In fact, even if I wasn’t involved in a murder (which I’m not) and you’re not involved in solving a case (which you’re not, unless you’re doing that home detective thing that Oliver in The Brady Bunch once did…which would also mean you’re jumping the shark), then…

I’m not leaving the time I called on your answering machine. Plain and simple.

In doing research that cannot be referred to or defined as “exhaustive” by any means, I determined that folks started leaving the time they called on people’s answering machines way back when answering machines first made their way into the public consciousness (and into their late 70’s homes). Someone by the name of Jeffrey Dean Sillias was working at Texas Instruments and included his own personally-crafted “sample answering machine message” that went a little something like this:

“Hi. We’re not home right now, but if you can leave your name, number, message AND THE TIME YOU CALLED at the tone, we’ll be sure to get back to you just as soon as we can. Thanks very much, goodbye!”

And thus began the idiotic reason for us telling people what time it is that we left a message.

A few things to remember for those devil’s advocates. Phone answering machines TELL you the time someone leaves a message. Me telling you what time I left my message may not actually be the real time I left the message. Having the knowledge of the time I left the message could be a code that when translated using complicated Nostramusian quadtrain code stuff, predicts the next time I’m going to call and tell you the time I left that message as well.

Get where I’m coming from? Useless.

So if you can tell me why I should leave the time I left the message and how it’s going to (a) help you respond to my message, (b) help you decide your next steps in the ever complicated process of returning a call, or (c) help you help me… please do.

But if you can’t, which I don’t think you can…

…you can expect the time I left that message on your answering machine, isn’t coming anytime soon. Or ever again.

And you stood over there. Ovah there, behind the bread bowls and dehydrated pineapple rings. Talking to someone you’d known for years. Telling them that tomorrow night when the kids went to sleep you’d be breaking out those kick-ass cornish game hens. You described them with such drippy adjectives, that I just had to say, “sounds good.”

But apparently you don’t care that I am interested in your cornish game hens.

The thing is this: if someone standing nearby you happens to hear you mention your cornish game hen plan for Halloween and they reach out of their self-imposed invisible bubble of social-ness to comment on the big, exciting, piping-hot goodness coming your way… I’d think you’d do more than look at the person, say nothing, and get back to your thoughts on appetizers.

To be honest, it was in that moment, when another human being decided that what I had to say about their cornish game hens meant nothing to them to even say a word…that I thought to myself, “What in the heck is the world coming to?” Sure, economic turmoil, political unrest, social depravity and a lack of values have already refused to let go of their evil grip on those around the planet… But when the other human beings on this planet start NOT responding to their fellow man’s commentary about their cornish game hens…

…well, things are truly in the crapper.

Had it been me, and I was talking about my plans to create an original new kind of chicken pot pie (but without chicken, but instead fish….and instead of doing it in a pot shape, but doing it in the shape of a Liberty Bell) and some person I’d never met before in my life spoke up to tell me that my fish liberty bell pastry sounded like the most sumptuous food experience he’d ever heard of (since Chicken Cordon Bleu) — I would have stopped, shook his hand….and said, “You know what? I’m naming my Fish Liberty Bell Pastry after you! What’s your name, kind sir?”

And when he told me it was “Frank Cooper” I would tell him, “Thank you sir. Keep your ears open for the ‘Frank Cooper Fisherman’s Special Pastry Thing’ at a four star restaurant near you soon.

And Frank Cooper wouldn’t have had to go home that night and write about it on his blog. A blog that he probably hadn’t even written on in, oh I don’t know….seven months or something.

Cornish Game Hens. Puh.

2012 and the Mayans have got nothing on this ridiculousness.

• Olives stuffed with feta cheese
• Bumper stickers that brag about your children’s insignificant accolades
• Any and all Leapfrog sub-par children’s electronic products
• Pomegranates
• Ships in glass bottles
• Centimeters…as a measurement. (Who needs ’em!?)
• VHS copies of the 80’s film My Tutor
• Corey Feldman

Thank you for your time.

I never plug anything, which must mean that when I do plug something it’s either because (a) someone is paying me to do so, (b) the voices told me to do so, or (c) the voices are telling me if I plug something someone is bound to pay me.

So without further adieu I ask you wholeheartedly to check out Travels with Two — a travel blog written by my close friend/voice/payroll coordinator. If you like the blog, vote for it here. If you don’t, then may Doc Hudson have mercy on your soul.

Yes. I have kids now. Cars informs everything I do now.

I try to be courteous and listen to my friends and colleagues when they talk to me.

I try to nod and look interested, periodically adding a “Mmmhmm” or a “Oh yeah” or a “No way” all the while they flap their lips, telling me about their nightmares or their car issues or the fact that the water heater in their house burst over the weekend. I try to seem engaged because that’s what a friend or colleague does when their other friend or colleage reaches out and asks to share their latest tale.

But if you’re going to talk to me about how many glasses of water you drank today..? I’m going to opt out.

The “this is how many glasses of water I drank today” goes all the way back to 1989, when doctors and scientists out at Johns Hopkins University came to the table with a startling revelation. That if YOU, normal everyday human being, were to drink close to your body weight in water each day…well… It would make you healthier. It would sweep all the toxins out of your system, free you up for the good nutrients and potentially keep you from getting sick as often as you normally did.

Getting a colonic is healthy, too — but you don’t see people talking about it to their friends.

So when you approach me with your hands in the air and give me the latest “count” for how many 8 ounce glasses of water (or bottles) you’ve downed so far throughout the day, and expect me to be jumping for joy as a result of your dedication hydration exercise, I have to just come out and say that I don’t quite care. That I would rather have someone retell me the story of Howard the Duck in vivid recollection, replete with sound effects and music queues. I would rather have to watch the last 30 minutes of Tropic Thunder and the opening musical sequence of The Hills for the rest of my life, while trapped on an island with a tormenting monkey who speaks in French. I would rather be stuffed in a box and shipped down to Mexico (much like Michael Douglas had happen to him in The Game) but not have a Rolex watch with which to bribe the local border guards, thus causing me to be stuck in the now-drug lord riddled area of Tijuana for the rest of my days….

…than to have you tell me how many glasses of water you drank today.

Bottom line? Nobody cares how much water you drank today. They also don’t care how many packs of gum you ate, how many DVDs you have in your possession or how many times you floss your teeth.

Let’s keep the water to ourselves and make the world a happier place.

What do you say?

The only thing I didn’t see was that damn smoke monster.

Still, I had to come out of hiding to address a slew of unrealistic inaccuracies in Disney’s The Little Einsteins; an often-adorable show about a quadfecta of young friends and their sentient robot rocket, Rocket. On a weekly basis they launch off on a variety of missions and tie in music and art while they’re doing it.

I just wish they could pay as much attention to the other small details.

Besides the fact that animals’ voices don’t sound like musical instruments, and that with the price of real estate these days there’d be no way a bunch of pre-elementary school kids could afford to build a huge underground lair down the hill from their parents house, and way beyond the fact that they travel out of the country on a moments notice without passports, approvals or any kind of permission whatsoever…there’s one glaring visual issue I seriously can’t get past.

Look at this picture:

Here you see all the little Einsteins getting ready to take off in their Rocket. Everyone’s buckled in, they’ve got their seats and they’re ready to go. There’s (from L to R) Annie, Quincy, Leo and June. Most importantly, it’s pretty tight in there, everyone’s seats are all pretty much about two feet from each other (I measured). Pay particular attention to Leo and June and then look at the next picture (a close up of Leo as he gears up to take off):

Do you see what’s bugging me? How is it even possible that Leo is sitting there and we don’t see any of the other kids? From looking at the spatial layout in the first picture we should plainly see June on the right side of this second picture. Nothing matches up. June should be there in the background. Or on the side. Or somewhere.

Basically, we’ve been cheated here, and handed an inconsistency and basically it’s assumed that no one will care, speak up about it, or even mention it on Twitter (which I’m about to do right this second). If this was Transformers there’d be a huge discussion about it on some board somewhere. If this was a Presidential commercial, there’d be a post up about it. But because it’s a kids’ cartoon, everyone just seems to let something like this slide.

And we can’t have it.

Not if we want to save the economy.

Such is the case with this Mental Floss article I wrote about the different crayons that Crayola removed from the world due to political and racial scuttlebuts.