Am I deserving of pity?

My goodness.  I saw this linked from Rich Watson’s blog, and I don’t know quite what to say.  I’ll merely present the link:  Mr. T Versus

Would one be foolish not to read the series?

Posted by seaking on 04-02-2008 at 10:04 pm
Posted in Surreal, Humor, Comics with 1 Comment

Greaser Fruit

I didn’t pay much attention to the sticker when I bought the melon - only enough to type in the PLU# at the self-scan checkout.  After I got it home, though, I was surprised to discover a reference to The Outsiders on my honeydew:

Nothing gold can stay, of course, and the melon is no exception - we’ll eat the whole thing within a week.

Posted by seaking on 10-13-2007 at 10:10 pm
Posted in Surreal, Food with 0 Comments

Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein

I find it hard to improve on that headline.

It sounds like the plot of a goofy comedy movie from the ’60’s, but it is apparently true.

The story can be found here.

I especially love the part about nobody noticing.

Posted by seaking on 03-02-2007 at 09:03 pm
Posted in Surreal, Links, Humor with 1 Comment

Truth in Spam?

This morning I received a spam message, which is not so unusual - I get at least a few per day. This one came from a typically nonsensical e-mail address. What was surprising (but perhaps refreshing) was the name associated with the address:

From: slime < xghuhirx@spbnit.ru >

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Posted by seaking on 01-29-2007 at 10:01 pm
Posted in Surreal with 0 Comments

Don’t Eat at Marge’s Kitchen

I don’t normally write restaurant reviews, but then, this isn’t really a normal review. That is to say, I have nothing to say about the food at Marge’s Kitchen, because I haven’t actually had any.

Here is the story: Marge’s Kitchen is a small breakfast restaurant in Northampton, MA. It’s a short walk from where we live now, and, as we often like going out for brunch, we decided to try it today. The menu is not very extensive, but has most of the breakfast staples, and has very reasonable prices. There are a few unusual items as well, such as the choice of sweet potato home fries in addition to regular potato ones. The place also seems to have a slogan: “The customer is never right.” I found this amusing at first, but apparently it isn’t a joke. More on that later. Click Here to Read More »

Posted by seaking on 11-26-2006 at 10:11 pm
Posted in Surreal, News, Food with 0 Comments

Return of the Indoor Wildlife

So, some number of weeks ago we had heard a scratching sound in some of the kitchen cupboards.  We suspected mice.  Fortunately, this cupboard area did not contain any food.  At one point, a small furry thing was spotted briefly, and the cookbooks in the cupboard then got removed to prevent their being shredded.

Plans were discussed.  Traps were purchased.  Traps did not work - that is, the traps (the live trap kind) were found closed with no rodents in them.  Soon after the setting of these traps, the noise ceased for a couple of weeks.

But then tonight, we heard it again, and opened the cupboard to get a good look at what was creeping around.   It looked too big to be a mouse.  Its head was not pointy enough.  Its tail was not thin and hairless.  In fact, after some googling of images, we discovered that we have a Southern Flying Squirrel lurking in our cupboards!
We have yet to actually snap a picture, or figure out what to do about the thing.  We are finding it bizarre and kind of cool to have such a creature in there, rather than a run-of-the-mill mouse.  Of course, the squirrel probably finds it exceedingly odd that there are people lurking in its ‘tree’.

Posted by seaking on 06-21-2006 at 10:06 pm
Posted in Surreal, News with 0 Comments

My hand is my most famous part

I was looking through the stats for my website today, and was amused to discover a couple of things.

First, one of the referring sites to my site was the blog of a somewhat famous person.

It turned out that, in comments about Mooney going to the midwest to speak, someone remarking on Michigan made a reference to using one’s hand as a map, and linked to this image, which I created a few years ago.

Second, I noticed that, among the top web searches that lead to hits on my site, some of the search phrases for a few months running were variations on “Michigan hand map.”

Third, though this might not be related to that image, for multiple months other referring sites were image searches.

I tried entering “Michigan hand map” on google image search, and I was hit #16. Strangely, if you do just “Michigan hand,” there seem to be more actual hands, but mine isn’t in there. At least, it isn’t in the first 200 hits.

Posted by seaking on 05-14-2006 at 08:05 pm
Posted in Surreal, Meta with 0 Comments

Indoor Wildlife

Our house seems to get quite a variety of critters in it. This is probably partly because it’s a very old house, and because we’re sort of surrounded by woods.

Some of the encounters we’ve had (some fun, some not so fun):

• We had a hornet’s nest in one of the windows, and sprayed it, knocking the nest down and getting rid of it after the hornets had all died. Despite this, we still regularly have a hornet or two show up inside the house. Fortunately, they seem to mainly fly around the windows, trying to get back outside, rather than attacking us.
• We get the usual moths and other bugs at night, many of which get eaten by the cats. One night, though, a large, noisy flying bug was being pursued by the cats, and it turned out, on closer examination, to be a cockroach. Flying cockroaches = very bad where Sean is concerned. I mashed it furiously, and there have luckily been no more.(Update: We saw another of these flying bugs outside one of the windows, and the consensus now is that it was some kind of beetle, and not actually a roach.)
• One morning I came downstairs and saw and heard something dart across the kitchen floor. As I walked into the kitchen, it darted back the other way, and I saw that it was a chipmunk. It darted through a gap between a cabinet and the floor, and was seen no more. It probably decided that it didn’t want to return to the land of much larger animals.
• There are bats living in our attic. We actually welcome them, because they’ll keep the mosquito population down. They have not come into the rest of the house, which is just how we like it.
• I discovered a mouse in the ceiling of one room. They’re not welcome, but this just happened the other day, so we have yet to deal with it.
• Related to the above, on the day after seeing the mouse, I found a strange object on the floor of the same room. It turned out to be a mouse skull! Apparently, mice not only live in the ceiling, but have died there as well…
• Finally, just last night, I walked into the bathroom to discover a toad sitting on the bathtub. No idea how it got in. I grabbed a box and gave it a ride outside.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Mutual of Belchertown’s Wild Kingdom!

Posted by seaking on 08-26-2005 at 09:08 pm
Posted in Surreal with 3 Comments