Scribal Terror

Slow Day

Internet connection is wonky.

Darwin Award for Sitting

This Belgian mining engineer, now probably defunct, is pictured here in a 1922 photo warming his nether regions on a lump of uranium which "contained enough fissile material to construct two Hiroshima type atomic weapons." Via Lateral Science

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing syllepsis, dirty syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.

Kingfisher and prey

Cellar Image of the Day.

Eagle Outage

AP reports from Alaska:

 About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines.

"You have to live in Alaska to have this kind of outage scenario," said Gayle Wood, an Alaska Electric Light & Power spokeswoman. "This is the story of the overly ambitious eagle who evidently found a deer head in the landfill."

The bird, weighed down by the deer head, apparently failed to clear the transmission lines, she said. A repair crew found the eagle dead, the deer head nearby.

What it is?

Answer: Cashews in their shells, although to me they look a little bit like bloomers. Mad Scientist Laboratories has some interesting information about cashews -- and why you can't buy them in the shell: In brief, they're not true nuts. They're related to poison ivy, and the fluid around the cashew is caustic. Via Bits and Pieces

Elk, with porch furniture

Don't worry, she got it off. From Denver Channel via Jonco

Fear the birthday balloons of doom

From Snapped Shot via Ace:

A Lebanese municipality worker places a balloon with Hebrew writing, on the shore in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Saturday, Jan. 27, 2007. Mysterious balloons drifting in from Israel to Lebanon are unnerving people, with some south Lebanon villagers reportedly feeling ill and authorities warning residents against touching them. Hebrew on red balloon reads ' For Silvi, from all my heart.'

(AP Photo)

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing syllepsis, dirty syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.

Strange Bedfellows

Ananova