I'd Guess 30 Concerts, Minimum

If you’re wanted, should you really be going around rocking a million faces?  


For today's Blag, Jeremy will once again be calling into question the lyrics to Jon Bon Jovi's song "Wanted Dead or Alive."  


It's not my fault the lyrics never make any sense.

So here we have a guy who claims to be wanted dead or alive, which is a pretty serious legal status to be in.  It's never made clear what Mr. Jovi did to attain this status, but it's probably pretty safe to say that you don't get to be wanted dead or alive for tearing the tags off of your pillows.  You have to commit some pretty heinous act to reach this level of being wanted. 

So what does he do with his time while hiding from the law?  He plays guitar concerts for a million people. 

This is dumb. 

One would assume that if the police and perhaps some other less savory types are looking for you with no concern for your well-being, the last thing you would want to do is be spotted by a large number of strangers.  You should lay low and live off the grid as much as possible. Make yourself completely anonymous to anyone but a few of your closest and most trusted friends and advisors.  I mean...I'm guessing here...I don't actually have any practical experience being a fugitive. 

It just makes sense that any one of the million people whose faces were rocked by one of Mr. Jovi's concerts might be able to recognize him and alert any of the people who are out looking for him.  It really seems like the surest way to get captured...dead or alive. 

Maybe This One Is Stretchy

No, random person at the gas station.  That pump’s hose isn’t longer than the other one


Well, depends on your margin for measurement error.  It's entirely possible that those types of things are not measured much down below the nearest centimeter or so.  With that, it's pretty much a guarantee that one is longer than the other...just not significantly so.  


While that's all very true, it certainly would not have helped with the situation I had the pleasure of witnessing recently.

So, not long ago, I needed to get gas for my car.  As I often do, I stopped off at the gas station that's on my way home from work.  It's convenient, the prices are usually totally decent, and they don't charge more for using a credit card, which is a rare and special gift in the Greater Jeremy Area.  It was also rush hour.  This means that the place was jam packed and I had to wait in line for a fuel pump.  No big deal.  I should mention at this point that in this station there are four fueling stations, roughly arranged in a square pattern, each of which can be accessed from either side, for a total of 8 available pumps. 

One of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind is that little arrow next to the fuel indicator in your car that tells you which side of the car the fuel door is on.  No matter how familiar you are with the car you happen to be driving at that particular time, you can very easily discern which side of a fuel pump you should be on in order to put gas in the car. 

Nobody explained this concept to the person in front of me in line for the fuel pump. 

This person pulls up to the pump and gets out of the car to begin pumping gas.  She takes the hose out of the holder and turns around to look at her car...unfortunately noticing that the inlet is on the other side.  Undeterred, she begins to walk around the back of the car, fuel hose in hand, attempting to reach the hose across the entire width of the car and dispense the gas on the opposite side.  Unfortunately for her, the hose was not long enough, and she was out of luck.  Putting the hose back into the pump's holder, she reenters the car to begin again. 

The following 30 seconds were the greatest moment of my week. 

She pulls her car directly forward to the more forward pump in the same line, with the car's gas cap STILL facing away from the pump.  She then exits the vehicle and takes the hose out of the second pump.  Walking across the back of the car, she attempts to reach the hose across the entire width of the car and dispense gas on the opposite side.  Shockingly enough, she failed the second time as well. 

HOW COULD YOU THINK THIS WAS GOING TO WORK?!  YOU'RE DRIVING THE SAME CAR, THE HOSE IS THE SAME, AND YOU'RE STILL FACING THE WRONG WAY!  OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO BE TOO SHORT!  WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?! 

Sadly, many of mankind's greatest inventions go unused due to people being unaware of their existence, stubbornness to admit that they did something wrong, and/or sheer rampant stupidity.  The poor little white arrow in this woman's car which faithfully shows which side the gas cap is on could only hopelessly point to the right while silently weeping.

Eventually, Early Wraps Around To Late

Has anyone actually graphed Health, Wealth, and Wisdom vs Sleep Schedule?  


For the most part, with the possible exception of wisdom, it seems like all of them are pretty quantifiable metrics that should be able to be plotted.  Somebody just needs to get on that.  


I agree.  We've all heard the old-timey phrase, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."  Many of us have also heard the Equally Profound Corollary "Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, but socially dead." 

I'll wait here for a second while you watch the rest of the Wheel of Morality video...

So, I thought about this and got to thinking that the phrase was made during a time when the hours of the day were a slightly more rigid concept than they are today. 


There are still 24 hours in a day, dummy.  


Yes, but the activities during those hours are much more fluid than they used to be.  The world has gotten much smaller in the internets age, and people collaborate and communicate all over the world on a much more routine basis than when this phrase was coined.  Incidentally, the phrase is attributed to Benjamin Franklin and his book "Early Rising: A Natural, Social, and Religious Duty."  With people across multiple time zones living and working together much more regularly than they did back in Franklin's time, this makes the concept of "early" very different for every individual. 

Not only are people using different definitions of "early" when it comes to sleep patterns, but people's natural sleep cycles vary significantly, and the traditional concept of 8 hours of sleep per night is just as ambiguous.  On top of that, people of different ages require different amounts of sleep depending on their developmental needs, so early and early may not be best for them, medically. 

So, if we normalize the amount of sleep each person gets, is there a true correlation between start and stop times of sleep with respect to traditionally-defined standards of "early" and the resultant health, wealth, and wisdom of the test subject?  I'm not aware of any such studies being done.  Get on that, science! 

How Many Are There? The Lyrics Are Not Specific

I think Warren Zevon ordered my lunch for me  

Did he pay for it too?  That would be very nice of him. 

So, I should probably point out here that I don't know Warren Zevon, and have never met the guy, leave alone have lunch with him.  What's important to note here is that my lunch was inspired by Warren Zevon.  

Yeah, this doesn't make sense anymore. 

So, I'll point out here that there is something of a tradition here at work that goes back for several years.  It's known as "Chinese Tuesday" and it happens, as you might suspect, every Tuesday.  It's when we go to the Chinese restaurant across the street from work for lunch.  The guy who runs it is pretty cool, and he knows us all since we've been going there for years, and the place is pretty convenient.  It's actually one of to and a half restaurants within a mile of work, the half being the franchised donut chain that's attached to the gas station which I've never actually ordered lunch from.  I get their coffee all of the time, since I'm told my country runs on it or something, but that's beside the point entirely.  

Not long ago, on my way to work, I was thinking ahead to lunch, and what I should order from the Chinese restaurant, since it was Tuesday.  I often go with the broccoli-themed dishes, such as chicken with broccoli, or beef with broccoli, but since I have lots of broccoli at home, I wasn't really feeling that.  There are several curry dishes that are quite popular at the restaurant, and I get a couple of those on occasion, but I wasn't sure if I was into spiciness.  Then, Warren Zevon happened.  

See, Warren's song "Werewolves of London" might be his most commercially successful song, having peaked at #21 in the U.S. back in 1978.  It's a ridiculous song, containing precisely 8 beats worth of music repeated ad nauseum for 3 minutes and 27 seconds.  Seriously...it never changes.  

Anyway, the first, I'm going to call it "verse" of the song, even though it probably doesn't count as one, ends with the line "Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein."  Then the song goes into some howling and mentioning the Werewolves of London while the same 8 beats of music play ad more nauseum.  

This reminded me of the fact that the Chinese restaurant does a pretty good job with Lo Mein noodles, not quite what the werewolf was eating, but my mind had made the connection.  More importantly, my mind made up what it was I wanted for lunch...a big dish of beef lo mein.  

I did not howl when I ate it, nor was I in London, nor were 8 beats of music playing in the background.