As I promised in an earlier post, it’s time for another installment of really weird facts and assorted nonsense. I’m going to try to supply everyone with this kind of thing each week because there’s absolutely no end to the amount of weird and useless facts available out there. It’s my job job to find them and share them with you whether you like or or not. Lets get this ball rolling.
A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
A silicon chip a quarter of an inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
Snails can have about 25,000 teeth.
About 70% of all living organisms in the world are bacteria.
A ten gallon hat holds 3/4 of a gallon.
A whale’s heart beats only nine times a minute.
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.
Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep him cool. He changed it every two innings.
The longest one syllable word in the English language is screeched.
Well there’s your weekly installment of weird facts. I barely scratched the surface of what I have stored away for future posts. I hope you find them as interesting as I do. Enjoy your day.
I am the poster boy for clumsy. I love winter and I love the snow but I just can’t seem to walk all that well on it or even near it. Winter is right around the corner and I’ve been trying to get myself mentally prepared for what’s coming. Every year before the snow starts to fly I try to determine exactly when I will fall and what damage I’ll might do to myself. It isn’t a matter of when but how often.
As a kid growing up my friends and I spent a great deal of time in the woods exploring. Even then it was the joke amongst the group as to when I would fall and hurt myself. Everyone thought it was funny and for years I fulfilled my role as the group clutz. I thought it was funny too but only because I hoped at some point it would end, you know, after I got all grown up. Must have been a figment of my imagination.
Let’s spring forward to my college years. I attended Edinboro College in Pennsylvania which just happens to be located in one of the Great Lakes worst snow belts. I couldn’t catch a break, I was on my back a lot in those days and not in a good way.
I then enlisted in the Army in the sixties and ended up in the northern section of South Korea with howling Siberian winds and snow up in my butt. Again, guard duty became quite the adventure as I attempted to remain totally silent while sliding down an icy hill on my back in the middle of the night. I have a scar or two that are constant reminders of those fun days.
Then came the 1970’s. I was enroute home from a job in a really nasty ice storm. I stopped to clean my windows and to take a much needed whiz. I lost my footing while whizzing and slid approximately fifty yards down an icy hill ending up under a nearby parked car. I couldn’t walk for more than a week and spent Super Bowl Sunday propped up in a chair so I can watch the game. I think the Steelers won but I can’t be sure, but those pain pills were the best.
I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. I’ve had a few falls in the ensuing years like breaking a leg and then two years later breaking an arm. Once the snow begins to fly I can guarantee you at least two or three more falls as I wrestle with my snow blower in the driveway. Those kind of things are minor and don’t even bother me anymore. I really hope your winter goes better than the one I’m anticipating.
As we’re all aware this last year-and-a-half with the pandemic has changed many things, some for the better and some for the worse. Since the onset of the pandemic I’ve noticed a disturbing trend with female drivers in the area and I’m assuming that it’s pretty much the same all across the country. I’ve mentioned in past posts that common courtesy is one of the victims of the pandemic and I need to take that one step further. It seems that many female drivers have taken to “flipping the bird” with a vengeance. I’ve seen teenage girls, old ladies, soccer moms, and just about everyone else getting with the program. Needless to say it sparked my curiosity which then required a little research into my archives about the practices of “throwing the finger” and here’s what I found.
SOME HISTORY OF THE BIRD
Tossing the bird has been a tradition with us men that has been passed down through the ages from grandfathers to fathers and then to their sons. Guys have been throwing the finger for a variety of reasons for as long as I can remember. We owned this gesture until the feminists arrived. Now the ladies have every right to be as obnoxious as we’ve been and believe me their certainly doing it with panache and gusto.
Thrusting up a middle finger or “flipping the bird” is one of the more familiar hand gestures across this country. Its popularity is also worldwide and has been around for a very long time in a number of European countries. No one is sure how it originated but we all know that the Romans used it at the time of Christ.
Just as there are many gestures in the world to convey one’s negative feelings about another, there are also regional differences to show approval. Men around the world have several gestures to imply that a woman is pretty. In the United States, men lift their eyebrows, in the Arab world a man grabs his beard, while in Greece he would stroke his cheek. In Italy, a man sticks his finger into his cheek and rotates it, Frenchmen kiss their fingertips, and Brazilians will pretend to hold up a telescope to their eye.
Obviously, almost any gesture can have meaning, either positive or negative, somewhere in the world. So the next time you travel abroad, be careful how you gesture with your hands. You might unwittingly attract unwanted attention from the natives, especially in the Middle East. They seem to look for any spoken word or gesture by a non-Arab as a reason to throw you into prison for a chat or to just execute you.
In my attempt to be fair I’ve also seen a few men with some unfortunate habits. While I myself would never today do something so crude. In my youth I may have lost control a few thousand times. I deeply regret those times when I “birded” nice old ladies or a few hundred clergymen. It really is nice to see that the female of the species now has the capability and the mindset to throw the bird to damn near anybody for damn near any reason. “I Am Woman” hear me roar.
And thanks to whoever placed that Ryan Gosling GIF on the net. It made my day.
All those years ago when I started this blog I had difficulty deciding on the proper name for it. After weeks of overthinking and indecision I decided on everyuselessthing. Initially I did a lot of political ranting but that was a wasted effort. Political discussions are to me as boring and useless as discussions of religion and sports. This blog name gave me the freedom to say whatever I wanted about any subject that tweaked my interest. Occasionally I shift gears and blog about unrelated and quirky information I’ve gathered over the years. Trivia is a favorite topic for me and today I’m going to fill your trivia basket with weird and hopefully interesting facts. Here we go . . .
Sean Connery once worked as a coffin polisher.
Johnny Mathis dubbed Miss Piggy’s singing voice in The Muppet Movie.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
The first TV sitcom couple to share a double bed were the Munster’s in 1964.
The blood in the famous shower scene in Psycho was really Hershey’s chocolate syrup.
A pigs orgasm lasts for thirty minutes.
Twelve or more cows are known as a flink.
There are 450 hairs in an average eyebrow.
The billionth decimal digit of the numerical value pi is nine.
Woman blink twice as often as men.
That completes the first ten items of this post and hopefully the final ten will be even more useless.
The first person to refer to a coward as a “chicken” was William Shakespeare.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
Mark Twain failed to graduate from elementary school.
President Andrew Jackson’s pet parrot had to be removed from his funeral in 1845 because it was swearing.
Australia is the only continent without an active volcano.
On November 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II was made an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
The colors blue, red, yellow, black, and green were chosen for the Olympic Rings because at least one of them appears on the flag of every nation in the world.
In 1956 the Physical Culture and Sports Commission of communist China recognized the sport of hand-grenade throwing.
Butter was the first food product allowed by law to have artificial coloring. It is totally white in it’s natural state.
That’s it for today. More trivia lists will follow in the future. Now, I’ve got better things to do like cutting grass and then picking ticks off my body. Who doesn’t love Summer.
This post was originally offered early in 2012 when I first started blogging for everyuselessthing. This list of questions I answered back then were an attempt by me to introduce myself to new readers. To see the original answers will require that you to search through my archives but the answers will be much the same now as they were then.
I want my readers to understand me. It’s the wish of almost every other human being on the planet that someone “gets us”. I’m going to list one hundred really stupid and simple questions and then post my answers. If you read them all and then bundle them into one huge ball of useless information, you just might have a better understanding of me. It may work or it may not but you’ll never know until you give it a try. To test it further ask a friend, lover, or family member to answer them. You might be surprised to find out they’re not exactly the person you thought. Here we go.
1. Do you sleep with your closet doors open or closed? Open.
2. Do you take the shampoos and conditioner bottles from hotel? Yes.
3:Do you sleep with your sheets tucked in or out?Tucked out.
4:Have you ever stolen a street sign? Yes
5:Do you like to use post-it notes? Yes
6:Do you cut out coupons but then never use them? No, I hate coupons.
7:Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of a bees? Bees, at least I’d survive.
8:Do you have freckles? A few scattered here and there.
9:Do you always smile for pictures? No, I hate being photographed.
10:What is your biggest pet peeve? People who talk-over me while in conversation.
11:Do you ever count your steps when you walk? Almost always.
12:Have you ever peed in the woods? Yes, it’s the best.
13:What about pooped in the woods? I have but it’s unpleasant.
14:Do you ever dance even if there’s no music playing? Only when I’m alone.
15:Do you chew your pens and pencils? Only pencils.
16:How many people have you slept with this week? Does my cat count? If she does then “2”.
17:What size is your bed? Queen.
18:What is your Song of the week? Marvin Gaye – Charlie Puth
19:Is it okay for guys to wear pink? Yes.
20:Do you still watch cartoons? Almost never.
21:What’s your least favorite movie? Anything with Will Ferrell in it.
22:Where would you bury hidden treasure if you had some? None of your business. It’s called ‘hidden treasure’ for a reason.
23:What do you drink with dinner? Seltzer Water or wine.
24:What do you dip a chicken nugget in? Ketchup.
25:What is your favorite food? Hamburgers.
26:What movies could you watch over and over and still love? Anything prior to 1950.
27:Last person you kissed/kissed you? My better-half.
28:Were you ever a boy/girl scout? Yes.
29:Would you ever strip or pose nude in a magazine? No, it might scare people.
30:When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper? 1990.
31:Can you change the oil on a car? Yes.
32:Ever gotten a speeding ticket? Oh yeah.
33:Ever ran out of gas? Once in 1975.
34:Favorite kind of sandwich? BLT, with lots of B.
35:Best thing to eat for breakfast? Bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee.
36:What is your usual bedtime? 11 PM.
37:Are you lazy? No.
38:When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween? At 45, I was Woody Allen.
39. Who is your favorite dead singer? Amy Winehouse
Loved Her
40:How many languages can you speak? 1.5
41:Do you have any magazine subscriptions? Yes, one.
42:Which are better Legos or Lincoln logs? Legos.
43:Are you stubborn?Yes.
44:Who is better…Leno or Letterman? Johnny Carson.
45:Ever watch soap operas? I used to.
46:Are you afraid of heights? Not really, no.
47:Do you sing in the car? Sometimes.
48:Do you sing in the shower? No.
49: Do you sleep clothed or naked? Naked.
50:Ever used a gun? Yes.
51:Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer? I was two years old.
52:Do you think musicals are cheesy? Some are, some not.
53:Is Christmas stressful? Yes, it’s a pain in the ass.
54:Ever eat a pierogi? Hundreds of times, Yummmm!
55:Favorite type of fruit pie? Apple.
56:Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid? Archeologist.
57:Do you believe in ghosts? No.
58:Ever have a Deja-vu feeling? Yes.
59:Take a vitamin daily? Yes.
60:Wear slippers? Yes.
61:Wear a bath robe? Yes.
62: How old were you when you lost your virginity? 14.
63:First concert? Harry Chapin.
64:Wal-Mart, Target or Kmart? Walmart, to people watch.
65:Nike or Adidas? Dr. Scholl
66:Cheetos Or Fritos? Cape Cod Potato Chips.
67:Peanuts or Sunflower seeds? Cashews.
68:Ever hear of the group Tres Bien? Hell no.
69:Ever take dance lessons? Yes. as a kid, 3 years.
70:Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing? No, there won’t be a future spouse.
71:Can you curl your tongue? Yes, and I know how to use it too.
72:Ever won a spelling bee? No.
73:Have you ever cried because you were so happy? Yes, at my divorce hearing.
74:Own any record albums? Yes, vinyl and CD’s.
75:Own a record player?Yes.
76:Regularly burn incense? Yes.
77:Ever been in love? Yes.
78:Who would you like to see in concert? Celine Dion.
79:How many tattoos do you have? Six small ones.
80:Hot tea or cold tea? Hot.
81:Tea or coffee? Coffee.
82:Sugar or snickerdoodles? Sweet’n’Low
83:Can you swim well? Yes.
84:Can you hold your breath without holding your nose? Yes.
85:Are you patient? Not really.
86:DJ or band, at a wedding? DJ.
87:Ever won a contest? Yes.
88:Ever have plastic surgery? No.
89:Which are better black or green olives? Green.
90:Can you knit or crochet? Neither.
91:Best room for a fireplace? Bed room.
92:Do you want to get married? Never again.
93. Do you wear glasses? Yes.
94:Who was your HS crush? Beth.
95:Do you ever cry and throw a fit until you get your own way? Only as an infant.
96:Do you have kids? Yes.
97:Do you want kids? No more thank you very much.
98:What’s your favorite color? Blue.
99:Do you miss anyone right now? Yes.
100: Have you ever been stung by a bee? Yes.
* * *
There you have it. My screwed up and over-explained personality in a nutshell. Remove a few of these questions and add your own. Personalize it as much as you think is necessary. Then have a few of your friends compete the questions and invite them over for a few bottles of wine and a group discussion. It might be a great deal of fun but even if it isn’t make sure you’re serving a really good wine.
This has been a rather hectic month for me and mine which hasn’t really happened too often since the Pandemic reared its ugly head so many months ago. With the Delta Variant coming into it’s own it appears that masks will be coming back as a fashion statement once again. It just seems that this virus and it’s many faces refuses to fade away. I guess it’ll be here to stay for much longer than we all anticipated. Fortunately for me there isn’t anything I did before that I can’t do now with a mask on.
This will have to do!
Being a senior citizen makes looking back at my life a little nostalgic at times. I wonder what my sex life might have been all those years ago if I’d been forced to comply with the restrictions that the pandemic requires. I feel really bad for the young and sexually active today. It would be well neigh impossible to maintain a reasonable love life if a six foot separation is mandated as well as the ever so attractive masks. It will take a very inventive person or couple to take the steps necessary to have sex and still comply with all the pandemic safeguards.
My Place or Yours?
Truthfully, I’m being sarcastic and a bit facetious as I hope you realize. There isn’t any pandemic that I could think of that will slow anyone down who has sex on his/her mind. For years we couldn’t get people (men) to regularly wear condoms to prevent pregnancies. Then the HIV/AIDS epidemic struck and condoms immediately became the norm rather than just a circular indentation on the back of a wallet. If AIDS didn’t slow everyone down who cares about silly old Covid-19. Where there’s a will there’s always a way.
Where are all the up and coming entrepreneurs when you need them. How about a one size fits all body condom. Maybe a mask with an adjustable opening allowing for the occasional French kiss. We need to find the next Steve Jobs to help us get the ball rolling on some ingenious new devices to assist our lovemaking efforts during these trying times. He could start his own new company and become a zillionaire overnight selling pandemic related sexual devices. He could call the company, CHERRY, just to give Apple something to worry about.
Just a thought or two while I’m sitting here on the deck relaxing. Now it’s time for a Jack and Pepsi to keep my creative juices flowing.
I’m holding an intervention for myself today concerning my lifelong addiction to all things science fiction. I’m not proud of that obsession because I’m not entirely sure that it hasn’t been a monumental waste of my time.
I was born in 1946 and was eleven years old when Sputnik made it’s famous flight on 10/04/57. My entire young life consisted of satellites, cosmonauts, astronauts, rocket ships, space travel, and the creation of NASA. Up to and including the Mercury and Apollo programs and eventually the moon landings. I was enthralled and spent a great deal of my spare time reading everything I could lay my hands on about science fiction and space travel. Over the years I’ve read hundreds of novels and scientific journals and attempted to stay up to speed with NASA, its failures, deaths, and many successes. Many years later I was finally forced to admit that sci-fi for me breaks down into two parts. Technology on one hand and space exploration on the other to include all of the craziness and misinformation on UFO’s and alien visitations. Technology continues apace and many things I read or thought about as a kid are slowing becoming commonplace. But continuing technological improvements are man-made wonders and unrelated to the science fiction that I’m interested in.
The UFO phenomenon is a sticky subject that’s been bastardized by numerous authors and movie makers. I suspect the vast majority of information contained in them is nothing more than exaggerated fiction aimed at increasing ratings and/or ticket sales. I gave up on live TV years ago and became somewhat taken with Netflix and other streaming services. That’s when I became overwhelmed with an ungodly number of videos and movies concerning UFO’s. I made a point to watch everyone I could find hoping that there might be a shred of evidence that could convince me that UFO’s were real and visitations to this planet were occurring. Sadly I found nothing at all that convinced me of anything.
It seems that a group of well funded and fervent believers reappear in most of the videos repeating their theories and suppositions. Believe me, I would love it if aliens decided to visit. But to believe the outlandish nonsense in these videos does more to convince me that it’s all so much BS and hucksterism. Most of the contributors on Facebook and other social media lead their posts with outlandish headlines to sucker us into reading further. It’s just more nonsense and half truths.
I have some serious questions about all of this UFO nonsense but the answers I’m getting are mostly silly and ridiculous. It seems highly unlikely to me that any aliens from an advanced civilization should certainly be able to fly their ships around this planet without crashing them in virtually every country. Most countries seem to have a Roswell type incident of their own and a crash sight to keep their conspiracy theorists busy. With that many crashes there’s no way any one government could retrieve and hide every single scrap of evidence. Most governments can’t operate anything without screwing it up. Why would this circumstance be any different. Why would we want their technology anyway if they can’t even keep them in the air. More silliness and nonsense.
I’ll be convinced aliens are here when I see a scene as seen in the 1950’s movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. A giant alien ship landing on the White House lawn looking to chat with the President. Hopefully not Biden. Until then I am a disappointed unbeliever.
Over the years I’ve wasted a great deal of my valuable time and efforts arguing about politics and political strategy. How stupid am I? Don’t answer that. It always feels good at first when your spewing your expert opinions to anyone who will listen. Fifty percent of them listen politely, smile, and later talk about what a bore you’ve become. The other fifty percent listen politely, wait until you’ve stopped talking, and then begin filling the air with their opinions and nonsense. They’ve listened to none of your ideas but waited patiently for you to shut up. You just gotta hate those A Type personalities.
I’ve always enjoyed finding and reading quotations from deceased politicians and a very few politically deceased politicians. Some are inciteful but many are not. The current hoard of elected officials never have quotes that are even a tiny bit interesting. Realizing that has forced me to find some lesser known politicians and journalists with quotes from the past that could actually impart some information that’s worth reading. You may not recognize some of the names but the quotes will speak for themselves.
“A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read.” Thomas Babbington (1859)
“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.” James F. Clark (1888)
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.
Bertrand Russell (1951)
“The press conference is a politician’s way of being informative without saying anything. Should he accidently say something, he has at his side a press officer who immediately explains it away by “clarifying” it.”
Emery Kelen (1960)
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx (1977)
“I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
Adlai Stevenson (1952)
These kinds of quotations were once plentiful but no longer. With newspapers losing readership there’s much less chance of any pearls of wisdom making the headlines. It’s truly a damn shame. Here’s one last and extremely old quote which remains as true today as it did in 1947.
“Politicians . . . rise predominantly from . . . the “lower middle class””; most are self-made men . . .; most depend on their political jobs for a livelihood and most have little time, inclination, of opportunity for adult education; hence the dominating qualities of so many are greed, vulgarity, attention to special interest, avarice, and selfishness.
I haven’t been blogging for a while, just laying back and enjoying my summer. I’ve been avoiding the news and current events as much as possible because so much these days is fake or just plain BS. I see things slowly returning to normal but I remain wary. Many people think the pandemic is over but I’m not a believer just yet. I honestly have difficulty believing anyone these days. I’ve decided that I’ll continue to mask up in crowds and in buildings until more time has passed. Booster shots of the vaccine will probably be in our immediate future and I’ll wait it out with my mask firmly in place.
“HOPE FOR THE BEST AND PREPARE FOR THE WORST”
I can’t resist taking a shot at the anti-vaxers. My suggestion to them is that they be as careful as possible when spreading their propaganda. They could easily end up with a seriously sprained neck. It’s hard to make a believable point with your head shoved so far up your ass. And please don’t waste your time or mine sending me any of your bullshit emails because as I’ve stated many times in the past, I.D.C. ( I Don’t Care) about anything you have to say.
Now I’ll return to my new deck and have a serious alcoholic beverage to celebrate the day.
I’m a huge internet rat and have been for years. I’ve seen ten thousand things I like and unfortunately a hundred thousand things I hate. Facebook has been going downhill in recent years in my humble opinion. I understand their need to continually come up with things to maintain and increase their numbers but come on . . . .
This recent rash of postings with people standing around with an arm load of signs attempting to take up as much of my time as possible to deliver a message to some blindfolded idiot. The individuals standing there being blindfolded and videoed are just sooooooooooo surprised and amazed. FAKE…FAKE…FAKE
Add to that the BS drama of outing a cheating partner or spouse with dozens of stupid flash cards makes me want to scream. It’s obvious to me that the ridiculous sign gimmick is just being used to increase their face time on-line. While some of them are somewhat believable the great majority are just LAME. Add into that all of the cheesy marriage proposals and I immediately feel the need to hurl.
Just as a side note: I’m a proud veteran who served for years. I don’t mind seeing the return-home videos but it has become ridiculous. People are posting happy returns from someone who served for 6 months in a training situation. As with everything on Facebook, these fads run their course after a time and become silly.
2d Side Note: Someone should make a universal announcement to the planet that the old and very stupid gimmick of wrapping a present in an endless number of packages became overused in the 1970’s. It’s just like bell bottom pants and platform shoes. SO OVER !!!!!
I expect nothing of importance from Facebook anyway so it’s hard to disappoint me. This crap will continue to clog the internet and drive any normal person mad.
