Another chance to win a quarter...

Why is this house three stories tall but only one window wide?

I Cannot Think of Any Good Captions for This Picture

"Waiter, there's more than a fly in my soap."

One Peak Minute Over the Line

I was searching for the appropriate bumper sticker to buy for my car when I came upon the following picture of a streaker at a New Zealand rugby match.

That's right, he's talking on his cell phone while he's streaking in a stadium.
My guess is that it wasn't long distance.

The Guys at Google are Having Way TOO Much Fun Again!

It's Google explaining how they rank pages.
Here's a hint: the image above is part of the explanation.
PigeonRank

Monday going okay so far?

Monday morning, what could be worse?

Why a David Hasselhoff music video of course!

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO
Ooga Chakka!

Not had enough.
CLICK HERE to see The Hoff on the Beach!

The War Between The Dates

Trying to match Stan in number of blogs, siren and phoenix have a new blog (Beauty and the Greased) where they invite a female blogger and a male blogger to debate a point of conflict between men and women. The most recent post involved whether a man should use a coupon to buy dinner on a blind date. I expressed the opinion in a comment that using a coupon at any time was not something a real man would do unless made to do so by his wife. Fuzz is still sending me threating telepathic messages for questioning his manliness!

While busy dodging fuzz's psychic grenades, I have been trying to remember the various reasons that I've heard for not having a second date. Here is a partial list:

-- "He had a 'Kerry' bumper sticker" -- contestant on Elimidate last week.

-- "She fell out of the car into a puddle of her own vomit" -- friend.

-- "He's cut/uncut" -- various -- I have never understood how this comes up (sorry) during a blind date.

-- "He has cannisters" -- friend -- She was referring to those containers that you put on the kitchen counter top that contain sugar, flour, etc. I have no idea why they would turn someone off.

-- "He brought flowers" -- co-worker -- apparently considered by some to be sexist.

-- "He wore Dockers" -- friend of friend -- Why? "Because it showed he didn't really care."

-- "She was not ready on time" -- friend -- Clearly a guy who will never have a second date.

-- "She spoke French to the waiter" -- relative -- I can kind of see his point, she was showing him up (even if unintentionally).

-- "She had curlers in her hair" -- friend -- ...so she would look good for the second guy?????

-- "He had not been to graduate school" -- someone I had a date with, explaining her last previous date. Why? "Because people who have not been to graduate school do not read." I should have let it go but didn't. What about Harry Truman, I asked, he read a book a week. "He would be too liberal." I pointed out that he had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan and founded the CIA, not very liberal things. She had no reply since I was clearly confusing her with facts.

-- "He had no tattoos" -- overhead at grocery store checkout line yesterday (I am so out of touch with the twenty-something world).

-- "She kept calling me 'Dan'" -- friend named Don.

A Copper Chopper

Loopy Loop

Rooty and I just finished our grand tour of town. It was actually more of a petite tour but we like to pretend otherwise.

First stop was the Milk Place. It has another name but that's what I call it -- because that's where I go to buy milk. There is a noticeable difference in taste between Milk-Place milk and supermarket milk so it is well worth the extra stop. It is actually more of a little convenience/grocery store for the neighborhood that it is in than merely a milk-place -- but they also sell cigarettes so the punk-factor is sometimes a little high.

There are two clerks at the Milk Place. There is an older women, who should probably be retired, but most likely put her money in tech stocks in the 1990's. There is also a guy about 21. He is incredibly thin and has very, very curly hair. The following photo isn't him, but you get the idea. His hair is either naturally aggressively curly, or he is the last guy in America with a perm.
Our next stop was Walgreen's. I like Walgreen's. Everything in every store is in exactly the same place. I could tell you exactly where to find Royal Dansk Cookies at your local Walgreen's! Actually, we went through the drive-through, where I caused chaos because I wanted to change the credit card for my Express Pay. That crisis resolved, I bet you can guess our next stop.

We went to the new McDonald's rather than the old, just because I wanted to see how they are coming with rebuilding the highway (Old U.S. 66). The new McDonald's also has a gas station attached so we got gas . [INSERT OWN JOKE HERE]

From McDonald's we looped around to get to a drive-through pizza place. I had placed an order and paid for it online so all we needed to do was, well, drive through. I wanted to order from Pizza Hut, which also has online ordering and a drive-through, but I could not get access to their online ordering page. The site would not accept my ID and password -- my online bank has less security. It recognized my email address but rejected either Rooty's name or my date of birth. It wouldn't just send the info to my email address, and it would not let me register again because my email address was already "registered." The proverbial Catch-22 had foiled my pizza plans, and I was not about to call a 800-number so I could order online.
With pizza in car, we made a half-loop back to use a new state highway to get through town. Illinois is the only state I have been in where there are state highways that have neither number nor name. You just have to know that they are there. This does tend to lessen the amount of traffic so we were back home in no time.

Then it started to rain.

Terra Not-So Firma

Apparently, the military unit in this video decided to show off a little for the camera. The beach turned out to be not quite as firm as they thought it would be! Be sure your sound is on, the audio starts when they "hit the beach," you can hear the guys laughing under the music. My guess is that the plan was to land and then rush towards the camera with weapons ready. That was the plan.

Military Beach Landing Video

NOTE: The video is titled Belgiumelite so I assumed that the guys were Belgians. "Elite" usually refers to a special forces unit of some type. Mik says "from the kit and weapons, those are British Squaddies not Belgians." Apparently he recognized one of his British cousins stuck in the mud or something. I defer to his expertise and have changed the post accordingly.

No person is allowed to sit on it, but...

Rooty sleeping on grandma's sofa last weekend.

"Put that damn camera away!"

"I'm going back to sleep. Get a life!"

[Yes, there is a TV behind the sofa. I don't know why.]

[You can see Rooty's right front leg is sticking straight out, hanging in mid-air. I have mentioned before that is how he sleeps. If he sleeps on his back, his legs are straight up.]

The Mega-Week Must End Soon

So far, there have officially been 15 days in this week! I've had it. I'm going to play LINGO for the rest of the day.

Go to the LINGO single player site.

There is an ad that will go away as soon as the game loads.

Use your keypad to type the words.

The rules are below.

Now this is just wierd

I do the grocery shopping for two elderly people (90+) -- I need the Karma and they bake me cookies. This means that when I go to the grocery store, I'm shopping for three people and have three orders to keep separated in the cart. I go at odd times since I always have three orders at the checkout and I don't want there to be any people behind me going crazy.

I went yesterday evening. I don't buy much for myself (since only Rooty eats in) so my stuff goes where other people put their kid. I then use some large item to keep the two remaining orders from co-mingling in the larger part of the cart.

I had just about finished yesterday when I realized that I need to go down the pasta aisle and pick up some shell-pasta. Rather than push the cart, I left it at the end of the aisle and went and got what I needed. When I got back, the cart was gone. At first, I thought I had just forgotten where I put it. Then, I realized that someone stole it! That's right, someone swiped my full cart of groceries. Two store clerks helped me look but we could not find it. Whoever took it must have headed right for the checkout.

Why? Who would want someone else's unpaid-for groceries? Could anyone actually be that lazy?

So, I had to start over, and find all of those items again.

How weird is that?

Are the Smurfs Really Pink?

Are the Smurfs communists? Do they spread dissension through communism? Are they a manifestation of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto? Have the Smurfs indoctrinated the youth of America with god-less communist propaganda and recruited them as mindless zombies in the international communist conspiracy? This guy seems to think that maybe they have? The guys below may prove his point.

Will this week just never end???

Will Pat Robertson say it's God's punishment for all that dancing?

Chris Penn, 41, was found dead last night in California.

Chis was son of director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan. His brothers are actor Sean Penn and musician Michael Penn.

The picture above is from Footloose.

The character "Willard" in Footloose was written specifically for Chris. When the producers found out that he actually did not know how to dance, the famous "learning how to dance" screen with Kevin Bacon (Ren) was written and added to the movie.

Not Ready for Primetime News

Migrant workers in south China are wearing adult diapers on packed trains heading home for the Lunar New Year holiday because they have no access to a toilet.

An Oregon man hurled both of his prosthetic legs at a state trooper, striking him with one, after his son was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

A Frenchman was fined 214,000 euros ($262,700) for attacking a urinal artwork, it was the second time he has attacked it since 1993. Following is an actual photo of the artwork, no kidding.

During the same two-year period that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spent $1 million to convince the public that its tap water is safe and tasty, it also spent $31,160 for Sparkletts bottled water for its own employees.

Meanwhile, in Tejas

Phoenix did a post today about blimps -- yes, of course, I did a phallic joke -- so I wanted to talk about the Helium Museum in Amarillo. Oddly enough, it seems to have disappeared. For years there was a sign on I-40 marking the exit to the Helium Museum, I was always hoping that it hovered a few feet above the ground. Maybe it finally just floated away.

There remains a Helium Monument in Amarillo (pictured above). It used to be right along I-40, but it now seems to be in another location. They claim the Army moved it, I prefer to believe otherwise.

Speaking of Texas, Mr. Toast has a terrific post about Texas drivers. No matter where you live, you will recognize that what Texas drivers do is very similar to what the drivers near your home also do. The following is just an excerpt, the full post is a great read.

On the Houston freeways in particular, everyone practices what I call the "hole theory" of driving, which is as follows: you own the "hole" that exists between your front bumper and the rear bumper of the car in front of you, and you guard it at all costs. This hole must be large enough to allow time to react if the car in front of you slows down or stops (the trick to this is to watch the brake lights not of the car in front of you but the car in front of him). But, if your hole is too large you will be taken advantage of and every other vehicle on the freeway will cut you off mercilessly. You might as well display a large sign on the front and rear of your car that says "PLEASE CUT IN FRONT OF ME. I AM AN IDIOT."

For information purposes only

My experience has been that the people that I know who have an opinion on either side of the abortion issue have never read Roe v. Wade [410 U.S. 113 (1973)]. This is essentially what it says:

(a) During the first trimester, the decision must be left to the woman and her doctor (Right to Privacy).

(b) During the second trimester, the State may regulate but not prohibit (and any regulation must be reasonably related to the woman's health).

(c) During the last trimester, the State may prohibit (except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother).

The present 34 challenges to Roe are almost exclusively concerned with state laws enacted under #b above -- how extensive can state regulation be before it becomes a prohibition?

The position of the Catholic Church is that abortion cannot be used to save the life of the mother, even if it is known that the baby is unlikely to survive. See: Pastoral Guidelines for the Catholic Hospital and Catholic Health Care Personnel Ad Hoc Committee On Pro-Life Activities, National Council of Catholic Bishops (April 11, 1973).

This is neither a political nor religious blog. There are plenty of those. If you wish to make a religious or political comment on abortion, please go to one of those blogs. The above is provided for information purposes only in light of the extensive coverage of the speeches and commentaries that will mark the anniversary of Roe this week.

Celebrity Kinder Nomenclature Capers

Cute names for kids are cute as long as the kids remain cute, and remain kids. Then they grow up. And get hairy.

Frank Zappa started all this with Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva.

Bob Geldof -- (4 daughters) Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa, Fifi Trixabelle, Pixie Frou-Frou, and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lilly.

Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) -- (daughter) Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette.

Demi Moore and Bruce Willis -- Rumer Glenn, Scout LaRue and Tallulah Belle.

Sylvester Stallone -- Sage Moonblood and Sistine Rose.

Christie Brinkley -- (daughter) Sailor.

And finally, Rob Morrow (Northern Exposure, NUMB3RS) -- named his daughter Tu -- that's right, he named his kid Tu Morrow.

Inspecting the "troops"

Here we go again (see January 2nd). Click on the photo to see a version with the green ban removed. Was that Cialis just before the awards ceremony really a good idea?

How did it get to be monday so fast?

Tongue Twister Time

Reed Wade Road

Bug's black blood

A real rare whale.

Does this shop sport short socks with spots?

The crow flew over the river with a lump of raw liver.

Irish wristwatch.

Six thick thistle sticks.

Tim, the thin twin tinsmith.

and the classic:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

in quest of the normal curve

In my quest to absolutely and completely waste this day (Saturday), I've spent the evening flipping coins on Ken's Coin Flipping Page. Since flipping two, or ten, or 100 coins at a time serves no real purpose, this is a major must try site.

Note: Ken appears to be Canadian, which might explain things. :)

Freeway Frolics

SignMaker is an online java applet. You can make Interstate signs, U.S. Highway signs, and state highway signs. I have pretty much amused myself with it all afternoon.

You cannot save the signs directly but there are instructions about how to save them. I did ALT + Print Screen and then "Paste as New Image" in Photo Editor.

The applet takes a little time to load, then click "Show Signs and Control" -- this is very faint -- it is at the bottom of the applet box when it fully loads.

You can also download a version to use on your PC.

It's the most useless site I have ever found!!!

Go to site. Type something in the box. Click Lamerize. Say "That's really stupid."

Hit yourself in the head with a hammer. Then rent one of these sports movies for Saturday night.

Battlefield Baseball (2003) -- Described as a low-budget zombie sports musical comedy.

The Iron Ladies (2000) -- Described as an exuberant comedy about the journey of a volleyball team composed largely of transsexuals, drag queens, and effeminate gay men to the 1996 Thai male championships.

The Iron Ladies (2003) -- Cuz they just had so darn much fun making the first one.

The Replacements (2000) -- Keanu Reeves as a football player.

Must Miss TV + A Winner

Thursday nights used to be the TV night. No matter how bad the week was going, Thursday nights on NBC were always good escapism. Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends, Fraizer -- you could always get a laugh on Thursday and have something to talk about at work on Friday.

Now, we have:
Will & Grace -- which has officially run out of gay jokes.
Four Kings -- features four best friends who have nothing in common except that they are in the same sitcom.
My Name is Earl -- about a guy who needs a shave and a haircut (it won the People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Comedy, proving yet once again that Americans do love to laugh at trailer trash).
The Office -- based on the BBC comedy of the same name, the same way that Gilligan's Island was based on Masterpiece Theater.

On the other hand, hidden over on ABC on Thursday nights is Crumbs. No one plays crazy better than Jane Curtin, and she is crazy at its best here. There is also Fred Savage, who clearly has the best agent in Hollywood, who is or is not gay. Eddie McClintock plays his brother and, for once, we have pretend brothers who actually look as if they could be brothers. William Devane also plays crazy but it appears contrived. Jane as crazy, however, is just an out of control looney! Crumbs is definitely worth a nibble.

It's been this kind of week!

So I'm staying under my bed all day today.

How about underwater bowling?

Left alone, any bunch of guys will eventually create a new sport. This one is called Underwater Hockey -- it's billed as the only sport in which the players are not able to breathe. They seem to think that's a good thing. Exactly the same would be true for spectators, of course, which is probably why there ain't none!

"The idea of the game is to use the pusher to push, pass or flick a 1.3kg (3lb) puck between team mates to get the puck into the opposing team's 3 metre long goal (called a "gully") at the end of a 25 metre pool."

"There are 10 people in a team, but only six are allowed in the water at one time. This results in fast substitutions which resemble tag wrestling. The idea is to work quickly, and then get out to recover. This increases the speed and exhilaration of the game."

It is probably superfluous to add that all this originated in England.

A slice of life

My social life has reached a new low, I've been invited to an adult circumcision. The invitation came today in the mail. Appropriately enough, I opened it with a letter opener.

It gets worse. The guy's wife is planning this as a surprise party. The timing of when everyone yells "surprise" would appear to be very critical.

The invitation makes the point (sorry) that he's having it done for "cosmetic" reasons -- unless he's going to start exposing himself at bus stops, I have no idea what that might mean.

I was once invited to a bris. It was very nice. They served cake. Everyone received a commemorative ball point pen. Nobody else did, but I thought that was really, really funny.

The invitation that I received today says "No Presents," which of course means that they expect a present. What do you give a guy who now has less than everything? A mutual friend sent an email to me saying that he is considering giving steak knives, a new putter, or a big tube of SuperGlue. He was not joking, he once gave dueling pistols as a wedding present.

A friend who is a RN says that this procedure starts with two injections of local anesthetic. I will be passed out on the floor by then so whatever happens next really does not matter.

As if this could not be any weirder, what we will actually be watching in their home will be a video tape of the unveiling that will take place at a hospital earlier in the day. I've seen this guy naked, that camera is going to need a zoom lens!

Bumb and dumber

Have you ever noticed that people who are stupid are consistently stupid. On our way back from McDonald's, we followed a car down this street. It came to a full stop at the sign in the picture. Okay. It does sort of have a picture of a stop sign on it. The sign is there because there is a stop sign just a little beyond a curve up ahead.

Can you see this one coming?

When the driver who stopped at the sign that isn't a stop sign got to the actual stop sign he just went right through it! He neither looked in any direction, nor paused in the slightest. Since cross traffic does not stop, he was very lucky. You probably know this guy, he's the one who turns on his left blinker and then turns right.

Put away that camera or I'm going to eat your face!

Rooty went to the doggie doctor today. Actually, he went to his doggie specialist in St. Louis. The terrific news is that his blood tests all turned out within the normal ranges, following several month of some apprehension. But he had a cyst on his tail that had to come off, which it did. It was just a cyst, however, so that was also good news.

When we got home, he climbed into his bed (above). He was tired -- you can see it in his eyes -- and not happy that I was taking his picture.

His bed has grown organically. There is actually a doggie bed under there someplace. That gray thing is a twin-size feather mattress doubled over. He really likes it. The blue thing to his right (your left) is a blanket from my bed. It and a couple pillows from my bed ended up in the family room and Rooty claimed them immediately. They have been part of his bed ever since. The red thing is my sister's blanket when she still lived at home (hehe). The white thing is the towel from my shower this morning that somehow ended up on the floor in the family room. What's missing from his nest is a giant comforter -- it has a white backing and his tail was still bleeding some so I put it in a chair.

From Alleys to the Ridiculous -- The Latest News

From CBS News:

New Invention Removes Odor From Hog Manure: A man has received a $500,000 federal grant to mass produce his invention, a machine that removes the odor from hog manure.

Two-Year-Old Called for Jury Duty: Kaylee Reynolds had a problem when she recently received a summons to serve on a jury. She wasn't old enough to read it. [The birthdate that the county had for her was July 4, 1776, shouldn't that been some type of tip off?]

Lawmaker Aims to Lower Urination Penalties: Ken Ortmann, a St. Louis Missouri alderman who owns a local tavern wants to lower the penalties for public urination before the Feb. 25 Mardi Gras Parade. Ortmann said his bill would allow police to issue different citations for public urinators who try to be discreet than they might for those who are more open about it.
"There's a difference between going in the middle of the street, in front of God and country, and somebody who is behind a Dumpster," Ortmann said. [His bar is the Cat's Meow, let's meet at his dumpster about 7.]

From Reuters News Service

Vampire seeks governor's job: Minnesota voters, who eight years ago elected a former professional wrestler as their governor, may find a self-proclaimed vampire on the ballot for the office this year. "Politics is a cut-throat business," said Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey, who said he plans to announce his bid for governor Friday on the ticket of the Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party.

From NBC News

A new way to view London - from a toilet: Visitors to Britain will find a new stop on London’s site-seeing route this spring: a usable public toilet enclosed in one-way mirrored glass situated on a sidewalk near the River Thames. [Photo above. Video with story. Deeply Freudian every which way.]

A Day of Nick at Night

Here are some little inside jokes that have been worked into TV shows:

Roseanne -- "Corn" is mentioned in every episode.

Seinfeld -- There is a reference to Superman in every episode.

Cheers -- The real-life wife of George Wendt did the voice of Norm's unseen wife Vera.

Newhart -- Larry, of Larry, Darryl, and Darryl, always wore a quarter in his ear.

All in the Family -- The line in the theme song is "Gee, our old La Salle ran great" -- Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton purposely slurred the line so it is difficult to understand. The La Salle was a type of Cadillac produced in the 1930's.

Everyday Math, huh

Well, just to confuse everybody, yet once again they changed how they teach math.

Some of the local schools are now using something called Everyday Math. If you are a parent of one of these children, I am so sorry!

The idea seems to be that you don't memorized 9 x7 and such things. Instead, problems are solved using little sheets of paper. Click the image above for an interactive example. Here is an additional resource.

It all looks like the abacus repackaged to me. Click the image below to go to an interactive abacus.

Just like the abacus, Everyday Math allows for math problems in other bases besides Base 10 (what we all use). That's right, your third grader will soon be asking for help doing arithmetic in Base 5 or Base 8! Good luck to you! [Here is a good site that explains how to do math in other bases besides 10.]

Man passes through solid glass widow

VIDEO

It's a magic trick, but how did he do it?

A friend of Ben's?????

For Christmas, Mark Davis, 31, a bus driver from Pontypool, South East Wales dyed his hair red and attached a Christmas tree to his head. He wore it to work for a month and had to sleep with it attached at night. (Photo above.)

For the New Year, he's wearing a fully-functioning disco ball on his head, with "2006" shaven in his hair. (Photo below, be sure to notice his eyebrows.)

He says he is planning something special for Valentines Day.

SOURCE: BBC

" The new way to burn fat - set yourself on fire"

"Women who want to lose weight are being offered a startling new way to burn fat - by being set on fire. Would-be slimmers are flocking to a spa in Hong Kong that promises to reduce their waistlines by smearing them with Chinese herbs, dousing them with alcohol and then setting light to them, all for £78 a session [about $138]."
...

"The treatment, which lasts about 90 minutes, begins with a body scrub and a spa bath, followed by a massage in which the fatty area, the buttocks or stomach, is pummelled and kneaded like bread dough."

"Next the skin is basted with a thin mud-like solution - a concoction of Chinese medicinal herbs which includes powdered buffalo horn, Chinese angelica, ginseng and caterpillar fungus - before the area is wrapped in cellophane, covered with two wet towels, then doused with alcohol and set alight."

SOURCE: The London Daily Telegraph

One Man's Tool Is Another Dog's Pleasure

It was windy today, but warm, so we were outside taking down the remaining Christmas decorations.
One of Rooty's favorite toys is the shovel. I don't know why. He plays with it vigorously. He digs in its blade. He spins it around. He turns it over and over with his nose. He chews on its handle. He runs with it in his mouth, somehow always grabbing it at its center of gravity.