More Silence - And Then Came the Infomercial

Here I am! I've been busy and busy and busy and well...something came up that I just HAVE to share.

For the past week, I have been visiting several of our restaurants before opening time and at closing time to perform some updates to the databases in their registers. This is a fairly arduous task and has been the cause of some sleep deprivation I've had this past week. Every day I have been up some time between 3AM and 4AM (for those of you who are particular about it, that's Central Standard Time), so that I could be in the stores and have the full process completed before they opened their doors at 6. THEN, I would visit a store at 10 and perform the updates and get out of the stores around 12 or 1 (again, central standard time).

There was also work to be done during the day, and I did my best to catch some Z's when I had some down-time, but 2 things kept that from happening: 1) I have a very hard time sleeping during the day and 2) People have a very hard time calling me without making my phone ring. So...even if I did happen to doze off, my phone would ring within a few minutes and wake me up. Even sleeping at night was tough this week because of all the thinking involved in getting this done right - it was hard to turn my brain off when it was actually time to sleep. So most days I was on less than 4 hours of sleep and even one day I was on 1.5 hours of sleep.

I'm not sure why I'm telling you all this except for maybe it sets the stage for the kind of mood I was in this particular morning.

You see, Friday night was the first night I was able to get more than 4 hours of sleep. I probably would have slept until 9 or 10 had my phone not rang at 7:20. I had also taken my pain medicine the night before so I was pretty groggy. But...all in all, I was in a decent mood because I was going to GO HOME (3 Hour drive from where I was).

So I go down for a continental breakfast and sit down with a bagel, some yogurt and a banana. I turn to the large, flat-screen tv mounted on the wall which has the sound turned down. I am watching what appears to be some kind of shopping network or something. I can't really tell what's going on since there's no sound, but usually, one can deduce what's going on in an infomercial, right? WRONG!

There are two people on the screen. One man and one woman. The man appears to be the informercial salesman and the woman appears to be the infomercial oooooooh-and-aaaaahhhh person. I see the man take something that looks like a large phone receiver and stick it to a wall. When I say it looked like a phone receiver, I mean it looked a lot like the photo to the left, except the color was white, there was no cord, and the round parts were much bigger. It looked like some make shift wall-handle. My first thought was, "Oh, yes - because I've always wanted a handle...ON MY WALL!!!!" Funny, yes, but I thought I'd continue watching to see what the purpose for this phone-receiver-looking wall-mountable handle might actually be.

No such luck. The man moved on to another bizarre task. He took 4 or 5 rectangular and brightly-colored sponges and put them on the table in front of the woman. He then takes a chef's knife (as pictured to the right) and presses down on the stack of sponges. I think "Oh - the guy is going to cut sponges with a knife...but what's with the handle on the wall?"

Patiently I wait for the answer to the wall-handle question and continue to push down on the stack of sponges and nothing happens. Well, the sponges compress but there is no cutting going on.

So the guy reaches over and starts sharpening the knife. I think to myself, "Ohhh....he's going to sharpen the knife and THEN cut the sponges. He's selling a knife sharpener! But what's with the handle ON THE WALL????"

So he finishes sharpening the knife and presses the knife down on the sponges. This time quite a bit harder. I'm thinking "If pressing harder did the trick then how am I supposed to know if your sharpener worked, bright guy?"

But, once again, nothing. The woman is smiling and nodding and saying something, but I don't know what. For all I know she could be saying, "If you keep trying to cut the sponges, maybe people won't notice the large plastic handle on the wall right next to me!"

So the guy starts sharpening the knife again. If it's an informercial for the knife sharpener, this is not going well.

So he takes his twice-sharpened chef's knife and pressed down really hard on the sponges this time he starts sawing at the sponges...NOTHING! The woman picks up the top sponge and looks at a tiny cut in the top of it and looks like she's impressed that he was actually able to cut a small slit into the sponge. I'm thinking "Yay, he sharpened it enough to cut a SPONGE; NOW I can use it to cut MEAT! NOW WHAT'S WITH THE HANDLE ON THE WALL?????"

As if to press my insanity over the wall handle to new levels and confuse everything that makes up my mental capacity, the guy then reaches over and picks up a generic can of cola and a square of carpet. "OHHHHH...", I think to myself, "He's selling SPONGES. He's going to make a mess and clean it up!"

So the guy proceeds to dump the entire contents of the can of generic cola onto the square of carpet that is now sitting ont he counter right next to the sponges in front of the woman. "I called THAT!"

Nope!

He then reaches over and picks up a large chamois and starts mopping the cola up off the carpet. At this point I'm thinking "Ok, so the guy is nothing more than a raving lunatic who wants to cut sponges and when that doesn't work he has to throw a tantrum by dumping his soda all over the counter and then feels guilt-ridden enough to mop up the mess...BUT WHAT THE HECK IS WITH THAT FREAKING HANDLE ON THE WALL?????????"

I am sorry to report that I have no idea what that was all about. I don't know why the guy dumped out the soda and mopped it up. I don't know why he tried THREE TIMES to cut a stack of colorful sponges. In fact, had the sound been on, I'd almost be willing to bet that he tried to cut the sponges the woman remarked "WOW! Those are some TOUGH SPONGES!!!" and then he would have replied, "Yeah...too bad they can't clean for CRAP! So here's a chamois!!!"

And...I.DON'T.KNOW.WHY.HE.PUT.A.HANDLE.ON.THE.WALL!!!!!

Please...PLEASE...one of my readers out there...PLEASE tell me that you've seen this infomercial and can fill me in on what it was all about! My mental wellness may very well depend on it!!!