Archives for December 2005

Click here

Found these on the BBC. Here are a few samples.

6. WD-40 dissolves cocaine – it has been used by a pub landlord to prevent drug-taking in his pub’s toilets.

7. Baboons can tell the difference between English and French. Zoo keepers at Port Lympne wild animal park in Kent are having to learn French to communicate with the baboons which had been transferred from Paris zoo.

More details

8. Devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to jaywalk as other people, according to an Israeli survey reported in the New Scientist. The researchers say it’s possibly because religious people have less fear of death.

9. The energy used to build an average Victorian terrace house would be enough to send a car round the Earth five times, says English Heritage.
19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing “is equal to” in his equations. He chose the two lines because “noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle”.
20. The Queen has never been on a computer, she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood.

More details

67. Giant squid eat each other – especially during sex.

68. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold one copy every minute since its 1969 publication.
More details

69. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.

PORT ORANGE, Fla. (AP) — A man who woke up and found his head bleeding, drove to work and left a note for his boss before going to the hospital to find he had a bullet lodged in his brain, authorities said.

When Glen Thomas Betterley, 53, noticed the blood Thursday morning he asked his girlfriend if she had struck him. Emma Lorene Larsen, 65, said no.

Betterley went to Halifax Medical Center emergency room where he learned he had been shot in the forehead.

While Betterley was being treated, police called Larsen and heard a single gunshot. When investigators arrived at the home, they found Larsen dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

Oy.

“A WOMAN rushed to hospital with tummy trouble, fearing she had eaten a dodgy kebab, was shocked to give birth instead, a British newspaper reported today.

Helen Smitham, 25, of Distington in northwest England, had no idea she was pregnant when she complained of feeling a bit rough – with an iffy kebab thought to blame.

Her mother rushed her to the nearby West Cumberland Hospital where she gave birth so quickly that doctors did not even have time to tell her she was expecting.

Her baby son Deaton was born on December 24 weighing four pounds and 11 ounces (2.1kg) said The Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling daily.

“I had absolutely no idea,” a stunned Ms Smitham said.”

How do you not know that you are pregnant.

Today I got a good look at myself and wasn’t all that happy with what I saw. If you are like I am you might be wondering what made me do this or more likely you are wondering if you are too tired to go out and get a Krispy Kreme donut. Or you could be just staring off into the space, jaw partially opened in a semicatatonic state. Whatever.

All I know is that today we went here to celebrate the big boys birthday. He had a great time which is really what I cared most about, but secondary to that is my own sanity and what little shreds I have left are cooked.

I have learned to hate and despise these stupid games that the funcenters have. I am not talking about the video games because I can usually find a few that are interesting. No I am talking about the games that you play so that you can win tickets that will be redeemed for a prize. The games are rigged so that you can win more than a few tickets at a time and it really wouldn’t matter if they were not because the good prizes are redeemed for just under a million tickets.

If you assign a value of twenty-five cents to each ticket you can see that the actual cost of the Monopoly game is not 8,000 tickets but $320.00 which probably means that anyone who actually wins one of those is not living on Broadway or Park Place and is lucky to be the doorman for Lenny’s Secondhand Shoe Store on 55th.

The big boy decided that miniature golf would be a good use of our time so I readily agreed as it kept me out of the children’s casino because that really is what those arcades are. If you look around you won’t see the same cocktail waitresses that you find at Caesars but a junior version who fills you with chips and soda.

Out there on the rolling hills of fake green and swinging logs I tore up the course. That putter never made sweeter music than it did with me today and I made sure that everyone knew it. Golf is much more fun when you taunt your opponents and those around you. Try it, you might like it or maybe not, but if you don’t that is your problem.

So anyway we’re rolling along and the digital photos are being snapped at a rapid clip. At one particular juncture I stopped to take a look at a shot that I was in and fell down dumbfounded. It turns out that the drycleaners are not shrinking my clothes, I have been growing and not in height.

Not only that but the face that I am walking around with doesn’t look like the bright eyed and bushytailed kid I used to be. Now I see some middle aged man staring back at me. I suppose that this explains a few things to me but I’ll save those for later.

That picture really made me think. First, I realize that mentally I still picture myself as being 20. I had the six pack abs, 16 inch arms, a 32 inch waist and could benchpress more than 300 pounds.

Now I look like I drank the six pack and consumed the bench and the weights. So the question becomes what am I going to do about it. Am I going to continue to allow myself to walk around looking like this or am I going to do something about it.

Well my answer is I don’t know. I don’t know if I care enough to give up the bad eating habits I have developed. To give you a sense of how I sometimes approach things I could use my old tactic from my days of playing Hearts in which I consistently would shoot the moon. I could keep eating like a fiend and become a Sumo wrestler. I am athletic and am still blessed with a fair amount of physical strength.

Of course there are some downsides to going that route that are all health related not to mention that it is a hell of a commute home each day. Oy.

As an alternative I could go balls out the other direction and do what it takes to shrink my 38 inch waist back to something more manageable. Or I might just blog about my lack of motivation and effort in either direction.

Five Years Ago

Random WebSites You Might Enjoy

Tearing Toilet Paper on Shabbos

And just for kicks two recent posts you might enjoy

Do you Have Blog Envy?

How Many Blogs Do You Read?