Now That The Die Hard Battle Is Won (II)

Now that we have convinced America that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, it’s time to take our game to the next level.

Adventures in Babysitting is a Marvel film.

I watched this film over and over as a kid because it was on Showtime, and I wasn’t supposed to leave the trailer when my mother was working, which was all summer long for a couple of years. So if you’re a longtime reader, you know I watched a lot of films that appeared on Showtime over and over.

Which is why I remember that the little girl wore a Thor helmet throughout and even, if I’m not mistaken, wielded Mjolnir at the beginning of the film, and at the end, she thinks that the helpful mechanic is Thor. What if he was? He didn’t look to different from the Thor from the Incredible Hulk television movie (The Incredible Hulk Returns).

As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure Marvel has actually made this little girl Thor at one point in the comic books.

Also, look at the back:

A Marvel copyright statement.

Q.E.D.

(See also Now That The Die Hard Battle Is Won.)

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When You’re Tired Of Backspacing

Sometimes, I have to type a word, backspace over some possible misspelling, and then type it two different ways a couple of times until I’m sure it’s right, which is often after I look it up.

Like devestated devastated.

Well, I’m not going to play that particular game any more.

From now on, it’s devostated in my writing.

I’m pretty sure those of us of a certain age will get the point even without embedding a music video every time it appears.

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A Pun That Needs Explanation


Mango but pawn in game of life

When I was working as a produce clerk while at the university, a friend of a co-worker asked me if we had any mongoes. I didn’t recognize what she was asking for, and my co-worker explained that she was from Puerto Rico and was asking about mangoes. Of course, it was a dive of a grocery store so it didn’t have mangoes, but I’ve pronounced it the Spanish way ever since.

Even though, apparently, the fruit is not native to Central and South America as I thought; it’s native to Asia. Well, I have a choice to make now that I have misinformed my family: I can correct my assertion to them and further illustrate the fallability of the father in this household, or I can let it lay and maybe let them discover at some future time that their father was comfortable making daft assertions that were untrue.

You know what I’m going to do already, don’t you?

This Christmas, I put a mango and a kiwi in each of my boys’ stockings, and I finally served them up, but the boys didn’t like them. I tried a couple of segments and found they tasted a little like mango but a whole more like pickled herring. I guess it’s hard to get tree-fresh mangoes in Springfield, Missouri, in December.

That’s right: I am changing the subject.

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A Truism

I am the master of all I survey.

How true is this statement?

      Completely true!
      It might be true.
      You’re daft!

     

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But Can It Remove One Of The New Facebook Portals?

Instapundit links to a ToiletTree Professional Water Resistant Heavy Duty Steel Nose Trimmer with LED Light, Silver.

Me, I clicked through because it sounded like a high-tech drain auger.

But, no, it’s not steel-nosed. It’s steel for your nose:

  • This high-end cordless battery-operated nose trimmer with bright LED light is made of high quality steel; the light comes in handy when you need to get at those hard-to-reach and hard-to-see hairs
  • The lightweight, but powerful, rotary cutting system allows hairs to enter the trimmer tip from the top and also from the sides, which is very helpful for stray hairs not only in the nose but also on your eyebrows, beard, and ears
  • Right out of the box, you will feel the difference, precision, and quality of this trimmer; it offers a smooth trim with its stainless steel high quality blades and gives you a perfect cut every time; no painful pulled hairs
  • Our best water-resistant design allows you to use this trimming tool in the shower and it makes clean-up afterwards quick and easy; it’s the best trimming and cutting tool you’ll ever experience from a men’s clipper product
  • This nose trimmer operates on just 1 AA battery (not included), which makes it an economically affordable way to take care of the daily trimming needs of your nose, brows, and ears

With all that steel and LED technology, I hope it can take care of those hard-to-reach Facebook Portal tracking devices.

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How Many Of These Six Items Do You Store In Your Garage?

My insurance company has provided this listicle about What Not To Store in the Garage, and I thought it would be a great chance at a quiz.

The items are:

  • Extra fuel
  • Paint or home improvement chemicals
  • Furniture
  • Clothing
  • Food
  • Anything fragile or valuable

A quiz for you, I mean. You’ll notice I have not bolded or italicised things that I store in the garage. Because I don’t want my home insurance rates to go up based on my blog response to a listicle composed by a 23-year-old marketing intern from a series of other Internet postings he/she/it found.

Note that storing extra fuel or solvents in your garage might also violate the contract you signed with your mortgage. What, you didn’t read it?

Not depicted, or detypeted as the case may be, on this list, other things that you might consider storing in your garage:

  • Automobiles. These things can emit dangerous gases or, based on our marketing intern’s research in watching action films, might be extremely prone to explosions.
  • Power tools. Which are electrocution dangers at best, death, decapitation, or disfigurement dangers at worst (according to our marketing intern, based on studious research of historical documents 80s slasher films).
  • Anything not valuable. They’re hazardous to your marriage if you just keep random things (or so I’ve heard) and can be a fire hazard.
  • Cigarettes. Because smoking is bad, and if you’re not planning to smoke them, you’re smuggling them, which comes with all the attendant organized crime risks.
  • Toys from the twentieth century. No matter what they are, they are killers of one sort or another. Jarts? Books printed with lead ink? Asbestos-stuffed teddy bears? Chemistry kits with real acids? Just call out the hazmat team or ordinance disposal professionals!
  • 21st Century Nerf Guns. Advances in Nerf technology have made it so you don’t need a BB gun to shoot your eye out. Or, more likely, your brother’s.

I’ll not answer that list, either.

Although if you retitle the article Whatnot to Store in Your Garage, that probably describes the contents of my garage.

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A Question for the Ages

Why are both Ps in sapphire silent?

I can understand the second, which is followed by an H, but the first one is not.

So as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to pronounce it sapfire from now on.

Fortunately, I don’t deal in gemstones or gin much, so I won’t actually have to do this and make people think I’m ignorant instead of taking a principled stand for a more obvious pronunciation.

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Explaining a Facebook Status

On Facebook, I said:

I’m not saying I got a little sun yesterday, but I am ready to infiltrate Helium to deliver a confidential message to Dejah Thoris from the Jeddara of Nogglestead.

Originally, I was going to say the Jeddak of Nogglestead, but thought the better of it because I did not want the beautiful Jeddara of Nogglestead to ask exactly what were the contents of that confidential message to the Princess of Mars, nor did I want to explain the joke to a wrathful John Carter.

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The Noggle Scale Of Awesomeness

I forgot what exactly made me leap out of my bathtub and shout “Eureka!”, but I surely have discovered a scientific principle. Perhaps it’s all the Einstein and physics stuff that I have been reading but not really comprehending. But, my friends, I have come up with a scientifically proven system of awesomeness ranking.

It’s like the Mohs scale, but of cool. You know how on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, every item a step higher can scratch a mineral not as hard, but not vice versa? A diamond can scratch quartz which can scratch talc, but talc can’t even scratch an itch? Well, things on the scale of awesome can make things below them more awesome, but the lesser things do not improve upon higher things in the scale.

Let me illustrate by going on the scale from things that are less awesome to more awesome:

5. Yoga.
Cool and all, but you know what makes them better?

6. Goats.
Goat yoga is definitely cooler than plain yoga. While some people might try to convince you otherwise through appeals to emotion, goats do not make everything better, as we will see.

3. Cheese.
There might be a cultural bias in play here as I’m from Wisconsin, but cheese is more awesome than goats. Cheese on goat meat make it better–cheese makes all food better–but goats in my cheese? Not an improvement.

2. The Ford Mustang.
A Mustang makes a weak man strong and a strong man invincible, or so the old slogan goes. Well, the one on the wall of Mustang Sally’s, a short-lived bar in the Central West End that I frequented, and by “frequented,” I mean “went to once,” when I owned a 1984 Ford Mustang GT. With a 5 Liter, V8 engine and five speed transmission. Ay, what a car for a young man to drive for about five months. Now, a driving a Mustang to the store for cheese? Awesome. Cheese on the Mustang? Are you kidding? Mustangs among goats? Awesome! A goat in a Mustang? Trouble, and not awesome at all, unless it is a modern Esmerelda and her goat, but that’s more a function of the awesome of Esmerelda than the goat. Fun fact: When I met my beautiful wife, a modern Esmerelda surely, I was driving the Mustang. Was it the poetry or the Mustang that won her heart for me? Bet on the Mustang.

1. Metal.
Metal music appears to be the strongest source of awesomeness on the planet. Listening to metal in a Mustang makes the Mustang better. Goats listening to metal probably provide better meat and milk (some experimentation still needed). To be sure, I’m not sure of anything that metal does not make better.

These are representative of the levels on the awesomeness scale, which is not completely heirarchical in nature. Some things are on the same level of awesomeness as other things, of course. For example, coffee is probably a 1 on the Noggle scale, as there is nothing that it cannot make better.

At any rate, here it is for scientific debate, and by “scientific debate,” I mean silly little conversations amongst friends. Or on the Internet if you don’t want to discuss it with your actual friends, who would think you daft for bringing this up.

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