Swans on Tea

Japan: Nothing says springtime like a penis festival
It may sound like a sophomoric gag. But these are folk rites going back at least 1,500 years, into Japan’s agricultural past. They’re held to ensure a good harvest and promote baby-making.
I don’t know if you’ll get the same flash popup, but mine said “Sponsored by Siemens,” which [...]

Sleep Talkin’ Man
The “definitely not G-rated” sleep talking ramblings of a guy named Adam, as recorded by his wife.
Jan 19 2010
“My badger’s gonna unleash hell on your ass. Badgertastic!”
“No, not the cats. Don’t trust them. Their eyes. Their eyes. They know too much.”
“Just look at yourself. Yeah, now look at me. You don’t stand a [...]

Meat stylus for the iPhone
It seems that the sausages, electrostatically speaking, are close approximations of the human finger.

On Rotating The Dishes
So we have dinner, take down a couple of plates, wash them, dry them, put them back. Have soup more rarely, take down a couple of bowls–big? small?–put them back.
And this is what I sometimes worry about: do I put them back on top of the stack? Do I put the bowls [...]

The Bloop, which has its own Wikipedia page (OK, what interesting subject doesn’t, the Wikipedia Paradox notwithstanding?)
Aaaaanyway …
[T]he sound is believed to be coming roughly from 50oS; 100oW. After reading that, I wondered how close that was to the coordinates given in “The Call of Cthulhu”. Allow me to quote: “Then, driven ahead by curiosity [...]

WTF is this?
My first reaction was “Photoshop,” because it’s just too good. But there are other pictures taken by many people. So I discard that hypothesis.

An unexpected result of Tiger practicing his putting on someone else’s green.
Tiger Woods drives sales of physics book sky-high
A photograph showing a copy of Get A Grip On Physics by John Gribbin on the floor of Tiger Woods’s wrecked SUV has seen the book rocket up Amazon’s bestseller chart

Creative Soap Designs

10 Strangest Inflatable Stuff
Billed as “the world’s first inflatable pub”, this pub in a box holds up to 50 guests (or 200 college students), fits in the back of a van, and assembles in under an hour. All pub-like features are painted directly onto the PVC walls (now anti-fungal and flame retardant!). The pub [...]

Letters of Note: Prepare For Contact
1924 telegram from then Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Edward W. Eberle, instructing all Naval stations to monitor the airwaves for any unusual transmissions due to anticipated contact from Martians. August 22nd of that year was witness to the closest Mars opposition since 1804

Ernest Shackleton’s whisky aged, well chilled in Antarctica
A bid will be made to drill through Antarctica’s ice to reach a lost cache of Scotch whisky that has been on rocks for a century – since it was delivered to polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Drillers will try to reach two crates of Mackinlay and Co. whisky [...]

Customs officers find a chihuahua being smuggled in a duffel.
‘In my 20-odd years in customs I have never seen a dog going through a customs machine.’