Alasdair Beckett-King, a very English comedian, offers reasonably good Texas accents in this brief parody of The Lord of the Rings and King of the Hill.
I would really enjoy seeing a special episode of King of the Hill in which the The Lord of the Rings takes place in Texas. Hank Baggins is tasked with delivering a Super Bowl VI ring to Austin for its destruction.
Beckett-King envisions Dale Gribble as Boromir and Boomhauer as Gollum. Additionally, Bill Dauterive would be the ideal as Legolas, Luanne Platter should be Galadriel, Cotton Hill should be Saruman the White, and Bobby Hill should play Pippin Took.
And while we were playing in his room, his mom yelled that dinner was ready. And check this. He told me to WAIT in his room while they ate.
Other users shared that this is an unusual, but not unknown practice in Sweden. When children visit the homes of other children, there's no expectation that the guest children will be fed.
Why? The Washington Post consulted a variety of experts on Swedish culture, including the food historian Richard Tellström at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Tellström explained that in the past, feeding someone else's children would be considered an insult:
“Eating was something that you did at home,” he says. “You didn’t feed other people’s children — that would have been considered a sort of intrusion in another family’s life, with the subtext of ‘You can’t feed your children properly, so I will feed them.’”
Tellström speculates that this now fading tradition was likely due to the atomistic development of families in rural Sweden. Dining with people other than your immediate family was unusual and thus providing food hospitality outside of the family would not be customary.
It was 1941 and the war was not going well for the Allies. The Nazis were advancing on multiple fronts, including deep into the unprepared Soviet Union. Britain was now locked into an uneasy but necessary friendship with that Communist power.
HMS Trident, a Royal Navy submarine, docked at Polyarny on the Arctic Ocean coast of the Soviet Union. While his boat was undergoing repairs, Commander Geoffrey Sladen dines with the Soviet post admiral. He comments that his wife sometimes struggled to push their infant's stroller through snow. The Admiral suggests having a reindeer pull the stroller and promptly has a reindeer delivered to Trident as a gift to Commander Sladen's wife.
This was a diplomatically uneasy time, so Commander Sladen knew that it would be unwise to refuse the gift, even though transporting a reindeer by submarine back to Britain would be difficult. The crew names the reindeer Polyanna after the port and takes on a barrel of moss for her to eat during the voyage back home.
On the way to Britain, Trident recieves new orders: stay on patrol in the area on the hunt for German warships. The supply of moss runs out, so Polyanna eats condensed milk instead. She hangs out in the torpedo room and sleeps beneath the captain's rack. But she is not exactly toilet trained and gets rather stinky. Submarines are called "pigboats" for a reason, but Trident gets unusually smelly due to Polyanna's contributions.
Despite spending six weeks on a submarine, Polyanna arrives in the UK healthy and has, in fact, gained weight, making removing her from the boat an added challenge. She lives for five more years at a the Regents Park Zoo in London.
Instagram member @nrml_mbter describes himself as an abnormal dude on a bike, but I don't see anything abnormal about him, aside from exceptional cleverness. This inventive gentleman records his off-road bicycling adventures which often take him far away from civilization.
When heading out into the wild, it's important to carry supplies that make the adventure comfortable, or at least survivable. Don't ride beyond your resources. Stay fed and hydrated.
To assist with the latter task, he used a cavity in his bike's frame to create a cereal bowl. With milk in a bottle and a spoon in his pocket, he's prepared for the journey.
In Japan, a bow conveys a lot of messaging into a brief and sometimes slight movement. Using the wrong bow conveys the wrong message. For example, the eshaku, which is a 15º bow, is a casual greeting. The keirei, which is 30º, is a more formal bow used in the working environment. The saikeirei, which is 45º, expresses deep respect to a social superior.
The gentleman pictured above is demonstrating the dogeza, which is an abjectly apologetic bow used to beg for a great favor or forgiveness for a serious wrong.
Sora News 24 says the dogeza sometimes does not go far enough. That's when the more extreme dogeritsu is necessary. In addition to having committed a huge offense, the dogeritsu requires substantial athleticisim, especially if it is necessary to hold the position while waiting for the aggrieved party to consider the apology.
In 1925, an American entrepreneur named Howard Johnson established a pharmacy and ice cream shop in a suburb of Boston. It thrived and by 1929, Johnson opened a restuarant. This was the first Howard Johnson's-brand restaurant, which became a thriving chain that swept across the United States from the 1930s through the 1970s. The company, which also built a chain of motels, was especially popular with road travelers who took part in the post-World War II travel boom.
The company sold off the motel chain and continued in restaurants, but it struggled with changing markets and gradually declined, especially in the early years of the 21st Century.
Now, CNN reports, the restaurant chain is completely dead. The last Howard Johnson's restaurant in Lake George, New York has shut down. The site is for sale with a current asking price of $10.
UPDATE 6/7/22: Commenter Unknown2 has helpfully explained why the price is so low. This refers to not the purchase price for the property, but the rental price per square foot. That makes a lot more sense.
This hound dog is Jack, a rescue pup owned by Brennan Gilmore, a guitarist with the bluegrass band Walker's Run. Jack often attended rehearsals and sang along with the music, but was not present at live performances until one special night in 2016.
Gilmore tells The Dodo that the band was playing at a theater in Little Washington, Virginia. Jack slept in the greenroom. But the door must have been left ajar when Walker's Run went to the stage to perform an encore because Jack followed them and began to howl.
Sadly, Jack passed on two years ago. But Gilmore thinks of him often, for one of his guitars is engraved with a portrait of Jack.
ViralHog shares this charming incident. 14-year old Hudson was practicing his basketball skills in the driveway of his home when a Federal Express delivery truck stopped in the neighborhood. In just a few seconds, the driver parked his truck and dashed out across the street.
Hudson intuitively understood what was going to happen. He passed the ball to the driver, who quickly dribbled up and dunked. He thanked Hudson and ran back to his truck. There's no conversation; just two guys who grok each other for a few seconds while shooting hoops.
Josy Peukert and her husband, Benni Cornelius, lead unconventional lifestyles. They have such a strong affinity for nature that Josy decided that the best type of "free birth" for her was to deliver in the crashing waves of a beach. The New York Post reports on their unique childbirth story.
The couple moved from Germany to Nicaragua. Peukert chose the beautiful Playa Majagual as the site of her fourth childbirth.
Peukert's first birth, which she describes as "traumatic", took place in a clinic. The second was at home. For the third, even having a midwife present was too invasive for her. For this pregnancy, Peukert decided to have no medical interventions or even prenatal doctor's appointments.
When the child came to term, she and her husband, Cornelius, headed to the beach. Cornelius brought towels and a bowl to catch the placenta. Their son, Bohdi, is a healthy 7 pounds and 6 ounces.
No, it's not the world's worst Transformer, but an impressive suit of plastic armor (+2 to AC, -3 to Dex) cut and assembled by Kami Robo, a Japanese artist famous for making robot figures out of anything, as well as robot-themed art in a wide variety of media.
24 traffic cones went into this suit, which is remarkably flexible. I'm not sure how the user breathes and it's likely to get very hot quickly. Here's a photo of Kami Robo standing next to the suit, which appears light enough to carry easily.
Malcolm Gladwell is a public intellectual famous for his novel takes on human society. His books, which include Outliers: The Story of Success and Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, are widely-discussed bestsellers.
Gladwell is a busy man, so he has personal assistants. In a recent blog post, he says that for many years, he would ask applicants for that position if they could drive a car with a manual transmission. If the answer was no, then they were disqualified.
Why? It's not because they will need to drive stick while on the job. It's because he's looking for the type of 22-year old person who would want to learn that "marginally useful skill." Gladwell explains that the young person who can use a manual transmission has certain useful personality traits:
One reason is that they like knowing how to do things that most people do not. Another is that they realize that the most fun cars in the world to drive are sports cars, and the most fun sports cars to drive are the ones with manual transmission, and they like the idea of being able to turn a rote activity (driving) into an enjoyable activity. I want to work with the kind of person who thinks both those things.
It's an interesting idea, but as one commenter at Ann Althouse's blog points out, it assumes that the average 22-year old has access to a car (let alone a sports car) with a manual transmission, which I think would be fairly unusual in the United States. Gladwell would certainly be disqualifying a lot of otherwise capable 22-year olds who could have other ways of demonstrating the same characteristics.
The latest project from Bufalino's studio in Lyons, France is this ping pong table. It's built around a bicycle for easy transportation between or even during games. It comes equipped with training wheels. I don't think that's because of his limited bicycling skills but the sheer weight of the table.
Bufalino rides it here in Esch-Sur-Alzette, a town in Luxembourg known for its vibrant art scene. He reports that he's already returned to France via bike, but not necessarily this bike.
Intima, a company that makes menstrual products, such as environmentally-friendly period cups and Kegel muscle training devices, would like to normalize conversations about periods. Yahoo! News reports that the company has launched a cereal with little bits shaped like a human uterus. The cereal is, appropriately, raspberry flavored and stains milk red.
Period Crunch comes in boxes with diagrams of the female reproductive tract and conversations starters about menstruation. Intima argues that cultural forces prevent many women from talking comfortably about periods. Chatting about menstruation over breakfast could be a way to overcome these inhibitions.
What's going on here? The cat is pawing at the clock, which seems innocent enough. But his human, Japanese Twitter user @MikasaLove611, insists his intentions are nefarious.
The cat has learned that the human does not present food until it is 9 o'clock. The clock must have a particular appearance for the human to provide food.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. By altering the appearance of the clock, the cat can move forward to 9 o'clock, or at least convince the human that it is now feeding time.
Time Cat could use his powers to be a superhero. But Time Cat is a cat and is thus unconcerned with the affairs of humans who are not directly involved with feeding him.
Her latest creation gets us ready for the summer heat with a bikini made from Canon camera cases. The straps provide all of the elastic flexibility that you need if you haven't gotten beach body ready yet. The built-in pockets are no doubt helpful, as one still needs to carry sunscreen, keys, and money while on the beach.
