I laughed so hard that my wife asked me if something was wrong.
Scott Meyer's Basic Instructions is a treasure. It should be one of your daily reads.
Now make the appointment for me. Sometime Thursday morning would be ideal.
John Farrier's Blog Posts
(Photo: Ricardo Arduengo/AP)
Here lies, er, stands Renato Garcia. He passed away at the age of 50 in San Jose, Puerto Rico. He once found a uniform for the Green Lantern Corps in a bag of donated clothes. Though he lacked an Oan power ring, Garcia felt inspired to wear the uniform for several weeks. When he died, his family thought it appropriate to bury him in it.
Posing bodies for viewings is becoming a popular funeral custom in Puerto Rico. The New York Daily News reports:
Posing embalmed bodies at wakes and funerals is nothing new in Puerto Rico, where the practice has taken off. Georgina Lloren, 80, was posed in her favorite rocking chair after her death in San Jose last year.
The last wish of another man, Angel Pantoja Medina, was to stand at his own wake so in 2008, family members abided.
Christopher Rivera, a professional boxer, was stood up in the corner of a boxing ring and dressed up in his pugilists gear after his murder in 2014. Another murder victim, David Morales Colon, was propped up on his motorcycle after he 2010 death.
This is a great practice! And I have just the right idea for a suit for my own funeral.
-via Geek Tyrant
(Photo: Reuters/China Daily)
Would you jump through a ring of fire? If you’re a frontier soldier in the Chinese army, that’s a requirement. This Reuters photo from last year shows one soldier in the Heilongjiang province in the northeastern corner of China doing precisely that.
It’s one of 24 photos of elite soldiers around the world doing extraordinary things as part of their training. You can see more from Business Insider/Rocket News 24. They include US Marines drinking cobra blood, bare-chested South Korean soldiers covering themselves with snow, Filipino marines holding bananas on their heads, and German soldiers assembling guns underwater.
How many Pokémon are there? Um, a lot. Maybe 721, more or less? I can’t keep count.
That’s a lot of Pokémon. If you’re a Pokémon manufacturer, then you need a constant supply of names, which is why the Swedish language and Mexican restaurant menus exist (I checked: they were invented for this purpose).
-via Tastefully Offensive
Parker Schoberl is 5 years old, so it’s time that he get married. He went to Disney World to find a wife. He’s not that particular. He just wants a Disney princess—and any Disney princess will do. He proposed to Snow White, Jasmine, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Ariel, Elsa, Belle, and Tinkerbelle.
Parker is, to say the least, bold. He actually proposed to Jasmine right in front of Aladdin.
Parker’s efforts paid off. One of the princesses agreed to marry him. That’s better than having two acceptances, which could cause complications.
-via Fashionably Geek
It’s 9⁰F. There’s snow everywhere. Your job, as tourism director for the Ithaca, New York and Tompkins County Convention and Visitors Bureau in the Finger Lakes is to convince people to visit that place of their own free will.
Good luck.
Yesterday, the website for Visit Ithaca briefly gave up, pulled out a bottle of whiskey from a drawer, and crawled under the desk for a rest. The site admitted that there was no good recreational reason to visit Ithaca and suggested that people instead travel to the warm and sunny Florida Keys.
This was a marketing scheme dreamed up by Bruce Stoff, the director of the Visitors Bureau of Ithaca in cooperation with the Florida Keys Tourism Council, which was glad to cooperate. CNN reports:
A spokesperson for the Florida Keys Tourism Council called the initiative "the wackiest thing I've ever seen in my life from a tourism marketing standpoint."
Andy Newman got a call from Stoff last week pitching the idea and asking for permission to use pictures of the Florida Keys homepage.
This wasn't an advertising campaign, Newman said, and no money was exchanged.
"I didn't believe he'd actually go through with it," Newman said.
But considering the weather conditions in the Keys right now, he understands.
"It's in the 70s, there's no snow and no frost on the ground," Newman said.
"Come on down. Why wouldn't you?"
-via Huffington Post
(Photo: Villa Seminyak)
Some luxurious resorts have pool areas where bathers can swim directly to poolside bars. The Villa Seminyak in Bali, Indonesia goes even further. Its Lagoon Villa has a pool accessible directly from the room. The room description says that it comes with free shuttle service, which I hope means a gondola.
I found this item through Messy Nessy Chic, which quips, “Now imagine the maid service swimming around with a cart and vacuum cleaner.”
(Fowl Language Comics/Brian Gordon)
This is my costume. I made it myself. Yes, I know: it’s not convincing at all. It’s a shoddy work of craftsmanship that was obviously cobbled together the night before the con, and every other day of my life.
Arnout Meijer, a designer in Amsterdam, made this desk lamp that he calls Get Ready for Launch. It's a minimalist design that neatly mimics the image of a rocket launching off the surface of a planet, presumably on its way destroy Earth with a doomsday device. It's ideal for workspaces that need inspiration and enthusiasm.
-via Fubiz
In middle and high school, we learn that flat maps are distorted projections of a nearly spherical planet. They're always wrong. The popular Mercator map gets especially bad in the polar regions. Still, even with this knowledge, bad impressions form in our minds about the relative size of countries and continents. For example, though Greenland appears to be huge in a Mercator map, it's very small compared to the equatorial-centered continent of Africa.
This BuzzFeed video illustrates some of the common misconceptions and shows how big parts of the world really are.
-via The Presurfer
(Photo: unknown)
Did you think that you were safe from the undead during the winter? You were wrong. Zombies may freeze, but it is only now that snowzombies are ready to rise from their graves.
-via Lifestylemagick
Redditor I_Say_ writes, "My son wrote a letter to batman about a week and a half ago. Today he got his 'response'." You can view a larger version here.
Before you get too excited: Yes, Batman is real. But, no, he doesn't respond to letters. I_Say_ wrote this letter for his/her son. It's a fine job, though it does make Batman look a bit boring. I suppose that Batman doesn't have a lot of time to devote to fan mail. If he had only 3 minutes or so to devote to writing to each child, he's bound to resort to tedious platitudes that can be rattled off quickly.
They call him Khaki Shorts. No one knows his real name, for he is a creature of the night. Also the arcade. With both hands, he throws one basketball after another into the hoop. Smoothly, the balls slide through the net, much faster and more accurately than his two competitors.
Having played with this child's toy long enough, Khaki Shorts aims for the basket on a different console! He banks the shots, sending the basketballs through the net.
Then Khaki Shorts strides off casually, disappearing into the sunset. He shall return again when we need him the most.
-via Rocket News 24
The cat saw a pool full of live octopodes. It's time for a snack! But the octopus he selected was not in the mood to be food.
-via reddit
Lassie the dog famously saved her owner in almost every episode. Little Timmy was forever falling into wells or getting stuck in old refrigerators or whatnot. The fates wanted him dead and only Lassie kept Timmy alive. Certainly Cat Lassie wouldn't have done what this dog in Germantown, Wisconsin did (warning: auto-start video).
For unknown reasons, Crystal Lauer fell unconscious on her front porch. It was only 3°F outside. She was dressed in pajamas and a housecoat. So she was in great danger of freezing to death.
Johnny, her black Labrador Retriever, ran into the street, agitated. Officer Jeff Gonzalez spotted him from his patrol car. Johnny led the officer back to Lauer's porch, where he found the unconscious woman. She had been on that porch for about an hour. Thanks to timely medical intervention, she's now recovering in a local hospital.
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