78 Stupid People Who Tattooed Celebrities Onto Their Bodies. (via Grow-A-Brain)
Five Things You Didn't Know About the Accordion. Probably because it never occurred to you to ask.
LOLfed is the image macro version of the current economic crisis. (via Metafilter)
Palin's performance for Katie Couric made everyone cringe. (via Simply Left Behind)
Ten Unforgettable Evil Twins. We've all had the fantasy of blaming our faults on the "other one that looks like me."
Psychologist John B. Watson had a theory that humans are not afraid of anything until something causes us to fear. To test that theory, in1920 he went through the process of teaching an infant (known as "Little Albert") to be afraid.
Arrrr! It's once again Talk Like A Pirate Day! Enjoy some pirate kitties for the occasion, and check out the pirate jokes, links, pictures, and videos I've posted over the years. Also see some pirate songs and stuff over at YesButNoButYes.
You know octopuses are strange creatures. They’ve always been part of our nightmares and scary stories, but that’s mainly because they look so odd. The more you know about them, the stranger they seem. How do they move around without bones? Why doesn't that hard beak cut into their flesh? And what's in that ink, anyway?
In Search of the Mongolian Death Worm. Reported to be between two and five feet long, the deep-red coloured worm is said to resemble the intestines of a cow and sprays a yellow acidic saliva substance at its victims. Yeah, right.
Dali Clocks exist in real life (although they didn't before The Persistence of Memory). You can have one in your home, too!
If you avoid black and white movies, you're missing out on some serious art. And entertainment. (via Metafilter)
The exterior is covered with bulletproof plexiglass. The entire vehicle is lined with bubble wrap. Yes, bubble wrap. It lights up at night, and it's shaped like a pyramid. Still, it goes 240 miles on one electrical chargeup. It's the Dream Car 123!
The 11 Coolest Wheelchairs In The World. I don't know what kind of mind came up with the flame-throwing wheelchair, but the result is tough to beat. (via Gorilla Mask)
The toughest creature on Earth has survived a trip into space. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, were launched into orbit, came home, and went about normal life again.
John McCain gets BarackRoll'd at the Republican National Convention.
The Large Hadron Collider is scheduled to fire up today, so to calm your fears by reading 8 Fictional Doomsday Devices More Dangerous Than the Large Hadron Collider. If a black hole swallows us today, there’ll be no one left to day “I told you so.”
Which is the fastest browser: Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google's new Chrome? Safari is sadly missing from these tests. Also: what does that logo remind you of?
Look for gorillas to take over the streets of London on September 27th. It's the fifth annual Great Gorilla Run to benefit Mountain Gorillas in Africa. (via Arbroath)Mr. Milk (1930-1978) was an activist and politician, and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America; in 1977, he was voted to the city supervisors' board of San Francisco. The following year, both he and the city's mayor George Moscone were shot to death by another city supervisor, Dan White.
The 50 Most Stylish Men of the Past 50 Years. (via Dump Trumpet)
The Edsel was unveiled 51 years ago today. It such a flop that it became a metaphor for failure.
I collect antique cobalt glass, and I would love to have this old poison bottle! It's part of the The Antique Poison Bottle Hall of Fame, where you'll find all kinds of poison bottles submitted by owners from all over. (via Everlasting Blort)
Variations on American Gothic by Grant Wood. (via Dark Roasted Blend)
We've been in the new place a week now, and I've solved my three major problems. We have cable TV and internet, we have hot water, and now we have a refrigerator!
Of course, it wasn't as simple as that. I called the appliance guy to see when he could move my old refrigerator to the new house. He was out of town, but said he would be back and move it Friday. So Thursday night, I cleaned out the old fridge and got rid of any questionable food. Has it really been 15 years since I cleaned out the refrigerator? Of course not; I just bought the thing about five years ago. Then I remembered I cleaned it thoroughly in the spring. But two kids who are learning to cook can make a monumental mess in a short time!
Friday came and went with no word. Most of Saturday, too. I got the idea he really didn't want to do this. It's getting quite expensive to eat out every day, and even with a big bag of ice, milk was going bad in the cooler too often. Mom encouraged me to just buy a new refrigerator, so I sighed and said OK. At the store, I found that new units cost way more than I thought! I'd never bought a new refrigerator -just used ones. I selected one that would fit the space alloted with the features I wanted. Then whaddaya know, Mom paid for it (bless her)! This being Saturday night, I figured it wouldn't be delivered until Tuesday, but the clerk said they could bring it on Sunday. Hoorai!
So not only did I get a new fridge, I also saved 1) the money I would've paid the appliance guy to move mine around, b) the $20 the city charges to haul off the old unit, 3) eating out bills for who-knows-how-long, and 4) ice costs. Also, I still have a refrigerator at the old house which will make it marginally more sellable. And it's clean! Very clean, while the rest of the old kitchen is covered in tomato juice. I'm finishing up the canning there, because I don't want to hose down TWO kitchens.
Sunday morning, the delivery guy calls at 10AM. He said they had two stops before mine, so it would be around 1PM. They came at 6PM. The wait was not extremely difficult this time around, because the kids watched TV and I surfed the net. Yeah, I had plenty of unpacking to do, as always. Anyway, the delivery guys had to take the handles off the old monster-sized non-working refrigerator just to get it out the door. They said it was at least 20 years old (no wonder the appliance guy didn't want it, even for parts). The new one didn't even have to be brought in sideways. After all, a family of three females doesn't need a meat locker, just a place to put our yogurt. We celebrated with a trip to the grocery store, where I let the kids buy what they wanted. What they wanted were the things they missed over the past week -butter, milk, orange juice, Kool-Aid, eggs, and cheese. They've had their fill of warm soda pop.
Oh yeah, there was an interesting coda to the cable story. Friday morning, a cable installer shows up. He found it hard to believe that I already had cable, since he was supposed to put it in. He apparently suspected piracy, because he asked for the names of the installers. I said I don't know, it was dark. Maybe they weren't really installers. Maybe they were angels sent in answer to a prayer. Then I explained that they had rescheduled my install for Thursday and probably never bothered to take it off the schedule. Mind you, it was Friday when he showed up.
Today, my brother and sister-in-law are coming over to help me load those furniture items I can't wrap my arms around. That will be a load off my mind. But I will have to call the pros to move the piano. They only brought it to my house a couple of months ago, said it was the heaviest upright they'd ever moved, and also mentioned they never wanted to move it again. They are going to hate me.
