Also: Global Warming

The lamestream media is lying to us!  A guy on the radio this morning said that Nailz was one of the Nasty Boys.  

Okay, people.  Before Jeremy explains this nonsense to you, stop whatever the heck you're doing right now and Watch This Video!  It will be the greatest part of your day.  Now, on to the second greatest part of your day....

So we hear a lot these days about media bias.  There's left bias, right bias, liberal bias, conservative bias, a bias toward fairness (A term that I needed TV's Will McAvoy to explain to me, saying "Bias towards fairness means that if the entire Republican Congressional Caucus were to walk into the House and propose a resolution stating that the Earth was flat, the Times would lead with 'Democracts and Republicans Can't Agree on Shape of Earth'.").  The end result is that everyone has their own set of doubts about various media sources.  This distrust gives rise to new terms like "Lamestream media," which is basically every standard media outlet who is apparently too blinded by corporate profits to actually be able to report facts.  

Well, included in this is now the radio station in the Greater Jeremy Area which plays the morning show I listen to while getting ready to go to work in the morning.  Granted, they're a comedy show, but that doesn't mean they're allowed to distort the facts for their own purposes.  Lately, they've been playing a call-in game where the listener is presented a name, and they have to guess whether that person is a professional wrestler or an adult film performer.  Not the most wholesome game ever, but we don't judge here.  

Jeremy's three for three so far this week.  

So, after playing this morning's edition of the game, one of the hosts went on to talk about the professional wrestler Nailz.  Portrayed by Kevin Wacholz, Nailz was the short-lived WWF persona of a former convict who was released from prison and was out to seek retribution from the former prison guard, "The Big Boss Man" as played by Ray Traylor.  He was fired from the WWF shortly thereafter following a physical altercation with owner Vince McMahon.  Everyone knows this.  Well...everyone except for the radio host, apparently, who described Nailz as one of the Nasty Boys.  This is inexcusable.  The Nasty Boys were, of course, an enduring tag team consisting of Brian Knobbs, Jerry Sags, and nobody named Nailz.  

I'm going to have trouble believing anything this radio host has to say from now on.  Geeze...

Vote Jerkface!

Hooray!  Election robo-calls to my office have begun!

Well, it is an even-numbered year.  So, these and every odd-numbered years are election seasons.  

Robo-calls suck.

An aspiring politician simply needs to record a message once, using at most 5 minutes out of their day, and then they turn things over to a machine.  The machine systematically calls everybody in creation, playing the recorded message and "spreading the word" about the politician and everything that the politician's opponent does wrong.  Everybody hates robo-calls, but in true politician fashion, the campaigner ignores what everybody wants and simply does whatever he or she thinks will get them elected.  

Usually, in election season (which is now every season...thanks, 24-hour "news" networks), these robo-calls are met with different reactions based on which political party the listener belongs to.  If they, for example, are a member of the Republican party, and the robo-call is from a member of the Democratic party (in the 1.7% likelihood that the listener is even aware of the party affiliation), the call is immediately the subject of rage and phone screaming, even though (in true political form), nobody is listening.  The same goes vise versa for opposite affiliations.  If the listener's political party matches that of the robo-call, the same level of rage is obtained, but directed at the caller's political opponent.  The end result is the same, really...the listener is enraged and yelling at the phone.  It's interesting to note that the subject of the call, or any relevant "facts" stated within are entirely irrelevant.  The voter has already made up their mind who they're going to vote for, why, and what they are going to believe in terms of information presented.

In the last election cycle, I was fortunate enough to only receive robo-calls to my office phone.  Perhaps my cell phone is unlisted, or on a no-call list or whatever.  I'm okay with that, and don't really want to bring attention to the fact.  Fortunately, for the sake of my office phone's health, the barrage of calls (3-6 calls every day) stopped immediately after the election.  What followed was a period of campaign-free bliss that was sure to be short-lived.  Well, that period of bliss ended on May 12, a mere 5 months and 3 weeks before the next election.  I didn't pay enough attention to learn who the call was for.  I should have, though.  My idea for this coming election is to tabulate the number of robo calls I get from each politician and cast my vote for whoever calls me the least in each race.  There are plenty of people who will use worse methods to determine their elected officials. 

Don't Ask About The Girl From Norway

Happy Limerick Day, everybody!  There’s no way this ends well  

Keep it clean, people.  

So, today is Limerick Day, which has nothing to do with the nuclear (pronounced: NOO cue ler) power plant in southeast Pennsylvania.  It's a day to celebrate poetry!  But not just any poetry...the Dane Cook of poetry forms, the Limerick!  

It's also a terrible excuse to post my favorite poem...the author of which is entirely unknown to me.  I could probably look it up, but I'm not that concerned.


There once was a man from Nantucet
Who got on a train to Boston
This poem doesn't rhyme
And the last line is missing


You'll have to just imagine me snapping my fingers together. 


Thank you.  Thank you. 

Next: Cajun Fries

Day 3 of my car smelling like Buffalo Wings

That's either the worst, or kind of the best.  I can't decide.

Very true.  It actually depends on a number of things, including the time of day and your current level of hunger.  First thing in the morning, it's not great.  On your way to get lunch, amazing.  After a volleyball game when your teammates invite you to a buffalo wing restaurant for a post-game drink/snack, a little redundant.   

I don't know how long it takes for Buffalo Wing smell to leave a car on its own.  As such, this is turning into a little impromptu science experiment.  I meant...I have one of those smelly things that clips to the air vent to make the car smell nice, but it's dead.  I have another one in the console, but it's not opened and I apparently can't be bothered to install it just yet.  So now...we wait. 

Speaking of waiting, Jeremy will be on vacation tomorrow, so there will be no new Sametime Status.  Sorry to disappoint.  Either that, or you're welcome, depending on what side of the coin you fall on.  Either way, Jeremy Is In The Office will be Out Of The Office tomorrow, returning May 12 with all new stuff!  Happy weekend, everybody! 

It's A Pretty Big Store

Contrary to what the commercial said, my grocery store doesn’t have a “Potato Aisle”

Well, certainly they sell potatoes.  Aren't they in an aisle?

Of course my grocery store sells potatoes.  They're in the Produce Section, roughly never referred to as "The Potato Aisle."  However, today's rant deals with something a little more specific.  

I saw a commercial recently for pre-packaged home fries that you dump in a pan, fry to a crispy golden brown and enjoy.  I've actually had them before, and they are pretty good.  I won't take that away from them.  They're made by a company that, for strictly blag purposes, we'll call "Famished John."  This company makes a variety of potato-based (or is that potatoe-based?) foods, ranging from mashed potatoes to scalloped potatoes to au gratin potatoes to au gratin potatoes with bacon...you get the idea.  If you go to your local grocery store, all of "Famished John"'s products can be found within 5 feet of each other, since they're all the same genre of foods.  In my store, they're found in an aisle which also contains Asian cooking products, Latin cooking products, rice, beans, salsa, tortillas, every canned vegetable (save tomatoes), and Spam.  If I had to give a name to this aisle, I wouldn't be able to do it, since the variety of items defies a single naming convention.  The store got it right, calling it "Aisle 7.**"

**I don't actually know if it's Aisle 7 or a slightly different number.  I'm guessing here a little bit, but my point remains valid.

At no point in this determination had it ever crossed my mind to refer to this aisle as the "Famished Jack Aisle."  "Famished John"''s items make up less than 8.3% of the overall available products in the aisle, not even a plurality, as that title would almost certainly go to that soup company that makes all of those pre-packaged noodle and rice sides, or else "Shrub"'s Baked Beans, simply due to sheer variety of beans and mixtures thereof.  There is more shelf space in this aisle devoted to salsa than there is to "Famished Jack."  To try to convince somebody to refer to this aisle as the "Famished John" aisle would be ambitious at best, hyperbole at worst.  

Yet, there they are at the end of the commercial.  The nice folks at the potato factory, telling me to look for their products "In the 'Famous John' Aisle."  This is a reach, folks.  This is a little too self-serving for me.  Do they either expect me to believe that I should be referring to an aisle of the grocery store that contains hundreds of products by the brand name of half a dozen of them, or do they believe that there are stores out there that carry so many of their products that they actually take up an entire aisle?  I'd almost like to see that store...I like potatoes. 

Also: Duck Calls!

Changing my name to Bill so I can open up a combination check cash/hat store named “Bill’s Bills and Bills”

Then later changing the name of this Blag to "Bill Is In The Office."  

So..uhm.  Pretty self explanatory joke today.   Have a good weekend, everybody! 

I'm Probably A 6 or 7 Out Of Ten

I’m curious about whether or not there are actually professional hand-washers out there

There are some weird jobs around.  I don't know how much this would surprise me.  

So, while it's not quite on the level of Dog Food Tester (53% of them have a PhD, and all of them have to taste the dog food to test it) or Hair Boiler (quite literally boils vats of animal hair to make it curly for every reason you need curly animal hair), professional hand washer would be a weird job.  

I suppose somebody out there has to test new hand soaps to see if it cleans your hands and leaves them smelling nice without drying out your skin, but that doesn't seem like it would need to be a full-time job.  It's really only relevant when a company produces a new kind of soap.  I don't know how often that is.  Doctors and nurses wash their hands a lot (did you know that in order to disinfect your hands, you're supposed to sing "Happy Birthday" TWICE while lathering?  Over 5 minutes if you're prepping for surgery), but their job is certainly not "hand washer."  They have other responsibilities which are more important which simply require clean hands to accomplish.  As far as I know, nobody goes to work for 8 hours a day washing their hands constantly in order to accomplish...something...generate data, perhaps.  

Yet, I walk into public bathrooms and I see "Professional" soap dispensers on the sink.