Soon, It Will Be Drop By Drop

My water glass is mysteriously getting larger

Maybe you're just getting more pessimistic.

As everyone is aware, pessimists see the glass as half empty, optimists see the glass as half full.  A politician will tell you the glass is more full than it would be if the other party was in charge, a chemist knows that the glass is full, but half of it is liquid and the other half gas, and a psychiatrist will ask you what your mother thought of the glass.  An engineer like myself will tell you that either the glass is twice as big as it needs to be, or will explain how the rest of the water is stored off-site in a redundant glass.  

The company that installed the new water filters in my building at work will tell you something else entirely.  See, not long ago, there were some complaints made about the quality of drinking water here at work.  Some of those complaints came from state governing agencies, so something needed to be done.  In-Line water purifiers were installed and all of the drinking fountains replaced with "Hydration Stations."  It sounds cooler.  To be sure, these things are pretty cool...though they're based on completely unnecessary technology.  Drinking fountains aren't very difficult.  You push or turn some form of valve, and water shoots out into a cup, bottle, or face positioned above.  The new "Hydration Stations" are tough-free so that when a cup of bottle is placed in front of a sensor, water is dispensed.  There is no longer support for face-direct dispensation.  When the cup or bottle is removed, the flow stops.  Simple enough, but more complex than a button or handle...not a big deal. 

Here's where it gets weird.  Apparently, the things have an auto-shut off, so that they don't sit there pouring water non-stop.  But, of course, rather than have he cut off based on a volume of water dispensed, it's based solely on time.  This is becoming an issue.  I have a Lexan cup that I use when getting water from the machine.  It holds 18 fluid ounces of water.  When the machine nearest me was first installed, the time-out was perfect.  In one shot, without any second thoughts, my cup was filled to the top with icy cool purified water, and I took it back to my office, pouring a bare minimum of it out onto my hand.  Over time, the flow rate of the dispenser has gone down to the point where now, the machine times out when my cup is only about 3/4 full.  I have to pull the cup away, wait for the light to go out and re-position it, then pay attention to the fill level as it completes the job.  

Now, I am an engineer, so without data to back it up, I can't say with 100% certainty that the flow rate is the issue here.  I haven't designed an experiment to conclusively say that my cup hasn't grown from its former 18oz size.  All I can say for sure is that with one dispensation of water, my cup no longer runeth over.


And with that, I'm sorry to inform you that Jeremy Is In The Office will be Out Of The Office next week, while Jeremy tends to some beach-going.  We'll return on August 6th with more of this sort of stuff.  I'm told you like it, though I'm not sure why.  

Winter's Not Coming Yet

Of course it starts to rain as soon as I pull into the parking lot

Batten down the hatches, kids.  Storm's comin'!

So, if you've been paying attention, there's some rough weather ahead for the Greater Jeremy Area, with wind, rain, hail, possible tornadoes and the like on its way.  In true karmatic fashion, I drove to work today in relative calm, with just a couple raindrops making their way to my car.  Then, I got onto the last road on my commute and down came the torrential rains.  Just in time for me to have to get out of the car and walk to the building.  Awesome.  

More of the same coming for my drive home, I'm sure.  Is it time for vacation yet?   

The Sound When He Gets Run Over Is Hilarious

I never understood why Frogger couldn’t swim

 Because he's a video game, and gaming consoles are notoriously bad with water?

Aside from that, of course.  For those who are unawares, Frogger is a video game that was released in 1981 by Konami.  The idea was to get a frog to cross a road without being run over by cars, then jump across a series of turtles and logs to navigate a river before settling into one of a number of little frog huts on the far side of the water.  

Here's Frogger In Action!

Here's a Fun Fact!  In the Jeremy household growing up, an alternate game objective would be to run into traffic and attempt to lose all of your lives before the opening theme song finished.  It's strangely difficult. 

Anyway, there are a number of ways to lose lives in this game.  You can get run over by any of the cars in the highway, you can be eaten by the snake the crosses the divider and the large log, you can travel off the screen, you can be eaten by the alligator masquerading as a log at the top, you can miss the entrance of the home, or you can fall into the water, either by jumping in, or standing atop a turtle that dives below the surface. 

Let's assume that both snakes and alligators eat frogs.  We can also safely assume that highway traffic can total a frog.  (Though we can question what road would have both open-wheeled race cars and what appear to be bulldozers traveling at the same time, and in lanes with alternating traffic directions, but that's getting all nit-picky)  What bugs me is that, as is evidenced at the 2:00 mark of the above video, simply landing poor Frogger in the water ends his life.  Frogs are amphibians, which means they can thrive in both land and water-based environments.  Sure, adult frogs have lungs and need to breathe air, but they grow up in the water and live their entire lives around it.  Frogs, in fact are quite adept at swimming as shown in This Video, entitled "Frog Swimming In A Pool."  For Pete's sake (whoever Pete is), the leg kick used in the breaststroke is called "The Frog Kick." 

As sad as it is for me to do this, I am forced to Call Bunk on Frogger for spreading the myth that frogs die the instant they hit the water. 

Nobody Saw This Coming Except Everybody

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Try to fool me a third time…well that just makes you look silly

What about a fourth time?  At some point, the running gag has to just start being funny.

Today, as promised is the official review of "The Dark Knight Rises," the latest film in the current Batman trilogy.  We're told it's the last, which is probably a good thing given the fact that Christopher Nolan has to be running out of twist endings by now.  

So George W. Bush once famously said, "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me, can't get fooled again."  Such was certainly the case in this film.  Let me illustrate my point.  

**Spoilers for the first two movies "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" follow.  There will be no important spoilers for "The Dark Knight Rises" in this review.**  

In "Batman Begins," we're dealing with the origins of Batman and his introduction to the League of Shadows, led by a mysterious man, Ra's al Ghul.  This introduction is done by some guy named Henri Ducard.  At some point, Ra's al Ghul is killed, and we go through the course of the film.  Batman is fighting the villain Scarecrow, and there's a big twist ending.  Not only is Scarecrow merely working for Ra's al Ghul, but Ducard himself is actually Ra's, and not dead at all.  It was pretty cool, and nobody saw that coming.  

We move on to "The Dark Knight," wherein Batman squares off with iconic nemesis, The Joker.  A man named Harvey Dent is cleaning up the streets acting as Gotham's District Attorney and doing a fantastic job with the help of Batman, and there's a big twist ending.  Dent gets half blown up and becomes new super villain Two Face and Batman has to deal with him now.  It was really cool, but everybody saw it coming, because everybody knows Two Face's real name was always Harvey Dent, and we'd already had one twist ending in the series.  Twisty, but not much of a shock.  

So, when is a twist ending not a twist ending?  When you're in the third film in a series of films about big twist endings.  You go into the theater looking for clues as to what the big twist ending is going to be.  You expect a twist.  So when it finally does happen, you find yourself relieved and self-congratulatory that you "saw it coming," rather than surprised by the development.  

Truth be told, I did not see this specific twist coming, but I went into the movie fully expecting a twist.  I was not disappointed.  I was also not disappointed in Anne Hathaway's performance as Catwoman, but that's not much of a surprise.  She would have had to go full Nic Cage Terror Alert for that to happen.  I was disappointed in Bane's voice (Bane is the bad guy, in case you were unaware) as he sounded like a young, muffled Sean Connery.  Bane was also a little too difficult to understand to really sell me on his evilness.  I was disappointed in the slow start to the film, too...as it took way too long to really get going, but once it did, things were solid.  I was also disappointed in Michael Caine, who had very little reason to be in this film, and it showed.  

Overall, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a very solid ending to the current Batman film series, but would rank as the third best of the trilogy, by a fair margin.  It's certainly not lacking for action, intensity, or special effects, but it never seemed to be as captivating or intelligent as the first two.  I would say this is a totally decent summer movie to see, but that's pretty pointless, because you're all probably going to see it anyway, regardless of what I had to say.  The Box Office thanks you for your patronage.  

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

Theme Week, Part V

Jeremy’s Sametime Status Proudly Presents:  Little-Known Batman Facts Week!   

Batman’s utility belt contains a ring made of Kryptonite to be used against Superman

Batman and Superman crossover!  Everyone loves it!  

If you take out the part where nobody actually cares about Superman, sure.  Max Landis does a better job than I'm about to of explaining why Superman is completely irrelevant in modern comic book times.  He has the same basic set of super powers that multiple other superheroes have, but he had them first, so he was original.  Once superheroes evolved, super strength and the ability to fly weren't especially noteworthy, so Superman became, in a superhero sense, boring.  If you have 15 minutes to kill, and a tolerance for some naughty language, Watch This Video called "The Death and Return of Superman" for a remarkably entertaining summary of this as well as Superman's legacy of having killed death in comics. 

Bottom line, of course, is that Superman really has only one known vulnerability (I mean...I guess....I never read the comics), and everyone knows that it's Kryptonite.  The radioactive remains of his former planet, Krypton, having fallen to earth along with his spaceship, are the only substance to be able to weaken and potentially destroy Superman.  It's normally green, but apparently comes in many colors, depending on your decorating needs.  

In June of 1990, Action Comics published a crossover comic featuring both Batman and Superman.  We established earlier that Gotham City and Metropolis were in very close proximity (which then makes you wonder why all the criminals stay there, when two of the most prominent superheroes have roots this close...but I digress), so it's not entirely unfathomable that Batman and Superman know each other.  I have no idea if Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne know each other, or any other combination thereof...it's not germane to my story here.  Superman decides that Batman is an okay guy, and someone that he can trust with the ability to destroy him should he ever run amok.  Superman gives Batman a ring made of Kryptonite in a lead case, which Batman then keeps on his person whenever he's in a comic book with Superman.  Batman now has the ability to save the day by pulling out a handy piece of kryptonite and going to town on Superman.  

Of course, should Batman ever go bat-crap, Superman's in trouble.  

Thus concludes this portion of Theme Week.  Come back on monday when Jeremy Is In The Theatre will present a rare and special gift...a spoiler-free film review of "The Dark Knight Rises."  Jeremy has to get to the theater soon...his screening starts in 4 hours. 

Theme Week, Part IV

Jeremy’s Sametime Status Proudly Presents:  Little-Known Batman Facts Week!  Burt Ward used the phrase “Holy ____, Batman” 356 times in the Batman TV show’s 120 episodes

Holy overused catch phrase, Jeremy!

Quite right.  If there was one thing the original Batman TV show was known for it was the full-screen onomatopoeia used to censor some of the more violent parts of fight scenes.  You know...like the parts where people would actually get punched.  At the moment of impact, the screen would cut away to a colorful background with a word like "BIFF" or "POW" or "ZAMM" instead.  If you'd like a complete listing of the onomatopoeia used, The Internets Have Your Back.

If there was a second thing the show was known for, it was the fact that Robin, as played by Burt Ward, would come through with one or more of his classic "Holy (Fill In The Blank), Batman!" lines once a key piece of the plot was unraveled by the Caped Crusader.  Some of my personal favorites are as follows:

• Priceless collection of Etruscan snoods 
• Interplanetary yard stick 
• Astringent plum-like fruit 
• Journey to the center of the earth 
• Contributing to the delinquency of minors

That last one's a little wrong given some of the rumors about Bruce Wayne's association with Dick Grayson...but this is a family blag, so we won't get into that here. 

The total number of these lines used over the show's 120 episode run was an astonishing 356.  Fortunately for you, The Internets Keep Tabs On This As Well. 

Theme Week, Part III

Jeremy’s Sametime Status Proudly Presents:  Little-Known Batman Facts Week!   

The iconic Batmobile debuted a full year and a half after the Batplane

That can't be right, can it?  How did Batman get around?  

To get really technical, today's Sametime Status is entirely true.  Let's take a look at the timeline, shall we?

Batman made his first appearance in comic book form in May of 1939 as part of DC's "Detective Comics."  (Issue 27, if that sort of thing matters to you)  In that comic, Batman did drive around in a car, but it was a completely stock red sedan convertible.  Over subsequent issues, the car evolved with the bat motif and features and gadgets were added...

Gadget Hackwrench?

...and the car was never referred to as "Batmobile" until issue 48, which came out in February of 1941.  Also, Gadget Hackwrench is a Disney character, and is not part of the Batman universe, but I'm sure there are crossovers in the Cosplay universe.  

Had to check.

However, in September of 1939, Batman did make a flight in the original Batplane, also referred to as the Batgyro.  This plane has also undergone a number of facelifts since its introduction, even including the ability to "fly" underwater.  

So why have I heard it called "Batwing"?

There is another example of Tim Burton changing things around to fit his movie.  The name "Batwing" was first associated with the Batplane in 1989 with the release of the feature film.  The name has since been carried over into comics and other media forms.        

Theme Week, Part II

Jeremy’s Sametime Status Proudly Presents:  Little-Known Batman Facts Week!  

Not surprisingly, Gotham City is most often depicted as being located in New Jersey

Batman Theme Week continues today with a little geography lesson as it relates to the fictional home of Batman, Gotham City.  

While it's always a little difficult to pin down exactly where any superhero lives (what with the whole secret lives thing), the internets are a valuable resource when locating your favorite fictional heroes.  In fact, as a total aside, I Recently Discovered that websites exist which define the gravitational strength of fictional planets in the Star Wars universe.  I would dearly love to know how people determine this sort of thing.  

Anyway, while the exact location of Gotham City remains entirely fantasy, it's superimposition over the real world has varied a bit over the years.  Most iterations locate it somewhere on the eastern coast of the United States, but canon states that Gotham is located in Southern New Jersey, across the Delaware Bay from Metropolis.  Apparently, Superman isn't super enough to deal with the crime in both cities, so he's got one side of the Bay, while Batman's all over the other.  

This seems like the kind of Fun Fact that may come into play a little bit later in Theme Week, wouldn't you say, Jeremy?

There does exist that possibility.  

Anyway, everybody knows that nothing good has ever happened because of New Jersey, from the toxic waste to strange smells over Manhattan, Atlantic City to Snooki, the place is a hole.  This truly is the best possible fit for a city of master criminals, massive asylums, political corruption, and vigilante justice.  It really comes as no surprise to anyone that Gotham finds its home in the Garden State...it's just that not many people know that.  Now you do!    

Theme Week, Part I

Jeremy’s Sametime Status Proudly Presents:  Little-Known Batman Facts Week!   

The Joker never had a real name until the 1989 movie starring Jack Nicholson

So, the big box office news today is that Ice Age 4 topped the moviegoers' list for the weekend, pulling down a respectable 46 million dollars.  The film's day in the sun will be short-lived, as "The Dark Knight Rises" descends upon theaters Friday, and will decimate other movies' paltry earnings for the next month or so.  

To celebrate, Jeremy Is In The Office will be edutaining you all week with some little-known facts about Batman.


In a rare and special gift, this will be a completely unprecedented 6-Day Theme Week, culminating monday in a full review of "The Dark Knight Rises" from Jeremy Is In The Theatre, because Jeremy is stupid enough to go see the film on opening night.  It likely won't be a very in-depth review, as Jeremy will spend the entire three hours gawking at Anne Hathaway, but we'll take whatever we can get.  




Today's interesting fact about Batman actually centers around one of the greatest villains in the history of villainy, The Joker.  Having made his first appearance in comics in 1940, and being a mainstay in nearly every incarnation of Batman media ever since, The Joker never had a real name until 1989.  In fact, there was never any official back story for the character until a comic entitled "Batman: The Killing Joke" was released in 1988.  The author of that comic was Alan Moore, who also created "Watchmen."  Even in the comic, no real name was given to the character who fell in a vat of acid and became The Joker, but Tim Burton gave him one.

Named after the actor who originally portrayed Bruce Wayne's quintessential butler, Alfred Pennyworth, The Joker was given the name "Jack Napier" in the film.  In this particular movie, he was also credited with killing Bruce Wayne's parents, a deed canonically attributed to a gangster named Joe Chill, so there certainly is some discontinuity here, but that's beside the point.

There Are Mega Stores, I Guess

Grocery stores have been stuck on “Super” for a while now.  They need to move on to “X-Trememarket”

 I would totally shop at a place called "X-Trememarket!"  

The problem with innovation and progress is Marketing.  

Oh yeah...THAT's the problem...

We like to use adjectives to describe stuff to convince people that it's better than some other stuff, but we never seem to leave room for growth afterwards.  We're too quick to get to the extremities of description.   

Things get labelled "Greatest" or "Best" or "Extreme" all the time, with reckless disregard for what will happen when something better inevitably comes along.  

Wait, what kind of phone do you have again?

That's beside the point.  

What's important to know is that this little oversight doesn't seem to happen in the realm of groceries.  Why?  I have no idea, but the term "Supermarket" has been around since "King Kullen" opened in Queens in 1930.  I dare say that grocery stores have come a long way since 1930.  The sheer breadth of products available to be sold in a single place has grown by a factor of 83 times since then.   So why haven't we moved on from the arcane "Supermarket" to something that more accurately resembles the extraordinary shopping opportunity afforded us by today's grocery stores?   

I Should Charge For Reading This

Today’s Sametime Status is in 5 parts, but the last part will be made up of two parts

So, I guess this is part 1?  When do we get the rest.  Maybe you should have done this as a Theme Week.

I did actually consider that, but decided that I didn't want to take up a whole week of Sametime Statuses for one dumb joke.  

Why not?  You've Done It Before.

True enough.  Anyway, today's Sametime Status deals with movies. 

None of us saw this one coming...

Film studios suck.

Ooo!  And we get a rant too!  Bonus day for Blag Readers!

Over the last few years, a remarkably disturbing trend has popped up in film making.  Pure, unadulterated greed for the sake of greed.  Greed at the expense of whoever happens to be on the business end of the studios' greed.  It's crap, and it really should stop...but I know it won't.  

One of the examples that I've talked about a couple times is the recent Transformers series of movies.  These are films capitalizing on nostalgia of 80s kids who grew up and have money to spend on movies and toys now who remember wanting to have money to spend on movies and toys back when Transformers were initially popular.  This is a cash cow waiting to be milked.  No matter how bad the films were (and boy, did they ever test that limit with the sequels), the studio knew that they were going to pull down a fantastically huge payday at the box office.  So what did they do?  They signed lucrative product-placement deals with companies like GM, Coca-Cola, and Hewlett Packard to make even more money by splattering their products and logos on the screen while there's supposed to be a movie going on.  There was no reason for this.  They knew the movies were going to make more money than they knew what to do with, but they milked huge billion-dollar corporations for more money while they were at it, taking away even more quality from the films themselves.  Why?  Because of unabashed greed.  Pure and simple...there is no other possible explanation.  

Then, only slightly more recently came a more disturbing trend.  Film studios making films about remarkably popular book series'.  This, in and of itself is not a problem...but when they decide to squeeze more money out of people for no other reason than to squeeze more money out of them, it becomes a problem.  How do they do this?  By making more movies than there are books.  This has happened twice in recent memory, with the final volume of both the Harry Potter and Twilight series receiving the double-film treatment.  I've never read any of the Twilight saga, but I can assure you that neither that last book, nor the final Harry Potter book deserved two movies.

Why do I bring this up now, you may ask?  Well, yesterday came the news that "Mockingjay," the final book of the "Hunger Games" series is going to be released........wait for it........as two films.  That's right, kids...they're doing it to us again.  They're making us fork over two times the money to see the ending of a film series for no reason other than the fact that they can make more money off of us by doing it.  The mere millions upon millions that the studio was going to rake in by making movies of three books was simply not enough.  

I hate them.     

It was also revealed not long ago that the "Fifty Shades" series is being made into a set of feature films...I've got five dollars on the table right here that says the final book of that series will be split into two movies.  Anyone taking that action?  

This Is What I Think About

There’s something far too entertaining about throwing rocks into a body of water

Today, Jeremy will take you on a trip through his mind.  Careful...it's a bumpy ride.

 So not long ago, I had the opportunity to take a bike ride next to something called a Lake.  Growing up near one of the Great Lakes, I wouldn't exactly call this thing near my bike path a "Lake," since it's WAY too small and covered in moss and lily pads, but the people who named it got a little overzealous, so they called it a Lake.  That's beside the point.  

I took a break from my biking to toss a couple rocks into the lake, which I find more entertaining than I probably should.  In this particular instance, the bike path is on a former railroad bed, so there are lots and lots of smallish stones which are great for light tossing and make an amusing little splash and causing nearby frogs to jump around.  No, I was not aiming for, not did I hit any of the aforementioned frogs.  While being amused by my little game of "Throw Stuff Into A Lake," I thought of the fun variations on throwing rocks into water that I like to play.  Here they are, in no particular order:

There's your standard, "Pick up a nearby rock and toss it into the water."  The simplest and purest form of the sport.  You can add difficulty to it by either trying to ht something in the water (A stick or lily pad, for example), or by throwing the rock as far as you can just to see how far you can throw a rock.  

A classic is, of course, stone skipping, or skimming.  You take a flat stone and throw it side-armed near the water so that it bounces off the surface and keeps right on going.  This is a great game to play with friends, because you can compare number of skips and distance in a whimsical competition.  For an interesting variation, try to skip a stone for height instead of distance....see how high you can get it to bounce off the water.  

For those who like bubble wrap, but crumple it all up at once instead of popping the bubbles individually, might I suggest the "Handful of pebbles" method.  As you might think, you grab a handful of small stones or sand and toss it into the air.  The dozens and potentially hundreds of little impacts over the surface of the water make for seconds of fun.  

If you have a bridge or dock nearby, you can play a variation whereby you find the largest rock you can maneuver adequately and heave it into the water.  If your water is deep enough, the sound and splash made by a huge boulder are quite impressive.  

Finally, there's what is perhaps my favorite game, the stone-throwing equivalent of the Olympic high-dive.   You take a stone similar to one you'd use for stone skipping, and instead of throwing it low and far, throw it as far up into the air as you can or feel like.  The air resistance during the rock's flight will straighten it out into a near-perfect vertical line during its descent.  When it hits the water, it will be absorbed with a strangely satisfying "THIP" sound and virtually no splash at all.  

There you go, folks...now off you go to your nearest body of water.  Have fun, everybody!

Eyebrows, too!

All limbs intact, I guess it’s time to get back to work

Glad to see you back in action, Jeremy.  We were worried that you might have blown yourself up over the 4th of July.  

Nope...I'm all set here.  All my fingers are whole and not a burn mark on me from the festivities.  Granted, the "festivities," in terms of fireworks amounted to a handful of sparklers and little spinny things that shoot inch-long flames on the ground, but that's hardly the point.  The point is that I'm back at work, diligently making it a better place to be...or whatever it is that I do here.  

Hopefully you know...nobody else seems to.   

Boom Goes The Low-Grade Dynamite

I’m just glad we didn’t declare independence from grills and fireworks

If only we could declare independence from Lee Greenwood, then we'd really be on to something.  

Agreed.  

So today's Sametime Status is a cute little remark about the true meaning of the Fourth of July...grilling and blowing crap up.  Not necessarily together, but not necessarily apart, either.  So, enjoy the holiday safely, because you all need to come back next week for more Sametimey Goodness!

Jeremy Is In The Office will be Out Of The Office the rest of the week, to celebrate Independence Day.  The Holiday, not the Will Smith movie...although it's not entirely out of the realm of possibilities that both with be involved.  We'll return on monday, July 9 with all new Status Messages and frivolity. 

Bailey?

How long can beetles survive in mobile captivity?

Well, that depends entirely on the species of beetle.  Most common beetles, like the firefly or the dung beetle have lifespans of 3-8 weeks once they reach adulthood, whereas your less common Stag Beetle may have a lifetime of 12 months or more.  

That is the creepiest insect I've ever seen.  If I saw one of those in my house, I'd have a lifespan of less than 12 months...holy crap! 

So I guess, to answer your question, you can probably expect to keep a beetle alive in captivity for just a couple weeks, depending on how well you maintain the environment and provide enough food and water for beetle sustaining.  Why do you ask?

Well, there's a beetle in my car, and I want to know how long before the stupid thing dies.  I've had no luck trapping the thing, and one of its favorite hobbies seems to be flying past my ear when I'm driving, and there's just no reasoning with it.  I'm sure it will be able to survive for a while on food rations left from me eating the car (Dunkin Donuts bagels are really flaky when they're toasted), but there shouldn't be any standing water around, so maybe dehydration will be my friend here.