Kirk: Let Me Help You With Those Hiccups, Scotty

If I read this correctly, Scottish males may be more fertile than female engineers.

"[...] when they were ovulating [...] They tend to put on skirts instead of pants, show more skin and generally dress more fashionably"

Does Starkist Want Chocolate With Good Taste?

I could have sworn I posted this while I was in Germany. Please embarass me by pointing out the post if I did.

How can you tell whether you've stepped in melted chocolate or in dog poop?

I can say from experience that sometimes, only the smell reveals the answer.

Don't Shake Hands With A Person Who Recently Had Hiccups

I get the hiccups about once every 3 or 4 weeks. I usually use the "hold your breath" method to get rid of them and that works for me.

In thinking about hiccups, I realized that I never get hiccups while I'm at work. And now I know why:

Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage

Apparently, being at work is similar to receiving a "digital rectal massage". Who would've guessed that?

BTW - The people who found this cure were awarded an IgNobel this year.

I'm Gonna Be Rich

I'm now receiving about 1000 spam a week. Almost all to an email address that does not appear in a Google search but was used by at least 2 different people as their "spam" address. Interestingly, both these people are from California. The first one started, and stopped, many years ago. The second started last year, using the address for his taxes, a tux rental and who knows what else. I found him based on the tux rental address and his MySpace account and he has also stopped using the address. But the damage is done.

Yahoo! does a good job screening out the spam but sometimes one or two will sneak through the filter. Here's the one that tricked the filters today:

From:"zebview@terra.es"
Subject: funds transfer from swiss bank,$14 million dollars

DEAR SIR,

I AM CONTACTING YOU ON BUSINESS TRANSFERING MONEY INTO
YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.

I AWAIT YOUR RESPONSE, SO I CAN GIVE YOU MORE DETAILS ABOUT
THIS TRANSACTION.

REGARDS,

MR MICHAEL DEROBERT.

Is there actually a person smart enough to use a computer and read e-mail but still dumb enough to respond to this?

OK, you already know the answer. I responded (shouting, of course).

DEAR MR DEROBERT,

THANK YOU FOR CONTACTING ME BUT I BELIEVE THERE WAS A TYPO IN YOUR EMAIL. WHAT ACTUALLY HAS HAPPENED IS THAT APPROXIMATELY $1,400,000 WAS INCORRECTLY CREDITED TO MY BANK ACCOUNT.

THIS MONEY DOES NOT BELONG TO ME BUT I HAVE HAD NO WAY OF RETURNING IT UNTIL NOW. PLEASE SEND ME YOUR BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER SO THAT I CAN TRANSFER THE MONEY TO YOU FORTHWITH.

REGARDS,

JAY MANFREDGENSENGEN

I like the use of "forthwith". It sounds very honest.

Within Spitting Distance Of Humor

I was working on an idea for a post this morning. It would have gone something like this:

If there is one thing you should never expect from a politician (or upper management who are also, essentially, politicians) is an answer to a straight forward question.

"When did you first learn that Rep. Foley wanted to diddle a 16 year-old?"

"Well, let me start by saying..."

When someone starts with "let me start by saying" you will not get an answer. What you will get is oration. Minutes, sometimes hours, of oration. If you're naive, you won't notice. If you ever get past the naivete stage you'll probably go through disappointment, then anger and, if you're lucky, indifference.

For those who are still struggling with the early stages, I offer this helpful advice. What should you do when you hear a politician asked one of these questions? Or your CEO? Expect oration.

But while thinking about this, just before I got into the shower, I somehow smashed my knee on the edge of the bathroom counter top. This made a nice little 1cm x 2mm gouge. After my shower, and despite the depth of the gouge, I decided to put some of that liquid bandage stuff on the wound.

If you read the directions for the liquid bandage it clearly states not to use it on open wounds. I interpret this as something you might have if you ran a chain saw across your leg, not a little gash. So I put a little dab of the stuff on my knee.

After about a quarter of a second, the pain started. A searing, burning, sharp pain that felt like someone was driving a nail right through my leg. No one in history has ever felt a pain like this...but I toughed it out.

After I shaved, I noticed my knee was now bleeding. Well, sort of. There was a big drop of blood hanging there. Much too big to not drip and yet it didn't. But it wasn't just blood. It was part rubbery New Skin. A big glob of rubbery blood. Neat!

So, I did what any normal person would do in this situation. I shaved my knee, cleaned it with expectoration and put a Band-Aid on it.

The Bag, Ladies

I didn't really know what to expect for my hike through the Ahr valley (only a few miles from Nürburgring, for you racing fans). I had my water, some energy bars and my camera but I figured I should also bring some extra socks, in case my feet got soaked. Also, having learned my lesson from Hawaii that no matter how nice the weather seems, have something to protect your camera. Bad news: I was out of plastic bags.

Fortunately, the hotel supplies free bags! These little bags are usually kept right by the toilet. I stuck my camera in one, a pair of socks in another and an open bag of peanuts in a third. That used up all the bags they had. The next day when I saw the housekeeper, she gave me a very strange look, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I didn't get to do the hike I wanted because storms (including a tornado) had destroyed the trails I wanted to hike. I hiked a different trail and there was no rain, not even any clouds. Along the way, I would stop in a rare shady spot and have a bite. One of those spots was a little shelter where several people had stopped.

My pack was a little disorganized and I had to partially empty it to find things. I pulled out my extra socks, in their little bag, and set them on the bench next to me. The woman nearest to me gasped and started speaking rapid fire German to the other women with her. They were all sneaking looks at me when I found my peanuts. Most of the peanuts had fallen out of the peanut bag so it was a good thing I had that extra bag around it. The bag was to long and narrow to fit my hand in so I just held the thing up to my mouth and poured in the nuts.

Two of the women gaped at me. I guess they've never seen someone put their salty nuts in one of those bags! I offered them some, holding the bag out to them. They recoiled in horror, gathered up their things and left the shelter. Some people are so weird.

This Is Only A Theory...Just Like Evolution

Let's say, hypothetically, that you really liked a movie (like Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie) and that this movie is no longer sold on DVD. You may be able to, hypothetically, buy a used copy for about $100 but who would want to do that?

Now, let's say that you found out that this movie was available but only in a foreign country; how about Germany and for a reasonable price. And let's further suppose that you just happened to be traveling to that country. So you buy a copy.

Now the problem is that your hypothetical movie, that you bought and paid for and that has been released in your country will not play on your DVD player thanks to it being the wrong DVD region. However, you're a pretty smart cookie and probably knew this before you bought it. You probably figured on using DVD Decryptor and/or DVD Shrink to make a hypothetical playable copy of it. You probably knew that you can change the region on most computer DVD players 5 times. Why 5? I have no hypothesis for that.

If you were to hypothetically do all that, then you would have a copy of the movie you might be able to play on a computer but probably wouldn't be able to play on a regular DVD player. And I'll tell you the reason, pal. Sorry, that should have been: I'll tell you the reason, PAL. You see, your hypothetical movie copy would still be in PAL format which is the TV standard in Europe, while NTSC is the standard here in the US. Hypothetically, you might burn two copies of this useless movie without realizing that was the problem.

You might spend some time and do some research about PAL to NTSC conversion, or DVD players that can play PAL DVDs on NTSC TVs. But if you're lucky, you'd stumble across a nifty trick which is to basically tell your DVD player that the movie is NTSC even though it's not. It might work and it might not. It'll cost you the price of a blank DVD to find out. If it does work then you can watch and enjoy your movie. Hypothetically, of course.