Icebreaker: What Is Your Greatest Achievement?

Having finished “The 25 most popular icebreaker questions based on four years of data” and enjoyed the results, I’m moving on to a new list:

76 Fun Icebreaker Questions (Not all of which will be used, since some are either/or questions, which are boring.)

Your mission: answer the question in the comments with a good story.

If you don’t have a good story, you are encouraged to make one up.

What is your greatest achievement?

Never having listened to Rebecca Black’s “Friday”. That was a close call. That stupid song was everywhere for a while.

Also, I still don’t know What the Fox Says.

Random Thoughts: Pence and a Good Guy with a Gun

Why can’t we just pass some amorphic, non-specific gun control laws that magically keep bad people from obtaining one of the 400 million guns in this country?

I remember with Occupy Wall Street, they seemed to think that by making a lot of noise and getting news coverage, someone would come up with a coherent solution for the problem they could only vaguely identify.
That did not happen.

I know this is really unpopular with the right and left right now, but instead of just yelling at random problems as you see them, consider developing some sort of coherent ideology.

I don’t think the problem with gun control is lack of attention. It’s lack of any useful ideas. No solid suggestions I’ve heard sound like they’d stop a school shooting… when there are solid suggestions.

To live a good life, you must believe in things bigger than yourself, e.g., elephants.

In the more perfect world, the right and left would be so busy putting out the dumpster fires on their own sides that they wouldn’t even worry about the other.

The thing I never understood about the AR-15 is the handle on top. Why do you want to carry your gun like a lunchbox?

There’s about 400 million guns in this country. If we repealed the 2nd and 4th Amendments and went door to door confiscating guns, we could probably get that down to 360 million.

My 4yo son claimed to have enjoyed The Last Jedi afterwards, but 15 min in he said, “Is this almost over?” I knew I was in for trouble.
Anyway, he liked the porgs.

When my kids got snow cones recently, they had a choice of a dozen different flavors, so they put all the flavors into one cone. That’s basically the thinking behind Avengers: Infinity War.

I liked the one part in the trailer where the one superhero talked to the other superhero who he had never talked to before. I am very excited.
I’m pretending this is sarcasm.

Man, I wish I cared at all about college basketball. That upset sounded so exciting. But I don’t even know what UMBC stands for.
Upper Massachusetts Ball Club?

I thought it wasn’t PC to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day anymore because of how he murdered all those snakes.

I want to remind people again to join my email list to get updates on my books. First newsletter was a huge success. Some people read it. Subset of those enjoyed it. No one reported it as spam.
And you get a free story if you sign up. At least one person enjoyed it and thought it was funny. I don’t know how often you get a guarantee like that.
Anyway, the first newsletter was sort of a test one. The next one is the important one. You won’t want to miss that. You’ll feel all excluded.

My biggest fear is that after Trump people will fall back into the trap of thinking the president isn’t an idiot and should be trusted.

Billion dollar idea: It’s like Patreon, but the opposite. You sign up to take money away from people you hate.

If this were House of Cards, the season would end with Stormy Daniels as president.

It’s no fun to rag on someone if everyone is ragging on them.

Jesus said “love thy enemy”, but in politics people seem more likely to listen to Palpatine’s “only your hate can strike me down.” Sad how many people keep concluding they lost because they just weren’t angry enough when that’s the exact opposite lesson they should be learning.

I’m deathly afraid of guns which is why I keep them all locked in a safe.
One that can’t be opened from the inside.

For a long time now, people have been saying that self-driving cars are this big new things that’s going to change everything, but is there any good example of everyone predicting some revolutionary new thing and that comes true?

The NRA really should have some Hamburglar type character called the Gun Grabber. Fun!

You’re trying to be edgy? That’s adorable!

Finished the book Sapiens, interesting, but that was the most nihilist perspective I’ve since my fictional character Rico from Superego. Not only did religious people get it, but anyone who hasn’t embraced the utter pointlessness of existence.
And there were a number of times he said things I’d been saying — but from the atheist side. Such as that the modern liberal perspective is considered secular but makes absolutely no sense without the Christian concept of the soul (the foundation for equality).
Also he poked holes in that there are differences between “beliefs” and “religious beliefs.” By any useful definition, Communism is a religion that’s killed millions.
Anyway, Sapiens was interesting as looking at humans as this animal from an outsider perspective. Can’t imagine anyone reading and not getting angry about something, though.
Only part where he seemed to chicken out was discussing gender. He knocked down all the current theories on why patriarchies have always been dominant with humans, but didn’t try to come up with a theory of his own, which seemed incurious.

Why do we hate Mike Pence’s daughter making a children’s book to help raise money to stop human trafficking?

If people really thought Trump was some special threat to the Republic, they wouldn’t waste so much time going after Pence for being a “weird Christian.”

“This is the destruction of everything we hold dear. This will kill millions. This must be stopped and… Heh. Mike Pence won’t go to dinner alone with a woman who isn’t his wife. What a weirdo.”

Well, now that polygraph data is in, I might finally have to explore the possibility that Donald Trump is not a great person.

Absolutely everyone believes a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. I don’t know why we pretend that’s controversial.

Just in case, I will illustrate how that works.
BAD GUY WITH A GUN: “I’m going to shoot people!”
GOOD GUY WITH A GUN: BANG! BANG!
BAD GUY WITH A GUN: clutching bullet wounds “Zounds! I am foiled!”
It really isn’t a science fiction scenario. There’s at least two or three examples of it recorded in human history.