snir�tle
v. to attempt to suppress one's laughter
TurboZombie|W|P|Great site. Very impressive.
Little Willie, in the best of sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burned to ashes.
By and by the room grew chilly,
But no one liked to poke up Willie.
-- Col. D. Streamer
|W|P|111878827689783319|W|P|Tender-Heartedness|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThere once was an old man of Lyme
Who married three wives at a time
When asked, "Why a third?"
He replied, "One's absurd
And bigamy, sir, is a crime."
-- William Cosmo Monkhouse
|W|P|111927923535517636|W|P|Limerick|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comActual questions asked in Microsoft job interviews:
- How are M&Ms made?
- Suppose you had eight billiard balls, and one of them was slightly heavier, but the only way to tell was by putting it on a scale against another. What's the fewest number of times you'd have to use the scale to find the heavier ball?
- Why do you want to work at Microsoft?
- One train leaves Los Angeles at 15 mph heading for New York. Another train leaves from New York at 20 mph heading for Los Angeles on the same track. If a bird, flying at 25 mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?
- How many gas stations are there in the USA?
- You've got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
- The interviewer hands you a black pen and says nothing but "This pen is red."
- Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19. Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no "prime triples."
At the end they ask, "What was the hardest question asked of you today?" My answer: "Why do you want to work at Microsoft?"
|W|P|112000945143240739|W|P|Why Is a Manhole Cover Round?|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"Never get a mime talking. He won't stop." -- Marcel Marceau
|W|P|111937022909107015|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comCranberries bounce.
|W|P|111876277325282035|W|P|Trivium|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comPredictions made by John Titor, a "time traveler" from 2036 who appeared briefly on the Internet in 2000 and 2001:
- The United States will go to war with Iraq over claims that the latter has nuclear weapons, and these claims will later prove false.
- Civil unrest will follow the presidential election of 2004, escalating into civil war in 2005.
- The war will pit cities against rural areas, with the government controlling the cities.
- When the old system cannot be restored, a new president will take power in 2009.
- As American support for Israel wavers, a nuclear war will occur in the Middle East.
- China will take over Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.
- In 2015 there will be a global nuclear war among United States, China, Europe, and Russia. Nearly 3 billion people will die.
"Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret," he wrote. "No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep. Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that."
On the other hand, he also claimed that Y2K would lead to martial law and that "Russia is covered in nuclear snow from their collapsed reactors." So, maybe not.
|W|P|111792034728848412|W|P|Future Perfect|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Most popular U.S. pet names, according to the ASPCA:
- Max
- Sam
- Lady
- Bear
- Smokey
- Shadow
- Kitty
- Molly
- Buddy
- Brandy
Two atoms are walking down the street.
One of them says, "Wait, I think I lost an electron."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm positive."
|W|P|111966185907977288|W|P|Rimshot|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comNational Spelling Bee winning words:
- 1995: xanthosis
- 1996: vivisepulture
- 1997: euonym
- 1998: chiaroscurist
- 1999: logorrhea
- 2000: demarche
- 2001: succedaneum
- 2002: prospicience
- 2003: pococurante
- 2004: autochthonous
Across the moorlands of the Not
We chase the gruesome When;
And hunt the Itness of the What
Through forests of the Then.
Into the Inner Consciousness
We track the crafty Where;
We spear the Ego tough, and beard
The Selfhood in his lair.
With lassos of the brain we catch
The Isness of the Was;
And in the copses of the Whence
We hear the think bees buzz.
We climb the slippery Whichbark tree
To watch the Thusness roll
And pause betimes in gnostic rimes
To woo the Over Soul.
-- Anonymous
|W|P|111878866942947696|W|P|Moorlands of the Not|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFamous left-handed people:
- Alexander the Great
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- Julius Caesar
- Charlemagne
- Benjamin Franklin
- Michelangelo
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Mark Twain
- Beethoven
- Mozart
- Charlie Chaplin
- Cary Grant
- Henry Ford
- Helen Keller
- Albert Einstein
"Mantle can hit just as good right-handed as he can left-handed," said Yogi Berra. "He's just naturally amphibious."
|W|P|111845615732886257|W|P|Southpaws|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"How do I stay so healthy and boyishly handsome? It's simple. I drink the blood of young runaways." -- William Shatner
|W|P|111937027807105861|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
If there were a Nobel Prize for chutzpah, it would belong to British playboy Harry Bensley.
In 1907, Bensley bet American millionaire John Pierrepoint Morgan $100,000 that he could travel all the way around the world without being identified. Morgan added 15 bizarre conditions, including these:
- Bensley would have to walk the entire distance, pushing a baby carriage and wearing an iron mask.
- The route included 169 English towns and 125 other in 18 countries, which he had to visit in a specified order.
- He could not identify himself, but he would have to collect a signature from a prominent resident of each town.
- He could bring only 1 pound, a change of underwear, and a supply of postcards to sell along the way.
- He must find a wife on the trip, without removing the mask.
Bensley gamely set out on New Year's Day 1908, wearing a four-pound mask and pushing a perambulator. Reportedly he sold a postcard to Edward VII but refused to give him his autograph, and he was arrested in Kent for selling postcards without a license. (When he explained the conditions of the bet, the judge let him retain his helmet and identified him only as "the man in the iron mask.")
It's unclear how far he got. When war broke out six years later, stopping the stunt, he claimed to have passed through 12 countries and received 200 proposals of marriage. He said he had covered 30,000 miles and had only 7,000 to go. Ever the sportsman, Morgan gave him 4,000 pounds for consolation. "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it," wrote Goethe. "Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
|W|P|111939734858588309|W|P|Harry Bensley|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comHenny Youngman jokes after 10 consecutive translations:
A man goes to a psychiatrist. "Nobody listens to me!" The doctor says, "Next!"
A man enters siquiatra felt "Nobody me!" They are indicated with respect to him of the doctor, "Next!"
The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip.
The horse, that one that I bet, were, the pulley of tenditrice arrested for him therefore diem of a slow illuminated course.
Is that your hat or are you wearing a cabana?
Are you he your protection that protects or takes a hut?
My wife will buy anything marked down. Last year she bought an escalator.
The purchase of the moglie of the mine everything, of that the deep one for if it indicates. Slipping the scale it bought last year one.
I just finished my income tax forms. Who says you can't get wounded by a blank?
I exactly finished to my forms they imposed them on the rent. Who visualizes that you cannot be the damages you of a white man?
If my mother knew I did this for a living, she'd kill me. She thinks I'm selling dope.
If the mine to nut/mother that he knew, I did this for a duration, he I I would destroy it. You think about that sells the representative in the painting.
wee�qua�shing
n. the spearing of fish or eels by torchlight from canoes
Asteroids named after fictional characters:
- 2309 Mr. Spock
- 5048 Moriarty
- 5049 Sherlock
- 5050 Doctorwatson
- 6042 Cheshirecat
- 6735 Madhatter
- 6736 Marchare
- 7470 Jabberwock
- 7980 Bandersnatch
- 9007 James Bond
- 18610 Arthurdent
Strangely, 2309 Mr. Spock caused an uproar when the asteroid's discoverer, James Gibson, revealed that he'd actually named it after his cat (he called the cat Spock because it was "imperturbable, logical, intelligent, and had pointed ears"). The International Astronomical Union officially discouraged any more pet animal names, but people are still fine -- asteroids have been named after Carlos Santana, Mister Rogers, all four Beatles and all six members of Monty Python.
|W|P|111884376627419558|W|P|Asteroids Named After Fictional Characters|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comQ: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: A vibrating Norwegian horse box full of sea cucumbers.
|W|P|111866435428513939|W|P|Surreal Humor|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
|W|P|JUNIOR�S LAST KABOBJunior had bacon. Some was in his shoes, and some was in his pants. He had always obeyed his momma and done what she said. This particular day, she had asked Junior to go to the store for bacon. He had done so with precision. �Here�s your bacon!�, he said to momma. �That�s a good boy�, momma said, �Now go back to the store for some kabob�s.� Junior smiled and said, �Yippee! Hooray! Kabob�s tonight!�, and ran out the door.
In the middle of his 12 mile walk to the store, Junior stopped in his tracks. �Wait just a cotton-pickin� minute!�, he thought, �I dunno what in the heck and holler a kabob is!� Junior was as stumped as a tree, so he chopped himself down and built a cabin. �This will keep me warm on those cold, winter nights�, he thought. Sitting in front of the fireplace with some hot coffee and a good book, Junior wept as thought of all the sad things in the world. �How lucky I am to be fortunate�, he thought in his brain. But the thoughts of worldly despair didn�t stay with him for long as he continued reading his involving story. He reached the humorous part of the book and laughed like a hyena, so he put himself in a zoo. �This way I won�t hurt anyone�, he thunked.
As Junior sat in his cage chewing on some bacon, he thought of all the things that had happened that day. �What a day!�, he thought. Junior was getting tired from all the excitement. He was as tired as a car, so he parked himself in a used car lot. Junior was sold the next day to a nice old woman with cataracts. She drove him to the store to pick up some kabob�s. �You�re stupid�, momma said to Junior.
The 10 oldest currently registered dot-com domains:
- symbolics.com (registered 3/15/85)
- bbn.com (4/24/85)
- think.com (5/24/85)
- mcc.com (7/11/85)
- dec.com (9/30/85 )
- northrop.com (11/7/85)
- xerox.com (1/9/86)
- sri.com (1/17/86)
- hp.com (3/3/86)
- bellcore.com (3/5/86)
What is this? Is it a spider monkey? Or is it some unknown primate? We may never find out -- this is the only photograph that survives from a strange encounter in the Venezuelan jungle in 1920.
Swiss oil geologist Fran�ois De Loys was exploring near Lake Maracaibo when two creatures angrily approached his camp. The animals behaved like monkeys, holding onto shrubs and branches. The male escaped, but De Loys shot the female, which proved to be 1.57 meters tall, about half a meter larger than any known spider monkey. He said the creature had no tail, though it's impossible to tell from the single photo he took.
All traces of the creature itself are lost -- De Loys skinned it and kept the hide and skull, but he lost them during the difficult expedition (20 of the 24 explorers died).
Since then, authorities have argued endlessly about "Ameranthropoides loysi" -- but it's worth noting that that's a regulation crate it's sitting on, which supports De Loys' contention about its size, and that its face, chest and hands differ in significant respects from a spider monkey's. And there have been occasional reports of similar creatures in South America: "Mono Grande" may yet be discovered there.
|W|P|111886216129950309|W|P|Ameranthropoides Loysi|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFamous teetotalers:
- John Ashcroft
- Adolf Hitler
- Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
- Penn Jillette
- Franz Kafka
- Osama bin Laden
- David Letterman
- T.E. Lawrence
- Bill O'Reilly
- Vladimir Putin
- Fred Rogers
- George Bernard Shaw
- Henry Thoreau
- Donald Trump
Robert Benchley wrote, "Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony."
|W|P|111845635367395348|W|P|Famous Teetotalers|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive." -- Moliere
|W|P|111878074353876840|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
This is Malden Island, an uninhabited speck of land more than 1,500 miles from Hawaii. When Lord Byron's cousin discovered it in 1825, he found a series of ruined stone temples in the interior, but the island was deserted. Who were the builders, where did they come from, and what became of them? No one knows for sure.
|W|P|111886136024671354|W|P|Malden Island|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comProof that one dollar equals one cent:
$1 = 100¢
= (10¢)2
= ($0.10)2
= $0.01
= 1¢
|W|P|111854693321569053|W|P|Dollars Equal Cents|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn April 1977, as a joke, the British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement about a fictional island nation called San Serriffe. It fooled quite a few readers, which is surprising, since it's essentially a series of bad puns about typography:
- There are two main islands, the Upper Caisse and the Lower Caisse. The capital, Bodoni, is linked by highways to the major ports, including Port Clarendon, but Arial in the Lower Caisse has grown in importance during the personal computer era.
- Natives are called Flong, and the descendants of colonists and known as colons. Those of mixed race are called semi-colons.
- At independence in 1967, the country was led by General Pica, a military strongman.
- Cultural highlights include the Ampersand String Quartet and "Times Nude Romances."
- The islands hold an annual endurance challenge race, known as the Two Em Dash, that now attracts international participants.
The island's alternate name, if it needed any, is Hoaxe.
|W|P|111869587595744433|W|P|San Serriffe|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
A classification of demons, from occultist Francis Barrett's 1801 book The Magus:
- Mammon: prince of seducers
- Asmodai: prince of vile revenges
- Satan: prince of witches and warlocks
- Pithius: prince of liars and liar spirits
- Belial: prince of fraud and injustice
- Merihem: prince of pestilences and spirits that cause pestilences
- Abaddon: prince of war
- Astaroth: prince of inquisitors and accusers
More than 70,000 Australians declared themselves members of the Jedi in the 2001 census, thanks to a fad fueled by e-mail. So did 53,000 New Zealanders and 20,000 Canadians. In England and Wales, 390,000 people gave their religion as Jedi, making it the country's fourth largest reported religion, behind Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.
Ironically, the stunt led many otherwise apathetic people to take the census, so it may actually have improved its quality.
|W|P|111866422833530914|W|P|Jedi Census Phenomenon|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comClowns avoid blue face paint -- they consider it bad luck.
|W|P|111869297077351912|W|P|Superstition|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The Platypus
My child, the Duck-billed Platypus
A sad example sets for us:
From him we learn how Indecision
Of character provokes Derision.
This vacillating Thing, you see,
Could not decide which he would be,
Fish, Flesh or Fowl, and chose all three.
The scientists were sorely vexed
To classify him; so perplexed
Their brains, that they, with Rage at bay,
Call him a horrid name one day,--
A name that baffles, frights and shocks us,
Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.
-- Oliver Herford
|W|P|111878770651569509|W|P|The Platypus|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comspeus�tic
adj. baked in haste
"Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall and it rolls off! It's rolling all the way back to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres!" -- Sportscaster Jerry Coleman
|W|P|111876457664337909|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
THE TWENTY MOST USEFUL KNOTS.
- Thumb or over-hand knot, tied at the end of a rope to prevent it from opening out, &c.
- Right or reef-knot, for securing all lashings where the ends of the rope meet together.
- Draw-knot, which offers great facility in undoing.
- Running-knot, used to bind or draw anything close.
- Sheepshank, serving to shorten a rope without cutting it or unfastening the ends.
- Clove-hitch, which binds with excessive force, and by which alone a weight can be hung to a smooth pole.
- Timber-hitch, very useful in hauling to move a weight.
- Single bowline-knot, difficult to undo, useful to throw over a post &c., to haul on, used for the draw-loop of a slip noose.
- Double bowline-knot, for slinging a cask.
- Running bowline-knot.
- Woolding or packing-stick hitch, used to tighten ropes.
- Men's harness hitch, passing over the shoulder and under the opposite arm of men drawing a carriage, &c.
- Stopper hitch, for stoppering the fall of a tackle, &c.
- Inside clinch, for fastening a cable to the anchor ring, &c.
- Common or sheet bend, a very secure method of joining two ropes, or fastening a rope to a loop.
- Hawser bend, for joining two ropes, easily undone.
- Cat's paw, the turn in the bight of a rope, for hooking a tackle to it.
- Dragrope or lever-hitch, used for fixing hand-spikes or capstanbars to the ropes attached to heavy carriages, &c., which have to be moved by men.
- Half-hitch, cast on the bight of a rope.
- Carrick bend. A wall-knot is a knot made at the end of a rope to prevent it from passing through a hole.
-- The Household Cyclopedia of General Information, 1881
|W|P|111871041373710645|W|P|Useful Knots|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIf there are 23 people in a room, then there is a slightly more than 50:50 chance that at least two of them will have the same birthday. For 60 or more people, the probability is greater than 99 percent.
|W|P|111853666575848105|W|P|The Birthday Paradox|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSlovenian names of Disney characters:
- Mickey Mouse: Miki Mi�ka
- Minnie Mouse: Mini Mi�ka
- Donald Duck: Jaka Racman
- Daisy Duck: Jakica Racman
- Scrooge McDuck: Stric Skopu�nik
- Huey, Dewey and Louie: Pak, �ak in Mak
- Goofy: Pepe
- Pluto: Pluton
- Chip 'n Dale: Cik in Cak
Average number of vacation days per year:
- Italy: 42
- France: 37
- Germany: 35
- Brazil: 34
- United Kingdom: 28
- Canada: 26
- Korea: 25
- Japan: 25
- United States: 13
Some premature obituaries:
- An unidentified New York newspaper once carried the front-page headline POPE BENEDICT XV IS DEAD. A later edition announced POPE HAS REMARKABLE RECOVERY.
- Melody Maker magazine once announced that Alice Cooper was dead. Cooper reassured his fans: "I'm alive, and drunk as usual."
- When a magazine reported that Rudyard Kipling had died, he wrote, "Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."
- English fiddle player Dave Swarbrick forgave the Daily Telegraph for reporting his death in April 1999: "It's not the first time I have died in Coventry."
- In 1982 People magazine reported that Abe Vigoda had died. He posed for a photo sitting up in a coffin, holding the magazine.
- After a heart attack, painter James McNeill Whistler wrote to a Dutch newspaper, saying that reading his own obituary had induced a "tender glow of health."
Get regular updates at the Dead People Server.
|W|P|111835013578595303|W|P|"Reports of My Death ..."|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comeπ ≈ πe
|W|P|111853699604406942|W|P|A Mathematical Coincidence|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
A U.S. forest ranger in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, Roy Cleveland Sullivan (1912-1983) survived being hit by lightning seven different times:
- In a lookout tower in 1942, the first bolt struck him in the leg. He lost a nail on his big toe.
- In 1969, a second bolt struck him in his truck, knocking him unconscious and burning his eyebrows.
- The third strike, in 1970, hit him in his front yard, burning his left shoulder.
- The next bolt struck in a ranger station in 1972 and set his hair on fire. After that, he began carrying a pitcher of water with him.
- In 1973, a bolt hit Sullivan in the head, blasting him out of his car and again setting his hair on fire.
- The sixth bolt struck him in a campground in 1974, injuring his ankle.
- The final bolt hit him in 1977, when he was fishing. He was hospitalized for burns on his chest and stomach.
Sullivan shot himself in 1983 ... reportedly over a rejected love.
|W|P|111845648409648681|W|P|"The Human Lightning Rod"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comLifelong virgins:
- Hans Christian Andersen, author
- J.M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan
- Lewis Carroll, author and logician
- Emily Dickinson, poet
- Immanuel Kant
- S�ren Kierkegaard
- Nikola Tesla, inventor
- Ed Gein, serial killer
Mark Twain kept his virginity until age 34; Goethe until 39. Voltaire wrote, "It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue."
|W|P|111845632434427090|W|P|Lifelong Virgins|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"When in doubt, make a western." -- John Ford
|W|P|111661357110759069|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The "Seven Summits" -- the highest peak on each continent:
- Everest (Asia), 29,035 feet
- Aconcagua (South America), 22,834 feet
- McKinley (North America), 20,320 feet
- Kilimanjaro (Africa), 19,340 feet
- Elbrus (Europe), 18,510 feet
- Vinson Massif (Antarctica), 16,066 feet
- Kosciusko (Australia), 7,310 feet
About 80 mountaineers have climbed all seven.
|W|P|111825192673616462|W|P|Seven Summits|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comToday's horoscope, via Gizoogle:
Pisces (February 19 - Mizzay 20):|W|P|111810528094276250|W|P|"Fo All You Beotches Who Wanna Find Shiznit"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Leave tha gossip'n around tha playa pusha ta everyone else. Bow wow wow yippee yo yipee yay. No nigga whizzay yo opinion on tha latest news is, it's best ta keep it ta yoself n concentrate on tha tasks at hand.
bre�pho�pha�gist
n. one who eats babies
That's Virginia Woolf on the left, dressed up as an Abyssinian prince. In 1910 she participated in an elaborate practical joke to trick the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, H.M.S. Dreadnought, to a supposed delegation of Abyssinian royals.
Arriving by VIP coach, the impostors spoke in Latin, shouted "bunga bunga" at the impressive warship, asked for prayer mats and bestowed "military honors" on the officers. At one point Anthony Buxton sneezed his whiskers off, but he stuck them back on before anyone noticed. When it was over they revealed the hoax by sending a letter and a group photo to the Daily Mirror.
This was, amazingly, a typical day for Horace de Vere Cole (far right), an Edwardian dynamo of practical jokes. As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, Cole had visited his own college posing as a sultan of Zanzibar. He once impersonated prime minister Ramsay MacDonald at a Labour Party meeting, telling members to work harder for less money. And he later slipped his watch into an MP's pocket and dared him to run to the nearest corner -- then had him arrested for pickpocketing.
He could improvise, too. He once told a group of workmen to dig a hole in the middle of Piccadilly Circus; it took a week for public officials to refill it. And occasionally he would ask a bystander to hold the end of a piece of string, disappear around a corner and give the other end to another man.
It's not recorded whether anyone ever played a joke on him. "Everything is funny," wrote Will Rogers, "as long as it is happening to Somebody Else."
|W|P|111825741827157628|W|P|The Dreadnought Hoax|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAt 5:12 p.m. on November 26, 1977, an unidentified voice appeared on the transmitters of Southern Television in the United Kingdom. Identifying itself as Vrillon, representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, the voice broke in to a news broadcast to warn viewers of "the destiny of your race," "so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid a disaster which threatens your world and the beings on other worlds around you."
Accompanied by a deep buzzing, the voice warned against the use of nuclear weapons and stated that humanity had "but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill" before it destroyed itself.
Investigators decided that pranksters were behind the broadcast, aiming a transmitter at a VHF receiver to overpower the "official" signal with a joke message.
But no one knows for sure.
|W|P|111825683191235320|W|P|A Note From the Neighbors|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Can't sing. Can't act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little." -- Paramount Pictures screen test report on Fred Astaire
|W|P|111661767525023531|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Unusual phobias:
- albuminurophobia: fear of kidney disease
- alliumphobia: fear of garlic
- allodoxaphobia: fear of opinions
- ancraophobia: fear of wind
- anuptaphobia: fear of staying single
- arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth
- atomosophobia: fear of atomic explosions
- aulophobia: fear of flutes
- aurophobia: fear of gold
- barophobia: fear of gravity
- caligynephobia: fear of beautiful women
- cherophobia: fear of gaiety
- deipnophobia: fear of dining or dinner conversations
- euphobia: fear of hearing good news
- geniophobia: fear of chins
- genuphobia: fear of knees
- hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: fear of long words
- linonophobia: fear of string
- lutraphobia: fear of otters
- mottephobia: fear of moths
- porphyrophobia: fear of the color purple
- pteronophobia: fear of being tickled by feathers
- scriptophobia: fear of writing in public
- spheksophobia: fear of wasps
- zemmiphobia: fear of the great mole rat
Politicophobia is defined as "abnormal" dislike of politicians.
|W|P|111811230923725901|W|P|Yikes|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comWomen's pay as a percentage of men's:
- 1951: 63.9%
- 1960: 60.7%
- 1970: 59.4%
- 1980: 60.2%
- 1990: 71.6%
- 2000: 73.3%
In sales jobs, women still earn only 59.9% of men's wages.
|W|P|111805704140500170|W|P|The Wage Gap|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Design your own tombstone at dogcrap.net.
|W|P|111802386290242396|W|P|Tombstone Generator|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDepartment of questionable PR: Morrison & Foerster, the gigantic San Francisco legal firm with 1,000 lawyers and 19 offices ...
... uses the domain http://www.mofo.com/.
|W|P|111801369660452895|W|P|Um ...|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIf you're visiting Rhode Island, you might be excused for wanting to visit Jerimoth Hill: It's the highest point in the state.
Unfortunately, you'd be taking your life in your hands. Jerimoth is private property, and it's owned by a singularly cranky 77-year-old named Henry Richardson, who monitors the trail with motion sensors. Here's how he's greeted other visitors:
- Assaulted them verbally ("Shoot all the damn highpointers!" "Get the hell off my property!")
- Threatened to break cameras
- Started fistfights
- Let the air out of their car tires
- Shot them with rock salt
- Chased them through three states by car
Under pressure, Richardson's son agreed in 1998 to let hikers visit the highpoint on national holidays. Before that, the 812-foot rise "was considered less accessable than Mt. McKinley."
|W|P|111801442709009399|W|P|Jerimoth Hill|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The night was growing old
As she trudged through snow and sleet;
And her nose was long and cold,
And her shoes were full of feet.
-- Anonymous
|W|P|111620283067091767|W|P|The Night Was Growing Old|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAnyone can lead a fascinating life if he's willing to invent it out of whole cloth. Or at least that's the lesson of George Psalmanazar, one of the stranger figures in European history.
Born in France in 1679, Psalmanazar traveled to Scandinavia in 1700 and perversely told everyone he was from Formosa. And he didn't stint on details. In Formosa, he said:
- Horses and camels were used for mass transportation.
- Men walked naked, covering their privates with gold and silver plates.
- The chief food was a serpent, hunted with branches.
- A man could have many wives; if any was unfaithful he could eat her.
- Murderers were hung upside down and shot full of arrows.
- Formosans sacrificed 18,000 young boys to gods each year, and priests ate the bodies.
Psalmanazar eventually found he could make a career of this; he gave lectures and wrote a book that went through two English editions and was translated into French and German. To keep up "Formosan" appearances, he ate raw meat, slept upright in a chair, and claimed to worship the sun and moon. Eventually, though, he gave up the charade, confessing in 1706.
To this day, no one knows who he really was -- he never told his real name.
|W|P|111696562362236546|W|P|George Psalmanazar|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Basement smells bad. Look for cat poops, change litter. Happy Valentine's Day." -- Martha Stewart, note to her gardener
|W|P|111711469894178204|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
U.S. state dinosaurs:
- District of Columbia: Capitalsaurus
- Maryland: Astrodon johnstoni
- New Jersey: Hadrosaurus foulkii
- Texas: Pleurocoelus
- Wyoming: Triceratops
om�pha�lo�skep�sis
n. navel-gazing
Dangerous tongue twisters:
I am not the pheasant plucker,
I'm the pheasant plucker's mate.
I am only plucking pheasants
Because the pheasant plucker's late.
I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit;
and on the slitted sheet I sit.
I'm not the fig plucker,
Nor the fig pluckers' son,
But I'll pluck figs
Till the fig plucker comes.
Ottley R. Coulter's 1952 How to Perform Strong Man Stunts is an injury lawyer's dream come true. Examples:
- How to Smash a Rock With a Blow of the Fist
- How to Support 1,000 Lbs. of Living Weight With Ease
- How to Lift a Man Overhead With One Hand
- How to Lift and Swing a Man With Your Teeth
"Actually, the teeth are but very little employed in this stunt," we are told. "All the pressure of what is called Teeth Lifting is borne by the pull against the concaved upper part of your mouth." Oh, good.
|W|P|111696749505789740|W|P|"All the World Loves a Strong Man"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAnagrams:
- DEBIT CARD = BAD CREDIT
- MOTHER-IN-LAW = WOMAN HITLER
- SLOT MACHINES = CASH LOST IN 'EM
- DESPERATION = A ROPE ENDS IT
- ASTRONOMER = MOON STARER
- ELECTION RESULTS = LIES -- LET'S RECOUNT
And SNOOZE ALARMS = ALAS! NO MORE Z'S.
|W|P|111707364831867288|W|P|Anagrams|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com