Agnes McKee, 105, of Oceanside, California threw out the first pitch on a game last Sunday between the San Diego Padres and the New York Mets. She says that "It is such an honor," but it's far from the greatest adventure that she's had. McKee grew up on a farm in Indiana. She and her late husband traveled to every state in the union and more than 30 countries.
She's still very active. Although McKee lives in an assisted living facility now, she does ballroom dancing every week and plays Wii bowling. She walks a mile every day and hopes to wean herself off her walker.
McKee has spent months practicing, training her pitching arm for this event. As you can see, she did pretty well. The Washington Post notes that she did better than many younger, more physically fit celebrities, such as Olympian Carl Lewis.
Isn't that clever? It's a simple mechanism--just fold and unfold. This table is apparently made by Decorações Timbó, a Brazilian furniture and interiors company. But the concept is not unique. You can find plans online. And now that I've just shown this video to my wife, she wants me to build her one.
He's Spider-Man. Did you think that was just a costume? Nah, man. He was bitten by an actual spider. If you want to survive, you should have gotten caught by Charles Xavier. And you really don't want to get caught by Assassin Bug Man.
This novel sculptural piece by Takayuki Ogawa shows each letter of the alphabet in the form of a mouth shaped to pronounce that letter. Oral:phabet, as he calls it, is an exploration of the emotional communication of the mouth in movement:
“The mouth alone is able to express many emotions,” says Ogawa, speaking about the impetus for his project, which was presented as his graduating thesis last year from Tama Art University. “For example, in email we use the letter D to create the smiling emoticon :D. But what if we gave similar attributes to letters like B or N which are never used as expression forms?” The result, as you can see is a disturbingly realistic serious of mouths, lips, teeth and tongues, all hand-crafted from clay and mounted to a wooden frame.
The sport of Lacrosse is of Native American origin. The Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee), a collection of six Native American nations in the United States and Canada, claim to have invented it. They maintain their own national team known as the Iroquois Nationals. They are very good, especially considering that they're working from a small population base: about 120,000 people. In fact, they missed the 2010 World Championships only because they insisted on travelling under their own national passports, which are not internationally recognized.
For many Iroquois, success at lacrosse is a source of pride:
For these men the game is not always about winning. It’s very much rooted in culture and tradition. It is also referred to as the Creator’s Game, Hill said. “I’ve been raised to play with a clear mind and to respect my opponents. We play for the Creator’s enjoyment because he gave it to us.”
“It’s a spiritual game and a medicine game first,” said Ward. “When you pick up your stick it’s got to be an extension of you.”
And those traditional sticks became a point of contention in Sunday’s game. In front of a sold-out crowd, Team Canada nosed the Nationals out by a goal scored with 19 seconds left in the game.
The Nationals use the traditional hickory sticks, which are heavier than the contemporary plastic and titanium sticks used by Team Canada. Following penalty calls against the Nationals during the game, the ESPN announcer contended that the wooden stick should be illegal in international competition, adding that it should never be used as a weapon.
Those hickory lacrosse sticks are controversial. Each one is four times heavier than a plastic and aluminum stick:
It’s “like a friggin' weapon. It nearly kills you,” a former Iroquois national player told Sports Illustrated in 2010. “I feel I'm more of a threat with a wooden stick. You can just see it in the other team,” Iroquois defenseman Kevin Bucktooth said. “When the ball swings around to your man, they never come in one-on-one.”
Reinesha and Devan must feel this way about each other because they had a superhero-themed wedding with Reinesha as the Princess of Themyscira and Devan as the Man of Steel. The entire wedding party was dressed appropriately for the event, including Wonder Woman eye makeup, Superman socks, and wedding rings for both of those characters. Reinesha and Devan are clearly DC superfans and deeply in love.
He may need canes to walk, but not to dance! Watch this old man put the younger folks to shame with his mastery of the dance floor. You can join him, but I doubt you can keep up with his moves and speed.
The wise philosopher Bill Cosby once said, "Parents are not interested in justice. They want quiet." This was funny before I had children. Then it became funny and painful.
One of the characters in "Harrison Bergeron," a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, is handicapped with a device that shatters his attention every 20 seconds:
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
I think that the term for this note is "humblebrag." She knows that she's found an absolute keeper and is acting concerned as a way to show off her man. I can't really blame her.
Doghouse Diaries has some excellent ideas. A beard really is just chest hair that overflows your chest as a result of your excessive manliness. And when it's early in the morning and the dog wants a walk, you can just use curtains for body coverage, right?
Reader challenge: in the comments, construct a grammatically correct sentence that uses all six of these terms.
A long time ago--way back in the 80s--there was a marvelous tabletop wargame called BattleTech. It was followed by a paper-and-pencil role-playing game called MechWarrior, which I played. That franchise now lives on in a series of highly successful computer games called MechWarrior.
The details that I can assemble are sketchy, but I gather that Jim Martin, a NASA scientist in Alabama, built this treehouse for his kids. It's modeled on the Mad Cat, a 75-ton mech of Clan origin. It is marked with the logo of ComStar, an organization modeled on the medieval Catholic Church.
Scotland is a land of refined tastes and thoughtfully-developed food traditions. (My ancestors were Scottish, so I know of what I speak.) Among their inventions are those now famous pillars of haute cuisine: haggis and Scotch eggs.
Yet the Scottish people are not the type to rest on their laurels. Among their more recent inventions is the deep fried Mars Bar. A 2012 article in BBC News describes how this culinary marvel has emerged from the fish and chip shops of Scotland:
Ahmed at Neptune's on Duke Street refuses to fry chocolate bars because "it turns the oil black and oil is very expensive."
But Mustapha from Denis's takeaway on the High Street is happy to oblige. He says he will deep-fry anything.
"That's my job", he says.
That's the spirit!
Mustapha says he sells one or two deep-fried Mars bars a day - more when the students are back at the nearby Strathclyde University residences.
He takes a Mars bar from the shelf, unwraps it, dips it in the same batter he uses for the fish and throws it in the fryer. A couple of minutes later he presents a soggy chocolate bar covered in batter.
The caramel squirts out when it is bitten. It is soft warm and sweet. Sickly sweet and fatty.
DeviantART member jablechien marked a sword with the cutie mark and traditional icon of Princess Luna, a character on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. He did so by applying acrylic paint with a toothpick.
(Image: Hasbro Studios)
Jablechien writes that he did this "for the glory of the New Lunar Republic!" This is a reference to a major body of fan fiction which places Luna (pictured above) and her sister Princess Celestia at war with each other.
My position on this as a brony: in keeping with the 34th Rule of Acquisition, stay neutral in this conflict and sell weapons to both sides.
A man in Corbin, Kentucky was arrested on the charge of shoplifting $36 worth of beer from a convenience store. When he was brought into the police station, he asked officers if he could use his cellphone to make a call. They agreed.
