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!

Owww, my brain hurts!

Being a nerd I naturally see things logically and yeah I do tend to be a bit analytical. And as already noted I find things funny others do not.

So this one cracked me up! We went to the movies last weekend. Here is the ticket "window"...
(Click photo to enlarge if needed)



If you will notice they have totally isolated the money changers from the customers. They have sheets of heavy glass floor to cieling. In fact the commincations is done through the speaker system and cashiers have to wear headsets so they can talk to customers.

Ok, we all know crime happens and it makes sense to protect the cashiers (and the companies money) from robbers but here is the part that totally cracks me up....

They have gone to a lot of effort to "harden" the cashiers. They have spent a lot of money and they have impossed a lot of inconvience on customners and workers simply to prevent robberies. Now look at this photo...



After all that effort to prevent crime all you have to do is take 10 steps around to the WIDE OPEN backside and yell "Stick 'em up!"

Yeah, that cracks me up. All that money and effort just totally wasted.

The sad part is they allow the people who put all this together to breed, vote and even drive cars. Sad huh?

South Park - Still awesome!

Most people I know don't "like" South Park. Of course they will admit they have never watched it but they still don't like it anyway. Say la vie.

It is now in it's 13th season. I loved the show for years but I had kinda drifted away and had not watched in a while but the Kanye West thing at the VMA's a few weeks ago brought it back to my attention You see, several years ago South Park did a blistering satire on Kanye West then and after Kanye's recent bought with assitis Comedy Central ran that episode four times the day after the VMA's. Ah yeah, as usual Matt and Trey, the writers creators of South Park were way ahead on their cultural trends. :)

Anyway, all of that made me remember just how hilarious those guys really are. Not only is South Park very funny but the episodes almost always revolve around current events and the glimpse into our culture and their insight into it is often incisive and sometimes brilliant. Yes, there is always some potty humor bandied about in every episode but the deeper plots poking fun at our societal foibles are my favorite part.

So anyway, they recently did an episode ripping how Disney TV is selling sex to children while making it look oh so wholesome and clean. I was trying to find that episode to show my son. I goobered the search for "mickey mouse".

Even their search engine cracks me up even though the joke is at my expense.

Things that make me LOL

I often find things Hilarius that other people don't even think is funny. I know I'm strange and it's OK. However yesterday outside of an AutoZone my strangeness even took me by surprise.

I saw this and started to laugh. And Laugh. And laugh. I was still chuckling when I snapped this...


Then the more I thought about it the more I laughed. You probably will not find it funny at all.

OK, being anal retentive people who can not control their vehicles well enough to park annoy me to no end. Whenever I see a vehicle parked like this I always wonder, was the driver too lazy, too inconsiderate or just a plain old shitty driver to park this badly. Then I figure all three of those traits do go together so I just assume "all the above".

However this one CRACKED me up. The owner buys an overpriced BMW pretentious-mobile then side swipes something putting big ugly marks down the drivers side and still- STILL can not control the vehicle well enough to get it inside of even one of four sides of the parking spot.

Oh man that's funny! (to me). Yeah, I realize no one reading this is laughing but man, when someone THIS mentally impaired is driving a BWM really, you should be laughing. I am not the weird one this time you are! :)

On a less funny in a bizarre way note here is a last "Springfield Weirdness" picture.



The speed limit is 29? How weird is that?

Eh?

What do they call black people in Canada? Are they African-Canadians? Or is North America loose enough a term they can still be African-Americans?

More Springfield Weirdness

No pictures this time so I will just have to paint the pictures verbally...

Weird #1)
I was sitting at a stop light and a car pulled up next to me, it's hood is about even with my passenger door so I can't see the driver. Rap music was a thumping and bumping very loud. (Please, let us not confuse, urban contemp. or hip-hop with Rap, this was RAP.)

Other than being reminded once again that this is the only form of music that I really do not care for I did not pay much attention one way or the other. Then the light turned green and the booming rap car gradually overtook me. The only occupant of the car was a grey haired old man!
Holy shattered stereotypes Batman!

Then I got this mental image of a guy with a boom box lashed to his walker shuffling down the hall of the "rest" home booming out, "So I busted a cap in my bitches ass..."

Weird, very weird.

Weird #2)
I was eating breakfast at a restaurant, I got up to leave. I am walking down a row a tables towards the door. At the table on the end of the row a woman is seated facing me. She has large boobs AND a very deep V cut shirt. Ladies, I do my best not to ogle and drool but c'mon! :)

So I am walking down the aisle towards her glancing at her occasionally as I get closer. Here are the thoughts that ran though my mind on each glance... (Bear in mind this is why they never made the other side of the movie "What Women Want" we already know what men are thinking all the time and we don't need to be reminded of it. :) )

"Oh my- Look at that! Thank you for sharing ma'am!"
"Might be a little much for a Sunday morning but I am not complaining, very nice."
As I get closer I can see a football shaped dark area right above the cleavage crack...
"What is that? Is that a shadow?"
Getting closer..
"The light is not right for a shadow- Maybe it's an odd sunburn?"
Closer still
"Is it a birth mark?"
Closer yet...
OH DEAR LORD IT'S HAIR! IT'S A PATCH OF LONG BLACK HAIR you can see from across the room! The hairs are actually long enough to be matted up! AIIIIEEEEEE!

Ok, I do NOT get this. If you have the kind of boobs you want to show off. (and you don't wear a blouse like this if you are not trying to show off) then my goodness do something about the fur! A shot of Nair? A razor? Black and Decker hedge clippers? Something! At the very least don't wear a blouse that pulls eyes eyes right to the patch of fur.

Yep, very weird.

With all that said though, now I am jealous, she has better chest hair than I do. :(

Ah Springfield

Just a post of odd things seen around Springfield lately. Well in addition to pajama's at the fast food joint.



I am sure someone thought this was very cute but it merely annoyed me!




Oh my god it finally happened! McDonalds killed one mid meal!

Notice the other guy caught me taking a picture of his buddy! That always happens to me at the topless beach too! I gotta learn to be more sneaky when snapping pics! ;)



Really? Harry Potter has to be around here somewhere looking for his train! I swear this picture is not doctored! I have never seen a half street before.



57? Really? 57? WTH? How did they pull 57 out of their butts? Not 55, not 60 but 57? That is soooo weird!

This is the kind of thing that makes you start to question the universe. Does it really exist? Are we all just figments of some mad god's imagination? How do molecules combine in such a way as to create life? I mean seriously, this the kind of thing that leads philosophy majors to commit suicide! Solipsism. SOLIPSISM!! AHHHHHH!!

Ok, I'm better now. Obviously Freshetta is trying to drive McDonalds out of business. I mean if all the philosophy majors commit suicide who will be left to say, "Would you like fries with that?"?

I suppose it's only right that someone take down those grandpa killing bastards!