Lost in Translation

Well, they get an "A" for effort!

Funny Business

I've always appreciated businesses with a sense of humor.  I love the fact that some companies realize the importance of being approachable.  Make your customer smile or laugh and you're halfway to a sale.

This doesn't exactly apply, since the iPhone app "Words With Friends" is free, but it's still good.  This is a clip from their how-to guide:

What else do you need to know?  You can play from your toilet seat?  Bring it on, world!

And "baazing!"?  LOL.  That's a new one for me.  I love it.

Inception

Inception


Opinions are fun!  I have my own, and I enjoy sharing it, but I also enjoy reading others, especially if it can be found on MSN.com.  (Because they're usually so bad easy to pick on.)  The article I found the other day was something along the lines of, "10 Worst Movies in 2010."  The author opened by admitting that it's hardly fair for an individual to decide what the ten worst movies of the year were, but they were getting paid so they did it anyway.  (And who are we kidding, we would find and bash ten crappy movies for a paycheck, too, right?)

I was reading along in the article and anticipated seeing a few that I did, like "The Last Song" and "Backup Plan."  Two movies appeared, however, that I have to publicly disagree with: Kick Ass and Inception.

I'm not going to say much about Kick Ass, other than I enjoyed it and I thought it was original.  The author of the MSN article, however, was appalled by its vulgarity and general distaste.  (If you've seen the movie, you know what they're talking about.)  I told Mandalyn about it.  She also disagreed with the article and added, "well, it's not like you find Kick Ass in the family section at the store."  I couldn't have put it better myself.

Now, Inception.  Am I the only crazy person who really likes this movie?  I think the effects were great, the story is complex (but follow-able), and the acting is good, too.  Bottom line: I could watch Inception a few more times and still understand more of it.

The author of the article didn't like Inception because of the "One last job" story line.  Okay.  I get it.  A lot of movies do this.  But if you think about it, would you really want to see a movie about an every-day-sort-of-job or a fourth-from-last-job?  Probably not.  He also thought Inception was unnecessarily prolonged with the third and fourth levels of dreams.  Whereas it was indeed a long film, I believe it was all necessary.  That being said (and without spoiling anything for anyone), I could have done without the last 15 seconds.  But in the grand scheme of things, what's 15 seconds compared to almost two and a half hours?

So after reading the article, I would agree on 8 of the "10 Worst" accounts.  Don't bother with the likes of Jonah Hex and Sex and the City 2.  Do, however, make time for Inception and Kick Ass.

Monday 7/12

Flush

Have you ever gone to take a drink from a water fountain (always located near the restrooms) and you hear a toilet flush from within one of the bathrooms?  And then the water shooting out of the fountain you’re drinking from goes down momentarily?  Once the toilet flush has finished, then the water fountain squirts back at the original level?  Well, I don’t know about you, but I get a little weirded out.  I can’t help but wonder about the connection between my fountain water and the toilet water.  (And that’s usually when I stop drinking.) 

My default thoughts when this happens are:

Either the toilets next to this fountain use drinking water…

…Or this drinking fountain uses toilet water!

Do you know how water gets out of the faucet?  Water pressure.  (In case you don’t remember, there was already a post about water towers.)  There’s no electric-powered machine pushing water through all the pipes.  It’s pretty simple physics and gravity.  (Unless, of course, you think physics is unequivocally complicated.  Then it would be unequivocally complicated physics and gravity.)  Anyway, if the water pressure from one affects the other, then the chances are, they do come from the same source.  Yummy!  The same sort of thing often happens when I’m washing my hands in a public restroom.  I hear a toilet flush and the water goes down just a little bit. . .  And I’m momentarily discomforted all the same. 

Rest assured, though.  There is probably some sort of filter for the water that comes out of the water fountain.

…Or is there?

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 6/15

Save Water?

Have you seen the billboards and magazine ads about conserving water while doing yard work?  I’m talking about the ones that say:

“Sweep me, don’t drown me.”

                        ~Your Sidewalk

“I’m a lawn, not a pool.”

                        ~Your Yard

Sometimes, they’re even accompanied by a dramatically over-watered yard, like so:

Now, there’s actually a commercial telling you not to waste water in the yard or on the sidewalk, sponsored by the same people.  It shows a homeowner (an actor) spraying off his sidewalk and one of the sprinkler heads in his lawn is broken.  Then he steps over near his garden and his yard is flooded and muddy.  Yuck.

Here’s my question: wouldn’t they have had to waste a lot of water just to make that commercial?  It’s not like they caught a water-wasting despot on tape and used it.  No, it’s staged.  They wasted water in order to tell you not to waste water.  Hmm.  Print ads are cool, because you only have to kill trees for those, but then again, those aren’t telling us to conserve paper either. 

Come on, underpaid-water-conservation-advertising-company, don’t you know hypocrisy doesn’t sell?

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 6/8

Blogger was down much of the day, yesterday, so I was never able to get around to posting.  (Their server must have hit the 'snooze' button one too many times.)  But here's today's:

Wet Roads

I was watching one of my favorite movies recently and something caught my eye.  The good guys were chasing the bad guy down an alley (classic, huh?), and I noticed the pavement was all wet.  It hadn’t been raining, though.  I turned to my girlfriend and made a comment about it.  Her response was something along the lines of:

“Well, duh.  Streets are always wet in movies.  Everybody knows that.”

Well, everybody but me.  And you know what?  She’s right.

(It took a long time to find this picture, by the way.  It’s not a very search-friendly set of keywords.)  Now I can’t sit through a movie without looking for the doused driveways and soaked streets.  Wet roads are just a bit of movie know-how that has never reached me until now. 

The more I notice it, the more I realize just how much better certain scenes are with a sheet of water on the road.  Foot chases are better when feet go splashing through puddles.  Car chases are enhanced with some slipping and sliding (maybe some extra crashing, too).  And the bright-lit streets of New York just look good soaked.  (I think New York is the wettest city in showbiz.) 

So keep an eye out.  If you’re like me, you won’t be able to help but to see it (and expect it) every time you watch a movie. 

By: S. Cole Garrett

Wednesday 6/2

Fad Water

Most fads are easy to spot.  Things like big hair from the 80s and more recently, crocks shoes, are disappointingly popular.  In retrospect, no one can figure out why.  Some fads, however, are harder to recognize than others, especially when we’re right in the middle of them.  Here’s a good one:

Vitamin-enriched water.  It’s not just the Vitamin Water brand, either.  Sobe has one, too.  Propel is another one.  You may or may not have heard of Vitamin Water’s most direct competition: V Water.  (V meaning ‘Vitamin’).

It’s kind of a weird thing to be sweeping the nation.  Water.  It makes sense, though.  Americans are always looking for the easy way out.  Who needs wholesome fruits and vegetables and whole grain breads when we have enriched water?  Just guzzle a couple of these bad boys every day and you can skip straight to the burgers and fries because you’ve already had your vitamin intake for the day, right?  Sure, just run that by your doctor. 

The problem is that a lot of people think that.  Vitamin-enriched waters are usually zero calories.  And since those precious calories no longer need to be wasted on salad and veggie subs, there’s more room for Snickers and cheese balls.  Yum. 

If you haven’t noticed this fad yet, take a look at the grocery store, next time you go.  The enriched water section is almost as big as the regular bottled water section.  Buy it, try it, then turn that page of history so we can move on to the next big thing.  Maybe erasable pens will make a comeback.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Thursday 5/13

Hey everyone.  I've been sick yesterday and today, so I didn't have an opportunity to write.  Here's something funny I found anyway.

Thanks for the warning.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 3/30

Water Tower

Whenever you’re on a mid-west road trip, there’s one sure fire way to know you reach a new town.  No matter how big or small the towns, they almost all have water towers.  Some towers are massive feats of engineering, rising aplomb where civilization thirsts.  Others seem like little more than a few gallons perched on sticks in the middle of nowhere.  Many of them are adorned with local high school mascots.  One tower in nearby me even hails the ‘fighting farmers.’  (No joke, that’s really a high school mascot.)  I’m fairly certain we all know what a water tower is, but what are they?  What do they do?

I bet some of you are asking, “who cares?”  Well, someone asked me and I happened to have the answer for them.  I realized I would be happy if I could save at least one more person the embarrassment of having to ask the question.  The answer is: fish.  They are built to house endangered marine wildlife.

…very endangered marine wildlife.

Just kidding.  The obvious answer is that they hold water.  This is true, but it isn’t the main purpose of water towers.  It seems like there wouldn’t be enough water in one tower to shower a whole town every day (even the towns where not everyone takes a shower every day . . . ew).  The main reason towns have towers is to create water pressure.

Think about it.  When your electricity goes out, the water still runs, right?  Sure it does.  That’s because somewhere, that water is being ‘pushed’ through the pipes.  It’s kind of like your toilet.  The water in the tank is held at a level above the bowl so that when you pull the lever, the water falls down (and swirls, but that’s a whole other discussion).  Keyword: gravity.  Water towers hold enormous amounts of water to provide what’s called hydrostatic pressure to push water through pipes, using gravity. 

So why are they raised?  For residential prowess and pride?  No.  (That would be too easy to make fun of!)  It’s more physics than is worth explaining, but it’s the same concept as siphoning.  The water source (the water tower) works better if it is at a higher elevation than the destination (all of the plumbing in your house).

Now, if someone asks you why we have water towers, you have two options.  You could tell them what you now know, that they are for water pressure.  Or you could intentionally lead them astray down the ignorance-paved path.  Tell them it’s a cheaper way for tiny towns to advertise than billboards and then laugh when they tell the next sucker!

By: S. Cole Garrett