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I sincerely doubt I will ever want to tweet about a self-storage warehouse

Well, maybe if you won one of them on that fake game show about buying abandoned storage units, you'd tweet about it.  

  

I suppose that's true.  But, failing that, I don't see anything all that tweet-worthy about self storage warehouses. 

So, self-storage warehouses are pretty boring.  They're a big ol' building with a bunch of lockers of various sizes inside.  You rent one out for some defined period of time, come in, stuff in a bunch of the crap you own but don't have room for in your current living arrangement, and...well...that's about it.  

I can see why there would be differences from one self-storage warehouse to another.  Some might be in better locations, have wider easier-access doors, better climate control, better lighting, improved security...you know...things like that.  Depending on your self-storage needs, these might lead you to pick one location over another, and that seems perfectly reasonable.  But why would you ever want to tweet about it?  

See, there are a number of self-storage warehouses in the Greater Jeremy Area, since people around here apparently like to store stuff.  I've never researched any of them, so I have no idea what amenities any of them offer over another to offer a valid comparison.  What I do know is that one of them has a programmable lighted sign out front which can be easily seen from the major road.  When I drove past it recently, the sign read "Deals You Can Tweet About."

False.  

Of course, I can't quite detail what kind of deal I could get on a self-storage locker in that particular warehouse (or any other, for that matter), but I can just about guarantee that I won't be tweeting about it.  I will, however, Blag about their stupid sign. 

Bonus! Collectible Quarters Now Even More Valuable!

Why do cents come in groups of 25, and dollars come in groups of 20?  

Please tell me this isn't one of those rhetorical questions like why we drive on parkways and park on driveways.  

Everybody loves amusing rhetorical questions!  But no...this isn't one of those.  It is rhetorical, I guess, since I'm not really expecting an explanation, but it really is a genuine question that has been plaguing me for a long long time.

Since about 7:30 this morning.  

That's a long time!  

So anyway, money is weird and confusing.  I remember back in grade school, when math class (or "maths," for our British readers) included many a lesson on currency.  They had to explain what coins were available and how to properly count out a certain number of cents using the fewest possible coins.  I never had a problem with it, since I'm a genius, but I would often have problems with self-righteous teachers telling me I got an answer wrong because I didn't put the cent sign after the correct number.  That sort of thing happens a lot when you're a genius.  It's the price we pay.  

Anyway, if you think about it, 25 is a weird number to use when dividing up a dollar.  Sure, it makes 50 really easy to come by, but is it honestly that much of a sacrifice for the sake of easy math?  If we were like the rest of the world (And by "rest of the world" I mean any country that uses Euros and the Bosnian Convertible Mark, since that's the amount of research I put into this...asking a Bosnian what money they used), dollar would be broken up into 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cent increments.  Dollars already come in 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 denominations for those of you who, unlike me, don't roll exclusively with hundreds.  

The only difference in American coins is the 25 cent coin, which isn't even twenty five cents!  Look at one...nowhere on there does it say it's worth 25 cents.  It says it's a Quarter Dollar.  So now, you not only have to understand currency and values, but you have to know fractions in order to figure out 25 cents.  Granted, it's not something that most of us think about, but that's exactly the sort of thing that pops into my head and builds a nest and stays for weeks.  In fact, almost none of our coins tell you how much they're worth.  Penny is one cent, Nickel is five cents, Dime is ten cents, Quarter is 25 cents, and Fifty-Cent Piece is not surprisingly Fifty Cents.  At least only the names of the Penny, Nickel, and Dime are missing from the coin itself...they actually tell you how much they're worth.  But tell somebody not from America to give you a Dime, and they won't know which coin to hand over, since none of them have the word "Dime" on them.  This is unnecessarily confusing.

So, while there is a genuine (and entirely reasonable) push to eliminate the penny from American currency, I think those efforts are a little off the mark.  We should be replacing the quarter with a 20-cent piece.  That way, at least the denominations on either side of the decimal point will match up and you only have to learn one set of math equations to deal with money.  You'll have 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50.  Then, regardless of if you have to come up with 83 cents or 83 dollars, you can do it the same way...a 50, a 20, a 10, and three 1s.  Boom, done.  

Genius. 

Brief Headline

My peach iced tea is the only one with an adjective  


Does that make it taste any worse? 


The adjective on the bottle has no impact on the product.  That doesn't stop companies from overusing adjectives on the descriptions of their products.

So, fairly often, I like to make iced tea.  When time is tight (like say...every day at work), I use those little bottles of liquid iced tea mix.  You squirt a little stream of concentrated goop into a cup of water, give it a little stir, and you've got reasonably decent flavored iced tea.  The goop comes in four flavors that I'm aware of: Lemon, Raspberry, Cherry Dragonfruit, and Summer Peach. 

Lemon is my favorite flavor, Raspberry is the worst (which is at least partially sad, because normally I love raspberry flavored iced tea), Cherry Dragonfruit just kinda happens, and Summer Peach is the only one that has an adjective.  I'm not sure what difference the summer makes when it comes to drinking peach flavored iced tea, but apparently, it's worthy of adding the descriptor on the bottle.  I'm at least a little curious what a winter peach tastes like.  I'm guessing it tastes like the exact same artificial peach-like flavor, but we'll probably never know. 

Why don't the Lemon, Raspberry, and Cherry Dragonfruit iced tea goops get adjectives?  Aren't they special enough?  Shouldn't the company be more consistent in their labeling?  How about Tangy Lemon?  Tart Raspberry?  Sweet Cherry Dragonfruit?  The whole thing makes no sense. 

Speaking of label descriptors that make no sense...Sun Chips.  They have a flavor called "Harvest Cheddar."  So uhmm...nobody harvests cheddar.  What's up with this one? 

...Just Staggering

Every day, I get surprised by static electricity.  One might say it’s...startling  

I'm dumbfounded, Jeremy.  You had a perfect opportunity to make the world's dumbest joke and you passed it up?  

Well, that pretty much is the joke.  Thanks for ruining it.  

You ruin comedy all the time.  Mostly by writing it.  

So anyway, it is winter.  A time of cold temperatures and dry air.  This leads to two things.  First, I wear a coat when I go outside.  My coat (actually one of two coats, but they're largely the same, so we're splitting hairs now) is made of wool which is magnificent at storing up massive amounts of static electricity.  The second part is that the dry air is a significantly worse conductor of electricity, meaning that the charge build-up is not allowed to dissipate quite as much as it would in more humid air. 

I've never put an ammeter to myself while being discharged, but I estimate the total charge collected in my woolen capacitor coat to be 8.3 metric craploads.  

All of this charge is stored up in my coat every time I come into work because that's how the world works.  All of this charge is discharged the moment I attempt to hang my coat up in the little metal cabinet in my office.  Because that's also how the world works.  

No matter what I try to do, I can't seem to stay properly grounded while taking my coat off, meaning I get the world's second worst electric shock (only surpassed by the one generated standing up off my couch and touching the metal plate around the light switch) every fricking day.  It doesn't matter what I do, like trying to stay in contact with the metal housing while taking the coat off, slapping the door, wearing metal shoes, etc.  It always ends the same way...with poor Jeremy getting a static shock from my cabinet.  I don't know why I find this so astounding now, since it happens all the time, but for some reason, I'm never expecting it.