Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Take me out to the . . . maytag factory

Today I was sitting in my cubicle when E. walked in with four candybars.  "Pick two."
I studied the selection:  two Three Musketeers, and two Baby Ruth's.

"I forgot what Baby Ruth's are like.  Do I like them?"

"Probably."

I chose one, opened it, and snarfed it down.  "Yes, I do like them.  They taste like the baseball game."  I was trying to sound knowledgeable about sports for an unknown reason.

"Why would you say that?"

"Um, the name, and the peanuts?  Seems baseballish to me."

"No, this candy has nothing to do with baseball.  People think that all the time, but they're wrong."

I went to Wikipedia and learned that the candy bar was named after Grover Cleveland's baby, Ruth.

"How'd you know that?"

"I'm really smart as long as it doesn't involve my actual work.  Like, ask me how many parts there are to a clothes dryer."

"Um, okay.  How many?"

He stares off into space for a minute.  "If there's a bolt that comes already riveted to a piece of sheet metal, should that count as one thing, or two?"

"Two."

"But if you ordered that part, it would all come together as one thing."

"Okay then, one."

More staring.

"What are you looking at, E.?"

"Just picturing the whole thing going together.  Eighty.  Eighty pieces."

"You know this is going on my blog, right?"

"Duh.  Why do you think I even talk to you?"

Okay then.  I'm pretty hard up for material at the moment, because this lawsuit thing has me pretty rattled.  It's an actual jury trial, with me being the defendant an all, and it makes me think I shouldn't write a word about anything at all.  Especially after listening to this week's Moth episode, in which an innocent man went to jail for 19 years for a crime he didn't commit.  The justice system is a little bit scary.  Clothes dryers seem safe enough, though.

But I would like to add that Snopes does not subscribe to the theory that a candy bar would be named after a former president's dead daughter, 17 years after her death, and coincidentally, during the time when the slugger was the most famous person in America.  (Didn't that sound sporty, to toss out the word, "slugger?").

At any rate, my point being, I got nothin' to write about, but tomorrow might be a whole new ballgame, as it were.

7 comments:

  1. *correction*
    -2- Three Musketeers
    -1- Twix
    -1- Baby Ruth

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  2. It's a good thing I hire a team of fact-checkers. Yes, the forgettable little Twix.

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  3. *clarification*
    regarding the definition of "parts", we are counting components (e.g. Timer) as one part.

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  4. If anyone cares ...
    http://goo.gl/IU2v

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  5. It's always interesting to find out who else gets visitations.

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  6. jury trial, think of the outfits, scarves, yummy

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  7. Now I want a Twix bar. But a trip to the store won't stop at that. I'm sure I'd come home with a new pair of shoes. Twix and shoes. Will power. Will power.

    ReplyDelete

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