Finally!

They finally did it!

I HATE electric hand dryers in public restrooms.

All they do is burn a lot of electricity and then you inevitably end up wiping your hands on your pants. I long ago reached the point where whenever I see one of these wastes of resources and there are no paper towels I just go ahead and save time and electricity and just wipe my hands on my pants right off the bat and be done with it.

However, someone finally invented an electric hand dryer that actually works! No I am not kidding! Stands to reason if someone was to pull off this feat of engineering it would be Dyson.

Check this out, instead of trying to dry your hands with what is essentially a hair dryer Dyson made the air stream very tight and directional so that it pulls the water off your hands instead of trying to evaporate it with heat. It works very well! (refer back to the drawing of how you can identify a scientific type, trust me, I tried this little gem of engineering several times before leaving!)

Jules and Stacy were already fellow co-founders of the Dyson fan club, so ladies, does this device give you any new ideas? ;)

Anyway, kudos to Dyson for FINALLY building an electric hand dryer that actually dries your hands. Who’d a thunk it could ever happen?

Truth in Advertising?

I don’t get it.

I don’t know if you heard about this or not... I will bet that everyone who watches TV remembers the series of commercials about Cheerios cereal being able to lower your cholesterol.

Well the FDA made them take those ads off the air UNLESS they were willing to classify Cheerios as a drug and go through the multi year process of getting Cheerios approved as a drug.

In today’s world it is common knowledge that a low fat, high fiber diet can help you lower your cholesterol plus it is considered just a generally healthy way to eat. Cheerios was just using that bit of common knowledge to brag they were low fat, high fiber and whole grain. These are all supposedly good things- right?

Ok. I think it’s a bit silly to issue cease and desist letters and legal threats to Cherrios over this but OK, I get it, you can’t make those claims about your product unless the government agrees it’s true. I can live with that even if I do think it is a bit over the top.

HOWEVER- at the same time we have pills advertised on TV to make your penis larger and other pills for women to make their breasts grow which are completely untrue! These products makers are flat out lying through their teeth.

So Cheerios commercials which were true based on current dietary beliefs are banned and threatened with massive government retaliation yet “Smiling Bob” and “Extenze" {insert derisive eye roll here at THAT name- ugh!} are allowed to advertise when they are complete and utter lies and are actually being sold in drug form instead of just being moderately healthy food.

I do NOT get that. Man, our government in action yet again.

A Perfect Sunday

Ah, yesterday was Sunday- after two weeks of lingering swine flu and a week of exceeding dismal weather in central Illinois it was a warm and sunny weekend and Sunday was nearly perfect. Out on the deck in a comfy rocking chair with the warm sun beaming down, sipping hot chocolate and reading what is perhaps one of the funniest yet most thought provoking books ever written.

It was wonderful!

Yes I know, this is a boring post but sometimes life is just truly awesome, yet boring at the same time. Weird huh?

Weirdness report #62

I thought this was pretty weird. Scooters are generally for cheap transportation in the city!

This picture was taken on I-44 way out in nowhere southern Missouri. Total BFE country. Miles from anywhere where pigs are not counted as part of the population.

Peter Fonda would be so proud!

Of course this reminds me of the old joke:
Q. How is having sex with a fat person like riding a scooter?
A. It’s a hell of a lot of fun but you don’t want your friends to know you are doing it.

Arrr arr! :) I love that joke!

Ah Bureaucracy

This is an actual photo from the state agency where I am working right now. These signs are EVERYWHERE on my floor today.

Ya know, just making sure!

I guess it’s true?

I once read that all women are inherently gay it’s only a matter of degree. At the time I did not think too much of that but with all the gushing over the stars of Twilight lately I think back on that article and start to go “Hmmmmm…”

See, since I am a man I like women who look like women. So my basic logic tells men women *should* like men that look like men. Yet so often that does not seem to be the case. I mean look at these people in this picture...


Kristen Stewart is very pretty and yet she is probably the least feminine person in this picture!

The one the third from the left, Robert Pattinson, he is the one you most hear women salivating over. Just look at him(?) he is just sooo pretty- I mean just glue a set of fake boobs on him give him some batons, teach him how to look sincere while he wishes for world peace and he is a Miss America contender all the way. Sandra Bullock, (Miss Congeniality) eat your heart out! He is way prettier than you! (and I adore Sandra Bullock)

Then I reflect back in time and so many “heart throbs” over the years have mostly been girly looking or effeminate.

So ladies, please explain this too me, why are you so often so hot for the girly looking men? If you ask me the “inherently gay” hypothesis gains more data points every day. :)

This should help...

If you ever thought the scientific types were a little weird this should help you understand them better...

And we are ALL about understanding here! ;)


(if you can't read the print, as always, you can click the picture to make it bigger.)

I don't know about y'all but I find this gut wrenchingly funny!

Were Screwed!

Etymology – et·y·mol·o·gy
1 : the history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language.

In short it’s the history of words. I have always been interested in the “back stories” of individual words, how the word started, and how it got to mean what it means now.

“Sincerely” is one of my favorite examples. In Latin “sincere” literally means “without wax”. How in the hell did we get to signing letters with a derivative of “without wax”?

The story goes that that in Roman time’s greedy contractors would mix cheap wax into expensive concrete mix. Of course this made for substandard concrete. So the boast or warrantee of “no wax” became important. You were a sincere merchant. Thousands of years later when you sign your letter you still boast of your honesty but thoughts of concrete or wax never once enter your mind. Fun huh?

So this week the thought occurred to me how did “I’m Screwed” (or the hundreds of variations thereof) come to be a bad thing? I mean the vast majority of people enjoy and want sex under most circumstances so how did *that* phrase come to generally mean “something bad is going to happen to me”?

Sorry, no cute answer here, I am genuinely pondering it.

Conversely, how in the world did one of the most despicable things a human could be, a pimp, come to be a good thing? “That’s pimping” is somehow a complement? Pimp my ride means make it cool? Being someone that hurts women and steals their money was somehow twisted into a compliment? I can’t figure that one out either.

Any insights are welcome.

A great callsign

Recently I was driving north through southern Oklahoma. Dallas radio stations were fading out behind me and Oklahoma City stations were not yet in range. If you are into Country Music OR religious talk radio then southern Oklahoma is a radio gold mine! If like me nether of those is really your cup of tea then the entertainment pickings get real slim!

So I set the old radio to “auto scan” to see what I could find. After a bit I got hit on a song I recognized from when I was a little kid. It was not really my kind of song but hey, at this point anything not involving a drunk dog who just got out of prison ‘cause his wife was cheating on him with another pickup truck was sounding good so I tuned it in. Then the next song came on and again I recognized it from long, long ago and again I was not really into it but it was as good as we were going to get so I was riding it out.

After a few songs I heard the radio station’s tagline…“The best of easy listening music from the 70’s and the 80’s” Aha! That explains it. Notice that not only does this radio station play nothing but easy listening music but hey, easy listening music that is only say 20 years old is just not good enough! It has to be really OLD easy listening music to boot!

So, here is the funny part though and I swear I am not making this up. So what is the call sign for a station that plays nothing but the best of 30 to 40 year old easy listening music?

Wait for it…. KOMA! :) Don’t believe me? Well here is the website! http://www.komaradio.com/ So there! :) Even the url is funny! Komaradio! Tee hee!