stairs. And that means the snow has to be removed. And THAT means manual labor FTW!
Before I start ranting in earnest, let me explain something. I am suited physically to heavy labor. I am extremely proficient at lifting heavy objects, moving them, and setting them down. By extension, this means I am ALSO quite proficient at shoveling.
And so, when more than one half inch of snow falls, it is my sworn duty to get out there and shovel! And shovel! And shovel! And repeat as necessary! Keep going! It's not clean yet! It's Shoveling Time! At this point, I don't even CARE if I'm overusing exclamation points!!!
...Anyway, my main point is that shoveling gets old fast. no matter how much snow you remove, there are always more pretty little ice crystals ready to get a piece of that action. I wouldn't be so annoyed with this, but shoveling involves leaning over and shoveling for weeks at a time, until my eyes gain the cast of an explorer whose eyes have long swept the horizon in search of distant glory, who's had his retinas burnt out from all the stupid snow reflecting the glare of the black day star into them. And that leaning over I was talking about hurts. My spine no longer functions. I'm like a six foot tall hunchback. If I have to shovel one more pile of snow, I'm going to run to France and have Victor Hugo write a story about me.