Giant Sweat Socks, Donuts With Feet, and A Puss Explosion

I confess that I never really grew up.  And I am not referring to my lack of stature.  I achieved exactly five feet in this department, much to my relief.  The thought of having to say that I am four foot anything would have been too much to bear.  (Sorry.  I momentarily had to consider the use of “bear” vs. “bare,” which is not good being that I am an English teacher.  Then I remembered that “Bare With Me” equates to an invitation to get naked.  Good thing I got that straight.  Stupid language.)  Now, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  My lack of height.

While, I never grew up in the physical sense, I failed to do so in the mental sense as well.  At the age of 45, I still love anything with eyes.  Well, not clowns.  Or dolls.  Or, Heaven forbid, clown dolls.  But most things with eyes amuse me immensely.

Poop.  Not cute.  Poop with eyes.  Adorable.

Poop. Not cute. Poop with eyes. Adorable.

I still love Bert and Ernie–although I am partial to Bert.  He’s the only man I know that can pull off lime green pants and a uni-brow.  I am a huge fan of Wage the Ugly Doll (um.  Hence my Gravatar and blog design).  And I collect vintage Pop Culture icons–you know, things like Grimace, Cornelius Rooster, old Snoopys, the Dough Boy.  But my real weakness is puppets.  I have a plethora of puppets.

My childhood (and current) dream was (and is) to be a puppeteer on any Jim Henson Production.  I’m not fussy.  Any one of his puppets will do.  Except maybe Miss Piggy.  She bugs me.  She looks like Nikki Newman on The Young and the Restless.  She bugs me too.

Nikki NewmanMiss Piggy (2)

Beeker would be good.  Or Grover.   And, of course, Bert or Ernie.  Not Elmo.  I’d like to step on his throat.

I finally got the damn thing to shut up.

I finally got the damn thing to shut up.

Makes me feel guilty stepping on my socks.

Makes me feel guilty stepping on my socks.

1)  Let’s face it.  Sock puppets are awesome.  As long as the sock is clean and doesn’t smell like foot.  Or Parmesan.  I can never tell the two scents apart.  Gack.

This sock puppet is pretty darn cute.  It’s the eyes.  It’s always the eyes.  I am suddenly very aware of the fact that I am stepping on a pair of potential sock puppets right this minute.  Instead of entertaining smiling children, my socks are stuck clinging to my foot callouses.  Note to self: moisturize crunchy feet.   Poor socks.  Almost makes me want to take them off and give them a break.  Almost.  The cold hardwood floor stops me from actually doing it.  After all, they ARE socks.  They were born to be stepped on.

Anyway, I digress.  Back to my first fact of the day.  When it comes to sock puppets, I think bigger is better.  Imagine one that is 32 feet tall.  Imagine the eyes!

It turns out that a group in Rhode IslandProject Undercover, holds the Guinness World Record for the World’s Largest Sock and–you guessed it–it looms a whopping 32 feet in height.  Holy crap.  And they patterned it with a standard sock monkey puppet in mind.  Here’s the finished product…monster sock

big zit

2) My mind is a mysterious thing.  Puppets have led to socks which, then, led to feet.  Feet make me think of bunions (which, by the way, is one of the cutest words ever.  Calling someone a bunion sounds like a term affection, when really you are calling them a hideous foot growth).  Bunions made me ponder boils and corns.  Which, unfortunately led to me finding this.

Ack.  I must try to type without letting my eyes wonder over to this picture.  It’s like a car accident.  You don’t want to look at it, but you simply have to.  All I can imagine is the poor bugger who was around when it popped.

I don’t really know much about this photo other than the fact that it is simply labelled “the world’s biggest zit.”  How the hell do you get a zit the size of a red squirrel?  Seriously.  Does the guy live off a steady diet of Poutine and Deep Fried Mars Bars?  Perhaps, it’s from an ingrown hair.  But what the hell kind of hair would lead to a giant pustule like that?  The hair of a Wookiee?

Rumour has it that the largest zit was 78mm–about the size of a hockey puck.  I’d rather get hit in the head with the puck though.  Less messy.

3)  I have to erase the image of this massive sebaceous thing, so I have decided to share a few cute Canadian things with eyes.  I remember asking an American blogger if she had ever seen the Excel gum commercial with the walking donut and coffee cup.  Apparently, this is a “Canadian” thing, so I thought I’d share this–and a few other cute commercial icons–with my non-Canuck friends.

Here are the mascots for Excel (by Wrigley’s) gum.  Since this original commercial, a bulb of garlic has joined the gang.

 I am, however, still puzzled about the whole “donut breath” thing.  Does a donut really cause “breath?”  And, if it did, wouldn’t it be a good thing?

And here are the “timbits” of Tim Hortons’–otherwise known as donut holes.

And Frank & Gordon, the Bell Canada Beavers.    They seem to have been fired from Bell–maybe due to failed contract negotiations or a better offer elsewhere.

One of my all-time favourite pictures.  Bert and his dad.

One of my all-time favourite pictures. Bert and his dad.

Photo credits:  Nikki Newman (people.plurielles.fr) Miss Piggy (www.timeshighereducation.co.uk), poop with eyes (flickr.com), sock with eyes (www.sodahead.com), monster zit (www.songtoday.com),

Pig Eyes, a Unibrow, and a Dude With 23 Names

My head hurts.  I don’t know if anyone else gets this, but I have an eye that from time-to-time decides it no longer want to sit alongside my other eye.  It chooses, rather, to align itself with my left nostril.  Seriously.  The eyebrow always does what the eye tells it to, so it ventures downwards also.  Needless to say, I look like a freak.  On days like this, it is very difficult to apply eye make-up.  (I admit that I am a “girly” girl and venturing out amongst the humans with naked eyes is not something I do on a regular basis).  I have fare eyelashes.  Without my mascara, I have pig eyes.  Honestly.  Have you ever looked at a pig’s eyes?  I know that pigs are cute, but they’re cute despite their eyes.  And pig eyes really don’t work on a person.

So, now I look doubly freakish.  Not only do I have pig eyes, but they are asymmetrical too.  I look like a Picasso painting in the flesh.  Don’t even bring up the possibility of hiding behind my sunglasses.  For one thing, I misplaced those a couple of days ago, so I have been reduced to wearing a pair of old ones.  And they have green frames.  I think they’ve been kicking around since the early 90’s, but that’s no excuse.  Forest green frames.  What was I thinking?  Plus, due to the recent migration of my left eyebrow, I now only have one furry caterpillar sitting over my frames.  Sunglasses look weird when you can only see one eyebrow.  And drawing one over the left frame is not an option.  Imagine taking my sunglasses off and showing the world that I now have three eyebrows.  Okay, one is down around my nose.  More like a moustache to one side, but still.

Sorry for the whinefest, but I really needed to vent.  Does anyone else have this problem?  Seriously, my eye professionals are stumped.  I will now focus on the task at hand–my three facts of the day.

1)  Speaking of Picasso, I haven’t actually delved into the world of Art for any strange new facts yet.  So, here it goes.  The name “Pablo Picasso” is a good name.  Has a nice ring to it.  It flows.

Unfortunately, for Mr. Picasso–his real name is not quite so simple.  In fact, his full name has 23 words.  His complete moniker is:  Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.

Apparently, he was named for several relations and some Saints.  And everyone his mother had ever met.

I bet he never signed a cheque.  Who could blame him?

Van Gogh lopped off an ear.  Picasso whacked off 21 names or so.

Which brings me to this freaky little car.  This is a re-designed Citroen dedicated to and inspired by Picasso.  A British mechanic spent six months creating this masterpiece he calls “Picasso’s Citroen.”

Ironically, Citroen does have a model called the “Picasso” (pictured here).

Not quite sure how it got this name–it is rather staid for something inspired by the legendary artist who created humans out of cubes.  There is a Grand Picasso as well and it is rather mini-van-ish.  Picasso was known as a great Playboy–hardly the mini-van type.  I rather imagine him driving a giant phallic symbol like a 1970s Stingray or a modern-day Dodge Challenger.

Maybe it’s just  me.

2)  Like I said, pigs have small blank eyes.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  This little pooch pictured here, however, does not have that problem.  He has the antithesis to pig eyes.  The Marty Feldman of the dog world, one could say.

This dog’s penetrating stare has earned him the Guinness World Record for the dog with the largest eyes.  Not bad for a little lad that was once a pound puppy.  Bruschi the Boston Terrier‘s owner, Victoria Reed, says she didn’t notice her dogs large eyes until her friends commented on them.  Really?  Is she blind?  Is this her first time seeing a dog?

It was these comments that led her to contact the Guinness World Records people and the rest is history.

Not only are his eyes big, but they seem to point in different directions.  She didn’t notice?  Really?  I think she deserves some sort of award.

3)  When I think of a unibrow, Sesame’s Street’s Bert comes to mind.  Let’s face it.  Bert pulls off the unibrow look with style and finesse.  Maybe it’s the lemon yellow skin.  Or his tuft of black hair.  Whatever it is, it works.  On him.

Outside the Muppet world, sporting one large, unending eyebrow is not exactly going to win you dates.  Unless you are in Tajikistan.  According to Wikipedia, the women there are wild about the unibrow.  Apparently, it is a sign of virility.  Personally, I think it is a sign of not owning tweezers.

It turns out that George W. Bush also has a proclivity for synophrys (the official medical term for this condition.  Yes, it is a condition).  During his tenure as President of the U.S.A., George Double-Ya’s unibrow was divided in to two.  But in his early shots, like this one here on vacation with his wife, he clearly sports a Bert brow.

According to a Victorian criminologist by the name of “Cesare Lombroso“, people who are genetically inclined to having one giant eyebrow are also more likely to engage in criminal activity.  Hm.  Not only does George W. prove this theory, but many of TV’s not-so-nice characters possess unibrows (Bert, of course, is the exception.  If I were a Muppet, I’d marry Bert).  But here are just a few of TV’s un-friendly unibrows:

The Simpsons , Maggie, may be young, but not too young to have an arch nemesis.  This is him.  Notice that this evil baby sports a unibrow.

Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Count Olaf dons a handlebar-style unibrow.

 And, of course,  The Men Show’s Mr. Stubborn and Mr. Grumpy (the ones with the negative traits) also have eyebrows that meet in the middle.

If I had a unibrow, would it stay in place or would I have one giant lopsided eyebrow?  Thanks to my Tweezerman pointed tweezers, I’ll never have to find out.

Photo Credits:  Picasso’s Citroen (neatorama.com),  Citroen Picasso, (carautoportal.com), Big-eyed dog (Guinness World Records.com),  George W. Bush (unibrowclub.com), Simpsons baby (tvtropes.org).  Count Olaf (fanpop.com),