“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.