Category Archives: Pass it on

MMeM, Vol. 14 Issue 13 – PING!

…happens without fail no matter,

Have you ever noticed, in movies and TV, that no matter the situation or environment, whenever a bullet is removed from a human body it is ALWAYS dropped into a shiny chrome bowl? Ping! This happens without fail, no matter the genre, the decade, the scene, or however outlandish the moment might be. Sure, emergency operating rooms are one thing, I expect that, but out in the wilderness somewhere when Carl with a rusty buck knife pries a slug from his buddy’s thigh, somehow a clean shiny chrome bowl always suddenly appears for the dramatic noisy PING effect drop.

It’s so cliché in entertainment that you come to expect it now know matter the situation. Someone’s been shot! Oh no! The bullet must be removed! Someone has forceps after burrowing into flesh and bone to then extract said projectile from body and hold it up for all to see. Then, PING!

I finally had to spout off after watching for the umpteenth time the other day, the first 21 minutes of The Bourne Identity. Good movie and as you all know, the first of 5 “Bourne” movies which have more camera cuts and shake view than a 3-year-old using mommy’s iPhone camera.

Anyway, it opens with an Italian fishing boat floating off of the coast of Marseille, France at night.

They find an unconscious retrograde amnesia-afflicted AND bullet ridden man in the water. The ship’s apparent “old man, part-cookie-part-sea-time surgeon” digs out a bullet, holds it up to the dim light in the cabin below deck, and wah-lah! Drops it into a shiny chrome bowl that just happens to be on this Italian fishing boat in the Mediterranean Sea at night.

OH, but of course.

PING!

MMeM, Vol.13 Issue 36 – 2017 Change Part 2 of ?

…changing things up a bit.

The decade of the 2010’s has brought a great deal of change and I’m not referring to more state quarters. While I mention the decade, what do we call this decade? The “Tens?” The “Teens?” I don’t know anyone from the 1910’s to ask what they did then so I’m not sure what the protocol was. But anyway, I digress.

This nameless decade has been a doozy for changing things up a bit. It’s been a real humdinger, a real bally hoo as one may have said back in the previous “xx10’s” decade.

Here’s a list that I’ve been jotting down the past few years, to denote some of this “change”.

  • Mt. McKinley, once so named to honor the assassinated 25th President of the U.S. William McKinley Jr. is now called Denali as the area was previously known by indigenous people in Alaska.
  • SeaWorld no longer has Killer Whales, err Orcas.
  • Bruce Jenner, 1976 US Olympic Gold Medalist in the Decathlon, is now Caitlyn Jenner.
  • Columbus Day is being renamed to Indigenous People’s Day.
  • Q-Tips have no safe use involving ears.
  • Hooded pullover sweatshirts once called “Hoodies” have been all but banned.
  • Clowns have become murderers and legitimately frightening Halloween costumes.
  • Ski Masks are only allowed during bank robberies.
  • Mini plastic baggies have been banned.
  • Crayola, for the first time in its 100-year history, retired a color from its 24-count box. They retired dandelion. Erasing it from the color bank. Sending it into the crayon black hole.
  • Monopoly’s Thimble & Iron are GONE!
  • Ketchup & Mustard makers are making each other’s products.
  • After 146 years Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus ends .
  • Cable companies want to be phone companies and phone companies what to be cable companies.
  • Some women want to be men and some men want to be women.
  • The USPS has begun to deliver on Sundays when needed due to the influx of Amazon packages and deliveries that need to be made.
  • You have to present ID showing you are over 21 to purchase O’Doul’s.
  • You have to show ID to purchase spray paint
  • The phrases clockwise and counterclockwise will one day very soon lose all meaning to current and future young persons.

…to be continued

MMeM, Vol.13 Issue 35 – 2017 Change Part 1 of ?

Enter, the pay phone graveyard.

Change. It’s usually thought of as disruptive and unsettling. Then again, change takes place constantly and at such a rapid pace today that you almost don’t notice it. I used to think that I hated change, but technology and innovation have helped to slowly change (pun intended) my mind.

Taking a look back at how things were always done before can be valuable perspective on ways to do things better in the future. Learning from history and past  failures so as to not repeat them again is one of the adages we often hear, and more often ignore.

At any rate, when one looks around there are reminders of the not so distant past everywhere. Moreover, there are absences of what used to be all too common everyday conveniences of the day. Take pay phones. We know where they’ve gone figuratively, but where do the actual phones go when they die? Nobody needs pay phones today. Need to make a nefarious somewhat anonymous phone call now? No pay phone? No problem. Get a burner phone, use it, toss it.

Enter the pay phone graveyard.

Ah, the public pay phone. Who could ever forget all of the convenience, the increase in cost, the switch from coins to swiping cards, the GERMS? Back when you used actual currency with a pay phone, didn’t you always check the coin return at the end of a call to see if you got change for some reason? Then, there was the urban legend that someone was putting HIV laced needles in coin returns of pay phones. That legend almost rivaled razor blades in candy bars at Halloween.

Yes, the pay phone will always hold a special place in our hearts as can be seen in the museums above.

MMeM, Vol.13 Issue 17 – Chop & Steele

…fact checking or vetting anymore.

I hope you’ve seen this and if you haven’t, you have got to find these guys hilarious. Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher are hosts of the Found Footage Festival. They specialize in spoofing unsuspecting local news stations into airing their shenanigans and proving time and time again, that hardly anyone does a good job of fact checking or vetting anymore. Rather, filling air time with content by any means necessary is the only goal.

Subsequently, the results are hysterical. By sending out a press release “claiming to be an inspirational strongman duo that referenced a nonexistent tour and an “America’s Got Talent” appearance, offering no video or documentation—they were immediately booked by seven different shows across the country”. They were booked on 7 morning shows and actually appeared on 3 before they cancelled the rest due to being too stressed out to continue.

As fictional strongmen “Chop” and “Steele”, they showcased some of their “Feats of Strength”. Below, please dry your eyes after watching these duped morning crews while “Chop” and “Steele” perform by smashing baskets, breaking sticks they found in the parking lot, lift chocolate milk, and assist one standing on their head.

Without further ado, I give you Chop and Steele:

It’s not until the headstand that you can see one of the hosts begin to crack a smirk. All in all, the ability of Chop and Steele to stay in character is amazing. BRAVO!

 

MMeM, Vol.13 Issue 13 – So ILL

…let nature take its course.

Here in the home of Midwestern Meditations, the bankrupt state of Illinois, things are eroding, cracking, and rusting away. Take license plates for instance. How long do you think that states have been making plates in aluminum for obvious reasons? Here in ILL the aluminum plate debuted in 1950. Yeah, using the old three-letter USPS abbreviation for Illinois seems tremendously appropriate these days.

However, apparently someone in the license plate construction process used a type of paint that contained a corrosive metal subsequently making the use of aluminum plates useless. Heck, I have a license plate that began the, all to familiar around here, bubbling up rust pattern around the letters (WTL NX YR).

Fortunately, the CUBS made that license plate officially NULL and VOID last year, and I have a generic state issued ready to rust model.

The other day I saw a pristine example of our state’s great plates. Usually, I would think about obstructing the plate for the person whose plate this was, but obviously that work was not needed in this case.

Yeah, that plate is completely unaltered via photographic software.

Have you ever heard about people getting confusing combination of letters on their plates to make it harder for police to look up or write down their plates, i.e. MNMMWNM? Well, if speeders and criminals exercise a bit of patience here, they can just let nature take its course.

I’ve heard of people getting tickets for having an obstructed view of their license plate such as a tinted plate cover, etc. Obviously, no one can read this plate and it should warrant a ticket, but who should get the ticket? Not the driver or registered owner of the car, but I think the State of ILL should get the ticket!

#FAIL ILL

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