Kids of 1995 Predict the Future of the Internet – correctly!!

It seems like men and women can be from different planets at times. During a series at youth group called “Lovesick”, we were shown the following videos, and they illustrate the differences between the opposite sexes hilariously – Enjoy!

cartoonconversation-outtoeat.mp4

cartoonconversation-pant.mp4

A while back now, I made a blog post about a site called mentalfloss.com, which is a collection of interesting, somewhat useless but incredibly entertaining tidbits about pop culture, history, travel, and a bunch of other topics.  Here are some links to other articles on mentalfloss I found interesting, and since I collected this list a long time ago and left it in my drafts, forgotten, I went back to check the links.  While I was checking, I got so sidetracked on mentalfloss again…  their miscellaneous info about anything and everything is really addicting!  I collected some of the best ones for you, so that you don’t have to risk hours and hours of your free time by going to mentalfloss.com yourself and clicking on link after link after link 🙂
See if any of the following capture your interest, and if you make it back here to tangents, leave me comments to tell me what you like!

An airplane graveyard in The Mojave Desert

Abandoned hospital in East L.A.

31 unbelievable high school mascots

10 unusual playgrounds from around the world

10 technologies we stole from the animal kingdom

7 crafty zoo escapes

And last, but definitely not least…

A collection of videos of dogs welcoming home their soldier owners – this is unbelievably sweet; these are the happiest dogs in the world!!!  (I cried)

If you are a news junkie like me, then you will love this website – there are maps of the whole world, broken down into sections.  You click on dots on the map, and you can see the front page of the newspaper for that region.  In many cases, you can get the pdf file of the entire newspaper!  The site is updated every day, so you can see current headlines.  I really like to read news from all over the country, especially places where I use to live, like Chicagoland, Lincoln Nebraska, and Rockford Illinois.  And it’s really interesting to see headlines from the entire world!  (even though I can only read the ones in English!)

Here is a link to the United States headlines map – enjoy! Follow links on the site to access news taking place on the entire planet!

I am a fan of many of the wordpress blogs, especially those written by my wonderful friends here on tangents.org.  But recently, I came across a previously undiscovered (to me)  blog that is right up my alley, and I was surprised to find out that it’s a wordpress blog: designingzoos.com – does that sound like my cup of tea or what?!?

This woman blogs blogged (she hasn’t written since July – disappointing!) about her job, which is far from boring – she designs zoos, aquariums, theme parks, etc. for a living!  My dream job calling?  Well, not really, I’m working my dream job taking care of my 4 wonderful kids.  And besides, zoo designers sometimes have to compromise their grand zoo visions, and they go to a lot of meetings.  But it’s certainly fun for me to read about zoo design!  I found this site while researching the history of  Brookfield  Zoo near Chicago, a place I was quite familiar with as a kid.  I ended up finding this, which is a re-design master plan map of the zoo.  If you are at all familiar with Brookfield Zoo, you might find it interesting, along with this designingzoos.com blog post about the proposed map.  Many other zoos have re-design master plans, but unfortunately, these plans are forced to be nothing but pipe dreams while this economy has forced zoo visits to be much lower on the priority list for many families.

It’s time for me to officially make my presence known on Facebook.  If you watch the awesome NBC comedy “The Office”, then you’ll understand the reference in the title of this blog post involving a creative Halloween costume worn by Jim Halpert, a character on my favorite show – it was hilarious!

But back to me learning Facebook…  some time ago I signed up for a Facebook account (don’t even remember why), but then I stopped using it because it started doing freaky things behind my back – like randomly adding mere acquaintances and business associates as my Facebook friends.  That was NOT the way I had envisioned social networking!  But my youth group kids have been BEGGING me to join Facebook, and since I took pictures of them last week, we decided that my homework challenge is to get on Facebook so I can post our pictures.  So here I go, and the first thing I’ll be doing is looking for a way to NOT invite everyone on my email contact list to be my Facebook friend!

There’s a celebrity in Britian named James May who has a show on the BBC called “Toy Stories”.  Each episode centers around adventures he has with one of Britian’s best loved toys.  For the  episode about Legos (to be aired in the spring), he had a life-size Lego house built in which he lived for several days.  While the house itself didn’t look all that cool from the outside, it was fully furnished with Lego, including a working commode.  Here are some shots from the inside set to a groovy little song, “I’m living in a Lego house…” It’s a  shame that the entire project went to waste when they tore the thing down…  prospective buyers were scared off by the million dollars it costs to move a Lego house.

And while we’re on the subject of life-size toy houses, this people-sized dollhouse can be found in Saskatchewan:

CNN.com links to a blog called Mental Floss.  Usually involving tidbits about pop culture in a top-10 format,  these articles can be quite entertaining.  For example, I came across a few the other day about fast food:  Who Approved That?  7 Food Promotions Gone Horrible Wrong and 10 Secret Menu Items at Fast Food Restaurants and enjoyed both of those.  Note the NY Yankees reference in the failed Pepsi promotion in the first article (sorry Jamiahsh!).

Mental Floss has featured other lists in their articles that have interested me; of note is 10 Homeschooled Celebrities (Agatha Christie, Mozart, Alexander Graham Bell, to name a few), 10 Things That Have Deflated the Macy’s Parade, and 5 Weather Events Worth Chatting About.  It’s a well-written, entertaining blog (like this one, haha) – Just thought I’d share it!

WOW!

I’ve made 500 blog posts here on My Food Chain Gang!  That is A LOT of rambling and a ton of tangents!  Thank you for reading; especially those of you who have read all 500 posts, if there is anyone who could stand me for that long!

I think after that many posts, I’m entitled to a generic one, noting nothing other than my 500th blog post, don’t you?

When friend and fellow blogger Derek came to visit last weekend, he brought along his blu-ray player.  For those of you who don’t know, that’s a type of movie player which plays a special kind of dvd in high definition – hope I explained that well enough; it’s not like I know that much about it myself.  So anyway, we chose the movie 21 – even though I’ve seen it, it was interesting to see it in superior visual quality.  I really didn’t think I’d notice a difference – it’s not my style to care about such things, but I actually did notice the clarity.  I could actually see the grain on the paper of the deck of playing cards.  And the opening scenes of the movie are sweeping views of the city of Boston, which were really enjoyable eye candy on the blu-ray.

So anyway, while watching the movie again, I began to wonder exactly how much of it is a true story.  I have my laptop right in the living room, so I looked it up while watching the movie.  It was interesting because Jeff Ma, the “real” Ben Campbell (the main character in 21) actually makes a cameo in the movie -and I found this out in enough time to be able to spot him.  I found out a bunch of other interesting info as well, and here is a cool site called chasingthefrog.com where you can compare famous movies with the stories upon which they were based.  Here I  found out that Jack Dawson’s sketches in the Oscar-winning movie Titanic were actually drawn by the movie’s director, James Cameron.  Not that I can stand that movie – it think it’s horribly exploitative to invent a romantic plot not even remotely based on reality about an historical disaster which claimed thousands of lives.  I decided to give it a shot once, and I tried to open my mind a little, but I still didn’t like what I saw – it seemed cheesy, hokey, and unrealistic, not to mention that it almost cheapened the very horrendous event whose story it attempted to tell.  Anyway, I also found out from this site that there was only one black victim of the Titanic disaster – a second class passenger named Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche.  As the website tells it, he loaded his wife and daughters onto a life boat and went down with the ship.  Even more sadly, his wife gave birth to their son later that year.  Here is a family picture:

The site only has a handful of movies to compare to actual events, but its comparisons are very interesting and insightful; including a picture to picture comparison of people and the actors who portrayed them – very cool, check it out!