GISHWHES 2014

So GISHWHES 2014, the year of the Elopus. I'd like to say this year was less weird than the previous years, but there's now people out there with Pope Francis tattoos and a ton of leftover kale stuck to chairs. So pretty standard for GISHWHES. My experience sadly doesn't involve a Pope tattoo or kale, surprisingly. It does involve pressure washing a trifle, talking to John Barrowman and a lot of Stonehenge though.

This year's list went up at 7pm (GMT) 2^nd August and we had until 8am (GMT) 9^th August to complete as much as we could. My team of 15 were a lovely bunch mainly from the UK that grouped together and we did a decent amount of items. I'm proud of what we achieved. We organised ourselves through Facebook messenger on our phones and Google documents to keep track of what everyone was doing. This method worked great for us. I'm mainly going to focus on my experiences here, but I can assure you my team accomplished some wonderful things and so did other teams. GISHWHES finally got NASA to join in on the fun this year for a start.

You can see the item list here as you can't see it on the main site unless you have an account. As you can see there was some difficult items this year. I think my favourite was 'VIDEO (20 seconds). The 1980s were great for break-dancing and neon clothing. Remember the “backspin?” Have a junker car do a “backspin” (upside down) on a piece of cardboard set to 1980s rap. The car must have some neon decoration. 167 POINTS' I honestly cannot wait to start seeing people's videos for this. We sadly didn't get this item done as we had no idea where to even start.

I started doing items on the Sunday. The first item I did was a fairly easy one where all I had to do was paint some hairy feet's toenails. The fun part for you is guessing which member of Foul Entertainment I roped into this. He may or may not play video games. I also took a sledge hammer to an old computer monitor. IMAGE. Find an object that you’re holding onto for all the wrong reasons. Destroy it mightily. 17 POINTS. That was really good stress relief.

IMAGE. Supernatural nail art. With Glitter. On hairy toes. - Natalie Springhart 19 POINTS

Monday was the start of my night shifts so I was unable to do as much as I'd have liked for the first half of the week. I was, however, able to tweet and email like a mad woman to try and get us some of the celebrity backing we needed for items. Unfortunately, I was unable to accomplish getting a NYT best selling author to read the Californian highway code for us or an actor/actress ranked in the top 2000 IMDB star rating wearing a shirt with our team name on. John Barrowman did, however, reply to me on Twitter to say he would have helped my team if he hadn't already helped another. So that was nice of him and then retweeted my team's picture which almost killed my phone, so that wasn't as nice.

Simon Gotch, star of WWE NXT's wrestling stepped up and helped us out though. I owe our collaborator Daza a big thank you for recommending him. The item was 'Aisha Tyler is a formidable thumb wrestler. Get a WWE or WWF Wrestler (former or current) to publicly challenge her to a thumb war. Triple points if the match-up actually happens. -Jess Richardson 48 POINTS' and Gotch agreed to help. So big thanks to him and you should all go check him out.

GISHWHES also gave me an excuse to renew my CPR and encouraged others to get their qualification. IMAGE. Based on the Internet, which is always super reliable and never wrong, each year almost 100,000 people are saved by out-of-hospital CPR in the US alone… from everything from choking on food to heart attacks. Get an online or offline CPR certification. It only takes an hour or two to do it online (Internet search for “online CPR certification”); however, the Interwebs say it’s more thorough if you go into an actual class (among many other organizations, the Red Cross and YMCA’s host classes). Your choice. Submit an image of you holding up your Certificate. Bonus points if you do it with a friend. 80 POINTS Let me get preachy for a second and encourage anyone reading this to get their CPR qualification. It can really mean the difference between life and death for someone. A person's chances of surviving a heart attack significantly increase if CPR is commenced at the scene before the paramedics arrive. It's knowledge worth having.

GISHWHES isn't all about teams competing against each other for points. We teamed up with another team to make an item possible. 'IMAGE or VIDEO. As GISHWHES certainly isn’t all about dog-eat-dog competition, find someone on another GISHWHES team and surprise them with an act of thoughtful generosity. Make us tear up. We must see the team name or Username of the individual you are helping. 66 POINTS' I posted a survival pack for GISHWHES to a member from another team and in return got sent a 2013 GISHWHES shirt signed by Misha Collins (founder of GISHWHES and Supernatural's Castiel). Honestly, my survival pack was complete crap in the face of that. I cannot thank her enough. I love it.

Once my night shifts were done I was found to be pressure washing a trifle on Thursday night. I can't say it's the weirdest thing I have ever done either. It was damn fun though, although cleaning it up was a bit of a pain. I also attempted 'IMAGE. Gingerbread Villages are always so cute and quaint. Make a gingerbread village that shows urban blight: needle exchanges, prostitution, heavy police presence, etc. 97 POINTS' Yeah, that didn't go so well. It tasted nice though.

Now onto my two most favourite items of the week. 'IMAGE. Recreate a scene from the cinematic masterpiece “Stonehenge Apocalypse” in miniature - measured to the HO Scale, 1:87 ratio (humans should be around 2cm/20mm tall). Use whatever materials you desire but YOU MUST make everything yourself - No store-brought Stonehenge kits! -Kristy Louise Gibbs 71 POINTS I'm probably too proud of myself for this. I had a lot of fun doing it though and it's still sitting on my desk now. I can't bring myself to throw it away. I did it during the day whilst I was on night shifts and my mini Misha might not be the best and it might fall over if you look at it wrong, but it was really fun to do. It's all made out of clay except for the cardboard base.

I've always loved Stonehenge and wanted to visit it since I was a small child. I don't know what it is about the place, but I've always been drawn to it. I even said at the start of GISHWHES to my team that I'd do any Stonehenge items. So you can imagine my reaction when there was a bunch of surprise last minute location items announced on the Thursday. 'IMAGE. Find two women at the Stonehenge monument in Wiltshire, United Kingdom in the visitor car park, Friday from 5:00 to 5:30pm (Stonehenge time, of course). They’ll have a royal blue umbrella with white polka dots and ruffles. Get a picture of either of them and you, with you holding up a piece of paper with your team name and “I found you at Stonehenge!” written on it. Bring them a written or recited “kindness haiku” (your choice)'.

I grabbed Big Steve from England and we had a drive down on the Friday. I was madly writing a haiku and making a sign for my team in the back of the car, whilst he was whining about his foot aching. Have you ever tried to draw and colour in whilst on the motorway? That was fun. Almost as fun as when I was trying to do the outlines in ink as we were going down bumpy country roads. We made good time though right up until we were about two miles away from Stonehenge and then we hit traffic. Still not a problem we got there with about five minutes to spare and then it tipped it down as we pulled onto the car park, and I had to run and find the women. We did it though and then looked around Stonehenge in the pouring rain. I also managed to accomplish another few items for my team there. Stonehenge was absolutely beautiful and I am glad we went though.

All in all GISHWHES was pretty fun this year. I didn't get as much done as I wanted to, but I got enough done and got to see Stonehenge. I also tried new things and things I would have never thought of doing before. I think everyone should give it a try once so check out www.gishwhes.com and sign up for the newsletter. It'll give you details about next year as soon as they're available and you can join the fun. Next year will be it's 5^th year so I'm expecting big things from it.