My Sick Mind

I was watching "How it's Made" last night, and the topic was thermometers. It's a complicated process of welding glass tubes. The crux of the issue is in calibrating the thermometers. They pull the air out of the tubing with a vacuum, and fluid is left inside. The thermometers travel down a conveyor of chilled alcohol. A heat gun drives the liquid up tubing. They then plunge the thermometers into a bath of ice-water to calibrate the freezing point. A notch is made in the glass where the liquid is. They are next set into a bath of liquid set at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Another scratch is made in the glass at that point, and the two marks are aligned on a grid and set to a calibration scale. My question: How did they make the first thermometer? If they had to place it in a bath of water at 200 degrees Fahrenheit to calibrate it, how did they know what 200 degrees Fahrenheit was without a thermometer? This whole temperature thing sounds like a big scam. How cold is ...

Ascend with us now, to the neighborhood supermarket, where our hero (me, in a relative sense) ventures into the great void of his neighborhood supermarket in search of sustenance and a little blog material. It usually works for both. Tonight's episode is entitled: "Express -- or Not." With a scant few items in his hand-held cart, our hero wanders into the so-called "Express Lane" at the supermarket, proceeds to lay his (less than 15) items on the conveyor, only to be delayed by another shopper. His arch rival, Coupon Bitch has an issue with some chicken stock she purchased almost a week ago. A discussion with the cashier (who we will call Express Queen) hears her contention of how the chicken stock she purchased last week should have come with a cents-off coupon, but she was instead charged the regular price. The cashier sent her to the nearby Courtesy Desk, where Express Queen's super-friends (now known as the Coupon League) have come to the aid of Coupo...

"You got to stay young, keep yourself young. And she helps me to that." - Pete Rose, talking about his girlfriend This hot little number is Kiana Kim . Who is Kiana Kim, you might ask? She is a former flight attendant from South Korea who moved to America with her parents when she was 5. She currently operates a hair salon in Los Angeles and appeared in Playboy magazine in April. Kiana Kim is also Pete Rose's girlfriend . That's right, Pete Rose. The All-Time Hit King. (Also the All-Time Out King) The 17-time all star and convicted tax evader. The Pete Rose who was born before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Pete Rose who has 2 daughters older than his girlfriend. The Pete Rose who ... ah, you get it. Anyway, the point is the strange attraction of this 20-something hottie to a troll. At his best, Pete was short and stocky. Now, he makes short and stocky look like Larry Bird. It's what Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H used to call "one of those dome s...

When Forbes magazine first began [sic] compiling its lists of the 400 richest Americans back in 1982, just 13 of those people were billionaires. In 2010, every person on the list was worth at least a billion dollars, and the highest-ranked person, Bill Gates, was worth $54 billion. Forbes' 2010 list of the world's billionaires includes a whopping 1,011 entries. Of those, 75 people are tied for last place with a net worth of $1 billion. First of all, the original article contained the phrase "first began," hence the sic ("Intentionally so written") which is not only redundant but inexcusable from someone who calls himself a professional writer. But I digress. The point of putting that blurb at the top was to point out how quickly a million dollars has been devalued. It ain't what it used to be, which I can say because I'm not a professional writer. Up until a short time ago, having saved a million dollars was not only something of an accomp...