What's The Aural Equivalent Of A Thousand-Yard Stare?

The internet only seems to remember the terrible videos I watch when recommending new ones for me  

Jeremy would much rather have the internet refer him to the latest My Little Pony videos.  

While that is almost assuredly not the case...

...I heard the word "almost" in there...

...I'm not specifically talking about what videos should be recommended to me.  This is more of a rant on what videos should not be.  It's a fine line, but one I'm okay with making.  

There are two very noteworthy examples of things going on here.  One is auto-complete.  You've seen this before, where you type the first few letters of your search into the little box on a popular video-streaming website.  The box fills itself in with things that the internets think you might be searching for.  This is based, supposedly, on not only your specific searching habits, but on the searching habits of other internet denizens as well.  The exact algorithm is secret and proprietary, of course....but it's also nonsense.  For example, there is a recurring show that I watch on occasion which starts with the letters "Jus."  While I've filled in this search more than a few times (I habitually refuse to "subscribe" to any of these channels because reasons), the auto-complete invariably comes back with the exact same thing after those first three letters.  "Justin Bieber."  

This is crap.  

I do not watch Justin Bieber videos, nor listen to his music.  I am not a fan of his.  I am not in his target demographic.  I have never once searched on this video site for his stuff, and yet, that is the first autocomplete every time.  

The other issue I have is slightly more understandable, and arguably more annoying.  Against my better judgement and for educational purposes only, I recently searched for and watched a music video because of several internet memes I've seen.  I pretty much knew this wasn't going to be good for me, but I did it anyway.  Yes, friends...I actually suffered through the entire "music" video "Watch Me" by Silento.  Needless to say, I don't recommend this to anyone.  

My suspicions were confirmed a mere 8 seconds into the video, when the "artist" blatantly violated Jeremy's Big Rule #1 with the first spoken lines of the "song."  It only went downhill from there.  To borrow a line from Dave Chappelle, "songs" like this make me wish I had more hands...so I could give it four thumbs down.

Having subjected myself to this musical violation of my well-being, I am 100% confident that I will never need to watch this video again, nor will I ever listen to any further performances by the "artist."  

However, the popular online video streaming site now knows that I have watched that steaming pile of video.  So now, when I log in, I get to see all of my new recommendations based on the fact that I watched it.  I've told the video site that I didn't like it, though not so far as to post a comment saying that the "song" was "so bad it gave me butt cancer," (I'm not making that comment up, BTW...it was the first one on the page).  I have also gone through my video history and deleted the fact that I put up with that crap from my records, and yet the message seems to be lost on the website.  They keep on recommending me horrible-looking videos because I watched that guy whip.  

Meanwhile, the show that I actually have watched and enjoyed takes a back seat.  Be careful on the internets, everybody. 

It Was Red. You Need More?

Now I know that I don’t have any photography equipment even remotely capable of taking pictures of a lunar eclipse  

No, Jeremy.  Your smartphone just won't cut it here.

Believe it or not, I'm actually quite aware of that.  Though, I did use my phone to send a picture of the eclipse...I just knew in advance that it wasn't going to work very well.  I'm at least somewhat smart.

You're right.  I don't believe you're smart.  

So anyway, unless you've been living in a hole for the past couple months, you know that last night was the big Supermoon eclipse.  Woohoo!  Exciting.  Supermoon, of course, is a full moon when the moon is as its orbit's perigee, or closest position to earth.  The result is the largest moon visible in the night sky.  Then, it occasionally passes through the earth's shadow, resulting in the largest lunar eclipse possible.  That's what happened yesterday.  

In the run-up to this astronomical phenomenon, there was a flood of social networking posts.  Unfortunately, very few of these had to do with any sort of astronomy or science.  Most of them had to do with the Prophecy of the Blood Moon.  The lunar eclipse is sometimes called Blood Moon because it appears a deep red in the sky, and because it's a scarier name to give a prophecy about the end of times.  Since you're reading this, it's pretty safe to assume that the end of times did not occur, and we were just dealing with a standard lunar eclipse.  Hooray for continued existence!  

In the aftermath of the Supermoon eclipse, there was another flood of social media posts about the eclipse.  This time, it was everybody posting their own photos of the eclipse.  Everyone seems to have better cameras than me.  Some of the ones I saw were actually fairly impressive pictures of the moon in various stages of eclipse.  They were clearly taken with nice digital SLR cameras with decent lenses and by people who seem to know how to work with this type of equipment.  

I have an old higher-end point and shoot camera and a truly crappy tripod which has blue paint on it for some reason.   

My suite of photography equipment was ill-suited to nighttime pictures of an eclipsing moon, as evidenced by my lack of social media posts about the moon.  I don't think anyone will miss my take, though.  There are plenty of other posts about it.  I also don't really want to go buy a new camera....or do I? 

It Would Sit Empty Anyway

Where were you when you first realized you’ve never owned a butter dish?  

Well, strictly speaking, I don't exist, so I don't own any dishes.  This is a little lost on me.  

Fair enough.  It's something that I've never really thought about, but I just came to that realization yesterday.   

Let me take you on a little trip through the past.  

I was heading back to college and it was going to be my first year outside of the dorms, so I needed to get stuff for my new apartment.  This involves kitchen stuff.  While some people go to garage sales (or Craiglist now), that method ultimately proved unsuccessful for me, so I packed up a van and headed to the outlet mall with my mom.  She's reading this now, so be nice.  

We came across a housewares kind of store, where I found all of the stuff I would eventually need, and they were having a sale.  Sale at an outlet store?  Like fun, you say!  Nono...it's true.  There was a sale.  Depending on the color sticker that was on the box of stuff you wanted to buy, you would get an additional discount.  Crappy silverware and a cheap set of pots and pans were easy, but dishes were a little more difficult to come by.  We looked at box after box of dishes that were either too expensive for me (I was a poor college student at the time...so keep that in mind), or were just so ridiculously ugly that I wouldn't be able to keep down whatever food I was trying to eat off of them.  It was that sad.  As sort of a last-ditch effort, we spotted a box of dishes on the very top shelf that was somewhat hidden, somewhat dusty, and seemingly lost to the ages.  It was a full 8-serving set of really heavy dishes that looked just fine once you managed to heft them off of that shelf.  The box had a sticker representing 50% off, so price ended up being something like 20 bucks.  The box made its way into the van.  

Fast forward years later, I have long since sold the crappy silverware at a garage sale, but I still use the exact same set of dishes, even after I could have afforded new ones.  There are only 2 fewer than there were when I bought the set.  A saucer and a cereal bowl met their untimely demise on my kitchen floor, but I've never really felt their absence.  They're still stupid heavy, but they still look nice and they still serve their purpose quite admirably.  I have also since supplemented my dish collection with some salad bowls, more glassware than anyone really needs, and bigger coffee cups.  

But I never bought a butter dish.  

I can't imagine why this bothers me now.  I rarely use butter for anything other than cooking, at which point, having it in a dish is irrelevant.  If I'm spreading something on bread or something, I tend to use soft margarine in tubs (I'm told I shouldn't believe that the product I'm using is not, in fact, butter) simply because it's easier to spread.  I guess it's healthier too, but for the amount of either that I use, it's probably not significant.  

I could easily solve my problem by going to the local housewares chain store (It's literally on my way home from work and also walking distance from my house) and buy a stupid butter dish.  But I'm not going to do that, since I have absolutely no need for one.  It also won't match my dishes, since the pattern has assuredly been discontinued ages ago, and that sort of thing would bother me more than the lack of a butter dish does in the first place.  

So I'm stuck with a complete and total lack of a butter dish, and no foreseeable plans to get one in the future.  If you're coming over for dinner, I hope you like margarine.