Accosted
A co-worker and I were sitting on a park bench on a sunny afternoon in Prague recently, having a conversation and generally minding our own business, when an older gentleman walked up to us and asked (VERY politely in heavily accented but impeccable english) if he could possibly interrupt us for a minute. He explained that he's had a translation question on his mind and, being a precise sort of person, he would like to ask a native speaker exactly how to say this one thing.
Now, this did strike me as an excuse for him to engage in a conversation with an animate being who might actually talk back. But I am the person who spent years (pre-google) tracking down why the abbreviation for Switzerland is "CH" rather than "SW" or any other much more sensible thing, so I can appreciate the tantalizing hope of finally answering one of life's mysterious questions. So I smiled and nodded encouragingly only to have to try DESPERATELY to not turn purple with suppressed laughter when he finally got the question out:
"What exactly do you call the hill that ants build and live in?"
If only!
The following was quoted this morning in a discussion at work on improving efficiency:
“We will not put into our establishment anything that is useless”
If only!
And the hip bone is connected to the arm bone?
Author's note: admittedly this is a little outside the normal topics for this blog since there aren't any fools or idiots involved. However, it was deemed to qualify on the strength of sheer bizzareness.
About an hour southeast of Prague is a little town that had one of the earliest Catholic churches in the area (the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora). The Abbot made a pilgrimage to the holy land in about 1300 AD, bringing back some dirt from Golgatha which he sprinkled on the cemetery. For you heathens out there, this means the cemetery was now by extension holy ground itself. So everyone and his brother wanted to be buried there. Literally.
Fast forward several hundred years and the little church cemetery had the bones of approximately 40,000 people and was in a serious real estate crunch. Some bright monk got the idea to use them to decorate the lower chapel for an object lesson in the impermanence of life. They've been rearranged a couple of times since then, not to mention bleached and white washed, but the concept remains. As with so many such things, no words can describe this so I offer pictures instead.
And the most bizzare part about the whole thing is that as gruesome as the whole concept is and as freaky as the pictures are, when you're there in person there's just a sense of macabre splendor, rightness, and even peace. Despite the ticket takers and all the tourists with their cameras, this IS a holy place.
Filial Love
"I decided that for father's day this year I'd buy my dad something other than ammunition"
I leave the context to your imaginations. Rest assured it was a real conversation I had (although it's not my quote).
Happy Father's Day all!
Vindication!
This is for all of you who laughed at me for my fixation with Japanese toilets and their myriad of buttons. I told you they were scary!
From Gizmodo.com:
The Strange Case of the Exploding Toilets: Japan on High Alert
Toto, purveyors of a-cut-above bathroom accessories are in deep doo-doo. Toilets from their Z range, which feature a pulsating massage spray, a power dryer, and a "Tornado Wash" flush, have been bursting into flames in the company's home market of Japan.
According to a company spokesman, nobody was using the toilets when the fires broke out, and there were no injuries—although it could have been very nasty indeed. "The fire would have been just under your buttocks," she added. Imagine the carnage if, while perched atop one of the flamers, some unlucky person had chosen that moment to unleash a mighty fart.
Although just three loos have been affected, Toto is taking no chances, and is recalling all 180,000 of the Z models, which were manufactured between May 1996 and December 2002. – Ad Dugdale
Free repairs to flammable toilets [BBC News}Labels: vindication
Headers
The theory is that a roomful of monkeys typing randomly will eventually reproduce a great work of fiction. I'm not sure about that, but it obviously doesn't take very many monkeys to create an email subject line guaranteed to make me laugh. Some of my recent favorites:
It mangel be euphemism
Entrails regimen
Stoic eggplant
Hi beer!
"Life is falling down seven times, getting up eight"
