The show must go on, even though the actors don't get paid, and even though the audience is there for only a few seconds each week. A group of performers in Chicago stage a skit on a rooftop for the commuters on the the Brown Line of the El, between Armitage and Sedgwick.
Turns out, every Wednesday from 5 to 6 p.m., these three friends put on a new skit atop the four-story parking garage for the Brown Line passengers who pass by.
On this particular Wednesday, the actors were indeed performing an original skit about Frankenstein and a mad scientist.
"Look at me, look me in the eyes Frankenstein," said the actor playing the mad scientist, during a performance. (Of course, no one on the el could hear the words, but the actors' actions pretty much explained the scene.)
"Argh, argh, argh!" said Frankenstein.
The three actors go by the name of CTA Theater, and they've been performing for riders for six months, every single week, just to make people happy. Riders who catch their show say they love the performances, no matter how short. Link-Thanks, Jeff!
Kansas State University professor Mark Haub ate a Twinkies every three hours for ten weeks and lost 27 pounds! His cholesterol numbers improved as well. Haub put himself through this horrible regimen to prove a point: weight loss is all about caloric intake, not the type of food you eat. James Plafke at Geekosystem explains:
When I first started working out, I couldn’t gain weight no matter what I tried. I asked a large amount of people at the few gyms I attended at the time, and the advice received has always stuck out: Eat everything. The first (extremely in-shape) person I asked told me to buy a box of bakery cupcakes from the local grocery store and eat that after lunch a few times a week. The next (very ripped and cut) person I asked told me he ate a tub of chocolate pudding a few times a week after dinner. The message was clear: So long as you’re correctly working out, the type of food you eat doesn’t matter as much as you may think.
Animals communicate with each other in ways we can't imagine, but there are a few we've figured out. Oh, we can't translate everything yet, but we know how some do it. Environmental Graffiti looks at five animals that have their own languages. For example, some frogs chatter away in a language we can't even hear!
The frogs’ calls have to compete with other animals’ loud signals. These calls are perceived as very loud to humans. However, there are frogs that communicate only through ultrasound. Their frequency is too high for the human ear to hear. The Huia cavitympanum species that lives in Borneo is the only species known to man that communicates only through high-pitched sounds.
If you were to be buried in one of the unusual cemeteries in this list, people would visit your grave whether they cared about you or not! Some are beautiful, some scary, and some are just plain weird. One that I would really like to see is the Bridge to Paradise.
The Bridge to Paradise, in the Xcaret Nature and Cultural Park, is quite an intriguing Mexican cemetery. Its structure is based on the Gregorian calendar: the cemetery simulates a hill with seven levels representing the days of the week and 365 colorful tombs on the outside depicting the days of the year. The main entrance is a stairway with 52 steps that represent the weeks of the year.
Each grave is different from the others in design and building materials. One might look like a replica of a famous cathedral, while the next one looks like a sofa or a bed with headboard and pillows.
Rob Cockerham posted the Incredibly Depressing Mega Millions Lottery Simulator a month ago, so you'd think he would be the type to avoid gambling. However, he won a costume contest for one of his over-the-top creations and the prize was $1,000 -in slot machine play! Therefore, win or lose, he sat down to play and report to us on the experience.
Thunder Valley has eight "100% payback" slots, which means that at the end of their life, they should have given out the same amount of money they took in. This group had some interesting features, the first was a bright sign on top, advertising "win up to 100% payback". What? What kind of deal is that? It sounds like the worst of both worlds, like you had no chance of going away a winner. I figured the sign was just not worded very well, that they wanted to say "100% payback", but that a sign which said that sounds like you are always going to win your money back.
The second feature was a small placard which stated "This game is not eligible for the Thunder Slot Fortune Bonus".
Ah ha! Maybe I'm a sucker, but to me, this sign says "the casino makes so little money on this machine, we can't let you have any other perks for sitting here". BINGO. This was the machine for me!
Try to guess how much he won with his $1,000 credit. Link
In this educational game, you don't go for points; you just try not to kill the patient! You'll learn many things about brain surgery in the process, thanks to the surgeon who guides you. Those who are very squeamish may want to pass, but the patient is a cartoon so it's not too scary. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
Jones Soda, the folks who brought you a turkey-flavored soft drink, is offering a limited run of bacon flavored soda. They've teamed up with J&D's Foods to offer a gift pack featuring two bottles of soda with bacon popcorn and bacon gravy for $9.95 plus shipping. Bacon... where will it all end? Link to story. Link to product. -Thanks, Waldo (wherever you are)!
In order to make Jillian Sherlock and Nikhil Pereira's wedding day as perfect as possible, the five bridesmaids kept quiet about the carjacking incident until after the ceremony was complete. A man who had broken into a house near the church in Boston was looking for a getaway, and the limousine carrying the bridesmaids looked like a possibility.
“He started fighting with the driver, and the girls got out and ran,” said Karl Kammann, a Buckingham Bus driver who had just dropped off 48 guests at the church. “It was chaos. Right out from under the wedding party! What a way to get married.”
Headed in the opposite direction on Columbia Road was Gerald Whelan, who was sitting in traffic when he spotted the man get into the limo.
“I saw the driver’s side open, and the driver struggling, half in and half out,” said Whelan, 61. “He started yelling, ‘Help me! Somebody help me!’ ”
The driver managed to get out, unharmed, and the limo disappeared down Columbia Road, only to be abandoned shortly afterward on West Fifth Street in South Boston as police searched for the wedding bandit.
The ceremony went on as scheduled while police cordoned off the area as a crime scene. Another limousine was summoned to carry the wedding party. Link -via Arbroath
Is it possible that comic book writers have super powers of their own? Cracked has four examples from Superman comics (and one each from Wonder Woman and Spider-Man) that were eerily prescient of real-world events, from the atomic bomb to 9/11. The panel to the left is a detail from a Superman comic that was prepared months in advance and released on September 12, 2001.
Obviously there was nothing DC could do to pull the comic out of circulation by then (not to mention that their offices are in downtown NY, so they probably had other things on their mind at the moment). They did make the comic returnable, but few if any were actually returned, because people understood that this was nothing but an unfortunate coincidence and not DC's fault.
by a scientist who is a Paris native and who requests anonymity
Seasoned visitors to the City of Light always factor in their travel plans the two most prevalent facts of life in France: vacations and strikes. Fortunately, school vacation periods are scheduled in advance with clockwork regularity. Strikes may be nearly as predictable. This preliminary study suggests a strong correlation between occurrences of the two.
The right to protest and demonstrate in France is a fundamental part of life, and not limited to the employed. In fact, foreign visitors in Paris in December 1997 might have witnessed a somewhat surreal event: hundreds of unemployed people on strike, demonstrating in the streets, demanding an end-of-the-year bonus.
But if there is one thing the strikers will not sacrifice, it is their hard earned (and constitutional right to) vacations. Witness the school teachers who went on strike in May of 2003, suspended the strike at the end of June for their summer break, and came back at the beginning of the next school year, in September, to resume the strike. Indeed, major issues had remained unresolved.
Needless to say, strikes are very unlikely in July and August (summer break), as at least three quarters of the workforce are away on vacation, and so is most of the government. At this time of the year, Paris is populated with tourists and the grumpy quarter of Parisians who got stuck at work while the others are chilling out on the Riviera or camping in Normandy. (This might be an explanation for the poor image of Parisians tourists tend to have, but that is a topic for another study).
In September vacationers come back in town, broke, to find out that the cost of living (public transportations, food, gas, etc.) has gone up while they were gone. Vacationers have to go back to work, days are getting shorter and the weather is worsening. Expect strikes from mid-September to beginning of October. Not too late in October, though, because that would interfere with the first school break (All Saints break, from end of October to beginning of November).
The next high occurrence period is mid-December, when the days are getting really short, the weather is downright miserable and people feel broke and start worrying about the holidays. Some privileged categories of indispensable workers regularly threaten to go on strike during the holidays, but generally the issues get resolved in time for everyone to enjoy the end-of-year festivities.
In January and February, the outdoors activity on everybody’s mind is winter sports. Two school vacations, the winter break (late February to mid-March), and the spring break (mid-April to early May), help Parisians survive until the return of warm weather. Everyone is relaxed from the last break, and the anticipation of the next. There is hardly any time left in between to get back to work, let alone sneak in a little strike or protest.
May–June is quite a complex period, due to the number and distribution of holidays in May. May 1st is Labor Day and May 8th is the WWII armistice. In a good year both occur on Monday or Friday, providing two long weekends. On an excellent year, they occur on Tuesday or Thursday, and with the “ponts” (“free” non-working days granted to bridge one-day gaps between holidays and week-ends) that’s two four-day weekends. Ascension Day comes 39 days after Easter, and that is a Thursday in May. In an excellent year, that Thursday does not coincide with the other holidays, and that’s another light week (or very long weekend). In fact, in a really good year, an employee can get the whole month of May off by taking about 10 official vacation days. Of course, even in France, not everyone can do that at the same time, so about half the people are away, and the other half are stuck at work, a day or two per week, and not doing much anyways.
When June comes, the weather becomes really pleasant, the Roland-Garros Tennis tournament (French Open, end of May to beginning of June) signals that the end of the school year is close, the summer vacations are around the corner and everybody is eager to get outdoors. After the end of the French Open, expect major protests with demonstrations en masse. This is the favorite time of the year for students to take to the streets (as end-of-the year exams approach). The strikes and demonstrations will most likely stop on time for Parisians to travel to their favorite summer spot come July.
Note that on a bad year, the May holidays coincide with weekends. The French feel cheated: expect the pre-summer protests to start earlier (although demonstrations are unlikely during Roland-Garros).
So this is why April is clearly the best time to visit Paris: the weather might not be great yet, but the chance of major social disturbances is low, and the Parisians, either coming back from a vacation or about to go on a vacation, are likely in the best mood they’ll be in all year.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the May-June 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
The blog Women Running from Houses is subtitled "judging books by their covers". Not having read many Gothic romance novels, I had no idea that a woman running away from a house was such a common theme for a book cover! Spectergirl collects such novels, and while admitting that she hasn't read them all (and probably never will), she is a fan of vintage cover illustration. Link -via Metafilter
Is there anything the iPhone, iPod, and iPad can't do (besides read your mind)? Meesha enjoys playing with the free app Cat Toys on an iPod, as recorded by Tiffany Bliss. http://www.tiffanybliss.com/kittycatbliss.html -via Buzzfeed
Waylon and his wife sampled quite a few of the less prominent nightspots on their recent trip to Cambodia, and wrote up reviews of each. While some have intriguing names such as the Corruption Bar, the G'Day Mate Bar, and the Any Club, the real fun is in what's inside. One place doesn't like pictures taken inside and the authors made a hasty getaway. Another has an owner who won't talk to you. Another has a sign posted prohibiting cameras, soldiers, bombs, guns, shorts, slippers, and dogs. The best review went to the Happy Man Bar.
Air conditioning: YES. Cold beer: YES. Adorably lovely waitresses: YES. Proprietor doesn't own a shotgun: YES.
If you are planning a trip to Cambodia, this may be an invaluable resource. However, there are places in the US where you can find a similar variety of taverns. Don't ask me how I know. Link
You must admit it's a name to remember: Young Boozer III. Boozer won the race for Alabama state treasurer, despite a rash of campaign sign thefts early in the campaign. It appears that college students wanted the signs for their dorms and frat houses. Boozer's campaign manager Glenda Allred said there were still signs left to be picked up after the election.
Allred said the name, and the signs, have led to some odd requests, particularly people from out of state who requested signs even though they had no say in the election.
One request came from a journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "He came down to cover the BP oil spill and saw the sign as he was going down the interstate," Allred said. "He called saying how he read about the candidate, saw the website and was following the race."
The future value of the signs is uncertain. Link -via Arbroath
Parents experience unbelievable joy at many of their baby's accomplishments -the first smile, the first step, the first words. There are also many not-so-joyful firsts, as you'll see in this list at NeatoBambino.
The first time they spit up on a friend who doesn’t have children. I’m convinced this is why some of my friends are still childless. Really, I am so sorry.
The first time your newborn son pees in your face. Yes, it really does happen. I finally got wise and started covering him up with a wash cloth while changing his diaper.
The first time they have massive diaper failure. I call these poo-splosions. They typically occur when you are in a hurry, you have placed them in your favorite little outfit, or have somehow forgotten a change of clothes.
The First time they put something really gross in their mouth. Babies are like ninjas. They have stealth reflexes. They can grab and lick the bottom of a shoe faster than you can scream “NO!”
Experienced parents will laugh; others may run screaming after reading this list. You are invited to add your experiences in the comments. http://www.neatorama.com/neatobambino/2010/11/06/20-awful-firsts-you-have-to-look-forward-to-with-your-new-baby/
