The Good Reverend

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-09-10T10:17:00.001-04:00

There's nothing wrong with the county jail: first in a series of stories on town buildings that are completely adequate.

Indexed by tag Montrose.

If Anyone Is Missing Two Size-Twelve Right Feet

2007-09-02T11:52:00.000-04:00

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police may have something for you.

Indexed by tags weird, feet, sea, Canada.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

2007-09-01T11:51:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags cartoon, Disney, Donald Duck, Chip and Dale.

A Lot Can Happen in Three Weeks

2007-08-31T16:51:00.000-04:00

Completely paralyzed people can learn ways to communicate.
A bacterium can celebrate its 600,000th birthday.
Bigfoot can get the Lindsay Lohan treatment.
Ants can teach us how not to panic.
We can all vote for the Seven Fortean Wonders of the World.
Those fearful of the word moist can have their day in the sun.
A German teen can take that Cuarto de Tula song from the Buena Vista Social Club a little too seriously.
A group of clowns can stymie a white-power hate group.
The soviets can get a bit uncomfortably freaky with their commemorative art.
Driving while talking on the cell phone can actually be, maybe, not so bad.
Airports can build some very strange runways.
We can all now search Wikipedia for incriminating anonymous edits from corporate IP addresses.
A new coinage can rival spam for inbox domination.
Fifties housewives can wax the linoleum.
China can regulate reincarnation.
Science musicians can create a glissando that is an aural illusion.
A Massachusetts behavior-modification school can convince parents to electroshock their kids.
You can make yogurt by adding milk to the little bit of yogurt you have left over.
Uniformed back-up dancers can make anything rock.
The universe can encompass a billion-light-year void.
Spiders can turn on you if you keep them as pets.
Picture-based instructional pamphlets can explain anything.
One can flip a misspelled eBay collectible for hefty profits.
Keywords in a country's official name can correlate with its democracy quotient.
Stars can have huge tails, like comets.
Vampire bats can pick cows over tapirs.
Burning Man can suffer an early incineration.
New vodkas can spring up like dandelions while rums and gins stay traditional.
Caffeine can boost grandma's memory.

Feedreader, you and I had a lot of catching up to do.

Gone Fishing

2007-08-10T09:47:00.001-04:00

I'll be out of town for a couple weeks and probably won't be able to blog. In the meantime, The Gravedigger will keep you entertained here. (The over-under on number of posts she'll probably write is one; I'm taking bets.) Also, be sure to check out some of the nifty sites in the blogroll down in the right corner.

Indexed by tag blog.

Maybe 'Around the World in 80 Days' Was Just that Bad

2007-08-07T19:36:00.000-04:00

Chan/Tucker, then Chan/Tucker, and now Tucker/Chan? What did Jackie Chan do to get bumped to second billing? It's not like Chris Tucker has been in anything since 2001.

Bonus: note the increasing seriousness of their expressions.

Indexed by tags movies, Rush Hour, posters, Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker.

And Now We Pause for Kobayashi Versus Bear

2007-08-07T17:56:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags sports, food and drink, competitive eating, Kobayashi, bear, nature.

Colors, Defined

2007-08-06T16:43:00.000-04:00

Webster's definitions of primary colors verge on poetic:

Red—a color whose hue resembles that of blood or of the ruby or is that of the long-wave extreme of the visible spectrum
Blue—a color whose hue is that of the clear sky or that of the portion of the color spectrum lying between green and violet
Yellow—a color whose hue resembles that of ripe lemons or sunflowers or is that of the portion of the spectrum lying between green and orange
Green—a color whose hue is somewhat less yellow than that of growing fresh grass or of the emerald or is that of the part of the spectrum lying between blue and yellow

As do its definitions of basic tastes:

Salt—being or inducing the one of the four basic taste sensations that is suggestive of seawater
Sweet—being or inducing the one of the four basic taste sensations that is typically induced by disaccharides and is mediated especially by receptors in taste buds at the front of the tongue
Sour—causing or characterized by the one of the four basic taste sensations that is produced chiefly by acids
Bitter—being or inducing the one of the four basic taste sensations that is peculiarly acrid, astringent, or disagreeable and suggestive of an infusion of hops

Indexed by tags language, color, taste, definition, dictionary, Webster's.

Richard The's Subway-Grate Shopping-Bag Sculpture

2007-08-06T14:15:00.000-04:00

German artist Richard The tied shopping bags to the subway grate along Broadway in New York:

1. Walk along the Green Line in Manhattan (going from the 1st to the 125th street, from the Financial Disctrict [sic], through China Town, Midtown, Spanish Harlem, Harlem).
2. Collect bags from the stores, which are situated in the street above the subway tracks. These should be representative of their specific neighbourhood.
3. Install 7 shopping bags, representative of the Neighbourhoods which are crossed by the line, above the subway's air shaft (ideally the combinations of these bags should tell a story already).
4. Once the train passes by the bags are pushed into the air by the air flowing through the tunnel and the air shafts, forming an ephemeral sculpture, making the existing forces visible and at the same time visualizing the Green Line in a regional social economic way.

This concept was realized by 90% as I was too optimistic about the weight of the plastic bags - it was impossible to have a readable installation even though many bags had been collected.

Link (via Rocketboom). The result is whimsical, if a bit depressing. Is there a word that conveys both feelings at the same time? I think if anyone had such a word it would be the Germans.

Indexed by tags art, New York, Richard The, subway, shopping bag, sculpture.

Newspaper Nickname Quiz

2007-08-06T10:53:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has long been known as the Gray Lady because of, as Wikipedia puts it, "its staid appearance and style." Something about American newspapers lends itself to nicknaming, but many local papers are not graced with as elegant a moniker as the Times. Readers, out of sense of local camaraderie, and staff, out of self-deprecation, often carve their paper's good name into a disparaging statement about its content. With colorful plays on official names, cities across the U.S. pithily criticize their papers' perceived boringness, fluff, political slant, or tabloidism. Can you figure out which nickname fits which newspaper?

Match the city or state to its disparaging nickname. Feel free to guess in the comments, but no posting URLs.

1. Arizona
2. Arkansas
3. Atlanta
4. Austin
5. Charlotte
6. Dallas
7. Fort Worth
8. Honolulu
9. Omaha
10. Orlando
11. Philadelphia
12. San Francisco
13. Seattle
14. St. Louis
15. Virginian
16. Washington

A. American-Realestatesman
B. Comical
C. Compost
D. Demagogue
E. Dirty News
F. Disturber
G. Morning Snooze
H. Pile-it-on
I. Post-Disgrace
J. Repugnant
K. Slantinel
L. Startlegram
M. Starts-Bulls***tin'
N. Timid
O. Urinal-Constipation
P. Weird-Harold

Indexed by tags newspapers, quiz, nicknames.
Image credits: Reading the newspaper, courtesy Dummy Fat Doctor, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

The United Countries of Baseball

2007-08-03T07:06:00.000-04:00

This map, caught by Flickr user littlebudapest (via Strange Maps), apparently adorns a wall at the Niketown store in San Francisco's Union Square (or at least did during the All-Star Game last month). It divides the United States (and part of Canada) into thirty "countries" (and a large swath of unincorporated mountains and desert) defined by the fan base for each of the thirty Major League Baseball teams. The boundaries seem fairly accurate, at least from my experience (I haven't spoken with that many people in the South, for instance, but I gather from country music that much of it is Braves Country, as reflected here).

As the Flickr photo commenters point out, one glaring omission are the diasporic fans who inhabit the West: some territories, according to anecdotal evidence, follow a specific team from the East Coast or Midwest, even though not everyone in the territory ventured from that team's country. If the commenters are to be believed, much of Idaho prefers the Mets, for whatever reason, and I recall that in the days before expansion delivered the Diamondbacks Arizona was Cubs territory (and remains so for contrarians).

(Cross-posted at Neatorama.)

Indexed by tags sports, maps, baseball, countries.

Random Movie Quote Thursday

2007-08-02T10:33:00.000-04:00

Alright, listen closely.
I'm not going to beat around the bush.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Your little body's changing;
it's all good, believe me.
Problem now is,
every time we jerk the gherkin,
we get a lot of unwanted sticky white stuff everywhere,
right? Right.
So, first order of business:
no more socks.
They're expensive,
gumming up the works plumbing-wise.
Now you might be thinking to yourself,
"But, Uncle Andy,
what do I do with all that pearl jam if I can't spew it into Mr. Sock?"
Glad you asked.
You can have a lovely time tugging the tiger in the shower each morning—
that eliminates the need for a goo glove.
But, the day is long,
masturbation's fun,
so unless we want to take four or five showers every day,
we're gonna need some other options here.
So let's start with the basics:
Tissues.
Perfectly acceptable backstop for all that creamy Italian.
They can be rough and dry on such soft,
sensitive skin,
not to mention it can stick to your dick head like a f**kin' Band Aid—
ouch.
From there we move on to more lubricated flack-catchers,
specifically, bananas.
Step one: Peel the banana.
Step two: Slip the peel over your Randy Johnson and start pitching.
Now for extra credit,
warm up the peel in the microwave.
Not too hot!
Serious yowza.
Also, olive oil,
moisturizer,
honey,
spit,
butter,
hair conditioner,
and Vaseline can all be used for lube.
In my opinion,
the best lube—is lube.
So save your allowance and invest in some soon.
Alright, moving on:
When you tug your Thomas on the toilet—
pft—
shoot right into the bowl.
In bed,
soft t-shirt,
perhaps a downy hand towel of your very own
that you don't mind tossing after tossing.
There's no such thing as polishing the raised scepter of love too much.
It reduces stress;
it enhances immune function.
Also, practice makes perfect.
So work on your control now,
while you're a solo artist—
you'll be playing some long, happy duets in the future.
Okay,
class dismissed.

Indexed by tags movies, quotes.

Misheard-Lyrics Video Interpretations

2007-08-01T13:15:00.000-04:00

This would make for some exciting karaoke. And there are many more at YesButNoButYes.

Who knew this was an entire genre?

Indexed by tags music, video, misheard lyrics, interpretation, AFI, "Silver and Cold".

Vegansexuals: Withholding Sex from Meat-Eaters

2007-07-31T15:12:00.000-04:00

According to a recent survey of attitudes about vegetarianism in New Zealand, a subgroup of vegetarians and vegans reject carnivores as intimate partners because the kissing and sex is icky or immoral:

F3: My boyfriend is a vegetarian. I don’t think I could live with a significant other who isn’t . . . It would disgust me to see my boy tucking into a chicken. I probably couldn’t kiss him! [31, pescetarian (ovo), Wellington]

F91: I could not be in an intimate relationship with anyone who was eating animals. Our worlds would just be too far apart and the likelihood of the relationship succeeding would be very low . . . I couldn’t think of kissing lips that allow dead animal pieces to pass between them. [49, vegan, Auckland]

F50: I believe we are what we consume so I really struggle with bodily fluids, especially sexually. [34, vegan, Christchurch]

F100: I have tried a relationship with someone who was not a vegetarian and found that although he was attractive sexually, sex alone was not enough to combat the revulsion created by the smell of dead bodies being cooked, and the associated lack of concern about the welfare of animals. For me, an intimate relationship needs to be based on shared values and moral codes as well as sexual chemistry. [55, ovo-vegetarian, Auckland]

F78: I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance. Non-vegetarian bodies smell different to me—they are, after all, literally sustained through carcasses—the murdered flesh of others. Even though I might find someone really attractive, I wouldn’t want to get close to them in a physical sense if their body was derived from meat. For me, this constitutes my very personal form of ethical sexuality. [41, vegan, Christchurch]

. . . .

M16: If a partner has been eating meat or fish, they would have to clean their teeth before I’d kiss them. [28, ovo-lacto vegetarian, Auckland]

Link (PDF; via Language Log). According to a news report about the study, its codirector coined the term vegansexual—naturally—to describe these feelings:

Many female respondents described being attracted to people who ate meat, but said they did not want to have sex with meat-eaters because their bodies were made up of animal carcasses.

. . . .

Christchurch vegan Nichola Kriek has been married to her vegan husband, Hans, for nine years.

She would not describe herself as vegansexual, but said it would definitely be a preference.

She could understand people not wanting to get too close to non-vegan or non-vegetarians.

"When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," she said.

Link. So of course, even though there's no one who actually describes themselves as a vegansexual, and there were only a handful of people who even expressed the applicable sentiments, it's the latest trend.

It seems like those who avoid carnivore partners, be it out of an ethical stance or the ick factor, are doing it for personal reasons and not trying to coerce anybody to act in a certain way, which has historically been the raison d'être of withholding-sex movements. But I'm sure it will graduate to compulsion soon: forcing someone into the Hobson's choice between your lover and your bacon, with only one allowed to cross your lips—what an ultimatum.

Indexed by tags food and drink, vegetarianism, vegan, vegansexual, sex, withholding.
Image credits: Iconismus IX Ponatur è regione, P. Gasparis Schotti, 1667, courtesy The Fantastic in Art and Fiction.

Profane TV Station Call Letters

2007-07-31T13:15:00.000-04:00

A soon-to-operate Maui television station has petitioned the FCC for and received station-identifying call letters that misspell a four letter word I won't print. The call sign starts with the same letter as almost all stations West of the Mississippi, rhymes with affront, reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe paintings, and sounds like the word voted most obscene in Britain (PDF).

From Skokie, Ill., comes a sincere apology "to anyone that was offended," said Kevin Bae, vice president of KM Communications Inc., who requested and received [the call letters that sound like the word that is synonymous with berk in cockney rhyming slang] and KWTF. It is "extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately."

. . . .

The call letter snafu was a source of great mirth for Bae's attorney.

"I can't tell you how long he laughed at me when he learned of my gaffe," Bae said.

Broadcasters for generations have joked among themselves about call letters resembling off-color words or acronyms knowing the FCC would never approve their assignment—but that was before computerization.

. . . .

However, assignment of call letters actually is an automated process, according to Mary Diamond of the FCC's Office of Media Relations. Broadcasters use the FCC Web site to request and receive call letters with no oversight from Beavis, his partner, or any FCC regulator.

Link (via News of the Weird Daily). Assuming the station keeps the call letters granted to it by the FCC, what will the regulators do if its on-air personalities utter them in a "fleeting and isolated" way?

Indexed by tags television, FCC, obscenity, profanity, call letters, station.
Image credits: Waterfall-No. III—Iao Valley, Georgia O'Keefe, American, 1939, courtesy the Honolulu Academy of Arts, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

The Mancatcher Voodoo Kit

2007-07-30T15:53:00.001-04:00

Attention ladies:
Are you having trouble catching a man? Why resort to smarts, good looks, and a winning personality when you could just use African-Caribbean religion? In fact, why resort to the religion at all when you could with less effort employ a watered-down, novelty-shop approximation thereof?

California toy makers may not know much about catching men or voodoo, but they do have the vague sense that when you put them together it involves effigies and sticking pins through things.

In the spirit of red-blooded American ingenuity and the drive to always take the easy way out, here's the Mancatcher Voodoo Kit (via the Presurfer).

Indexed by tags religion, women, love, relationships, voodoo.

Meanwhile, in Montrose . . .

2007-07-30T14:33:00.000-04:00

Your aluminum cans will be sorted and crushed by prisoners working for two dollars an hour.

Indexed by tag Montrose.

Nursing Home Kills Off Cat's Favorite Patients

2007-07-28T07:49:00.000-04:00

Oscar, a hospice cat at a Providence nursing home, has become an omen of impending death. Oscar seems to know when a patient is in her final hours, curling up next to her out of what optimistic doctors and nurses assume is genuine companionship:

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

Link (thanks, Melissa). Oscar the Death Cat has even inspired an episode of purported lolcat-meme ur-comic Laugh-Out-Loud Cats (a bit disconcerting since the strip was written in 1912).

In that essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Dosa passes off Oscar's behavior as old-fashioned, good-spirited death prediction, but years of absorbing the works of Stephen King tell us there is something much more sinister afoot. After all, Providence is only two-hundred miles from King's stomping grounds in Maine.

Indexed by tags weird, science, medicine, nature, cat, death, nursing home.

Let's Talk About Safe Sex

2007-07-27T12:32:00.000-04:00

A survey of 1000 UK Girl Guides revealed What (young) Women Want: to be prepared for the 21st century.

Girls under the age of 15 want instruction in a broad spectrum of activities, from the more traditional cooking healthy meals and pitching tent, to standing up to boys and safely surfing the web. Girls over 15 requested instructions on assembling flat pack furniture, managing their budget, and safe sex.

The demands emerged in survey ... by Girlguiding UK, which is striving to keep itself relevant to the lives of young women. A spokeswoman said that the movement would act on the findings and make sure that the appeal for more information on sex and money was met.

Link (via BoingBoing*.) While the badge may be new to the Girl Guides, it seems that the demand for basic information about sex has been around for quite some time. Just ask Spiderman (BoingBoing again).

* I'd like to point out that last part of this url reads 'girls_want_bad' (short for girls want badges) which I had misread as girls_want_it_bad which is a completely different take on this story, and not an entirely fair one either.

Indexed by tags Girlguide, UK, sex, safety, internet, badge, Spiderman Planned Parenthood.

What American Pie Means

2007-07-21T08:37:00.000-04:00

The song, not the movie. I wrote a report on "American Pie" freshman year of high school, and as I recall it came to conclusions pretty similar to those in this video.

(Via the Presurfer.)
Indexed by tags music, America, American Pie, Don McLean.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

2007-07-21T08:34:00.000-04:00

Indexed by tags cartoon, Simpsons, Bumblebee Man.

Chimps Hate You Because of What You Do, Not What You Have

2007-07-19T13:35:00.000-04:00

A group of evolutionary biologists at the Max Planck Institute have demonstrated that chimpanzees are capable of taking revenge when they feel personally wronged but, unlike humans, won't act out of spite if they merely see that another chimp is better off:

The researchers explored how chimpanzees responded to loss and theft by putting them one at a time in a small room with access to food on a sliding table in a booth outside.

Each animal held a rope allowing it to collapse the table and send the food out of reach. Unsurprisingly, the chimpanzees chose not to collapse the table while eating, researchers said.

When the researchers made the food on the table viewable but out of reach to the first chimpanzee or when a second animal could eat in plain view of the first, the chimpanzees did not seem to care.

When the second animal was able to take the food away from the first, the chimpanzee without food often collapsed the table to take revenge, the researchers said.

"The final situation was punishment where theft was involved," [lead researcher Keith] Jensen said in a telephone interview. "The only option for the victim in this situation was to collapse the table and nobody eats."

Link (via Freakonomics Blog). So we probably can breathe a little easier knowing this chimp isn't motivated by spite for human global domination. And we finally have a major, scientifically demonstrable hole in the plausibility of this vision of the future.

Indexed by tags science, nature, evolution, psychology, behavior, chimpanzee, revenge, spite.
Image credits: "Project X," courtesy Reel Film, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.

Advice Column Mashup

2007-07-18T15:39:00.000-04:00

Dear Ann Savage,
Our daughter is 10 years old, and very big for her age. "Evangeline" is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds. She still plays with dolls, and her interests are the same as any other 10-year-old girl.

Last Halloween, Evangeline came home in tears after 15 minutes of trick-or-treating. She had been told she was too old to be "doing that." When we would go to the movies or to a sports event and ask for a child's ticket, they invariably questioned her age. We solved that problem by bringing along a copy of her birth certificate.

I have never seen this situation addressed in your column, so I hope you will publish my letter. Surely other parents are experiencing this same challenging situation and are at a loss as to how to deal with it.

–A New Orleans Reader

Dear Reader,
First off, you were born five foot two, 450 pounds? Did your mother burst like a seedpod?

Second, enough already! I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact—being heavy is a health risk; rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly—characterized as "hate speech." (Particularly by people who, like LARDASS, fill their letters complaining about my hate speech with juvenile taunts about my hunger for c**k.) Perhaps the problem here is that LARDASS and BW lack perspective. My comments only seem hateful to people who haven't read anything truly hateful about fat.

–Ann

Dear Ann Savage,
I am 38 years old and still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I am stuck in a job I hate and don't know what to do with my life. When I was in high school, I never gave my future a second thought. I didn't want to join the family business, so I went into the military. That was OK for a while, but I didn't want to make a career of it.

I married a great girl and we have two kids, but I lost my job, and now we are in rocky financial shape. My father offered me a job and I took it out of desperation, but it was not a good fit so I quit. I returned to college and got a degree after 10 years of evening classes, but it didn't train me to do anything worthwhile.

I went back to work for my father, but I am bored out of my mind. I know I am capable of more. I took some job-placement tests, but it seems I have no aptitude for what interests me, and no interest in what I am qualified for. How can I get out of this trap?

–Totally Stuck in Minnesota

Dear Totally,
If you're serious about your motto—"the older the better"—then the club you should join is AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons. "AARP has 33 million members," said Tom Otwell, AARP's national spokesman, "with the median age being 67. We have members from age 50 to well over 100." Is AARP a good way for single people to meet mature partners? "We have 4,000 chapters, some are more social than others, some more politically active than others. But being active in a chapter certainly creates opportunities to mingle with like-minded folks." As almost 60 percent of AARP's members are female, and many of these women are widowed, odds and early male mortality rates would seem to favor you, Spike.

But, alas, at 38 you're too young to join AARP. "Fifty is the age of membership eligibility," Tom told me, "but if someone is married to another person who is 50 or older, then that person automatically becomes a member when their spouse joins." Did Tom have any advice for someone not yet old enough for AARP who wanted to meet, oh, women old enough to be long-time AARP members? "Um, I guess I would give the standard advice: Get involved in social activities, take some classes, do some volunteer work. A lot of volunteer organizations rely heavily on older folks to fill their ranks, and someone could meet any number of older people that way."

To join AARP, send $8 to The American Association of Retired Persons Membership Center, P.O. Box 199, Long Beach, CA 90848. Along with your membership card you'll receive a subscription to—are you sitting down?—Modern Maturity, AARP's membership magazine, and probably some good one-handed reading for you, Spike. You don't have to provide proof of age to join—just check the "I'm 50!" box—and Tom tells me the September/October issue of Modern Maturity had a cover story on "Great Sex: What's Age Got to Do with It?"

Anything in that issue about the pros and cons of younger men worshiping older women like Egyptian love slaves? "I don't think I'm going to comment on that," said Tom, who suddenly had to take another call.

–Ann

Indexed by tags advice, mashup.

Missing Honeybee Update: Have You Checked Johnstown?

2007-07-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

Those missing honeybees are at it again, this time swarming in the tens of thousands inside a Johnstown, Pennsylvania, house. But the owner won't exterminate them, because they are charismatic megafauna.

Indexed by tags nature, honeybees, disappear, swarm, house, Pennsylvania, Johnstown.
Image credits: "Swarm1," Sillydog, courtesy Flickr, acquired via Creative Commons license.

Thrill-Ride Chess

2007-07-18T12:31:00.001-04:00

Fans of webcomic xkcd were inspired to act out one famous strip in real life. Bonus points for doing it at Dollywood. There are many more such tributes here.

Indexed by tags games, photography, souvenir, chess, roller-coaster, theme park, thrill ride.