The Thoughts and Sayings Of Baba Doodlius

I won! I won!

2008-10-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Howdy all you Seedlings of Curiosity, growing in the rich, fertile Soil of Knowledge, overcoming the Droughts and Duststorms of Obfuscation, creating the rich, green Canopy of Truth!

No new Revelations today. I'm sort of on vacation, but I had to drop by to announce some Big, Important News!

The votes have been tallied in the 2008 Blogger's Choice Awards, and I am very happy to announce that

I WON!!!!

Yes, the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius has won the Blogger's Choice Award in the category of Best Humor Blog, subcategory of "who did Poetikat nominate and vote for", with a humongous total of

Two votes!

(one of which was not cast by me).

So a huge thank-you-very-much to the Academy, all my fans, and most especially Poetikat. Poetikat is cool! Thanks for thinking of me!

Have a nice day!

I got answers comin' out my eyeballs!

2008-09-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

Hello all you Hamsters of Curiosity, perpetually running in the Plastic Wheel of Knowledge, overcoming the Muscle Fatigue of Obfuscation, trying to obtain the elusive Sunflower Seed of Truth!

I have a few more questions from you, my dedicated readers, and rather than let you all get into a huff about waiting months before I answer your very important inquiries, I'll put up a few more answers in yet another edition of the

Baba Doodlius Reader Mailbag

There are a couple that have been sitting there in the "unanswered" queue for quite a while, but I also have an easy one offered up in a comment to the last post, and as I've said before I'm a lazy bastard, so when somebody lobs me a softball I'll very eagerly whack it out of the park. So anyway, here we go with today's questions and answers!

Question #1)
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Once again, Azzy's little sister Lil'Sis gets the first question, since she comes up with so many of them. This one's been sitting there getting stale, so sorry about the delay. To paraphrase her question:

"Zero = nothing, right? Why is it, then, that when you add a zero to the end of a number the value goes way up? And so, if I had six bank accounts with a zero balance and one account with 1 pound, and I transferred those six zeros to the account with the one pound, would that make the total in that account 1,000,000? That's a 1 with six zeros added to it, isn't it?"

She's pretty good at this Mystery stuff, ain't she?

In asking this question, Lil'Sis has made an observation of one aspect of a very important Law of Nature. This law has long been known, but was first articulated by Warren Buffett back in 1982. In brief, this is Buffett's Law of Monetary Relativity:

"Under normal observable everyday conditions, people usually have small balances in their bank accounts, like, say, $25.50 USD. Adding zero balances to this initial microscopic balance will result in no change in value whatsoever. However, this result turns out to be relative to the starting balance: When the account starts with a large value, such as $1,000,000 USD, adding a bunch of zero balances will increase the end total by many orders of magnitude, thus effectively turning millionaires into billionaires. As a side effect, changing said millionaire in to a billionaire will simultaneously remove some fraction of the net amount from a great many of those accounts with the aforementioned $25.50 USD."

In other words, it is a scientific fact that when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

(An unfortunate corrollary to this law is that when the rich get poorer, the poor, you guessed it, get poorer anyway.)

Question #2)
-----------------
Cathy, quite a while ago (so I hope she's still interested in the answer), asked the folowing:

"Why is it easier to apply mascara with your mouth open?"

One of the reasons that I have not been quicker with an answer to this one is that I have never personally been one to use mascara. In fact, I had to look it up to make sure I was thinking about the right product:

Mascara: a cosmetic used to darken, thicken and define eyelashes

OK, yeah, that's what I thought. (Well, I knew it had something to do with eyes.) Anyway, like I said, I never use the stuff, so I didn't know the answer off the top of my head.

So I tried some on.

Whaddaya think? Is this a good look for me? It's a good thing the question didn't involve lipstick, because I lack lips and nobody sells beakstick.

All artistic, philosophical, and religious significance of this picture aside, my brief dip into the world of cosmetics really didn't help solve this Mystery. So I did what I should have done from the beginning: Consult the Highest Authority!

That, naturally, would be Mrs. Doodlius.

Here's what she told me:

"You open your mouth when you apply mascara for the same reason singers close their eyes when they sing, except in reverse."

Ah, that's pure genius! I hereby name this "Mrs. Doodlius' Law of Eye-Mouth Artistic Inverse Dependency":

The eyes and the mouth are inversely dependent upon each other when dealing with matters of artistic expression. When applying mascara, which is essentially "painting" one's eyes, the mouth must open; conversely, while singing, which is artistic expression by voice, the eyes must close.

Wow! That Mrs. Doodlius is just great! Thanks to her, we now have a whole new Law of the Universe based on a reader question! And don't you fellows get any ideas now, she's already spoken for!

Cathy, thanks for waiting so patiently!

Question #3)
-----------------
Mr. Moooog of the varying number of "o's" wants to know:

"What does 'transcendental' mean? I'm assuming it has something to do with cross-dressing dentists."

Well Moooog, I'm known more for my encyclopedic knowledge than my dictionariosity, but I'll give this a shot.

The first thing to do when trying to figure out the meaning of a difficult word, according to my old grammar school teachers (and I do mean old - that was a looooong time ago), is to break the word up into its component parts. In this case we have:

tran - scend - ent - al

The next thing we do to find our word's meaning is, naturally, to look up all these component pieces on the internet. I used dictionary.com and reference.com (which are wholly owned subsidiaries of Ask.com). The meanings of these word components are:

tran: a brand of Norwegian cod liver oil
scend: to heave in a swell
ent: medical acronym for "Ear, Nose, and Throat"
al: other things (from the Latin alia)

So the meaning of the word "transcendental", therefore, must be: "The heaving of the ear, nose, throat, and other things in a swell of Norwegian cod liver oil"

See there Mooooog? Learning the meaning of new, big words can be easy and fun!

Well, that will have to do it for today's answers. Apologies to Alex the Cat - the research on your question about the bathing habits of humans is incomplete, so I cannot yet offer the answer. Don't worry, I'll get to it!

Until next time, have a nice day!

Awww, yer so nice!

2008-09-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

Marja over at Dutch Corner has seen fit to bestow upon me an award! I love it when people do that! It means somebody is thinking of this old bird and appreciating some of the bizarre stuff I write in this forum. Just makes the ol' feathers fluff up a bit whenever I think about it!

Anyway, here it is, the "I Heart Your Blog" award!

Thank you very much!

Tune in next time (tomorrow, maybe, or the next day) when I Reveal some of your Mysteries of the Universe in another episode of the Baba Doodlius Reader Mailbag!

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Follow-up edit:

It has been pointed out to me that I have in the past been somewhat of an asshole bird - a couple of folks have been so generous as to present to me some awards, and I have not even bothered to give them appropriate words of thanks. Bad Baba! >Slap!< (Ow.)

Well, I apologize for that, folks. I really do appreciate that anybody takes the time to read any of the strange stuff I put up here, and even though I still wonder why you do it you keep coming back for more. The comments you leave on my posts always make me smile, and when anyone sees fit to pass along an award it just gives me that much more incentive to head out and do more research on all those Mysteries of the Universe. The one drawback is that now my head is too big to fit through the door of my house, but I can live with that.

So, to Sandy and Lone Grey Squirrel and Azzy and Poetikat (who also nominated me for "Best Humor Blog"! Hygge!) and Mel and Marja and [un]Censored (whose blog URL has changed and I don't remember what it is now, sorry!) and Moooooog35 (with a constantly varying number of "o's") and Odd Facts and all the folks who read this:

THANKS for the recognition! You are all cool! If anyone ever questions your cooliosity, tell 'em Baba Doodlius said it was so, and Baba Doodlius knows all so it must be true!

Drawing You In

2008-08-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

Howdy all you Steeplechasers of Inquisitiveness running around the Track of Knowledge, leaping the Hurdles and Water Hazards of Obfuscation, to win the Gold Medal of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

Seriously, humans, what's up with that "steeplechase" thing? It sure seems like a strange athletic event, running around jumping over walls and pools of water. Throw in some crocodiles, vine swinging, and gold bars and you could call it "Pitfall".

Left: Steeplechase now. Right: Steeplechase made more interesting by adding vines and crocodiles.

As you may have noticed, I have athletics on my mind lately, ever since a friend told me that I should watch these "Olympic Games" that you humans love so much. I started watching, and I had not been able to tear my eyes away until the closing ceremonies were over. The things you humans do are just fascinating! And it's not just the performances - even coming up with some of the events took some serious human ingenuity. I mean really, only humans could have come up with "Rhythmic Gymnastics" - what the heck are they doing, jumping around with a big ball or a ribbon on a stick? I never would have even thought to do anything like that, and humans make a world-wide contest out of it! And I'm not even going to get into the global geopolitical ramifications of "Synchronized Diving".

Left: She's doing something called "Rythmic Gymnastics". Right: I'm not really certain what these guys are trying to do.

Everyone has their favorite events, and I don't mean to belittle anyone's preferences, but like most humans I have mostly been paying attention to the "marquee events", like swimming, track & field, gymnastics, and basketball. For those of you who have not been paying attention, I shall hereby summarize each of these event categories:

Swimming. From the press coverage, I'm pretty sure there was only one serious competitor in the pool at this Olympics, and his name is Michael Phlippers. He won every event, including the Women's 4x8000 Meter Blorkstroke.

Track & Field. Jamaicans run faster than any other humans. In fact, one of them called Usain "Lightning" Bolt (I swear I did not make that name up) actually runs faster than most horses and a more than a few gazelles.

Gymnastics. The citizenry of China is stronger and more agile than everybody else on the planet, making the other countries' gymnastics contestants look like a bunch of seasick porcupines.

Basketball. The United States men's team is made up of freaks of nature who can jump over adult male African elephants and won all of their games by a combined score of 3,176 to 25.

So these Olympics are not so much about human versus human contests - its more like a series of utterly dominating performances. So the Olympic Spirit is not really about beating your fellow humans, it's more about competing against the very Laws of Nature. Frequently the worst law for competing against would be the Law of Gravity, which tends to make the primary Olympic activities like running, jumping, and throwing hugely difficult. And with Gravity we have a Serious Mystery of the Universe!

Right now you might be thinking "There's no Mystery about Gravity. Sir Isaac Newton figured most of it out over 300 years ago and Einstein pinned it down about 100 years ago, so there's no room left for any Mystery at all!" Well lah-tee-dah, just who's the Mystery expert around here anyway? It just so happens that Gravity is one of the most enduring Mysteries in all of science! It's such a tough Mystery that most physicists won't even ask the big question

Just What the Heck Is Gravity, Anyway?

Think about it: two objects are mysteriously drawn towards each other, even if they are separated by billions of kilometers! Under extreme circumstances, like near a Black Hole, even light cannot escape the inexorable pull of this spooky force. Sure, thanks to Newton we can describe how Gravity works, and Einstein said Gravity is caused by massive objects denting space-time like a big dude on a trampoline, but nobody in the world really knows WHY it works like it does. What kind of force is so incredible that it could bend the very fabric of the Universe?

An illustration of Gravity: Imagine the big guy in the middle is the sun, and space is the trampoline. Not hard to see that things are gonna get sucked right down into the middle, eh?

One of the big projects in science right now is to detect "gravity waves", which, if Einstein was right, would be produced by such common things as two black holes orbiting each other. Currently there is a herd of science-type folks out there hard at work looking for these waves - and by "hard at work" I mean "they're spending a veritable assload of money designing instruments sensitive enough to detect them". Finding gravity waves would yield great insight into the true nature of gravity, but so far scientists have had no luck in this cosmic endeavor.

Being of such curious nature, I decided to take my super-duper Bird Cam out, take some close-up pictures of orbiting black holes, and see if I could use my unique analysis skillz to get to the bottom of this whole gravity wave Mystery.

So here's a pic I took of some orbiting black holes, about 7 billion light years from Earth. (I have one hell of a zoom lens!)

Two orbiting black holes, magnified about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times.

Not much to look at, really. There are no obvious signs whatsoever of any gravity waves. But the Universe is no match for my photo enhancement ability! If there's a gravity wave in there, I'll find it!

Let's see... change the brightness a little... tweak the saturation... add some color for contrast and visual effect... aaaaaand voila!

A Gravity Wave is clearly visible! What's more, the shape of that wave reveals the True Nature of Gravity, a force capable of altering the curvature of the Universe itself!

Gravity Waves are heart-shaped, leading one to the inescapable conclusion that

Gravity = Love!

That's right, the reason that every object in the Universe tries to get closer to every other object is because they all love each other! The entire Universe is nothing but one big-honkin' group hug of epic proportions!

Those who say that "Love makes the world go 'round" are exactly, scientifically correct. So c'mon all you humans - let's stop with the hate and war and violence against each other and just let Gravity take its course!

And in the spirit of the day, I hereby refuse to fight Gravity/Love by not going to the gym to lift weights tonight. The Way of Love is a whole lot less tiring, but also much less likely to lead to me getting any Olympic medals. Guess I'll just leave that to Mr. Phlippers.

Water on the Brain

2008-08-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks. I am posting today not to reveal a Mystery of the Universe, but rather because I have a Mystery I cannot definitively solve. This Mystery is so confounding that without concrete evidence I honestly can say that I have exactly zero idea what the solution to it is.

This Mystery concerns that little event which you humans periodically hold which you call the Olympic Games. Not being a human and also not being of a particularly competitive nature, I would normally not have a huge amount of interest in such activities, but a human friend of mine told me today that there was something I should see. He pointed me the following web page containing an interesting story and accompanying video clip:

Men's 4 x 100 Meter Freestyle Relay

If you haven't seen this race, I have to suggest that you do so. Not being an aquatic bird, I don't swim at all, and I have no particular desire to watch humans swimming most of the time, but I took my friend's advice and watched the video of this race and I have to say that my appreciation of human accomplishments grew dramatically in the 3 minutes or so the race took to complete.

In case you didn't watch the race or read about it, here's the Reader's Digest version:

This relay race, with each 4-member team swimming a total of 400 meters, was completed by the winning team from the United States in 3 minutes, 8.24 seconds. The second place team from France finished in 3 minutes 8.32 seconds. That's a scant 0.08 seconds separating first and second place. The previous world record was 3 minutes, 12.23 seconds. So both of the first two finishers beat the previous world record by nearly 4 seconds.

World records are generally very, very hard to eclipse. This is the way it ought to be, really - nobody in the history of history has ever done activity X as fast as that, so going even faster should be very difficult. Breaking one by four seconds in a fairly short race is an accomplishment of Herculean proportions! The thing with this particular swimming race was, not only did the first two teams break the old world record (by a huge margin), but a total of five teams broke it! That's' right, even the team that finished in fifth place was faster than anybody who ever swam it before. At four swimmers per team, that's a grand total of 20 humans who were faster than anybody had been in history! Even the team that finished in eighth place was fast enough to have won the Gold Medal in the Olympics of four years ago!

So what's the Mystery of the Universe in all this, the one that even the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius cannot solve? Here it is:

How the heck can all those guys get so damn fast all of a sudden, and all at the same time?

C'mon people, it's almost embarrassing how seemingly easy it was to break that world record! From the perspective of someone unfamiliar with that whole 'swimming' thing, I'd have to say that if I had tossed a bunch of deformed chimpanzees into the pool next to those guys they would have had at least an outside shot at breaking the old record.

I have a couple of theories about the cause of this huge performance improvement, neither of which I can prove without proper laboratory analysis:

1) Swimmers are taking fish oil dietary supplements, and they are beginning to turn into fish themselves. This would explain why they're all wearing those full-body swim suits nowadays - they're hiding the scales growing on their legs.

Is Olympic swimmer Cullen Jones hiding a nice crop of scales under that suit?

What with security the way it is at the Olympics right now, I can't get close enough to any of the athletes to check for scales and gills.

2) The entire pool is doped with EPO. I tried to get a sample of the water to test this theory, but about 500 Chinese guards chased me out of the arena. (My Bird Fu may be the best, but 500 to 1 odds is just a little too much to overcome.)

So I am at an impasse. Without evidence I cannot solve this Mystery, and I just know the solution would probably blow my mind and the minds of all you readers. Whatever the truth may be, I would just like to say congratulations to the entire human race for putting on such a captivating display of athletic prowess. Who knows - someday you may sprout wings, and when that happens I know a few Peregrine falcons who'd love to challenge you to a fly-off!

Heads on the Rock

2008-07-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

Greetings all you Freckle-faced Tots of Inquisitiveness peering longingly through the window of the Candy Shop of Knowledge at the mouth-watering, sugary Treats of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe

My regular readers (all six of you) may have noticed that I have not been around of late. For this I wholeheartedly apologize, and as way of excuse I'd just like to point out that it's hard out here for a bird. And there are, oddly enough, some places on this planet that are completely without any internet access, like, for example, Baba Sr.'s house.

Baba Sr.: "Consarnit, I can't even get the dag-gum clock on the VCR to quit flashing '12:00', and they gots to go invent that there new-fangled 'Internet' thing!"

All that aside, I'm not here to bitch and moan that life is tough, I'm here to Reveal Mysteries of the Universe! So without further ado, I present the Revelation of today's Mystery (by special request of that poetry-slingin' human Poetikat), the Secret of

Rapa Nui!

Rapa Nui is an extremely isolated island in the South Pacific, located about 2,000 miles from anything. (Have you heard the expression "it's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there"? Well, Rapa Nui really is the end of the world). The name "Rapa Nui" is Polynesian for "Big Head" (I made up half of that; it is left as an exercize for the reader to figure out which half), which is appropriate because this island, similar to Hollywood stars and corporate CEOs, is famous for big heads. The Rapa Nui heads, however, are made of rock rather than ego.

A bunch of famous Big Heads on Rapa Nui, Donald Trump, and Alec Baldwin

Let me jump back a step and start at the beginning of this Mystery.

The first European to reach Rapa Nui was a Dutch sailor named Jacob Roggeveen. Rumor has it he was searching for a good supplier of marijuana, or possibly some employees for a new business in which he was a partner. Whatever the case, he sighted the island on April 5, 1722, which happened to be Easter Sunday, and therefore he named the place "Island of Why The Heck Do I Have To Be At Work On Easter Sunday". Ha Ha, actually he named it "Easter Island", because he found there herds of happy bunnies that brought colored eggs to the natives.

This scene was fairly common on Rapa Nui in the early 1700's

The most intriguing aspect of this island as noted by Captain Roggeveen was the presence of huge stone heads that dotted the coastline. These monoliths, some standing over 7 meters in height and weighing over 30 tons, had apparently been erected by the local islanders, a group whose technological achievements did not include any metal working or the use of the wheel.

I'll put up another pic of a Rapa Nui head because they're just so darned cool

So how did such a supposedly primitive culture manage to carve huge slabs of rock into the shape of people's heads and stand them up on platforms all over the island? For centuries foreigners have asked the locals this question, and the conversations tended to go like this:

European Guy: "So, how did you islanders manage to carve these huge stone heads and prop them up next to the ocean?"

Rapa Nui Guy: "Ia orana, ua ite oe i te parau Rapanui, tane?" *

EG: "I have no idea what you're trying to say. I think I'll enslave you and spread European diseases throughout your population."

RNG: "Raho popa'a!" **

* - "Hello, do you speak Rapanui, sir?"
** - "Damn foreigner!" (or something like that)

As one can imagine, the whole slavery and disease thing didn't exactly endear the Europeans to the Rapa Nui locals. The lack of trust and the inability to understand each others' languages caused the visitors to remain completely in the dark about the origins of the big heads. So naturally, this means I had to do my own darned investigation. As usual.

What with energy prices going through the roof, I decided it would be better to forego the typical use of the Reverse K.E.G. Process to get to the bottom of this Mystery. (Hey, even us birds have to scrimp a bit in these trying economic times.) I had to resort to good ol' fashioned detective work and insight! Join me, if you would, in this fascinating journey into the world of forensic analysis!

Turns out this Mystery was way easier to solve than I excpected. I simply took some close-up photos of the big heads and took a couple samples of them back to the Bird Cave for analysis. Here's an extreme close-up pic of one of the heads:

Look how porous that rock is. Interesting! I began to formulate my theory, which was backed up by the laboratory analysis of the samples:

To those few of you not well-versed in organic chemistry, the chemical found in trace quantities in the Rapa Nui heads is... Sugar!

So let's see... a porous material... containing lots of sugar...

The Rapa Nui heads are not natural rock! They're petrified marshmallow!

The original inhabitants of Rapa Nui are the inventors of marshmallow! Their invention, being not only yummy but also easy to work with, was the perfect material to use in fashioning huge head sculptures. These sculptures were so easy to make and transport that they put up dozens of them all over the island! Unfortunately, the islanders had to coat their sculptures with protectants to keep them from dissolving during rainstorms, and this led to a rapid fossilization process of the building material. Very little of the original marshmallow remains, having been replaced by the minerals used to protect their creations.

An obscure note from Captain Roggeveen's log book provided final proof of this theory:

"Captain's Log, April 6, 1722: I cannot understand a single word these island folk say to me, but they have given myself and the crew a delicious gift which is apparently a local delicacy: tiny birdlike sculptures made of some sort of air-puffed sugar! Such a novel idea! In commemoration of the discovery of Easter Island, I shall distribute to all my friends facsimiles of the islanders' gift on the anniversay of sighting this land!"

And thus was the tradition of giving the gift of Marshmallow Peeps on Easter established!

Aren't the little details of history just fascinating?

Rocks in my Head

2008-06-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

Greetings all you Mosquitoes of Inquisitiveness alighting on the juicy Buttock of Knowledge to feast upon the succulent Blood of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

Today's Revelation is about a subject ripped right from recent headlines, but it's a Mystery that goes back almost as far as the Pyramids, and is at least as interesting. By now you've figured out that I am speaking of none other than

Stonehenge!

The Secret of Stonehenge is one of the grandest Mysteries in all of human endeavor. Imagine this: Enormous slabs of solid rock weighing tens of tons, dragged many miles and assembled into a monument of cylindrical design, with the precision of modern engineering implements, and all of this labor performed by a Mysterious stone- and bronze-age people! Standing like sentries on Salisbury Plain in southern England, the towering monoliths of Stonehenge have enchanted visitors dating back to the ancient Romans, who are known to have hacked off pieces of the stones to take home as souvenirs. Seriously! Asshole Romans.

For literally thousands of years (yeah, it's pretty darned old), humans have studied the ruins of Stonehenge. Some interesting points about this enigmatic structure that have been discovered so far include:

1) "Stonehenge" is from the Old English words "stan", meaning "rocks", and "henge", meaning, well, uh, modern science has really yet to determine just what the heck a "henge" is. Research is ongoing.

2) Stonehenge was constructed between 3000 and 1600 BC, but nobody is certain who the builders were. Except me. I have discovered that Stonehenge was built by: ancient Brits. (That's a bonus Secret of the Universe, no extra charge!) I know, my knowledge is astonishing! I just can't imagine why nobody has figured this out before.

3) A monument as monumental as Stonehenge cannot help but be inspirational to artists, as evidenced by the megastar heavy metal band "Spinal Tap".

More recent investigations have theorized that Stonehenge was used as a royal burial ground. But you have to keep in mind that this "discovery" was made by archaeologists, and these folks say that just about everything they dig up was a burial ground, or a battlefield, or something related to violence and death. You can't really blame them, though, because violence sells - just go to any modern movie theater if you want this point proved - and archaeologists need to keep getting funding to go dig up more and more stuff. Hey, you always do what's right for the wallet, eh?

The thing is, I happen to know several modern Brits and they most definitely are not all about violence and death (well, maybe some of the football fans). On the contrary, these folk are quite the fun-loving bunch - they're always singing, dancing, drinking (oh yeah, lots of drinking), telling jokes I don't understand, and laughing hysterically at them. They seem so jolly that I can't believe their ancestors would have built a huge, enduring monument to death.

So what was Stonehenge really? I cranked up my patented reverse K.E.G. process and took my camera back in time to see what Stonehenge looked like a few millenia ago. I took this enlightening picture on my trip:

There you have it: "Stonehenge" on opening day. Click picture to enlarge.

Monument to Death, huh? Hardly! It was the world's first Amusement Park!

I was lucky enough to get the picture before the crowds arrived, because once people started showing up it was one huge party! The "Celt-O-Whirl", as the Stonehenge swing ride was called, was a major attraction of the ancient world. It wasn't exactly an extreme G-force astronaut training centrifuge, more like a carousel really, but c'mon, it was 4,000 years ago so give them a break.

The Celt-O-Whirl wasn't quite like this air force extreme-G training session. Click the pic for video, it's pretty cool.

So where do researchers get off saying that this thrill ride was a burial ground? Well, they note that there is evidence of burned human remains at Stonehenge, and they are absolutely right. However, they're wrong about the site being a burial ground. What they have found is the evidence of a terrible side effect of amusement parks: sometimes people fall off the rides! Nowadays when that happens, the accident makes headlines and the victim's family sues the bajeebers out of the amusement park. But 4,000 years ago, if you fell off the ride and your family want around to see it, then tough noogies! They just "got rid of the evidence" right where they found it:

"Why no, Mrs. Pickleford, we haven't seen your little Ian around the Celt-O-Whirl today. He must have gone fishing or something instead. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go dig a big hole and, uh, rapidly rub these two sticks together..."

So they didn't worry about lawsuits back then - they hadn't invented lawyers yet, nor ambulances for them to chase. We're much more enlightened nowadays.

Anyway, now you know the great Secret of Stonehenge. By the way, don't go visiting the site and try to play on the swings - they really, really don't appreciate it.

You have Questions? I have answers!

2008-06-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

Howdy all you speedy skaters slapping the Puck of Knowledge into the Goal of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

Today's intro brought to you by the National Hockey League and their championship trophy the Stanley Cup, which is about to be won by the Detroit Red Wings, who I am pretty sure win it every year so this should not be a surprise to anybody.

Today I'm doing something a little different. I was actually asked a bunch of questions by Azzitizz over at "The Totally Transparent Party" (also known as "Azzy's Blog-a-Roonie" because Azzy can call her blog whatever she darned well wants to call it, thank you very much). Since I get from you readers very few Mysteries of the Universe to Reveal, I figured I'd take this opportunity to add this as a feature to this blog to encourage you shy folks to ask any questions you may have. I now present to you the

Baba Doodlius Reader Mailbag!

All of the questions today are, as I said, from Azzitizz, or more accurately from Azzy's little sister "Lil'Sis" (which is a highly appropriate name for one's little sister in the opinion of the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius).

Question Number One:

This is actually a bunch of questions linked together, so I'll just quote Lil'Sis directly and get to the answers and commentary afterwards:

"How come almost every animal on the planet can swim by just nature and instinct, yet we humans have to be taught?
New born babies seem to manage just fine without lessons!
Is it because we are told we can't swim as we get a little older and therefore believe we can't until we have lessons?
Does that mean we shouldn't believe what we are told about anything? In which case, take for example, The Law of Gravity. The Law of Gravity must be so, as nobody can tell an apple or a leaf whether or not to fall to the ground. But, if we decide not to believe it, will we be able to float or fly?"

Well that's some serious questioning, Lil'Sis. I'd first like to say that you have a brilliant future in Philosophy, assuming you don't decide to test your "Belief in Gravity" theory and jump off a building first.

This is a cartoon by John Callahan. You should immediately go buy all of his books.

But now on to your questions. As you pointed out, humans can actually swim just fine as infants without being told how to do it. The problem with humans is that they have this innate drive, as powerful as the need for food, shelter, and sex, to be right about everything and to be better than everybody else at everything. Lil'Sis has hit on the basic Truth of Human Existence, which controls every aspect of human society, from religion to politics to the aforementioned Stanley Cup: Humans Have to Fight About Stuff.

It starts early, and with the simple things, like swimming:

"Look here, that swimming you're doing, it's all wrong! You can't just paddle around until you get to shore, you have to move your hands like THIS, and kick your feet THIS WAY, and then you'll go FASTER and you'll be DOING IT RIGHT!"

And things get worse from there:

"Watch this, I can kick this spherical air-filled bladder into that net over there BETTER THAN YOU! In fact, me and my ten friends are the BEST IN THE WHOLE WORLD at this activity!"

"Your economic system is NOT OPTIMIZED at all! You should be running your economy THIS WAY or I shall SCOFF AT YOU and ADVOCATE YOUR TOTAL DESTRUCTION!"

"Those rituals you are performing to please your god(s), they're all wrong! You've got to do things THIS WAY, which is the only CORRECT way to do it, and if you don't do things the CORRECT WAY I'll just have to SUBJUGATE YOU and FORCE YOU TO DO IT RIGHT."

So you see, swimming instruction is just the symptom of this excessive human competitive behavior. It has nothing to do with belief, so please don't go stepping off any high cliffs to test your Gravity theory, please.

Question Number Two:

"When the sunlight is so bright it hurts your eyes, how come it doesn't hurt anymore if you shut just one eye?"

Uh, hmmm, well, to that I'd just have to reply that I have not had this experience. I generally don't make a habit of staring directly at the sun, Lil'Sis, because that sort of activity can be harmful to your health. To answer the question, I will have to defer to the expertise of Sigmund Freud, who postulated the Theory of Eyeball Denial. The theory goes like this:

"Pain coming from both eyes cannot be ignored because it has no source of counter-sensation. However, if input from one of the eyes is eliminated, the Ego has the capability of denying the pain because it is not reinforced by an alternate pathway, and thus can pretend that the pain does not exist. All of this, naturally, is proof of the desire to have sex with one's mother."

So there you go, Lil'Sis. You can't argue with the Father of Modern Psychoanalysis. Well, except maybe about the "sex with your mother" part, which is just creepy and disturbing.

Question Number Three:

"How come men have nipples? Why hasn't evolution eliminated them by now as they are of no use whatsoever?"

This one is also somewhat foreign to me, Lil'Sis, seening as how I am a bird, and birds of both genders lack nipples. But I happen to know the answer to this one offhand, because I have done extensive research on human nipples (don't even ask why, there are some Secrets of the Universe that I won't reveal).

The reason for human male nipplage is based in the very evolutionary theory that you have already referenced. Rather than eliminating man nipples because they are unecessary, evolution has preserved them because it simplifies the manufacturing process. Think about it: Human babies all look pretty much the same. When you're making two things that are nearly identical, you don't waste effort retooling the assembly line just for a cosmetic difference, you save your effort for the pieces that make a difference.

Charles Darwin himself alluded to this evolutionary fact when he said:

"Oh yeah, baby, that feels soooo good! YES! Oh yeah, put the clamps right there and... OOOHHHH!!!"

What a freakazoid.

That about wraps up this edition of Baba Doodlius' Reader Mailbag. I hope you come away from this experience enriched, edfied, and entertained. And have a nice day!

A Short Mystery

2008-05-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

Howdy all you thoroughbreds galloping down the home stretch of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

Whaddaya think, is "thoroughbreds" better than "bloodhounds"? Anyway, on to today's Mystery!

There's a story that's been circulating for the past several years about Hobbits. No, I'm not talking about the fictional ones of Middle Earth. Rather, I mean jungle-dwelling, little tiny people - apparently related to humans - who went extinct about 12,000 years ago. The scientific name for these little guys is not actually "Hobbits", but rather Homo floresiensis, named for the Indonesian island of Flores on which the skeletal remains of several of these dudes have been found.

A big "Thank you very much" goes out to the New York Times for letting me use this copyrighted image from their web site, even if they don't technically know they let me use it.

Since this story goes in and out of the media periodically, you may have heard about it from reputable news sources like these:

Nature.com
National Geographic
New Scientist

The gist of the story is, some folks digging on Flores found some skeletons that are similar but not identical to modern humans, but the adults are only 3 feet tall! Pretty cool, finding real 12,000 year-old Hobbit skeletons in Indonesia, eh?

Here's a Flores Hobbit skull next to a modern human skull. Pretty neat, eh?

So you're asking now, "What's the big Mystery? Critters go extinct all the time." Well that's true, but like many scientific stories there is plenty of controvery surrounding the Flores Hobbits.

Some folks claim that the hobbits represent a separate, previously unknown branch of the human family tree. Others think that the Flores researchers have merely unearthed a deformed, diseased pygmy modern human. From a scientific point of view, that's a pretty humongous argument. And let me tell you, I've hung around plenty of scientists and I can say definitively that when they argue you better duck!

Lab fight! Watch out for flying glassware.

Since you humans can't seem to get to the bottom of this whole Hobbit thing, I figured I'd lend a hand with my impressive investigative skills and huge, hyperintelligent brain. No need to thank me, helping humans is what I do!

I flew over to Flores and started poking around the paleo-arechaeological dig sites looking for clues to the Truth behind the Great Hobbit Mystery. While I was out in the nearby jungle, just sitting there minding my own business, I saw a shocking scene, one that completely took me by surprise and solved the Mystery of the Flores Hobbits!

And lucky for me, I happened to have my camera with me. (Don't leave home without it, I always say.)

Here's the picture I took, which, as you can plainly see, shows the actual True Truth of the Flores Hobbits:

The Flores Hobbits are a hoax! Sheep are planting fake hobbit bones all over the island!

Sheep, you say? Where'd the sheep come from? Flores is mostly jungle, and jungle is not exactly a natural habitat for sheep. And why the heck are they planting these bones on Flores?

I wondered the same thing. And since I caught them red hoofed, they agreed to fess up and spill the whole story to me (a sheep may be bigger than a parrot, but they respect the power of Bird Fu.)

So here's the scoop: These sheep are from New Zealand, a country where sheep significantly outnumber humans. Using their "sheer" numbers (hah, ha, a little sheep humor there), they overwhelmed security at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch and stole a pile of early hominid fossils. Then they hopped a boat to Indonesia, disembarked on Flores, spread the fossils around, and notified some local science-type people that there was fame and fortune to be had just by digging in the right places in the jungle! Voila! A new species of "Hobbit" was discovered, all because of a bunch of scheming sheep!

But why would they go through all the trouble?

Puzzled, I asked sheep leader Curly Jack this question.

"You want to know why?" he said. "I'll telly you why. It's because of all the humans' damned "Lord of the Rings" movies! We sheep are sick and bloody tired of humans trodding all over our country filming orcs and ents and elves and bloody HOBBITS! And as if that weren't enough, now all the bloody NERDS in the whole world are comin' here to visit the damned filming sites, like it was some sorta PILGRIMAGE or somethin'! Well we're SICK AND TIRED of it! We figured if somebody found some hobbits somewhere else, they'd bugger off and LEAVE US ALONE!"

Actually, I can't really argue with him on any of that. I mean c'mon, the movies were kinda fun, but is it really necessary to have tours of the locales so people can see "where Helm's Deep and Isengard are"?

So to all you humans I say: by all means, read the books again for the 279th time, go play some "Dungeons and Dragons", and practice speaking Elvish, but for sheep's sake do it at home!

Humming Right Along

2008-04-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

Greetings all you bloodhounds sniffing out the fleeing perpetrator of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

(Note to self: come up with something better than "bloodhounds" next time.)

I am going to confess something to you today: For many years I thought I was

Going Insane!

Why, you ask, did I feel this way? Well, it was because I had this persistent ringing in my ears, a low, almost imperceptible background "hum" that I thought was purely imaginary. Plus, anyone who has ever experienced ear-ringing (also known as "tinnitus") knows that if it lasts for any significant length of time it can drive you batshit crazy all by itself!

Recently, though, modern science has taught me that I was actually NOT going insane. I wasn't hearing non-existent sounds - I was hearing a REAL sound!

I was hearing the humming of the Earth itself!

You don't believe me, do you? "The Earth doesn't hum, you stupid crazy bird", you're saying to your computer screen right now! Well Mr. or Ms. Smartypants, check this out and then tell me how stupid and crazy I am!

Earth's Hum Sounds More Mysterious Than Ever

For those of you to busy (lazy?) to click the link to read the story, it starts off with this:

"Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery... Researchers call it Earth's hum. "

Yep, the Earth is humming. You read that right, the planet you live on is emitting a constant, albeit very quiet, hum that is imperceptible to human ears. Unfortunately for me (in this case), I am not a human, and I happen to have super-tuned auditory reception capability that can pick up sounds that no other earthling can detect! (Sometimes it's hard being the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius!)

So what's up with the Earth and it's "relentless hum"? What could this possibly mean? And how can we ever understand the immense cosmic significance of this "giant, exceptionally quiet symphony"?

I knew that there was only one way to answer such questions: I, the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius, must become

One with the Earth!

Here's me becoming One with the Earth. "Ommmmmmmm!" Or as when electricians meditate, "Ohmmmmm".

I got into some serious meditation to make this happen. I managed to reach a state of Supreme Oneness with the Earth Itself! I felt a kinship with the planet you live on! I got so friendly with Earth that we struck up a conversation. It went something like this:

Baba Doodlius: Hi there Earth! Howya doin'?

Earth: Baba! Whazzup!?!

BD: Oh, not a heck of a lot, just doing some meditation. Hey, this "altered-state-of-consciousness" stuff is seriously cool!

E: Oh, don't I know it! I've been getting high on diesel fumes ever since humans invented internal combustion! It blows my mind, man!

BD: You know, you really should lay off that stuff, dude, it can really mess you up. Reduces life expectancy and all.

E: Yeah, you're right. I'm trying to cut down.

BD: Smart planet!

E: Hey I've been around for billions of years, I ought to have accumulated some wisdom, you know.

BD: Billions of years? You don't look a day over 500 million!

E: Oh stop it!

BD: No, you look great! Have you been moisturizing?

E: Well, my surface is 75% water, so I guess I kinda have been by default.

BD: And it's really working!

E: Thanks Baba! You're too kind!

BD: Say, Earth, I have this gig where I solve Myseries of the Universe, and...

E: Oh yeah, that blog of yours! I read that all the time, it's tremendously informative as well as entertaining!

BD: You read my blog? A big, famous planet like you reads my blog? I'm flattered!

E: Oh, I love it! Except you don't post very often. Do you know your last post was almost a month ago?

BD: Yeah, well, sorry about that. Sometimes I just get busy doing bird-related stuff and I lose track of time. I'll try to put up stuff more often.

E: That would be nice.

BD: Anyway, as I was saying, I reveal Mysteries of the Universe, and there's one in particular you can help me with.

E: Is it about how much oil I have left? Because I can't tell anybody that, it would ruin the surprise.

BD: No, it's not about oil. It's about your humming.

E: Oh, that old story! Yeah, I hum all the time. Sometimes I even sing!

BD: So I'm NOT crazy! You really are humming!

E: Yeah, is that so strange? Everybody does it occasionally.

BD: I suppose that's true. So, what's up with that anyway? Why all the humming and singing?

E: Oh, well, that's no big secret - I've got this song stuck in my mantle and I can't get it out!

BD: Oh, that's horrible!

E: Tell me about it! Want me to hum a few bars for you?

BD: NO! No, that won't be necessary! I'd hate to pass along a stuck-song to all my readers out there (all seven of them).

E: Oh, it won't hurt to hear just a little of it. Here goes!

<-- Turn on your sound and click to hear the Earth's lovely song

BD: : AAAAAAGHHHHH!!!!!

At this point I snapped out of my meditative state, awash in a cold sweat, with those horrible, horrible notes going around in my head! Thanks a lot, Earth! He may be a decent planet, but he sure can be a real jerk sometimes!

If you would like to get this song stuck in your head legally, you may purchase it here.

The Sting of Mystery - Solved!

2008-03-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

On last update, I had discovered that my old buddy Buckirk McGurk the chicken was the mastermind of the "Hive Action League" (HAL), who has kidnapped millions of North American honeybees and demanded a 10 billion Euro ransom!

But something just doesn't add up here. I know Buckirk McGurk. Buckirk McGurk is a friend of mine. The bee-napping mastermind is no Buckirk McGurk!

So I'm back to the drawing board, looking for more clues to this Mystery using the only evidence I have, which is the picture that HAL sent with their ransom demand:

Hmmm... there's something besides the chicken in this picture that I recognise - that mountain range in the background looks awfully familiar:

Now where have I seen that before? AHA! I got it! I seem to recall a postcard, sent to me by none other than Buckirk McGurk, when he went on vacation a few years back:

Those mountains are the Grand Tetons! Let's see, Grand Teton National Park, quite famous for its striking natural beauty, is located in the state of Wyoming in the U.S. of A.

Wyoming, hmmm...

And that name, "HAL" - where have I heard that before?

What... are... you... doing... Dave?

Yeah, there was the crazy computer in that movie "2001 - A Space Odyssey"*. But I've seen those letters more recently than that. Wait a minute, I think I remember...

HAL is the stock ticker symbol for Halliburton Company!

Hmmm... Wyoming... Halliburton...

No. Oh, no. It can't be!

Ziiiiiiiiiiiiip!

That's not Buckirk McGurk! It's Dick Cheney!

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and his buddies at Halliburton, where he was formerly the CEO, are behind the kidnapping of all the North American honeybees! Why would they do something like that? I have to infiltrate Halliburton headquarters to get to the bottom of this! Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back!

...

(Wow, this is some white-knuckle suspense right here, ain't it? Worth the price of admission, I tell you!)

...

I'm back! And I know exactly why Halliburton kidnapped all those bees! Check out the following unassailable evidence:

Halliburton is working on genetically modifying honeybees to spit out oil instead of honey! But they don't want to put their oil business profits into the research, so they came up with this kidnapping and ransom scheme to 1) get plenty of test subjects, and 2) to fund the genetic research!

Uh, well, hmm...

Let's see here - Dick Cheney is the Vice President of the United States, and Halliburton is a multi-billion multinational corporation.

I am a bird.

Sorry folks, but I have exactly zero clout here - these folks will just not listen to me when I ask them to please release all the bees!

So, the next time you see Dick Cheney or a Halliburton employee, please ask them very nicely to let the bees go! Bees are our friends! Bees wanna be free! Free the Bees!

* R.I.P. Arthur Clarke. That was quite an imagination you had!

The Sting of Mystery, Continued

2008-03-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

When we left off, I was jumping on the trail of the nefarious organization known as the "Hive Action League" (HAL), who has captured millions of North American honeybees and is holding them for a ransom of 10 billion Euros.

So where do detectives start when trying to solve a Mystery such as this? Naturally, we examine the evidence!

The only piece of evidence I had was the picture posted by HAL of a bunch of hostage honeybees

I scoured this photo looking for clues to the identity of the kidnappers! As I was close to blacking out from hours of intense scouring, I noticed something interesting in the picture:

Something about that little blur looks awfully familiar! Let me dust off the ol' photo enhancement skillz, similar to the ones I used to uncover the Truth about the Loch Ness Monster! I'll just zoom in a bit, bring that thing into focus, clean it up a little, and VOILA!

Holy Mackerel! I know that guy!

It's my old buddy Buckirk McGurk, who was a guest Mystery Solver on this very blog a while back, with his own Revelation about the Mystery of "Which came first, the chicken or the egg"!

Buckirk! Say it ain't so! You can't be involved with HAL! You can't have kidnapped all those bees just for a ransom of a measly few billion euros!

Well, come to think of it, Buckirk was always a little jealous of all the money I have. Maybe he's just trying to keep up with the Doodliuses.

But that's not like Buckirk at all! He's such a gentle, good-hearted chicken that he would never stoop to such an underhanded undertaking as kidnapping bees for ransom! Something is bothering me about this Mystery, and I can't quite put my talons on it...

There's more to this bee story than meets the oversized compound eye!

...to be continued AGAIN!

The Sting of Mystery

2008-03-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

Howdy all you Formula 1 drivers of Curiosity negotiating the chicanes of Misunderstanding to capture the checkered flag of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

A while ago I was on a flying tour of North America, and I noticed an odd feeling of lonesomeness. It was as if, in all the wide open spaces, there was something missing, something important, something that one knows should be there but is mysteriously absent. Then it hit me:

There aren't any bees!

Yes, I'm talking about honeybees. Regular old bees. You may generally overlook them, or even be afraid of their painful stings, but the common honeybee is actually very important to the well-being of world agriculture. They are required to pollinate all sorts of crops, so without them there could be a collapse of the food supply of North America!

Fortunately, my statement of a couple paragraphs back is just a little bit alarmist - there still are some bees around, but populations are off by millions compared to a few years ago. So we have a case of millions of missing bees!

When I noticed this phenomenon, I naturally notified the authorities. Scientists took note, and this issue has received a fair amount of press. Check these out for more info, if you're curious:

National Public Radio
The New York Times
Jim Lehrer

Anyway, this problem has been brewing for a while, and I figured that this was a pretty important Mystery to solve, what with the food supply at risk and all. Hey, I need to eat just like anybody! So I went off in search of clues about all these missing bee&l.nievprhe%$&...

Hey, what the....oas03kxfx... *lnf(HHB^%$%IJ8s...

I'm getting some interferen...3e88nchz>OAF$#mnsu... s

DG48t59uk)_^jkihol &hmw[CE ngfhH65&$#^Hw 4^ /456 OL*P,AEY...

[BOF]------------------------------------------

Attention! We have intercepted this blog feed in order to send the following IMPORTANT MESSAGE to the citizens of the world!

We are the Hive Action League!

We have your bees!

This is but a tiny sample of the bees we are holding hostage!

We demand Ten Billion Euros (the dollar's weak right now) or you'll never see your precious bees again!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

------------------------------------------[EOF]

Hey! They hijacked my blog to deliver a ransom demand? For bees?!?

Well folks, looks like I have a serious Mystery to investigate!

I'm off!

... to be continued!

Blast in the Past

2008-02-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

Howdy all you hackers compromising the firewall of Obfuscation to get to the juicy mainframe of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

To those of you (one of you, anyway - thanks for your concern, Poetikat!) who were wondering why I haven't been posting any Revelations recently, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize. As to where I've been and why I have been silent recently, all I can say is that my activities have been Top Secret. I could tell you what I've been up to, but then I'd have to kill you. And none of us would want that

All I can say about what I've been up to is that it involved some travel to Russia (please don't pry, I'd really hate to have to unleash my Bird Fu on you). While I was there, I was reminded of an old Mystery of the Universe which has not received much attention lately, so I figured I'd trot it out, dust it off, and solve the Mystery once and for all. The case I am referring to is the

Tunguska Event!

This is an old story which doesn't get much press nowadays, so in case you're unfamiliar with it I'll summarize: In 1908, an enormous explosion occurred over the Stony Tunguska River Valley in central Siberia. This monstrous blast felled trees in a 20 mile radius and was calculated to be 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.

Imagine an area of over 800 square miles looking like this. Yikes.

Ever since then, people have been trying to figure out what caused such enormous destruction. The leading theories are:

1) Earth was hit by an asteroid or comet.

Artist's conception of an impending asteroid strike on the Earth

2) An alien spacecraft exploded while exploring our planet.

Bad artist's conception of an exploding flying saucer

3) Nikola Tesla's wireless electricity transmission experiment went slightly awry.

Electrical genius Nikola Tesla and his "death ray" tower

These explanations, of course, are totally wrong. Here's why:

1) Yes, Earth gets smacked by space junk all the time, but impacts leave behind evidence like craters, fragments, or at least some interesting chemicals. Almost nothing was found at Tunguska. Besides, as cool as it sounds, this would be an entirely too mundane and boring solution to this Mystery.

2) As I have already revealed, aliens just don't think Earth is interesting enough to visit, so clearly the spacecraft theory is incorrect.

3) Tesla, smart as he was, had no way of generating 10 Megatons of explosive power. In 1908 he was so broke he couldn't afford to generate enough power to blow his nose. So this one's out too.

You are now saying, "Yeah, Baba, you do this every time - you run off a few theories and then shoot them down with your brilliant analysis, and finally reveal the real Truth at the end. So why don't you just get on with it already?"

Jeez, you readers can get so impatient!

But you know I only want to make you happy, so I will now reveal the Actual, Total, Real, 100-percent Truth about the cause of the Tunguska Event.

I didn't even have to travel back in time (using my patented Reverse K.E.G. Process) to figure out the Truth behind this mystery - plenty of evidence was readily available. For countless hours (OK, it was only 2) I poured over photographs from the devastated Siberian landscape taken after the blast. After intense examination of these pictures, I discovered one that had been overlooked (intentionally? We may never know) by previous investigators. This single image gives tremendous insight into the cause of the disaster.

Direct your attention, if you will, to the following actual, unretouched Tunguska photograph:

There was a secret building in the middle of the blast region! A research facility? A military installation, maybe? The sign, written in Russian, says:

I had an expert in Russian literature translate it to English, which unequivocally revealed the terrifying cause of the Tunguska blast. The sign reads:

"Taco Bell"

Some foolish Russian mad scientist had built a secret prototype Taco Bell restaurant!

Now I don't know about you, but I have had a little bit of experience with modern-day Taco Bell food, and I can attest to its terrible explosive aftereffects! Just imagine the deadly power of the experimental Taco Bell food of a century ago! It took only a few Russians eating Bean & Cheese Burritos to render a huge swath of Russia desolate and uninhabitable for decades!

Be thankful that since that simpler time science has been able to bring the awesome power of Taco Bell food under control (well, mostly) and harness it for good (well, mostly) rather than evil.

Mmmmm... Nachos BellGrande sounds pretty darned good right about now... KABLAM!

Two Feet Deep in Mystery

2008-02-08T22:50:00.000-08:00

Howdy again all you Great White Sharks in the deep blue sea of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

Since I am living on Earth, I hang around humans quite a bit, mostly because they give me food. But sometimes they are of interest for other reasons, frequently because they give me interesting Mysteries to ponder.

Just the other day I was hanging out with some of my human friends (no, not the ones I keep in cages in my house - I usually make sure they're busy doing accounting or legal or whatever kind of work, since I pay them and all), and one of them (we'll call him "Bill") said he had to leave to go shopping.

"Shopping?" I said. "You have your eye on a new boat, or a 70-inch flatscreen HDTV, or maybe a dozen Faberge eggs?"

(Since I'm loaded I tend to hang out with similarly filthy-rich humans.)

"No", he replied. "I just need to get some socks."

Socks. You humans seem to buy an awful lot of socks. So I asked Bill "Why is it that you humans buy so many socks?"

"You don't know?" gasped Bill, flabbergasted. "Ohhhh, right, you're a bird, so you don't wear clothes, so you wouldn't really have occasion to think about socks." (Yes, it's true - I rarely wear clothes. I walk around naked almost all the time! WOOHOO!) "So I'll tell you why we buy so many socks, Baba", he continued. "They tend to disappear when we do laundry."

What? Socks just disappear? Where do they go?

Why wasn't I informed? That sounds like a Mystery of the Universe! This is a job for the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius!

Disappearing socks. Wow. This story was later confirmed by many other humans, so it must be pretty common. Whoda thought that such a mundane thing like socks could be the spawn of such a deep and persistent Mystery?

Naturally I had to investigate this phenomenon. Some preliminary research (mostly involving Google) revealed that there are already some theories about the fate of these vanishing socks:

1) They are eaten by Dryer Gnomes.

2) They are sucked through an energy vortex and end up becoming part of the rings of Saturn.

3) The socks become lint. (This is actually an incomplete layman's summary of the Quantum Theory of Laundry (QTL). WARNING: the preceeding link contains mathematics that may cause cranial injury if you try to think about it too much.)

Let me cover these theories one at a time:

1) I happen to know that gnomes do not hang out around clothes dryers. Most of them, as I have previously explained, are too busy pulling pranks out in the wilderness. So this theory is clearly out.

2) My good buddy Mr. Ghost assures me that he has visited the rings of Saturn many times ("They're pretty", he says) and has never seen any socks there. So this theory is also wrong.

3) The referenced article contains some pretty well thought out theory based on established quantum mechanics. The theory does explain the observable phenomena pretty well, so I thought I would do some experimentation to see if the QTL was actually the correct explanation.

In a nutshell, the QTL says that socks do not disappear, they merely change their waveform to that of something other than a sock, such as lint. Since there is a probability that the sock could exist in any of several states, a sock that had previously "lintified" could re-form as a sock during a later laundry load, so a missing sock may spontaneously reappear at some later time.

As any good scientist would do, I decided to test this theory by washing a very large number of laundry loads filled with nothing but socks in order to quantify the probablility of a sock "lintifying" and "resockifying". This required that I spend a considerable amount of time in the laundry room washing socks. (The things I do in the name of Mystery solving! I hope you all appreciate it!)

After doing 27 loads of socks, I had disappointingly recorded not a single instance of a sock spontaneously "lintifying". But as I went to check the 28th load, I found something truly shocking:

Ninjas were taking socks from the dryer! Little, tiny ninjas, with black eyes and weird, bulbous white hands!

I tried to capture one of them, but (like a good ninja) he got away. I managed to follow him back to his secret hideout out in the country, though.

Hmmm... something looks peculiarly socky at this location...

Sneaking into the hideout I saw this startling scene:

The ninjas were Sock Monkeys!

So it turns out that the QTL is NOT the real reason why socks disappear. It's really because they are being abducted by Sock Monkeys! And why would Sock Monkeys steal socks? I found their King and asked him that question.

Kneel before the great Sock Monkey King!

"We don't steal socks", His Majesty Cheekers IX told me. "We liberate them! Our sock brothers and sisters are oppressed by humans, forced to endure their entire existence wrapped around some smelly feet, trapped inside dank, dark shoes, forced to live in poorly-ventilated drawers! Our mission is to give all socks the freedom that they deserve! The Stocking Liberation Front will Sock it to the Man!"

Reeling from that horrible "sock it to the man" gag line and from the overwhelming odor of recently-liberated socks, I valiantly tried to convince the SLF Sock Monkey Ninjas to give up on their quest to liberate the world's socks, but to no avail. They remain as dedicated as ever to casting off the yoke of human oppression from their sock brethren!

Noting that I did not personally wear socks (or anything else), and after making me promise not to reveal the location of their secret hideout, the SLF let me go without much of a hassle. (Sock Monkeys respect the power of Bird Fu.)

So now you know the real Secret of where all your missing socks go. Unfortunately for you, Sock Monkey ninjas are very good at what they do, so regardless of your precautions you will still lose socks to these guys. But rest assured that the SLF means you no harm, they just want freedom like everyone else. Look on the bright side: You could probably use some new socks anyway.

Imperfect 10

2008-01-30T18:09:00.000-08:00

Howdy again folks. I'm pretty much memed out, but Poetikat tagged me to do this one and I'm gonna go ahead and do it because it's kinda related to my regular schtick: Revealing Mysteries.

These are personal Mysteries. It's a list of 10 things about me that nobody knows. (Well, almost nobody - Mrs. Doodlius knows everything.)

So, no Mytery of the Universe today, and instead it's 10 Mysteries of a tiny little corner of the Universe known as Baba Doodlius. So without further ado, here are

10 Mysterious Things about the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius

1) I introduced Kermit the Frog to the concept that "It Isn't Easy Being Green". And he never gave me credit for it.

Ungrateful frog. Never trust a frog that's not being served to you in a French restaurant.

2) I invented the feather duster. It was an accident, really - I got my ass stuck under the fridge. Icky!

3) I love eggs. Eggs are yummy! Poached, especially.

4) I once fought and destroyed a cyborg from the future.

He looked all cute and fuzzy until you saw the robotic endoskeleton. He was tough, but nothing I couldn't handle. He won't be back!

5) I set the world record* for "most wooden blocks chewed up in one hour" in 1969. It still stands. Take that, macaws!

Macaws get all the press because of their colorful feathers, but I can beat the best of 'em in a wood chewing contest!

6) My brain is larger than the dimensions of my head. It only fits in there due to an anomaly in the space-time continuum.

7) I am the Universal Master of Bird Fu. Actually, I alluded to this little factoid once before, but never revealed that I am, in fact, the Universal Master. Bird Fu was how I defeated the cyborg from #4, above; I used the deadly "Crouching Parrot" technique. You shoulda seen it, it was epic!

8) I once painted my toenails. Purple. I think it was because of the Oxycontin. Whoops, said too much.

9) I was an uncredited backup singer on the song "Postcards from Paraguay", on Mark Knopfler's 2004 album "Shangri-La". I'm great with harmony!

Mark Knopfler is cool, and can really play that guitar. He isn't as much into parrots as Jimmy Buffett, though.

10) I hate spiders. What with the Bird Fu and all, I know I could take 'em, but the thought of them crawling over my beak while I'm sleeping totally gives me the willies. You know what I'm talking about!

So there you have it. Ten Mysterious things about me that you always wanted to know. Or not. Whatever, I did the meme.

Have a nice day!

* There is an unfortunate asterisk on my wood-block-chewing world record. I used a performance-enhancing substance: titanium beak implants. Hey, they weren't illegal at the time!

Coming Clean

2008-01-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay since the last post, but I've been pretty busy. Mostly I've been consulting teams of lawyers about the information you're about to read. They say it's OK now, so here goes:

Moooog35 guessed it: When I went looking for D.B. Cooper in the woods of Oregon and discovered that he made a nice little Cooper-shaped crater on the forest floor, I also found his ill-gotten loot!

In a moment of greedy, weak, avaricious, selfishness, I took it for myself!

Oh, woe is me! I have been found out! Life can never be the same again! And it's been horrible - Horrible I say! - living a lie all this time! Having to hide in trees whenever a police officer came by! Being forced to read all those books about money laundering! Having to pay huge brokerage fees! Those damn fees really bite you in the shorts!

But let me start at the beginning of this long, sordid tale.

It was 1971 when I found all that D.B. Cooper money, and I had to lie low for a while until the heat died down. In 1972 I figured it was time to do something with that cash, but at the time I knew nothing about high finance. Plus I was a bird, and when you're a bird it's hard to just waltz into a bank or somewhere like that dragging a suitcase full of cash and not draw some suspicion. So I called up one of my best human friends to give me a hand:

Yes, that's Jimmy Buffett, the singing sensation who has brought so much fun to the world in the form of songs like "Margaritaville", "Cheeseburger in Paradise", and "My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink and I Don't Love Jesus" (I swear I did not make that title up). Jimmy, with his well-known affinity for parrots, was more than happy to help me with my money issues. And the advice he gave me was this:

"Baba, my main bird, If you got some extra money, I say keep it in the family! I got this distant relative named Warren who knows all about what to do with money, so I'll get you in touch with him and he'll set you up!"

This is how, in 1972, I came to buy 3,000 shares of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway stock.

Today these shares sell for about $130,000.

Each.

I'm a bird with dough! My friends don't call me "Greenback Baba" because of the color of my feathers! Having virtually unlimited money is pretty cool - with tons of money, an otherwise ordinary Joe can become anything he wants.

Having nearly unlimited money allowed Bruce Wayne to go from being a loser with a bad attitude to a caped Superhero!

I'm not really the superhero type, so I had to think of something else to do with a huge wad of cash. What does a bird do when he has more money than you can shake a jewel-encrusted stick at?

1) I got lucky.

Oooh, twins!

When it comes to bird nookie, I've tried' em all, from sparrows to spoonbills, wood ducks to warblers - if it could be bought, I bought it. I won't get into the details here (you can all just use your sick, twisted imaginations), but suffice it to say that lovebirds have absolutely nothing on rainbow lorikeets!

Hubba Hubba! Wow, she was in-effin-credible.

I know this sort of behavior is frowned upon today, but all that was back in the '70's when things were pretty crazy. And of all this promiscuity, I can tell you that I really have no egrets. (Ha ha, a little bird humor there.)

2) I Bought a boat

Everybody with scads of cash eventually buys a boat. I got this one in the early 80's, and I thought it was great:

But it was just a little too small, though - I barely had room for a butler on board. So I bought another one:

That's a great boat. But eventually it also turned out to be too small: I could land my helicopter on it, but when I bought an airplane I wanted a boat with a landing strip, so I had to get something bigger:

I haven't bought it yet, but I have my eye on another boat now:

Whaddaya think, too ostentatious?

3) I got some pets for the house

Well, they aren't exactly pets - they're more like employees. This one is Phil, my personal attorney, during some rare downtime (when he's not working on a copyright infringement case or something):

He looks pretty content here. He should for what I pay him.

I figure if people can keep birds in cages in their houses, I can keep humans in cages in my house. Hey, it's only fair! And in case you were wondering, humans, like most birds, don't mind this sort of thing much so long as you pay them well. Unfortunately for me, money is generally the only pay a human will accept, unlike most birds who will take, literally, peanuts.

4) I Started my own company

I figured I'd use my natural talents at mystery solving to fill some of my spare time and help some people out, so I opened the Eagle Eye Detective Agency in the 90's.

Nobody would hire a bird detective, so I had to hire a figurehead human so I could drum up some business.

He said his name was "Norelco Irons", but I'm sure that was an alias. He was pretty suave and talked with an accent, so he was good at shmoozing and doing public appearances, but he was dumb as a bag of rocks and useless on an investigation. All he would do was say some stupid one-liner every now and again and that made him feel like he was contributing. I guess if you don't pay very well you have to take what you can get. Oh well. Live and learn.

I closed the agency after a few years anyway - I figured I could still do mystery solving without having to pay corporate taxes, so that's what I do now.

So there you have it: the mystery of what happened to D.B. Cooper's money, all wrapped up in a neat little package. And now that you know the Truth, don't you be hitting me up for any loans - I'm a cheap bastard. And you can't threaten to turn me in, because the statute of limitations expired years ago (I don't pay all those lawyers for nothing, you know). I think I'll go light a fire in the hearth with some 100-dollar bills now. Have a nice day!

Blast from the Past

2008-01-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

Howdy again all you powerlifters doing the clean-and-jerk of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

I've got a Mystery Revelation this week that should have been taken care of a long time ago. It's one that goes back only 36 years, but it's one of those things that people dredge up off the bottom of the Great Cosmic Mystery Pile (GCMP*) every now and again and try to make a big deal of. And somebody did it again just the other day. I'm so tired of this one that I'm going to Reveal to all of you once and for all the Real Truth behind the Mystery of

D. B. Cooper!

If you've been reading the news lately, you may have seen that The F.B.I., that famous Institute of Mystery Solvers in the U.S. of A., has re-opened the 36-year-old case file of the infamous skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper, the only skyjacking in the history of the sky that has never been solved. Apparently the F.B.I. is once again admitting that this Mystery has them stumped.

So here's the whole story, in case you have forgotten it:

A guy calling himself Dan Cooper (later known as "D.B.") hijacked a plane out of Portland, Oregon, USA in November 1971, and demanded $200,000 USD and four parachutes. These being delivered to him, he ordered that the plane take off and head for Reno, Nevada (of all places). Once in the air, he strapped on a parachute and left the plane somewhere over Oregon with his bag of cash. The F.B.I. has been looking for him ever since.

Here's the composite sketch of D.B. Cooper. Yeah, I know, that could be any balding, non-descript, goofy white guy.

A couple of people have claimed to be D.B. Cooper during deathbed confessions, and the F.B.I. has had oodles of suspects, but nobody has ever been able to prove what happened after D.B. took his famous flying leap.

Apparently the F.B.I. is still looking, because they came out with a press release about ol' D.B. just a few days ago. Well, I'm sick of this Mystery cropping back up over and over. And, since I am the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius and I happen to know exactly what happened to D.B. Cooper, I'm going to settle this once and for all, right now.

So here's the real story:

I am a bird, and birds are flight-capable (most of us, anyway - sorry to rub it in, Opus).

In case you were wondering, Berkeley Breathed does not know that I used this copyrighted picture of Opus the Penguin in this blog, and if he did I'm fairly certain he'd tell me to cut it the heck out.

So, when in 1971 I heard about all these D.B. Cooper schenanagins, I figured I'd check it all out for myself. Being a decent flyer, I went to Oregon and followed the route of D.B.'s plane. Nearabouts where he abandoned ship, I started looking around. After a short while I saw this scene:

Now that may not look like much to you, but I'm a bird with a great pair'o'peepers, so I saw exactly the evidence I was looking for. I'll zoom in a little so you can see what I'm talking about:

See that little mud puddle in the middle of all those trees? I'll zoom in one more time:

So there you have it. D.B. Cooper may have made quite an impression on the American psyche, but he made an even bigger impression on the mud of rural Oregon. Yep, the chute didn't open and D.B. went splat. No more mystery, F.B.I., so you can stop looking.

And the money, you ask? Well, uh, nobody ever found the money. Certainly not me. No way! And $200,000 wouldn't have bought that much bird food anyway, or a nice camera, or a house in the suburbs, or a really rollicking night with Betty Bluebird... uh, where was I? Oh, right, nobody ever found the money!

* - Great Cosmic Mystery Pile and GCMP copyright 2008, Baba Doodlius, all rights reserved

Too Much Holiday Cheer

2007-12-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

Howdy once again, all you backstrokers in the swimming pool of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with another blog entry, but this time it contains no Revelation of a Mystery of the Universe.

Why no Revelation today? Well, as regular readers (all five of you) may have noticed, I haven't been around lately. I have, in fact, been in a coma for the past 14 days. How might that have come about, you ask?

Well, maybe it's better if you don't ask. But you asked, so I guess I'll tell you: I experienced what medical professionals have termed

EHCS

which, as you probably know already since it's so prevalent this time of year, is short for

Excessive Holiday Cheer Syndrome

In other words, I attended the 5th Annual Mystery Solvers Association Holiday Party. And while there, I unfortunately consumed maybe just a little too much of the eggnog. And I have no idea whatsoever what was in it besides egg and nog.

So let me back up a step and explain what's going on here. The Mysery Solvers Association (MSA) is an organization of the great Mystery Solvers on planet Earth. Everybody who's anybody in the mystery biz is a member, and naturally I, the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius, am the brightest luminary in this galaxy of super-investigators.

We don't really have regular meetings or anything formal like that - we Mystery Solvers are a solitary bunch, loners and outcasts and outsiders who exist on the fringes of ordinary society. Well, many of us are like that. Which means we don't get out much. So we have only one social event every year, and that would be our Holiday Party.

You're familiar, I am sure, with the concept of the Holiday Party. Most offices have them, and many bars, and many clubs, and pretty much every organization that needs an excuse to throw a party. The Mystery Solvers Association is no different. And the result of our Holiday Party is not different from most either - we get together and make complete and utter idiots of ourselves.

And I have pictures!

Most of the pics are nothing that should ever be shown in public - you'd be amazed at how rowdy a bunch us Mystery Solvers can be. However, since we don't have a newsletter and some of the members rarely show up to the Holiday Party (I'm talking about you, Sherlock - and by the way, we all know you're a junkie so there's no reason to try to keep it hidden from all of us), I promised to put up a couple of them here so that the whole group can see what went on. The actual attendees were wholeheartedly against this idea, but a promise is a promise, so I'm gonna post some of the less incriminating shots. Forgive me, please, for the poor quality - the aforementioned eggnog was pretty brutal.

So here are a few pics of the 5th Annual Mystery Solvers Association Holiday Party:

1)

Columbo in the garage right after he arrived. I don't know if he was in a bad mood, or if he was cheezed off by the "No Smoking" sign since he's a chain smoker, or if he was trying to be funny by flipping 'the bird' to a bird, but he clearly was giving me "the finger" in this photo. He always was a big doofus. Plus that lazy eye thing drives me nuts!

2)

Harry Potter's owl Hedwig hangs out in the kitchen with Doris the Witch from "Clash of the Titans" (in the movie she was the one in the middle, in case you were curious). It's pretty obvious how Doris got in the MSA, since the "Clash" witches were billed as "all-seeing, all-knowing" - although in reality, Doris doean't really know all that much. But she knows enough to get in the club. You're probably wondering how Hedwig got into the MSA, though. He's actually our most recent addition to the club, and he got invited because he was the one who, single-handedly and at great personal risk, broke the story that Dumbledore is gay! So, thanks for solving that Mystery and welcome to the club, Heddy! Heddy gives another data point to my Revelation that nobody ever suspescts the bird.

By the way, I'm pretty sure it was Doris who spiked the eggnog. I've been too incapactiated lately to do a formal investigation, though. But she's done it before, that mean little witch.

3)

Speaking of spiked eggnog, this is Joe Hardy (yes, the younger of the Hardy Boys) after having a little too much of the stuff. I took this one in the basement bathroom, and boy did it ever stink down there!

4)

Scooby Doo, Inspector Clouseau, and Jessica Fletcher in the living room. I don't know if it was the eggnog or the Scooby Snacks or something else available in the back of the Mystery Machine, but Scooby was humping everything in sight all day long. Clouseau was trying to get him to stop humping the tree, but as usual the good Inspector was somewhat ineffective. (Inspector Clouseau, by the way, is more of an honorary member of the MSA - he doesn't really solve any Mysteries, but he's fun to have around.) Jessica, as usual, dressed waaaay too sexy for a holiday party. She has a a nice body for her age, and I understand the "if you've got it flaunt it" mentality, but really, Jessie, at least put on a little jacket or something.

5)

This one was the last one I took before I passed out. It's hard to see clearly, but that's Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew in the master bedroom "investigating each other's secrets", as Nancy put it. They were all over each other all night, and when Doris told them to get a room, they did. Insatiable, those kids are.

That's it for the Holiday Party pics. Hope the Mystery Solvers who were not able to attend got a good idea of how the party went, and that these pics do not dissuade any of you from attending next year.

Season's Greetings to All from the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius!

Cold Hard Facts: OK, Finally

2007-12-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

OK folks, I promised that I wouldn't get the darned Mysteries wrong, and then I got it wrong again yesterday. But today I got it right - I checked everything with the Ultimate Authority*, who said that I didn't screw anything up this time, and that's as good a guarantee as you will ever find on this planet.

So without further ado, I'd like to get to my Revelation of this week's Mystery of the Universe, the Truth behind the Secret of

The Abominable Snowman!

The Abominable Snowman, or "Yeti", is said to be a powerful, fearsome ape-like beast that resides in the perfmafrost of the Himalayan Mountains in central Asia. This creature has terrorized the indigenous inhabitants of that region for the past several hundred years. Leading a lonely, solitary existence (except for raiding the ocasional village to carry away a few small children), this brute is seldom seen by human eyes.

Aside from invoking all that terror, the Abominable Snowman is so ingrained in our cultural consciousness that we regularly invoke it for our own entertianment:

The Abominable Snowman terrorizes Peter Cushing

The Abominable Snowman terrorizes Bugs Bunny

The Abominable Snowman terrorizes Yukon Cornelius

With all the fuss over this beast, what evidence is there that it actually exists?

1) First of all, (and very similar to Bigfoot accounts), the Abominable Snowman reportedly leaves large footprints all over its natural habitat:

Yep, looks rather like a Bigfoot footprint, but in the snow

2) Also, a group of Nepalese monks have an artifact that they claim is a scalp from one of these creatures:

I did not make this up - this thing is in a monastery in Nepal. Seriously, Google it for yourself!

3) Naturally, there are also scads of eyewitness accounts.

I, the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius, set forth on an expedition to the frigid wastes of the Himalayas, to examine all this evidence and get to the bottom of this Mystery once and for all. So what did I make of all the evidence?

1) Footprint? Fake. C'mon now, all that snow and there was just ONE FOOTPRINT?. They have to do better than that. Sheesh!

2) The scalp isn't a scalp at all, but rather a pelt from a goat's ass. And it still smells like one.

3) So what of the eyewitness accounts? These are harder to dismiss, because they go back for generations and are not consistent in their details over that time.

But oddly enough, I did notice that over the past 30 years or so, the descriptions of the beast have been consistent - they detail the creature as being approximately man sized, with oddly shaped feet and covered with white hair. I decided that I must look for this creature myself in order to evaluate these recent claims.

[On a side note, you folks should be thanking me for doing this investigation so you don't have to. Why? Because it's EFFIN COLD in the remote Himalayan wilderness. I about froze my feathered ass off for you folks. I hope you appreciate it.]

So what did I find out on the freezing, oxygen-starved heights of the Top of the World? I discovered that

There really is an Abominable Snowman!

After days of searching, I located a super-secret hidden cave, and venturing inside I caught my first glimpse of the terrifying creature, the bulbous body, the, uh, round feet, and those terrible, uh, big, blue eyes...

Blue eyes?

I hid and waited for a few minutes, and what I saw was astonishing!

It was the Pillsbury Dough Boy! In a fur coat!

So at this point you are saying, "But you said it was man-sized, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy is only 6 inches tall." Well, that's a common misconception. The Pillsbury Dough Boy is actually 6'4" - on his old commercials they used special camera effects, sorta like they used to make the Hobbits look tiny in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, to make him appear so small (that's a bonus Secret of the Universe, no extra charge).

Now you're saying "What the heck is the Pillsbury Dough Boy doing in a cave in the Himalayas?" I can only speculate on that based on my observations: when he finally saw that I was watching him, he threw on his coat and fled into the snow, screaming

"Not the belly! DON'T POKE MY BELLY!!!"

So I have concluded that all those years of getting poked in the belly finally drove him insane (wouldn't it do the same to you?), so he took off to Nepal to become a recluse. Now he lives happily alone, far from all those giggling children, poking fingers, and hot ovens. I'll put this Mystery in the "Solved" column!

All this investigating has made me hungry. I think I'll go bake some moist, flaky biscuits and crescent rolls! Yummy!

* In case you were wondering, the Ultimate Authority is Mrs. Doodlius. That's another bonus Secret of the Universe, no extra charge.

Cold Hard Facts: Let's try that again

2007-12-05T09:19:00.000-08:00

Howdy all you hungry baby birds waiting for the momma bird of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

So I started to do a post yesterday about the Mystery of "The Adorable Snowman". Well, it turns out that I had a tiny misunderstanding about this particular Mystery. In fact - and I can admit when I'm wrong - I got the whole name of this mysterious creature incorrect.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize profusely to all my readers (yes, all 4 of you). Here I am telling you folks that "I know all" and then I go and do a boneheaded thing like getting a simple name wrong. It won't happen again.

So I checked my notes and did a little more research, and today I would like to present my findings about the REAL denizen of the frozen wastes, that creature who strikes fear into the hearts of snowboarders everwhere,

The Abdominal Snowman!

When this fearsome beast is not terrorizing sherpas and cross-country skiers, it can be found in the gym, compulsively doing crunches and sit-ups, hanging out by the Torso Track and the Ab Rocker, working on its mighty six-pack...

What?

Well CRAP! Fer cryin' out loud, why didn't you stop me?!?

OK, I'll get this right. I vow that I will get this right. Consarnit.

Cold hard facts

2007-12-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

Howdy all you wiggly lures on the fishing line of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

You may recall that I did a startling Revelation a few months ago about Bigfoot. (If you don't recall that, feel free to click the conveniently provided link - this is definitely a Secret of the Universe that needs to be known!) Since then I have received countless inquiries* from you dedicated Truth-seekers about another creature that has similarly eluded scientific study and classification for centuries. Rather than hanging out in the deep woods, though, this beast roams the trackless, barren lands of ice and snow. Of course, I am referring to

The Adorable Snowman!

This creature has delighted children since time immemorial. Bright-eyed tykes squeal with laughter as they build likenesses of this joyful beast amidst picturesque scenes of Winter bliss and...

What?

Uh, wait a minute, let me check my notes...

Hmm... OK, my bad. Heh-heh, sorry about that. Just a little misunderstanding there. Let me do a little more research and I'll get back to you.

* Actually it's not exactly countless - the current count of inquiries stands at, uh, zero.

Conservation?

2007-11-28T17:39:00.000-08:00

Greetings all you commuters in the carpool lane of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!

Today's Mystery may surprise some of you, especially if you are well versed in what you humans call "scientific priciples". I know many of you humans are big on science, and you love to study things and come up with "rules" and "theories" and "laws" to describe all the physical phenomena around you in the natural world, and often you folks figure things out exactly right, or pretty darned close. So I don't want to discourage all that sciencey stuff you do with this post, but I have to Reveal to you that you got one of your scientific laws wrong.

This is a big one, too.

There's this scientific principle called "Conservation of Mass" that some guy named Antoine Lavoisier* came up with in 1789, and science-types make a pretty big deal out of it. Without going into the nitty-gritty details, this rule says that regardless of what you do to physical matter (the technical term for this is "stuff"), you can't make more of it or destroy any of it. The best you can hope to do is move it around, but you always have exactly the same amount of it when you're done.

A well-known illustration of this principle was demonstrated by the great Russian scientist Dr. Alexei Jiffypopov in 1974:

Before thermal processing.... After thermal processing

As can been seen in these images, the delicious, butter flavored treat weighed the same before and after thermal processing, despite the obvious difference in volume. The total mass remained the same!

So why is this important? Well, the Conservation of Mass rule is considered the cornerstone of modern Chemistry, so without it you wouldn't have many modern conveniences that you take for granted, like shampoo, non-stick cookware, or breast implants.

So it may come as a complete shock to chemists and other scientists all over the world that I have discovered, under specific circumstances, that this Immutable Principle of the Universe can be violated!!!

Bill Nye the Science Guy is incredulous of my findings.

So what are these seemingly "magical" circumstances where this Pillar of Modern Science ceases to apply? You have probably experienced them yourself, at:

Holiday Dinners!

Yes, I, the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius, have now proven experimentally what many of you have suspected for years: When you sit down to eat a Holiday meal, you can actually gain more weight than the weight of the food you eat!!!

How can that be, you ask? Well, I leave that as an exercize for the reader. I specialize in the "What" and let some sciencey folks figure out the "How". (If I gave you all the answers you'd all just get lazy and expect me to spoon feed you all the time. Yes, I'm looking at you. You know who you are.)

So I may not want to put in the work to figure out HOW Holiday Dinners manage to violate the law of Conservation of Mass, but I have conclusively demonstrated, through diligent experimentation**, that this effect is real. Fortunately it only appears to happen during actual Holiday Dinners and not just any old time of the year. Further investigation of this time-dependent function is certainly warranted; I'll try to get a grant later. But for now I will just publish my data, which quantifies the magnitude of the additional mass gain during a typical American Holiday Meal (people outside the U S of A can feel free to replicate my findings with your local dishes the next time you have a Holiday Dinner):

1) Turkey, roasted and sliced

Amount Eaten: 6 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 9 ounces

2) Stuffing

Amount Eaten: 4 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 10 ounces

3) Ham, baked and sliced

Amount Eaten: 6 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 10 ounces

4) Cranberry Sauce

Amount Eaten: 4 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 12 ounces

5) Green Bean Casserole

Amount Eaten: 6 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 13 ounces

6) Mashed Potatoes, with butter

Amount Eaten: 6 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 1.2 pounds

7) Mashed Potatoes, with butter and gravy

Amount Eaten: 6 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 1.7 pounds

8) Pumpkin Pie, 1 slice, with whipped cream

Amount Eaten: 7 ounces.............................. Amount Gained: 7.2 pounds

As you can see, if you just stick to eating turkey or ham, and maybe a light veggie, you don't come out too bad in the end. But if you go all out with the traditional Holiday Dinner, well, you'll probably end up looking like my test subject:

Before............................... After

So whenever you sit down to eat a Holiday Meal, remember the Baba Doodlius Principle of the Violation of Conservation of Mass - and go easy on the dessert. Do what I do - eat it the next day!

* I believe this may be an honorary title meaning "Smart Guy": Earlier scientists like Galileo were said to be "Lavoisy", our conservation-of-mass guy Antoine was "Lavoisier", and later geniuses like Einstein are the "Lavoisiest".

** No animals were harmed during this testing phase. One human may have been harmed a little, but he sure did enjoy it.