The shark one at least is definitely fake:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/scubashark.asp

Maybe he stole the car and the mattress at the same place..

Just to nitpick, the Star Trek episode had them visiting a parallel universe, so it wasn't like a collection of unrelated evil twins suddenly turned up on the Enterprise one day.

An amusing book that takes a similar tack is David Macaulay's _Motel of the Mysteries_.

Costco's the place to go for impulse shopping..

Sigh.. "Hiring Stan Freberg to run your marketing campaign! What an idiotic idea!!" Freberg was an advertising genius who won numerous awards. Americans have the historical sense of gnats.

I had a yellowjacket nest take up residence in a tree by my driveway, and the professional that came to deal with them also used a vacuum cleaner, because he captures the little buggers alive and they get used in antivenom research/production. He wore a protective suit, too, but it was.. well, an actual suit. I obviously didn't watch too closely, but I gathered he just staked out the entrance and sucked them all in as they came and went. Worked like a treat, and I didn't have to spray poison around.

Just to nitpick, but that wasn't really Lincoln, but an image pulled from Kirk's mind and made flesh.

Some(?) Native American tribes had the right idea, give the kid a temporary name at birth then when they grow up change it to something that reflects their actual personality or achievements.

Thirding the comment about the stupidity of trying to run it like a business. It's a SERVICE that improves people's lives. If this country was sane, we'd just run it at a loss and pay off the difference through taxes; making up the shortfall is the same as how many month's occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan?

I like it, but tiles are such a pain to install correctly and maintain; give me a one-piece shower/tub unit any day.

Back in the days of snail-mail letters, the author Isaac Asimov once described his method for dealing with particularly anger-inducing letters: dash off a enraged spittle-flecked response, holding nothing back, put the result in an envelope, seal, address and even stamp it, and then tear the whole thing up and write a civilized reply.

I've always liked No See Um Road, which is near Chelan, WA.

I agree, the Tin Man should be leaking oil and showing broken bits of cogwheels or somesuch.

Unsurprisingly, her children ended up being pretty weird. In addition to giving to charities, her son spent vast amounts of money on estates and.. ahem.. female companionship.