Geographically, or Chronologically

Are Strawberry Hill, Blueberry Hill, and Solsbury Hill all near other?  

I would guess not.  Fats Domino and the Red House Painters were both American, but Peter Gabriel was British.  I would assume they draw from different inspirations.  

So, today's Status deals with three vastly different songs.  

First off is the entirely depressing Alternative Rock song "Strawberry Hill" by Red House Painters.  The song's lyrics make reference to California, so we can reasonably safely say that the hill lies there.

Moving on to Solsbury Hill, and this one's a little easier.  The song is about a spiritual journey of some sort to the top of the aforementioned hill, which is near Bath in England.  Peter Gabriel would often walk on that hill, which partially gave inspiration to the song.  Gabriel himself was going on a spiritual journey of his own at the time, having just begun his solo music career after being in Genesis.  

Finally, Blueberry Hill...where one is said to find their thrill.  The song's lyrics were originally written by Larry Stock and Ed Lewis and many many versions of it were recorded.  Probably the most famous version is that made by Fats Domino in 1956.  While everybody seems to know where to find their thrill, nobody seems to actually know where that might be.  There are at least 16 different acknowledged Blueberry Hills in the United States, across 7 states.  None of which are confirmed to be the location of said thrills.  The best advice I can give you is that if you're looking for your thrill, find one of the Blueberry Hills, start climbing, and hope for the best. 

They're Probably Not

“Fig Newtons are made with bananas?”  -Anonymous Co-Worker


It should be relatively well known at this point that Jeremy is a self-repeatedly-proclaimed genius.  He also works with geniuses.  On occasion, genius runs into some stumbling blocks along the way.  Have a seat, and Jeremy will regale us with an entirely true story from the office.    


So, not long ago, I was sitting in a meeting at work.  This particular meeting is a recurring meeting, every week at the same time, and it's pretty long.  It's long enough that is fairly often devolves into some sort of nonsense, and often singing.  


Jeremy gets paid for this stuff...


Another feature of this meeting is the snacks.  On occasion, cookies, candies, or other goodies make an appearance for the team to enjoy during the productive times.  Recently, due in no small part to laziness on everyone's part, this too has devolved into the treats being Tic Tacs.  (Not a sponsor...but, you know...you can be, Tic Tacs.  Give me a call)  Tic Tacs are ostensibly breath mints, but come in such a variety of fruit flavors that they can be substituted for candy in a pinch.


At some point, this really does get around to Fig Newtons, I swear.  Also, not a sponsor.  


Not long ago, we were provided with banana flavored Tic Tacs.  They were at least reasonably tasty and I assume made my breath smell okay, so we went with it.

Well, this week, once again, the snack patrol (of which I am totally a member) slacked off, leaving us with wintergreen Tic Tacs as the treat of the day.  Not nearly as tasty, but probably did a better job with the whole breath thing, since that's what they're made for.  Anyway, this led to some good-natured ribbing of the Tic Tac provider that we had mints instead of a more appropriate candy for the meeting.  One person lamenting this fact by pointing out that we recently had the banana flavored version, and that we had no banana this week.  As you might imagine, this devolved into song, singing the song "Yes!  We Have No Bananas." 


Here's a Fun Fact!  That song is way older than you think.  It was written in 1922 by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn for the Broadway show "Make It Snappy."  


The song was also made famous more recently by being featured in a commercial.  Everyone in the meeting remembered this fact, but not what it was a commercial for.  The meeting continued.  During this time, a certain genius engineer took it upon himself to Google what commercial it was which used that song for its soundtrack.  So, a few minutes after the meeting had resumed, I randomly blurted out, "It was for Fig Newtons."  The commercial featured a monkey examining all of the new fruit flavored offerings of Newton-style cookies, but lamenting the fact that there were no banana flavored Newtons.

Only mildly confused, but certainly understanding of the interruption, a co-worker asked what was Fig Newtons, to which everyone else, who had begun laughing at this point, explained that it was the Bananas song we had sung minutes earlier.  To which, the anonymous co-worker asked, "Fig Newtons are made with bananas?" 

The meeting ended on time. 

Now I Want To Pop Some

Today, I learned that “Bubble Wrap” is copyrighted  

Well that's a thing.  Is popping it a violation?  That would spell trouble for just about everybody.

So, true story: some time ago, I spent some time working at a home improvement store which, for strictly Blag purposes, we'll call "High's Home Improvement."  During that time, one of the things that I ended up working on was the display of doors.  This involved putting up a few new models which had been shipped to the store.  When they were shipped, they were packaged securely with Bubble Wrap (or a similar product produced by a supplier other than the copyright owner, Sealed Air Corporation), so the first step in our project was to unpackage the doors.  This created a giant pile of bubble wrap approximately 8 feet tall in the middle of the aisle of the store.  Since we were doing this work during the day, there was the occasional customer that came along, and the occasional worker as well.  Every last person who passed this giant pile grabbed a handful of the bubble wrap and popped it.  It was pretty fun to watch, and if I'm being 100% honest, it was pretty fun to pop as well.  

All of this is tangential to the story here.  

What's important is that I keep my eye on various little-known holidays from time to time in case I find myself in need of something to celebrate.  In doing my research for this, I learned that Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day was held earlier this week, and I am totally Not Making That Up.  What stood out in that was the fact that there was a little trademark symbol every time the site made mention of Bubble Wrap.   So, I dug a little further.

As it turns out, Bubble Wrap was invented in 1957 by two guys in New Jersey who were trying to invent a new style of wallpaper by gluing two shower curtains together.  I'm not making that up, either...maybe there's something weird in the water in New Jersey.  The name Bubble Wrap was trademarked in 1960 by Sealed Air Corporation, and the product's first commercial use was packaging and shipping IBM computers in 1961.  

And there you have it...more information than you thought you were going to learn today about Bubble Wrap.  Enjoy! 

Science! It Hurts, Sometimes

I like this fuzzy shirt I have because I can see the static electric sparks it makes  

You're not wearing a fuzzy shirt.  You have a pretty standard fare gray button-down.  Why are you lying to the nice people, Jeremy?  

Okay, so I'm not wearing that particular shirt at this very moment, but I wear it quite frequently at home.  It's soft and warm.  It also has the downside of being amazingly good at generating static electricity.  

This has its good and bad points.  

Another thing that I have which is noteworthy for static electricity is my couch.  Either of them, for that matter...they're both the same.  I've gotten into the habit of grounding myself to my computer case when I stand up, otherwise, I run the risk of an impressively powerful electric shock when I touch the light switch.  Here's a Fun Fact...a standard static electric spark that you get from a couch or scuffing your feet across the floor is around 4000-20,000 volts.  Anyway...combining my gray fuzzy shirt with my devious couch provides a nearly dangerous* amount of static electricity, which manifests itself in several ways.  

*It's not actually nearly dangerous.  The amount of charge is WAY too low to actually hurt anything, despite the high voltage

 So anyway, what's especially fun about this shirt is moving it around in the dark.  The shirt itself will actually discharge its static electricity to whatever happens to be nearby, which is usually my arm.  When it does, there is the tell-tale sparking sound, which sounds like somebody stepping on the world's most adorably tiny bubble wrap, and the sparks themselves.  If the room is dark enough, you can actually see my shirt lighting up like a really busy thunderstorm.  It's amazingly fun, and just makes me want to wear the shirt even more.  Even if it means zapping myself on the light switch all the frickin' time.