RedGage

Off The Wall & Outta The Bag: #2

The Mysteries of Nacho Cheese

[DISCLAIMER] "Off The Wall & Outta The Bag" is an irregular, irreverent, irresponsible waste of time, energy, and space (not to mention unregulated and non-sanctioned) that just may, or may not, answer all your questions about life, love, the universe, and of course - the RG Lifestyle!

Every once in a blue moon ...ummm, well, maybe more often than that ... we'll drag a member kicking and screaming ... uhhh, scratch that! that's what they do over there in the RG Traveling Showcase RV. So ... every once in a while we will reach into the old mail bag or check the wall posts around town for questions from listeners. Now I'm just saying we will get y'all a question, there'd be no telling if'n we'll have any answers ... well, not a good answer anyways, but we promise to try and find an answer, and if'n nothing else we will just make something up!

Recently Bug-In-My-Ear wrote asking:
Hey Mr.Off-the-Wall, I was suspicious about some of those pictures too, but why the phrase "nacho cheese"? What is the best way to deal with this type of theft? unfriend, report, ignore or just seeth in private? Interested to know your opinion on this.

Dear Bug-In-My-Ear,
Thanks for noticing ... first I will share the secrets and mysteries of "Nacho Cheese" and then we will discuss suspicions.

The Tale of "Nacho Cheese"
As with any good tale, we must eventually get to the beginning ... which was many years ago, long before I started leaving "nacho cheese" as a comment.

The origin of "Nachos" are attributed to Ignacio Anaya, known by his nickname "Nacho". In 1943 Ignacio lived in Piedras Negras, Mexico where he was the cook at the Victory Club. One day for a lunch special he invented what we know (and many of us love) as Nachos. Ignacio's original Nachos recipe was a plate of fried maze (corn) tortillas topped with melted cheese and slices of jalapeño peppers. Ignacio served this item as "Nachos Especiales" - which translate to "Nacho's Special" in English - and are now known almost universally as Nachos.

Ok, you say, but why are you serving up Ignacio's lunch special for comments?
Hang on to your somberos Damas y Hombres! We are getting to that, but first a bit or two about "cheese"! This convoluted tale needs some "Cons" and some "voluting" ...

Cheese
Jumping ahead 55 years to 1998 we find the penultimate discertation on Cheese - "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Spencer Johnson. A motivational parable about change in one's work and life featuring the reactions to change by two mice and two "littlepeople" during their hunt for cheese. Who Moved My Cheese? was on the New York Times Best Seller List for almost five years. In the book "Cheese" is synonimous with "pocessions", especially work-related concepts like corporate turf, ideas, but also "things", things like staplers and chairs, and with people taking ..er.. moving someone's "cheese".

"Aaah...", you say, now this is starting to make some sense!
Good! glad you are following along. Finally, we get to the joke ...

Cheez-It commercial: What do you say when the cheese isn't yours? Nacho-cheese!!! (Not-UR-Cheez!!!)

oh...ok, so you want the whole joke not just the punchline from the commercial...

First, this joke has been told over the past 30-40 years with many different racial and ethnic slurs, I'm trying to sanitize the joke to remove as much bigotry as possible, so please bare with me.

There's this unemployed man, his family hungry, who takes a walk to a quiet place at the foot of a big hill. He kneels at the base of a tree and begins praying: "Sweet Jesus, please show me a way to feed my family..."
The man with his eyes closed while praying does not see another man coming over the top of the hill, who stumbles wildly dropping his sack of groceries. Just as the unemployed man finishes praying and opens his eyes, a large wheel of cheddar cheese rolls down the hill and lands right at his feet!
"Oh, thank you Jesus, thank you!" he cries as he grabs the cheese and runs straight home. He gives the cheese to his wife and tells her to make the family nachos to eat.
"But wouldn't you rather have cheese enchiladas and burritos and other things?" his wife asks.
"No!" he says, "Jesus sent this cheese to me with a message ... As I ran home, I kept hearing Him yell down to me - "THAT'S NACHO CHEESE! THAT'S NACHO CHEESE!"

So back to Bug-In-My-Ear's question: "What is the best way to deal with this type of theft? unfriend, report, ignore or just seeth in private? Interested to know your opinion on this."

Oh please Bug, don't "just seethe in private " - you will make yourself totally miserable and possibly develop an ulcer ... or at least a severe case of constipation! (-;

But don't "Ignore "! First thing - VERY IMPORTANT THING - you absolutely have to do - is verify that a suspicious piece of content is not "original". You have to research that content. Once you are certain it is non-original content you can proceed with other actions.

"Unfriend " only if you feel you must. I don't recommend unfriending people because hopefully they will learn how RG works and change their uploading ways, and become a valued member of the RG Community.

"Report "! that is the best thing to do!!! It is called "flagging". You will find a little yellow flag icon [insert icon] just below every piece of content uploaded to RG. Click the flag and select the appropriate reason for flagging - ie "rights violation" for non-original content posted to RedGage. [insert pic of flag options]

Report! version #2 - if you find a lot of non-original content posted by one member the best thing to do is flag 3-4 of them as detailed above, and then contact RG Support with an RG-mail or use your regular email to send the name of the member - ie http://www.redgage.com/suspected-username - so the RedGage staff can take a look-see at all the content uploaded by that member and take appropriate action.

One last thing about Community Self-Policing and Flagging of content - unless you are an employee of RedGage you should not direct or demand that another member remove/delete their content even if you are 110% certain that it is non-original - that's what the RedGage Staff is here for and paid to do! It is best to just flag it and contact RedGage, but if you must say something, try a nice nudge and suggest that they read the RG Help Page about uploading content. http://www.redgage.com/help

I hope that answers Bug-In-My-Ear's questions about the mysterious sightings of "Nacho Cheese" around RG and what to do when you find non-original content on RG. I am quite fond of Ignacio's Especiales but I am hoping to find less Cheese being Moved around on RG and in the future to find it less and less necessary to leave "Nacho Cheese" comments scattered around. I hope you didn't find any nacho cheese dripped on any of your uploads! (-;

By-the-way ... You can celebrate "International Day of the Nacho" on October 21st!