What do you do when you want to have a big summer party, but you don't know how to grill? You put an ad on Craigslist for a guy to be "Dad" and man the grill! He'll also be expected to drink beer and talk about dad things.

Duties include:

- Grilling hamburgers and hotdogs (whilst drinking beer)
- Bringing your own grill (though this is subject to change. We will provide all of the meat)
- Refer to all attendees as "Big Guy', "Chief", "Sport", "Champ" etc. (whilst drinking beer)
- Talk about dad things, like lawnmowers, building your own deck, Jimmy Buffet, etc. Funny anecdotes are highly encouraged. All whilst drinking beer.

Desired experience:

- A minimum of 18 years experience as a father
- A minimum of 10 years grilling experience
- An appreciation of a nice, cold beer on a hot summer day

This is an actual ad for a cookout June 17 in Spokane. Whether or not they fill the position, everyone on the internet now knows where the party is in two weeks. -via reddit

If you want to understand Wonder Woman, you need to understand her comic book history. We've posted about her beginning as written by William Moulton Marston in 1941. But in the forty years afterward, Wonder Woman stories varied so much that her world, like many DC superhero stories, became a convoluted mess.

No character suffered from the ailments of continuity more than Wonder Woman. First introduced in 1940s tales that formed a kind of pop-culture feminist urtext, she had been depicted as a lasso-wielding warrior named Diana from an advanced society of ancient Amazons on a place called Paradise Island. She was a liberated woman before people generally spoke of such things, possessing an array of superpowers ranging from super-strength to ESP, as well as a curious fondness for bondage. She comes to the world of men to fight Nazis alongside a military love interest named Steve Trevor and best friend Etta Candy, a mouth-stuffing, plus-size woman who provided comic relief. It was as wonderful as it was eyebrow-raising.

Those early stories were simple enough, but over time, they were revised and rethought over and over to the point of near insanity. Readers learned that the WWII Diana actually lived on an alternate-reality planet called Earth-2, and that there was another Diana that they’d retroactively been reading about for the past few years. They perused multiple retellings of her origin story that rewrote not only her narrative but the nature of her powers, and that couldn’t be easily reconciled with one another. Then she lost her powers entirely and became a mortal woman who trained under a racist caricature named I Ching. Then she became an Emma Peel–esque super-spy for a while. It was enough to make your tiara spin.

That all changed in 1986, thanks to writer George Pérez. Read the story of how he redefined Wonder Woman in 1986 and made her the superhero we know today. -via Digg

Queen Victoria had been a widow for 26 years when she celebrated her Golden Jubilee. That's when a young Indian Muslim servant named Abdul Karim came to work at the palace and soon became Victoria's favorite. She elevated his status and charged him with teaching her Urdu and Indian culture. They spent so much time together that people were talking. Even a hint of impropriety was enough to cause Britain's ruling authorities and Victoria's family to panic.  

The British monarchy has been known to be better than the KGB at covering up its scandals and destroying evidence. But where there are secrets, there are detectives lurking nearby (especially when it comes to the affairs of the royal family). Queen Victoria’s kids did their best to cover up her private life, especially the relationship she formed with Indian servant, Abdul Karim. All records of Victoria’s young “munshi” (teacher), as she called him, were supposedly destroyed by relatives, but a discovery of Abdul’s lost diary in 2010 revealed a complex relationship suggesting that the two were more than friends. Did the Queen, 40 years his senior have a not-so-secret crush or was this relationship a way to fill the void of loneliness?

The relationship between the queen and Karim is the subject of the biographical drama Victoria & Abdul set to be released in September. Meanwhile, you can get some background on the real story with an at Messy Messy Chic.

The following is an article from Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader. 

 Martha Mitchell is largely forgotten now, but at the height of her fame in the 1970s, she was one of the most popular women in America.

THE MOUTH OF THE SOUTH

On November 21, 1969, Martha Beall Mitchell, the wife of Attorney general John Mitchell, gave an interview on the CBS Morning News. Her husband had been on the job for nearly a year, and in that time she hadn't attracted that much attention. Her TV appearance changed that. She came out against Vietnam War protesters, whom she denounced as "liberal Communists… As my husband had said many times, some of the liberals in this country, he'd like to exchange them for the Russian Communists." Nixon administration officials cringed when they saw the show; they wondered how bad the fallout would be… until letters started pouring into the White House supporting Martha.

SPEAKING HER MIND

Suddenly people were interested in Martha Mitchell. She cut quite a figure: A native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, she was a 51-year-old Southern belle whose loud clothes, big hair, and cat-eye sunglasses competed with her big mouth for attention.

But the big mouth always won. Martha had an opinion on everything-she loved Richard Nixon (one of the funniest and sexiest men in America) but hated liberals (communistic), teachers (too liberal), lawyers (they're lawyers), the Supreme Court (too liberal), the press (too powerful), and universities (too liberal).

You might recognize the name Gilles de Rais as the real-life inspiration for the story of the killer Bluebeard. The real Gilles de Rais was a war hero who fought alongside Joan of Arc, but later was brought to trial for sodomy and child murder, with up to 150 victims. He confessed to the crimes (before his scheduled torture) and was executed in 1440. Rais' reputation grew, but the story was told differently in France and England. In England, he became known as a legendary serial killer and the inspiration for the fairy tale Bluebeard by Charles Perrault. In France, some biographers determined he was the victim of a politically-motivated witch hunt, on par with the persecution of Joan of Arc.

This exoneration isn’t a secret: many of Rais’ countrymen know him as the victim of Church conspiracy, falsely accused on account of his great wealth and political connections to Joan of Arc, who herself was tried for heresy and executed 10 years prior. Yet while attempts to clear Rais’ name go back to 1443, the majority of his biographers make little mention of this or of the suspicious circumstances around his trial. Those who have considered the possibility of Rais’ innocence are few and far between—and almost all of them wrote only in French. Add in the pre-Internet Court of Cassation and you’ve got a wealth of information that has remained inaccessible to an English audience. Like a 15th-century Steven Avery, Rais has been waiting for his very own season of Making a Murderer. Now, 600 years after his execution, he may finally be getting it.

Margot K. Juby is trying, almost single-handedly, to fix Gilles de Rais' reputation in the English-speaking world 500 years after the fact. Read about her research and findings at Atlas Obscura.

This is Duffy. He is a good dog. He just can't catch a ball to save his life. But he's not giving up.

(YouTube link)

Duffy's trials are wonderful as they are, but shown in slow motion and edited as an epic tale set to the tune of "Nessun Dorma," it is a thing of beauty. -via Boing Boing

Big_Wanker shared a picture of what happens when you feed a neighborhood cat. The title was, "My parents started feeding a stray kitten a couple weeks ago. This was their front porch today." And so it goes.

P3rc0sk1 came home to this. He said, "I don't own a cat." The response was yes, you do, in fact you now own five cats. It happens more often than you realize that a cat thinks it's just fine to walk into your home and decide it's a good place to live. That's how you get a cat. Bored Panda has 160 submitted images from the "I don't own a cat…" category. -via Metafilter

(YouTube link)

Contractors are working on painting the water tower in Sussex, Wisconsin, but  where they stopped work one first left a unique photo opportunity. Workers experienced a venting issue that caused them to stop with just the "sex" left showing.

A village administrator said he believed the workers left the three letters up intentionally to get a few laughs and a contractor said they didn't mind the attention.

"We kind of like the honks when they go by and a little bit of the road traffic," the contractor said.

The rest of the tower has since been painted. -via Bits and Pieces

Viola Davis' daughter Genesis Tennon is a two-year-old Wonder Woman! She's among the many little girls who are excited to have a big-screen super hero to look up to. Little girls all over are dressing up as Wonder Woman to see the movie.

Looks like our daughters have the same outfit - except Genesis rocking the boots! pic.twitter.com/G76kJOip6b

— Gabby (@GabnDad) June 3, 2017

See a roundup of young cosplayers going to see Wonder Woman at the Hollywood Reporter. And this one really deserves to be seen, as it kind of sums up the phenomenon.

So hyped to see #WonderWoman tomorrow!! pic.twitter.com/BsKmTlhmRD

— Lightning⚡️Strikes (@L_Strikes_art) May 31, 2017

-via reddit

(Image credit: Viola Davis)

It looks like every country in the world uses a different kind of electrical outlet. Don't take the outlet for China  literally, though- when I went, I took eight kinds of adaptors and used several in different cities. Then we stayed in one city that couldn't use any of them, so my video camera battery ran down. The explanation at Fail Blog: 

This is meant to be a visual guide, as many similar outlets have different voltages. Just because a plug fits doesn't mean it will work. Always double check before you blow up your cell phone/hair dryer/discount lightsaber.

-via Geeks Are Sexy

Maps that compare states to each other are fun, and we've posted a lot of them. But how seriously should we take them? Like the population in general, there are more differences between people within groupings (states) than there are between groups (states). Of course, if you look at such maps and wonder what is going on in your state that you weren't aware of, you already know to take the results with a grain of salt. Randall Munroe of xkcd takes a swing at the map trend in his latest comic.

Would you rather fight 10,000 chickens or 20 T-rexes? What if they were to fight each other? YouTube user Lazy Game Reviews harnessed the power of Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator (previously at Neatorama) to create a battle simulation between the dinosaurs and the small birds they eventually evolved into.

(YouTube link)

Oh, the carnage! I can't really understand what the chickens are doing to defeat a T-rex, but it's fun to watch. Since it's fictional and animated, you know. -via Sploid

Studio Ghibli fans are stoked to learn that a theme park based on the movies of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata will be built at Aichi Prefecture’s EXPO Park in Japan. Ghibli Park is expected to open in "the early 2020s."

The park – located in Nagakute City, just east of the prefecture’s capital Nagoya –  was the site of the 2005 World EXPO. It sprawls over 200 hectares of land, and is rich with natural greenery and gardens. The park was initially opened in 1970 as the Aichi Youth Park (Aichi Seishounen Kōen), and was reopened for the World EXPO as the Ai-Chikyūhaku Kinen Kōen, a play on words using “love” (ai) and “earth” (chikyū) to include “Aichi” in the name of the park. While a lot of the facilities added for the World EXPO have been removed, there still remains a water park and swimming pool, ice skating rink, and a giant Ferris wheel.

Rocket News speculates on what such a theme park might contain, both good and bad. You'd expect a moving castle and a catbus, at the very least. -via Swiss Miss

This is the latest comic from John Atkinson at Wrong Hands. Learn and remember these phrases, so you can sound high-falootin' when you're talking about the normal stuff you eat. I like to start every day with a seared pain brioche with an oleo glazed veneer, except I go whole hog and use butter. But wait- this is titled "Another Everyday Foodie Menu," which means there must be an earlier comic just like this. And there is.

This is the first Everyday Foodie Menu. Now I have more pretentious names to memorize.

The first artificial ice skating rink opened in London in June of 1844, after a few months in a temporary location at Covent Gardens. Strangely, that was before the technology was available to freeze water for the skating surface. The Glaciarium was decorated to resemble a winter wonderland, refreshing in the summer heat. It would have been easier to create the illusion if they had air conditioning.  

But, as Tim Jepson and Larry Porges write ​in the National Geographic London Book of Lists, it smelled noxious.  “At the time, ice couldn’t be manufactured and kept frozen in sufficient quantities to create a proper rink. The appalling smell of the substitute, a mixture of pig fat and salts, would be the project’s undoing,” they write.

Skating on a surface of lard in the summer had to be extremely unpleasant. The Glaciarium only lasted a few months before it closed down. But the technology to build a real rink came about some years later, and Londoners were skating on ice by 1876. Read how that came about at Smithsonian.