I’ve been watching some import DVDs, and on each one the for home use only warning screen mentions in five different languages where you can’t watch this DVD. One of those places is an oil rig. But there are people who are happy for oil rig bound fans.

Good Lord! A fascinating combination of shopping and snooping, Unclaimed Baggage. Conveniently located in Alabama.

Hilarious and horrible disease name of the day: Leaky Gut.

It’s mentioned in the title of a book on “invisible illnesses” so you know there will be many many hits on anything on the web containing the phrase. Not to cast aspersions on people with imaginary, erm, invisible illnesses. I’m sorry your gut leaks, but please ask a medical or information professional to help you find reliable information.

I’m going to regret putting this entry up, I know it.

PS Tuesday’s animal of the day: Sugar Gliders.

Couldn’t afford an MIT education? Couldn’t get in? No problem; now you can learn, MIT-style in the comfort of your own home. You don’t get the paper to hang on your wall (nor, according to their site, do you get “an MIT education”), but it’s about the learning, right?

McSweeney’s seems like it’s put together by the kind of people I’d like to hang out with. Or maybe I’d hate them. They publish a variety of stuff, from open letters to obscure poetry forms to lists, some of which are interesting, and/or amusing. Some of it is written by people you may have heard of.

From today’s OED Word of the Day:

knitting, vbl. n. […]

c. A girl or girls. slang.

1943 C. H. WARD-JACKSON Piece of Cake 39 Knitting, girl or girls. 1946 J. IRVING Royal Navalese 104 Knitting, girls in the plural. The singular of this is ‘A Piece of Knitting’. 1962 GRANVILLE Dict. Sailors’ Slang 68/2 Knitting, girl friend or girls collectively.

The rest of this entry is left as an exercise for the reader.

The tone of this story about aging and humor is very optimistic, but it has me wondering what sorts of crossword puzzle-analogs I have to do so that I’ll still find funny when I’m older the things I find funny now. I’d hate to turn 70 and suddenly be nonplussed by “You know what my favorite TV show is? Xena, Warrior Princess. They should just call it The Patton Oswalt Masturbation Hour. Big moon faced amazon with a stick, beating people up — what god did I please?”
Or, even worse, develop a fondness for the 3 Stooges.

Despite my nearly pathological avoidance of advertising, I was pleased to see Bob Garfield’s Ad Review. You don’t even have to watch the ads there, if you don’t want to; you can simply enjoy his criticism of them. My favorite review so far: Hummer, the Truck for Jerks. And why is Bob Garfield’s name so familar? I’m imagining he must be the guy NPR interviews after every Super Bowl to talk about the latest crop of stuff.

A librarian with a job on the side (are you surprised? Combine municipal employment and a female-dominated profession and you won’t be.) as a dominatrix apparently makes for a hilarious news item. My favorite comment: “Shahan, who worked for 25 years at the Western Washington University Library, took the Concrete job without telling the Upper Skagit Library District’s board of directors about her unusual predilections.” OK, which do you think would be more likely to keep you out of a job: being into leather or bringing it up in your interview?

Also, I have the sneaking suspicion that part of the hilarity is the idea that a librarian might have an interesting home life. Who’d a thunk it????

From the New York Times, October 29, 1852:
“A piece of romantic rascality lately transpired at Taylor’s Springs, Lauderdale County, Ala. About a year ago, a man calling himself Anderson, a gay and elegant Lothario in appearance and manners, located there as a school-teacher, and soon married a young lady of respectable family. Not long since, however, a gentleman and lady, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, visited the place, and recognized in the handsome teacher and happy bridegroom, a man named Henderson, who had a wife and three children living at Baton Rouge. The intellectual and fascinating bigamist, that night, stole a neighbor’s horse, and sloped to parts unknown.”

All commas are from the original.