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Check here for interesting articles and trivia.

Donut Burgers

I was going to try an all-organic diet, but I've decided that Homer Simpson was right.  Donuts are good.  Burgers are good.  What could be better?  How about the Krispy Kreme Burger at the Gateway Grizzlies baseball games?   The minor league team is located outside of St. Louis and sells this gut buster as a promotion.

The same formula has been applied as the Luther Burger at Mulligan's in Decatur, Georgia.  It was named after Luther Vandross, however it was unclear if he ever ate one.

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Pink Flamingo Zombies

Much to our horror, the pink flamingo lawn ornament was pronounced dead.

It was reported that Union Products Inc. stopped producing their original pink flamingos and other lawn ornaments at its Leominster MA factory in June, and was going out of business Nov. 1 due to rising expenses for plastic resin and electricity, as well financing problems.   They had produced this american icon for nearly 50 years.  

This caused a rush to the stores by the flamingo fanatics to salvage what they could before the market dried up.  The classic flamingos disappeared from the shelves.

But then something unexpected happened.  A new owner is stepping in to resume manufacturing and bring these precious birds back to life.  On the surface, this appears to be spectacular news.... but it raises bigger concerns.  Will the flamingos return in the exact image of the original Featherstone design?  Or will they rise as the feathered undead to terrorize our neighborhoods.

If you have flamingos in your lawn (which I'm sure you do), you may want to make sure they are chained to a tree.  Some of you will scoff at this warning, but if they eat your brain, don't come crying to me.

Read the 6-1-2007 USA Today article here about the buyout.

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Monster Pig

Remember Hogzilla?  Well, there's a new king of swine.   Check out this monster pig gunned down by an 11-year old boy named Jamison Stone.  The big was shot by the boy in the head 8 times in south Georgia.  It was reported to be 8-12 feet long and 800-1000 lbs.  The statistics vary on the version you read.

More info can be found at their family Monster Pig website.

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Site Is Back

The site has returned and has been overhauled.  The old photos and web tours have been archived, but may return someday.  I hope you enjoy the new site.

Leprechaun In Mobile, Alabama

Do leprechauns live in Alabama?  Here's a 2006 news report to analyze the case.  I want to know where the gold is at.

Giant Turtles

Have you heard about the 600 year old 500 lb turtle living in Hanoi
Vietnam?  Check out this turtle living in Hoan Kiem Lake in the country's capital.  I was listening to back episodes of an NPR podcast and heard
this.  It's got a great backstory, regardless of truth.  Download this
5 minute radio story and give it a listen.

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Tootsie Pop Indians

I always heard this Tootsie Pop indian story growing up in the 1970's.  The rumor was that if you had a red Tootsie Pop wrapper with an indian shooting an arrow at a star, you could cash it in for a free Tootise Pop.

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I found many of these wrappers over the years and never tried cashing one in.  I think the fact that I found one so easily made me think it was bogus.   Or I was just too lazy to have my mom drive me to the store to get a free 10-cent lollipop.

You'll probably see a lot of Tootsie Pops around the office after halloween (as people dump and trade their leftovers).  Check it out, if you've never noticed the indian shooting the star.

Here's a Snopes article on the topic.   The Tootsie Roll company received requests for redemption for bags of candy or Tootsie Pops.  In 1982, they began replying by returning this story along with their letter.

By the way, Mr Owl was wrong.  I think it only took me about 1 lick to get
to the center.  My dentist just loves me now.

Wild Animals on the Track

On August 3, a race car driver was testing his car on a closed track in Wisconsin.  Somehow a deer was able to roam onto the course.  Cristiano de Matta crashed into the animal and suffered serious injuries.  I've got to think this was the last thing the driver was looking out for.  De Matta underwent surgery for a subdural hematoma and is still recovering.  There was no word on the fate of the deer... but it couldn't have been good.


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Mummies

Have you read about the mummies in the catacombs of Palermo,
Italy?  This is an old one, but new to me.  Apparently, it was a
place for the burial of royalty and the socialites of that region and
was maintained by monks.  However, a 2-year girl named Rosalia was
buried there in 1920 and mummified using an unknown chemical formula.
Apparently, she looks nearly the same today as she did 90 years ago.

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Click here for the disturbing photo.  I believe they stopped adding to the catacombs shortly after that.

The Horse Latitudes


The Horse Latitudes are an area in the Atlantic Ocean where the trade winds died which would stall early Spanish ships sailing to the New World.  To lighten the ships, the sailors would throw heavy cargo overboard to lighten the ships load, which would allow the weak sails to pull the ship out of the doldrums. This included funiture, crates of dishes, and even canons.horse latitudes  When particular areas were still too calm, they were forced to toss over their frightened horses into the sea. The legend is that the horses would swim after them for miles before they drowned, and the superstitious sailors would hear the horse screams in their haunted dreams for the rest of the voyage.  

Interesting side trivia, this weather phenomena occurs between 30 and 35 degrees north and south of the equator.  The air often sinks in these regions and most of the major deserts around the world can be found in this band.

Another (probably unrelated) curiosity is that the Bermuda Triangle also happens to be between these latitudes.

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Roller Coaster Death

I lived 30 minutes from Six Flags over Mid-America just outside of St.Louis when I was in high school.  Back in 1984 they introduced a short-lived standing rollercoaster called the Rail Blazer.  The story was sensionalized locally and there were a few different versions of the incident.  

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A large woman and her husband was secured in the last car of the roller coaster and the ride was sent on its way.  When it returned and the end of the run, there was only one passenger in that car.  A woman was missing and her husband claimed she was flung from the car during one of the turns.  She died from the fall and some unlucky teenager had the grusome task of locating the body among the trees below.

There are three accounts of what happened:
a) The lady was too big and could not be properly strapped in
b) The husband deliberately shoved her from the ride
c) The official report speculated that she fainted and slid out of her straps

At this point, the roller coaster was nicknamed the Hoosier Hurler.   This ride was closed for a while and then converted into a sit-down ride called the River King.  I never heard if any more details came of this.  But around my high school, the saying went "The ride's not over till the fat lady flings."

The old UPI article is posted here on the NY Times site.

Paris, TX

The competition to have the 2nd tallest Eiffel Tower...  

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When we first moved down to Dallas, my wife and I used to do small day trips from the city to check out the kooky things the neighboring towns had to offer.  Paris Texas used to be the home of the world's second tallest Eiffel Tower until they got competition from another one in Paris, Tennessee.  I think they went back and forth with that one to eek out a few feet and keep the honor,  but then was later squashed by the much larger one built in Vegas.  They've since added a giant cowboy hat to the one in Paris, TX - which I took as a sign of surrender.











Paris, TX is also home to the Evergreen Cemetary which features a
large gravestone statue of a Jesus wearing cowboy boots.  We took a
few photos when we were there, but you can also find them on the web.

ParisStatueBoot600  ParisBootCU600

Singing Boobs

I stumbled upon this article on the net...

Breast Implants That 'Do Something Useful'

Here are some words you don't hear often, "if a woman has something implanted permanently, it might as well do something useful".

Those are the words of UK-based BT Laboratories' analyst Ian Pearson who says computer chips that store music could soon be built into a woman's breast implants.

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Flexible plastic electronics would sit inside the breast and signal would be relayed to headphones, while the device would be controlled by Bluetooth using a panel on the wrist.

"It is now very hard for me to think of breast implants as just decorative", he said in a recent interview. "If a woman has something implanted permanently, it might as well do something useful".

Pearson added sensors in the chips could also monitor the electrical impulses and warn wearers about heart murmurs, blood pressure increases, diabetes and breast cancer.

The Death of Your Music

Chuck Klosterman of Esquire wrote a good article about expanding your musical horizons.  This supports my belief that people in their 30's & 40's have simply given up on finding new music.  New music isn't necessarily that much worse, you've just stopped trying.  Regardless, of your age you probably feel that the music industry peeked in the decade from your age of 16 to 26.  After that, music coincidentally took a down turn and you haven't tried many new bands since.

I do believe the music of the 2000's has been a bit saturated and corporate.  A lot of what is played on the radio is identical from city to city and seems like watered-down rehashes of the same formula.  However, there are still quite a few gems out there if you're still willing to spend the time to look.  

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Check out the May 2005 Esquire article here.

Just for trivia's sake, I happened to have the Black Keys, Secret Machines and TV On The Radio.   I didn't know most of the other music mentioned in the article.

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