Failbook

I do not subscribe to the Facebook phenomenon, BUT if you haven't visited failbooking.com, you are truly missing out.

14 out of 14 found this review helpful

...almost as cool as this.

PS. Got the image from todaysbigthing.

No Corkscrew? No Problem!

We Survived Snowpacalypse 2010!

Can’t tell yet whether I prefer Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon.

Anyway, the worst of it is over. Or so I’m told. I’m also told that there is a 30% chance of “Few Snow Showers” on Monday. Of course, if this weather report is anything like the last few, by Saturday, there will be a “90% chance of flurries” and by Sunday, “170% of wintry parfait by the crapload.”

Surprisingly, the reports were correct to suggest we “expect the worst.” I get a tingly, “Boy Who Cried Wolf” feeling every time there are reports of snow. Fact is, two inches of snow is enough to cause widespread panic around here. Mobs of people pack the supermarkets and wipeout the sausage section. Seriously, sausage is the first thing to go. Frozen pizza is second. Beer, third. Displays of water and canned goods are really only there to control the flow of traffic.


To be fair though, the drivers here are awful, so two inches of snow really should cause some panic. It doesn’t matter if there’s more than a foot of snow and that 40 mph winds drop visibility to less than 20 feet, the folks around here refuse to drive slower than 45 mph on the local roads, 60 on the highway. And if the snow is causing your pickup truck to fishtail through the Target parking lot? The only answer is to gun it. Swerve, stagger, and weave, but as long as the gas pedal is all the way down, you’ll get there eventually.

Despite growing up in Connecticut, at the top of a steep hill/mountain, I can’t say I know much about the appropriate use of salt and sand in conditions like this. But I will say, plowing a day later, after all the snow has already been packed down by drivers who really need to get to IKEA right now, and then tossing a little salt on top is not the answer. There is brown/gray slush everywhere. So now, not only isn’t it safe to drive, but we can’t walk outside without waders.

Luckily though, severe weather advisories and over-turned tractor trailers aren’t enough to stop the local pizza delivery guys. Even in life-threatening conditions, there are still a few for whom a $2 tip is a king’s ransom - thank goodness for the current economy!

Clearly have nothing to write about

Don't Feel Like Posting

There are things I could write about... but I don't feel like it. And I'm sure you don't want to read another post about how much I love running. So, this:

Video Slam

Couldn't help sharing some of these Best of 2009 videos:

See more videos at Today's Big Thing.

Today's Word of the Day

Voracious
vo⋅ra⋅cious
  /vɔˈreɪʃəs, voʊ-, və-/ [vaw-rey-shuhs, voh-, vuh-]

–adjective

1.	craving or consuming large quantities of food: a voracious appetite.

2.	exceedingly eager or avid: voracious readers; a voracious collector.

---

Origin:
1625–35; voraci(ty) + -ous

Related forms:

vo⋅ra⋅cious⋅ly, adverb

vo⋅ra⋅cious⋅ness, noun

Synonyms:
1. See ravenous. 2. rapacious, insatiable.

Commentary:
Technically, it's not onomatopoeic, but it kind of sounds like what it means doesn't it? Like, a velociraptor would have voraciousness, but a baby bunny would not. There's a ferociousness to it. Which is why it makes perfect sense that someone could be a voracious eater. I'm a little curious though about how someone can be a voracious reader. That doesn't sound very ferocious. Can someone be a voracious knitter? I suppose if he/she were eager or avid enough. I'll tell you right now, I would not want to meet a voracious knitter.

(definition copied from dictionary.com)

How do you know you're a runner?

I mean, a runner. Like, part of the running community. All dedicated and whatnot.

You run four miles on New Year's Eve, at night, in a cold rain, with 1,500 other lunatics.

Karate Kid Trailer

See more funny videos and Entertainment Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Where's the Old Man?

Driving South in December

Driving south along the Eastern seaboard as I type this. It's not quite wintertime, but all the leaves have fallen and there all these naked trees along the roadside. And each one is surrounded in fog. And within the fog bounces around the highway lights. The clinical, almost impossibly white street lights.

I am totally mesmerized. ...Which probably speaks to the fact that I had a few glasses of wine five hours ago. But anyway, I keep staring at these skeletons clawing upward, and I can't help but feel some strange sense of humanity.

Is that weird?

Surprise Kitty

I know I said I was going to spend more time writing, and less time posting stuff from other websites, but I thought I'd post this one from CollegeHumor.com.

Pushing Through

We've been running a lot lately. I'm really enjoying it. I don't know what it is about this "sport" I used to hate that recently turns me on so much, but I really look forward to the next time I can go out for a few miles.

As such, I've been spending quite a bit of time on Runner's World's website. And while I do read the sneaker reviews, the editors' blogs, and the various articles on nutrition, I spend a lot of time reading about injury treatment and injury prevention. I'm 30 years old now. My body isn't quite resilient as it used to be.

After our half marathon, our knees ached for days; Onaona's more than mine. I'm not gloating. It was only two weeks before that I had to stop our workout early, because it felt like my kneecap was about to explode. And that brings me to my point.

Runner's World (and every medical website I visited) explained that our pain was common to runners (hence the name, Runner's Knee), and that the best thing to do was to let it rest for a week or two.

"Two weeks?! We're training for a half marathon. I'm giving my knee two days, tops!"

And I think that was the right thing to do.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should ignore the things our body tells us. When something hurts, it hurts for a reason. I am however saying, a little pain teaches us to do things better. I've learned to run more softly. To take corners a little easier. Instead of using long, extended strides, I'm using shorter, quicker strides.


It was easy to learn to do these things too. In fact, it was really easy. Because it hurt every time I tried to go back to the way I had been running. I had a little reminder in the shape of a sharp, stabbing pain every time I took a corner too fast, or strode too far. (Strode is a funny word.)

So, I just wanted to make the point. A lot of pain is too much. Stop what you're doing, and figure it out. A little pain though, can be just the right motivator. It can teach us to be a little more efficient. If with every little twinge we stop for two weeks, we'll never get anywhere. And in the end, we'll probably only have to stop again, because we never learned what was wrong in the first place.

So, uhhh...

So, obviously it's been a while since I've posted anything. The thing is, I have pictures and videos that I could post, but to be perfectly frank, I'm kind of tired of posting other people's stuff, you know?

I've been feeling kind of pathetic that I can't seem to come up with anything original anymore.

I seek and search for the natural stories that come up in daily life, and everyday realize I just don't have those stories anymore. I don't have a life.

Okay, that's not true. Maybe I'm just not appreciating life's events the way I have in the past.

So anyway, I'm not going to stop posting other people's pictures and videos. But just so you know, the blog is going to be rededicated to original material. Thoughts. Dumb and clever.

And so the transition for you is an easy one, here's something I found one night on the interwebs:

A Feeling of (Someone Else's) Nostalgia

I don't know, but I thought this website was kind of cool. The reason "I don't know" is because the site isn't particularly crazy. It's not particularly interesting. Or particularly anything. The pictures are a kind of themeless hodge podge. But you can tell each one of them is important to someone.

Anyway, the pictures below are from My Parents Were Awesome.




Or maybe I've just been watching too much Mad Men.

Magic Trick

To be honest, I sort of hate these magic tricks, because there's no slight of hand or misdirection. But hey, it's still fun.

Yahoo! Video

Master of All Viral Videos

Actually, no, I haven't seen all of the videos included in this compilation, but I've seen a darned good few of them and it was nice to see them again.

All the Single Babies

Caught this one on Today's Big Thing:

Another Message Brought to You By...

Got this one from http://kanyegate.tumblr.com/

Be Healed!

Another lolcat from icanhascheezburger.com:

Facebook Mom

When I was in high school, I answered the phone one time to a girl saying, "Hi Daddy!" To which I replied, "Ummm, I think you have the wrong number." To which she said, "Daddy, stop, can I speak to Mom?" And that's when I hung up. I felt bad, but I figured it would probably ease her embarrassment if we just ended the conversation sooner than later.

Anyway, I thought of that story tonight while I was on College Humor. These images had been posted (click to enlarge):

A Classic, Revisited

The Effect of the Fairer Sex on a Young Boy

What it Feels Like to be Big Bird

Something I found at HowStuffWorks.com:

Animals with Casts

Just got word of a relatively new website called, animalswithcasts. Here are a few pictures, but go to the website to see plenty more.

Super Trooper

Got this image from Today's Big Thing, which, naturally, got the image from somewhere else.

The Lion King (based on a true story)

Just a Reminder

Awkard Family Photos is still awesome.

I Love This Guy!

But at the same time, I can't believe he has his own show. You see, he's crazy.

Colin Ferguson on "Why Everything Sucks."

Got this one from the live feed.

Adults Only(?)

I'm a sucker for a good ukulele song. This one's a promo for a film that apparently came out last year, Bart's Got a Room. It's another 'high school loser tries to score on prom night' movie.

Another one from todaysbigthing.com

Seriously?!

This is what you spend your day doing? How much did you have to rehearse for this? I mean, it's cool, but, seriously?

Found another one at todaysbigthing.com

This is the Marathon I Want to Run! (Someday)

The Richmond Marathon, in Virginia, is called "the Friendliest Marathon in America." It's known for being a little more welcoming than the Boston or New York Marathons and is especially famous for its junk food stations, live bands, and great scenery. Apparently, near the end of the race, a local bar hands out beer in little runners' cups. Sounds pretty cool right? If only I could get over these damned shin splits.

I'm tired.

Get Ready!

Driving Tired is as Bad as Driving Drunk

Found this one at todaysbigthing.com

Something I Read Somewhere

I read this in Express (the free commuter newspaper handed out at train station entrances) this morning:

A San Diego judge has ordered the seals out of the pool. The judge on Monday gave the city 72 hours to begin getting rid of harbor seals that have invaded an artificial cove at La Jolla Beach called the Children's Pool or face heavy fines. City officials say they plan this week to scare off the seals by broadcasting barking dog sounds. The plan could cost the city $700,000.

My first reaction: What!? It costs $700,000 to play a CD with dog sounds on it?

My second reaction: In what way is a judge qualified to place a strict time limit on the removal of wild animals that weigh 300 pounds?

Information Superhighway

No one really uses that term in 2009. I guess the Internet is too ubiquitous; it's not "Super" anymore. In the shower this morning, I was remembering a time when our principal, during his morning announcements used it in an analogy describing how fast-paced and exciting high school is. Except, he said, "Super Information Highway," and some of us laughed. To be clear, a few of the nerds laughed. It was 1995, and not too many of us knew what the Information Superhighway was.

At the time though, Prodigy and Compuserve were already starting to lose ground to America Online and Netscape was duking it out with Internet Explorer. It seemed like every night there was a news report about the "World Wide Web" and the "Information Superhighway." And a particular hysteria about how, "Pornographic images are now available to anyone with a computer and a phone line!" In retrospect, that hysteria was probably the best advertising the Internet could have gotten. While some people were avoiding the "Interwebs" and all its perverts, everyone else was buying modems specifically to look for low resolution photos of women in bikinis one tiny image at a time. "If your modem downloads at 14.4 kbps, this will take approximately 10 min., at 28.8 kbps, this will take aproximately 5 min."

And that's how it was, really slow and with limited content. I largely used the World Wide Web to look up sports scores I could have otherwise gotten from ESPN, and more than anything else, to feel cool. This certainly wasn't the "wave of the future" everyone was talking about, it was just too slow. But it was exclusive. Among other things, you needed to have a computer, a modem, a second phone line, and the willingness to pay $20 per month to an Internet Service Provider so you could download things really slowly. I cannot emphasize enough how damn slow the Internet was.

Anyway, it was 1995 and the principal had said, "Super Information Highway." Four of us looked at each other and laughed our asses off. Maybe another half a dozen had heard about the World Wide Web on the news, but couldn't care less. The rest just thought the principal talking out of his butt again, something he was prone to do.

I was thinking though, if it had been 1990 and he said that, nobody would have known what he was talking about at all. It would have just been some random jumble of words, "You're a sophomore, riding the Super Information Highway!" barely relatable to our high school lives.

I wasn't in high school in 2000, but I'm going to imagine that a lot more students would have laughed. By 2000, content was finally starting to come around and more people were getting their first taste of high-speed Internet. Moreover still, there weren't any laws preventing the distribution of MP3s yet, so Napster was king.

And in 2009, "Super Information Highway," would probably garner a laugh from the same four nerds. But only because the nerds would be the only ones who had heard this archaic phrase. Everyone else would be too busy texting, or watching YouTube videos on their iPhones to even notice anything was said at all.

Just a thought.

Too Tired to Post

I led a little wine-tasting class last night that I had been preparing for for a week. It was a success, but I'm way too tired to post. So, I'll just leave you with this.

POW!

Don't Judge My Hair

Found these this morning on a relatively new website. See the rest at dontjudgemyhair.com.

Origami + Math = Cool Origami

Strange right? Usually when you add math to things, they become less cool, but anyway...

Got this off an interesting website called ted.com, which provides video of, "riveting talks by remarkable people." Basically, in the video below, this guy (Robert Lang) explains how certain scientific problems are solved by mathematically-enhanced origami techniques. Naturally though, the heart stent and the 100-meter telescopic lens isn't half as cool as the origami moose and fish.

Take a quick look. It's a 15-minute video, but if you can't be bothered with the whole lecture, watch the first minute or two and then skip ahead to 4:00, and then to 8:40.

Binocular Soccer

I don't even know what to make of this.

(from Pictureisunrelated.com)

Go

So, we've been running lately. You know that. And I'm having a great time. Lost 6 pounds. Net. Which, of course means I've probably lost 11 lbs of fat and gained 5 lbs of muscle.

So what I'm wondering is, why haven't I been able to do this before? And why has it always been that when I exercise, I can never exercise more than say, 3 months at a time?

Unfortunately, I can't answer that.

But I'll say two things. One, it's been helpful to have someone to exercise with. Someone I'm not embarrassed to exercise with. Someone I can talk about "exercise" with. And two, I'm realizing now that it gets infinitely easier once I've achieved something. Once I'm impressed with myself. Now that I'm saying, "Holy crap, I can't believe I can run 5 miles (without throwing up)," I want to run 7 miles. And even though I was miserable "training" for that 5K we ran a month ago, after I had actually completed it, all I could think about was going out again the next day.

So maybe that's the secret. Find a way to impress yourself. Feel like you've kicked some ass. And keep finding new ways to kick some ass. (Start with a small ass though, and work your way up.)

Maybe that's it.



PS. For the record, I'm finding that to be a "runner," you don't really have to run that hard. For more than enough people, the goal is just to finish. Run for 30 minutes, who cares the distance. Run 3 miles, who cares the pace. In fact, if you can't talk comfortably while you're running, you might very well be running too hard. So bring a friend. And talk. And go.

Vegans

Grabbed this one off the Chive.

The Neverending Story

I can't figure out why anyone's surprised. They couldn't have been more explicit from the very beginning. The story is neverending. It's right there in the title. Anyway, there are rumors that the Neverending Story is going to be remade. From what I understand, it's intended to be a modernized version of the original, including some sections of the book that were skipped.

Let's just hope this one is better than Neverending Story 3 (a young boy must restore order when a group of bullies steal the magical book that acts as a portal between Earth and the imaginary world of Fantasia). One of Jack Black's finest films to date.

Vandalism: Sometimes It's Funny

Blog Theft!

Now that I don't have Grandma around to inspire stories and humorous anecdotes, I realize, I don't actually have much to say. Spindles and Spices actually has quite a few things to say, but I particularly enjoy one.

International Cat Hats!

"Cats with International Hats" would actually be more literal (since the hats are international, but the cats probably aren't), but hey, it just doesn't have that zing. Anyway, it's what happens when you cross knitting and cats. Here's a sample:


And here's the rest.

The Economy is Affecting Everyone

I found this here.

Obesity

It’s been a while since I’ve actually contributed to my own blog (I usually just steal other people's stuff), so I thought maybe I would write something. That was two months ago. I haven’t had much to say in that time.


Anyway, I was having a conversation with a couple of my work buddies the other day. We were talking about exercise and food and health in general. One of the things that came up was the percentage of Americans who are obese. Paul said something to the effect of, “Aren’t 50% of Americans obese or something?” I felt like I had heard that too, “Something like that."

After clicking around on the Internet tonight, I found some websites with figures as low as 25% and one as high as 60%(!). The website that said 60% was clearly failing to distinguish between overweight and obese. But a majority of websites stated 60-65% are overweight and about half of those (30-34% of Americans) are obese. For some reason, that sounded about right to me.

But after thinking about it a little, why does that sound right? I recognize that there are certain communities where there is a higher percentage of obese people than others. But I can’t imagine 1 out of every 3 Americans is obese. I mean, we’re not talking about a little overweight. We’re talking about “excessively overweight,” says Princeton University’s online dictionary. “A medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health,” says Wikipedia.

And that just doesn’t sound right. What began to bother me was how vague the definitions of “obese” were. Very subjective to say the least. “Excessively overweight”? Over what weight?

Well, upon more research, it’s not as subjective as I originally thought. According to Wikipedia, obesity is defined by BMI (body mass index), which is a number determined using a simple formula (your metric weight divided by the square of your metric height). Theoretically, BMI is an indicator of body fat percentage, said to be accurate within 4%. Once you’ve calculated your BMI, you only need to determine your placement on the following table. Simple and scientific.

BMI
less than 18.5 = underweight
18.5–24.9 = normal weight
25.0–29.9 = overweight
30.0–34.9 = class I obesity
35.0–39.9 = class II obesity
greater than 40.0 = class III obesity

Except, not really. First of all, it’s accurate within 4% (which is a scientifically unclear statement by the way). I’ll assume that the statement means plus or minus (+/-) 4%, which is what that statement usually means rather than +/- 2%, which is what that statement actually says. So even if my BMI is 22 (normal weight), I could actually be underweight (22-4=18), or I could actually be overweight (22+4=26). And that’s just stupid. And unhelpful. Moreover, the Index is also known to be inaccurate for people of certain body types, like pregnant women and bodybuilders. But where do you draw the line between bodybuilder and casual weightlifter (there's probably a pretty clear line between pregnant and not pregnant)? And if that’s not enough, some studies have shown that high BMI can have a more negative effect on Asians. So Japan sets the obesity bar at 25 BMI. China sets it at 28. And doesn't this sound a little arbitrary and subjective?

Anyway, I just wanted to say I have my doubts that one-third of all Americans are obese, at least not by a definition acceptable to most individuals. And as a whole, I think a lot of what we hear on a daily basis about health is hooey (more on that in another post).

By the way, the whole reason I decided to write this was because Onaona and I have been running a lot and I thought it would be interesting to buy a scale to see what effect the sudden influx of exercise might do. It’s one of those new scales, so in addition to weight, it measures body fat percentage using BMI (according to the manual). I guess it figures out my BMI and then converts that number into body fat percentage. Turns out, I have 20.4% body fat, which according to bodybuildingsecrets.com and the International Sports Sciences Association makes me obese. I decided it was time to investigate.

Saved by the Bell Reunion

Apparently, Jimmy Fallon has been pushing for a Saved by the Bell reunion on his show. As such, he recently interviewed Zack Morris. Not Mark Paul Gosselaar. Zack Morris. Here's the clip.



From what I understand, Tiffany Amber Thiessen and Dustin Diamond are the only ones who haven't signed on yet.