The Stuff

Yahoo is running a story about the Silver Bridge Collapse: W.Va. town remembers 1967 bridge failure. One part of the story was left out: the Mothman.

This is out of control., originally uploaded by jocieposse.

One inflatable is too much for my conservative tastes, but nine, wow! I could speculate as to why a person would make this much of an investment, and think it actually looks good. I have great disdain for snowmen in a absence of snow, and orange bears, but the inflatable tree really hurts my brain. They have large evergreens on their lawn — why do they need an artificial, inflatable version? It’s like a breast implant for their yard.

37th Street Lights 03, originally uploaded by phartsy.

No it isn’t. Actually I don’t know. It may be filled with egg nog.

Christmas Insanity, originally uploaded by CoredesatChikai.

The title says it all.

One of my favorite places to get my drunk on was a bar called McCormicks in New Brunswick, New Jersey. McCormicks was known for its large selection of beers on tap and one of the better jukeboxes in North America. Time moves on, and I stopped hanging out there. Over the past half decade or so the place has gone downhill. I’d heard rumors that patrons were bringing in and selling their own beer, and that the owner had painted the carpet red in a sad attempt to spruce up the place. Well, local “dinosaur blog” The Star Ledger has confirmed that the painted carpet rumor is in fact true:

Wallpaper? How about the flattened six-pack cartons at McCormick’s in New Brunswick, where owner Jack Schobert painted the carpet instead of installing a new floor. Saved him $12,000.

Tiki: Tiki nostalgia is alive and well on blogs like Swank Blather. Viva Polynesia!

Cryptozoology: Mental Floss (publisher of fun fact books and a magazine) has a list of 9 things that might kill you (if they actually exist). Do mind the Mongolian Death Worms.

Music: my friend Pat is crazy for the band Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. You can download 3 of their songs for free on the Alternative Tentacles web site.

Art: 3 Types of Unusually Legal Urban Street Art: colored manhole covers in Japan, murals on traffic signal switch boxes and light post sculptures.

Science: Quirks and Quarks is a CBC Radio podcast about all things scientific in nature.

Autos: There’s an air freshener in every junk car. Have you have seen Repo Man?

Comic books: The Justice League: New Frontier movie looks promising.

Science Fiction: Watch the the Turkish version of Star Wars on Google video. It can’t be be much worse then the Star Wars Holiday Special.

WOW: The Mr. T and William Shatner World of Warcraft commercials are awesome! (Disclaimer: I’ve never played the game.)

Vans from Japan: Tiny versions of classic American vans made in Japan.

Space: Gorgeous space photos from the Hubble telescope.

Comedy, Caucasians: Conan O’Brien and Jim Gaffigan are the Pale Force! Conan and Jim visit Little Canada.

Gaming: The fugliest video game boxes of the year.

Have you heard of the “mosquito” cell phone tones? They’re high-pitched ring tones — so high pitched that older folks aren’t supposed to be able to hear them due to the residual hearing loss that comes with age.

Here are the tones. Try them out and see if you can hear them. Surprisingly I can hear the tone for 30-year-olds (it’s quite awful) in spite of being much older than 30. I can’t hear the 24-year-old tones, which makes me think this is more than an urban myth. Can you hear them?

do they know it’s Christmas?, originally uploaded by wottalottapixels.

With this many lights, they’ll be able to see it’s Christmas from outer space.

, originally uploaded by mojohand.

One friend said that the number 3 stands for the Holy Trinity, but my other friend says it stands for Dale Earnhardt.

, originally uploaded by mojohand.

No offense to visually impaired folks, but don’t let them decorate your house for Christmas.

IMG_0708, originally uploaded by conrad.matt.

How many illuminated ornaments can you fit on your lawn?

 Sorry, I was too busy counting to write a punch line.