Fun

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Bwaaak!!

It’s almost September, National Chicken Month. I adore chickens. Put those two facts together, and I have the perfect opportunity to enlighten you with some chicken trivia.

  • Chickens are the most numerous bird species on the planet.
  • Wild chickens are still found in south Asia, where birders know them as Red Jungle Fowl. There is also a feral population in Hawaii and in other spots around the world. If you want to check “Jungle Fowl” off your life list, you must find one of these wild birds.
  • According to Red Bird Farms, the average American eats 80 pounds of chicken every year. (We prefer the skinless, boneless breast, but other cultures prefer dark meat. Much of our domestically produced dark meat is shipped to other countries.)

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Fifth Friday Fotos

It’s the fifth Friday of the month, and the perfect time to take a break. Today, instead of writing a post, I figured I’d let these photographs do the talking. Enjoy!

Karin and I found this house at the beach in Oregon. We hope they don’t walk in their sleep.

Seen in a store window in Johnson Corner, Colorado:

This Erie, Colorado dairy is clearly in trouble:
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Doomsday

According to twice-wrong Harold Camping’s most recent prediction, the world will end on October 21, 2011.

If that isn’t a good day for you, how about October 16? I was recently alerted (by a caring friend who was quite serious about this) to the impending destruction of the earth by a small, nondescript assemblage of ice and dirt that is currently heading for the core of the solar system. That’s right. On October 16, 2011, on its way out to space again, the comet Elenin will pass by Earth at a distance of “only” 21 million miles. (By comparison, Venus is 23.7 million miles away.)

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There’s a Mouse in the House!

 

Eew! What was that horrible smell? Even with chronic congestion associated with my being allergic to nearly everything, I could tell something had died. Following my nose, I wandered downstairs, then into the corner of the basement with the seldom-used utility sink. As I got closer, I realized the deep sink was completely full of dirty water  that lapped at the faucet and threatened to spill over the counter and onto the floor. I hastily ran upstairs to alert my handyman husband.

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Green

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. I’m one-eighth Irish, so it is my right—my duty!—to mark the day with a celebration. I’m not much into green beer (or any other color beer, for that matter), and corned beef and cabbage actually hail from New England, not Ireland. However, having visited the Auld Sod, I can attest that it is very, very green. It is so green that the green grass reflects in the clouds, and they look green! The Blarney Stone (in the castle shown at left) has green algae growing on it (all those kisses add to the slime factor). And green is my favorite color.

Therefore, in honor of St. Pat,  today’s blog is all about things that are green.

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Saving Daylight

Here’s a friendly reminder in case you usually sleep through it—daylight saving time starts this weekend. Yup, it’s time for bags under the eyes, sleepy drivers, and excessive caffeine consumption.

In honor of our lost hour of sleep, I did a little research and came across a now-famous prank at the Museum of Hoaxes website. (If you’re unfamiliar with this site, I highly recommend checking it out!) Maybe it’s a mistake to change our clocks so close to April Fool’s Day.

With a circulation hovering around 1,200 subscribers, The Eldorado (Illinois) Daily Journal is one of the smallest daily newspapers in the United States. However, in 1984 managing editor Bob Ellis managed to play a prank that fooled an awful lot of people.

In an article that was printed on April 1 of that year, a contest was announced to see who could save the most daylight before the clocks were set back again in the fall.

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Battered Birds and Fish Fatalities

In case your New Year’s resolution was to avoid all news media, you should know that as the year turned to 2011, approximately 5,000 dead Red-winged Blackbirds, starlings and grackles fell out of the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. About the same time, around 100,000 young drum fish washed ashore on the banks of the Arkansas River. And on January 4, two million dead juvenile spot fish floated to the surface of Chesapeake Bay.

Of course, once you have a few articles on a topic, many more are sure to follow. Similar events that may have escaped notice a few weeks ago are suddenly headline news:

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Cheap Fun

We sure complain about the high costs of health care, but did you know that the average American spends about the same amount (5.6% of their income) on fun? Yet no one complains about skyrocketing entertainment prices!

That’s right. According to Visual Economics, the average American earns  just over $50,000 per year. Of that,  around $2,800 goes to amuse ourselves. It’s nearly the same as we spend on healthcare (5.9%, almost $3,000) and much more than we give away to charity (3.4%, $1,700).

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Say What?

dord

Among the approximately 200,000 words in the English language (give or take a few), “Dord” is unique.

Oh, it’s in the dictionary, or at least it used to be, right there between Dorcopsis (a genus of small kangaroo) and doré (meaning gold). But it doesn’t mean anything. In fact, it was there by accident. Dord isn’t really a word.

Turns out that for five years, from 1934 through 1939 , Webster’s New International Dictionary mistakenly included dord as a real word, defining it as a noun meaning density.

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