Return to Rhetorical Friday

Mandatory seatbelt laws are fascist.


Uhm...that's great. Why is this an issue today? Did you get pulled over or something?


Actually, I thought I'd take this opportunity to use Rhetorical Friday to expand everyone's horizons. That said, since you are The Most Intelligent Readership In The World, you probably already know this, so we'll have a bit of an English refresher course today.

Today's topic: Rhetorical Fallacies.


Ooo! Edutainment! Tell us all about Rhetorical Fallacies.


While a Rhetorical Question is one designed to not really have a response, (ie: What is the sound of one hand clapping), a Rhetorical Fallacy is a statement designed to not allow a discussion, or realistically have an exchange of ideas. They are divided up into several categories, which we may well be exploring over the coming weeks...but today's is an example of an Ethical Fallacy. More specifically, a Moral Equivalence.

Moral Equivalence deals with two items, and implying an analogous relationship between them when it's clear that the two are on entirely different levels of morality. In today's example, Seatbelt Laws are at worst a minor nuisance to a single person, while fascism is an entire type of government. While some parallels do exist between the two ideas, one is far and away more substantial than the other. Yet, today's Sametime Status puts them on equal footing...this creating a Moral Equivalence.

Hope you had fun today, everybody! Enjoy the weekend!!!

It's going to be good, too

Tomorrow’s Sametime Status will be about procrastination.


I have a great retort for tomorrow's blag as well. I'm looking forward to it.


We should get started preparing.


Ehh...maybe after lunch.

It's usually dark and sooty.

Funny...I don’t feel ashy.


You are pretty pale, actually...


So today is Ash Wednesday...the official start of Lent and a day that I have to remind myself that I'm not supposed to eat any meat. So far, my bagel and I have succeeded!

They're so gonna go

Go Syracuse!


I agree. Go Orangepersons! That would be the more politically correct way of addressing them in large, integrated groups, I think.


Uhmm....sure. Regardless, tonight is the big basketball game between Syracuse and...uhmmm...some other team who's going to get the floor wiped with them. I'm going to be at the game because I'm very susceptible to peer pressure, and because there will be food and drink in Manhattan involved in the trip. Good times all around.


Speaking of good times...it's National Pancake Day!


Woohoo! I kinda wish the people who run the adorably tiny cafeteria thing at work realized it was pancake day and made pancakes for everyone...but such was not the case. However, if you live near an IHOP, they'll give you a free stack of pancakes until l0PM tonight.

On a related note...here's a clip from "Scrubs" that cracks me the heck up every time I see it:

It was an honor just to be nominated

And the award for Best Status in a Sametime Role goes to...Jeremy!


Congratulations, Jeremy! This is an honor well-deserved.


Oh wow...I had no idea that I could win this award. It's such an honor to be here tonight with all of you beautiful people.

There are just so many people I'd like to thank. Of course, my agent, who has helped me get as far as I have...my fabulous writers; I wouldn't be here without you. I'd like to thank my Mom and Dad, and Hilary Swank, and my publicist, and my personal trainer, and my cosmetic surgeon, and my second cousin once-removed who's name I think is Steve but I'm not sure.

I'd also like to thank the Academy for putting on such a great event every year and making this year's the best ever. I'd like to thank the people down at IHOP for making my breakfast this morning, and the people at Bagel City for making my breakfast yesterday. I'd like to thank the sweatshop worker who made the bow tie I'm wearing today and the make-up artist who applied my eye shadow tonight.

I'd like to thank the pit orchestra for playing the "Get Off The Stage" music, and of course, I'd like to thank Elvis and everyone who came out tonight to celebrate this award with me. Thank you all!!!

The Hunt for Rhetorical Friday

What would we do without Rhetorical Friday?


We'd all be a lot happier, that's for sure.


That depends. Many of the members of The Most Intelligent Readership In The World have told me they enjoy Rhetorical Friday. Some even have come to depend on it as a public service, reminding them that it is Friday and they now have a weekend to look forward to. In addition, it gives them a reason to make it through the week. Sometimes on monday mornings, that last mile seems so long.


You've been reading too many Stephen King books.


Speaking of making it through the week...it's my sad duty to inform you that the website "Birdflubreakingnews.com" is no longer available on The Internets. I don't know why, since it seemed like such a helpful and informative site. My guess is once they broke the story on the conspiracy in China to hide and possibly spread and weaponize Bird Flu (The hide part was in the story, the rest, I drew the obvious conclusion to), they became a target of Internet Terrorists and were forcibly shut down. It has nothing to do with the global economy, I'm certain.

So, in its place, I'll be posting a link to an important message board where you can get information, and share your stories of Bird Flu. Ladies, Gentlemen, and People from Elmira, I present, Avian Flu Talk

PAR-TAY!

"Okay, so far our ideal party consists of: beer, fights to the death, cupcakes, blood pudding, blood, touch-football, mating, charades, and, yes, horse hunting." Jim Halpert; Dunder Mifflin


That sounds like it would be fairly interesting...not unlike a lot of college parties.


So over the past few weeks at Dunder Mifflin, Jim and Dwight got put in charge of the party planning committee. What we've learned is that both Jim and Dwight individually and collectively suck at planning parties.

Since I don't really have anything else interesting to talk about today, you get to watch a cool video involving science and fire:

Coworkers are awesome!

“Well, today is a monday after a weekend.” – Anonymous Coworker


Today is Wednesday.


Yes, yes...so ideally, I should have waited until next monday to use this as my Sametime Status, but it just amused me too much to not share it with you right away.

There was a meeting across the hall from my office, and an anonymous coworker offered this as an explanation for why something wasn't going to get done in as timely a manner as some manager would have preferred.

Personally, as much as I don't like mondays (so much so that some of you may have noticed that I categorically refuse to capitalize the word "monday" regardless of its position in a sentence), I do tend to prefer the mondays that occur after weekends, rather than those that happen in the middle of the week. For example, if you take Wednesday off work for personal reasons, the following Thursday immediately becomes monday. That is somewhat balaned out by the fact that the previous Tuesday becomes Friday. In that instance, you have a week with two mondays, two Fridays and nothing else.

What I haven't decided on is if you were to take Thursday off. That Friday then becomes monday and Friday rolled into one. Does one take precident over the other, or does it all blend into a Wednesday? Discuss!

This Blag is TOAST!

Gozer the Gozarian. Good evening. As the duly designated representative of the city, county, and state of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activities and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension.


Obviously a Ghostbusters reference...what's it doing here?


Well, at volleyball last night, several of us got into a discussion of movie quotes which led to my standard recitals of this quote, the "I believe in the soul" speech from Bull Durham, and Clark Griswold's rant about his boss from Christmas Vacation. In addition, the assembled group repeated practically the entire script from Ghostbusters entirely from memory. Good times. The conversation included the phrase that leads to many Sametime Statuses: "you know...that would make a good Status Message!" Therefore, here is it. Enjoy!

Who invented mondays anyway?

Fewer skunks need to get run over along my way to work. Get on that, Nature.


Driving past a lot of dead skunks? That really stinks.


Thank you for that.

This morning, my way to work was polluted by no less than 4 dead skunks. As it turns out, that seemed to be the perfect precursor to my morning. mondays suck.

The Ghost of Rhetorical Friday Past

Will inflation jokes ever get old?


The answer is yes, but I imagine you're going to provide details.


Indeed! Inflation jokes suck.

It's an all-too-common device used in movies to really help you accept the world that the director has chosen for you. We've all seen it. A guy goes into the past and buys a newspaper and candy bar, asking if $2 is enough, only to have the standkeeper look at him and say that it's only 15 cents. Or in the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic "The Running Man" a woman is lamenting the $7 cost of a bottle of pop/soda out of a vending machine. Immediately, you're supposed to think, "Oh wow...stuff costs different amounts. That's proof positive that this film is set in a different time than I'm used to. I'm now fully immersed in the director's fantasy."

That's crap.

Inflation jokes are the filmmaking equivalent of "Cheap Heat" in pro wrestling. A bad guy grabs a microphone and insults the town they're all in, and he gets boos. Another guy grabs a mic and talks about how "the best fans in the world are from *insert current city here*" to great applause.

I was at a concert a while ago where the performer (we'll ignore the name because it's embarrassing) used up all of his or her cheap heat in one shot. The performer literally went on the following streak: "How about those Bills?" *Pause for cheers* "Are they going to win the Super Bowl?" *Pause for more cheers* "How about those Sabres?" *Pause for still more cheers* "Are they going to win the Stanley Cup?" *Pause for even more cheers* "Dominik Hasek is in the audience tonight!" *Pause for most cheers yet while a spotlight shines on a man in the crowd*. But that was it! The performer's entire knowledge of the city of Buffalo was used up in about a minute and a half. I was supposed to believe that the performer actually knew or cared about the city rather than having merely been briefed about the local sports teams in between songs. In fact, I'm willing to bet that somewhere on the stage the list of teams and the titles they competed for were written down for the performer's benefit outside of the audience's view. I'm certain that "Dominik Hasek" was spelled out phonetically. The truth is, this performer cared for Buffalo for the entire duration of the concert, and possibly until the check cleared, then promptly forgot the name of the arena, let alone who that goalie guy was she had to point out in the audience.

The same holds true for inflation jokes. The only thought the director or screenwriter put into the time displacement was to come up with some clever way of revealing to the viewers that stuff costs a different amount in a different time. The characters probably also wear different clothing, too...but that's even easier. If your film is set in the past, you can refer to old pictures and even wikipedia to come up with a period look. If you're set in the future, just make clothes shinier. Boom. Filmmaking laziness at its finest! Now sit back and watch the money roll in.

He just doesn't get it.

"I have got to make sure YouTube comes down to film this." Michael Scott; Dunder Mifflin


Office is a welcome sight. That means it's Thursday...which is nearly Friday.


You can say that again. The sooner this week ends, the better. But tonight is the big finale to the 2-part Office episode "Lecture Circuit" in which Michael is for some inexplicable reason asked to tour around to all the Dunder Mifflin branches to teach about sales. So far, he's done a pretty miserable job, as you might expect.

On a separate but nearly equal TV note, it seems I was a little mistaken about yesterday's Demetri Martin appearance on Comedy Central. Apparently, Demetri is the host of a new show which will be airing Wednesday nights from now on. The show is called "Important Things" and yesterday's episode was entitled "Timing." So I guess you should look for that every Wednesday. Cool!

"Timing" is everything today.

"I used to play sports. Then I realized you can buy trophies. Now I'm good at everything." - Demetri Martin


So, the remarkably busy work week continues here in Jeremy's Office. He'd like to remind you to watch the new Demetri Martin special "Timing" tonight on Comedy Central. It's going to be great.

Blech...

Creativity is a premium today.


Jeremy is having a remarkably busy week at work so far. As such, Sametime Statuses and Blag Entries involving extra time and creativity to come up with may suffer a bit. You'll get crap instead, which isn't so bad, because that's what you're used to.

Vroom!

"I did as little work as possible to get my car to run imperceptibly faster!"


Uhm....good for you?


Good for the person stopped at the red light next to me.


Him too.


So, you've probably seen lots of cars with various decals on the windows for performance modifications the owners have made to their cars. For most of those people, modding the cars is a hobby and it entertains them, causing no harm to most people except making them listen to a car that now sounds like a high-pitched fart due to the high-flow exhaust system you mounted on, neglecting the fact that the catalytic converter causes the majority of the exhaust backpressure, and that their engine was probably tuned to a certain amount of backpressure which now may or may not exist because of the new exhaust which won't increase your performance because the engine is now out of tune.

Anyway...when you buy these performance mods, they often (or so I'm told) come with stickers that you can put on your windows to prove to everyone else driving that you're not only a high roller, but your car might now go slightly faster than it did when you drove it off the lot. Go you. I drove up next to a car not long ago that had one sticker in the window for a mod well done. It was for an improved air filter they had installed from a brand we'll call "N&K". This company makes high-flow air filters which are remarkably easy to install. There is little more to the process than removing the old air filter (which all auto manufacturers make easy to remove because it's a consumable) and dropping in their new one. Voila! Your car now has slightly less trouble breathing and can possible have an extra 5% horsepower or so which you'll never notice while driving. In fact, I have one on my car...but mostly because this filter type lasts about 10x longer than a traditional paper one, so I don't have to remember to change it all the time.

The fact remains that this particular driver was so proud of installing the "N&K" air filter that he put the sticker up in his window. I'm proud of him. He still drives a beat to crap old junker, but at least it has 5 horsepower it didn't before he went to work on it.

By The Way...

Hi everybody. LIR here.

Jeremy would like me to inform you that Jeremy Is In The Office will be out of the office tomorrow and will not be checking messages while away.

In an emergency, please contact the backup: Jeremy's Status Message.

Jeremy Is In The Office will return on monday, February 9th with more Statusey goodness.

I'm actually not sure I've ever had one.

Hooray for Matzo balls!


Mazel tov!


So, today's Sametime Status may require a little bit of explanation. I'm pretty sure I have zero experience with matzo balls, but I can't be 100% sure...maybe I've had one or two in my life, but at most, it wasn't a memorable experience. Now eating the "Basement Cheese" was life-altering because it was that bad...so if I've had a matzo ball, it was definitely well above that.

Regardless...I followed an SUV on my way to work this morning whose license plate was obviously supporting the New York Mets. I can respect this because if this person is a Mets fan that means, like any other decent human being, they hate the New York Yankees, who don't even deserve a link in my blag.

I forget exactly how they had things spelled out on the plate, but the general idea was "Lets Go Mets" and they had "MTZ" to shorten "Mets." No big deal...but my brain started working on ways to screw that up...because that's the sort of thing I do. The first thing that popped into my head was "Lets Go Matzo!" so obviously this person is a fan of Matzo Balls...so I decided to help support their cause and cheer on boiled dumplings.

I can haz Spring nao?

Coolest part of my morning: Listening to water freeze on my sunroof.


You lead a sheltered life.


Yesterday's whimsical mix of weather led to ice on top of my car. Overnight, it sat in the garage, where the ice melted...so when I set off to work today, there were little puddles of water on the sunroof...no big deal.

The combination of 11 degree temperatures (-12C) and the wind chill associated with driving, even though my commute did not exceed 35MPH at any point due to following an oil truck the entire frickin' way, caused the water to refreeze. Forgive the play on words, but this was remarkably cool. It made little crackly sounds as it froze, and I could actually see the crystals forming. (Police, please note, I was only watching the crystals forming while stopped at the red light.)

Then it hit me...this is the best part of winter...well, that and hockey season. And if that really is the case, then I've now seen the best Winter has to offer, and I'm done with it now. Let's have some sun and warm temperatures...I'm ready to barbecue! Nuts to winter, I am now officially ready for Spring, Groundhog or no groundhog.

As a side note, Oil Trucks have replaced cement trucks as the bane of my driving existence. Back when I first started driving, it was uncanny how often I'd end up following a cement truck going 30MPH down the road. Nowadays, I almost invariable end up behind an oil truck...equally annoying, and I think they smell a little worse. Now is a good time to switch to natural gas, people!

DOOMED, I TELL YA! DOOOOOOOMED!!!!

Bird Flu has been sighted in Canada!


It's official. Bird Flu has been confirmed in North America.

Here's a press release, in the form of a cookie-cutter newspaper article:

Canada investigates possible avian flu outbreak

Don't tell me what happened

Wait...there was a game yesterday?


Yep....it was a good one, too.


Oh well...I guess I'll catch the replays on CNN or something.

Moving on, today is the day that the Fabulous Furball of Forecasting makes the decision on whether or not Winter is over. So with a foot of snow still on the ground and more coming in the next two days, he amazingly tells us that we get six more weeks of winter. Jerk.

The whole thing is predicated on whether or not our boy Punxsutawney Phil is scared back into his hole by his shadow. I say the whole thing is nonsense. If I were to wake up from a nap and 10 thousand people are watching me wake up, cheering for me, and some dude who looks like a 19 century Flavor Flav (No, I'm not making this up...check the Photo Gallery if you don't believe me) yanks me out of bed...I'm going to be scared, too.

But the bottom line appears to be six more weeks of winter. In one respect, I'm somewhat envious of Phil...he's just going to go back to bed and wake up when winter's over...I still have to get up.