Clean
Living in
the Great Midwest

by JRM
February 9, 2009
Do we have any
refrigerator salesmen in the audience? I ask because I just reached into
the fridge and got a beer. Suddenly
I find myself exceedingly curious about tempered glass.
Now I know that when something is tempered, it means that it has
been hardened or strengthened by application of heat or by heating and
cooling. Past that, I am
mostly curious as to why it remains important to write the phrase
"tempered glass" on my beer shelf. If I go to Sears
tomorrow and tell them that I want a fridge, will they happily show me
the best model, open the door and stretch their arm out like Vanna White
and say, "Look it's got tempered glass!!"? I highly
doubt it.
I guess what I'm really
asking is that have we, as a collective society, reached the point that
if we see glass inside of a refrigerator, that we can assume that it's
been tempered? Can we stop
extolling the virtues of tempered glass in the sparkly prose that is the
Best Buy Sunday insert? Can
we state once and for all that we have defeated the problem of highly
breakable glass refrigerator shelves? I think we can...turn the
refrigerator page
America
. If not for me, do it for the children...
Actually, I'm somewhat
curious as to whether or not there has ever been non-tempered glass
serving as a refrigerator shelf. I would hazard to guess that
before there was tempered glass, refrigerator shelves were probably made
of plastic or granite or whatever. I should really go to Amazon
and see if anybody has written The Comprehensive History of Tempered
Glass Refrigerator Shelves.
I was writing a
comedy sketch yesterday. It just wasn't as funny as it should have
been. The name of the sketch was "CelebreD.O.T.". The
premise of the sketch was the existence of a Department of
Transportation office that caters only to famous people. I don't
know about you, but I've never seen anybody famous in the D.O.T.. It
really should have been funny...and it still might be eventually.
It's turning into a version of SNL's Jeopardy! except they're at
the D.O.T.. Then I started to worry a little bit that it might
have been done already. I have missed about the last ten years of
every sketch comedy show except Mr. Show and The Post Show. Anyway, if
you guys want to help me out, I'd appreciate it.
"You almost never get what
you want by screaming and crying" - Good advice from me to my
3-year old son.
"Underwear is not jammies. What
if something fires up the house? You can't go outside in
underwear." - Good advice from my 3-year old son to me.
At the back of my son's "classroom" at his "school",
there is a bathroom. It's your run of the mill school bathroom -
there are toilets and sinks where the kids can do their business. The
cool thing about them is that they are tiny.
When the kid uses them, he looks like the opposite of an actor on
one of those movie sets where they make everything huge so that adults
can play children's roles. He doesn't even look like a kid...he's just a
dude in the bathroom. I thought those little toilets were the
coolest thing ever.
I don't have any weird phobias about crapping at work - In fact, I am of
the opinion that one of the greatest things about this country is that
if one plays their cards right, they can get paid to poop. I did,
however, feel pretty odd when I stepped into the stall at my new place
of employment to find a toilet very similar to the one at my kids'
school anchored down in there for employees to use. The little
ones must be cheaper or something. I tried to use this
thing...once. Never ever again. It was like trying to ride a
tricycle while taking a dump in a dixie cup. Once again, I am
driving to QT to use the bathroom.
When working on a writing assignment, I used to start a column in the
evening and write the bulk of it, if not all. I would then e-mail
it to myself, come in to work early and proof it with a fresh pair of
eyes. After I was done, I would then send the attachment to
whatever editor wanted it. I figured that the system worked pretty
well, so I would continue it at the new place. The e-mail came
through and everything worked out great...until I tried to send the
finished copy to my editor. Yeah - apparently my new employer uses
some sort of Googlesque software that scans outgoing mail. The
main difference is that Google is exploiting the technology to sell
advertising - my employer is scanning it to determine inappropriate
content. When the program thinks it has zeroed in on said
inappropriate content, it sends a message to the network administrator
who then reads the e-mail manually.
Of course, it caught mine. I would think that they would like to
do this quietly so that they could determine what to do with the
information. Not quite the case here friends. The
program sends an undeliverable message that tells you the email was
blocked for content for the sole purpose of making a stupid employee
sweat over the weekend. And sweat I did - I knew I was busted.
In case you didn't see it, here's the sentence that got me called
into the boss's office:
"Throughout my years, I have always found that the best source for
reliable information on how to deal with just about any problem is the
23 year old gay Filipino software engineer. I’ll tell you what,
the matriarch next door is enough to make anyone move to
San Diego
…and become gay."
Everything turned out okay...but now I have to fix my routine. I'm
telling you guys, I need a rich and stupid person that will pay me to
write for a living.
Love,
metten
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