The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People

Current mood: Just moochin' along
Current music: Robert Post! Let's have a whale of a time

Is your life droning pointlessly on like an automatic bread-slicing machine? Do you feel trapped in the cogwheels of the artificial society that is laughingly called the 'real world'? Are you fed up with hearing about super-efficient, highly effective people, who go around reading business-meets-self-help books, moving other people's cheese, and using words like 'synergistic'? Yes? Good...

It's time we made a stand for the underdogs in modern civilisation - the dreamers, the escapists, and the procrastinators. Thus I found some sites on the Wonderful World-wide Web that are good for killing (or at least, maiming) time, and for leaving the world behind.

1. Orisinal

http://www.orisinal.com

A website of beautifully designed Flash games, accompanied by relaxing background music. The games tend to be very simple, yet some of them are surprisingly addictive. My personal favourites include 'Pocketful of Stars', 'Bubble Bees', 'Bungee Bear', and the somewhat strangely (yet aptly) named 'Bum Bum Koala'. Orisinal is a cute little site that is best summed up in a word: Charming!

2. Yeti Sports

http://www.yetisports.org

A snowy-white Himalayan Yeti hits penguins with a baseball bat, a golf club, an orca whale, seals, llama spit, and anything else he can get his hands on. Apparently he isn't being cruel in hitting Pingu with a bat, because the penguin was attempting to learn how to fly, and Yeti was simply trying to help. But that's just Yeti's side of the story. Poor penguins. Once you get past the cruelty-to-penguins bit, though, the games themselves are fun. Originally, you didn't have to register to be able to play the games, but their popularity has grown so much that you now have to enter your e-mail address and a couple of other details before you're allowed in for the first time. Don't worry, it's quite a quick process, and soon you'll be toning up those virtual Yeti muscles of yours...

3. Waterballoon Drop

http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/waterballoon5

This isn't something I'd do in real life, because being a Nice Person means I can't wantonly drop water balloons on people's heads. However, this isn't real life, which is my whole point. You get to play a construction worker on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, having a perpetual tea-break, and spending the whole time chucking water balloons at passing tourists. A quick yet amusing diversion for your own tea-break.

4. Sudoku-San

http://www.sudokusan.com

The Sudoku-San website claims to be "proudly destroying productivity since 2005". It really does. 'Nuff said. (If perchance you live in a cave somewhere and have no idea what Sudoku is, you can read my blog entry 'Go figure!' dated October 10, 2005.)

5. Google Earth

http://earth.google.com

I spent a long time debating over what else deserved to be in this list, and finally settled for something cool yet educational. OK, so you have to download and install a little programme from Google Earth, which is a bit annoying, but hey, it's free. But you do get to leave the world behind - you can take off and get a bird's eye view of all the places you know! Basically, Google Earth provides loads of aerial photographs of our home planet, which is good fun to explore. If you like, you can also look at the entries that people have posted, providing a bit of information on the areas or landmarks you're interested in.

Also, to commemorate the very first manned moon landing on July 20, 1969, Google has provided a little extra titbit (courtesy of NASA) in the shape of Google Moon:

http://moon.google.com

This isn't nearly as extensive as their Earth records, but you can look at the funny shapes of the Moon's surface and say, 'Ah! So that's where Neil Armstrong took a giant leap for mankind!' Oh, and be sure to zoom right in and magnify the image as much as possible...

6. The Llama Song, and its creator's website

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama.php

It's a song about llamas. What other explanation is required? The song itself is quite short, but the guy who created it, who calls himself Burton Earny, has his own website that includes not only the Llama Song but quite a lot of other stuff too:

http://www.burtonearny.tk

7. Intergalactic Rigamarole

http://intergalacticrigamarole.blogspot.com

...You're reading it! And believe me, it takes a LOT longer for me to write and check and add pictures to and upload and yell at the computer and re-upload and double-check these entries than for you to read them. So you should jolly well read them!

I hope you had fun being ineffective. Now get back to work!

PS I suppose I'm the only person who reads the comments to my blog, but I just thought I'd let y'all know that Edsters has finally written and published his acceptance speech in the comments for my prize-giving entry, 'Limerick gimmerick' (8 November, 2005). Read it and applaud.