0150: "Grownups"

[Mo0man]

i always fancied the idea of having my basement as a swimming pool with floating furniture. i'm such a light sleeper that if i rolled off the bed in the middle of the night i'd wake up anyway. why not have a softer landing with a splash?

I want a room where water runs down the walls and/or sprays from a fountain in the middle, and there's always about an inch of water on the floor. And a button to start the Zelda OoT Zora Cavern theme on endless loop.

I think you mean the fairy cavern theme

[Cytoplasm]

Last night at work I finally remembered to ask my boss about the plastic colored balls in the back. She said I could have them I gave her a hug for I was so happy. So now I finally have some plastic colored balls (I don't know how many, but they fill a regular sized garbage bag, I need to count them later). The manager on duty last night wanted four blue balls to juggle. Yes, we did tease him about that. I made the inncocent oops of saying when I left, "Have fun playing with your balls". I appologized for the awkwardness, although it was funny. I don't know, I just wanted to share that I am so incredibly happy that I have a good amount of plastic colored balls.

[Julianna]

<anecdote>

My sister has a walk-in closet in her house. She bought a child-safety fence, despite her lack of children. It is fitted to the inside of the closet, containing the 10x8x4 feet of playpen balls.

</anecdote>

[Willis888]

I've solved the problem.

Ball playpen timeshares.

Get a bunch of xkcd fans in a given town to all go in together to rent a small room somewhere and then chip in on the balls. Because, really, how much ball-bounceying can you do in any given day? It's like a co-op, only, more colorful. Much, much more colorful.

My co-op* organized a ball pit with a second co-op* just up the road as part of last year's New Year's party. A large room was turned into a 2-story adult-size hamster tunnel maze (!) using wooden pallets covered on all sides with thick carpeting. One "room" of the maze was filled with pillows. At the back of the maze, 5 queen size mattresses formed the floor and walls of a 4-foot deep ball pit that could be accessed from the top floor.

The room stayed that way until April when it started to get nasty, but the balls are in storage until next time . . .

The pallets were pulled from the dumpster of a local warehouse. The carpet had been recently torn out of a house some friends in the construction biz were renovating (the same friends were also kind/excited enough to do the installation and make sure the upper level "floor" would be safe). The mattresses were thrown out by the local university at the end of the semester, and we were there to collect. The co-op has a supply of extra pillows stashed in a closet. The balls were purchased from an inflatable ball pit company that was going out of business (apparently they are too expensive to clean) for about $700. After everyone pitched in, the whole project cost about $5.00/person.


*an Intentional Community (google it)

[Random832]

I've solved the problem.

Ball playpen timeshares.

Get a bunch of xkcd fans in a given town to all go in together to rent a small room somewhere and then chip in on the balls. Because, really, how much ball-bounceying can you do in any given day? It's like a co-op, only, more colorful. Much, much more colorful.

You're not thinking big enough.

<_<

>_>

Anyone remember places like Discovery Zone, Leaps & Bounds, etc?

Yeah. That.

We need to convince some company that there is a market for this.

[GyRo567]

The biggest problem with Discovery Zone was that the pipes were too small for adults. The ball pens were fine for any size human, but the rest of the place needed to be upscaled. Adding a bar would no doubt also increase revenues.

[smitty]

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1885012

the ball pit bar

[sheepgomeep]

Balloons work ok (and are cheap).. we filled our housemate's room with about 1000 for her birthday.. video here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3RcDVTbJVa4 skip to about 57 seconds in for when she opens her door

unfortunately they didn't last long..

[Soft-n-Swift]

I would like to point out that target has 50 playpen balls for 10 dollars.

[mfank]

2 things.

1st and most importantly, with a fan base as large as xkcd we could simply work our way around the world, snagging a few playpen balls from McDonalds and every other playpen. It would be like the ball pen co-op, but the only credit you can earn is the number of balls you bring to the pen. Of course it would be nice if each person decided to clean the balls they bring...a little bleach solution should do the trick.

2nd. Think bigger on the slides. Check out this place: http://www.citymuseum.org/home.asp. Imagine that but with play pen balls every where. With complete disregaurd to the play pen balls, city museum is still fun even if you 'grown up'

I lied I have three things: This comic was so amazing I needed to sign up for a forum user name because of it...

[phider2]

i always fancied the idea of having my basement as a swimming pool with floating furniture. i'm such a light sleeper that if i rolled off the bed in the middle of the night i'd wake up anyway. why not have a softer landing with a splash?

I want a room where water runs down the walls and/or sprays from a fountain in the middle, and there's always about an inch of water on the floor. And a button to start the Zelda OoT Zora Cavern theme on endless loop.

I think you mean the fairy cavern theme

Zora's Domain.

Sorry, it was annoying me that nobody corrected that...

[Guitarist_09]

Haha, that comic is awesome. When i get my own place i so want to do that

[Awesomeness]

Funny thing is, I discovered Questionable Content through this website. How backwards am I?

Not as backwards as me, I found xkcd, on Wikipedia's Wikipedia page. xkcd then opened my eyes to the internet culture, making me aware of things like memes, 4chan, and many other web comics.

[Apathy]

I've got this funny feeling that this comic will be the cause of a series of burglaries at all McD's, IKEA's and Toystores in my region.

[matizieu]

I have a strange idea on the hygiene problem of a ball-filled room, but I'm not sure if it would work. Is there any way that the balls could be suspended over some sort of rigid netting (like a piece or several pieces of chain link fence laid down horizontally) with just enough clearance beneath them that a slim vacuum cleaner could slide under to pick up debris? I figure that would take down the volume of balls enough to at least partially offset the cost of the structure, and make living in the balls at least slightly more maintainable.

P.S. New fan, just stumbled across this thanks to a reference a friend in CS. This comic is wonderful and profound, and it makes me warm and fuzzy inside. Thank you!

[phider2]

slim vacuum cleaner

Read: roomba. And yeah, I think that would work great, except that chain link fence might hurt your feet, or whatever other part of your body might come in contact with it.

[MysteryBall]

This discussion is just too important to let die...

I'd just like to say that this comic has inspired me, as soon as I get my own place, one of the spare rooms is being turned into a ballroom, I work it out that a room the size of my current bedroom would only set me back £254 in balls (10'x10' ish) for a 3 foot deep pit and £338 for a 4 foot deep pit. Yeah, here in the UK you can get 100 65mm balls for £5. It's times like these I'm glad I'm British!

A friend of mine has already called dibs on one of the spare bedrooms, and she loves the idea.

And, of course, I'd fit the barrier with a little door so I can use one of those big white flexible pipes you get for air conditioners and such for emptying the room of balls into a box box somewhere. Maybe I can create a giant ball vacuum with storage in the loft, then I can just have them fall back down as opposed to hitting it into reverse...

[thicknavyrain]

This discussion is just too important to let die...

I'd just like to say that this comic has inspired me, as soon as I get my own place, one of the spare rooms is being turned into a ballroom, I work it out that a room the size of my current bedroom would only set me back £254 in balls (10'x10' ish) for a 3 foot deep pit and £338 for a 4 foot deep pit. Yeah, here in the UK you can get 100 65mm balls for £5. It's times like these I'm glad I'm British!

A friend of mine has already called dibs on one of the spare bedrooms, and she loves the idea.

And, of course, I'd fit the barrier with a little door so I can use one of those big white flexible pipes you get for air conditioners and such for emptying the room of balls into a box box somewhere. Maybe I can create a giant ball vacuum with storage in the loft, then I can just have them fall back down as opposed to hitting it into reverse...

Where can you buy 100 65mm balls for £5? I don't have a place of my own yet but hey, might come to a point where I need to know where to get cheap ones. (PS: I do live in the UK too).

[soytsauce]

I just signed my first lease. There was a clause that said "no waterbeds of any kind are permitted." I asked them about it, and they said that they might be able to revoke that clause, but they'd have to check with their lawyers first.

Life is so weird.

[kitkat10]

A great way to clean ball pit balls is to place them in mesh bags on the back of a pick-up truck and drive through a car wash. My grandparents used to own a kids enterainment business in which there was 3 ball pits, i can't remember how often we did this but the most enjoyable part was dumping the balls back into the enclosements.

[MysteryBall]

Where can you buy 100 65mm balls for £5? I don't have a place of my own yet but hey, might come to a point where I need to know where to get cheap ones. (PS: I do live in the UK too).

I'm not really supposed to give links out for another few posts, hop on Tesco direct and put 200-3492 into the search, £4.89 for 100 of the things. Argos do them for £4.99 as well, dunno if they're better quality or anything...

[lvdata]

Has anyone considered using empty water bottles? The new lightweight "Eco Friendly" ones are soft when empty (except for the bottle cap). Rinse and dry them out, then cap them so that they are air tight. I go through a ton of them due to the bad Las Vegas, Nevada tap water, and my diabetes(I put the sugar free, 0 cal drink mixes in them). The cap I don't think will matter much after you get a 3+ foot depth. I think it would end up softer then the hard plastic balls, and you could still load them in the back of a truck in a mesh bag and run it through a car wash to clean/sanitize them every so often. If the Coors light guy could fill a apartment with beer cans for $0.00 that still would be spent on a product I think a water bottle "ball pit" should work.

[themissinglint]

[Mr. Troll]

A little late on this thread, but I found somewhere to buy pit balls for 2 cents each:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/375742547/plastic_ball_pit_balls.html
I mean, it's still gonna cost a couple thousand dollars, but man is that cheaper than some of those other sites. This might actually be possible.

[gringer]

Found this on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/ot ... _has_some/

Obviously, the xkcd link is the top post.

[jpers36]

Alt Text: "I've looked into this, and I can't figure out a way to do it cheaply. And I guess it wouldn't be sanitary."

I just noticed the actual comic hadn't been posted to the thread ...

[wilcomir]

Poking around on youtube, and I've found this:

v=3cIcRO3oSNc

[can't post the link as it's flagged as spam]

cheers
V