Just for Fun Friday: The Fly-On-the-Wall Illusion

If you stare at the fly sitting in the center of the yellow-blue pattern on the right for a minute or so, and then switch your view onto the fly on your left – you’ll experience one interesting effect! Normally the cow photo looks divided into two different colored surfaces, but if you follow the previously mentioned procedure correctly – the cow photo will appear perfectly normal.

source

In the ‘Dying Doing What You Love Department’ - Man Dies During a Lapdance

They say you should go out doing what you love. A 67-year-old Texas man may have taken that inspirational advice to heart Friday night when he died at a strip club while getting erotic lap dances. According to a manager at the Red Parrot, Robert Gene White was face-deep in pelvic gyrations when it came time to pay the girls and he was found unresponsive. Staff attempted CPR before calling emergency responders, who took the man to the hospital. We can only guess White's final earthly sights, but we're pretty sure he passed on to the other side with pleasant visions in tow. (News source)

Keeping it Real: sometimes lines blur when we ‘escaping’ from reality

         Good Day Humboldt County!

Fantasy and reality are clashing more every day. Theme parks transport people to alternate universes. Theatres offer more than just movies. Seats are built onto moveable platforms that coordinate movement (up and down, side-to-side) with what’s happening on the big screen. Monster sound systems coupled with 3-D clarity and graphics out of this world…and you have a surreal experience.

Entertainment often involves setting reality aside and just going with the story line. My column this coming Sunday – Coming Soon: A Superhero Near You - is about some people who are living their fantasies out by wearing superhero costumes and patrolling neighborhoods in search of crime.

One of entertainment’s dark sides is crazy fans. Actors, celebrities, and sports stars sometimes have to deal with people who worship and stalk them. Other so-called fans outright threaten them (and sometimes even their family) for imagined sins.

A recent example is what happened to basketball player, Steve Blake. He plays for the Los Angeles Lakers and comes off the bench. He missed a shot that could have won Game Two of the NBA Playoffs against the Oklahoma Thunder Wednesday. Apparently some fans (immature idiots) felt they had to take their ire out on Blake’s wife and family!    

“Various fans sent messages to the Twitter account of Kristen Blake, Steve's Blake’s wife, filled with profanity-laced death threats toward the Lakers' guard and his family.

"It's pretty disappointing that there's a lot of hateful people out there," Blake said after the Lakers' practice Thursday at the team's facility in El Segundo. "You move on. I just don't appreciate it when it's toward my family. You can come at me all you want. But when you say things about my wife and my kids, it makes me upset." (Read the whole story here)

The line between reality and fantasy is a fragile one for many people in our society. It’s no secret we have mentally ill people living in the streets of every state in the Union. But, they also can live next door to you in an exclusive neighborhood. There’s a lot of reasons why we as a society feel the need to escape. Sometimes that need turns ugly.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Gag-A-Rama: Teen finds finger in his roast beef sandwich

A customer at an Arby's in Michigan got a little more than roast beef in his sandwich last week when he bit into a piece of a finger, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reports.

Ryan Hart, 14, tells the newspaper he was almost done with the sandwich when he tasted something rubbery. He spat it out and saw the back of a finger extending beyond the first knuckle. His reaction: "I was "about to puke. ... It was just nasty."

Steve Hall, environmental health director for the Jackson County Health Department, tells the Citizen Patriot an Arby's employee had sliced her finger while operating a meat slicer and left her station without immediately telling anyone what happened. Other workers were filling an order before they became aware of the situation, Hall says. The restaurant did not close.

Coffee Lovers are Buzzing about the Good News – Drink Up, and Live Longer!

                           Good Day Humboldt County!

I had my first cup of coffee when I was a freshman in high school. Like most teenagers, I was ready to give anything a try. That included trying the bitter brew my parents loved (and still do).

It was considered an adult drink. I was in a hurry to be an adult, so drinking coffee with a couple of friends at a coffee shop before going to school was extremely cool thing to do. Oh yeah…and smoking cigarettes.

Everyone seemed to smoke back in those days. I’m glad I finally quit in 2000. But, I still drink coffee every morning. I NEED COFFEE every morning! MUST HAVE COFFEE before any decisions are made for the day…like getting dressed.

Over the years, I’ve heard some negative things about drinking coffee – which I willfully ignored – and decided that if I had to die anyway…then I’d do it with a cup of coffee in my hand. Too much caffeine be damned. Then I saw this article over a cup of steaming Joe this morning:

 “One of life's simple pleasures just got a little sweeter. After years of waffling research on coffee and health, even some fear that java might raise the risk of heart disease, a big study finds the opposite: Coffee drinkers are a little more likely to live longer. Regular or decaf doesn't matter.

The study of 400,000 people is the largest ever done on the issue, and the results should reassure any coffee lovers who think it's a guilty pleasure that may do harm. "Our study suggests that's really not the case," said lead researcher Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute. "There may actually be a modest benefit of coffee drinking." (Read the whole story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Trio of idiots try to sell grenade launcher to undercover fed: two imprisoned, one on bail as long as he reads an hour a day and does a book report!

Growing up I use to think school was a real drag, and when it came to writing book reports …yuck! That meant I had to read a book and make some intelligent comments in an essay afterwards. Reading and writing a report wasn’t considered punishment – just part of the educational process back then.

So why would a judge sentence someone to do a book report while on bail after trying to sell a grenade launcher and pulling a gun on a cop? Doesn’t make sense to me. I wonder what’s on the list of books the judge is providing?

I’m just guessing, but I don’t think they’ll be listed on the Top 10 at Amazon. So what do you think will be on the list? I’m thinking “Crime and Punishment,” might be one of them.

“One of three men indicted for allegedly trying to sell a grenade launcher during a deal that led to gunfire in Richmond was ordered released on bond Monday by a federal judge, who allowed him to remain free so long as he reads each day and completes book reports.

Over the objections of federal prosecutors, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted a request by 23-year-old Otis Mobley Jr. to be released before trial. She ordered him to "read and complete book reports," spending an hour every day on books and at least a half an hour writing. The judge said she plans to provide a reading list for Mobley as he awaits trial.” (Read the whole story here)

We call it Thanksgiving, Georgians call it Shemoedjamo, both celebrate eating massive quanities of food

          Good day Humboldt County!

  My wife and I were watching a series on obesity last night and how American eating habits are killing us slowly but steadily.

  It wasn’t a pretty picture by any means. Americans are pigs! We eat too much, and two-out-of-three are overweight or obese. Even our kids. What can be done? Americans love eating to the point they’re sacrificing future generations health.  

I was surprised to find there’s another country that celebrates gorging on food for fun just like us (Nod of the hat to Cracked). The European Georgians call the special holiday “Shemomedjamo” and it’s their version of our Thanksgiving. The word basically means: the act of eating to the point where your body says, "OK, we did it! We're all done now," and then muscling through another three steaks.

The only way to know if you're done eating on Thanksgiving is when physical pain gets involved. If you don't eat on Thanksgiving until it hurts to breathe, you're either a liar or a terrorist (you're welcome, FBI). In fact, many Americans celebrate Thanksgiving shemomedjamo every day, because they're so patriotic.

The literal translation for shemomedjamo is "I accidentally ate the whole thing," which is a charming way of saying "Oh my God, why isn't somebody stopping me?!"

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do

         What do you see?

              A Tree?

          A Face or more?

        The longer you look

        The more you’ll see

               the Story

 illusion found here

              

         

 

Thinking about going on vacation? No shirt, no pants, no problem at Vegas Nudist Convention

The most stressful part of traveling can be deciding what to pack and coordinating all those outfits, accessories, belts and ties. Here's a simple solution: the Nudist Clubhouse Nudist Expo 2012, a two-day convention in Las Vegas (of course) that highlights all-nude resorts and naked-vacation (or "nakation") packages. Visitors to the expo can drop their trousers after dark at clothing-optional pool parties and grill outs. One unnamed Vegas hotel will even let expo participants ignore its regular "no shirt, no shoes, no service" policy and cruise around naked. (Source)

There’s No Accounting For Taste: From Monkey Toes to Rodents, People Will Eat Almost Anything

                  Good Day Humboldt County!

When it comes to what I’ll eat, I’m not much of an explorer. Blazing culinary paths will never appear on my bucket list. I’ve got too sensitive of a stomach! The only time I ever went outside the box when it came to food was when I ate a bowl of fish head stew in the highlands of Vietnam with a group of indigenous people called Montegards. I couldn’t refuse out of courtesy, but I can still see that partial fish head’s eye staring at me in my nightmares! 

Every culture invents a food that is weird or disgusting to outsiders. These strange foods are cultural markers to show who's a member (insiders like it) and who's not a member (outsiders hate it.) Maybe a kid ate first it on a dare. They pass it on to the next generation. Then they nudge each other and laugh when outsiders gag.
For example, many cultures pride themselves on their foul-tasting local drinks, such as white lightning, pulque, chong, retsina, and so on. You're accepted if you drink it. There's stuff like Balut – see photo - that is normal fare for Filipinos that makes most Westerners cringe.

                                                   PART I : Some examples  from Mammals:

Monkey Toes
(Indonesia)
Deep fried monkey toes, eat it off the bone.

Borewors
(South Africa)
Borewors - sheep,pig,cattle intestines stuffed with meat and offcuts, spiced with herds and cooked on an open flame (barbeque) and served as a meal or snack.

Pig Blood
(Hungary)
Pigs blood with eggs. In Hungary, it is a big deal to kill the first pig of the season. So there I was in the morning watching some of my co-working chasing a pig around in the back yard. they caught it, slit it neck, and colleted the blood in a frying pan and then added scrambled eggs.

Nutria
(USA Louisiana)
Nutria are large semi-aquatic rodents indigenous to South America... In the 1930's nutria were imported into Louisiana for the fur industry and were released, either intentionally or accidentally into the Louisiana coastal marshes. Nutria have caused extensive damage to Louisiana coastal wetlands due to their feeding activity. Due to this damage, officials in Louisiana are now promoting Nutria as a food source, even posting recipes. From what I've heard, they don't taste good enough to eat. www.nutria.com

Biltong
(South Africa)
Animals ranging from cattle to wild animal - springbok, eland or even elephant, get cut up into strips and hung out to dry. Once it is dry it is ready for consumption. National snack for all rugby supporters.

Squirrel Brain
(US South)
Yes, the brain of the small tree climbing rodent. You cook the head with the rest of the body (after cleaning of course), then, using your fingers and a fork, you crack the skull open and dig the brain out. Tastes kind of like mushrooms to me.

Salo
(Ukraine)
Salo is pig fat stored in vats and eaten cold, either raw, smoked, fried or boiled. I guess you could compare it to fatback. It's a delicacy over there. Making fun of the invasion of Snickers bars since the fall of the USSR, the Ukrainians jokingly call chocolate-covered salo "Ukrainian Snickers." Worse yet, some enterprising (?) Ukrainian somewhere decided to actually market the stuff! (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3825221.stm)

There’s nine more categories of weird food that I’ll share in the coming months that will either delight or disgust you! Stray tuned.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Millions of Americans act like zombies every night…

                          Sleep walking.

This, finally, may explain our cultural obsession with zombies: Long after dark, millions of Americans basically become one.Without warning, they suddenly rise from their silent, supine states then roam aimlessly, eyes open and mouths sputtering gibberish.

About 8.5 million U.S. adults -- or 3.6 percent of the grownup population -- have taken at least one sleepwalking jaunt during the past year, according to research released today by the Stanford University School of Medicine.

By the way, did you know, when birds fly, they can sleep with one half of their brain, while the other half is analyzing the flight? That’s why you see birds going for thousand of miles without any problem. They sleep when they fly…or sleep on the fly…just depends on how you look at it.