Safe Excitement
Enjoy the Ordinary
This page describes the many things we do — ordinary things — to get our adrenalin rushes.
Table of Contents
- Watching Paint Dry
- Watching Grass Grow
- Wood Warping
- Weather Channel
- Riding Through Car Wash
- Cheese Rolling
- Cement
- Defragging
- Use-By Dates
- Watched Pot — boils?
- To-Do Lists
- Stone Skimming/Skipping
- Bubble Wrap
- Metronomes
- Water Freezing
- Windscreen/shield Wipers
- Thumb Twiddling
- Shoe Laces
- Raking Leaves
- Curling
- Rain
- Darning Socks
- Elevators/Lifts
- Escalators
- More? Please email them to us, click here
Stilton Cheese Rolling Championships — Cambridgeshire, England
Cheese rolling is an annual event in Stilton. Hundreds of villagers and visitors line the racecourse that begins at The Bell Inn and ends at the bottom of Fen Street and Church Street. Contestants group together in teams of four.
Click here to view the Stilton Village website. The website has many interesting pictures of the cheese rolling over the years.
Race Underway
Holy Rollers
Warning—not for dull men:
Extreme Cheese Rolling — Gloucester Cheese Roll — Gloucestershire, England
Unlike the Stilton Cheese Roll, where cheese is rolled down a relatively flat road, the Gloucester Cheese Roll on a steep hill.
Each year there a many injuries. This is Extreme Cheese Rolling. It is not an event for dull men.
The event had been held in May each year on Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire. Up until 2010. The 2010 event was cancelled (click here) due to the inability to arrange sufficient insurance coverage.
There are many locations to watch grass grow. Home owners have it easy with their front yards and backyards. Apartment dwellers can go to parks.
Watching Grass Grow Webcam
Even easier is viewing the Watching Grass Grow Webcam. The webcam was breaking news:
The website has still photos showing the a lawn's progress:
Watching paint dry is, hands down, the leading dull activity. Watching paint dry is synonymous with being dull. It's so easy to do. You simply paint something, then pull up a chair and watch. To ramp up the excitement, use a rocking chair.
The Official Watching Paint Dry Webcam
The Official Watching Paint Dry Webcam allows viewers to watch paint dry without actually painting a wall. Viewers have fun using control buttons on the website to move the ladder to the right, left, or center.
Digital Paint — it drys digitally — never needs repainting
The website watch-paint-dry.php shows paint drying on your computer screen. Convenient because the paint never drys. So when you want to watch again. all you do is hit your computer's refresh button. Much easier than repainting a wall again.
Going Professional
Having the last laugh about watching paint dry is Keith Jackson. Keith gets paid for it. He is a professional paint drying watcher. The London transport system hires Keith when they are painting their underground stations to advise on when it is OK for subway passengers to walk on the station floors again.
Keith stares at the paint for hours, occasionally touching it with a finger to see how it is coming along.
Click here to read more about Keith in London's The Daily Mirror.
YouTube
Watching paint dry is now, of course, on YouTube. There are several videos on YouTube of watching paint dry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1VEY7ndKCs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PjUvZm-6PU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jECynrO9GQQ
If listening to music is too exciting for you, especially rock-and-roll, you may enjoy listening to a metronome.
Online
Click here to listen to online. you can listen to various speed and choose the one that suits you best. On this metronome, the speeds indicated are largo, larghetto, adagio, andante, moderato, allegro, presto, prestissimo.
Ramping it up
Click here to see and hear a YouTube video of 100 metronomes.
BBC
A BBC article (click here) describes thumb twiddling as an ancient art and that it is a subject having many nuances and a depth not seen upon initial contemplation.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has a perfectly dull article about thumb twiddling (click here). They say thumb twiddling is often cited as an example of a useless, time-wasting activity, an activity that yield no useful results.
Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia has an article about thumb twiddling (click here), which they say is an ancient martial art known as "thumb fu."
Uncyclopedia shows a statue in honor of thumb twiddlers:
The premier website for shoelacing is Ian's Shoelace Site.
Ian's website has a Shoelacing Photo of the Week. The photo for the week of August 10, 2009 is a brightly lacing method on a pair of crossword patterned Converse All Star sneakers::
Bubble Wrap, close up
Bubble wrap can be fun to pop, it's fine Safe Excitement:
Equipment needed: Bubble wrap. Floor.
Season: All year long although it is practiced more around Christmas when more packages are arriving.
Technique: Place bubble wrap on floor. Step on it.
Ramp it up: Syncopate your popping. Have others join you, popping along with you.
Go digital with iPhone/iPod Touch: click here for app from Sealed Air Corporation, makers of BubbleWrap, and Lima Sky, designer of apps. With this app, you don't need to put bubble wrap on the floor to pop it. You can pop it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Bubble Wrap Stomp: Click here to watch a video of a Bubble Wrap Stomp.
Make a Bubble Wrap Stomp T-shirt: click here for instructions and video.
Another Bubble Wrap Stomp
Watching cement being poured, trowelling, and setting provides endless hours of entertainment.
The Sound of Cement. It also is enjoyable to listen to the cement mixer.To listen to cement mixer sounds, click here to get to a great website about antique cement mixers. The audio on the website — the rhythmic sounds — can be listened to for hours.
You can enjoy listening to rain even when it is not raining — click here to listen to soothing sounds of rain, with calming background scenes, on YouTube.
Riding through a car wash is exciting
Equipment needed
Car. Car Wash. Coins or credit card. Chamois or towel.
Season
Any time of year.
Preparation
To prepare for this experience, to make sure you won't get scared when doing the real thing, click here to watch a video of a ride through a car wash.
Instructions
- Lower antenna.
- Drive up to the entrance of Car Wash.
- Pay using the coins or credit card.
- Close windows.
- Once the light turns green, drive into the Car Wash until the light turns red.
- Enjoy the ride.
- When ride ends, drive the car forward to a parking place.
- Use chamois or towel to dry off bits the Car Wash's dryer missed.
- If you find a spot that didn't get clean, ask attendant if you can ride through again.
Caution
While you are riding through the Car Wash you will be tempted to turn on the windshield wipers. This is OK if the Car Wash is the brushless kind. If it is the kind that uses brushes, however, be very careful not to have the wipers on when a brush is getting close to the windshield.
The same applies to the rear window wiper, if your car has one.
© 1996-2013 International Council of Dull Men, London and Washington DC
