the danger of cleaning a shared fridge

I used to work in a corporate environment, where a whole floor of people had to share the same refrigerator.  As you might expect, people sometimes forgot about their food and left it in there for a long time.  But a policy was developed that the fridge was cleaned out at the end of every week.   Apparently the AT&T building in San Jose, CA, didn’t have such a policy.

Recently an office worker was cleaning the office fridge, and the resulting smell was so noxious that 28 people needed treatment for vomiting and nausea, and 7 were sent to hospital.  I’ve smelled some stinky stuff before, but that’s inconceivably bad.  Actually, that’s beyond stink — that’s some stank!  They had to evacuate the entire building!  And it gets even worse — the hazmat team was called in!

When I lived at “the bachelor pad” in college, the fridge occasionally got out of control, and we joked about leftovers trying to conquer the fridge, but it never actually happened.   But obviously the mold did take control of that office fridge and required professionals to defeat it.

The irony of that story is that the person cleaning it didn’t get sick, because she couldn’t smell due to allergies.

There’s probably a moral to the story…

caption contest, Superman wannabe hanging laundry

I plan to post a new caption contest every Monday, as long as the creek doesn’t rise.   (Fortunately for you, I don’t own a creek.)  That said, it’s Monday, and here’s your new caption contest!

This week’s photo is of Superman hanging laundry.  Well, it’s obviously not the real Superman, given how baggy his costume is, unless he’s really let himself go.   Anyway, explain what might be going on here.  Or make a joke about it.   Or just say something funny that’s somehow related to the picture.

Superman wannabe hanging laundry

(To see the other caption contests, click on the “Say What?” category in the sidebar.)

1960s style trailer for Batman: The Dark Knight

You’ve probably seen the recent Batman movie The Dark Knight, featuring the Joker.  (If you haven’t, what’s wrong with you?   It’s only one of the best action movies ever!)  Anyway, someone made a new trailer for that movie but set it in the context of the 1960s Batman TV series (which is good, but cheesy, and takes itself way too seriously).  Prepare to be taken back in time*.

* Not literally.  That technology is still in the research stage.

Now, the video:

Biden on Obama’s broken teleprompters

To some, Joe Biden is funny.  What makes him funny is that he usually isn’t trying to be funny, but he makes so many verbal mistakes.  Some even call him the “human gaffe machine”.  In this video clip, he was giving a speech and the teleprompter blew over, so he made a joke at the expense of himself and Obama.

It’s good to be able to laugh at yourself, but isn’t it kinda sad that there’s such a reliance on teleprompters that Obama and Biden are known for extreme stuttering and making ridiculous unintended statements when they don’t have them?  I mean, this is the President and Vice-President of the United States, some of the most powerful and influential people in the world!  I know it’s more difficult to speak “off the cuff”, but they should know what they’re doing!

Oh, wait, I got kinda serious there.  This is the wrong blog for that.  My bad…  Let’s go in a different direction.

If you happen to see a question-and-answer session or an interview with Obama where he doesn’t have a teleprompter, you could count how many times he says “Uhh” per minute.  I used to do that with one of my foreign teachers in college who could barely speak English.  (He averaged about 15 times per minute, which is once every four seconds.  Imagine listening to that the whole class!)  Counting this with Obama won’t cause you to miss much — he usually doesn’t answer the question anyway.  Of course he’ll give an answer, but often he “speaks around” the answer, making “politically correct” statements but not actually answering the question or leaving out the specifics.