Sunday, April 26, 2009

You Can’t Make Me!

I am a big fan of the TV show "Bones". For a guy who can hardly handle the smell of a nasty diaper it is a mystery to me how I can sit and watch an hour of TV where the real star of the show is the mangled, mutilated, and gross remains of some dead person who died under mysterious or sinister circumstances. I will admit that there are a few times that I have covered my eyes while they inject fluid into or remove some portion of the inner workings of some human. I might have to have my man card taken from me. I'm a wuss.

As for the show I think my appreciation or obsession with the show is a fondness and appreciation of well written, even entertaining dialog. And it applies to other shows besides Bones. Eureka on SciFi, Psych on USA, Moonlighting back in the 80's, all of these shows have witty dialog that makes me wish these characters were real.

But now I'm mad at the show Bones and I'm thinking of turning it off, blocking it with Parental Controls, leaving town whenever it's on, all to avoid the disgusting and immoral activities that are becoming more and more blatant with every episode. It's hard to notice among the storylines about whether there is a God or not, love the one you're with, murder, violence, etc, etc, etc. This is worse and someone needs to do something about it.

They're trying to push the metric system onto us.

It's been in the background the whole time, a cc of this, a millimeter of that, that third vertebrae is a centimeter out of place. I've politely ignored all of these attempts to drag me into a system of measurement accepted the world over. But the other day they finally got the best of me. It was an episode where someone had been run over by a particular SUV, the impact to the person occurred, wait for it, at 54 centimeters in height on the vehicle.

And that is when they had me. All of a sudden I found myself wishing that I knew what a centimeter was, I jumped up from the easy chair and yelled at the TV, "WHAT IS IT IN INCHES?" I thought for sure that Booth being the man's man that he was would ask Bones to speak in English.


"C'mon Bones," he would say, "what's that in English?" "Sorry," Bones would reply, "I meant 21 and a half inches." And then Booth and Bones would have some conversation where Bones would tell Booth that the metric system is used in most of the world and that it is only people in the U.S.A. that were holding onto such a barbaric system of measurement. Booth would reply with some very pro-American comment and then we would all feel the sexual tension escalate.

So I went to the Internet and Googled "How To Understand the Metric System". Now if you are a slow typist and you have your computer set up to "auto fill" your typing you will find that if you delay at all after you've typed in "How to…." that the first return on suggested sites is "How to Put On a Condom". So after my curiosity was satisfied, I wanted to know in case I had been putting it on wrong all these years, I finally typed in my original request and 8,760,000 results popped up on my screen. Carefully reading the site descriptions I initially chose wikiHow. That site only showed me tables in standard and metric. So far no success. The next site provided a practical approach, for instance;

"Learning metric really only requires a few reference points and a way to use them in everyday life. To help me use metric units, I have a Celsius thermometer, a kilogram scale, a liter water bottle, several meter sticks, and a metric odometer and speedometer on my bike."

I'll be honest that the only part of that paragraph I could understand was "water bottle", "speedometer", and "bike". I decided that I would have to get serious in my research and found a great site that provided information in a way that was both educational and entertaining. The "Facts on Farts" webpage had nothing to do with the metric system but was way more entertaining. For instance, researching how to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius is nowhere near as much fun to read about as "Why do Farts Make Noise?". I mean we all know why but reading why confirms our suspicions. What? You don't know. Facts on Farts does.

"The sounds are produced by vibrations of the anal opening. Sounds depend on the velocity of expulsion of the gas and the tightness of the sphincter muscles of the anus. Contrary to a popular misconception, fart noise is not generated by the flapping of the butt cheeks."

See, you smiled at that description. And even though it dispels the idea that fart noise is generated by the flapping of the butt cheeks we can still tell our children and grandchildren that it does. Besides, who doesn't like to say "sphincter". You can't have this kind of fun with the metric system.

Hottie, and I believe I speak for most wives, does not really care about the metric system. She does however have very strong opinions about farts. Women want to talk. Choose the wrong subject, like the metric system, totally kills the female conversation mood. Not farts. Recently I experienced a rather long burst of flatulence, low in tone, long in time, nasty as to smell. Hottie jumped all over me, not about the sound but the smell. "You could have warned me!" she exclaimed. "That's what the sound was for!" was my manly response.

See, conversation. I'm in touch with my wife's needs.

And I know the metric system is easier, units of ten is better than fractions, kilometers per hour sounds like you're really flying compared to mph, and freezing at 0 degrees Celsius makes more sense than 32 degrees Fahrenheit. And I'm going to convert one day.

As soon as the webpage is as entertaining as "Facts on Farts".

5 comments:

MakingChanges said...

Gee, thanks for the education tonight. I just needed to know why farts make noise. Now I know- it is to warn me to leave the room IMMEDIATELY!

Oh, and I LOVE Psych and Moonlighting. Big fan of both.

J. Baxter said...

I want you to know that I'm at my mother's using her computer (now that my power cord quit working). I only had time to read one blog, and I chose yours.

And it was totally worth it. That was very funny.

Haynsy said...

Youngblood, Yes it is a warning, but educational. Glad I could spread blog wisdom.

Jen, first, well, uh, thanks for reading me first. Second, what kind of laptop and I'll see if I can find you a power cord with my vast resources..

AW Cake! said...

Hahahaha! I love it. You should write educational blogs more often...

Shelle-BlokThoughts said...

LOL... I'm with your wife on this one... all though your response was Classic about the warning her!!! :)