Voodoo Time Dot Com

A shot, a jigger, and a pony are the same measure of liquor - 1.5 ounces. 1.5 ounces is equivalent to 45 milliliters, or 3 tablespoons.

So this weekend was pretty busy. Consequently I didn’t get around to mentioning what I learned for a couple days. Lest you think I forgot, here are a couple entries for the last couple days.

Today I may have learned why it is that I don’t like tea. As I’ve always suspected, we Americans do not know how to make tea.

First, the water must be boiling when it meets the leaves. This business of a bag of Lipton’s finest in a styrofoam cup makes for some really lame tea.

Here in the States, tea tends to be boiled in a tea kettle, then poured into some sort of cup with a tea bag in it. A good English-style tea involves a third vessel - the tea pot (short and stout). One warms the tea pot preemptively lest it cool too quickly. The tea bags go in this pot - not in the cup or in the kettle as the water boils. The boiling water goes into the pot. Then tea happens.

In England, people sometimes drink tea with milk in it. I’m going to try that next time I make tea. Evidently the milk goes in the cup first, so as not to scald it.

Now everyone go make some tea and tell me how it goes.

You learn something new everyday.

This is a cliche I have been hearing since I was but a wee lad. I really want to believe that this is true. It seems like life should be so full of wonder and mystery that everyday should be a festival of knowledge and experience.

More often than not though, I’d be hard pressed to think of any new knowledge I’ve gained on an average day. So, in order to test the above hypothesis, and in an attempt to actually get some new content on this site more than once a week, I’m starting a little feature I’ll probably call something lame like “What I Learned Today”.

So I’m going to try to learn something everyday and tell you all about it here. You’ll have to pardon me if I share something you already know, or don’t care to know.

But feel free to let me know either way.

So I finally got cable. A couple weeks ago I made the call, and now for $35 each month I have all the TV I can handle. If you recall, until recently, I was without TV completely. Living where I do, electromagnetic waves have a profoundly difficult time reaching me from the Greater Los Angeles Area™. Actually I did get one channel… sort of.

But now we’ve got all kinds of TV. It’s just always on - even when we’re not really watching it. For some reason I don’t find this unusual or unpleasant. All during my childhood, television was the soundtrack of my life. Half the time, I wasn’t even watching anything, but the television was on anyway - staging dramas for no one in particular, and periodically attempting to sell products to the wall 30 seconds at a time. I have to say, in all that time, I’m disappointed that my cockatiels never learned to sing the Oscar Mayer Weiner song. Though they did manage to order some stuff from an infomercial once. They were pretty smart.

Before now, I was without television for well over a year. So it was sort of exciting when the cable guy bestowed upon us the gift of passive entertainment. But it didn’t take long to realize there is still mostly nothing but crap on TV. So, because of this, and because I am a complete nerd, most of the time we end up watching the educational channels. We have entire channels dedicated to food, gardening, home improvement, interior decorating, animals, and science. Chances are, at any given moment, I’m watching the Emeril channel, the Crocodile channel, or the Hitler channel.

So today, we watched a show on Animal Planet (the Crocodile channel). The more I watch this channel, the more I wonder how on earth humans managed to survive on this planet long enough to become what we are today. It seems like every other animal has some way of biting, scratching, stinging, poisoning, or eating other animals. On a level playing field, human beings have almost no chance against scary animals.

As handy as we are, humans have no claws. We do have some pretty sharp teeth though. Unfortunately, our jaws effect a pathetic bite of only about 150 pounds per square inch (PSI) of pressure. A tiny rat can manage 7000 PSI without really trying. Luckily, we can outrun rats with our average running speed of 12 miles per hour, but a determined hippopotamus could outpace us. Since male hippos grow teeth over a foot long, we’d better have something sharp in hand when they catch up. If you’re ever toe to toe with a hippo, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be holding some kind of pointy stick.

The pointy stick is the great equalizer. The pointy stick is why I can sit in a temperature-controlled environment and watch nature happen from thousands of miles away.

Speaking of pointy sticks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is on TV right now. I’m not watching it though.

Bye for now.

Recently, it seems that there is a resurgence in the popularity of superheroes. With movies like Spider-man and X-Men raking in millions of dollars in ticket sales, our childhood heroes are more popular than they’ve been in decades. Obviously, we’re looking at some kind of cultural phenomenon here. So what is it about these comic book crime fighters that enthralls us?

Maybe it’s all the capes and spandex jumpsuits. I’m not sure when we all agreed that crime fighting is best executed in skin-tight leotards, but so be it. Maybe the bright-colored, muscle-hugging body socks intimidate super villains or something. I can buy that, I guess. The cape thing is a little harder to understand. Somehow I find it hard to believe that Superman has never snagged that thing on a tree. Come to think of it, as tight as those leggings are, I find it hard to believe that Superman has never snagged his thing on a tree. Alright, so it’s probably a moot point because, as cool as the costumes are, I think there is actually only one thing that really excites us about superheroes.

Big boobs. Comic books are full of enormous breasts. In fact, I suspect that superheroines draw all their power from their mammoth chests and channel that power into doing good for mankind. Hooray for boobies!

But I digress. The best thing about being a superhero is the superpowers. Who doesn’t wish they could do something that no one else can do? I’m not talking about uncle Marvin who can belch the alphabet backwards in greek. I mean flying, disappearing, superhuman strength, super stretchy limbs, and communication with sea creatures. Actually, scratch that last one. No one really likes Aquaman anyway.

So lame superpowers aside, we’ve still got a hefty list of great ones.

Flying: Old guard, but still very popular. Fast travel, and it freaks people out.

Super Strength: Very common in superheroes. Super strength is very handy for taking out bad guys en masse.

Invisibility: A great way to get out of tight situations. Get the drop on villains everytime.

Teleportation: Very X-Men. One of the cooler and most underrated superpowers. The whole idea of being able to be wherever you want instantaneously is really cool. Until recently, if I could choose just one superpower, teleportation would be it. However…

A friend recently shared with me the best superpower ever. I mean it. This could put down the Justice League, the X-Men, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four all at the same time. It is truly a devious and devastating power. It is the power to make anyone crap their pants anywhere at any time. Think about it.

There needs to be a comic book about this. Any ideas?

Man, it’s been a while since I’ve put anything new up. Sorry about that. I’ve been having to deal with a lot of drama at work, so I haven’t been in the best of spirits lately.

Anyway, I’ve finally got some ideas that may or may not be funny, so I should be getting some new stuff up a little more regularly.

Thanks for coming by.