Place: Taco Time
Lunch: Crispy Taco (no tomato), Crispy Chicken Burrito, Cheddar Fries, Coke
"Cheddar Fries" in Taco Time speak are Mexi Fries topped with melted cheddar. "Mexi Fries" are tater tots. Basic tater tots. Nothing special, no special seasoning. But I get them anyway. Because tater tots.
I was watching my usual Saturday TV lineup last night. Saturday is my all-MeTV night. They start with two episodes of Batman, then Wonder Woman, then Star Trek, then Svengoolie. During Svengoolie, a commercial for something called "HD Night Vision Glasses" ran. They're apparently amazing because they reduce glare, and they're totally HD.
Being "HD" started becoming trendy thanks to HDTV, or High Definition Television. HDTV is, of course, the modern broadcast standard, replacing the old 4:3 480 line standard with a picture that has five times the resolution. Higher resolution equals higher definition. Or...HD.
Most of us replaced our old TV's with HDTV's over the last 5-10 years, and most television programs have long since converted to HD production. It really should just be "television" at this point. Yet it's still cool to declare your show is in "HD". So cool in fact that it's become trendy to declare products having nothing to do with televisions are HD, even in applications where it doesn't stand for "high definition", if it stands for anything at all.
Let's have a looksie at some of this silliness.
HD Night Vision Wraparound Glasses - The idea is that they reduce glare at night, thereby giving you clearer vision. There's a number of yellow lens "night glasses" in the market, making similar claims to improve vision. The more reputable web sources seem to think they're snake oil. I love a good night drive, but have never tried them. I do wear my polarized sunglasses in the rain to reduce glare though.
HD Radio - A digital radio broadcast technology (trademarked by iBiquity) used by several stations across the country. The signal is piggybacked on the analog signal, though the industry could go all digital eventually. Compatible radios automatically pop between the analog and HD signal as needed. Some stations offer sub-channels, effectively allowing them to broadcast up to three channels of programming on a single frequency. In this case, "HD" does NOT stand for "High Definition", or anything else, though in the early days iBiquity claimed it stood for "Hybrid Digital". Given the relatively low bitrates being broadcast, especially on the AM dial and on sub channels, that's probably for the better. Hasn't been adopted widely by receiver manufacturers, surprisingly, but I'm starting to see receivers in rental cars now.
Chevrolet Silverado HD - Just imagine washing your HD truck on a sunny day and giving the world a beautiful HD thing to look at. Except "HD" in this case means "Heavy Duty". But feel free to wash your truck anyway. Your neighborhood association thanks you.
Silverback HD - They make truck parts like brakes and stuff. Also using "HD" as an abbreviation for "Heavy Duty".
Timberline HD Roofing Shingles - Yes, shingles. "Lifetime high definition shingles", according to Timberline. Look closer, I guess.
The Home Depot - Guess what their stock symbol is? That's right..."HD".
Make Up For Ever - They have an HD line of makeup and use the phrase "high definition" on their website. So I guess if your face is looking a little standard...
PixelSkin HD Wrap for iPad - In case you need an HD cover for your iPad. But don't iPads have Retina displays?
Cellucor Super HD - Diet pills. Admittedly, there isn't a lot of definition to my stomach. It's just round.
Maybe I should come up with a new HD product. Maybe HD chili.
In that case, the "HD" would stand for "Heavy Density".
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
The Joker
Place: Taco John's
Lunch: Three hard shells, small Super Ole (no tomato, no guac), Pepsi
It's April Fools Day. Apparently, the April Fools joke at this particular Taco John's is to do everything reeeeeealy slooooowly.
I've been seeing the usual April Foolery in the form of fake news stories and social media shenanigans. Then there was the big CBS show swap, where Craig Ferguson and Drew Carey swapped shows. But I don't count that because it was heavily promoted and acknowledged. If Carey had just shown up on the Late Late Show and Ferguson had just shown up on TPIR with no explanation...maybe even using each other's names...it would have counted. Having said that, Carey did a phenomenal show last night. As far as I'm concerned, Carey just became the beginning and end of the list of people who should eventually replace Letterman. Carey and Ferguson would be a knock-out late night punch.
My April Fools joke? I left my office calendar on March. In related news, I'm not much of a practical joker. In fact, I can't even think of any good practical jokes I've ever planned. Except for that one time where the payoff came completely by accident.
We lived on a remote island of 13,000 in my teenage years. There was no road access to the place, so reliance on boats and aircraft was big. My family fell somewhere between 'poor' and 'middle income' and generally we either didn't have a washer and dryer, or we had a broken washer and dryer. When I got my drivers license, I ended up alternating laundry duty with my mother. Every two weeks, one of us would haul about a half dozen ginormous garbage bags of laundry down to the laundromat and take up an entire row of machines.
The laundromat was in a strip mall next to the biggest harbor in town. Big boats, small boats, yachts, fishing boats, house boats, hundreds of every sort of privately owned boat you could imagine were docked here. As a result, this laundromat got a lot of 'boat people' business, be it from people who lived on their boats to transient traffic passing through. Like all laundromats, this one had a community bulletin board on the wall where people posted "for sale" or "wanted to buy" items. This board was always packed with 3x5 cards. As you would expect, the majority of items were boat related.
So I'm sitting there with the washing machines running, bored out of my mind, reading the bulletin board, thinking about how weird all this stuff would look like on the bulletin board of any other laundromat in the civilized world. And I decided to write up a card myself as a joke. Something that people would question, but just be plausible enough to let it pass.
WANTED TO BUY: Shower head for 50hp Mercury outboard motor. Must be rust free.
I put the phone number of a public radio station 150 miles away as the contact with no name. I figured nobody'd actually call because they'd have to pay long distance, and even if they did, their receptionist at best would just put a note on THEIR bulletin board in an effort to get the message to whoever of their fifty volunteers might have posted such a thing.
People would just look at it, maybe question it, then let it go.
And that was the end of that.
Or so I thought.
TWO WEEKS LATER:
"Sam?"
"Yes, Mother?"
"Did you put something on the bulletin board at the laundromat?"
She was standing in the dining room of our palatial double-wide, mixing bowl with spoon in hand, making dinner.
After a pause, I asked "Why?"
And then she told this story...
"Well, your brother and I were doing the laundry, and he was reading the bulletin board, and he said "Mom, doesn't that look like Sam's handwriting?"
"Yes it does."
"Mom, why would somebody want a shower head for an outboard motor?"
"Well, fisherman want some pretty strange things sometimes."
I FELL ON THE FLOOR laughing. Probably into a fetal position. Tears streaming down my face. Hysterical laughter.
I could not have envisioned this payoff in a MILLION years.
At some point, I looked up at her. She was standing over me with this completely dumbfounded look on her face. She had NO idea why this was funny, and I was making NO effort to explain it. Eventually, she just shrugged her shoulders and went back to the kitchen.
It's probably ironic that the best joke I've ever pulled off was something only I laughed at or even understood, and that it happened completely by accident.
But even today, it still makes me laugh.
Lunch: Three hard shells, small Super Ole (no tomato, no guac), Pepsi
It's April Fools Day. Apparently, the April Fools joke at this particular Taco John's is to do everything reeeeeealy slooooowly.
I've been seeing the usual April Foolery in the form of fake news stories and social media shenanigans. Then there was the big CBS show swap, where Craig Ferguson and Drew Carey swapped shows. But I don't count that because it was heavily promoted and acknowledged. If Carey had just shown up on the Late Late Show and Ferguson had just shown up on TPIR with no explanation...maybe even using each other's names...it would have counted. Having said that, Carey did a phenomenal show last night. As far as I'm concerned, Carey just became the beginning and end of the list of people who should eventually replace Letterman. Carey and Ferguson would be a knock-out late night punch.
My April Fools joke? I left my office calendar on March. In related news, I'm not much of a practical joker. In fact, I can't even think of any good practical jokes I've ever planned. Except for that one time where the payoff came completely by accident.
We lived on a remote island of 13,000 in my teenage years. There was no road access to the place, so reliance on boats and aircraft was big. My family fell somewhere between 'poor' and 'middle income' and generally we either didn't have a washer and dryer, or we had a broken washer and dryer. When I got my drivers license, I ended up alternating laundry duty with my mother. Every two weeks, one of us would haul about a half dozen ginormous garbage bags of laundry down to the laundromat and take up an entire row of machines.
The laundromat was in a strip mall next to the biggest harbor in town. Big boats, small boats, yachts, fishing boats, house boats, hundreds of every sort of privately owned boat you could imagine were docked here. As a result, this laundromat got a lot of 'boat people' business, be it from people who lived on their boats to transient traffic passing through. Like all laundromats, this one had a community bulletin board on the wall where people posted "for sale" or "wanted to buy" items. This board was always packed with 3x5 cards. As you would expect, the majority of items were boat related.
So I'm sitting there with the washing machines running, bored out of my mind, reading the bulletin board, thinking about how weird all this stuff would look like on the bulletin board of any other laundromat in the civilized world. And I decided to write up a card myself as a joke. Something that people would question, but just be plausible enough to let it pass.
WANTED TO BUY: Shower head for 50hp Mercury outboard motor. Must be rust free.
I put the phone number of a public radio station 150 miles away as the contact with no name. I figured nobody'd actually call because they'd have to pay long distance, and even if they did, their receptionist at best would just put a note on THEIR bulletin board in an effort to get the message to whoever of their fifty volunteers might have posted such a thing.
People would just look at it, maybe question it, then let it go.
And that was the end of that.
Or so I thought.
TWO WEEKS LATER:
"Sam?"
"Yes, Mother?"
"Did you put something on the bulletin board at the laundromat?"
She was standing in the dining room of our palatial double-wide, mixing bowl with spoon in hand, making dinner.
After a pause, I asked "Why?"
And then she told this story...
"Well, your brother and I were doing the laundry, and he was reading the bulletin board, and he said "Mom, doesn't that look like Sam's handwriting?"
"Yes it does."
"Mom, why would somebody want a shower head for an outboard motor?"
"Well, fisherman want some pretty strange things sometimes."
I FELL ON THE FLOOR laughing. Probably into a fetal position. Tears streaming down my face. Hysterical laughter.
I could not have envisioned this payoff in a MILLION years.
At some point, I looked up at her. She was standing over me with this completely dumbfounded look on her face. She had NO idea why this was funny, and I was making NO effort to explain it. Eventually, she just shrugged her shoulders and went back to the kitchen.
It's probably ironic that the best joke I've ever pulled off was something only I laughed at or even understood, and that it happened completely by accident.
But even today, it still makes me laugh.
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