Your vote, Sir?

When Jeremy Bentham, the "Father of Utilitarianism," died, in 1832, he willed his body to the University College Hospital in London. However, it was willed on the condition that his "dear friend Doctor Southwood Smith" would preserve his body in the manner shown in the picture above. In Bentham's own words: "The skeleton he will cause to be put together in such a manner as that the whole figure may be seated in a chair usually occupied by me when living, in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought in the course of time employed in writing."
For years, Bentham carried around the glass eyes he hoped would go inside his mummified head. While Bentham's head was mummified, it deteriorated rapidly and a wax head was put on his skeleton instead. However, in 1975, student kidnapped Bentham's real head, demanding a £100 ransom for charity. The college eventually paid £10 and Bentham's head was placed at his feet (see picture above).
Bentham also wished for his body to be present at all board meetings, and tradition has it, that when there is a tied vote, Bentham votes favorably for the motion.
Source. Source.

Welcome Back

In the 1931 movie Skippy, 9-year-old Jackie Cooper had 3 crying scenes but had trouble crying on cue. One of the scenes involved a dog. The director Norman Taurog, also Jackie's uncle, had a security guard take the dog out of sight. When Norman threatened to have the dog shot, Jackie stayed dried-eyed, so Norman arranged to have a pistol shot heard. After the shot, Norman said, "The policeman has shot your dog. . . [because] [y]ou're more interested in the dog than you are in your work." After capturing Jackie's flood of tears on camera, they gave him ice cream. For his role, Jackie was nominated for an Oscar. Not surprisingly, he is quoted as saying, "No amount of rationalization, no excuses, can make up for what a kid loses -- what I lost -- when a normal childhood is abandoned for a movie career."
Source source

My appologies

Because of Christmas, I am taking a few days off from blogging. After Christmas, I will of course resume. So a very merry Christmas to all, and be sure to come back after it.
If you are insistent on reading my blog over my mini-vacation, I chose to highlight my favorite post from each week. The oldest posts are at the top.

• Allow me to introduce myself - my first ever post
• Dinner -about eating metal
• You'd Better Clap -the intersection of music and guns
• That will win the war -involves a "gay bomb"
• Still Loving the game -A Frisbee of death
  
• Wow! -beautiful typewriter art
• handy skirt -turn into a vending machine
• She did what? -licking Jeeps
• Liquid Ham -kosher too
• Mugger Angels -and rabbits
• oooooooooooooo! -ghosts and Spider-man
• Don't play with your food -vegetable orchestra
  
• shhhhhhhh! -a very quiet song
• adrenaline and shirts -extreme ironing
  

adrenoline and shirts

Ever heard of extreme ironing? Apparently, it "combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt." Some places where ironing has been done: the exact center of the Antarctic, 137m (450 ft) underwater, Mt. Everest, a nudist beach, in caves, while rock climbing, while jumping off a rock face, while hang gliding and while bog snorkeling. In case you are wondering, the irons are battery-powered. Here is a video of extreme ironing and here is a photo gallery from the official site.

paranoid?

Haven't you ever wanted to drive someone insane with postcards? Well here is the e-bay auction for you. According to the description, three postcards (one from 1995 and one from 1996) will be sent by the seller from Poland to your "friend." They will be "rant ravingly insane," but filled with personal details about your friend, thanks to your information. And of course, the signature will be illegible. It is currently selling for $185.
Humorist Brian Sack is the person behind it. Thanks to SNAFU-ed. . . Situation Normal (Situation normal, for people who don't think at all ... and offbeat news, for the rest of us ...) for this post idea.

sniff sniff

• Lynda and David Taylor were separating after three years of marriage, and Lynda was upset when David refused to give her half of the money and the house. So she took her revenge. She sprayed perfume on herself and her daughter. She sprayed Lysol and bug killer around the house. She burned scented candles. She plugged in scented air fresheners. And she emptied lavender sachets. While this may not seem all that severe, Lynda was arrested and charged with aggravated battery. You see, David had multiple chemical sensitivity, and her actions caused him to be "very ill with severe brain fog, headache, numbness and trembling and pain throughout [his] body so severe [he] could barely move." Before this incident, his condition had earned him $150,000 in worker's compensation. Source.

And a big Thank you to the ever-gracious Rusin Roundup for this award. I have to admit, I really like it because I like pirates, and the pictures has a bit of a pirate-y air. I always have a hard time trying to decide who to pass awards on to, so I chose people I hadn't awarded or tagged before. Thus, I would like to pass this award on to:

• Grillman and Luna for flattering my vanity with a lovely welcome to their blog, and teaching me about Santa.
  
• AY@tes for making me double-check every time I write his screen-name and earning an impressive 99% nerd score. (I only scored an 80%).
  
• And I Beati because I was not feeling very cheerful today, and the cute pictures on her blog made me melt into a pile of simpering goo.
  

Do you take yourself for better or worse?

Ever get tired of searching for that perfect someone who understands you? Why not stop the search and marry yourself?

• Liu Ye of China married a cutout of himself wearing a bridal dress. (Pictured above.) He says: "There are many reasons for marrying myself, but mainly to express my dissatisfaction with reality. This marriage makes me whole again. . . [I'm not gay, but I am] maybe a bit narcissistic." Source.
• While Dutch artist Jennifer Hoes also married herself, she does not rule out a possible future marriage. She married herself to embrace her own life and believes that the values of an individual's life are the same as in a marriage. In answer to the question we are all wondering: "The wedding night I spent alone and slept like a baby. . . Unfortunately I had no money for a honeymoon, that would have been nice and welcome after the hard work." She argues that her marriage was not a publicity stunt: "I don’t make a distinction between my life and work. . . The wedding, as something of heart and mind, is just as relevant to my work as a cast of my nipples." Source.
• Kevin Nadal of New York is a "Filipino-American gay performance artist" who married himself to protest culture's discrimination against singles, specifically women and gay men. He told his parents that he was having a birthday party. Kevin was very pleased with the wedding: "I got a DVD recorder, a nose-hair trimmer, kitchenware, Martini glasses, and a back massager. . . Oh, and I registered for male pornographic magazines, and got those too. I did well." Source.

Nicetown

• In 1996, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) turned their attention to the town of Fishkill. Because they believed it evoked "violent imagery of dead fish," they wanted its name changed to Fishsave. However, the town declined, pointing out that in the original Dutch, "Fishkill" is "Fish stream."
• In 2003, PETA offered $15,000 of vegetarian patties to the town of Hamburg, NY, if they changed their name to Veggieburg. PETA's reason: "The town's name conjures up visions of unhealthy patties of ground-up dead cows. . . I hope they get a little chuckle about it, and then I hope they think about it. . . Our offer is serious as a heart attack." Hamburg declined the offer.

Source

shhhhhhhh!

To be fair, for this post I could just include white space and nothing else. However...

Composer John Cage's piece 4'33" is basically 4 minutes, 33 seconds of complete silence. But supporters of Cage would argue that the experience is different for each listener and the piece includes the sounds of the environment it is played in. Composed in 1952, it can be played by any combination of instruments. Cage explained his piece by saying: "[W]hatever we we are[,] what we mostly hear is noise."

When Mike Batt composed A One Minute Silence, Cage's estate sued him. While Batt payed an undisclosed 6-figure amount to the John Cage trust, he retorted: "Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."

Here you can see 4'33" performed with a full orchestra. While there is a conductor, he only lifts his baton to give the downbeat at the start of each of the three movements, and occasionally turns pages. Here you can see it preformed by a solo piano who closes the piano lid and sits quietly with a stopwatch. If you are interested in Cage but don't have a large tolerance for silence, you might be interested to see an early work of his called Water Works. Here is is part of Cage's piano sonatinas. Be forewarned, they sound very different than what one is used to.

Source. Source.

A few blips of science (reader discretion warned)

Here are a few oddish blips to ponder (Reader discretion is advised):

• Recognize the sheep above? Well it is not an ordinary sheep. It is 15% human, having a sheep body and half-human organs. It is the result of £5million and 7 years of research by Professor Esmail Zanjani of the University of Nevada. He created the sheep by injecting cells from human adults into the fetus of sheep. In the future, he hopes to use these sheep for organ transplants. He would inject stem cells from a donor's bone marrow into a sheep fetus, and in two months there would be a transplantable liver, lung and brain. Source
• Twins are either identical or fraternal, right? Wrong. There is a pair of semi-identical twins. They are identical on their mother's side but only half-identical on their father's side. This means that two sperms fertilized one egg which split. While one of the children is male, the other one is a hermaphrodite, with "both ovarian and testicular tissue." However, genetically, both children have some male and female cells. While their identities are anonymous, they are reported to be healthy and happy toddlers in the US. Source
• Surgeon Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov, chief of the organ-transplanting laboratory of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, ran experiments. In one, he transplanted the head and forelegs of a puppy onto the neck of an adult dog. The puppy "kept its own personality," lapping up milk and yelping. The adult dog first tried to shake the puppy off of its neck, but soon grew reconciled. They both died after 6 days, but other dogs in his series of experiments stayed alive for 2 1/2 months. Here is a movie clip that shows his experiment. Source.
  
• The above scientist inspired a US scientist Dr. White who attached the living brain of one dog to the neck of another dog. the brain stayed alive for several days prompting the question: With the brain being alive, what was it experiencing? Mr. White then moved on to head transplants using rhesus monkeys. While the head acted on its own, it was impossible to connect all the nerve threads, so it was paralyzed from the neck down. He predicted that in the future, brain dead patients could donate their bodies for the heads of paraplegics. Source
• Researching LSD in 1962, the psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West and Chester M Pierce of the University of Oklahoma injected LSD into a male elephant. they believed that LSD would make an elephant go into musth: a condition where elephants "run berserk for a period of about two weeks, during which time {they] may attack or attempt to attack anything in [their] path." They gave a male elephant named Tusko enough LSD for 3,000 people. Sensing Tusko's distress, his mate rushed to his side and tried to support the swaying elephant. 5 minutes later, Tusko collapsed, and approximately 2 hours later he was dead. West and Pierce's take: "It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD - a finding which may prove to be valuable in elephant-control work in Africa." Source
• In the 1930s, Robert Cornish of the University of California tried to use seesaws to raise the dead. Injecting adrenaline and anti-coagulants into fox terriers he named Lazarus, 6 minutes after their death he would place them on a seesaw. While some did revive, they experienced blindness and brain damage before dying again within a few hours. He moved on to trying to revive 3 men dead for 5-6 hours. He had no luck. Source.

Spare Change

• This 72,000 square-foot house is listed at $165 million, the highest ever asking price for an American residential property. It includes 41 bedrooms, 8 fireplaces, 29 bedrooms, 3 swimming pools, 22 foot arched ceilings and 1 disco. The house, featured in The Godfather and The Bodyguard, is from the 1920s and sold in 1947 for $120,000. With a view listed as "canyon, pool, treetop," it includes 6.25 acres in the vicinity of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and David and Victoria Beckham.

To put things in perspective:

• It would take an estimated 10 hours to quickly clean all of the bathrooms.
• Other things that cost $165 million: A Boeing 787 Dreamliner Passenger Jet and NASA's Mars Polar Lander.
• Half the world lives on under two dollars a day.
• Every second child lives in poverty and 1.4 million children die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation

If you like this post, check out one of my older posts including a $14,000 diamond-studded tea bag here.

And by the way, thanks for your patience. I haven't posted recently because of finals week.

Sources: Dec 07 Reader's Digest, poverty facts

Square-y

Square watermelons were invented in 2001 by a Japanese farmer concerned about consumers not being able to fit the fruit into their fridge. There is no genetic changes in the watermelon, they are simply grown inside a box, and assume the box's shape. The square watermelons end up in the exact dimensions to fit comfortably into a Japanese refrigerator. In Japan they cost a bit more, however, at about $82, three times that of a normal watermelon. Recently, Tesco in the UK (a kind of UK WalMart) has started selling these for around £5, importing them from Brazil. And also recently, an agriculture and applied biotechnology student from Vietnam has produced square watermelons for the lunar New Year. During this time, watermelons are offered to ancestors. The ideal offering is a regular watermelon paired with a square one, as a square represents the earth and a circle represents the sun.
Source. Source.

Fido?!

Artist Karl-Friedrich Lentze is planning on opening the world's first brothel for dogs. Stationed in Berlin, the brothel will charge $32 and will include Lentze's Jack Russel Tarrier acting as the door-dog. Lentze sees it as art: "It's a form of satire that criticizes society. I used to paint and create sculptures, this is just the next step."

Other artistic endeavors of his include:

• He sued the Easter Bunny for causing addiction to chocolate. Lentze said: "The Easter Bunny is a sadistic and unscrupulous offender who preys on people's sweet tooth."
  
• He got permission from the Bonn city council to be buried with a biodegradable inflated sex doll.
• He applied for a patent for his devise to straighten bananas. He explained it as: "Depending on the degree of the curve, chunks will be cut out of the banana, which will then be bound back together using biologically safe bandages.
  

Source. Source. Source. Source.

ho-ha

Westaff, Australia's largest supplier of Santa Clauses, has instructed their Santas to say "ha, ha, ha" this Christmas. A former Santa employee reported that Westaff was concerned about Santa's traditional "ho, ho, ho" being derogatory to women. Says an anonymous Santa: "As far as I'm concerned, a hoe is something you dig the ground with."
Westaff has fended off these allegations by claiming that :"[I]n some cases the little kids can get a little bit scared of the deep ho, ho, hos." Bill Muehlenberg retorted with: "Potentially any big guy in a red suit with a white beard is scary but I don't think him saying 'ho ho ho' would damage a child's psyche."
Source.

Irony

In Houston, Texas, after passing a student-driving test, the driver crashed his car into the Texas Department of Public Safety.
source

What time is it?

don't play with your food

Apparently, there is a First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra. They play about 20-30 concerts a year and have 11 musicians, 1 video person and 1 sound technician. And yes, all of their instruments are made out of actual vegetables: "carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos." After the end of each performance, the vegetables are made into a soup and served to the audience.

Here is a video of a performance. Here is an audio clip. And here are pictures of their instruments.

Behold...Art?

Behold the Itallian artist Piero Manzoni. His art includes:

• In 1961, he signed people to make them works of art. He also issued them varying colored stamps. A red stamp certified that the person was a full work of art. A yellow stamp certified that one of their body parts was a work of art. And a green stamp certified that the person was only a work of art under a certain condition like sleeping or running.
• In 1960, Manzoni boiled eggs on a table, stamped his thumb print on them, handed them out to the audience and had his entire exhibit eaten in 70 minutes.
  
• But perhaps he is best known for his putting his feces in 90 small tins and labeling them "Aritst's Shit." With 30 grams each, he sold them for the current price of gold. In 2002, one of the tins sold for over $40,000 to the Tate Gallery. Because they were "naturally preserved," around 45 of them have since exploded.
• You can even visit his website.
  

And once again, a BIG thank you to Rusin Roundup for this award and I would like to pass it on to Less than Half a Nickel because she let me know that I was not the only one with no clue what "meme" means.

um... OK

Maybe I'm not a da Vinci, but I don't think this is art.

• Hoon Lee staged an art show in Omaha, Nebraska where he licked yellow icing off a 2,500 square-foot floor. He wanted "people to look at the icing and feel a certain way."
  
• Cang Xin staged "Lick the World" in Sydney. He licked anything visitors brought to him and claimed to use his tongue to improve world spirituality.
• Source

Elton! Hop!

In Canada, to win tickets to an Elton John contest, Brandy Elliott collected 38,000 grasshoppers. A local radio station started the competition when a grasshopper invasion upset Canada's farmland. Ms. Elliott's comment: "All I kept thinking is, is this enough?" She only won by 6,000 grasshoppers.
Source.

I've been tagged

I have been tagged thanks to to Rusin Roundup. I will try to keep this in my blog spirit and share only odd facts about myself.

1. I used to be afraid of salt. I couldn't look at it if it was used in cooking. I have overcome though and am now on my journey to heart disease.
2. In 9th grade, I made myself an anti-alzheimer's program which included taking all of my biology notes with my left hand. (I am right handed.) I also wrote backwards and upside-down.
3. I wish I had synesthesia. Desperately.
4. When I am bored in class, I often write in the phonetic alphabet (example: "u" is the lute sound. "backwards and upside-down e" is the sofa sound.)
5. My closet door is decorated with pictures of contestants of a mustache contest.
6. I once had 95 books/CDs/movies checked out from the library. As usual, I returned them all late.
7. I love popping my back and can often gross people out. Along with other body parts, I can pop my hip, and I one worked for weeks to get my big-toe to pop on command. I can also put my feet behind my head.
By the way, I do have friends and am not crazy.

Tag! You're it: rules here.
1. The Way I see it
2. Ramblings of a Madman
3. The Thoughts and Saying of Baba Doodlius
4. The Totally Transparent Party
5. Satire and Theology
6. Forty Forever
7. Less Than Half a Nickel

oooooooooooooo!

Alfred Mansbridge, a 69-year-old retired milkman, started being woken up in early mornings by a ghostly voice saying, "I won't take the lift down." Despite searching, he could not find the source of the noise nor did anyone else, including his neighbors, ever hear the voice. To prove that he was not crazy, Alfred tape recorded the voice and discovered that it spoke to him just before 2 AM every day. While the story made Paranormal News and Alfred lost much sleep, he insisted that there was a rational explanation. He was rewarded when the local environmental health staff finally found a novelty Spider-Man watch in the cupboard under the stairs. His five-year-old great-niece had left it there, and every day at 1:55AM it had dutifully played a film catchphrase.
Source.

mugger angels

In Australia, muggers stole Hilda Morgenstein's purse. Inside her purse was a dead rabbit that she and her daughter were on their way to bury. Hilda said: "They saved us the trip - I told my daughter they were angels and were taking bunny to a better place."
My source.

Yayyyy!

A big thank you to Rusin Roundup!!!!
This is my first blogging award, so I am pretty excited. I don't know the rules, but I believe that I get to pass the award on. So. . . I would like to share this award with:
1. The Totally Transparent Party for being the first person I didn't know personally to comment on my blog and link to me.
2. Steven Yoo for leaving the longest and most random comments.
3. And Baba Doodlius for taking the time to comment on my Rudolph post. That post gets me so much traffic, but all from people doing Google-image searches for Rudolph who stay for 1 second.
And thank you all who take the time to read and comment.

Mike

On September 10, 1945, Mr. Lloyd Olsen chopped the head off an unnamed rooster. The next day, the same rooster was found strutting around and earned the name Mike. The Olsens fed Mike by dripping a gruel mixture down his throat and and started earning more than $4, 500 ($44,000 today) a month from exhibiting him. Enough brain stem was left on Mike to allow him to continue normally: gurgling out crows and attempting to preen. Mike gained 5 1/2 pounds and lived for 18 months. While on a national tour, Mike chocked to death on his mucus when the Olsens could not find the eyedropper they used to regularly clear his throat.
In honor of Mike, the town of Fruita, Colorado holds an annual Mike the Headless Chicken Festival. Events include a 5k "run like a chicken with your head cut off."
Don't trust me? My source is here.

cheese!

This is casu marzu cheese from Sardinia. It has maggots and burns in the mouth. When the maggots eat the cheese, they release an enzyme that putrefies the cheese's fat. If you choose to eat the cheese with the maggots, convention tells you to cover your eyes so no maggots will jump into them. If you choose to eat the cheese without the maggots, put the cheese in a paper bag and wait for the sounds of the suffocating maggots to stop. Although in Sardinia the cheese is technically banned, it is readily available on the black market and its ban is rarely enforced. It is typically eaten with bread and red wine.
A Wikipedia article about it is here.

art and background music

Do you have some time to spend gazing in adoration while listening to ethereal music? At this website, you can view The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci in 16 billion pixels and clearly see sections of the masterpiece as little as one millimetre square. If it strikes your fancy, you can also view Vita Di Cristo by Gaudenzio Ferrari or La Gloria Di Sant'ignazio.

Pizza out of this world!

In 1998, Pizza Hut tried to put their logo on the moon. Their plan was to use a high-powered laser beam to project their logo onto the moon. They even went so far as to hire a team of specialists and experts . However, the experts squelched the project when they announced that the ad would have to be as big as Texas to be seen on earth, and that laser technology was not up to the task. Undaunted, Pizza hut switched course and paid around a million dollars to have a 30 foot tall logo put on the side of a Russian rocket. On the same note, in 1996 Pepsi gave 5 million dollars to the Russian space program to have them float a Pepsi can replica outside the Mir space station.
An article is here, and I read about it in the book "The World's Worst. A guide to the most disgustingly hideous, inept, and dangerous people, place, and things on earth."

What Would You Do?

What would you do if you found a human leg wrapped in wire screen inside a meat smoker you bought at auction? Mr. Shannon Whisnant of North Carolina found himself in this situation and quickly turned the leg over to the police.
It turned out that the leg belonged to Mr. John Wood and had been lost in a 2004 plane crash. Mr. Wood had kept his leg in a storage facility so that he could be buried with it. When he fell behind on his payments, the contents of the storage facility were auctioned off. Mr. Wood allegedly laughed when he learned his leg had been found.
Mr. Whisnant started charging admission for people to see the empty smoker (pictured above) where he had found the leg. He then tried to get the leg back, even offering to share custody of the leg with Mr. Wood. Mr Whisnant insisted: "It's a strange incident and Halloween's just around the corner. The price [I charger for admission] will go up if I get the leg." He also insisted that because he bought the smoker, the contents of the smoker belonged to him. Mr. Wood disagreed and insisted that he get his leg back.
The disagreement eventually went to TV court judge, Judge Mathis. Mr. Wood was forced to pay Mr. Whisnant $5,000, but he got his leg back. Judge Mathis is quoted as saying: "Bunch of weirdos out here,. What's special about him and his leg? . . . I think that you all, quite frankly, are enjoying this."
Here is an article about the find, and here is an article about the ruling.

Moo

While driving back to their hotel, a 600 pound cow fell 200 feet off a cliff onto Charles and Linda Everson's minivan. The Eversons escaped injury. Mr. Everson is quoted as saying: "I don't believe this. I don't believe this."
The Aricle is here, and thank you to weird facts for the idea.

Death Money

Would you like to buy this $399,900 Pittsburgh-area house? The owners, Bob and Ricki Husick, have had their house on the market for a year and are trying a new strategy. If you buy their house, upon their death, you will receive full cash back plus an extra $100,000. And if you are willing to take responsibility for the Husick's retirement care in Arizona, you can inherit their entire estate. However, no money will be paid out to you until authorities confirm that the Husicks died of natural causes and were not murdered by you. Here is an article and here is a video with an interview of Ricki Husick.

Skinny sandwich

In Greenville, Maine, The Black Frog has a skinny-dipping offer. If a customer skinny-dips in the local lake (pictured above), owner Leigh Turner gives them a free prime rib sandwich on a baguette roll. After a customer complaint, Turner briefly considered dropping the offer but did not. Turener says he gets two or three takers a week, and the skinny-dips usually happen at night. The customer drops their clothes on the dock behind the restaurant, runs off the dock and surfaces to a towel. The restaurant's very unique menu can be seen here.

Magnifying glass

Althea Crome Merback of Indiana is into extreme knitting. This means that she knits on a 1:12 scale. However, in the above picture, she used a 1:144 scale. That means that in each inch, there are 80 stitches. In her own words: "I love to knit and man, do I love a challenge." See more minuscule masterpieces on her blog.

The room above is only about 8 by 18 by 14 inches. Donated by Mrs. James Ward Thorne to the Chicago Art Museum, its scale is one inch to a foot. Visit the Chicago Art Museum's picture gallery of other amazing miniature rooms here.

Hand-y

This is a picture of. . . . . a hand! To see much more amazing animal hand art, visit the very cool site, Picture of the Week.

Eating on a toliet

At the Modern Toilet in Taipei, dinners sit on toilet-chairs, eat from mini toilet-bowls and wipe their hands and mouths on toilet paper. The restaurant is not for the squeamish. Plastic feces adorn the rooms and the drink list mentions urine, feces and blood. Boasts manager Yang Chung-chi: ""When you see the food, it does look like feces."
Pictures here.
Article here.

Free time to waste?

Fun Randomly Generated Websites

• Here is a zany random compliment generator. Sample: "You mutter such objects of equine delight that the mind's ability to sew slices of mordant ivory becomes tamed with visions of Tamsils in Constantinople."
• Here, you can be insulted by Shakespeare. Sample: "Thou misbegotten motley-minded fustilarian!"
• Here is a site which gives you 20 random words at a time. You can choose their first two letters. Sample included: "proffelewondered, rosy and man."
• Here is a random name generator. You can choose the name's origin and gender.
  
• And Here is a wonderful site with random words, random phrases where you can specify the parts of speech and commonness of the words, random sentences and random paragraphs where you decide the subjects. Sample sentence: "The oxygen doubts the chopped wrath."

Potatoes!

Apparently, there is a Mashed Potato Wrestling Federation. Their events are held in Barnesville, Minnesota and Clark, South Dakota. In this competition, the wrestlers combat in a giant tub of mashed potatoes. Eric Hanson comments: "After they are all done getting [the mashed potatoes] out of their crevices, it will be fed to cows."
The undefeated reigning world champion Steve-O Gratin justifies the choice of mashed potatoes: "We'd go to Japan, we'd wrestle in sushi. We go to Boston, it's clam chowder."
And lest you think that this sport is not tough, Yukon Golden Boy shares his strategy: "Well I do a little thing called the mashed potato where I pick up a handful, and I pick up another handful, and I put it in the guy's ears, and I shake his head. Generally that works my opponent into submission."Afrodisiac also shares a strategy, - "My Afro prevent[s] all potatoes from actually entering near my scalp.
The competition is also tough. Rowdy Rowdy Potato, who wears a superman outfit, laments: "I'm un-undefeated....I've never won."
"You can never train enough for mashed potato wrestling," warns Steve-O-Gratin.
Many interesting videos of mashed potato wrestling posted on the official MPWF blog.

Yet another thing I can't afford

Behold the Steiff 125th anniversary teddy bear. Clocking in at a mere $84,000 (62,446 Euros), it features:

• made from raw silk
• hand-knotted gold coat
• 18k yellow gold pupils and diamond irises
• 24k gold nose, mouth, medallion and trademark button

I know what I want for Christmas.
Link

the not-so-perfect gift

In the US, Consumer Reports announced that 8 Billion dollars worth of gift card money went unclaimed in 2006. Yet 62 percent of customers are still planning on buying gift cards this holiday season. Yikes!
Read the article here.

Who?

To make a point about frivolous lawsuits, Nebraska Democratic State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God for making terrorist threats. Highlights of the case:

• Chambers claims that he can sue God because, God "being omnipresent, is personally present in Douglas County."
• Chambers claims he has made reasonable efforts to talk to God by calling, "Come out, come out, wherever you are."
• Chambers says that he cannot serve notice because: "It would be a futile and perhaps unlawful act to nail a notice to the front door" of any of God's agents.
  

Chamber's four-page lawsuit

Gravestone tour

In Natchez City, they have a colorful cemetery that you can tour. Here are two highlights:

• Florence Irene Ford died when she was 10. Because she had always run frightened to her mother during thunderstorms, her mother made a storm shelter with stairs leading down to a place where she could view her daughter's body through a glass window. Picture above.
• Ruphus E. Case wanted to be buried in his rocking chair. To accommodate, the cemetery built a brick structure around him and his rocking chair. Unfortunately, as the bricks started to crumble, anyone with a flashlight could peek in and see him.
  

http://www.natchezcemetery.com/custom/webpage.cfm?content=content&id=2

Summer Reading

Real Books with odd tiles. All of these are real books that can be found on Amazon:

• Eleven years a drunkard, or, The life of Thomas Doner: Having lost both arms through intemperance, he wrote his book with his teeth as a warning to others
• Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality: Reading from the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity
• People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves To Unsuspecting bystanders and what to do about it
• The Art and Craft of Pounding Flowers: No Ink, No Paint, Just a Hammer
• Build Your Own Hindenburg (The world on the move)
• So your wife came home speaking in tongues?: So did mine!

Liquid Ham

The Seattle-based Jones Soda Co. takes pride in the taste of its flavors being accurate. This may not always be a good thing. While they do sell traditional soda flavors, they also offer some odd soda packs.

Thanksgiving pack: Green Pea, Sweet Potato, Dinner Roll, Turkey and Gravy, and Antacid

Seattle Seahawks pack: Perspiration, Dirt, Sports Cream, Sweet Victory and Natural Field Turf

Hanukkah pack: Latke, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Jelly Doughnut

Christmas Pack: Christmas Ham, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Sugar Plum

And best yet, because their Hanukkah and Christmas packs are both zero-calories and certified kosher, you can drink a no-calorie kosher Ham for Christmas this year.

http://www.theolympian.com/northwest/story/266965.html