Wednesday, January 10, 2007

TMI

I read a random bit of information somewhere; and when I say “somewhere,” I mean some random place on the internet. If I had read it in Playboy, I’d just come out and say so. Shy I am not. But let me not keep you in suspense. What I read was that an ear of corn has, on average, 800 kernels wrapped in its silky husk.

First of all; how do you get the job of kernel counter? Then, who pays this person to sit around counting bits of corn and averaging it out? I am sure there is a government grant out there somewhere that is funding this. And why are they doing this counting?

Did we really need to know this kernel (Ha ha! Get it? Kernel!) of useless information? Unless it is winning me a car in some kind of contest in Iowa, I’d rather be guessing the number of M&Ms in a pickle jar. This random bit of fluff has dislodged some other bit of information in my brain, I am sure. Hopefully it wasn’t something important. I already can’t remember phone numbers to save my life. Well, except for my friend Katy’s number, cause it is kinda awesome. As is she. (No, I won’t give you the number, she’s happily married.) (By the way, Katy, you realize this means you are the first person I am calling if I need bail money. Just saying.)

But back to the subject, because I know you are all ears (Get it? “Ears,” like corn! I crack me up.) (And no, this is most likely not the last of the corny puns.) (See there was another one!)

Have we really run out of important things to discover? Isn’t cancer and AIDS still a concern somewhere in this world? Don’t we have a plethora of things that we could have been having Colonel Counter working on? Or is this the level of his ability to participate? Is this someone who had been counting sheep but kept falling asleep? Or was this some really annoying guy who kept getting in everyone’s way while they were working on real science? “Hey, will someone find something for Dwayne to do? He keeps trying to play “Pong” on the particle accelerator.” “Okay Dwayne, go down to the farmer’s market, buy all the corn you can, then count the kernels in each ear, and find he average. Off you go!” “Okay, Steve, you make a tape of random numbers to play while he is counting, to make him lose his place and start over and over.”

And another thing; How do we know this is even accurate? Is someone going to do a follow up to check the numbers? I know I’m not going to do it. I have books to read, movies and TV to watch and music to listen to. Although I guess you could listen to music while counting. Just not anything like 99 Luftbalons or anything from the Schoolhouse Rock math series.

Now that we have spent the last five hundred or so words discussing useless information, I feel like I have just contributed to the problem. But thanks for letting me bend your ear. (All right, I’m done with the puns now.)

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Random fact: The average foot has 4.89 toes on it. Don’t believe me? Just start counting.

1 Comments:

Blogger Ulysses said...

Or, you could sing:
1 kernel of corn on the cob,
1 kernel of corn,
if you made you living at this kind of job...
2 kernels of corn on the cob.
2 kernels of corn on the cob,
2 kernels of corn,
After one or two rows, my head starts to bob...
3 kernels of corn on the cob.

3/29/2007 8:26 PM  

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