T.I.L.T. Things I've Learned Thursday IV

Things I've Learned Thursday is still here! Who knows when I will stop dropping “knowledge”?

* It is impossible to eat more than half of a good sized pizza burger in a decent diner before the sauce soaks through the bread, requiring a knife and fork to finish.

* Random station surfing through radio stations I don't normally listen to has now twice led me to a Katy Perry song with ridiculously catchy lyrics, not to be confused with a nearly-forgotten less-catchy '90s song of the same name by Jill Sobule.

* Mastiff saliva is not unlike soap suds; warm, gross, brownish suds shaken from the jowls of a beast more horse than dog. Also, apparently, that demonic growling sound means “I like you! Come back and pet me!” and not “Come back so I may devour you!”

* Reading.

* We are often more like our parents than we realize or care to admit. A week after falling off a ladder while picking cherries from a tree and badly bruising her feet, my mom finally checked with a doctor who suggested she get a CAT scan. “Didn't I mention I landed on my head?” she asked when I questioned the scan, which was clear thankfully. Given the choice, I've often avoided doctors in favor of a “wait and see” approach. I can't tell you how many times that's worked against me.

* When your Netflix queue is close to 500 movies, it's a good idea to check it every once in a while as you might forget some of the films you've added. This can avoid awkward double features such as Tuesday night, in which I watched the excellent The Bucket List followed by the crap-tacular The Ladies Man. I don't think I've ever been drunk when adding movies, and yet there it was in my mailbox. Some skits can't be stretched to feature length films as well as others, and I'll automatically subtract a star on principle from any movie that includes a scene with a character consuming human waste. I may need to watch Walk Hard again to remind myself Tim Meadows is capable of being hilarious.

* John Witherspoon's presence will almost always guarantee bathroom humor.

* Writing.

* While often credited with the invention of the Radio, Marconi's success was predated by Tesla's and the former based his work on the research of the latter. While I'm basing this information on a bit of dialogue from Morgan Freeman's character in the bucket list, Wikipedia lists quite a few contributors to the technology. It's difficult to credit any one individual, though in the 1943 the Supreme Court ruled against Marconi's claims.

* If there's a line of traffic and you can clearly see a police blockade up the road where a movie or commercial is being filmed, the people behind you will still angrily lean on their horns and even drive on the shoulder of a one lane road to pass you. If I don't roll forward, it's because the car in front of me is stopped. If that car isn't moving, chances are it's waiting for the car in front of it and so on. That's the definition of a traffic jam, you impatient road raging bastards.

* If you shop late enough in the day and tell a cashier, “No, I haven't heard of your store's new credit card,” he'll continue ringing up your order without elaborating further, because after a day of rejection his tired mind will tune out everything after the word “No”.

* If you blink during Atonement, you may miss some nonlinear storytelling as it occasionally reverses time to show key scenes from different perspectives. Good flick, though.

* Keira Knightley's beauty is inversely proportional to the size of her chest. Some would consider her a mathematical anomaly.

* Arithmetic.

Tune in next Thursday or John Byrne will rip up your comics. Let's see how many people get that reference!