Oddities and Humor

HEADLINES FROM GULF OF MEXICO
BP put a large wedding ring over the well leak earlier this morning and it immediately stopped putting out.

Yeah, I didn't put the photo up, because I knew it was huge.

SAN FRANCISCO — The pink slip for Harold Voelker's 1956 Ford F-100 pickup was tucked away with the memories of his prized truck after it was stolen in 1972 in Los Angeles.

Both were dusted off when authorities told the 63-year-old man last week they had found the vehicle in Modesto.

The California Highway Patrol says officials noticed a discrepancy in the vehicle identification number when a couple tried to register it after receiving it from a relative in Texas who didn't know it was stolen.

A CHP officer found the original identification number and traced it to Voelker, who says the truck is running well and even seems to have more power.

Ah, a nice story with a happy ending! I'll see if I can come up with one myself.

Walt Disney chose Marilyn Monroe as a figure model for Tinker Bell.

John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to the epic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band closer "A Day in the Life" sold today for an impressive $1.2 million, a bid that far exceeded its initial $500,000 to $700,000 pre-auction estimate. According to Bloomberg , three buyers were vying for the piece of Beatles memorabilia at Sotheby's of New York, and the winner was an unidentified American who phoned in the $1.2 million bid. Despite breaking the million-dollar threshold, the handwritten lyrics narrowly missed becoming the highest-priced Beatles lyric sheet to sell at auction: In 2005, the hand-penned lyrics to "All You Need is Love" went for $1.25 million.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, the handwritten lyrics to "A Day in the Life" were once the property of Beatles road manager Malcolm "Mal" Evans and represent the legendary song as a work in progress: There were spelling mistakes and words crossed out as Lennon developed the track, which Rolling Stone ranked as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. On the back side of the lyric sheet, however, is a more polished version of "A Day in the Life," written in all capital letters, with a break in Lennon's lyrics where he anticipated Paul McCartney would add his famous "Woke up, fell out of bed…" bridge. "A Day in the Life" is regarded as one of the final true collaborations between Lennon and McCartney and a song that Rolling Stone said "made rock's possibilities seem infinite."

The conclusion of the Sotheby's auction ends an adventure of sorts for the prized lyric sheet. Sotheby's of London first sold the sheet in 1992, then in 2006 it returned to the block when New York auction house Bonham's hosted a "sealed bid" auction, at which point it failed to sell. At the time, Bonham's estimated that Lennon likely penned both versions of the lyrics in the morning and afternoon of January 17th, 1967.

Spaghettios are being recalled, I saw in the news. Must have accidentally gotten real food in the cans.

Marie Callendar is also doing a recall; this one for samonella. I always knew it was wrong to take raw vegetables, passing them quickly through wamd steam, and calling them cooked.

So, what ya figure, Edgar, will this be a good investment for the buyer? It's a lot to pay for the lyrics of a single song.

Sounds like a recipe for feeding germs.

He must want it for sentimental value. I don't see how he could reap a profit in reselling it.

Yeah. I bet you could get an actual recording and still save money.

I bought a vinyl copy of the album it's on a few years back, for about six to eight bucks.

All together now.
Nah nah nah nennah nahh
neneah nna nahhh

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - No words were minced when the character Ed Bailey jumped out of his seat in one of the early scenes of "Tombstone" and told the slick gambler and gunslinger Doc Holliday — played by actor Val Kilmer — to scram after their poker game went sour.

"Take your money and get out 'cause I'm tired of listening to your mouth," Bailey yelled.

Well, some of Kilmer's real-life northern New Mexico neighbors share Bailey's sentiments. They're upset with him, saying he made disparaging comments about San Miguel County and for chasing away people fishing on the Pecos River at his ranch.

The bitter feelings that have been brewing over the last several years have reached a boiling point. But unlike Holliday, Kilmer won't be able to settle this with a knife or a pair of six-shooters.

Kilmer has been asked to appear before county commissioners to explain himself during a meeting next Wednesday.

Calls and e-mails to Kilmer and his publicist have not been returned, but commission chairman David Salazar said the actor has indicated he will show up.

"I think it's a chance for him, an opportunity, to straighten out the record," said Salazar. "I think if he goes ahead and explains what happened, if he was misquoted or if he said something and somebody took it the wrong way, I think it's to his benefit to clear that up."

The hope, Salazar said, is that something good — for Kilmer and the community — comes from the meeting.

The flap started when Kilmer's Pecos River Ranch sought to open three guest houses to paying customers. The county zoning and planning commission approved the proposal 3-2 in March, but Rowe resident Abran Tapia appealed to the commission.

"He's not a good neighbor. That's all there is to it," Tapia said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Tapia has never met Kilmer, but he proceeded to tick off a list of reasons why the actor is on the bottom of his list. Included were the disparaging comments Kilmer allegedly made in two magazine articles years ago and the "no trespassing" signs posted around Kilmer's sprawling ranch, which includes a few choice miles of the Pecos River.

In October 2003, Rolling Stone published an article that quoted Kilmer as saying he lived in the "homicide capital of the Southwest" and 80 percent "of the people in my county are drunk."

Despite Rolling Stone standing by the article, Kilmer denied the statements and said he had actually bragged about New Mexico during the interview. Days later, he took out an ad in the Santa Fe New Mexican, saying he loved New Mexico and Pecos.

To make matters worse, Kilmer tried to explain for an Esquire writer two years later the emotional toll acting takes on an artist by talking about the soldiers who were shipped off to fight in Vietnam and how they were mentally unprepared for the horror of war. He ended up saying most of them were sent to the war because they were "borderline criminal or poor."

An Army veteran, Tapia was offended. He said his cousin and friend from school had fought and died in Vietnam.

He also accused Kilmer of being racist, claiming that the actor is trying to create "a segregated facility" at the ranch by charging people to stay at the guest houses. Tapia reasons that local Hispanics in the area would be excluded because they wouldn't be able to afford a night at the ranch.

Kilmer recently told the Albuquerque Journal that the accusations against him have been upsetting for his friends.

"I'm not worried at all about the reaction because I just see it as an opportunity to bring people together," he told the newspaper. "No one would make a false statement like this statement of racism if they knew what we were doing."

The flap has caught the attention of everyone from the New Mexico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has offered to defend Kilmer's 1st Amendment rights, to the California-based Committee on Chicano Rights and Gov. Bill Richardson, who is known for his diplomatic problem-solving skills.

Richardson, who is friends with Kilmer, said he has been pushing for all sides to meet.

"Val, he's got his rights," the governor said. "The 1st Amendment protects him to say anything he wants, but those comments he made a long time ago were not good comments. So I think there's a possibility of a gracious exit for both sides with the meeting coming up."

Don Pratt has sold his taxi firm A Cornish taxi driver is £250,000 better off thanks to the will of a grateful customer.

For 20 years Don Pratt and his wife Gill ferried Mary Watson to and from the shops, to the doctors and on other errands around Newquay where she lived.

Ten years ago she moved away and died aged 86 in December 2009, leaving the couple her estate which included a small house and savings worth £250,000.

Mr Pratt, 65, has sold his taxi firm and has retired.

Mrs Watson became a regular customer of Don's Cabs after Mr Pratt offered to help take her shopping into her home.

After that Don's Cabs was the firm Mrs Watson used every day to get around the Cornish seaside resort.

Mr Pratt said: "I always try to help old people because one day you will be needing that help yourself.

She was a feisty lady, she did not take any nonsense from people
Don Pratt
"It should be the same for everyone."

Mr Pratt said Mrs Watson was always a good tipper and about 12 years ago she asked him to be best man at her remarriage.

He said: "She told me that if she outlasted her husband, 'I shall make sure I'll look after you.'

"I took it with a pinch of salt at the time."

Mrs Watson moved to Northampton 10 years ago, but Mr and Mrs Pratt kept in touch with her until about two years before she died.

"Her solicitor called to tell us she had remembered us in her will.

"I couldn't believe it when we found out she had left us everything.

"I'm not sure how her family feel about it, but the solicitor was clear that she wanted me to have what she left."

Mr Pratt has fond memories of her, even without the bequest.

"She was a feisty lady, she did not take any nonsense from people.

"I liked her. She was a lovely lady."

Now he has sold his taxi firm to a friend and is looking forward to a relaxing retirement.

"We worked days and nights. Now we can go travelling and all the other things we have not been able to do."

No-one was available for comment at the Argyle House care home in Northampton where Mrs Watson spent the last two years of her life

The extraordinary ability of tiny ants to carry huge loads has been known for some time.

But scientists have now employed high speed video cameras and revealed how the ants use controlled head movements to maintain their stability.

The researchers also discovered that an ant's neck plays a critical part in balancing the load, a feature previously unknown in any insect.


Grass-cutting ants (Atta vollenweideri) carry plant fragments many times heavier and longer than themselves.

These ants harvest grass, hauling fragments considerable distances back to their nest, sometimes exceeding 100m.



We did not expect the neck joint being involved


Ants maximise the amount of grass they transport by selecting long fragments, the researchers explain.

But this is not an easy thing to do; in order to carry the cargo, workers need to both lift and balance their load.

"In this study we could experimentally show that workers carrying long fragments often fell over," says Karin Moll from the University of Cambridge in the UK, who undertook the study with Dr Walter Federle, also from Cambridge University, and Dr Falvio Roces from the University of Wurzburg in Germany.

To find out how the ants maintained their stability, the research team used high speed video cameras to measure the insects' head movements.

They gave the ants pieces of paper soaked in orange juice to mimic grass leaf fragments and measured the angles at which they carried them.

"In order to maintain stability the combined centre of gravity of ant and load needs to remain above the area of the supporting legs," Ms Moll says.

The researchers found that the ants carried long fragments at a steeper angle than short fragments of the same mass.

"Workers do not hold fragments differently, but change fragment positions by up and down movements of their head at the neck joint," she says.

That allows the ants to adjust their "leaf position" even if they are walking up or down hills or over objects.

When walking uphill, workers carried fragments at a significantly steeper angle than ants on a horizontal trail, the researchers wrote in the journal.
When walking downhill, the ants carried fragments at a significantly shallower angle.

The study has provided the researchers with a further understanding of "ant biomechanics" and has yielded some surprising results.

Biomechanics is the term used to describe mechanical principles of living organisms.

"We did expect the ants to have evolved an adaptation that enables them to carry long grass fragments," say Ms Moll.

"However, we did not expect the neck joint being involved in the adjustment of the load position, as this is not known to be involved in load carriage in any other insect."

Ms Moll explains that the study underlines the importance of considering biomechanical factors in theories of how ants forage, especially if large loads are involved.

The team hopes to conduct further work to explore the detailed function of the head movements, and how ants may sense and perceive carrying unequally balanced objects.

Grass-cutting ants occur in the Chaco region of north Argentina and Paraguay and belong to a subgroup of leaf-cutting ants that specialise in harvesting grass leaves.


Leaf-cutting ants are fungus growers, which means that harvested leaves are not eaten by the workers themselves, but serve to cultivate a symbiotic fungus within the nest, which is the main nourishment source for the ant larvae.

CNN) -- Watch out! It's 10 feet tall and hairy, and it could be coming to get you -- or your dogs!

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is said to be an ape-like monster but has never been proved to exist. Still, reported sightings never stop: Tim Peeler of Cleveland County, North Carolina, says he saw a giant, hairy "man-looking person" with six fingers that was going after his dogs June 5 and told it to "git." On Thursday, a large, muddy footprint in Burke County, North Carolina, stirred up more Bigfoot speculation.

Across human societies, variations on mythical creature stories like that of Bigfoot have persisted for thousands of years, and accounts of seeing or hearing them still abound. There may be some basic culture-based need for these fantastical tales, said Todd Disotell, professor of anthropology at New York University.

Monsters represent dark aspects of our subconscious worlds and can be metaphors for the challenges of life, said Karen Sharf, a psychotherapist in New York.

"Some monsters are scary. Some monsters are friendly. Sometimes in movies or myths, we befriend the monster, and it's just like in our inner world: There are monsters; there are dark aspects that we have to face," she said.

Humans also have a fascination with the divide between their species and animals, and Bigfoot bridges that gap, said John Hawks, anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Believing in these creatures and following their trails in the forest is somewhat akin to an amusement park ride: They are safe ways of experiencing fear, said Jacqueline Woolley, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.


People are still searching for evidence of Scotland's Loch Ness Monster, said to have first been spotted by Vikings in the sixth century. There have also been reported sightings of mermaids -- in Israel last year, for one -- and ghosts: For instance, there are still believers in La Llorona, "the crying woman" said to have killed the children she had with Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés.

Other cultures also have legendary folk monsters that have supposedly been sighted but haven't been proved to exist. The "chupacabra," roughly translated as "goat sucker" in Spanish, has been blamed for the deaths of goats in Mexico. The blood-drinking creature is said to look like a cross between a giant dog and a lizard, and it has fiery eyes. A coyote-like creature in Blanco, Texas, created a frenzy last year as some speculated it could be a chupacabra.

Humans are inherently interested in the blurred line between fantasy and reality, psychologists say. People also want to feel like heroes; stories such as David and Goliath help people see themselves as capable of tackling their own challenges, even if their "monster" happens to be their boss or in-law, she said.

Serious scientists have studied the evidence that hunters of Bigfoot and others collect but have never made a shocking discovery based upon them.

Disotell has conducted DNA analyses of more than 15 samples over the years of blood, feces, bone, hair and other remnants of supposed chupacabra or Bigfoot-like creatures. His samples have come from various places in the United States, Canada and as far as Nepal, where the Abominable Snowman or Yeti is said to reside.

"It stretches credibility just from the sense that you can't just have one or two of these beasts running around for tens of thousands of years; you need a population to be viable," he said.

The "evidence" he has examined was, in reality, material from bears, coyotes, humans, mountain goats,and inorganic sources. He ran analyses of their DNA with the same rigor as any other samples in his lab, which routinely does such tests to help classify species of primates from all over the world.

Another strike against the reality of Bigfoot and its brethren is the lack of photos,

Twelve days after Lady Gaga wound up in his box at Shea Stadium during a Mets game, Jerry Seinfeld has called her "a jerk" and then some.

Joking or no? Read and decide.

"This woman is a jerk. I hate her," Seinfeld said during a WFAN radio interview on Monday. "I can't believe they put her in my box, which I paid for."

Gaga, dressed in a bra and swilling beer, was moved from her front row seat to Seinfeld's empty box (without his knowledge) after flipping off photographers.

"You give people the finger and you get upgraded? Is that the world we're living in now?" he said.

Seinfeld first said when asked about the June 10th incident, "I wish her the best. You take one 'A' off of that and you've got gag."

"I don't know what these young people think or how they promote their careers," Seinfeld said. "I'm older, I'm 56. I look at Lady Gaga the way Keith Hernandez watches these kids when they pull the pocket out, they wear the inside-out pocket. ... Do you think he understands that? He can't understand that. That's a new game, that's kids."

He added, "I'm not one of these all-publicity-is-good people. People talk about you need exposure -- you could die of exposure."