Got an email from Angela today to let me know that October 14 is National Chocolate Covered Insects Day.
This, of course, brings back memories of the “Exotic Cuisine Night” I celebrated with the Jaycees during the cicada invasion of 2004.
In one favorite photo, Angela is holding a piece of banana-nutcicada bread. The expression on her face, pretty much says it all:
“What’s that crunch? That’s not a walnut.”
Category Archives: Silliness
The Butler Did It!
Every so often I hear a song on the radio with lyrics along the lines of:
Now I’m falling asleep,
And she’s calling a cab,
While he’s having a smoke,
And she’s taking a drag…
And so on. The song is called “Mr. Brightside” and it’s sung by a group calling themselves “The Killers.” The problem with this song is that one of the lyrics is, “He takes off her dress now.”
Every time I hear that line, I’m reminded of this joke:
Lady Brooks summoned her butler to her bedroom.
James arrived, she said “You know why you are here I assume. Take off my dress and do it with care. It cost a lot of money so do not tear it.”
“Take off my bra and stockings too.”
James diligently did what he was told to do.
“Take off my knickers, I know you have done that before.”
“If I catch you wearing my clothes again I will personally kick you out the front door.”
Now you can get that joke stuck in your head too.
Bombing the Moon
Many thanks to Squish for passing along a link to the news story about NASA’s plan to bomb The Moon. No, they’re not really going to “bomb” it per se, that’s just the spin MSNBC is using. What’s really going to happen is that they’re going to deliberately crash a couple spacecraft into a crater on the moon’s South Pole in order to verify whether the crater contains any water ice.
Boy, are they gonna be surprised when The Moon pops!
Of course, those of us with a sense of history remember what happened the last time there was an explosion on The Moon, ten years ago, on September 13, 1999…
The Ig Nobel Prizes
The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize awards ceremony was held at Harvard this past weekend.
Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan (all three from Chicago) received the Ig Nobel Public Health Prize for their work on the “Garment device convertible to one or more facemasks” (U.S. patent # 7255627).
Pictured below is Dr. Bodnar. Standing with her, and modeling the award-winning garment are Nobel laureates Wolfgang Ketterle (left), Orhan Pamuk, and Paul Krugman (right). PHOTO credit: Alexey Eliseev.
Yes. It’s a brassiere which can be converted into a pair of gas masks.
Likewise, the Ig Nobel Economics Prize was awarded to “The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.”
I can’t help but think various US banking executives and central regulators may have been runners up for that one.
Finally, Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México received the Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize for creating diamonds from Tequila.
A full list of winners (past and present) appears on the web site of the Annals of Improbable Research.
Ahoy There!
Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day, I hope ye be celebratin’ accordingly.
If nothin’ else, ye can be switching your website to use the Piratespeak generator. (It’s a one line change.)
Skirting the Issue
Dave’s been having fun the past few years, telling his daughters all sorts of stories about their various uncles. More recently, he’s posted a story or two on his blog.
I suppose I could respond with a story or two of my own, for example, when he was a foreign exchange student, he returned from New Zealand in January. My then-girlfriend and I went with my parents to meet him at the airport and when Dave got off the plane, he was wearing a skirt. (The girlfriend broke up with me a short time later.) I could go into great length about that, but why? After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
So you see, it turns out that I’m the normal one!
The Comment of the Beast
About five or six months ago, I was surprised to note that the number of comments on Dividing by Zero had reached the point where there were more comments than posts. I haven’t really been paying attention to the number of comments since then. Tonight though I just happened to take another glance at the numbers:
As of this evening, Dividing by Zero has received six hundred and sixty-six comments, 666.
So what was “The Comment of the Beast”? Well, it came in response to the post about The Eastern Setter when Luke wrote in to say, “when i die, i wanna come back as an Eastern Setter.”
It’s a sentiment I can certainly understand. Take a look through those photos and you’ll see that Wylie’s surrounded by a lot of pretty girls. He’s the neighborhood rock star after all and chicks dig the fuzzy guy.
It’s ironic that Luke should be the person who left comment #666 though. He’s in seminary and can tell you in far more detail than I can about how all dealings with the devil come with a great deal of peril. You might manage to get exactly what you asked for, but there’s always going to be a vital detail you didn’t think of.
In those photos, Wylie is getting his back skritched by pretty girls, and what guy wouldn’t like to be in that situation? But here’s the detail Luke overlooked: Wylie has been fixed.
The Eastern Setter
Ol’ Wylie is pretty much the neighborhood rock star. When we go out for our regular after-work walk, the neighborhood kids frequently flock to his side. The kids inevitably want to pet Wylie, and many remark on how soft his hair is. (He uses shampoo with extra-conditioner.)
One of the most frequent questions the kids ask me is what kind of dog Wylie is. They’re never satisfied with “I don’t know” so I’ve tried variations such as “Black” or “He’s a Wylie.” None of those work either. Some Wylie-historians claim that Wylie is an Irish Police Dog from Scotland Yard, but Wylie insists that this is a gross exaggeration and he only ever worked with a small constabulary on the outskirts of Dublin.
So far though, Wylie hasn’t been willing to discuss his origins. Until now.
Earlier this week, Wylie and I were talking about the problem with the kids not accepting any of the standard answers. He admitted that it always bothered him to be putting me on the spot like that, so he’s decided to share his secret with the world:
Wylie is an Eastern Setter.
For those unfamiliar with the particulars of this breed, the Eastern Setter is native to North America with a range covering the mid-Atlantic states, going North into New England and as far West as Indiana.
Here we see the Eastern Setter in his natural environment — setting on the couch.
Likewise, here we see the Eastern Setter in another of his favorite settings — setting on the deck, getting his back skritched by a pretty girl.
And again, the Eastern Setter, setting on the couch, getting his back skritched by two more pretty girls. (It’s truly a dog’s life!)
Oops!
Before going to bed on Sunday night, I set the alarm clock for 6:40. (On the weekends, I tend to set it for a little later, so on Sunday I have to set it back to my weekday schedule.)
I woke up this morning and after a few moments started wondering if I’d somehow awoken before the alarm. It’s been known to happen, but given how late it was by the time I actually fell asleep (around 3:30 or 4:00), that didn’t seem too likely.
So I pried myself out of bed and looked at the clock.
8:24
Oh crap.
(Actually, the phrase that went through my mind was not “oh crap”, but it did contain the same number of letters .)
The indicator showed that the alarm was definitely set. Had I slept through it? (This has also been known to happen, particularly when I’ve had trouble falling asleep the night before.)
For whatever reason, I pushed the button to check what time the alarm was set to go off.
It was set for 6:40 alright. But here’s the interesting part: it turns out there are two 6:40s in the day, and they’re not equivalent.
Who knew?
Happy New Year!
Today is August 21. According to Weatherbug, today’s high temperature was 87 degrees. (That’s because it was overcast. The day the air conditioner broke, the high was around 98.)
By my reckoning, there are 132 days left in the year (slightly more than 1/3 of it). Going by the calendar, there are another 30 days remaining until the official end of summer, and you still have 126 shopping days left before Christmas.
In short, we are nowhere near the end of the year.
And yet, today’s mail included a 2010 calendar.
Good grief!