Archive for the ‘Stupidity’ Category
Have you ever gone to the track and bet on a horse? Have you ever tracked the odds on your horse? It always amazed me that someone actually sat in an office somewhere and computed those odds. No one actually knows what criteria is used or even if they’re accurate but what the hell do I know, I’m not a gambler. Today’s post is going to be more of the same. I found this information quite by accident and I knew immediately that I had to post it. If you think horseracing odds were hard to compute, these are even more ridiculous. You might find them interesting, and I hope you do.
Odds of Dying
While playing a video game: 100,000,000 to 1
By venomous snake bite: 95,000,000 to 1
By an asteroid falling to earth: 75,000,000 to 1
By venomous spider bites: 25,000,00 to 1
By a champagne cork: 22 million to 1
By lightning: 10,000,000 to 1
By a bee or wasp sting: 5,000,000 to 1
By falling down stairs: 157,000 to 1
By choking: 100,000 to 1
By heart disease: 467 to 1
😵😵😵
ROLL THEM DICE
With Halloween on the horizon, I thought I’d give you a dose of weird. Just a few little tidbits of bizarre things that humans insist on using as an excuse for questionable behavior. Here we go . . .
In January of 2008, an 81-year-old Chilean man woke up at his own funeral. His family dressed him in his finest suit and laid him out for a proper way, only to witness him opening his eyes midmorning. Upon waking he simply asked for a glass of water. The family was overjoyed.
The Dunkenfield Crematorium in Manchester, England, once asked local residents and clergyman to support its plan for heating and powering its chapel and boiler using the heat created by burning bodies.
“It rubs me the wrong way, a camera . . . It’s a frightening thing
. . . Cameras make ghosts out of people.”
Bob Dylan
In Paris in the 20th Century, Jules Vern describes the Paris skyline dominated by a large metallic structure. The book was written in 1863, years before the Eiffel Tower was even conceptualized in 1887.
The state of Idaho has enacted a provision known as the “Ghost in the Attic” statute, which went into effect in 1998. It states that neither the homes seller nor the seller’s broker is liable for not disclosing that the property may be haunted. Even if the house is the site of a known suicide or homicide, the seller need not disclose this fact unless the buyer specifically writes to the seller and inquires.
Triskaidekaphobia is a morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th. In early Christianity, the number thirteen was considered unlucky because it was the number of persons present at the Last Supper, and the day Friday unlucky because Christ was said to have been crucified on a Friday.
In you love candles you need to know these following facts since they have always been shrouded in mystery and superstition.
- If a candle blows out during a ceremony, it’s a warning that evil is nearby.
- Three lit candles in a row are bad luck, so be sure to blow one out if you see them.
- Light a candle inside jack-o’-lantern on Halloween to guard against evil spirits that are lurking about.
- If you look into a mirror by candlelight, you are risking bad luck, but you might also find the souls of the dead there.
- A cork candle is a small, sourceless flame that floats through the night air and is believed to be a lost soul. The sight is considered an omen of death.
“Some of mankind’s most terrible misdeeds have been committed
under the spell of certain magical words or phrases.”
James Bryant Conant
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
I’ve spent a great deal of my life dealing with the more unsavory side of the human race. Unfortunately, it’s taken a toll on me and seriously bruised the faith I once held for human tolerances. Doing historical research has its ugly side and I’ll share some of that with you today. Hopefully at some point in the future things will improve but I’m certain anyone reading this post today will never live to see it.
- Adolf Hitler kept a framed photograph of Henry Ford on his desk and Ford had one of Hitler on his desk in Dearborn Michigan. Hitler had used in his book Mein Kampf some of Ford’s anti-Semitic views, and he always welcomed Ford’s substantial contributions to the Nazi movement.
- From the beginning Puritan colonists engaged in the slave trade, first selling captive Indians to the West Indies and then bringing in Negroes from Africa. Cotton Mather, pastor of Boston’s North Church, owned both Indian and Negro slaves. In 1641, Samuel Maverick proposed the breeding of Negro slaves on Noodles Island, which is now East Boston.
- It has been estimated that the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians within a few years after Columbus discovered the New World.
- Human beings have been exterminating animals at the average rate of one species a year for the last two centuries. That rate appears to be on the increase, despite the rising of ecological awareness that began in the 1960s.
- 40 million Americans are murdered, maimed, raped, mugged, or robbed every year.
- Pope Innocence VIII (142-1492) received a gift of 100 Moorish slaves, who he distributed as a gratuity to Cardinals and friends.
- Not all the bad guys in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s mild abolitionist tract about U.S. slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, are Southerners. The villains, in fact, are Northern renegades. Simon Legree, the wicked slave driver, was from Vermont.
- Here in the “civilized West” a human being has been killed by others every 20 seconds for the last half-century, either legally or illegally. This is three times the rate of the century preceding these 50 years.
- The English promised land in the colony of Nova Scotia to former slaves to join their side during the American Revolution. When the promise was broken, a former slave, Thomas Peters, who had been a sergeant in the British Army, sailed to England and won a concession of land in Sierra Leone in West Africa, for his fellow blacks landless in Nova Scotia.
NUFF SAID
Since we’re now in the first weekend in October and the Summer is over, everyone is feeling a little down. Here’s my attempt to make all of you smile just a bit. The old saying, “laughter is the best medicine”, remains true to this day. So, here’s some humor. It costs nothing to smile.
- Two identical twin brothers died at around the same time. One was happily married, did charitable works and generally lead a blameless life; the other was a drunken womanizer, a serial liar and a cheat. The bad twin went to hell and the good went to heaven, from where he was able to look down on his bad brother. The good twin was dismayed that hell was not as bad as he had hoped. Indeed, his brother seem to be having the time of his life, drinking, partying and enjoying the company of beautiful women. Eventually the good twin complained to St. Peter: “Heaven is very nice and peaceful, but my brother appears to be having plenty of fun in hell. He has his own beer keg and just look at that gorgeous woman he’s been given. St. Peter said: “Fear not, my son. All is not as it seems. The keg has a hole in it; the woman doesn’t.”
- A man walked into his doctor’s office and said: “Doctor, I have five penises.” “I see,” said the doctor. “How do your trousers fit”? “Like a glove.”
- For his birthday a little boy asked for a 10-speed bicycle. His dad said, “We’d let you have one, but the mortgage on this house is $140,000 and your mother just lost her job. There’s no way we can afford It.” The next morning the father saw the boy heading out of the front door carrying a suitcase. “Where are you going?” he asked. The boy answered: “I was walking past your bedroom last night and heard you tell mom you were pulling out. Then I heard her tell you to wait because she was coming too. And I’ll be damned if I’m staying here by myself with $140,000 mortgage and no bike”!
- A man and woman were having sex in a very dark forest. After fifteen minutes of fumbling around the man said: “Man, I wish I had a flashlight.” The girl said: “So do I you ass. You’ve been eating grass for the past ten minutes!”
- A man looked out his window late one night and saw a gang of thieves breaking into his garden shed. He called the police immediately, but the station sergeant said there was no one available to respond. “OK”, said the homeowner, and he put the phone down. Five minutes later, he telephoned the station again “Don’t worry about sending anyone out to deal with the shed burglars at 53 Larch Avenue., I just shot them”. Within two minutes the road was swarming with police cars. The officers caught the burglars red-handed, but the sergeant was furious. He said to the homeowner, “I thought you said you shot them!” The homeowner immediately countered: “I thought you said there was nobody available.”
KEEP SMILING – THE HOLIDAYS ARE COMING
Are you ready for another day of freaky and bizarre? Let me dig into my bag of nonsense and come up with four or five more oddities which you might find interesting. I don’t need to say anything else, here we go.
- When English writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) died, his heart was kept apart from his body that was cremated. The idea was to bury it in Stinsford, England, the home of his beloved childhood church and his family’s burial plot. All went according to plan until his sister’s cat leaped up on her kitchen table, snatched the heart, and ran off into the woods with it.
- Centuries ago, animals were often put on trial for crimes ranging from witchcraft to theft and murder. Throughout history, the animal that’s been prosecuted mostly is the pig. In 1547 France, for example, a mother pig and her six babies were sentenced to death for killing and eating a child. The sow was executed, but the piglets were pardoned because it was felt that they were led astray by the bad example of their mother.
- A fortune teller told businessman Kichiro Toyoda that it would be good luck to change his company’s name to Toyota and to give the company cars names beginning with the letter “C “such as Celica and Camry.
- Francesco Lentini was born in 1889 with what appeared to be a tail, but which was in fact a nearly developed foot growing from the base of his spine. Although he was treated as a disabled outcast most of his life, he found work in Italian sideshows and was quoted as having said, “I have never complained. I think life is beautiful, and I enjoy living it.” He lived to the ripe old age of 78 years.
- Investigators in Tacoma, Washington, were able to identify two generations of maggots on a body that had died from a gunshot wound. In doing so, they determined the approximate date of the corpses demise, as a maggots lifecycle lasts only about three weeks. Armed with the estimated time of death, the investigators were able to trace the disease whereabouts and eventually found the killer.
OOH MY!!!
With my better half’s spending a week with her grandson in California, I thought I’d enjoy this gray and rainy Maine day by supplying all of you with interesting, weird, freaky, and odd tidbits of facts and trivia. So, todays post (part 1) and Tuesdays post (part 2) should be interesting and just a bit weird.
- On April 21, 1997, a rocket containing the cremated remains of 24 people was launched into space. Among the remains were those of Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek series creator. The rocket was launched by Celestis, a company formed in 1996 for the expressed purpose of launching ashes into space.
- A tourist visiting San Francisco in 1964 was involved in a minor cable car accident. As a result, she sued the city of San Francisco, claiming that the incident had turned her into a nymphomaniac. She won the case and received an award of $50,000. (Only in San Francisco)
- The extreme dread of thunder is called brontophobia. For brontophobes , the boom and crash of thunder has a demonic quality. Often found in people suffering from a psychoneurosis, brontophobia can also be associated with a person, often a person in a position of authority, and the fearsome thunder is their expression of disapproval.
- During World War II a young woman in Germany, Emmie Marie Jones, gave birth to a daughter, despite the fact that she insisted she was a virgin. In 1955, scientists in England did genetic testing and discovered that Emmie and her daughter were genetically identical twins. The only explanation the scientists could offer was that the shock of the bombing caused parthenogenesis, the spontaneous splitting of an unfertilized egg.
- Queen Mary I of England and Ireland (1516-1558) was a Catholic who had Protestants tortured and killed. Her actions inspired the nickname “Bloody Mary”, which in turn later inspired the famous cocktail.
LOOKS LIKE MY HIGH SCHOOL PROM DATE
I’m on a break right now. Not that you really care but it’s just a break from another project I’m working on. My eyes were strained beyond belief from three hours staring at that project, so I decided to lighten things up with a little humor and jokes from the 1980’s. It seems that the decade of the 80’s easily supplies silliness and nonsense to last me for many years. Let’s get started.
- How did you get to see the official bird of New York City. Cut somebody off in traffic.
- Is it wrong to have sex before you’re married? Only if it makes you late for the ceremony!
- When should you stop masturbating? When the smoke alarm goes off!
- Why don’t girls like to drink beer on the beach? Because they get sand in their Schlitz!
- What did the one lesbian say to the other lesbian? “Your face or mine!”
- What you get when you cross an anteater with a vibrator? And armadildo!
- What’s the hardest thing about the sex change from a man to a woman? Inserting the anchovies!
- What happens to boys that lie? They get girls!
- How do women get minks? The same way that minks get minks!
- If you have VD, what do you know for sure? Urine trouble!
WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY
This blog was intended to supply the masses with “everyuselessthing” I could find. There are also thousands of so-called “trivia experts” out there with knowledge of thousands upon thousands of other strange and odd facts. It’s a true challenge for me to search out a few that even the experts may not have heard before. Here are ten items that were new to me, and I hope new to them as well.
- The name of the monster in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel was not “Frankenstein” but “Adam”.
- According to Ian Fleming’s writings, James Bonds favorite alcoholic beverage wasn’t a vodka martini (shaken not stirred) but bourbon. Of the 317 drinks consumed, Bond drank 37 bourbons, 10 bourbons and branch water, and seven bourbons and soda, but only 19 vodka martinis.
- Although the deerstalker hat is almost a trademark of Sherlock Holmes, he never wore one. Nowhere in Sir Arthur Conan Doyles four novels and 56 stories is the hat ever mentioned. The belief that Holmes wore such a hat can be traced to Sydney Paget, an illustrator for Strand Magazine. Paget, who liked deerstalker hats and wore them himself, produced drawings inaccurately depicting Holmes wearing one.
- The official name of the bed created by the Murphy Door Bed Company was not called a Murphy Bed but an In-A-Door bed.
- The monkey wrench was named after its inventor, Charles Moncky.
- The rock group America was actually formed in England.
- The specific English word for a group of kittens is not litter, which can designate animals of different species, but Kittles, or Kindle.
- Table tennis was invented not in China but in England, where it was originally played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles from cigar box lids. English engineer James Gibbs introduced the celluloid ball.
- The person who invented the electric chair was a dentist. In 1881, Dr. Alfred Southwick, a dentist from Buffalo, New York, saw an intoxicated man touch a live electric generator, which promptly killed him. Thus, the electric chair was born.
- In slang Italian perfume describes garlic.
A special thanks to Ted Nugent for this quote.
As I sit here this morning looking for inspiration for this post I received a text message from my grandson. He just received from his parents his first real phone and he immediately reached out to me with a typical text from someone his age (11). It consisted of about 60 rows of poop emojis with a short sentence, “My gift to you LOL.” I’m not sure why it is that kids love talking about farting and pooping exclusively but it seems to be something trending online as well these days. Tick-Tock is full of farting individuals blasting away in crowded street scenes. I have to admit it’s incredibly funny and apparently poop humor starts at a very young age. Hoping that the “little shit” (no pun intended) will someday read this post and learn a few more disgusting facts about poop he needs to know.
- People often fart shortly after they die.
- The most germ laden place on your toilet isn’t the seat or even the bowl. It’s the handle.
- The average healthy adult expels between 100 and 200 grams, almost half a pound, of feces every day.
- More than 6.5 million Americans have fecal incontinence – the inability to control the passage of stool – and most of them are women.
- Americans used 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper every year, which represents at least 15 million trees.
🧻🧻🧻
- Most people produce 1 to 4 pints of gas and pass it approximately 14 times per day.
- The foul odor of flatulence comes from intestinal bacteria as it releases gases that contain sulfur and, in some cases, methane, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.
- Adolf Hitler suffered from chronic flatulence, for which he took anti-gas pills.
- 40% of the world’s people have no toilet, and must use the bathroom in any public place they can find: bushes, roadsides, alleys, etc.
- In a humid environment like the bathroom, a single bacterial cell can multiply into 1 billion cells overnight.
🚽🚽🚽
Well, there you have it folks, everything you never wanted to know about poop and its related activities. And a special thanks to my grandson (the poop specialist) for his inspiration.
💩GO, GO, GO💩
I’m not what anyone would consider a rabid sports fan. I love the NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers, but I still can’t sit for three hours to watch a game filled with constant annoying commercials. I now rely on Facebook to supply me with recaps on Monday morning. I was for many years a huge fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates but that eventually faded away due to an organization afraid to spend money on exceptional players. They seem to have improved in this area this year, but I’ve been fooled before . . . so color me skeptical. One thing I’ve always loved even more than sports was any good limerick. I searched out a few samples about sports and I found them to be just as enjoyable as any sports event on television.
A showoff whilst skating on ice,
Turned a difficult somersault (twice).
He bounced on his head,
Spat out six teeth and said:
“I must try that again- it was nice!”
💥💥💥
I hit every home run we score,
I catch every catch and what’s more,
I aint missed a game,
You may not know my name,
But I’m up here in row eighty-four.
💥💥💥
I played a few times for the Yankees
(Though, as memories, I’ve tried to blank these).
I did what I could,
But I wasn’t much good,
And my antics had fans grabbing hankies.
💥💥💥
A team playing baseball in Dallas
Called the umpire “blind” out of malice.
While the ump had fits,
The team scored eight hits,
And a girl in the bleachers called Alice!
🏈🏐⚾🧢
GO STEELERS
