My Blog's Been TeePee'd

I don't think I've relayed this story before, at least not on on my blog.

One day back in college, my roommate told me he had run out of toilet paper and asked to borrow a roll of mine. Of course, I gave him a roll. Now I'm a Charmin man. Toilet paper is one of those areas where I do not skimp. Charmin has 200 sheets per roll.* My roommate, Dave, was a Scott's man. Scotts has 1000 sheets per roll. He took my roll of Charmin and went off.

The next day (I kid you not), Dave asked me if he could borrow another roll of toilet paper. I was nonplussed. "I just gave you a roll!" He replied, "That was yesterday and there are hardly any sheets on those rolls." "How much toilet paper do you use?" I asked.
Let me pause here. In case you don't know, both myself and my roommate were studying engineering at the time.
He retorted, " How much do you use?" I informed him that I bought a 4 pack at the start of the school year, one was on the roller, two were under the sink and the fourth one was given to him the day before. Clearly, we were on opposite ends of TP use spectrum. I gave him another roll.

A little later in the day, Dave came down stairs and announced, "Eleven miles!"
Me: "Huh?"
Dave: "I use 11 miles of toilet paper a year"
Me: "Eleven Miles!!!"

Dave then gave me the breakdown, 365 days * # movements/day * number of wipes * number of sheets per wiping bouquet * number of inches/sheet * miles per inch = 11 miles. Wow, that seemed like a lot so I figured out my usage. I actually remember my numbers. 4 sheets/bouquet * 3 wipes * once/day * 365 days * 4 inches/sheet / 12"/ft. / 5280 ft./mi. ~= 1/4 mile!
Dave: "A quarter mile! NO way!"

So there you have it. My roommate (who went out that very same day and bought a big pack of Scotts) used 44 times more toilet paper than me. Although we tried, we could not convince either of our female roommates to figure out their usage but, then again, they were not engineers.

* - OK, this is kind of a rant. I think back in college, Charmin had either 220 or 240 sheets per roll, but I could be mistaken. However, at the store the other day I noticed that they have now reduced the roll to 180 sheets. Fortunately they still had some old 200/roll stock left which and I'm pretty well stocked up.

Hey! You Can't Go in There!

Driving home yesterday I was on a one-way street, waiting at a red light. It's a four-way intersection and all the other directions are two-way streets. I'm in the right lane waiting to go straight and no one is in the left turn lane next to me. A pick-up truck coming from the street on the right paused in the intersection in front of me. The guy driving was talking on his cell phone. Before I could think "What the hell?" he turned left and drove past me going the wrong way on a one-way street. In the process, he missed 2 of those left-turn-bar signs, a "one way" sign pointing the other way and a "do not enter" sign. I watched in my rear view mirror until he got to a point in the street where someone was parked (on his side) and there was no room for him to continue...so he started backing up. At least now he was going the right direction.

And, checking Blogger's new image capability, here's a character seen the other day in CoH that cracked me up. Wish I could remember the name.

Murderball

Heard this story on the way home yesterday. It's about Murderball, aka Quad Rugby.

Participants in the sport must have a combination of upper- and lower-body impairment. They compete in specially outfitted wheelchairs on a basketball court in four, eight-minute quarters.

I have a friend who is a quadrapalegic but he does not play, as far as I know. Watch out James Caan!

Unplugged

I just saw this commercial on TV. A man and a woman in a rowboat on a lake. They are talking about something (I wasn't really paying attention) when the woman points out that there is a hole in the bottom of the boat and it is leaking. The guy says something along the lines of "No problem, I can handle it." While he looks for something to plug the leak, the woman takes a tampon out of her purse, inserts it in the hole (removing the applicator and leaving the strings dangling for easy removal later, I guess) and stops the leak. Then it goes to the tag line about Tampax Pearl something or other.

Now, I realize that this commercial is not targeted at me but is comparing a woman's period to a leaky boat a good idea? What is the message they are trying to send? Is it like the old Secret deodorant commercials and they're saying "Strong enough for a boat...but made for a woman!"

Please Don't Make Me Watch This Again

On the flight back from Ireland, Continental runs five (they say six but one is "Continental Vision") video channels. Here's what we were supposed to get:
First Feature:

1. Assault on Precinct 13
2. Elektra
3. Let the Church Say Amen
4. Sideways
5. Toys in the Attic

Second feature:

1. Constantine
2. Sideways
3. The Practice (TV)
4. Maid in Manhattan
5. How to Steal a Million

My thinking went like this: I heard Elektra was terrible, not terribly interested in the church movie, just saw Sideways (really liked it, too) and wasn't interested in the 1963 movie, so Assualt it was and, it was fine as far as having something to do while being locked in an aluminum can 36,ooo ft. above the ocean.

After that I picked Constantine but Assault came back up on that channel. I flipped around and saw that all the channels were showing the first feature again. They had mistakenly rewound the tape(s). Uhg. I guess I'll watch Elektra.

Well, even with the whole 36,000 ft. and everything this movie is barely tolerable. I'm watching it and about an hour and a half in they interrupt the movie to show a video of how to fill in your customs form. That took so long that apparently the movie tape stopped (if it's a VCR then it would automatically stop after a couple minutes on pause). The customs tape ended but the movies didn't start back up. After a few minutes someone asked and the flight attendant went to check on things. And then things started back up...from the beginning of the tape. A check of the time showed there might be time to fit in a whole movie but probably not. As bad as Elektra was I would've liked to have seen the end. I could watch it again and hope it made it through or watch something else that I wanted to see even less and risk not seeing the end of it either.

Fear and loathing at 36,000 ft as I started to watch Elektra again. It was about 5 minutes short of where it had left off last time when the call went out for seat belts, tray tables and upright positions.

Beware (not that anyone _should_ care) spoiler below:

So the point I got up to was where Elektra was in the camp with the blind guy. I asked a friend how it ended and got the "She kills all the bad guys" response, which, in actuality, is probably more exciting than the movie itself. I just can't "waste" a Netflix on this thing. If anyone can fill in more details on the end, please feel free to do so.

P.S. Yes, the idea of leaving a partial summary of the ending and then cutting it off is very funny but someone already thought it up. :)