Saturday, May 17, 2008

Mailman, you complete me.

I got the best item ever in the mail. Words cannot describe it properly:

shocking_hot_potato.jpg

This is the Shock Ball. Remember "Hot Potato" where kids were forced to use their imaginations to pretend a ball was hot and toss it around? Well screw that, imagination is for the Muppet Babies

goodman03_muppetbabies.jpg
and I'm not Kermit. Though I do an awesome retarded Fozzie, ask GB.

I'm digressing, sorry. Back to SHOCK BALL OF AWE.

This is a very simple game. You put batteries in it. You try and remember if any of your friends recently had bypass surgery. If yes, do you really like them that much? While you ponder that, pull the pin and toss the ball. Possible ex-friend-to-be catches it.. and if he knows what's good for him he tosses it up again before electricity flows out of the approximate 374 metal contact points arrayed around the "Ball o' RAD" as we call it around the office.

Note, by office I mean "the voices that won't let me sleep and tell me to find Ann Heche and make her take me to the aliens/god/thetans".

After shocking myself silly, I had to look up the origin of Hot Potato. I make no promises on the veracity of this claim but here is what Wiki had to say:

"...it may go back as far as 1629 (puritan period) when Sidney Addy's Glossary of Sheffield Words describes a game in which a number of people sit in a row, or in chairs round a parlor. In this game, a lighted taper is handed to the first person, who says:

Jack's alive, and likely to live
If he dies in your hand, you've a forfeit to give.
The one in whose hand the light expires has to pay the forfeit.
"


Wow, passing around a candle until it goes out. History has completely misjudged the puritans.

2 comments:

Gaby Hess said...

This would make an excellent gift for a very small child.

Anonymous said...

playing with balls these days, eh?