Okay...so boredom...extreme boredom...leads to experiments. And successful experiments have to be shared! So, I have a list. A list that will leave you childishly entertained for the rest of your days!
Bored? Listless? Help is at hand!
Pass away the pointless hours with my list of things to do
when you're bored.
THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
Blink wildly and then close your eyes really tight for an
interesting light show.
(Amusement Potential: 1-5 minutes)
See a variety of blobs, stars and flashes. Try to make out
shapes and see if your subconscious is trying to send you a message (perhaps
that funny shape is saying, 'send all your money to Todd'?)
See how long you can hold a note.
(Amusement Potential: 4-20 minutes)
Not that much fun, but it sure passes the time. Play with a
friend, or try to beat your own personal best. Inhale deeply and then try and
make a noise for as long as you can. Earn extra points for making your partner
laugh or ending on an amusing note.
Try to not think about penguins.
(Amusement Potential: 1-5 minutes)
This is especially hard, because by trying too much, you
remember what you were trying to avoid thinking of. If you try too little, you
end up thinking about penguins anyway.
Use your secret mind power.
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Pick a passer-by and try to use your mind power to command
them do something, like drop their bag or knock into someone. The law of
averages dictates that sooner or later one of your mind commands will come
true, so you can convince yourself that you really have super human powers and
waste even more time trying them out.
Nose Appreciation.
(Amusement Potential: 10-15 minutes)
Before you eat that apple, sniff it well. Smelling can be
better than eating. Smell the table. Smell the floor. Smell the computer
screen. Why should dogs have all the fun?
Pretend you're a robot.
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
Walk down the street with mechanical movements, adding
'zzzzzt' sounds with each motion. Pretending to have a motor broken in, say,
your left hand can add at least 30 seconds more entertainment.
Scratch yourself.
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
Go ahead, scratch yourself now. Even if nothing itches, go
ahead. Doesn't that feel pretty good?
Dry your tongue!
(Amusement Potential: 6-17 minutes)
Get a clean cloth or paper towel. Stick out your tongue,
then dry it thoroughly with the cloth. Keep sticking it out so it will air-dry
a bit more. Now challenge your friends to feel your dry tongue surface. Weird
and creepy. Grab the hands of an unsuspecting passersby, and force them up
against your warm dry tongue.
Rate passers-by.
(Amusement Potential: 10-15 minutes)
Secretly award passers-by marks out of ten as you go along,
offering (unsaid) expert criticism over their clothing, hairstyle and footwear
choices.
Pulsing Bloodbags.
(Amusement Potential: 7-8 minutes)
Shake your hand really hard, for a fairly long time, until
your fingertips feel like they're turning into rubber. Stop for a moment. Now
do it again. It takes less time the second time for "rubberization"
to commence, eh?
Repeat the same word over and over until it loses its
meaning.
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
Pick a random word out of a magazine and say it aloud to
yourself until it becomes a meaningless set of noises.
Pinch yourself.
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
What is pain? Why is it unpleasant? There's nothing physical
about it - it's all in your mind. Plus, after pinching yourself for awhile,
boredom will seem nice next to being in pain.
(kaboom)
(Amusement Potential: 10-20 minutes)
While yawning, notice that rumbling sound right near the end
of the yawn. You can control it consciously, and make a "boom" sound
which only you can hear. Walk down the street while accompanying yourself on
the Invisible Bass Drum. Launch thought-balls at irritating drivers and hear
them explode. Burst out giggling while walking along at work, and nobody knows
why!
Try to swallow your tongue.
(Amusement Potential: 1-2 minutes)
There's not much to say about this one. It is possible, but
really stupid.
Pretend to be a car.
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Make appropriate revving noises in your head as you walk
along and add a racing commentary as you pass strangers in the street. Use
blinking eyes as indicators for extra authenticity.
Make your 'self' vanish.
(Amusement Potential: 7-38 minutes)
As a child, while all alone, pretend that you are not who
you think you are, but that you have suddenly woken up in this human body, and
your memories of your whole entire life have just been placed in your head.
Your real memories of your "real" life are gone. Your mom and dad are
not your real parents, they are the parents of the child you've just been
forced to occupy. You know you were just somewhere else a moment ago, but now
you are here on this "Earth" thing, and you don't know how to escape and
go back to your real home!
Make Star Trek door noises.
(Amusement Potential: 1-2 minutes)
Stand by an electric door to a bank or something and make
that silly "Scccccccchwop" sound heard whenever people popped on to
the bridge to hang with Captain Kirk.
Look at something for awhile, shut eyes, study after image.
(Amusement Potential: 2-5 minutes)
Another great time waster. It takes about 30 seconds of
staring to create an after image, and the image is then viewable for about the
same length of time. Fun to combine this one with pushing on your eyes.
Waskilly Wabbit
(Amusement Potential: 8-12 minutes)
Say "aah-eeee-ahh-eee" with a deep voice, but
relax your face and shake your head back and forth hard and fast so that your
cheeks flap. Sounds like Elmer Fudd when he's trying to shake off the dizzyness
that comes from being hit on the head. Try this next time you get flattened by
a falling anvil, see if it helps.
Get yourself as nauseated as possible.
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Best achieved by looking straight up and spinning around.
Try to be so dizzy you can't even stand up. This is also entertaining due to
the "makes boredom seem a lot better" effect (see "Hurt
Yourself").
Invent a weird twitch.
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Adopt a bizarre twitch (e.g. flicking your head irregularly,
twitching with eye or busting out sporadic cough noises) and try it out when
you go shopping.
Make a low buzzing noise.
(Amusement Potential: 15-30 minutes)
Hours of fun in libraries! Keeping a totally straight face
and looking nonchalant, make a low pitch humming/buzzing noise and see who
reacts
Discover that your life is a lie.
(Amusement Potential: 10-70 minutes)
You'd be remarkably surprised at how many things you've been
told all your life that are completely false.
Recognizing them is the first step.
For example: "You can't have
your cake and eat it too." ...Is
there anyone in the history of this world that has owned a cake and not eaten
some of it? No. There isn't.
This is an obvious lie. "The
grass is always greener on the other side." This is impossible. Needless to say, anyone who uses the phrase
"Needless to say" is lying, or they wouldn't be saying it. What else is a lie?? Empower yourself by unearthing the truths we
have been blinded to!
THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH VERY LITTLE
See what's in your neighbor's rubbish/trash.
(Amusement Potential: 20-30 minutes)
You can learn a lot about people by what they throw out. You
might uncover some dark secret about them. Plus, they might be throwing out
something with value that still works, like a VCR or Barney action figures.
Watch TV, repeat everything said in Italian accent.
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Sort of entertaining. Include flamboyant shoulder shrugs for
added impact, or go for a Marlon Brando set of grunts.
Tube of Boob
(Amusement Potential: 5-35 minutes)
Tune your TV to a blank station and adjust it for good
"snow". Stare into the snow. Imagine the number "3", and it
will appear as a 3-shaped flickering. But then it will start to slowly rotate.
Mentally erase the 3, then imagine a horizontal line. It appears, but it won't
stay still, it wants to drift and rotate. Make it shrink and vanish. Keep
staring, and soon the snow will smoothly ripple, as if you were looking through
the distorting water of complicated waves in a swimming pool. Think of more
stuff to create mentally. View the "snow" with one eye covered with
dark sunglasses. Who says that watching TV for hours isn't worthwhile?!
Plasma jellybeans
(Amusement Potential: 6-11 minutes)
While waiting in the dark outside a movie theater or pub,
violently shake your head back and forth while observing nearby neon signs.
(this only works with clear-tube orange signs.) See those frilly filigrees in
the bands of light? All neon signs have them, but normally they wiggle back and
forth so fast that humans can't see them. Physicists call them "positive
column striations," while neon signmakers call them
"jellybeans". Tell bystanders what you are doing, and soon you'll
have a crowd of people shaking their heads in the dark like fools.
Send spooky emails.
(Amusement Potential: 15-60 minutes)
Look up someone's e-mail address on the web, do some
research on them via Google and then send them an email full of personal
references claiming to be an ex-work colleague who fell in love with their
shoes. Or something.
Enhanced Awareness
(Amusement Potential: 10-15 minutes)
Look in the mirror, use both hands to pull your lips wide,
then snap your teeth open and closed as shown in the photo. This makes you
"AWARE OF YOUR SKULL." Why, your face is just a thin layer of meat!
Now be honest, can't you feel your Death sitting up there in the future,
patiently waiting? All too soon that skull in the mirror won't be moving any
more. Might there be something important you should be doing right now? (Once
the full-blown skull awareness wears off, find another mirror and restore it to
full strength.)
Dare to be Different
(Amusement Potential: 10-50 minutes)
Besides daring to sing loudly where others can hear, have
you ever dared to "think out loud" in public? Perhaps even start a
long conversation with yourself? Now finally it's possible without
embarrassment: just get an old defunct cellphone and an earphone/mike. Sit in
the park with the cellphone in your lap and say anything you want, right out
loud. Nobody will care. (Just don't dare to try this WITHOUT an obvious
cellphone and microphone-headset!) Hmmm. Even better. Just wear a mike-headset
alone, but with the plug dangling loose in your lap. Passersby will assume that
you have a cell phone. But perhaps one or two people will look more closely,
realize that no cellphone is involved, then suddenly stop smiling. And back
away from you carefully.
Make prank phone calls.
(Amusement Potential: 20-60 minutes)
Very entertaining, but requires discipline. Remember:
vulgarities don't make a call funny, but getting the other person to believe a
ridiculous story will. Try seeing if you can get them to make noises to 'test'
the line. One to get you started off: Call McDonalds with weird complaints
about their food.
Zen Fluid Dynamics
(Amusement Potential: 20-40 minutes)
Sit in a sunbeam in a dimly-lit room. Light a stick of
incense, hold it vertically, then move it upwards and stop suddenly, with a
jerk. A perfect smoke-ring will be launched from the burning tip. Move the
incense upwards, then suddenly jerk downwards, then repeat. You can launch fast
smoke-rings through the center of slow ones, create side-by side rows, etc. In
a draft-free room they persist for ages, and soon the air will be full of huge
grey thin circles. Contemplate the silent Chaos.
Pretend all humans will die except for people in room with
you.
Amusement Potential: 10-20 minutes)
What would you do if this really happened? Would the group
stay together, or would there be factions? Who would join what group? Remember,
there would only be power for a few days before the plants ran out of fuel or
broke. To travel, you would always have to be near cars to siphon gas out of.
Best to do with people you know.
Do the Celestial Crawl
(Amusement Potential: 10-25 minutes)
On a cloudless warm night, walk around until you can put a
nearby building or tree very close to a bright star in the eastern sky. Now lay
on the ground and move yourself until the corner of the building or the top of
the tree just BARELY covers that star. Wait a moment. The star will reappear.
Wiggle along to cover up the star again. It reappears. Keep wiggling along.
(Um... notice that the entire Earth is rotating beneath you?)
Restaurant Super-candle
(Amusement Potential: 15-40 minutes)
...with a foot-high flame. While in a restaurant, tear off a
bit of a napkin or other paper, and twiddle it into a little rod the thickness
of a pencil lead. Dip both ends into the liquid candle wax so the whole thing
is wetted, then wait for it to harden (or chill it in your drink.) Carefully
jab this hard wax rod into the top of the candle so it becomes a second wick.
Tilt the candle to expose this extra wick to flame. Now REPEAT THE PROCESS! Five
wicks create a tall flame like a blow torch which makes a soft roaring noise.
Step off a curb with eyes shut, imagine it's a cliff.
(Amusement Potential: 2-5 minutes)
To get any benefit out of this one, you have to have a good
imagination. Don't step off immediately, build up to the jump. Study the ravine
below. Feel the winds at that altitude. Step off and...AHHHHHH!!!!! It's more terrifying than you'd expect.
Psych! Experiment
(Amusement Potential: 1-4 weeks)
Get some epoxy or crazy-glue and attach a quarter to the
floor. Who can resist stopping to grab it? Arrrg! Put it in a spot that you
pass by every day and see how long it survives. Eventually somebody will come
along with a pocketknife and pry it loose. The quarter lasts for weeks. After awhile
a black blossom of markings appears around it. People will be scuffing the
floor while trying to kick it loose. Chuckle to yourself as you investigate,
only to find numerous bloodstains and broken fingernails surrounding the
quarter.
Try and sound Welsh.
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
The key to sounding Welsh is to make sure that your voice
goes up at the end of the sentence, so that everything sounds like a question.
Throw in a superfluous 'isn't it?' at the end of everything you say and you're
halfway there. Isn't it?
Burn things with a magnifying glass.
(Amusement Potential: 5-30 minutes)
Ants are always fun to use for this, but burning the face of
someone you don't like, under some circumstances, can be just as entertaining.
Burst of flavor.
(Amusement Potential: 4-6 minutes)
While reading, eat something. Notice that the flavor
vanishes as soon as you get involved with the story you're reading? Now
concentrate on your mouth, and the flavor explodes into reality. By
concentrating on the text or on your mouth, you can make the flavor flash on
and off. WEIRD!
THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH ANOTHER PERSON
Have a water gargling contest.
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Put a glassful of water in your mouth and see how long you
can keep gargling for. Award yourself extra points for loud and amusing
gargling noises, and minus points if you laugh.
Stare at the back of someone's head until they turn around.
(Amusement Potential: 2-5 minutes)
This works on the "I have the feeling I'm being
watched" principle. Conduct an experiment…does this really work?
Suggest the person next to you do something ridiculous.
(Amusement Potential: 1-30 minutes)
Turn to the person next to you and tell them they should do the first thing that comes to your head...like "Hey, you should stand up on your chair and proclaim the person you love," or "Do you have anything random in your bag that you could give me?" or "It would be so awesome if you busted out your favorite dance move right now." You'll be amazed at the number of people that will actually consider obeying you.
Have a "Who is less competitive" competition.
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
Trying to win at this will make you lose. Trying to lose
makes you win which makes you lose. Not trying at all makes you lose which
makes you win which makes you lose.
Pick up a dog so it can see things from your point of view.
(Amusement Potential: 3-5 minutes)
Think about it: your dog has only seen the house from a
viewpoint from 6" to 2' high. It's never seen the tops of counters, what
you keep on your desk, the tops of shelves, etc. Try looking at things from its
point of view, too.
Make a secret handshake.
(Amusement Potential: 5-15 minutes)
Most people will invent secret handshakes with their
friends, but then don't keep it a secret.
They take such pride in their ridiculous ritual, they do it out in the
open for all to see! Find a friend, and
invent a secret handshake complete with passwords, hip bumps, thumb wars, magic
tricks, exchanged goods, and alternate endings.
Make sure that most of your movements are small enough to be hidden
between two people. Then, when you meet
in public, make sure no one can see what you're doing as you execute the
handshake. Everyone will be dying to
know what in the world is going on between you two each time you meet up.
Pull out a hair, stick in someone's ear.
(Amusement Potential: 1-5 minutes)
Best done to sleeping people. Added challenge in having no
one else around, because then you can't blame it on anyone else. Try to beat
your record number of times before the person catches on.
Two-inch sparks
(Amusement Potential: 9-15 minutes)
Create REALLY BIG "static" sparks: on a winter's
day, scuff your feet on the rug so that your body becomes electrified. Now
stand near a victim. Wiggle your shoes while pressing on the rug, so that you
build up some charged footprints. Now suddenly LEAP INTO THE AIR and touch your
victim with your finger at the same time, while you're still in flight. The
spark will be much stronger than normal. For added effect, bolt from the
vicinity giggling incessantly.
Hold onto the same object as someone else.
(Amusement Potential: 15 minutes - unlimited)
Find a pencil or teddy bear or bag or numchucks or something. Hold on to one end. Have your friend hold the other. Now just go about doing all the normal things you need to do in the day...but never let go. This activity is fun at first...then it gets really competitive after about half an hour...after more than 90 minutes, you're generally not friends with the person on the other end of the object anymore. But at least you're not bored!
Can you out-hum your friend?
(Amusement Potential: 1-4 minutes)
This is quite a tough one - and as many friends as you like
can join in. Sit opposite your friends,
and then start humming to yourself as loud as you can. The winner is the person who can keep a
straight face the longest...anyone who laughs is disqualified. Tip:
Try varying the tone of your hum to put off your opponent!
Pour water in hand, make sneeze noise, throw water on back
of person's neck.
(Amusement Potential: 5-15 minutes)
Always a good gag. For an even bigger reaction out of the
person, act like you're not sorry at all for what they think you did. Comment
instead on how big that sneeze was or about how there was a lot of mucus in
that one.
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I hope that this list has been of use to you. I know it has
and will be to me for a long time!!
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