Sacrificing Myself For Your Edutainment

If we switch over to the Metric System, NASCAR will have to rename all of its races

That really is about the only reason left.  And it's not very good.  

Let me start off today's blag with two very important notes.  First of all, I ended up needing to do a greater amount of research into NASCAR than I ever wanted, but I made sure to do it in a Private browser window so there would be no history and no judging.  Secondly, here is a map of the countries in the world who use the Imperial measurement system versus those using Metric:

I'm not sure what those other two countries are, and I couldn't be bothered to look it up.  It seems largely irrelevant.  The World uses Metric, and for most items, it makes tremendously more sense.  We should bite the bullet and switch over.

One of the last holdouts would seem to be NASCAR.  This is based on an exhaustive study I did in which I thought this bit would be funny.  Also, it turned out to be a crap argument anyway, but more on that in a second.  See, NASCAR names many of their events after a Shameless Corporate Sponsor, followed by the length of the race, as measured in miles (an Imperial unit).  Thus, giving rise to events like "Daytona 500" and "Gobowling.com 400."  I'm not making that up.  I had assumed that NASCAR made these races with nice, round numbers and thus would want to forestall the switch to metric rather than renaming these to the "Daytona 804" and "Gobowling.com 643."  As it turns out, it's not as if these race lengths have any integrity anyway.  Sure, most of them are even numbers, but there are also ridiculous races like "Aaron's 499" and "Cheez-It 355 at The Glen."  Nope...not making those up, either.  So sure, now it's the "Aaron's 803" and "Cheez-It 571 at The Glen," but those really aren't any worse.  

So let's forget this argument.  

You could easily make the case to simply adjust the length of the races to once again be a nice, round number for the sake of marketing.  There are already 600-mile races.  Adding a mere 21 miles gives you an even 1000km...and "Shameless Corporate Sponsor 1000" sounds pretty cool, as race names go.  800 km is just shy of 500 miles, so it's close enough.  You could even keep the "500" races, which are now only 310 miles, 10 miles longer than the shortest NASCAR race I could find on Wikipedia, the "Osram Sylvania 300."  Nope...still not making these up.  So I tried to come up with a reason that this argument could be invalidated...and it didn't take me long to think..."track length!"  I figured that all of these races are set up specifically with the individual race tracks to be a very specific length due to a very specific length of the race track.  Well, as it turns out, this argument is for naught as well.  A majority of the 3 race tracks I looked up were set up to be 2.5 miles long...which coincidentally turns out to be almost exactly 4km.  So, you could still have a perfectly distanced race with the existing tracks.  Well, on top of that...track length is nonsense anyway.  The track at the Talladega Superspeedway is not an even 2.5miles (4.02km)...it's 2.66miles (4.28km).  So we can safely throw out any argument I've made in the last few minutes here.  Math and Science have proven that NASCAR is not a valid reason to keep using the Imperial measurement system.  Let's switch over to Metric now, shall we?  Except for temperature...I like Fahrenheit.  

Whoever Yells "FREE BIRD" Gets Punched

Silly Lynyrd Skynyrd, of course Tuesday’s gone.  It’s Thursday!

Today's Sametime Status makes me want to go to a NASCAR race and complain about liberals.  

You get all that from "Tuesday's Gone?"  I mean...it's a nice song and all, but never seemed quite THAT life-altering.

Nah, I'm just kidding.  It would take a lot more than that to get me to watch NASCAR.  

So today's Sametime Status deals with Lynyrd Skynyrd's song, "Tuesday's Gone."  The reason today's Sametime Status deals with  Lynyrd Skynyrd's song, "Tuesday's Gone," is that this was the first song playing on the radio when my alarm went off this morning.  This thought was actually the first thing to pop into my head today.  You know it's going to be a good day when your first thought is something funny instead of something like "I wonder how much it snowed overnight," or "It's time to get up already?" or "Ow, I just stepped on that thing!"  Those are far more common than comedy. 

The especially nice thing about this particular Thursday is that it's cleverly disguised as Friday, since I have the day off of work tomorrow to celebrate March Madness.  Woohoo!  So long suckers!  See you all on monday.

So, even though Jeremy made it pretty clear already, it's in my contract that I'm supposed to do this.  So, Jeremy Is In The Office will be Out Of The Office tomorrow, returning monday, March 25 with all new stuff.  I've actually gotten a preview of monday's Sametime Status and I have no idea what it means.  We'll all be waiting patiently for an explanation.  

I will stink until further notice

My soap is sponsored by NASCAR. I need new soap


You'd stop using soap because of a shameless corporate partnership with a sport you don't watch?


It's the principle of the thing.


There are other principles about showering, you know.


Entirely beside the point. Today's Post is a mild rant about silly partnerships and sponsorships of sporting events in general.

I don't watch NASCAR, or any sort of racing. I'm 100% certain that every NASCAR driver is a better driver than I am, and we'll leave alone the argument about whether or not car racing is a sport, and I'll just point out that I don't want to watch racing. Step 1, you drive until you have to turn left. Step 2...there's no step 2. Why do I want to watch people do this for 2 hours? Sure, they're driving faster than I would in my car, but that doesn't make me want to spend the time to watch them do it.

One of the main attractions of NASCAR is that the cars, the drivers, the pits, the pit crew, and even the post-race speeches are slathered in non-stop corporate sponsorships. Each car contains 83 separate corporate sponsor ad placements, based on a Google picture I just looked at. All of these logos are subsequently repeated on everything associated with the car, including the uniforms, and the truck used to carry the car from one race to another. (The point of this always escaped me...seems to me they could save time by just driving the cars themselves instead of loading them onto a truck...the cars are much faster.)

Anyway, the product placements tend to reverse themselves, with NASCAR logos showing up on various products that I may or may not want to buy. The fact that NASCAR wants me to buy these particular products, in lieu of other brands of the same type of thing, really has no positive impact on whether I choose that or not. If anything, I tend to steer myself away from things that are the "Official Nonsensical Product of NASCAR." Case in point, my new bottle of soap. For some unknown reason, I didn't notice this in the store, but it's got a picture of some NASCAR driver on it who wants me to buy this soap because he's got the same logo on the rear inside fender of his car. I don't really care if NASCAR boy wants me to use this particular soap. I choose it because it leaves me clean and fresh-smelling, without drying my skin like most other soaps. Now that I have to wake up every morning and see NASCAR while I'm in the shower, I may have to reconsider my association with this particular product.

As a bit of an aside, for your amusement, I've compiled a list of pretty nonsensical NASCAR sponsors (ie: Things that have little if anything to do with driving a car in circles). Enjoy!

• Coca-Cola - Official Non-Alcoholic Beverage
  
• Coors Light - Official Beer
  
• Freescale - Official Automotive Semiconductor
  
• Gillette - Official Shaving Product
  
• Mars - Official Chocolate Bar, Official Cheese-Filled Snack, AND Official Pet food
  
• Nabisco - Official Cookie
  
• Old Spice - Official Deodorant
  
• Sirius XM Radio - Official Satellite Radio (Seriously? There's only one Satellite radio company in existence)
  
• Sunoco - Official Convenience Store
  

This just goes to show how good I am

I made it all week without making a Charlie Sheen joke! Woohoo!


Congratulations, Jeremy. You've held out the longest of all the recurring Sametime Status Message Blags you read on the Internetz...and just about every other media outlet, for that matter.


In celebration, I'm going to share with you a joke I would have made if I weren't so ridiculously busy on Wednesday. The Sametime Status that day was "If you have a NASCAR license plate, I shouldn’t have to follow you going 30MPH down the highway" because I had to follow some loser going a full 25MPH below the speed limit on my way to work that morning, and I take out my frustrations on people like this in passive-aggressive Sametime Status form.

Anyway, since I was making fun of NASCAR, I was going to point out that my Sametime Status that day was Racist.

Okay...that's enough for one week. See everyone on monday!

Theme Week Part Deux

Jeremy’s Sametime Status Proudly Presents: Back From France Week! I’m now banned from all Grand Slam Tennis Tournaments


Way to go, Jeremy. Why couldn't you get yourself banned from NASCAR, or something else that you don't actually enjoy?


First of all, I'd have to go to a NASCAR event in order to be barred from returning. That said, the mullets and smell of cigarettes and spilled Budweiser everywhere would probably be enough of a deterrent on their own, I wouldn't need the help of security.

In the case of my vacation, one of the events on the trip was a stop off to Roland Garros to catch the first round of the French Open. It was a lovely spring day until it started raining heavily. Umbrellas came out, and tarps covered the clay courts for over an hour until it was decided that play could continue. While the tournament committee was ready to blame me for the weather, they weren't entirely convinced.

The main issue they had with me was that I'm pretty certain I cursed everyone that I saw play. I'm pretty sure that nobody I watched in the first round made it out of the second. I didn't even see Rafael Nadal play, but simply being in the area was enough to get him bounced in the early rounds, despite being probably the greatest clay-court player in the game. The Williams sisters lost their doubles match soon after we saw them, the Russian girl whose name escapes me obviously didn't win, and Jelena Dokic had to withdraw from her next match with a back injury.


Nicely done.

Math and spelling all in one!

TWELVE PLUS ONE is an anagram for ELEVEN PLUS TWO. Spooky.


I'm going to need my calculator AND a pencil for this.


Use whatever you'd like to, but it's true. It's also true that they both add up to Thirteen, which is an Evil number. And in the immortal words of Mitch Hedberg, 12 and 14 are guilty by association.


Interesting. So what's new on the internet?


Glad you asked...although soon, you won't be. Maybe I’m a little too pessimistic, but sometimes it seems that the world gets a little bit worse every day. I’m not blaming NASCAR for all of it, but there's a little too much to be pure coincidence. Somebody out on the Intertubes decided that ordinary online dating websites just didn't cater enough to their specific need to find that special someone who's as into racing around in circles as they were. Lo and behold, a new exciting website was created so you can meet your perfect match and share the special experience of watching people drive. Ladies, Gentlemen, and people from Elmira, I present to you:

Meet Me At The Races


Awwwe....that's so sweet. Wonder if one of the descriptions you have to fill out is the number of teeth you have left.