The daily rant: words of encouragement, humor, birthday wishes, etc

Is the GIF creature related to this https://youtu.be/QAJzsaz2ZSc ?

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My daughter and I and two other good friends, on the way to the coast for a ‘girls’ weekend’. Saw a Suburban-type vehicle approaching us in the opposing lane. Suddenly, he turned very fast to his left (towards my lane) as if trying to compensate for missing his turnoff. The boat that he was towing went airborne and was headed directly for us. The slow motion that @PrinToLaser described was exactly that. The four of us sat there in sheer terror…knowing that we could not get out of the way…I guess waiting to die. After what seemed like an eternity, it veered to the left further and hit the one and only vehicle in front of us, pinning him against the side rail of the highway. Everyone walked out of that. This photo was taken by me at the steering wheel. The vehicle that was pulling the boat is on the other side of it, facing the other direction. Looks a lot farther away than it really was. We were in stunned disbelief and our good fortune colored our weekend.

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Oh yeah, things look much brighter when It’s Great to be alive!

That time dilation is so strange isn’t it? That our awareness can morph like that.
I ponder that thinking about relativity, and how the passage of time is relative to the observer.

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In martial arts you experience it. Combination of adrenaline and high physical and mental stress (for those who haven’t tried it sparring is like sprinting as fast and hard as you can while playing chess. You have to think fast and move faster it’s fun/awful). Number of times I had things slow down when it got REALLY intense and that feeling of knowing I could finally actually just think for a second is sorta surreal. Never could get my body to move as fast as my mind though. Knowing just exactly where to move your forearm in order to keep that foot that’s coming from knocking your helmet off is not the same as being able to get your arm there :joy:

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So apparently velocity and extreme gravity aren’t the only things that can dilate time. The belief of imminent death, or as you describe, injury has an effect on our personal Universe!

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Saw this at the Denver Art Museum store today. Laser cut packaging, too!

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ROFL! First thought…“That’s spelled wrong!”…then I realized it was a comb…duh! :smile:

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Comb + multitool! Interesting combo…

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Hey, MacGyver always looked put together…maybe that was his secret. :wink:

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My wife probably experienced time dilation. I experienced lost time. This is starting to sound kind of Doctor Whoey or X-Fileish.

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Hate to sound like a nut case, but I’ve done time dilation frequently, and hopefully still do. (Remind me to tell you the stories sometime. My extended family still relates one of them every time we get together and eat at the dining table. Apparently it was the funniest thing they ever saw.) :rolling_eyes:

Each was a case of imminent death or injury.

And strangely, it doesn’t just affect your own personal sense of time - it actually slows time in the immediate vicinity as well. (Otherwise, I would have been quite defunct halfway through college.)

Many wonders in this universe.

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consider yourself reminded! Sounds like some interesting stories.

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Chuckle! Let me catch up to a couple of things, and I’ll tell you the funniest of the lot, if you remind me again later. (Just about everyone in the known universe has heard it, courtesy of my “loving” family members.) :rolling_eyes:

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*sets down chair and picks up a hot chocolate and cookie *

I’m good. I can wait awhile.

*munches happily away *

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Okay, this deserves it’s own thread. Tell me more.

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Okay - This needs a little bit of scene setting:

It’s Christmas, several years ago, and the family has gathered for the holiday at my folks house. (It’s an immutable rule of nature.)

But this time, two of my father’s sisters have joined us. You have to understand a little bit of the family dynamic in order to appreciate this…my mom has always felt that dad’s sisters and parents looked down on her - they didn’t really, but mom has a real inferiority complex when dealing with dad’s family.

So anyway, she has pulled out the stops trying to impress Janis and Carolyn. We’ve got the full formal meal going, antique linen tablecloth, tapers, flowers, half a dozen forks and spoons for the courses, red and white wines, we speak in quiet cultured tones and no nose picking at the table…the whole ball of wax.

So mom is having a meltdown about everything going perfectly and we’re all trying to play along as well as we can without cracking up too badly. She was making such a huge deal about everything looking perfect that I actually measured the hang on the tablecloth. (Yes, that crazy.)

And that blasted heirloom tablecloth was the culprit in what followed.

It hung too low and obscured the pedestal feet under the formal dining table.

You can guess what happened.

After dinner I got up to get something that someone requested and I was holding a glass of vintage Cabernet in my hand, and I moved around the end of the table and caught that leg.

Time slowed to a crawl. I felt myself going down, and I knew there wasn’t a single thing I could do to save myself. I didn’t even try.

The one thought that I had was…“Oh my God! I must not spill the red wine on the tablecloth!”

So during the thirty seconds or so that it took me to fall, I turned in midair, carefully reached out and set the glass of red wine down gently on the table without spilling a drop, picked up a water glass and took that with me instead…still falling…saw the horrified looks on the family members’ faces…still falling…saw my sister burst into laughter…still falling…moved my head forward so I did not strike the breakfront with it…still falling. And then I hit the floor. And got doused. Fortunately with water, not wine.

When I finally managed to sort myself out, and everyone got control of themselves again, they started apologizing profusely for laughing and every single one of them said they had never seen anyone do a full face plant that slowly. I didn’t break the fall in any way, but wasn’t hurt.

Maybe that was just luck, but it’s not the only time that it’s happened. It’s just the only one that has independent witnesses that I’m still in touch with. (There were witnesses to the other incidents as well, but they were total strangers, so I can’t verify it.)

Anyway - now I get to live on in family legend with…“Remember that time when Julie tripped over the dining room table? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!” :rolling_eyes:

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:smiley: Thanks for sharing, love a good story!

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Hahaha–great story! I love all the gory details, they just make it so real.

I was a witness to something similar once. It was at the Missouri Fiddlers Christmas party in the community gym, and one of the players on the stage was really getting into his backup guitar. Wasn’t paying attention to the edges of the stage (old-time fiddlers aren’t used to playing on stages). Yep, you guessed it: he fell backward off the stage. Even though he wasn’t a particularly agile or athletic person, he managed to fall squarely on his back, thus preserving the Martin guitar from damage. :astonished: He held it straight up in the air, making no attempt to break his fall.

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Funny how your priorities get set in time of crisis! Chuckle!
(I’m glad he wasn’t hurt though…falling off a stage is pretty dodgy unless you’re crowdsurfing a mosh pit.)

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Great story, I don’t buy the time dilation but we’ll not let that get in the way of a great story.

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