Cars from Mars, Giant “Hamsters,” and Aliens in Siberia

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“Ask a glass of water!”    Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  

1)  You seemed to enjoy yesterday’s toothbrush question, so here’s another one.  What was the most popular car colour in 2011?  No peeking.  I said “no peeking!” Okay, since you seem determined to cheat, I am going to tell you the answer a little bit later.  First, here’s a chance for you to let your opinions be heard.  Which of the following “weird” cars, do you like the best?

You can vote for your freaky fav by using the “comment” button below.  I’d love to hear your what you have to say.  I’m partial to the Dr. Seuss-ish flower car.   It’s whimsical–plus, it has a baby.

Okay, so here is the answer you’ve been waiting for.  According to the 2011 DuPont Automotive Color Popularity Report (who knew there even was such a thing), white and silver tied for first place with 22% of the global share.  We humans certainly lack imagination.  Here’s the final tally:

1.    White/White Pearl and Silver – tie, 22 percent
3.    Black/Black Effect – 20 percent
4.    Gray – 13 percent
5.    Red – 7 percent
6.    Blue – 6 percent
7.    Brown/Beige – 5 percent
8.    Green – 2 percent
9.    Yellow/Gold – 1 percent
10.   Others – 2 percent

A big cheer for the “others”–the pink, purple, and multi-hued car owners who dare to thumb their noses at the other 98% of the world!

2)  This has always been one of my favourite Internet finds…the caption below this picture says “the thing is, I told her you were a hamster.”  Clever.

So, what is this mutant creature?  A groundhog from Chalk River?  No, this is the world’s largest rodent, the Capybara.  They hail from South America and can weigh up to 150 lbs.  And I thought my eight-pound Guinea Pig was big.

But seriously, I can think of nothing cooler than sitting on the sofa with my big rodent.  I want one.  I think I would name him Herbert.

3) I am a sitcom-addict, as many of you know, but last night between the hours of 9:30 and 10:00, I encountered a comedic void.  I was forced to watch something educational.  Ugh.  At least it involved aliens.  Here is what I learned thanks to Ancient Aliens.  

I don’t know about you, but when I think of “Siberia,” I think of bitter cold and desolation–not exactly a sought after travel destination.  Now, I have another reason for not going there.  The Valley of Death.  The name alone is a pretty convincing “No Trespassing” sign, but some people are stupid.

This 100,000 square km swath of swamp and uprooted trees is home to massive clouds of mosquitoes and something much more sinister–something that has been said to cause blistering sores, intense nausea, fevers, paralyzing headaches, and sudden blindness. Again I must ask, why would anyone go there?  These are the same people that ignore their haunted house when it loudly tells them to “get out.”

The local indigenous peoples, the Yakut, claim that every 6 centuries or so a giant fireball shoots out of the valley into the sky.  Hmm.

In the 1850’s and right up to the 1930’s, various people including travelling merchants, explorers, and geologists, reported finding massive cauldrons in this location.  Many later became ill.  Hmm again.

But here’s where things become complicated.  Remember this is a swamp.  Ivan Mackerle, well-known explorer of all places mystifying, strapped on a powered hang-glider and buzzed his way around the area in question.  What he and his men found were a series of strange-looking rings that definitely did not resemble “natural” occurrences.  So what would you do if you found a bizarre looking annulus in the middle of a marsh–poke it with a stick, of course.  Using a 2-meters long branch, they discovered that something very cauldron-like lurked beneath the water.  And there were several of them.  Yikes.

Then they hit the jackpot.  Literally.  They found a 10 meter cauldron on its side covered in mud.  Their vodka-riddled celebration was cut short as they all became deathly ill–not hangover ill I must add.  And then it snowed on them–lots–even though it was June (and we think we have bad weather).

So what are we to make of these strange big “pots” in the middle of the Russian no-man’s land?  Well, apparently, we are supposed to conclude that these are large alien “missiles” left behind to protect earthlings from less-than-desirable extra-terrestrial types who would seek to conquer and plunder.  Of course!  That makes perfect sense.  Dick Solomon, Alf, and The Great Gazoo are all earth-friendly aliens.  Surely, there must be more who would wish to fend off earth’s foes–the ray-gun-happy Marvin the Martian types way up in the sky.

At 10:00, Seinfeld came on.  And my mind returned to its usual resting state.

The Origins of Embiggen, Murphy the Molar, and the Lap Pillow

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.”  Robert Benchley.

I don’t know if you noticed (I’m hoping someone did), but I changed my blog’s name.  Apparently, the other one was too hard to spell–unless you speak fluent Italian.  I should have known it would be problematic when I–its creator–kept having to double-check the spelling.  What can I say?  I’m not too bright.  But, that’s the whole purpose of this blog–to learn new things and, if nothing else, to make me brighter.

1) I decided to kill the proverbial “two birds with one stone”–explain why I named my blog  The Embiggens Project, while giving you a new and life-changing piece of information.  Do you detect the sarcasm?

No blog is complete without a Simpsons reference.  Not only is the show brilliant, but it is the longest-running sitcom in history.  And it has filled this blogger’s brain with a plethora of useless information.  A perfect example is a history of the word “embiggen.”

“Embiggen” was actually born in 1884, in a British journal entitled Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc.  It sounds official enough, doesn’t it?  Just wait until you read the sentence that introduced the world to this new verb–“but the people magnified them, to make great or embiggen, if we may invent an English parallel as ugly. After all, use is nearly everything.”  So, there we are.  Embiggen=make great.

Embiggen later found its way into scientific journals dealing with string theory.  You know that when a word has been deemed acceptable by the science world, it has truly hit the big time.  But “embiggen” was destined for bigger and better things and thanks to a community of yellow cartoon characters with eight fingers, it entered the homes of millions of TV viewers.  Although it seemed to have only stuck in the minds of a few of us.

On a statue of Jebediah Springfield–the founder of the town which is populated by the Simpson clan, the Flanders, the Comic Book Guy, Krusty the Klown, the Wiggums, Apu, and Milhouse–is the town’s motto  “A Noble Spirit Embiggens the Smallest Man.” So there you have it.

2) Okay, so I have been dying to find a way to incorporate “Murphy the Molar” into my blog and I have finally done it!  (Does anyone else remember this singing tooth who starred in television commercials in the early 1970s?  I know that I will have his theme song stuck in my head for the rest of the day, which isn’t really a bad thing.  It makes me smile).

Back to the task at hand.  I have a question for you.  What is the most popular colour of toothbrush?  I’ll give you a moment to think about that.  Here’s a hint–my husband is using one right now.

I don’t really feel like getting up to answer the door, so I’ll give you the answer–BLUE.  Yes, apparently this is a colour that both sexes enjoy.  Next time you are shopping, be bold–go for neon yellow or hot pink.  Turn the dental hygiene world on its ass and maybe next year’s stats will be completely different.

A special thanks to Murphy.

3) The Japanese are truly innovative people.  I recently featured their square watermelon, but now I have found an even more intriguing (polite way of saying bizarre) invention–the Hizamakura Lap Pillow.  Yes, a pillow that resembles the lower half of the female torso.  “She” comes in a red skirt or a black one and retails for $131 US.

To make things even stranger, the manufacturer also offers a “maid costume” version–a model that is currently SOLD OUT.  Yes.  Sold out.

And, in case the ladies are feeling left out, we can always purchase a “boyfriend arm” pillow.  Buy a bunch of each and turn your bedroom into a body-part riddled crime scene.

People have way too much disposable income.

Teeny Tires, A New Ghost Town, and A Coveted Pez

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”  Kurt Vonnegut.

I think I had too much caffeine yesterday.  As you know, I am usually hyper–a “can’t sit still,” twitching & yapping, multi-tasker–but, yesterday, I was all this times ten with a touch of nausea thrown in.  This is why I don’t drink coffee.  And from now on, I will give Tim Horton’s Iced Capps a wide berth too–no matter how yummy and Coffee Crisp-like they are.

Today, I am suffering from post-caffeine exhaustion.  Hopefully, my mind-numbing stupor will not show through in my writing.  If it does, I apologize and promise to limit my beverage consumption to water and herbal tea K-cups.  Do we have a deal?

1)  Here’s a question for all you car people…who is the world’s largest tire manufacturer?  I’ll just sit here for a minute, while you run out into the nearest parking lot and examine people’s tires.  (In an attempt to pass the time, I decided to create my own muzak…but now I am plagued by the crooning of Tom Jones echoing in my head).

Are you finished yet?  The answer is LEGO.  Yes, they produce more tires, albeit smaller ones, than any other tire manufacturer.  381 million in 2011 alone.  That’s a lot of teeny tiny tires.

2) What images spring to mind when you hear the words, “Ghost Town?” For some reason, I imagined a town populated by Casper and friends, but that’s probably just me.  Most of you probably thought of abandoned Old West-style buildings like the ones pictured here.

Turns out that the modern-day Ghost Town (isn’t that an oxymoron?) is nothing like any of us conjured up at all–at least not in New Mexico.

Plans for an ultra-modern community boasting homes, office buildings, warehouses, retail outlets, sewers, and pretty much everything else one would expect to find in a bustling city of 35,000 inhabitants have been unveiled.  The only thing that will be missing is the inhabitants.  CITE, otherwise known as Centre for Innovation, Testing, and Evaluation will be just east of Hobbs, New Mexico.  And why the heck are they doing this?  In the name of research.  The goal is that CITE will become the testing grounds for smart and green technologies from around the world.  Already, companies are eager to road-test unmanned vehicles and geothermal power sources here.

In an age of homelessness and unemployment, does it seem strange that we are building houses for no one to live in and industries that won’t employ a soul?

3)  I admit it.  I’m a giant PEZ head.  I can’t get enough of these brightly coloured dispensers with eyes.  Funny, I don’t like the candy.  Just the containers they come in.  I think my fascination started thanks to an episode of Seinfeld, which leads to another passion of mine–anything Seinfeld–but we’ll save that for another day.

So, today I decided to entertain myself (and hopefully some of you) with one of many fascinating PEZ facts.

I have always coveted the Mr. Bean Pez collection.  Who wouldn’t?  There’s a miniature yellow Leyland Mini and a plastic rendition of Teddy.  Too cute.  Well, turns out that I should have had my heart set on another, albeit ugly, PEZ–a 1982 World’s Fair Astronaut–the most expensive PEZ ever.

This antithesis of cute fetched a hefty $ 32,205.00 US on e-bay, without a doubt causing some eyebrows to raise.  Some people just have way too much money.

AND you may have noticed that I changed the name of my blog.  Or maybe you didn’t.  Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.  Apparently, “Abbraccio Conoscenza” aka “Embrace Knowledge” in Italian was too hard to remember.  I picked my brain for one of my favourite pop culture references and voila–Lisa Simpson’s “embiggens” popped into my mind.  So, here’s to embiggening your dendrites and increasing your hat size.

Peeping, Tomcats, Cruise, and All Things “Tom”

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?”   George Carlin

Yes, I missed my blog yesterday.  But in my defence, I did write.  A LOT.  And then my head hurt.

But now I am re-focussed and totally dedicated to filling your minds with useless morsels of information.   So, here we go…

Really weird things occur to me in the middle of the night and last night, I began to wonder why there are so many negative phrases about people named “Tom.”  Think about it.  There’s the lascivious leering “Peeping Tom,” the word’s most famous sceptic, “Doubting Thomas,” the caterwauling “use the girls and spit them out afterwards” Tomcat, and the phrase that stresses the “average-ness” of every “Tom, Dick, and Harry.”  What has the world got against Toms?  I know lots of Toms and they seem to be really great guys.

I decided to look at the origins of some of these phrases and here is the general consensus.

1) The term “Peeping Tom” started in Coventry, UK when Lady Godiva decided to take a naked horse ride through town to convince her greedy husband to lower the taxes levied against the poor.  (Yes, ladies.  A whole new way to get what you want.  I can hear it now–“give me your credit card or I’ll march through Walmart in the nude.”  My husband might hand over his Visa just to spare the general public.) Apparently, the town agreed to turn their eyes away from her flesh, but one man did not.  This man’s name was, of course, Tom.

2)The Bible’s Doubting Thomas really needs no explanation, so I will move on to the Tomcat–a common word that really has a boring birth story.  Some people have attributed it to Tom & Jerry, but it existed long before this cartoon was even conceived.  It simply stemmed from an eighteenth-century children’s book about a cat named Tom called The Life and Adventures of a Cat.  Quite frankly, I was disappointed.  And now I have disappointed you.

After scouring the Internet, and asking every Tom, Dick, and Harry, it would appear that no one knows the origin of the phrase “Tom, Dick, and Harry.”  I guess a modern-day version would be every “Brandon, Alex, and Cody.”  Somehow, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

3)  While we’re on the subject of “Tom’s”, I felt compelled to give a shout out to my fellow Robert Hopkins Public School-ites with a pop culture tidbit on my least favourite Tom, Tom Cruise.

In case you weren’t aware, Mr. Cruise spent  several years of his childhood in Beacon Hill, a neighbourhood in Ottawa’s east end–as did I.  In fact, he attended Robert Hopkins Public School for grades 3, 4, and 5.  I was there for grades 4, 5, and 6.  And we were both taught by Pennyann Styles and Shirley Gaudreau.  Normally, having so much in common with a huge movie star would be exciting, but come on–it’s Tom Cruise.  The Oprah couch-hopping, Scientology-spouting, moron who attacked Brooke Shields for taking medication for her postpartum depression.   Six degrees of separation would never be enough.

Mutant Fruit, Lost Arms, and a Funky Highway

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.” – Steve Martin

I must apologize for my absence yesterday, but quite frankly, I had better things to do.  Haha.  Seriously though, the penance for my blogless day involved driving the cell-phone signal no-man’s land that is highway 41 in the dark.  Furry creatures with marble eyes scurried to and fro in front of us.  Porcupines threatened to puncture our radiator with their menacing quills.  And, of course, it was so very boring.  And long.  And did I tell you it was boring?

Well, we did make it home.  Finally.  And I now must present you with the daily blog fix that you have been waiting for–

1)  Japanese researchers have found a solution to a problem that I didn’t even know I had.  Apparently, I have experienced a great deal of frustration surrounding the storage of my round fruits.  It seems that I have also had great difficulty slicing said objects.  Thank God they pointed this out because now I really want to buy the product they are pushing…square watermelons.

Yup.  You heard me right.  Forget curing cancer or solving the word’s hunger problem.  We have bigger fish to fry…melons are rolling around willy-nilly in the bottom of fridge’s all over the globe!  What if one of these giant orbs accidentally squishes the Wonderbread?

Using tempered glass boxes, scientists have managed to alter the shape of the watermelon without compromising its quality.  The only problem is that when these babies first rolled (oh ya, they can’t do that anymore) into Japanese supermarkets in 2001, they cost the equivalent of $83 US.  I think at that price you could afford to replace the squashed Wonderbread.

2)  Okay, this is the strangest piece of information that I have come across yet.  It made me laugh and cringe at the same time.  And, according to Snopes, it’s true.

In 1997, a huge tug-of-war was held in a Taipei park to celebrate Retrocession Day.  1600 people pulled with all their might on a 5 cm thick, nylon rope.  They should have known a disaster was likely to happen.  The rope snapped with tremendous force, taking with it a pair of arms.  No really.  Two men each had an arm torn off just below the shoulder.

Thankfully, both arms were returned to their owners during 7 hours of surgery.

3)  I don’t know if this is new or if up until now, I have been the world’s least observant person, but there is a stretch of the 401 between Belleville and Kingston that is a manufacturer’s road paint test strip.  On our way back from Newmarket yesterday, we kept seeing signs forewarning us of “test paint strips.”  My husband and I obviously aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box because we both looked at each other with dumb, blank looks on our faces and said in unison, “what the hell does that mean?”  Well, we received our answer a few metres later–in techno-colour.

While this picture shows drivers off to one side, forbidden from driving on the psychedelic markings, we had the privilege of running right over them.  Plus, not all of these strips are tidy, horizontal lines as shown here.  That would be too boring to mention (although maybe this is still too boring to mention).  There were dots and slashes and vertical lines too.  I, of course, have to wonder what effect these would have on an illiterate (thus unable to read the explanatory signs) person at night.  Would they think they had fallen asleep at the wheel and had somehow wound up driving onto a banquet hall’s carpeting?  (I’m sorry, but those places really do seem to have the ugliest prints on the floor).

Adventures with Condoms, Mirrors, and Driverless Cars

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

“I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by two guys.”  Woody Allen. 


I encountered some really strange “knowledge” over the past 24 hours and I have totally changed my theory on education.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.  But, unfortunately, you can’t “un-learn” something–no matter how hard you try.

Here are some of the least mind-damaging pieces of information that I managed to collect:

1)  I should have known that if I googled the words “cool inventions,” I would come across some really strange stuff.  After all, one person’s “cool” is another person’s “what were they thinking?”

I discovered beer-flavoured lip gloss for well-groomed alcoholics.  Caffeine inhalers for those times when your stomach is overfilled with coffee, but you still need a caffeine-jolt (personally, I would seek medical attention if I had this problem).  And someone with too much time on their hands has created a crime scene beach towel.  I guess that’s one way to get a private spot in the sand.

The strangest invention that I came across, in my opinion, is a condom/yardstick…okay, maybe not a yardstick…but it is almost that optimistic.  According to the manufacturer’s website, they are available in inches and centimetres.  Let’s hope the prophylactic pictured is metric.  25 inches would just be scary.

2)  The next tid-bit is really disturbing, particularly if you are planning on driving in Nevada any time soon.  Cars with drivers are dangerous enough, but a car that drives itself is even worse.  And Google has officially received a “green” light to put its driver-free vehicle on the road.

Now, the vehicle hasn’t earned complete independence yet.  Two humans must be in the vehicle at all times–just in case something goes wrong.

I am curious about one thing.  If the car has been “trained” to go down Main Street, but an accident has created a detour, what does the car do?  Try to run over the detour?  Back up and drive forward repeatedly in confusion?  Or simply give up and explode?

3) For some reason, the next fact made me think of Romper Room.  “Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?”  I remember watching day after day, month after month, for her to see me in her magic mirror–but, alas, “Kimberley” was never called.

So, anyway, back on topic.  There are only three animals that are able to recognize themselves in the mirror.  The first is obviously the human.  The second is the ape.  What do you think the third one is?

Time’s up.  The answer I am looking for is the dolphin.

According to research conducted at New York’s Rockefeller University, dolphins have the ability to recognize themselves and companions in mirrors.  I’m sure this skill comes in really handy at the bottom of the ocean.

I often wonder who funds this type of research and why.

Noisy Birds, Bugs Bunny, and Things That Smell

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

“An encyclopedia is a system for collecting dust in alphabetical order.” 
Mike Barfield.

I have always been fascinated with useless facts.  As a kid, I taught myself the U.S. states in alphabetical order.  I can still rhyme them off in record speed.  This is not exactly going to land me any jobs, but it did help me with the answer to a trivia question once.  Not everyone knows how many U.S. State names begin with the letter “M.”  Do you? I’ll give you a minute to count them and I’ll give you the answer at the end of the blog…

Meanwhile, here are today’s three riveting facts:

1) After a long, harsh Canadian winter, there is nothing more welcomed than the return of our red-bellied friend, the robin.  They’re cute–hopping around on the lawn, fluttering about in the bird bath, teaching their little ones to fly–but man, are they noisy.  There is nothing more frustrating than the repetitious tweets of the robin at 4:30 in the morning.  I’m a nature lover who avoids stepping on bugs if I can, but I have seriously contemplated braining one of these birds by propelling a shoe out my bedroom window.  Seriously–heave-ho and then “splat.”  No more noise.  Just a beak.

My husband, however, is much more pragmatic than I am.  He strives to understand what makes these “disturbers of the peace” tick…or in this case, tweet.  Here’s what he has discovered.  It’s our fault that the robin has been forced to adopt the role of avian alarm clock–a role traditionally held by another bird, I might add.  The rooster.

Humans are noisy.  Our normal waking hours are filled with a myriad of sounds.  And the poor robin can’t hear himself think, let alone talk to a friend in the distance.  Robins must sing to attract mates.  If the mates cannot hear them, the robin will die a childless, lonely spinster.  To avoid this fate, the robin has learned to chirp its aria when the rest of the world is silent–or snoring.

So, here’s hoping that the robins in my neighbourhood soon find that special someone.  And that I can finally get an undisturbed night’s sleep.

2)  June bugs freak me out.  They’re huge.  They’re crunchy.  And when they fly into you, they actually leave a dent.  Turns out the June bug is a lightweight in the insect world.

Enter the Giant Weta of New Zealand, the world’s largest insect.  And now, enter the largest Giant Weta of all, and you have entered horror movie territory.  This is the mother of all bugs.  In fact, she weighs as much as three mice.

Her name is Bugs Bunny as she is large enough to eat carrots.  Forget her size!  She has teeth that can chew carrots!  And her wingspan is seven inches.

In her defence, she never bit the hand that fed her.  She was returned to her tree and hopefully lived happily ever after.  Far, far away with oceans between us.  Phew.

3)  Nothing smells better than the aroma of freshly pumped petrol.  It’s not for everyone.  Smell is highly subjective.  After all, I am the girl who thinks that skunk smells like Tim Horton’s coffee.  But, as I was filling up my gas tank today, I began to wonder what are the most popular smells?  Certainly not my living room after a night of brown beans.

According to a survey conducted in Britain by a dish soap manufacturer, the Brits preferred scent is fish & chips.  That even sounds Coronation Street.  Two different American surveys turned up two different results.  One said Americans favoured Vanilla, while the other said they had a hankering for Banana.

And everyone’s least favourite smell seems to be the public washroom.  I concur.

What smell do you absolutely love?

And no, I haven’t forgotten to answer the question I asked about the number of American states that start with the letter “M”.  There are 8–Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana.

Wooden food, Classroom IV’s, and a Whole Lotta Smiths

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.”  Groucho Marx.

This quest to learn has become an obsession.  It’s quite scary actually.  Everything that I encounter in my everyday life is suddenly inspected closely for an “a-ha” moment.  A cereal box is perused for unusual ingredients.  The Young and the Restless is listened to with intense studiousness.  I even find myself pondering the origins of my kitchen utensils.  My husband hasn’t said it yet, but I’m pretty sure he thinks I’ve lost my mind–which would be a shame considering all the work I’ve been doing to expand it.

But here are the 3 juicy tid-bits that I have selected just for you.

1) Many of you know that I have been trying to lose weight and I have to say that a lot of “diet” food tastes like cardboard.  You know what I’m talking about–melba toast, Ryvita, and worst of all, the coaster pretending to be a rice cake.  If God had intended me to eat wood, he would have made me a beaver.  Right?

Wrong.  Apparently, I have unknowingly been eating wood for years.  And so have YOU.  No, you won’t find “wood,” “bark,” or “knotty pine” written on any food labels, but you will find the innocuous term “powdered cellulose.”  It sounds innocent enough, but what exactly is it?

Beaver food.  Ground up wood pulp and other plant fibres.  Talk about roughage.  And we’ve been eating it in our favourite foods for years–waffles, cake icing, pasta mixes, cocoa, cheese, and ice cream, just to name a few.  And it is especially prevalent in foods that have been labelled low fat or high fibre.  I thought fibre was supposed to be good for the colon, but who wants a bowel splinter?

Just goes to show you that slick marketing will get us to eat anything.  Forget pumpkin pie or butter tarts.  Soon those mint-flavoured toothpicks will be dessert.

2)  We’ve all heard of test anxiety.  You may have experienced it yourself–profuse sweating that no amount of Lady Speedstick can help, butterflies in your stomach, and the dreaded blank mind.  I realize that some of us are perpetually in a state of blank-mindedness, but we’ll save that for another post in another blog.

Or maybe you have stayed up to the wee hours of the morning, cramming as much information into your exhausted brain as you possibly can, only to find yourself in a sleep-deprived stupor the next day.

It would appear that the Chinese have come up with a solution, albeit a strange one, for these exam-related problems–classrooms retrofitted with IV drips.  Yes, no need to interrupt your studies with pesky chores like eating or sleeping.  It’s far easier to pump amino acids directly into your vein.

Is this bizarre or is just me?  I’d love to hear your comments.

3)  Thanks to my eternal quest for the perfect pen name, I ended up in a conversation today about knowing more than one person with the same name.  I have known three Jim Smiths.  And two Jennifer Jones.  It’s not all that surprising.  Jim and Jennifer are both common names.  And so are Smith and Jones.

The conversation then moved on to trying to guess what the most common last names are.  I said Smith.  It turns out I was both right and wrong.  It all depends which side of the border I am on.

According to the majority of web sites that I found, the top 5 most common surnames in the United States are:

  1. Smith
  2. Johnson
  3. Williams
  4. Jones
  5. Brown
Interestingly, Canada’s list is quite different:
  1. Li
  2. Smith
  3. Lam
  4. Martin
  5. Brown
And for all my relatives…the 6th most common last name in Canada is:  ROY.  Ha, for years people have been telling us we’re strange.  Turns out we are common. And we have the numbers to prove it.

Weird Toes, Edible Mail, and 1912

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Wow!  As I attempt to learn three new things each day, I find that I am learning to listen.  For those of you who know me, this is a major feat as I am the one that is usually talking.  I’ve come to the realization that I won’t learn anything through listening to my own voice, but others have a lot to offer.  Who knew?

After putting on my listening ears, I managed to acquire another three nuggets of enthralling information.  Okay, I guess this would be highly subjective–one person’s “enthralling” is another person sedative.

1)  My second toe is far longer than my big toe–a condition known as Morton’s Toe.  Several years ago, one of my past room mates informed me that this condition meant that I was predisposed to become a serial killer.  Thankfully, I have never encountered any evidence to back this up.

While perusing the Internet yesterday, I did accidentally come across some more facts about the Morton’s Toe and those “afflicted” with this digit problem–facts that I must add are much easier on my self-esteem.  Foot-related self-esteem, anyway.

So, here’s a few facts that will make you proud to wear sandals this summer.  The Morton’s Toe has been referred to as the Greek Toe and has been celebrated in both Greek and Roman sculpture.  In fact, the Statue of Liberty boasts a large pair of Morton’s Toes as well.  Furthermore, the Morton’s Toe is a dominant trait.  No wimpy toe genes for me.  Yay!  Strangely elongated second toes rock.

2) Let’s face it.  The coconut is one of nature’s perfect foods–sweet, healthy–and “oh so yummy” wrapped in chocolate.  Yesterday, thanks to National Geographic, I learned that it is ideal for another less obvious purpose–mailing.

Apparently, it is perfectly legal and acceptable to mail a coconut in the United States.  Annually, roughly 3000 people write an address on the husks, affix the proper postage, and mail their loved ones a round postcard.  I wasn’t the only one fascinated by this as Mythbusters have given this myth the “truth” stamp, after receiving their self-addressed coconut in the mail. And, according to the National Geographic, the pumpkin has also been successfully mailed.

Imagine the money that could be saved on envelopes–not to mention the trees that could be spared.  I wonder if I can talk one of my friends that are getting married this summer in to sending out coconut wedding invitations.  I really just want see my postman try to fit one into my mailbox.

3)  I have been looking up baby names a lot lately.  And NO, it is not for the reason that you think.  I am trying to come up with the perfect pen name.  It’s fun picking out your own name, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Keeping in mind my age, I can hardly give myself a young name like Kaitlyn or Kylie.  But I don’t want to go too old either–Thelma just won’t cut it.  So, what did I do to break the moniker-hunting monotony?  I decided to find out what the most popular baby names were exactly a century ago.

All of the websites that I could find that provided baby names statistics for 1912 agree.  The most popular names in both the U.S. and Canada were John and Mary.  This knowledge has had no impact on my pseudonym selection whatsoever, but I do find it interesting.

And to all my readers named Mary or John–you can bask in the knowledge that your names are timeless classics.

Male Trees, Rubberville, and an Odd Couple

Posted by facelikeafryingpan in May 2012 and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”  Albert Einstein.

Learning three new things proved quite challenging for me over the past 24 hours.     Laundry and other household chores demanded my attention.  And, frankly, the background noise of my television consisted of a series of TVtropolis reruns.  I may find a new joke to laugh at no matter how many times I see the same show, but sitcoms aren’t noted for their ability to impart an education–especially when you’ve seen it ten times before.

Despite a lack of stimulating content, I did manage to find three tid-bits of valuable information in the past day.

1)  For all my fellow female allergy sufferers, I have just one piece of advice–blame the males.  No, this is not a sexist rant.  It is, in fact, scientifically accurate–at least, according to a horticultural expert, Tom Ogren.   He has been commissioned by Reactine to tour across Canada, educating us on the downside of planting solely male trees–the unnecessary torture of allergy sufferers.  Most Canadian and American cities are filled with an overwhelming majority of male trees.

So, why do North Americans eschew the female tree?  Apparently, we don’t like the mess.  We are simply too busy to find time to sweep up nuts and seed-pods.  Instead, we opt for the invisible and stealthy pollen of their male counterparts.  It would seem that washing a thick coating of yellow powder off of our vehicles is not a problem.

I learned this gem while reading the front page of today’s Ottawa Citizen.  

2) I bet you don’t know what American city held the title “Rubber Capital of the World” for years and actually birthed the American trucking industry.  Odds are you probably have never really cared either, but I bet I have now piqued your curiosity.  For much of the twentieth century, Goodrich, Goodyear, Firestone, and General Tire all had their headquarters in this city.  I know…you’re sitting on the edge of your seat in anticipation, so here is the answer.

AKRON, OHIO.

And so you don’t walk away with just one fascinating Akron fact, I’ll ply you with more.  These tire companies also created affordable housing neighbourhoods for their employees with catchy names like Firestone Park and Goodyear Heights.  And even after the departure of three out of four tire manufacturers, it is now famous for its polymer research.  It really is a town built on rubber.

How on earth did I encounter this little gem?  I was doing a crossword puzzle that gave the clue “Ohio Tire City.”

3) My husband had the TV tuned to Batman and Robin, the one with George Clooney as Batman (who I think was the best Batman ever) and I decided to “imdb” Tim Burton.  One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, I was reading an on-line article (actually there were several), about the strange living arrangements  of Mr Burton and his significant other, Helena Bonham Carter.  Apparently they live in separate halves of an apartment in a very posh building. 

According to Helena, Tim is a  problem snorer due to his deviated septum.  In his defence, she admits that she is very bossy.  Her side of the home is girlie, while his is…well…darker and more skeleton-ish.  This is, after all, Tim Burton.

My only question is: how do they divide up the children?