Adventures in over-literality
There's some standard advice for facing fear and indecision, which is to consider the worst that could possibly happen, and then realise that it's not so bad. There's an example in a thing going round at the moment about dealing with unhelpful thoughts that ends with "If the thought was true, what is the worst outcome? Is it as bad as you think
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Yes -- I get this. That xkcd I've somehow not seen before but I get this when a doctor asks me and I'm thinking "Well, I can imagine several years in a torture chamber... compared with which the fact that I merely cannot walk across the room some days (*) is very minor."
playing bumper cars in the car park at work would be fun
I'm not so sure it would... It would seems like it might initially but bumper cars bump rather than crunch because they have rather wide rubbery bumpers. I think if you tried with cars in the car park it would be an unsatisfying and jarring experience. You'd either need to do it so slowly you just put lights out and end up just carefully inflicting minor property damage (back a bit, back a bit, another cm... crunch) or you would find it uncomfortable and then you'd set off an airbag.
exclusively positive stories can't possibly be reflective of reality"How I decided to change everything in my life and now I can't afford a stamp to send this to a publisher in a naff ( ... )
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That sounds awesome! Especially on top of all the alarms. Crunching would be the best. You're really not doing a good job of undermining my vision of fun here.
Actual bumper cars are fun, but entail a disappointingly low level of crunching and smashing "because they have rather wide rubbery bumpers". Modern cars have surprisingly effective bumpers for dealing with low-speed impacts too: I'm thinking you would need to take a bit of a rush at them. Part of the fun would be getting an empirical sense for just how fast you need to go. Think crash test videos but from the inside!
You might reasonably point out that to smash at that speed would raise a significant risk of life-altering eye injuries or whiplash or something like that, and you'd be right, and those things are firmly in the "consequences that make the whole project on balance not fun" column.
How I decided to change everything in my life and now I can't afford a stamp to send this to a publisher in a naff lifestyle magazine.Turns out people ( ... )
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I'm just thinking the whole event would be
i) I back relatively slowly into another car
ii) The bumpers crunch a bit and an alarm sounds -- it is quite annoying.
iii) I forward a little bit faster into another car
iv) The bumpers crunch, my airbag inflates, an alarm sounds, my car cannot now be driven.
v) My neck hurts now. I had better call the AA.
Possibly I am getting too old for this.
Turns out people are often prepared to tell you about career changes that did not work out so well
Probably in a darkened bar after a few drinks more than in "Hello" "Hi" "Chat" or "Waffle" magazine. I'll update you next time we go for a drink.
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It can't be driven safely but it will still go, unless you've managed to go fast enough to take out the engine. What's the issue with keeping going if you can't see? You might hit something? More noise and flappy white stuff = more fun. And it'll be their alarm not yours, which is easily bearable. Ghod knows I've been in that situation often enough. Oooh - if it's annoying you can try bumping it harder to make it shut up. I suppose if your car has some weird hitech emergency fuel cutoff thing then the fun might be over when the airbag deploys, but if it's just the airbag, the thing deflates in moments after it's exploded and just gets in the way a bit but doesn't block the view entirely.
I'm sure you can find videos online of nutters driving along with deployed airbags.
Possibly I am getting too old for this.I did explicitly pick this as an example of a thing that would be fun except for the consequences, which would be such a big load of no fun that it's not worth it. If the thing would not even be ( ... )
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