I don’t have much interest in the British royal family, but I do love a good corgi, so I can get on board with a parade of corgis in honor of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Seafood Is Expensive ∞
Also, koi remain overpriced.
Friday, September 1st, 2023
Over in England, at the Grosvenor Pulford Hotel, one hungry otter has managed to eat $125,000 worth of koi.
Mr Nelson said it was “definitely a surprise to find that an otter was the culprit for our huge loss of fish”.
It would not a surprise long-time readers of this site. At this point, koi ponds are basically just otter buffets.
A Wild Hair
“Do you, Sir? Well, for sure!”
Thursday, August 31st, 2023
Reader, I groom my eyebrows. A quiet ritual I have: a trimmer and I are alone present. Well, that and the constant fear of Mona Lisa-ing myself.1
You see, every few months, I notice that a couple of stray eyebrow hairs have grown longer than the rest. At that point, in the hopes of avoiding looking too much like a mad scientist, I trim those rogues down. Naturally, each and every time I undertake this task, I contemplate what would happen if I slipped. It would not be a pretty sight.
Fortunately, I have had no major shaving mishaps thus far in my life. However, in the distant past, I did once find myself with a different problem. At a time when I was more trusting and perhaps less vigilant, an evil eyebrow hair managed to grow to truly monstrous size before I finally noticed it. When at last I did see this mutant hair, it was necessary to pluck it completely from my head. It simply could not be permitted to continue residing there, lest it take over my entire face.
So with a pair of tweezers and a sharp “Ow!”, I brought the beast low. After that, I placed its corpse in a tiny, fancy box. As one does.
Perhaps that hair doesn’t look so humongous, nestled as it is in white gauze, but I assure you it was massive. In order to establish a proper record, I eventually used some hair gel to straighten it out on a sheet of paper to take proper measurements. Again, as one does.
The fiend had a length of nearly 3.5 centimeters. Yes, it was well over an inch and a quarter long, and that’s ridiculous! I don’t know how it evaded my defenses. Did it slip past those sporadic visual scans by laying low, in preparation for some sort of strike? Or perhaps it sprouted overnight. If asparagus can grow two inches in a day2, why not this sinister strand?
Having defeated the demon, I now wished to show it off as a hunting trophy of sorts. Swiftly, I was off to eBay. A few days later, I was able to properly show off my catch:
I think you’ll have to agree that at a mere $5.14 shipped directly to my door, this “LEGO Town Minifig Fisherman Green Vest & Pole” was worth every penny.
Footnotes:
If you’ve never noticed, have a look, that gal’s eyebrows are gone. Thought it’s sometimes claimed this was a reflection of the beauty standards of the Renaissance, the painting apparently did originally have eyebrows. It now seems they may have been a victim of time and overcleaning. ↩︎
Can Fat Do That? ∞
Or more likely, are the machines just not very good?
Wednesday, August 30th, 2023
A few years back, Major League Baseball mandated that all stadiums have metal detectors to prevent attendees from bringing in weapons. After a recent shooting at a Chicago White Sox game, their effectiveness must surely come into question. It would seem they might need some work.
On Tuesday, ESPN Chicago reporter Peggy Kusinski said that the gun was snuck into the stadium by one of the women who was hit. The shooting was “an accidental discharge” by the woman whose injury was previously identified as “a graze wound.”
“She reportedly snuck the gun in past metal detectors hiding it in the folds of her belly fat,” Kusinski said in a post on X.
On the one hand, that might seem difficult to believe. On the other hand, I attended a baseball game just last night where I was instructed to keep my keys and full-of-metal cell phone in my pocket as I went through the clearly-not-very-sensitive metal detector.
Update (September 5, 2023): When I wrote about this, I made it a particular point to not convey anything here as established fact. Over a week later, there’s still a lack of clarity. One of the women involved denies bringing in a gun, and police have merely said they’re still investigating:
Chicago police earlier Tuesday issued a statement saying the claim that a woman had brought in a gun and suffered a self-inflicted wound was “not released or confirmed by the Chicago Police Department.” Police said the investigation was “still active and ongoing.”
Meanwhile, White Sox sources believe the shots came from outside the park, but of course they’re incentivized to think that.
Hopefully the mystery will be solved eventually.
Close to 100, Without Going Over ∞
For the record, however, Price is Right rules for general guessing/estimating are terrible and should not be used.
Monday, August 28th, 2023
Bob Barker almost made it to 100. He died this past weekend, just a few months shy of becoming a centenarian. In addition to being the host of beloved sick day classic “The Price Is Right”, Barker had a tremendous cameo in Adam Sandler’s “Happy Gilmore”. The Washington Post has a great piece on how that ridiculousness came to be.
When [Ed] McMahon’s manager said he was too busy, Sandler and Herlihy homed in on Barker, although they doubted they could persuade him to participate, Sandler said in an interview with entertainment news site Collider. Still, they pitched the idea to him.
What they didn’t know is that Barker’s next door neighbor was Chuck Norris, who had been teaching Barker how to fight, Sandler and Herlihy said in 2021 on the podcast “That Scene with Dan Patrick.” Fed up with losing to Norris, Barker was eager to do the fight scene but had one condition: He had to win.
He did indeed win, and so did the world.
Turning on the Pressure ∞
Hopefully the spigot of creativity isn’t clogged.
Friday, August 25th, 2023
Does it matter where one writes? Around the country, house museums related to famous writers are selling authors the ability to write in the same place as literary greats.
That [$300] rental fee is part of Arrowhead’s new program called Musing With Melville. If someone wants two hours, the museum charges $500, marketing it as an experience that “is sure to jumpstart your creative endeavor.”
…
Arrowhead is not the first historic house museum to do this.
Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West Florida charges $1,500 for two people to spend a few hours in the house, gardens and writing studio, after a tour. Mark Twain’s house in Hartford charges $50 to spend three hours in Twain’s library with other writers.
The Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst rents out the poet’s bedroom where she wrote. Brooke Steinhauser, the museum’s program director started the Studio Sessions, which also costs $300 for one hour.
It’s nice that these museums have found a way to keep their doors open. However, I can’t stop laughing at the idea of someone paying hundreds of dollars to work in such illustrious digs, only to find themselves completely and utterly blocked.
What An Incredible Concidence ∞
“I’m shocked, shocked! Well, not that shocked.”
Thursday, August 24th, 2023
In news that is not-at-all surprising, yet still shocking, it seems Yevgeny Prigozhin has died in a plane crash. This is much more comprehensible to me than last month’s meeting, or the original aborted mutiny in June. Prigozhin was surely on extremely borrowed time since that aggression, and now the clock has apparently run out. That’s almost certainly due to the machinations of Vladimir Putin, who just eulogized Prigozhin:
Vladimir Putin has said that the Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had a “complicated fate” in his first remarks about the plane crash said to have killed him.
That’s quite a phrase from the man who surely ordered his death.
Yuck To This Rejection
I have contempt for this decision.
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023
In 2022, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles approved approximately 15,000 vanity license plates, but rejected 897. Axios has a look at a few. The reasons for rejection for some are obvious, but I would fight against this:
YUCK
The RMV says the word “yuck” could be considered “an expression of contempt, ridicule, or superiority of a race, religion, deity, ethnic heritage, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or political affiliation.”
The RMV is off the mark on this one. I say “Yuck” is a simple state of mind, and a reasonable reaction to much of the world. It may not be upbeat, but it’s not offensive, and the idea that it relates to race, religion, or anything else, is an enormous and foolish reach.
Alas, a new law in Massachusetts will apparently now prevent rejected plates from being released. Thankfully, there are other states in the union, such as California, that are willing to tell us about the vanity license plates they reject.
White Noise Podcasts ∞
This is probably a very poor platform for ads.
Tuesday, August 22nd, 2023
Back in 2014, a band called Vulfpack earned $20,000 with silence. In 2018, a random Bulgarian playlist might have scammed Spotify for millions. Now, “white noise podcasts” are apparently the hot new Spotify moneymaker.
The worst part of this story, however, is this correction:
Correction August 18th 10:25AM ET: An earlier version of this story said white noise podcasters could make $18,000 per year. It’s actually $18,000 per month. We regret the error.
$18,000 a year would be a nice little side hustle. $18,000 a month is a heck of a nice job if you can get it.
