The One Hundred

For reasons that will be explained in a later blog post, I was having trouble sleeping recently so, at around 4 in the morning I got up and shambled into the living room to see what was on TV.

Turns out that unless you want to see endless infomercials, there’s not a whole lot going on. I switched it over to the On Demand channel to see what could be had. I noticed that there was an HD subsection of the FREE section so, I peeped it out. I decided that I needed to see something in HD simply because we now have this awesome TV and I rarely get to see anything that isn’t kid-centric on it.

Now, I am not sure if it was the lateness or the lack of sleep that impaired my judgment but, I settled on “Date Movie”. And I actually watched it. All of it.

I’m not proud of myself. It did what it was supposed to do (while away the time until I got sleepy again). I do have to state, for the record, that I didn’t pay any money to watch it — but, still, I’m afraid that it may have cost me a piece of my soul.

T.V. Bad Movies

When you’re watching T.V. the last thing you expect to happen is that you start thinking about things — and not the normal things either (like if people actually buy the snuggie and wear them to football games. Or if they know that it’s actually just a robe turned backward.). I mean genuine head scratchers — things that make you go… well, you know.

This past weekend gave me three.

The first came while we were watching an, apparently testosteron filled, episode of “Flip This House”. The company they were profiling had the abbreviation “LLC” after their company name. “What does LLC stand for?” asked Joan, a visiting family friend. I’d seen this before but I never knew what it meant so, it was up to Google:

LLC is an abbreviation that most commonly refers to:

1. Limited liability company, flexible form of business enterprise that blends elements of partnership and corporate structures

So says wikipedia.

Huh. So that’s what it means. Not sure that really explains it, but that’s neither here nor there. Moving on…

The second and third things come from my umpteenth watching of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, and more specifically from George Nelson. When our heroes first meet George he’s on the run from the law and on the way to his next heist — and this is where he says:

“COME AND GET ME, COPPERS! YOU FLATFOOTED LAMEBRAINED SOFT-ASSED SONOFABITCHES! NO ONE CAN CATCH ME! I’M GEORGE NELSON! I’M BIGGER THAN ANY JOHN LAW EVER LIVED!”

This caused me to wonder — since they were POLICE officers on the POLICE force, how did the name “Cop/Copper” come about? This is what the internet told me:

Police officers are often referred to as cops, but the word origins of cop are something of a debate. It is known that up until the 1970s, cop was something of a slang term, and one would refer to cops more properly as policemen, or police officers. Some argue that the term cop is shortened from “copper” and derives from the tin or copper badges worn by a policeman. Others say cop is an abbreviation for constabulary of police.

General consensus on the word origins of cop however suggest that the term is based more on the policeman’s job than on his clothing or job title. In Latin the verb capere can be defined as “to capture.” In French, the verb is caper. “To cop” in English is to seize or to take. This defines some of what a police officer does. He or she seizes or takes crooks or stops their crime “capers.”

A bit of further explanation/theory can be found here.

George comes through for our last question as well:

“‘Lo, boys! Well, these little men finally caught up with the criminal a the century! Looks like the chair for George Nelson. Yup! Gonna electrify me! I’m gonna go off like a Roman candle! Twenty thousand volts chasin’ the rabbit through yours truly! Gonna shoot sparks out the top of my head and lightning from my fingertips!”

The last time our heroes see George, he’s being led away by… well, a torch bearing mob. The law has finally caught up with George and he now has to pay for his crimes. He recites the line above and this inspires my wife to ask, “Why are Roman Candles Roman?”. “That,” I said, “is a good question.” And I was off to the internet, where I found this less than stellar answer:

Roman candle
n: a firework that produces a continuous shower of sparks punctuated by coloured balls of fire
(C19: so called from its having been originated in Italy)

From here.

Really? That’s it? I was hoping for something a lot cooler than “Cuz it was made in Italy. LOL. Pwned.” Well, sometimes, the most obvious answer is the right one – no matter how lame it is.

Whatever PSA, Thanks for that info Bean!, The more you know

I wasn’t that busy with work today so I spent most of today putting together my book using the free bookmaking software from Blurb.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but I have to say, it is super easy to use and the results appear to be pretty cool. I say appear to be because I have’t actually — well, I get ahead of myself here. Let me explain a little first.

If you go to the Blurb website, you can download the free bookmaking software, BookSmart. It’s dead simple to install and within a few minutes you are off and bookmaking.

I’ve been wanting to do something with the pictures that I’ve been taking and I thought, well, let’s see how a book about the boys would turn out. Turns out, it was an awesome idea. (Click on the image to see an actual page from the book I created as well as the User Interface for the BookSmart program). Looks like I’ve gotten a lot of Christmas presents taken care of 322 days early (if any family members are reading this… um, surprise?)! You can control page layout, theme, font type and placement — it’s all up to you! The UI is pretty intuitive and if you can make pretty pictures in MS Word, you can handle this. It is SO. MUCH. FUN! (And pretty satisfying too when you see it all come together)

Now, I haven’t actually ordered the book yet (and, for those of you keeping score at home, this also means I haven’t actually received one either) but I’m giving this company the benefit of the doubt. I’ll have another blog post after we get the book and more pictures of the finished product.

In the meantime, get yourself over to Blurb and make some books already!

Photography Blurb, Bookmaking, Two in one day?!? Insanity!!

There are a number of things that I adore in life:

• Tickling my sons
• Making my wife laugh when she’s mad at me
• Using sitcom character nicknames that were only mentioned once as blog post titles (Anyone want to guess?)
• A homemade sandwich, chips, and a soda
• Long hot showers on cold winter nights

And since, after a long absence, hot water had finally returned to the shower in the Master Bathroom — it was time to take a long shower.

(It was glorious. Thanks for asking.)

As as I was getting out, I noticed that my hands were predictably pruny.

“Hey,” I thought, “why does that happen?”

I got dressed and made my way to the computer.

Here’s what Google told me:

The outermost layer of our skin has sebum, which lubricates and waterproofs our skin. The sebum keeps the water out when we wash our hands or take a quick shower.

But when our skin is exposed to water for a longer time…such as in swimming or washing dishes, the limited amount of sebum gets washed away. Once the sebum is washed away, water enters the outer layer of the skin by the process of osmosis.

So why do finger tips and toes get pruny and not the rest of the body? Because most of our body is covered with hair and each hair follicle constantly pumps out sebum; but our palms and feet don’t have hair; so the protective layer of sebum gets washed away quickly.

The extra water that enters your skin makes it swell up in some places, which gives it that wrinkled look. So, the wrinkled look is not because our skin has shriveled but because it is overly clogged with water.

From here.

Isn’t that something? So, now you know. Expect more of these — I hope you find them and edifying as I do.

And I promise they all won’t make you think of me taking a shower.

…

Well, most of them anyway.

Whatever PSA, Thanks for that info Bean!, The more you know

So I’ve been feeling pretty bad these last few days and I’ve been lamenting the fact that the medicine I take doesn’t seem to be doing it’s job. I want to have one thing — clear nasal passages. I just want to breathe. But I can’t seem to get that. I have one side stuffed up and the other side free and clear. I take the medicine. The stuffed up side becomes unstuffed — by moving to the side that was unstuffed prior. Can’t I just get a medicine that does both sides at once?

It was at this point that my wife pointed out to me that I am bigger than what could possibly be considered “normal” (I’m fat. There. I said it.) and that maybe the dosage doesn’t really work on me (using the weight to controlled substance ratio). So I have to wonder if there’s a Big and Tall Pharmacy somewhere and what does it look like?

That’s all I got. I could probably expand on the idea some more but, like I said, I’m sick.

…

Big Ass Pills. There. Happy?

…

And it’s not Big Ass pills in the sense that they’re for big asses, it was more in relation to the size of the actual — oh, nevermind. I’m going back to bed.

Whatever almost a twitter, I'm still sick, random thoughts