Nobody knows...

What is the sound of one Sametime Status clapping?


Sametime Statuses don't have hands, so they can't clap.


Or can they?


No..not really.


But if they could...?


Then I would imagine they have two hands just like most people and be able to clap just fine.


You're assuming they're anthropomorphic.


More that I'm just trying to avoid the inevitable conclusion here...


That, of course, being...Happy Rhetorical Friday, everybody!

Nobody will get it

Next year, I'm going to Comic-Con dressed in jeans and a plain t-shirt. It'll be hilarious.


Yes, it's true a lot of people dress up as characters for Comic-Con, but I sincerely doubt that there are no people dressed like normal people.


Have you ever been to Comic-Con?


I'm a figment of your imagination. Of course I haven't been to Comic-Con.


So you can't say for sure. I'm going to go with the assumption that everybody at Comic-Con is dressed as their favourite superhero, cartoon character, or Poorly Engineered Planet-Sized Battle Station. I'm not making that up.

In fact, HERE'S A LINK to the first gallery of Comic-Con costumes I found on The Google. It boasts 850 costumes. This is crazy...but, I suppose it's a crazy sort of fun for the people who do it, so okay. So, next year, I'll be going to Comic-Con dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.


Terrific. Speaking of terrific, nobody got your pop quiz question right yesterday.


Indeed. Of all the submitted answers, precisely zero of them were correct. The last movie starring my boy Nicolas Cage to achieve a Tomatometer greater than 75% was the 2009 epic "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans." (87%)


I've never even heard of that.


That's the beauty of it. Nobody has. The thing has a gross box-office take of a whopping 1.7 million. For a movie that cost around 25M to make, this just won't cut it. Way to go, Nic! Prior to "Bad Lieutenant," you have to go all the way back to 2003 to go above 75% Tomatometer for "Matchstick Men." Yet, he still finds work...

He's a hack!

Pop Quiz! Name the last movie starring Nicolas Cage to achieve a Tomatometer above 75%


Here's a hint. It's more recent than Jeremy would like to believe.


True enough, but nobody ever saw the film, so it barely counts.

Anyway, here's my point. The paradigm goes like this: Great Actors, Good Actors, Serviceable Actors, Bad Actors, Lousy Actors, Nicolas Cage. The guy is a walking train-wreck of cinema and should be banned from ever appearing on the silver screen again. Just my opinion, of course.

In case you're unaware, the Tomatometer is the primary feature of the film review website RottenTomatoes.com, and is a measure of positive versus negative reviews for a movie. The percentage of positive reviews (which is a bit of a judgement call, to be sure) is the number shown on the Tomatometer. Basically, anything above 60% is considered a "good" movie, and 75% is certainly not unreasonable to achieve for a solid film.

So...how long has it been since our boy Nicolas Cage hacked his way though a movie that was actually good? Tune in tomorrow for the answer.

Please Recycle

Attention Phone Company: Nobody uses phone books anymore.


But what if you have to find a business's number?


Well, that's what the internet is for. Every reputable business has a website these days, and they all put their contact info on it. The primary reason being that they actually want you to be able to find them to give them money.


What about finding people?


Just about everybody you'd need to call has already given you their phone number, email address, or friended you on Facebook, so there aren't many excuses for not having that info. Also, people don't "call" anymore. Phones are more for texting and forwarding those funny animated pictures now than they are for "calls." Calling is so 20th century.

Anyway...my point is that the multiple phone companies don't really need to send me 5 phone books every year, when last year's are still sitting around in the plastic bags they came in, having never been looked at. It's pretty much a waste of the money I'm paying you to provide my texting service. Thank you.

It's one of those days, I guess.

Even today's holidays are lame. Happy Friday, everybody!


It's a slow day in the world, apparently. Thankfully, it's Friday, so it's almost weekend.


Indeed. My usual source for lame holiday Sametime Statuses says that today is either "Gorgeous Grandma Day," or "Hot Enough For Ya Day," which are both moronic, so I really have nothing for you today.


So instead, you get to watch a video (Probably best watched on "Mute" due to crappy music) of baby moose playing in a lawn sprinkler:

It's really annoying for you to be deploying

Four rhymes in one commercial is either too many or too few.


So how many is correct? The loyal readers need to reflect.


Well, the answer depends. There is nothing wrong with making your entire commercial rhyme, or even be its own catchy jingle. Many have done that in the past, and the world as a whole is none the worse for it.

A problem arises, however, when you only have a handful of little catch phrases that you scatter around your commercial. Nobody listening is entirely sure if you want to be catchy or serious.


Is this a real commercial you're talking about? You may want to explain, or else you'll sound like a lout.


There is one commercial that's on the radio around here that does this. It's for a junkyard, so the need to be cute and jingly is pretty minimal. At the same time, the need for a memorable catch phrase is equally apparent. It's not very often that the general scrap-part-buying public is looking for a quality junkyard. However, the commercial writer wrote a script where there are exactly 4 rhyming catch phrases in a 30-second spot. Every 3rd line, roughly...it's a little weird.


Definitely sounds like a red flag. Now go off and read somebody else's Blag.

I just can't describe it

The difference between "Knight and Day" and a good movie is like...a lot.


I can't come up with the words, either.


One of the things worth doing when the weather is nice is to go to Drive-In movies. It's fun to share a picnic with your friends, sit outside and watch a movie under the stars with some snacks and beverages, plus it's significantly cheaper than seeing the movies in one of the standard roof-having theaters...and you get two movies for that lower price. Everybody wins.

Except in recent times, the people who bring us the Drive-In movies have tended towards having really really crappy movies as the second half of the double-feature. The track record lately has been rather dubious...with such stinkers as "Don't Mess With The Zohan", "Shutter Island", and "Splice" as the back of the twin bill. This is lousy.

Not long ago, the second feature was the whimsical action-comedy-spy-drama "Knight And Day" starring a Post-Oprah's-Couch Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. That's all you need to know about the film. The plot was moronic. The action sequences were cartoony and implausible, but the rest of the film didn't match the cartooniness, so you never really bought into it. It shifts gears between action romp, rom-com, comedy, drama, and zaniness so quickly and discontinuitously (If that's not a word, it is now. Tell your friends.), you wonder if you fell asleep for a couple minutes and missed a change-over or something. At the end, they completely recycle no fewer than 4 comedy bits from earlier in the movie, with the exact same script. That's not "coming full-circle"...that's laziness.

So to "Knight And Day", Rottentomatoes may have you at a generous 54%, but from me, you get a big, hearty "No, Thanks!"

This has been another edition of "Jeremy Is In The Theatre."

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

One more day until the 21st Century!


Ooo, that's very exciting. I can't wait until...wait. The 21st century started like 8 1/2 years ago. 9 1/2 if you don't believe in math.


Well, yes...but the 21st century is said to be the Information Age, and today is the day that I get to stop being the roadkill on the Information Superhighway.


Good...because nobody uses the expression "Information Superhighway" anymore. If you were more up on the Tubez, you would know that.


Today, my friends...I join the ranks of those who have a Smartphone!


Wow. So you're finally getting that Droid You Asked For At Christmas?


Yes, and no. I'm getting a Droid X. It's newer, better, faster, and smarter than those silly old-fashioned Droids.


So that wasn't the Droid you were looking for. You moved along.


Thank you for that.


Sorry. Got caught up in the moment.


I got it because it's been time to upgrade my phone for a while, the Bluetooth never worked on the old one, and I Recently Saved Some Money On My Cable Bill.

I also chose the Droid X because it doesn't come with a personal lecture from Steve Jobs on how to properly hold the phone so that I can actually get a signal. I find this to be a pretty big selling point.

Haven't Had One In A While

What if the Postman is your Opportunity?


Oh no...not again.


Yep! It's Rhetorical Friday! WOOHOO!


Awe crap...


So today's Sametime Status examines the paradoxical relationship between the Postman (Not the Kevin Costner version), and Opportunity.

We all know that 'Opportunity knocks but once' but canonically, the Postman always rings twice. Incidentally, the FedEx guy rings twice as well, in case you were wondering.

In the instance that the Postman is your opportunity, it presents an unanswerable conundrum. Maybe the Postman is delivering your winning lottery numbers, or a college acceptance, or perhaps it's an attractive Postwoman who is destined to be the love of your life....who knows? If they don't realize they're your opportunity, they have no choice but to ring twice. But if they did know that your opportunity was right there, they would be obligated to knock only once or else shear the very fabric of space, time, and chance. It really does boggle the mind.


What boggles my mind is your need to have Rhetorical Friday.


Because it's fun!

The Roof is Hopefully Not on Fire

Jeremy’s Sametime Status is a proud supporter of Rooftime! July 17-18 at the Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie!


Today marks the annual plug for the Rooftime charity volleyball tournament held in Poughkeepsie NY every year. Come join us (Jeremy's going to be playing) and help raise money for the Dutchess County Coalition for the Homeless. It's a family-friendly event (with occasional profanity from players who make mistakes), complete with volleyball matches all weekend, grilled foodstuffs, music, tents, and all the baked goods you care to eat.

For more information, or to register your team, please vist www.Rooftime.net

Seriously...No

Ilya...I was joking.


AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAA! That was a good one.


Yeah, not that kind of joke. You also don't usually like my jokes anyway.


I like staying employed, so I throw you a bone now and again.


So anyway, not long ago, as part of the Ilya Kovalchuk sweeps, now also known as "The Klusterchuk," I mentioned how Ilya should have extended that squeekball player's prime-time free-agency decision show to 2 hours, to announce his signing as well.

Somebody Took That Ball And Ran With It.

So to whomever is in charge of that Canadian "national outlet," I say punch yourself in the face.

I'm an awesome negotiator

It only took two weeks for the cable company to realize I mean business.


Either that, or they're pinheads.


Definitely one or the other.


So tell us your story about beating The Man.


So, the cable company that provides service to my area is a well-known company that, for strictly Blag purposes, we'll call "CordSight." I've had feuds with their customer service people before, because they tend to do roughly nothing right. They've fouled up my bill for 3 consecutive months, screwed up my cable install, the phone didn't work for the first three days, they added the wrong channels, deleted other channels and still charged me for them, and still haven't figured out that I'm a hockey fan and order the Center Ice NHL package every single year.

In fact, Not Long Ago, I had a rant about the top 3 companies that are On Notice for me (A Catch phrase I coined long before Colbert, but I don't have any evidence to back it up), and for some reason, forgot to include "CordSight". Terrible oversight on my part...they're #3 on the list, pushing "Greek Difference Airlines" down to #4. It's a long, uphill road before anyone can catch up to UPS in terms of incompetence, though.

Anyway...so "CordSight" offers new customers a special price if you have their TV, Internet, and Phone services, which is cheaper than just having TV and Internet (which are the only ones I care about). The catch is that the special price only lasts one year, at which point, they jack up the cost. So after I had their package deal for a year, they said they'd raise the rates, so I asked them to cancel the phone so I could save money. They offered to extend the introductory price for another year...which was awfully nice of them...and life went on. Another year goes by, and they tell me again that the rates will go up, so I again ask for the introductory price, threatening to cancel the phone part. They tell me that they can't extend the price, and that my costs will shoot up starting with my next bill. I say OK, and have them transfer me to somebody else to disconnect the phone. The entire process of shutting off the phone service took a minute and a half, entirely done with one phone call.

A mere two weeks later, I get a call from "CordSight" saying that if I'm willing to try out their phone service, they'll give me a special "introductory" price for one year. Yes...this is the very same phone service I just had disconnected, and the very same introductory price they said they couldn't give me.

Here's the kicker:

In order to activate my "new" phone service, (All hardware for which never moved) they have to send a technician out to my house to install the modem. I'm not getting a new modem. I'm not getting new cables, a new phone, a new ANYTHING. The phone service is already installed. The only thing that ever changed was clicking one button on their side of things. Stands to reason that the only thing needed is to unclick that button and I'm back in the introductory price phone game. Instead, they're paying somebody to come to my house on a Saturday to install nothing and give me my "welcome" package...the same welcome package I got the day I got all this crap installed in the first place. Anyone else still wondering why their cable TV prices keep going up?

This is embarassing

Somebody may now explain to me why I know what "GTL" stands for.


Because you're entertained by morons and insipid wastes of space, time, and cable bandwidth masquerading as TV shows?


While the former may be entirely true for short periods at a time, the latter is most certainly not true.


Watching Jerry Springer is a guilty pleasure of yours.


I guess that's a point as well...but it's different. Anyway, the "GTL" thing was used to describe some of the folks playing at a recent volleyball tournament. It was not used in a complimentary sense.


So since the Blag here is for Edutaining purposes, why don't you tell us what it means.


So apparently, if you're a moron with no life and an extremely overdeveloped sense of self, your daily routine (instead of going to a job or making some other actual contribution to society) involves going to the gym, going to a tanning salon, and going to the laundromat. Gym, Tan, Laundry. That's a full day, right there.

In Soviet Russia, Contract Signs YOU!

Now that nonsense is over, we can focus on where Ilya Kovalchuk is going to sign.


It's down to only a handful of teams...what's the holdup?


So apparently, both the NBA and the NHL have their divas this year. The NHL's version is high-scoring Russian winger Ilya Kovalchuk, an unrestricted free agent formerly of the Atlanta Thrashers and New Jersey Devils. Both players decided to drag their contract negotiations out publicly, and while apparently one of them has made their decision (I quite honestly don't know or care what it was), Kovalchuk remains unsigned.

Options include, and please keep in mind this is based entirely on ugly public negotiations and rumour-monger websites, re-signing in New Jersey (Remember Ilya: Nothing good has EVER happened because of New Jersey), one of two New York teams, the Kontinental Hockey League in Russia, and Los Angeles.


Who so few options?


Because the NHL actually has a salary cap, and Ilya thinks he's worth more money than the best players in the world. So he and his agent are playing each team and league against each other in order to squeeze an extra million dollars out. Of course, each team is doing the same thing...pretending to walk away from negotiations to try to sign him for a million dollars less. It's really quite messy, and precisely the kind of thing that shouldn't be dragged out in public. Just negotiate, and sign the silly thing...let me know when you've decided.

Of course, if you're such a self-important egomaniac that you think you need your own TV show to declare to the world your intentions...punch yourself in the face.

It's Global Warming!!!

Yes, it's 100 degrees again. No, I don't miss winter.


But think of the children!


Wait, what?


Yeah, I don't know...was just going for a bit there.


So anyway, you may have heard that there's a bit of a heatwave going on in the Northeast US this week. It's obviously due to global warming, or else El Nino...Possibly some combination of both.

Anyway...yes, it's hot. I have fans and an air conditioner and whatnot running, and I end up sweaty and such if I go outside...but guess what...that happens. One of the perks of living in the Northeast is that you experience all 4 seasons. Sometimes Fall and Spring get bypassed a bit, but you get the idea. One of the downfalls of living in the Northeast is that you have people whining about all 4 seasons non-stop. Observe:

• Summer - "Oh, it's so hot! I can't believe how hot it is. Don't you miss Winter? I'd like to live somewhere that's not so hot."
  
• Fall - "Oh, it sucks having to rake up all these leaves! It's too much work. Don't you miss Spring, where the leaves are all on the trees? I'd like to live somewhere where the leaves don't fall."
  
• Winter - "Oh, it's friggin cold! I hate having to shovel all this snow. Don't you miss Summer? I'd like to live somewhere where it's warm all year." (By the way...this is me.)
  
• Spring - "Oh, it's rainy! I hate looking at all these sticks before they grow leaves. Don't you miss Fall when all the colors are out and it's pretty? I'd like to live somewhere where it doesn't rain so much."

Basically, you can't win. Somebody will be whiney and annoying, and you can't do a thing about it. It's very much like the weather and Bird Flu in that regard...it's just going to happen so suck up and deal.

Newton and Murphy got together

For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.


Like when you miss a day of Blagging, and people complain to you?


Yeah...much like that. To all those people, I give a hearty "T.S.!" You get some of those mondays cleverly disguised as Tuesdays, particularly after a holiday weekend, and things get a little crazy. Truth be told, I still haven't caught up...but that's beside the point entirely. Today, I have come to entertain you.


Well, go ahead...start entertaining.


Uhhm....well...yeah. Here I go.


Hopefully something interesting will happen in the world today that you can talk about tomorrow.


Here's hoping!

Friday!!

Virtual Friday! WOOOOO!


The Blag is so late today, it practically IS Friday.


So today's Sametime Status is to inform everyone that tomorrow and monday are site holidays at work here, so I don't have to be in. As such, Jeremy Is In The Office will be Out Of The Office starting tomorrow and returning on Tuesday, July 6. Have a safe and explosive 4th of July, everyone!