HOME |
RSS | 
My husband was sick last weekend – as in, up at 4 a.m. hugging the Porcelain Goddess sick (and not because of alcohol). So we were up at an ungodly time of the morning. He was dying a slow death and I was flipping channels because I couldn’t get back to sleep. I have to say, I got sucked into a number of infomericals that were absolutely horrendous. Is there anything Billy Mays doesn’t hawk?
One of my favorites is the Magic Bullet. It sounds suspiciously sexual, but it’s really like a mini blender. I actually got one for Christmas a few years ago and I loved it – until the motor burned out after a few months. The informercial is positively addicting though. I thought I was the only one who noticed the strange old lady wandering around with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth the whole commercial, but no: there’s a whole YouTube video dedicated to the lovely Hazel.
When I was in high school, the ever-present infomercial was the RonCo Electric Food Dehydrator. I always wanted one of those, but alas, I never got one. He just makes it seem so easy to make beef jerky, turkey jerky, dried fruit and MORE!
I’m cheating, though, because we didn’t actually see either of those commericials on T.V. at 5 a.m. last weekend. A couple we did see:
The Handy Switch. Just plug in the receiver in any outlet and then plug in the lamp to the receiver. You can stick its corresponding switch anywhere… even in your car so you can turn the lights on when you pull in the driveway! My favorite part is when Billy Mays says how great it is for kids to be able to turn the light off from bed – the infomercial cuts to a little girl in bed with a lamp within arm’s reach on a nightstand on one side of her bed and the switch within arm’s reach on the other side. She goes for the switch.
By the way, the number of products that Billy Mays endorses is insane. Here’s a sampling: OxyClean, OrangeGlo, Hercules Hooks, Mighty Putty, Easy Off Bam!, Kaboom! products, Bang! Automotive Dent Remover, Bump Be Gone zit cream, Gopher reaching tool, the Grip Wrench and the Ding King automotive Dent Remover (think the Bang! people were mad?).
Here’s Billy Mays falling into a bathtub.
Then there’s the Shamwow. It holds 20 times its weight in liquid!! The Web site says you’ll never have to use paper towels again – unless you’re prone to using them as napkins. But it’s not just for spills and car washing, oh no!! You can even use the Shamwow as a towel. Cut it in half and you’ll have two towels!! I’m glad they do the math for those of us who aren’t so hot at calculations. Shamwow isn’t promoted by Billy Mays, so it probably isn’t that great.
Feeling sick? It’s probably all of those toxins in your body – we all have them. What you need are Takara Detox Foot Patches. You just attach the pads to the bottom of your feet before going to bed and when you wake up in the morning, the pad will be black with all of the horrible toxins it has sucked out of your body. Asbestos? Mercury? No match for Takara Detox Foot Patches.
Yeah. It’s a good thing Paul didn’t get sick any earlier in the morning, because I would have totally been suckered into buying something if I had been exposed to these much longer. If the food dehydrator commercial had come on, I definitely would have been picking up my phone.
So, on the infomercial topic – what have you tried? What has actually worked and what has been a complete waste of money? Any food dehydrator users??
Sirius and Pitou had lived in a 20 foot cage in a Monaco zoo for the past ten years. But after a five year campaign, they were set free last week to live in a wildlife reserve in South Africa. The leopards were given to the late Prince Ranier by a circus owner. Prince Albert of Monaco freed them for release and said:
“The leopards are quite old now but if they can have a nice last few years, then hopefully they will appreciate that we can do that for them.
“It’s time to rethink the mission of zoos, particularly when we can now see the wonder of animal life in documentaries.”
76-year-old Virginia McKenna of the Born Free Foundation, star of the 1966 film Born Free, spearheaded the campaign. Link -via Fark
|
Feeding an appetite for power rarely fills a guy’s belly. These four pudgy heads of state were as happy raiding the pantry as they were creating policy. Grover Cleveland: The Glass is Always Half Empty
An Extra-Cuddly Teddy
W.H. Taft and His Presidential Privileges
Bill Clinton: With an Assist from Helmut Kohl
|
|
 |
From mental_floss’ book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History’s Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission. Original title: Hail to the Chef: 4 Presidents Who Overindulged Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!
|
Kangaroo rats can last longer without water than camels.
In fact, a kangaroo rat never has to drink water. Instead, its body can manufacture water by metabolizing foodstuff.
In this video you’ll learn how to shoot through a bottle cap with your index finger.
Link [Metacafe]
Venus, Carmen and Pablo were born without front legs due to a genetic defect. The North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, New York took custody of the three chihuahuas from a shelter in Virginia, and outfitted them with front wheels!
“The three have been practicing getting about and eating using their new, custom-built, aluminum carts,” the shelter said. The carts are fastened to the dogs with “Velcro-held polar fleece padding for comfortable body support and lightweight foam wheels.”
The contraptions were made by Eddie’s Wheels of Massachusetts, and are designed to be used for ten minutes at a time. The wheels alleviate stress on the puppies’ lower backs. The three have been adopted by a veterinary technician at the League, and are also learning to balance themselves on their back legs. Link (with video) -via Arbroath
"You can’t say that civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way."
– Will Rogers, actor (1879 – 1935)
Comments Off
Have a look below if you want to try to figure out how it works, or simply kick off your shoes, hit play and enjoy the ride.
The core of the bearings consists of a magnetic rail and super-conducting bulks, cooled to a temperature of -196°C. During the cooling process, the magnetic field of the rail will be written in the superconductors, which are positioned at a set distance from the magnetic rail. This enables them to retain a set horizontal position in relation to the rail. Their super-conducting operational temperature is maintained in cryostats, initially through cooling in liquid nitrogen.
Link [YouTube] – via Prylefeber
Lord Alton of Liverpool spoke of an example of why UK laws covering human fertility and adoption should be changed. Here’s the strange case of a twin, separated at birth, who ended up marrying each other:
"They were never told that they were twins," he said during the Dec. 10 debate on a law covering human fertility and embryology. They had been adopted by separate families and "met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."
Link – Thanks Tiffany! (Photo is of David Alton, who spoke at the House of Lords about the case)
I’m going to share with you a fantastic website that has been around for a long time: Alan B. and Brian Comb’s Shaggy Dog Story Archive.
The website has over 2,000 shaggy dogs, feghoots, yarns, and groaners. We can quibble about the details of how a feghoot differs from a shaggy dog, but these are basically short stories with atrocious pun or really bad punchline (hence "groaner" – the listener invariably groan when they hear the ending!). Most of them have been around, like, forever . Chances are you’ve heard of some of ‘em but didn’t know what they’re called.
What’s with the title "Tarzan’s Tripes Forever"? Well, here’s the story (I warn you, it’s a groaner – but it illustrates what a feghoot is):
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, was innocently leaping from tree to
tree one fine day, when a band of crazed cannibals ambushed and killed
him. They devoured him almost immediately, except for the lining of
his stomach which they stretched over a hollow log to make a bongo drum,
and gave it to the son of the chief cannibal.The boy was delightedwith his new drum and played it constantly for weeks. Until one day, he came crying to his father the chief. "Daddy," he whimpered, "my
bongo drum rotted away.""Son," replied the chief, "you can’t play ‘Tarzan’s Tripe Forever.’" (from NetHistory, who has a few shaggy dogs)
Get it? I told you it was a groaner!
If you haven’t seen it before, or haven’t visited it for a while, it’s worth a visit (they’ve got new stories!): Link
Comments Off 
From Flickr user ben_templesmith, here’s Dadadada dadadada … the Batman Crossing! via Loris Z
The old 15-floor P&O Building in downtown London is being torn down to be by a new tower But unlike your usual building demolition, the process here is backwards: they’re dismantling it from the bottoms up!
The lower levels of the building are being taken apart to reveal a concrete core running down its centre.
This is possible because each floor is hung from a huge beam at the top of the tower and supported by the central core. The 15-storey building, erected in 1965, is one of four in the capital to be constructed that way.
Project director Matthew White said: "When you demolish the building, you have to take the weight off the structure first, from the bottom up. "Eventually the beam will be deconstructed at roof level, leaving the core, which will be demolished from the top."
Link – via Fogonazos (who has video clips)
Comments Off 
Rocketeer and Syndrome (from The Incredibles) by xueren
I’m truly diggin’ Brickshelf user xueren’s collection of custom LEGO minifigs – there are hundreds of characters whos likeness are lovingly sculpted in LEGO. Link – via LEGO Block Block
Comments Off 
Photo: Keizo Kioku
You’re looking at Japanese artist Chu Enoki’s artwork called RPM-1200, a diorama built from junk metal, old drill bits and spare machine parts polished into gleaming, shiny spires of a futuristic city.
The sculpture is actually pretty big, it measured 11 feet tall (3.4 m) and 15 feet (4.6 m) in diameter. As shown below, the details are absolutely fantastic!
Photo: Yuto Hirakakiuchi
Link: Chu Enoki’s Website (scroll down to see RPM-1200) – via io9
We’ve posted about Terry Border’s Bent Object blog before, but he’s come up with tons of new creations. If haven’t seen it before (and if the picture above isn’t obvious), Terry makes simple yet creative sculptures out of bent wires.
This one above, titled "Chained to His Desk," is a tribute to y’all office workers and comes with a little poetry:
He took the job for the security,
but they were bleeding him dry-
ALWAYS pushing him around.
Time to escape
while there was some life left in him.
Link | More at Bent Objects – via pootling
Large, jovial Grover Cleveland – also known as "Uncle Jumbo" – enjoyed his beer. In 1870 (15 years before he became president), Grover ran for district attorney of Erie County, New York, against Lyman K. Bass. It was a friendly contest. In fact, it was so friendly that Cleveland and his opponent drank and chatted together daily. In the interest of moderation, they agreed to have no more than four glasses of beer per day. But soon they exceeded that and started "borrowing" glasses from the next day and the next day until they’d exhausted their ration for the whole campaign – with the election still weeks away. The solution: Each brought his own giant tankard to the tavern, called it a "glass," and went back to the four-a-day ration.
The standard scoop on Teddy Roosevelt was that he was a scrawny, sickly weakling from New York City who built himself up into a rough, tough cowboy type through vigorous outdoor pursuits. What’s seldom mentioned is that Roosevelt went from skinny boy to robust young man to plump (though vigorous) president to obese (though still active) ex-president. While running on the Bull Moose Party ticket in a 1912 attempt to regain the White House, Roosevelt was described as "an eager and valiant trencherman" (it meant he ate a lot). If the main course was roast chicken, TR would consume an entire bird himself, in addition to the rest of the meal. Not to mention the four glasses of whole milk the portly prez routinely threw back with dinner. Photos and films show an aging Roosevelt carrying a decidedly wide load.
William Howard Taft often dieted because his doctor and his wife told the 290-pound president that he must. But without supervision, Will "the Thrill" didn’t just give in to temptation, he sought it. Once while traveling he asked a railroad conductor for a late-night snack. When the conductor said there was no dining car, Taft angrily called for his secretary, Charles D. Norton, who had probably – under instruction from Mrs. Taft – arranged for the diner to be unhooked. Norton reminded the president that his doctor discouraged between-meal eating. Taft would have none of it. He ordered a stocked dining car attached at the next stop and specified that it have filet mignon. "What’s the use of being president," he said to Norton, "if you can’t have a train with a diner on it?"
President Bill Clinton, who famously frequented McDonald’s, was known for eating whatever was put in front of him. He showed a more discriminating, if just as hungry, side in the company of Germany’s chancellor Helmut Kohl, though. Kohl was called "Colossus," at least in part because he carried 350 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame. But, in Kohl, Clinton found a gourmand soul mate. In 1994, Clinton hosted the chancellor at Filomena Ristorante of Georgetown for a lunch at which both consumed mass quantities of ravioli, calamari, and red wine, as well as plenty of antipasto, buttered breadsticks, Tuscan white bean soup, salad, and sweet zabaglione with berries. Each ended the meal by ordering a large piece of chocolate cake to go. Clinton once remarked that he and his German counterpart, though the largest of world leaders, were still too slim to be sumo wrestlers.
