Old Music Is Messed Up

Somebody must care if Jimmy cracks corn.  After all, they wrote a song about it

At the very least, Bender is concerned, since he's singing about it at the 5:30 mark of This Video.

If I'm not mistaken, Homer Simpson also had a rendition of the song (known as either "Jimmy Crack Corn" or "Blue Tail Fly," depending on where you look), but I can't find a video of that at the moment.  

Anyway, I decided to look around today and see if anyone actually knew what this song was actually talking about.  Turns out, that was a big mistake, as the internets ruin a major part of childhood once again.  So, this charming little folk song about a fly turns out to be something much darker and more sinister than I ever thought before. 

The ostensibly wholesome song is actually about a former slave whose master is killed falling off of a horse.  The horse bucked off the master due to negligence on the singer's fault, as he, perhaps intentionally, was negligent in performing his duties of shooing away flies.  The fly ends up biting the master, master panics, horse panics, horse throws master into a ditch, master splits his head open (the aforementioned corn cracking), and dies.  The slave is later brought to court to face charges for the master's death but is acquitted on grounds that the fly actually committed the crime.  

I'm not making this up.  

There are even other schools of thought, that the corn cracking is referring to opening jugs of corn whiskey in celebration over the master's death.  One other interpretation of the lyrics suggest that cracked corn is the punishment the singer would be forced to endure for killing the master, and that he decided the punishment was totally worth it, and went ahead with his plan anyway.  

Long story short, this whimsical little song that I used to play on little 45 records and in the folk music classes in middle school is nowhere near the pithy little ditty I used to think it was.  Thanks, Internets. 

Drop The Biscuit!

For the first time ever, the last four Stanley Cup Champions are in the Conference Finals

The conference finals are set, folks...and the teams should look familiar.  Last year's champions, the Los Angeles Kings square off against 2010 champs, the Chicago Blackhawks in the Western Conference.  Out in the east, 2011 champions, the Boston Bruins are locked up with the 2009 champs, the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Jeremy has it from a reliable source on the internets somewhere that the last 4 consecutive Stanley Cup winning teams have never make it to the Conference Finals.  

Whether or not that little fact is true, I haven't exactly been bothered to figure out, so that's left as an exercise for the reader.  What I do know is that the Conference Finals will both be a display of contrasting styles.  The Penguins and Blackhawks feature smaller, fast teams capable of scoring in bunches while the Kings and Bruins are bigger, tougher teams which feature stronger defenses and much better goaltending.  It's the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object set to collide.  We'll see what comes of that for the Cup Finals. 

One thing we won't see is much of a contrast in colors for the Eastern Conference...as both teams' uniforms are black, white, and yellow.  This will be the 83rd time in NHL history that teams with identical uniform colors face off in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. 

This Post Bites

Here’s a Fun Fact!  A Florida man had his hand bitten off by an alligator, and was later arrested for illegally feeding an alligator

Well, it's not quite as funny as it sounds...

Do you really have to take my fun away?

It's what I do.

So, yes...the guy was trying to feed a fish to the alligator, so he was actually feeding it illegally.  The illegal feeding was not, in fact, his hand.  Though, it does make for a much more amusing headline when you leave that little bit out.  

No word on the rumor that his pet dog is named Smee.

I'm sure he has at least removed all of the ticking clocks from his house.  Neighborhood children now refuse to grow up. 

And with that, we're off.  Second star to the right, and straight on until tomorrow, when Jeremy has to come up with a new Sametime Status.  

Time For Back To School Sales To Start

Let me be the first to unofficially welcome the unofficial start of Summer

I sincerely doubt you were the first.  Some TV or Radio morning talk show host probably did it already.  

Sad, but most likely true.  

Anyway, so yesterday was Memorial Day, which is the unofficial kickoff of Summer.  I assure you, it came none too soon.  I tend to prefer warm temperatures and long days with outdoor activities over cold and that snow garbage that winter has going for it.  So now that it's summer, what do we do?  We go to drive-in movied, of course...where it was like 45 degrees, so I'm wearing a hoodie and wrapped up in a blanket, of course.  What better way to welcome summer?

Ummm.... 

"Plasticky" Isn't As Catchy A Name As "Woody"

Silly woodpecker/alarm clock, the siding on my house is made of vinyl

Well, it's tan.  To a bird, there's not much difference.

I would imagine that wood and polyvinyl chloride resin taste very different.

But you wouldn't know that until after tasting it a little.  

So, not all that long ago, I got an interesting wake-up call.  It was that weird time in the morning, about 10 minutes before the alarm clock officially starts going off forcing me to decide if it's time to get up or merely shut off the beeping.  A woodpecker starts going to town on the siding of my house, right outside to the bedroom.

Woodpeckers are jerks.

In theory, the point of a woodpeckers pecking at wood is to eat bugs contained within.  This is all well and good if you're able to chip away at the wood and find stuff underneath.  I would imagine vinyl siding bounces a lot more and would be harder to peck into, exposing bugs.  I would also imagine there are fewer bugs inside than in a tree.  Regardless, this stupid woodpecker diligently pecked away at the siding for a solid 10 minutes, which was really annoying.  

I realize I at least partially brought this on myself.  I recently installed a new birfeeder (one that the Stupid Deer can't get into to eat all of my birdseed), with seed designed primarily for the larger of the songbirds.  Ostensibly, this means Cardinals, Blue Jays, and the occasional Nuthatch, but I do have a small family of woodpeckers nearby who are frequent guests at the feeder.  (On a somewhat unrelated note, the Nuthatches are awesome.  They take a seed, wedge it into the cracks in the wood on my deck's railing, then proceed to peck at the seed until it opens.  Highly entertaining to watch.)  So the fact that I'm encouraging woodpeckers to be nearby is entirely on my shoulders...but they should ave the decency to return the favor by keeping themselves to the trees and feeder.  Also, they shouldn't wake up until after my alarm goes off.  

Rhetorical Friday, Now On Tuesday!

Commercials always assume (usually incorrectly) you’re going to answer “Yes” to their questions

Well, they can't exactly assume they're talking to their non-target market. 

Yes, but it makes me feel a little weird. 

I'm surprised it takes that much...

So, the primary driver behind today's Sametime Status is some commercial that's been running on the radio in the early mornings while I'm getting ready to head out for the day.  It's for a local business that for Blag purposes, we'll call "Pay Less For Smoking Supplies" or "PLFSS" for short.  They specialize in selling cigarettes, cigars, pipes, loose tobacco and things of that ilk.  They start off their commercial with a spokesperson asking, "Are you looking to pay less for your cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, or other smoking supplies?"  To which, I respond, "No...no...no I'm not."  The spokesperson comes back with "Well, then you need to go to 'Pay Less For Smoking Supplies'!"  

But...I said no.

First of all, apparently, no matter how you answer the initial question, PLFSS is the place for you.  Which then begs the question, "why did you ask me in the first place?"  On the surface, it seems like a very important question, since you'd think I would need to be in the market for the goods and/or services they provide for their business to be of any value to me.  Apparently, that's not the case, and regardless of my need to pay less for smoking supplies, I am required to go to their store.  I'm not sure what I would do there.  

Second of all, my annual budget for cigars, cigarettes, pipe tobacco and things of that ilk is precisely $0, so the premise that they are able to save me money on those supplies is tenuous at best.  

I suppose if I were to take up smoking, at the expense of healthy living and my current general lack of social exile, and became something of a connoisseur of fine smokables, realized that this hobby was too expensive and needed to save money on the requisite supplies, then I would know where to go.  But that's a far more complicated question than they asked me in the commercial. 

Inflation Sucks

I’m so good, I correct people’s math mistakes in my sleep

And by "good," you mean "nerdy."  

Isn't that the same thing, really?

So anyway, not long ago, I was asleep.  It happens from time to time.  And I found myself wanting a cup of coffee...because I was tired or something, I guess.  Back before I had my own coffee maker in my office, I was a member of one of the numerous coffee clubs at work.  The term "member" is a bit of a misnomer, as there is no formal membership selection, dues, or acceptance ceremony.  You kinda just go get a cup of coffee and leave 50 cents.  The 50 cents was determined by the board of directors, for which there apparently is some form of declaration, and is meant to cover the costs of all the supplies, including cups, creamer, the coffee maker itself, oxford commas, and coffee.  

Well, while I was asleep, I found myself going back to the coffee club and times had changed.  The seemingly reasonable price of 50 cents had increase to somewhere in the neighborhood of $1400, due to a new contract signed with a supplier of coffee-related paraphernalia.  (True story, I spelled paraphernalia right on the first try!  Go me!)  Since I was a little short on the necessary funds to procure a cup of coffee, I asked to see an explanation for the price increase, so the club treasurer showed me an itemized list of costs associated with coffee, including the supplies contract.  I quickly was able to point out that the supply cost was the cost for the entire contract, and was not prorated into individual cups of coffee, so there was no need to charge me such an exorbitant rate.    

I felt good having saved the world from poor math skills once again, and have absolutely no idea if I ever got that cup of coffee or not.  

Thought Of This While Eating Cheese

Robin in Geneva: “Holey cheese, Batman!”

I hate you.

See...it's funny, because Geneva is in Switzerland.

Yeah.  Nothing funnier than a joke autopsy.

So there you have it! 

Not Quite Dubstep-like...

Can’t tell if my lawnmower blade is out of balance or I’m listening to Chemical Brothers

Well well well, look who's back.  Thought you forgot about us.

Well, I forgot about something, but it wasn't my Sametime Status.  In my haste to take a half-day of vacation last Friday afternoon, I ran out without checking my monday calendar.  Probably turned out to not matter much, since anything I know about on Friday has about a 1.7% chance of being remembered on monday morning.  Had I looked at my upcoming calendar, I would have realized that I had a training class on monday and Tuesday of this week, which would take up my entire work day.  While this leaves me in a better position to work with my clients, it also prohibits me from looking at my computer all day, which means no Sametime Status, no email, no work being done.  It causes me to be behind, but should actually be of some benefit to my career.  I'll take that trade-off, I guess.  

So not long ago, I was mowing the lawn...as I am wont to do...and I heard something all funky.  It was sort of a popping/wobbling noise that was somewhat intermittent and not really in time with anything.  I'm not a stranger to having the blade on my lawnmower going out of balance due to a build-up of grass clippings, so I figured this would probably be the case.  The solution is easy...turn off the lawnmower (This part is strangely important), clear the underside of the deck, start the engine back up, and go about my business as usual.  Well, picture my shock when I see that the blade is perfectly clean with no obstructions from grass...and moreso than that, the noise continues, even without the mower running.  Weird...

As it turns out, the song "In Dust We Trust" by the Chemical Brothers sounds an awful lot like a lawmower blade going out of balance due to a buildup of grass clippings.  Who knew?

Here's a Fun Fact!  The Chemical Brothers recorded a song named "In Dust We Trust," and the Dust Brothers recorded a song for the Fight Club soundtrack called "Chemical Burn."  

I Forgot To Write About This Last Week

I hate it when I forget that I remembered to do something

Why can't you just forget things like everybody else?

That's exactly the problem.  I do forget things on occasion, perhaps even more often than I actually remember them.  This causes problems on occasion, more than anything in the realm of "well, I'll just assume that I forgot that, so I'll go back and do it now."  

It's pretty sad when your default setting is to assume that you're an incompetent buffoon.

So, as happens on occasion, I actually remember to do something, and in as little as a few seconds, I start to think to myself, "did I remember that thing?"  Let's work with an example, shall we?  Leaving the car is a fairly common occurrence.  I do it all the time.  (As a complete aside, I've always found parking lots to be weird.  My parents would be forced to yell at me all the time for leaving my stuff laying around, and now, I leave my car laying around in a parking lot.  I was just preparing for the future!  By the way, Happy Mothers' Day, Mom!)  The process is simple.  You open the door, step out of the car, close the door, lock the car, go about your business (pronounced: BIH-niss, or alternatively BID-niss).  Locking the car, for those of us who spoiled themselves by paying for a proximity key, means pushing a button on the door handle.  I have made this a habit, and I do it ALL THE TIME!  Yet, I can't tell you how often I take a handful of steps away from the car, think to myself, "did I lock the door?" and have to walk back to the car and pull on the handle to see if I remembered to lock it.  You'd think I'd either remember that I just pushed the button no more than 10 seconds before, or remember that I have a key fob in my pocket, so I can just push a button from a distance to reinforce the fact that I locked the car.  I do neither of these things.  

I Think You Mean Princess

Why was nobody in Eternia ever offended that Prince Adam invariably ran away at the first sign of trouble?

Well, he WAS the prince.  It should be their job to keep him safe or something.

We'll go ahead and call this another case of the internets ruining an important part of my childhood.  It should come as no surprise that I enjoyed the occasional cartoon while growing up.  Some of these cartoons were significantly better and more influential than others.  For example, Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, and the Transformers were in the uppermost tier of cartoonage, but also somewhere farther down the list are lesser shows like Rescue Rangers, Gummi Bears and The Real Ghostbusters.  I'm okay with this.  

I enjoyed watching these shows as well, but like a meal at Taco Bell, it's gone just about as quickly as it arrives, and I remember virtually nothing about the episodes or storylines.  I'm okay with this as well.  However, thanks to the magic of the internets, some of these shows are now completely accessible to me once again for me to look back on what I thought was at least decent entertainment and marvel at what an idiot I must have been for liking this crap.  On a whim, I took it upon myself to re-watch an old episode of the cartoon "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe."  We'll go ahead and chalk this up as "Mistake #1."  I used to actually like this show for some unknown reason, and looking back on it now, I wish I hadn't looked back on it.  

 So, the basic premise of the show is that this chump "Prince Adam" turns into superhero "He-Man" when he channels the power from the Sword of Castle Greyskull.  Castle Greyskull is a remarkably dreary place with a skull for a main entrance, so why he didn't move to a nicer place is beyond me.  He becomes He-Man every time somebody threatens to take over Castle Greyskull, because the bad guys really like it too because they also have no exterior decorating taste.  Here's the problem...He-Man as an alter ego is a secret that nobody else in Castle Greyskull knows about, so every time He-Man shows up, Prince Adam has "mysteriously" gone missing.  Sure, people ask about his whereabouts...he is the prince after all...but He-Man summarily dismisses the topic by saying something like, "Oh, don't worry...he's safe," and nobody gives it a second thought.  After the bad guys are vanquished, He-Man "mysteriously" disappears, and Prince Adam comes back, leaving everybody wishing they could thank He-Man for saving the day.  Prince Adam offers to send their well-wishes along, and again, nobody bats an eyelash.  

So let's forget the fact that the people of Eternia are complete imbeciles for protecting some dumpy, run-down, pile-of-rocks castle (thought apparently, it contains "secrets") and not being able to figure out the worst kept secret identity since Clark Kent put on a pair of glasses, and let's think about how their heroic prince runs away as soon as bad guys show up.  To people who don't know his secret alter-ego, it would appear as if he desserts the castle right before every single fight, hoping that He-Man will know enough to show up and deal with the problem for him.  Doesn't sound like a very good prince to me. 

Add Sour Cream For Dipping

I don’t understand it, but I’m okay with wild onions growing in my yard.  It smells great when I mow the lawn

Now just grow some potatoes out there too, and you can make soup!

Not the worst idea you've come up with.

And yet, they're all better than yours.  Seems a little strange, doesn't it?

So, I don't know when this happened, but over the last year or so, wild onions started becoming a thing to grow in the Greater Jeremy Area.  It's not just in my yard, either.  I've seen them in local parks as well.  I'm not sure if other people around here have them in their yards, too, but for the sake of my argument, I'm going to say that they do.  Allium tricoccum, or "wild leeks" have become a fairly regular feature in grassy areas all over.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  Sure, they're growing in place of actual grass, they grow very quickly and very tall, so they stick out among the standard grass blades, and due to their bulbous bottoms, they're somewhat difficult to pull.  But, they have one distinct advantage.  They smell awesome when you cut them!  

See, I'm allergic to the world, so a very common theme is for me to mow the lawn, then spend the next hour or so sneezing my face off.  This leads me to not really enjoy the smell of fresh-cut grass as much as some people claim to.  It's not necessarily something I look forward to.  But, when the mower makes its way over a little clump of these little onion stalks, the veggies get mulched into a fine mince, and the wonderful smell of onion pervades the yard for a while.  Of course, it also does have the unfortunate side effect of making me hungry.     

Everything But The Kitchen Cinco

Seis de Mayo!

Only missed by one.  Good job, Jeremy!

Holidays are weird.  

So, there are important days for people to celebrate based on historic cultural occurrences, and that's fine.  Sure, we may fudge the numbers around to make things work a little more smoothly (there is a school of thought that Christmas should be celebrated in the Spring, and other variations such as that), but most holidays are centered around stuff.

There are also the more made-up holidays which are more of an excuse to sell greeting cards, candies, random novelty crap, and alcohol than normal.  Even though these holidays are still grounded in perfectly reasonable histories, they've been corrupted so much by society that we don't even bother to know what it is we're celebrating so much as the fact that it's time to celebrate.  Cinco de Mayo is one of those holidays, alongside St. Patrick's Day, and the New Orleans version of Mardi Gras.  Many people consider their birthdays to be a form of holiday as well, and that's fine for them.

What's strange is that recently (or maybe this has always been the case, but I've noticed it more recently...maybe it's me), certain holidays of this ilk have spread out from their measly one day affair, and turned into weeks, months, even seasons worth of holiday.  I've already seen 4th of July stuff in stores because it's the "Fourth of July Season."  I'm not making that up.  It's may, and we're in July's season.  I don't get it.  I also see people on Facebook, who I should have de-friended long ago for this sort of nonsense, referring to their "Birthday Month" and talk about what they're doing to celebrate their "Birthday Week" and expect all of their friends to pay as much attention to them as they do.  I don't.  

So today's Sametime Status celebrates the Week of The Day Of The Battle of Pueblo, since we're in the Cinco de Mayo Season.  See...you didn't even know that Cinco de Mayo was the Battle of Pueblo, did you?  That's actually why it's a holiday. 

We Barely Knew Thee

Today is the last day for my Girl Scout Cookies.  Sad.

 Really?  All twelve boxes gone already?

Fortunately or otherwise, I only got two boxes of Girl Scout cookies.  One box of the minty ones, and one of the peanut butter and chocolate ones.  This should come as little to no surprise.  To reduce temptation, I left the boxes in my office.  That way, I can't eat them at home.  I can only eat them at work, and even then, only when I'm not in a meeting...which is at least somewhat rare. 

The boxes lasted almost two weeks, but today is the day that I polish off the last of the minty cookies, and that will be the last of them for a whole year.  

You can totally still buy them.  They set up tables in the mall and outside the grocery store.

Yes, but I'm not going to.  I've done my bit of good for the organization, enjoyed my brief time with the cookies, and I'm done for now.  It's still just a little sad.  

Feel The Burn

Raise your hand if you started off your day hitting yourself in the head with a locker too

Yeah....I'm looking at all the loyal readers through the Internets, and nobody seems to have their hand in the air.  You're on your own again, Jeremy.  Nicely done.  Good thing this Blag has webcams on all the visitors.

So by now, you're probably familiar with the fact that I'm not a morning person.  My brain takes a little while to get going, and that's okay.  I tend to use that time for beneficial and productive things that require little to no thought, like going to the gym.  This involves the use of lockers.  I come in, do my little running gerbil thing, then change into work clothes and start the actual brain-using part of the day.  Before this, of course, all bets are off as to how intelligent I'm going to be at any given moment.  

I'm also a creature of habit, and I tend to use roughly the same locker on each trip to the gym.  There's no special significance to it, it's just the one that's usually available at that hour of the day without too many other people in proximity.  Well, today, that one wasn't free, so I was forced to go afield.  I found an acceptable one in a different location and briefly wondered why it was open, since it was in a fairly prime area.  I make to open the thing up and realize why nobody was using it...the locker directly above it was askew on its hinges, so the edges rubbed together, somewhat sticking both in place.  No trouble, I thought, as I tugged a little harder, determined to get the door open.  Well, they both came free, and the upper one swung the other direction, smacking me square in the side of the head.  Awesome.  No pain, no gain, right?