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A woooden board has to lie? I ain’t lettin’ this one by.

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Post #142 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

When is a board not a board? I’m serious. This isn’t a little kids’ joke that can be answered with, “When it’s floating in the water next to the boat.” No, I mean a real board, like a 2×4 that is used in most any kind of house there is.

See, I have a friend who’s taking Shop—the kind where you go build stuff, not the one that teaches you how to behave at the mall—and he told me that a 2×4 is really only one and a half inches by three and a half inches. Huh? That’s a pretty big difference. Say you’re trying to fill a box with a bunch of boards—Don’t bother to ask why. Just go with me on this, okay?—and the box is a foot high, foot wide, and two feet from end to end. Like the box just below, okay.

wooden_gray_box1Nice looking box, eh? Anyway you get some two foot long 2×4’s. You’re good in math so you figure it will take three boards to go across the bottom (which would be a foot total since you multiply 3 X 4) and six boards from the bottom to the top (since 6 X 2 = 12). So that’s 18 boards in all, right?

WRONG! You would still have all this empty space left in the box. I don’t see how builders can work this way. Why isn’t a 2×4 a 2×4? It’s like they round up. Way up. Saying one and half inches is two inches is like adding 33% to it. It’s like those ice cream cartons that everyone calls half a gallon, but they’re way smaller than that. (So the companies can get more of your money without you thinking about it, see? Ooh, they ARE sneaky, aren’t they?)

Hey, if I use this strategy, it could really help me. Say I’m five feet tall. (I’m really taller, but I want the math to be easy.) I can just say, “Yo, dudes, I’m a massive six foot eight inches tall.” (33% extra). Wow, looks like I’m going out for basketball after all.

And if I go to a movie, I can just give the guy in the window $6 and tell him, “Hey, guy in the window, this may look like $6, but it’s really $8. So let me in, all right?”

Just trying to help out, ya’ know. That’s what I do, remember? Point out stuff that needs fixing. Which will make life better for all of us.

Talk to you soon, I hope.

Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

I COULD CLEAN UP MUCH FASTER WITHOUT THIS DISASTER

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Post #141 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

Dudes, you ever do any cleaning in your house? Okay, what if your mom or dad makes you, you know like they say, “You should pull your weight around here, El Sloppo!” or “If you want your allowance this week, you better do some chores around the house”?

Well, it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t. All that matters is that you recognize this thing I’m about to show you.

Gray DustpanYes, almost every house in our country has one of these. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a DUSTPAN. And I had to use one to clean up the kitchen last night. And I discovered an important thing about it. Well, I’ve always known it, but it was still like a WOW moment because I realized it’s time to get rid of this pitiful excuse of a tool and replace it with something better.

Here’s my reason: IT DOESN’T WORK! No matter how hard you try, it always leaves a line of dirt or dust right at its entry point. Then you have to get down with a wet paper towel or something to get up what’s left. What’s with that? How long has this thing been around–since Roman times maybe?–at least in one of those emperor’s mansions or something and even then, some servant probably got his tail whipped because the emperor would come along and say, “Like dude, what’s with this line of dirt on my marble floor?” and he’d send the poor guy off to the lions.

I mean, we’ve replaced parchment, the quill pen, the horse and buggy, the hole in the ground (for going to the bathroom) and most of the stuff from centuries ago with something better.

WHY NOT THE DUSTPAN?

And yes, I know you’ll say a vacuum cleaner is stronger for getting up dirt, but that involves dragging it from another part of the house and it takes too long, man.

So here’s my suggestion for that thing.

dustpan X'ed outGood-bye and good riddance. At least after someone comes up with something that works better. C’mon, Apple. An I-Watch is nice, I’m sure, but I’m talking about something that will really change the world here. And make it cleaner too. Maybe an environmental group will support me on this.

In any case, that’s all I got today.

From someone who’s always trying to make the world a better place,
Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

Joseph A. Bank must own a freakin’ bank to give the deals they offer.

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Post #139 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

I was watching the game the other night. NBA playoffs, of course. And they ran this ad from Joseph A. Bank. It’s a place we all see at malls. Seems like a nice enough store. And they had this ad — I’ll make this short — that said if you buy one suit from them, they’ll give you three more for FREE.

Huh?? Now I know these deals always say the other three suits can’t cost more than the first suit. So I spend — which I’d never do, of course, since why would I need four suits? Look at my picture and you’ll see why I say that — say, $250 for a suit and they give me three others for that same $250.

How can anyone stay in business doing deals like this? I never see car ads — and I see lots of them with not-so-bright types jumping around and acting silly — where they offer $500 or a thousand off or they say they have the best deal around, but I’ve never heard one single car dealer say, “Hey, all you dudes, if you buy one car from me, I’ll give you three more for free.” Nope, not one time. And I don’t see that kind of offer for houses either.

So what gives, Joseph A. Bank?
1) Either you are the most generous people that I’ve ever heard of, or
2) The other three suits are swimsuits, or
3) The other three suits are made of moth wings or fly spit (or some similarly cheap material), or
4) Anybody who buys four suits would probably buy a bunch of shirts and ties and socks and shoes and shoelaces and shoe polish and cufflinks and whatever else I’m leaving out and that would make up some of the difference, or
5) The suits cost you so little, say $50 each because they’re made by very poorly paid workers in Asia, that you can afford to give them away at four for $250. That would leave you at least a bit of profit. But hey, that’s still very little winnings, so the suits must cost maybe $35 or $40 to make, or
6) Since I’ve never really been inside a Joseph A. Bank, one suit could cost over $1000 and my reasoning from #4 is right, it’s just that the suits cost like $150 each to make.

So which is it, Mr. Joseph A. Bank? Or does anyone else know how they do it?

Just wondering.
From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

THE NBA IN 1956? YOU WOULDN’T RECOGNIZE IT!

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Post #138 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

Well, even though they can stay on pretty late, I can’t get me enough of the NBA playoffs. Those guys are simply amazing. Everyone knows about LeBron and Kevin Durant but there are other very cool stories as well. Like Danny Green on San Antonio. Come the playoffs last year and this year, the guy’s on fire! Setting all kinds of records with tons of 3-pointers. But here’s the cool part. He didn’t even START in college. That’s right; he was sixth man at UNC. I remember because I live only about 5 miles from the UNC campus. So a guy who couldn’t be in the top five on his team in college is now going berserk from downtown (3-pt land) in the pros. That shows you sure shouldn’t ever give up, even if you can’t make the first string.

Anyway I decided to look up some history of the NBA. Don’t know why, but I looked up 1956. Oh, that was an interesting year. The Celtics beat the Hawks for the championship. The St. Louis Hawks! Hey, most of the teams we know now didn’t even exist back then. Here were the divisions with all their teams:
East Division
Boston Celtics
Syracuse Nationals
Philadelphia Warriors
New York Knicks

Western Division
St. Louis Hawks
Minneapolis Lakers
Fort Wayne Pistons
Rochester Royals

That’s right! There were only 8 teams in all and get this: 6 of them got to go to the playoffs. Only two were left out. Huh?? And they had teams in Syracuse, Fort Wayne, and Rochester! Not exactly huge cities nowadays. But I can’t believe they were that big even back then. I guess it shows there wasn’t a ton of interest in having an NBA team in your town. Too bad I wasn’t around. I could have started up a team no problem and no doubt made some nice coin over the years.

Anyway, then I decided to look up some salaries from back then. I mean right now, Kobe Bryant makes $30 million a year. And he didn’t even play this year. #2 is Dirk Nowitski at almost $23 million. #3 comes Amar’e Stoudemire, another guy who hardly played. (Where can I sign up for those jobs? I can’t play either and I’ll gladly take even half of that.) Even a low paid star — like Tim Duncan — gets $10 million. But back in 1956, Bob Cousy of the Celtics and Bob Pettit of the Hawks made the top salaries of $25,000 a year! Say what?? And yeah, I know about inflation, but that still wouldn’t come anywhere close to what even the lowest paid players on teams make now.

Man, there’s a lot out there I don’t know. Since I’m pretty sure I’ll never be a pro player in anything, maybe I should get more tuned into history. Seems pretty interesting.

Well, back to the playoffs. Go, San Antonio! I felt bad for them when they blew the finals against the Heat last year. Hey, give someone else a chance, LeBron.

Just sayin’.
From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

A GREAT HOCKEY IDEA THAT TURNED OUT TO BE BULL HOCKEY

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Post #136 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

Oh, Dr. Crankenfuss was ready with a great sports idea yesterday. Yes, Dr. C was going to change the game of hockey forever–revolutionize it, you know–and everybody would know his name. But it turns out he was sadly mistaken and as a result, still very few people know his name. Oh, well. I’ve got lots of time left to come up with some earth-shaking ideas. (At least, I hope I do.) Anyway, here was the idea:

I figured a hockey team could hire the biggest sumo wrestler in the world, a guy like six hundred pounds or so, and they could make him the goalie. All he’d have to do is kind of crouch, or even sit, in front of the goal and he’d practically cover the whole thing up. The other team would be so ticked off, but there’s nothing they could do. You can’t score a goal through a 600 pound wall, can you? The result would be a complete shutout for the Crankenfuss-advised team and certain fame for Dr. Crankenfuss, just like that guy who invented Moneyball for the Oakland A’s. (He was played by Brad Pitt in the movie.)

I was already set to post this idea, send it off to Sports Illustrated and maybe the Nobel Prize Committee, when I did some internet research first. Aw, drats! The idea had already been thought of and shot down on several different forums. (Type “fat goalie rules” into your search bar and you’ll find the same discussions I did.) So here are the reasons my hockey idea turned into bull hockey:

1) Even if the idea did work, it would only work for one game. Once all the other teams saw the earth-sized guy stopping all those shots, every team in the league would sign up a similar type guy within a day or two. Nobody would ever score again and the league would shut down from lack of attendance. (To give myself some credit, I thought of this one on my own before I did any web research. The ones that follow I found on those forums.)

2) The hockey goal is 4 feet high and 6 feet long. Even a super huge guy couldn’t cover all that space up. There would be little spaces left open, like at the upper corners. And–I didn’t know this before–hockey players are so good, they could hit a lot of those little spaces. Now not all the time, but enough times to still score because a guy who weighed that much wouldn’t be the most agile dude around so flailing his arms wouldn’t stop a lot of the shots. (I found this amazing video on YouTube put on by “Sports Science” that proves this beyond a doubt. And it’s really funny too. I can’t believe only half a million people have seen it. It deserves more airplay than that.)

3)The are NHL limits on how big the pads can be on a goalie. That’s so they can’t wear five-foot wide pads and stop the puck that way. The trouble for our hypothetical sumo goalie would be that the pads would be way too small for his giant body. So most of his body wouldn’t have padding on it. So the other team would slapshot the puck over and over into the poor goalie’s body at 100 miles per hour or so. You know, to soften him up a bit. Youch! After ten minutes, he would have puck sized dents in him. Heck–and this is a scene I came up with all by myself–the puck would probably get lodged into his body and they’d have to call a time out to get a rescue squad in to get the puck out. It could be jammed like six or more inches into one of his fat rolls.

So even though my idea wasn’t as original as I thought, I still learned a bunch by researching about it. So I thought I’d pass the info along. And you got to see a very cool video as well.

From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
who’s always tried to exude
new ideas imbued
with goodness (you know, like health food),
Dr. Crankenfuss