The Metric System verses Whatever We Americans Use.

Okay people. It is the end of February and we are less than a month away from Spring. (Imagine a trumpet fanfare at the sound of that lovely word.) This morning it was 20 degrees outside. I’m not talking about Celsius either! 20 Celsius is something like 70F or 87.34F or maybe the surface of the sun for all I know. Hey, I’m American. We don’t get that whole metric system thing. A system based on tens? That is just crazy! Zero as the freezing point of water and 100 as the boiling point? Come on! That is just silly. Everyone knows that 32F is the freezing point and 212F is the boiling point. It makes perfect, logical sense. (Please note the rampant sarcasm implied. Please also note that sarcasm plays a key role in this whole blog.)

Having the same name for the basic unit of measurement is just plan lazy if you ask me. If you heard the word meter mixed with some prefix, it tells you that you are talking about measurement in the metric system. Now real men know that you must have inches, feet, yards, and miles. Don’t bother me with that whole “every time you multiply by ten, it changes the prefix” nonsense. There are twelve inches in a foot. Three feet in a yard. 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards in a mile. See? Perfectly logical. I almost forgot about acres. Those are 1/640 of a square mile or 43,560 square feet. An acre is about 40% of a hectare which is either another unit of measurement or the Greco-Roman God of Confusing Mankind. I can’t remember which.

Then there is the one kind of metrics that has been sneaking into our lives for years. The clever little liter. As much as it tries, the American system still holds on and fights for its right for a part of the pie. We go to the store and buy a two liter of soda, but we sit it beside our gallon of milk. You would think they could just learn to get along; but I caught the milk bouncing on the soda the other day. So instead of liters, we have fluid ounces, pints, quarts and gallons. Now a fluid ounce and an ounce used for weight have nothing in common other than the name. So there are sixteen fluid ounces in a pint. There are two pints in a quart. Four quarts make a gallon. Perfectly logical.

We could talk about ounces and pounds verse grams and kilograms, but you get the idea. Metrics are just too easy and make too much sense for Americans. We can’t have that stuff around here.

And what kind of system keeps the same prefixes no matter what you are measuring? Everyone knows that you can’t do that. Weight has one system. Length has another. Temperature is its own. You can’t take the base name like meter and add kilo to it to make it 1,000 meters. That is just silly. Who would think megameter would be a million meters or gigameter would be a billion meters? The next thing they are going to say is that a tetrameter is trillion meters. Everyone knows that only works when we’re talking about memory on our computers. It can’t possible apply to other forms of measurement.

I think I have shown you how much more sense the American methods of measurements make than the system used by everyone else. Now can someone please explain why something we American obviously invented is called the English method? (Yes, that was more sarcasm.)

Opposites Detract

Have you ever noticed how the old adage of “opposites attract” doesn’t always seem to work? Look and Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. Still shaking my head about that one. He must have made her laugh. A lot! As I tried to get the image of them out of my head, I began pondering how some things are great for one thing and terrible for another.

• A car with a tank full of gas and a stomach full of sugar are both great. A car with a full of sugar and a stomach full of gas, not so much.

• An elephant blowing water out its nose and preschoolers playing with mice are both fun to watch. And elephant playing with mice and preschoolers blowing water out their noses can both result in messes that I wouldn’t want to clean up.

• An older, chubby man dressed like Santa Claus posing for pictures is as adorable as a photo of a baby in the buff showing off a cute little tush. If they change places it causes confusion for the baby and makes the rest of us poke our eyes out seeing the old man tush.

• A twenty-something rocker jamming on a kicking lead guitar is as cool as the blue haired grandma making her pumpkin pie with her secret ingredients that make it taste amazing. When grandma rocks out, the guitar explodes on the third verse of How Great Thou Art; when the rocker adds his secret ingredient to the pumpkin pie, everyone sits around giggling at how amazing the water looks when the toilet flushes.

• The hillbilly who makes the smoothest moonshine is as handy to know as your blonde neighbor who likes to layout in the tiny bikini in the sunshine. The blonde neighbor trying to make moonshine may lead to exploding stills and seeing the hillbilly in the bikini in the sunshine will make you want to be inside the still when it does.

It is all in how you look at things. Now if you will excuse me, the sun just came out and I need to find my binoculars. Oh no! It’s the hillbilly, again. Never mind.

Unusual Phobias

While looking for unusual words to be used by one of my unusual characters (his name in Tone and is one the main characters in the Spiritscape Chronicles), I stumbled across the word anatidaephobia. Now I am certain all of you are quite familiar with this irrational fear, but on the off chance that you are not well versed on your aquatic avian aversions, allow me to elaborate. It is the fear that somewhere a duck is watching you. I think it inflicts duck hunters who cannot seem to get a shot off. This is not to be confused with anatiDAFFYaobia which only has one reported case. I checked and Elmer Fudd is in therapy for this one.

That got me thinking about phobias. It seems there are irrational fears about everything under the sun. Now that I think about it, heliophobia is the irrational fear sunlight. Sometimes you have to wonder if some of these fears have been created by therapists who don’t have enough clients. Here are a few of my favorite phobias.

Xanthophobia is the fear of the color yellow. When I first read about this one I thought it had something to do with cowardice and being called yellow-bellied. After careful research (a.k.a. Google), I discovered that it had nothing to do with Looney Toons. However, I do believe there should be another one called xanthoSUBMERSIBLEphobia. It is the fear of The Beatles.

Now turophobiacs have a difficult time taking a good pictures. Every time someone raises a camera and says, “Say cheese!” these individuals have a startled look as they search in vain for the terrifying dairy product that causes them irrational fear. It also makes them feel not so gouda. (I know that was a terrible joke, but it’s so bad it’s funny. Right? I said, right? Someone please agree with me.)

In the 80s, with Madonna coming into favor, those with omphalophobia truly had a trying time. These poor individuals with the fear of navels would have hated all those truly great videos including “Like a Virgin” and “Lucky Star”. Going back and looking at them now I wonder, what was the big deal? Sure she is showing off her belly button and making the ophalophobiacs rather uncomfortable; but at least she’s in a boat with clothes on and not naked on a wrecking ball. Is there is a fear of Miley Cyrus destroying your home? Let’s call it collisiusorbuscyriophobia.

Now some of you reading this must have this fear. Nomophobia is the fear of being without mobile phone coverage. I shudder just thinking about that terror. I bet that would make a great horror flick. A group of really hot, physically fit young people are driving through a small town in western Kansas when their car breaks down. They are horrified to discover that there is no cell service and the 4G on their phones is useless. The tension builds as the cheerleader can’t update her Facebook status; the football star can’t tweet what is happening; the texts sent by the girl who is cute-but-not-as-pretty-as-the-cheerleader are not going out; and the cybergeek can’t use a gum wrapper, two toothpicks and a straw to boost the signal. They all die of boredom since they have no idea how to read a book, play a board game or use a landline. Scary, isn’t it?

Now pogonophobia is the fear of Duck Dynasty. Well, actually it’s the fear of beards, but that’s the same thing in my book. As a beard wearing male, I cannot understand this fear. But as a straight beard wearing male, I don’t have to kiss someone with a beard either so what do I know?

I hope these irrational fears have helped you realize and face some of those fears that have been weighing you down. Even if they haven’t, at least you know there are some people who have weirder phobias than you.

Music Has Charms…Sometimes

As I write this blog post, I am listening to Nickelback. It’s making me think about what I would do if today was my last day. I think I’d blow off my diet and drink the largest chocolate malt I could find. Sadly, I think the song was trying to inspire something more than ice cream envy. As I have said in the past, I’m not that deep.

Aren’t there some songs that move you to action? The list of moving songs on my playlists ranges from arias to ZZ Top. With Mozart to metal, my taste in music is eclectic as my writing. In an effort to expand your horizons, it is my duty to share with you some of the songs that will make you think, wonder and go “Ah ha!” Mostly you will be thinking, wondering and going “ah ha” about what I put in my coffee. (Non-dairy creamer makes me loopy!)

“Dressed for Success” by Roxette: It was only after listening to it a couple decades later that I was able to detect the subtext within the lyrics. There is a line that talks about shaking thing up. That is obviously a reference to wearing funky socks with your charcoal gray Ermenegildo Zegna Suit. I’m thinking something with pink flamingos.

“Goodbye Says It All” by Blackhawk: The futurist meaning in this song was truly mind blowing! Can you imagine the shock when I realized the line about no shot at redemption was really about the demise of the flip-phone in favor of the smart phones? Since it was released in 1993 that makes it spooky-visionary since we still had clunky laptops back then. I don’t even want to imagine the back-masking hidden in “Postmarked Birmingham”.

“Round and Round” by RATT: It is really about sharing the merry-go-round with your classmates when the teacher yells at you for making it go by yourself even though you had all agreed to take turns to see who could get it going fastest by yourselves; but the teacher wouldn’t listen to logic and reason, thereby ruining a perfectly good experiment causing you to abandon the scientific method in the second grade to derail your plans at becoming a great scientist. (I may be reading a little more into that one than Steven Pearcy intended.)

“What Hurts the Most” by Rascal Flatts: It’s about stepping on Leggos in the middle of the night.

These insights are startling and alarming. Please do not be concerned. It will be okay. We still have Weird Al to keep us focused on the important things like… ummm… I’ll have to get back to you on that one.