I Wonder . . .

I Wonder . . .

We all want the world to be a better place, right?  Sure we do.  So how do we get there?  Ask this one question:  “Why?”

Yep.  It’s that simple.  (Not to be confused with easy).  There’s always a better way to do things, but how will we ever know if we’re not actively seeking them.  Well, like a 3 year old, I ask “why” all the time.  However, I’m not exactly wondering about a better way to split an atom.  I like to think I wonder about more practical subjects.

I’ve been collecting a list of wonderings and now I think I’ve got a post’s worth:

-Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?  (Or goldfish crackers, for that matter?)  (Or Teddy Grahams?)

-Why does sour cream have an expiration date?

-Why is a doctor’s business called their “practice?”  (I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if I like being practiced on.)

-Who decided the order of the alphabet?  And why isn’t Q at the reject end of it with X, Y, and Z?  (It’s kind of out-of-place where it is, now.)

-Why do they put Braille on drive-thru ATMs?

-Why don’t they call non-stop flights one-stop flights?

Anything y’all wonder about?  

Impossible Savings

Impossible Savings

You’ve seen all of the commercials . . .

Let me see if I understand correctly.  If I take my current annual premium for auto insurance, $1,380, then knock of 15% by switching to GEICO, I’ll only pay $1,173 per year. 

Then I switch to All State and save another $348.  Now I’m at $825.  So if I switch to AAA, then to Progressive, and finally to State Farm, then I’ll be paying negative $564*!  So does that mean they’re paying me to drive my car around? 

What are we all waiting for!?  Get to switchin’!

Suggestions Welcome

Suggestions Welcome!


I've been making small changes around my blog, lately, some more noticeable than others.  I wanted to point out one in particular.  It's called "The box":

It's a suggestion box.  If there is anything in the world you would like a Dry Humor Daily perspective on, just let me know.  I could always use a good idea for a post (and of course you'll get a shout-out and a link-back in return).  You just click it and your default email provider should create a new email message addressed to me with "Suggestion" in the subject line.  Then, just type your post suggestion and send it!  (And of course, keep a lookout for the response post.)

Until tomorrow!  :)

Wednesday 8/4

Yes, Please


For those long days at work . . .

By: S. Cole Garrett

Wednesday 7/28

Unpredictable

Can you guess what the weather is going to be like in 30 days from now?  Probably not correctly, but you can make a guess, right?  (Here, in Texas, I can say fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk hot, and I might even bet on it.)  Of course you can guess.  You can always guess.  Can you predict what word I’m going to say next?  Go ahead and try.

…

Porcupine!

Were you right?  Your odds are about one in 600,000.  (If you did guess right, I’d go buy a lottery ticket, if I were you.)  What’s my point?  We describe so many things, people, and events as unpredictable, but is that an accurate statement?  I don’t think so.

A prediction is basically a guess, right?  Well, you can guess pretty much anything.  You can guess how many accidents you’ll see on the way to work.  You can predict what song is going to come on the radio next.  You can predict anything.  The concept in question, however, is there anything that is truly unpredictable?  Again, I don’t think so.

Just because no one is guessing correctly when the world is going to end or who is going to be the next Justin Beiber doesn’t mean it can’t be guessed.  You can prophesize all day.  Who cares if you’re right or wrong?  A guess is a guess is a guess.  I say absolutely nothing is unpredictable.  We’re just not actively predicting everything.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Thursday 7/15

Labels!


I decided to start adding labels to all of my posts.  If you look right underneath each one, you'll see a couple of words, separated by commas.  You can click on them and it will bring up all of the posts with the same label.  Pretty neat, huh?  (I thought so.  But then again, I think a lot of geeky things are kind of cool.)  Anyway, I went back and added labels to all prior posts.  So check it out.  I added some of the most popular labels to this post so you could try it.

Enjoy!

Friday 6/11

Quest

I don’t have a navigation system in my car.  I do, however, have my general good sense of direction and, of course, my male instincts, but not a portable electronic one to paste to my windshield.  I either know where to go or I look at a map (old fashioned, huh?  Not so fast…).  Well, nowadays the map has moved online.  I usually just print mapquest or google maps before I go somewhere unfamiliar and voila!  No need for the fancy, British accent telling me where to turn.  Online maps, as advanced as they are, still seem to overlook a few things.  Here are some features that should be available that aren’t yet.

#1  “Start on Step 5”

Online maps are so specific, they tell you how to get out of your own neighborhood.  “Step 1, Back Out of Driveway.”  “Step 2, Go Straight on Your Street to the End of it.”  I think we can all get that far without help.  Unfortunately, that might be assuming too much for some people. 

#2  “Avoid Ghetto”

Have you ever taken directions from an online map and end up driving down a street where even police officers don’t go?  I have.  And then wonder if you should start calling relatives to say some last goodbyes in case you don’t make it out alive?  Quite possibly, yes.  Don’t you wish you could know ahead of time so you could go around?  I do. 

#3  “Avoid School Zones”

I’m all for our kids’ safety, I just hate driving so slooooooooow!  Sometimes, I feel like I’d rather be riding molasses down a tree in January!  Or watching the evolution of primordial ooze into protozoa.  I know there are ways to get around school zones.  Online maps can usually tell us where every McDonald’s and Starbucks is, so they should be able to help us avoid mind-numbingly slow school zones, too.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Friday 5/7

iCouldCareLess

We’re quickly becoming an iWorld.  iYep.  You name it, there might just be an iSubstitute for it.  iTV.  iBook.  iHome.  iKitchen Sink.  iArtificial Leg.  iEye.  iBreakfast Cereal.  (i . . . think I made some of those up.)  It’s exhausting, for me at least, to see the most obscure off-brands come up with something iPod compatible.  Thanks iCarta, for the iPod dock/toilet paper holder (yes, that’s real!)  I personally feel like the Apple brand gets relentlessly cheapened by the onslaught of iPod docks, clocks, and . . . I don’t know, rocks, that keep hitting the shelf.  If you can stick an iPod on it, you can sell it!  Where do we draw the line?

Well, I think this one takes the cake:

Crap!  A perfectly-formed, not-so-steamy pile of, you guessed it, crap!  I only wish this was real.  (You know, Billy Mays could probably sell this if he were still alive.)   

Even though this is a joke, it does, in fact represent a lot of what is being sold out there under the i-name.  Crap.  Case in point, I bought some cool, triangular iPod speakers some time ago and all they did was suck dry some perfectly good batteries and get blown out at half-volume. 

Do yourself a favor.  If you have an iPod, and you’re considering buying a fancy gadget to go with it, don’t do it.  It’ll just fuel the iPhenomenon.  Besides, don’t iPods come with speakers?

By: S. Cole Garrett

Thursday 4/22

Earth Day

Can you believe we’ve already been doing this for forty years?  Yep.  Earth day was started in 1970 because we, as an American people (full of hippies at the time), needed a shout out to raise conservation awareness!  It was, of course, specifically aimed at the government.  (Apparently, claiming a day is enough to get the government’s attention.)  But what’s it for?  What are you supposed to do?  Well, here’s a guide.  You just need to figure out what group you would most likely be in, and see what they do.

#1 If you were the Earth, you could…

Spin on your axis and orbit the sun.  (That’s not a euphemism, so don’t get any ideas.)  There aren’t too many members of this club, so don’t get excited.

#2 If you were a hippie, you could…

Handcuff yourself to a tree and proclaim your love for nature, wearing bell-bottomed jeans and your favorite, tie-dyed, antique-of-a-T-shirt.  And if someone asks you why you look like a hippie, you could just tell them you’re a Scooby doo fanatic.  (Or tell them the truth, they’re gonna think you’re weird either way.)

#3 If you were a politician, you could…

Announce your big Earth Day plans (none of which involve getting your hands dirty), hoping to gain poll popularity and a good photo op to use in a future election so you can say, “See? I do care about the Earth.”  Then, tomorrow, you can return to lobbying against the Environmental Protection Agency.

#4 If you were a tree, you could…

Stand in your infinite glory, basking in the one day of the year when almost the entire world acknowledges our reliance upon you for the air we breathe and the eternal beauty you radiate upon us!  (Wait, I thought is was Earth Day?  Yeah, well, we sure seem to talk about trees a lot on Earth Day, even though we already have an Arbor Day. . . those trees are day-hogs.)

#5 If you were an average person, you could…

Bake an Earth cake and bring it to the office or throw a party at your house (an environmentally friendly party, of course).  Or if you don’t have time, you could just let this Earth Day slip into the realm of non-historic days to be forever forgotten.  (Kind of like last Thursday.)  Don’t be ashamed if you end up in this group, most of us do.

 Earth Day has probably outlived its purpose.  I mean, it’s not even a bank holiday!  (And I don’t work for a bank, but come on!)  At least now, you’ve given it at least one moment of thought in your mind.  Now, you can go and forget about it for another 364 days.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 4/20

Statriotic

Do you ever come to a situation where you need a word for something and you just can’t seem to put your finger on it?  You need that one word but it escapes you.  So you try to think of a different word to use but even still, nothing comes to mind so you mash up and inappropriately hyphenate a mix of other ones to try to sound out what you mean.  Sometimes, you just have a mind lapse and you think of it later.  But what I’m more concerned with is when a word just doesn’t exist when you need it.  I’ve been stumbling over this one adjective for a long time and I’ve finally figured out what to say:  Statriotic.

I live in Texas.  (I just thought that would be a good place to start.)  Now, if you’ve never been here, then let me be the first to tell you, it’s chock-full of state pride.  (If you have been here, then perhaps you know what I mean.)  “Everything’s BIG in Texas” right?  Dairy Queen is the Texas stop sign.  Home Depot used to be “The Texas do it yourself store.”  I’ve driven in an HOV lane with two lanes!  (At that point, they should just call it the HOV-side-of-the-road).  If you’re from Texas, you are Texan.  (Some, but certainly not all, states have names for their inhabitants.  Hawaiian is cool, but New Hampshirean?  Nope, sorry New Hampshire.)  Texas even shares a category of food with another country: tex-mex.  I’m all for “loving your state,” but there is one problem.  There is no adjective available by which to describe such feelings. 

I kept wanting to say patriotic, but I double-checked and patriotism specifically has to do with one’s country.  (Some people consider Texas its own country, so depending on the perspective, it could work.)  Anyway, I spit out ‘statriotic’ one day.  Most of the time, it’s a comic event when we accidentally mix two words together.  For example, great + cool = grool.  Punch + slap = slunch.  We all do it.  And sometimes, it works out!  Hence, statriotic!  (Aha moment!)  The long-elusive adjective for state pride exists, even if only in my own mind.

Now, whenever you see an enormous “Texas Edition” truck on the road, notice a big metal star adorning a neighbor’s house, or order the Texas-sized T-bone at Big Tex Bar and Grill, you can say, “Now that’s statriotic!”

By: S. Cole Garrett

Friday 4/16

Options?

I feel like this sign should say something different.

Maybe it should be ‘Choose’ or ‘Either’. 

Or perhaps ‘Turn now, or forever hold your peace’.

I kept driving by this sign and I decided to finally stop my car and take a picture of it.  Just think, your tax dollars made this possible. 

By: S. Cole Garrett

Monday 4/12

Age Old Answer

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?  This is a very interesting question.  You ask someone and they usually have an answer for you fairly quickly.  Either the chicken came first or the egg.  Then you ask the counter-question to their answer, either the egg was laid by a chicken or the chicken had to have hatched from an egg.  Soon, you’ll start to sound like those vultures on the Jungle Book deciding what to do for the day.  It’s a vicious cycle of repetitiveness.  The more you think about the chicken or the egg, the more confusing it gets.  That’s kind of backwards from how you normally figure something out.  You’re supposed to come to a conclusion, not to venture out from it.  Well, there may be several reasonable answers for which actually came first.

So, again . . .

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer 1: The Velociraptor

Let’s say you’re a big fan of Charles Darwin’s work: evolution, natural selection, and all that jazz.  Let’s rule out the egg.  If the egg “came first,” then there would not have been any nurturing parent chicken or protector.  Anything that hatched from that egg wouldn’t have lived more than a week (and that’s just sad).  Your answer would be that the chicken came first.  You should also be ready if someone were sly enough to challenge you with asking where that chicken came from.  Just tell them dinosaurs because birds came from dinosaurs and so the velociraptor clearly came first. 

Answer 2: The Rooster

Well what if you’re not convinced by evolution.  You’re a hard-core creationist.  God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh.  Fact.  And in due time, He took some dust from the ground, created a man, Adam, and breathed life into him.  Then, from one of Adam’s ribs, He created Eve.  It might be safe to assume that some of the other animals that roam the Earth were created in the same manner.  God may just as easily have scooped up some dirt and made the rooster and when the rooster was lonely, He used a drumstick to make the chicken (no souls, of course).  Voila!  The rest is history.

Answer 3: The Chicken

(Well, that seems pretty straight forward.  What gives?)  Some believers out there think UFOs and extra-terrestrials visit Earth from time to time.  In my opinion, “to each his own.”  But let’s be open-minded.  We’re all waiting for aliens to visit us and bestow upon us unimaginably advanced technology and understanding.  Perhaps in an inter-planetary fly-by, some Alien race decided our world could be a better place with fried chicken, chicken kiev, and barbecued chicken pizza so they left us one to get started with (and a rooster, too, because . . . you know, it takes two to tango). 

So choose a side, or make up a different theory.  Just realize you’re practically justifying your entire religious and scientific beliefs in the answer to one silly, age-old riddle!

By: S. Cole Garrett

Friday 4/2

Movie Night

“I’d like to see [Insert movie title here] in 3-D at 7:30, please.”  The gentleman in front of me pulled out his wallet and the box office attendant punched a few buttons on her computer.

She leaned forward into the microphone.  “Fourteen dollars,” she said.

“Oh, no, just one ticket, please.”  The man was very polite, trying to correct the girl behind the glass.

“Yes sir, that’s fourteen dollars,” she smiled.

Then it hit him and his jaw dropped.  He reeled it in and reluctantly handed her a twenty.  She quickly returned him his ticket and six dollars.  He walked away and looked at his six dollars like he had just sold his soul to the devil.  He shook his head and walked into the theater. 

Take a minute and think about what you could do with fourteen bucks.  Better yet, imagine you were taking someone to the movies and it was twenty-eight instead.  Don’t worry about the keg of soda and the dump truck of popcorn you might buy once you get inside.  That’s for another day.

Just let it sink in . . .

Unless they start handing out bars of gold with those 3-D movie tickets, I probably won’t be going to see too many of them, if any.  There’s a local rental store where you can rent two movies for one dollar (and they’re not that old.  There are plenty on those shelves that I meant to get around to watching and still haven’t).  I could see fifty-six movies with that same twenty-eight dollars.  (Ok, if you really want to be technical, which I usually am, I could only rent fifty-one movies if you calculate taxes.)  It would take me three months to watch that many! 

I’m not saying you should forever forgo the nostalgia of the theater.  I’m just saying maybe you should consider all your options before forking over a fifty on a Friday night.

Clearly, the premium you pay for a 3-D movie ticket is for the experience.  Sure, it’s a sense-adventure, but there’s still the crawling-over-people and who-forgot-to-turn-off-their-cell-phone-? that, personally, I can do without.  So make it a movie night at home and save a buck (or lots of bucks!)

By: S. Cole Garrett

3/23/10

Friday

Purpose

Can you think of some really bad inventions?  Of course you can.  For all of us, there are probably different products and ideas that come to mind first.  Maybe you think blimps are the most belligerent things to ever take flight.  Maybe you think Curling is an embarrassment to the winter Olympics.  Perhaps you had a lava lamp break once and now you’re forever biased.  (Maybe you like all of those things.  Who knows?)  Well, whatever your contention, consider these: single-purpose items.

Single purpose items are good for only one thing: one thing.  There are exceptions, but most single-purpose items are benign (and for some reason, a lot of them are found in the kitchen).  Take the egg separator, for example.  The egg separator doesn’t do anything else!  I guess you could spank your kids with it, but that’s about it!  I’m not making fun of anyone who has an egg separator, just enlightening them.  It does exactly what people have always done with their fingers.  Or better yet, the egg shell itself.  Yep, the amazing egg even has a separator built in! 

How about the fly swatter?  There’s one that’s stood the test of time!  When you first buy a fly swatter, you could probably use it for many different things.  But once you swat that first fly, are you really going to see how cool it would be to flip a pancake from a distance?  I don’t think so.  (In case you’re wondering, yeah, you could probably spank your kids with it, too.)  The fly swatter is just like the egg, though.  When a fly is bothering you, you don’t want it to get away, so you just grab the nearest magazine or flip flop.

Then again, there are some things that should only have one use.  Like the gas pedal on your car.  Imagine your pedal working like your gear shift.  That would be scary.  Also, I’m content with my stapler just being a stapler and my letter opener neatly opening my letters (actually, my bills (they should change the name to bill opener)). 

There is something, although rare, that is more embarrassing to society than single-purpose items.  That is, multi-single-purpose items (I made that up, I think.)  It’s something that was originally used for only one reason, now used for a completely different reason, and no longer used for what is was for in the first place.  I’m sure you can think of one if you try hard enough.  Here’s one:  the cow bell.  It was designed to hang around a cow’s neck so they couldn’t wander off without being heard or simply to help find them if they get lost.  Now it’s a musical instrument (and an extremely tacky one, at that!)

So next time you’re buying a kitchen gizmo or something and asking yourself, “do I really need this?” I implore you to ask a greater question: “Does the world really need this?”

By: S. Cole Garrett

3/25/10

Friday

On the Bubble

I was walking down the toy aisle the other day looking for an inflatable beach ball for my son, and I saw something else I knew he would certainly enjoy: bubbles.  Bubbles are endless fun and they’re super easy to make.  As long as you have an arm, a hand, and at lease one opposable digit to grab the bubble stick and wave it in the air, you can make bubbles!  I picked one up and suggested it for the kids.  I was rejected immediately being told the only thing bubbles are good for is spilling.  Come to think of it, I don’t know that I’ve ever made it to the bottom of one of those bottles.

Want to ruin a bubble party quickly?  Kick over the bottle of bubbles.  It begs the question.  Why aren’t they spill-proof?  Well some of them are, but they are hardly as hap-happy to use.  Part of the beauty of blowing bubbles is their simple nature.  Dunk, wave.  Dunk, blow.  Dunk, anything.  Basically, dip the ringed stick in the soapy water and somehow get air to pass through the hole.  The spill-proof containers get in the way of this uncomplicated process and consumers buy the good old “even-though-it’s-going-to-spill-it’s-easier” bottle anyway.

Another solution to the bubble bottle toppling travesty is bubble-making toys.  It seems like a great idea because you can pour the liquid into a toy and screw on the top and the toys do all the work.  No spilling!  The novelty of bubble-blowing is lost, though.  When you reminisce someday about your youthful pastimes, you probably won’t think about how fun it was to shoot bubbles out of an AK-47-looking bubble gun or how you used your air-powered 10,000 bubbles-per-minute mega blower!  No, you remember the good, old-fashioned using-your-lungs and stick that always seemed to fall into the bottle.

(It’s kind of funny how the stick has a ring on both ends so that you can fish it out of the bottle when you drop it in.  The people who made these had to have realized this because they put the ring on both ends.  Why didn’t they just make the stick longer and strap it to the side of the bottle or something instead of putting it inside from the start?).

(And are they ever going to change the colors of the bottles?  I wasn’t alive, but I think they’ve been the same since the seventies!)

Good thing regular bubbles are cheap, because until they make a spill-proof (but not fun-intrusive), longer-sticked (but not lose-able), memory-friendly version, we’re stuck with the ever accident-prone bubble bottles of old. 

By: S. Cole Garrett

3/18/10

Friday

Boxulism

If you’ve ever had a food borne illness, you may know how miserable, possibly embarrassing, and commode-confounding it can be. Ignorantly high spikes in cases tend to occur after holidays involving gathering and food. Food sits out for hours on end, bacteria grows and exponentially multiplies, and finally people woof it down. That scrumptious salsa that sat outside all day on the fourth of July becomes a bacterial fiesta in your intestines. Oh, and you’re invited!

But what about a food borne illness less talked-about? A disease which is reported little over a hundred times per year is botulism. Ever wonder why you shouldn’t feed an infant honey? Why should you not buy dented cans of food? The answer is because in rare cases, both can lead to botulism (In theory, eating tainted dirt could give it to you, as well. So long, mud pies!). Botulism can cause nerve damage and paralysis in parts of the face. Severe cases could mean respiratory failure. Death is rare.

Recap:
No honey for babies. Check.
No dented cans (despite the possible price discount.) Check.
Note: Botulism from cans is very, very rare, but would you really want to be that statistic?

One illness is talked about even less: boxulism. There is no recorded contraction of the illness and the symptoms are unknown. No continuum of case severity exists and no cure has been discovered. The source of this illness is invisible to even the most powerful microscope. Most of us, however, avoid it like the plague.

Let’s say you go to the store for a box of cereal and there are only two boxes left on the shelf of your favorite one. One of the boxes is just fine but the other is crushed in one corner. Which one do you pick? The un-dented one, of course. What’s wrong with the dented box, though? The contents are in flexible packaging within the box and are untainted. So, what if the only box on the shelf was mangled? Would you take it, no questions asked? Or would you seriously consider another choice before committing to the damaged, but preferable brand in front of you?

Ah! A simple question on the surface, but the reality is, we all have an “affinity threshold,” if you will. The risk of Boxulism is only one factor in it. In other words, how much damage does it take to outweigh your love for a certain product? For some die-hard consumers, a box of frozen corn dogs which is water-logged, crushed on one end, heat-discolored, and impaled by spear is still worthy. Flightier food fans, however, flee from even the slightest fandangled-with package. Funny, huh?

Re-recap:
Eating honey = good. Feeding honey to babies = bad.
Eating canned food = good. Eating dented canned food = botulism.
Eating boxed food = good. Eating dented boxed food = certain boxulism.
Eating baby-bee honey from a dented can out a damaged box = call 911!

By: S. Cole Garrett 3/10/10