Scribal Terror

Bathies

Via Arbroath

"Our lawyers made us post this stupid sign"

Via Bits and Pieces

Melody Road

deputy dog reports on a bit of whimsical road engineering in (where else?) Japan:

a few years ago in japan, members of the hokkaido industrial research institute started carving thousands of very precise grooves into nearby roads. the slightly loopy brainwave belonged to a mr. shinoda, a guy who accidentally cut a road in several places with a digger and then later drove over the damage in his car.

he realised that with some planning and time to kill he could create rows of grooves which, when driven over at a certain speed, would ‘play a tune’. . . . the grooves are between 6 and 12mm apart: the narrower the interval, the higher the pitch.

Video at the link. Believe me, it isn't pretty.

Don't count on this happening again

Ananova reports:

Three-year-old Vladimir Rushkov plunged from a window on the seventh floor of a block of flats in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

But he landed on the awning of a shop below and bounced off from there onto the bush.

Doctors who examined him afterwards said he had a few cuts and bruises but was otherwise perfectly healthy.

Warren reminds me that Mythbusters did an episode on "Hollywood MegaMyths" and declared this"plausible."

You will be pleased to know

that one male polar bear weighs as much as 15, 840 human eyeballs. Via Weird Converter

Rat-related rewards

Science Daily reports:

India's Mizoram state, facing a once-in-50-years invasion by rats, is reportedly offering a 2 1/2 U.S. cent reward per rodent tail to avert a crop wipeout.

This is separate from a $25 reward for a Chawmnu, dead or alive. The Chawmnus are giant rats, each believed to be the size of a female pig which, according to unconfirmed local rumors, already are stalking some villages, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

There are no photographs of Chawmnus on the internet, leading one to believe that they might be ever so slightly imaginary. Still . . . you never know.

Swastika shoes

How would you like to pull up your insole and find one of these? You might be justified in wondering if crazy people were sneaking into your house at night and doodling on your Steve Maddens, but apparently it's just a factory symbol from the Chinese shop where they're made. For one thing, it's the wrong way round. A bit spooky nonetheless.

Seriously, though, do you have any idea what is written under YOUR insoles?

It's frogilicious

As if amphibians didn't have enough to worry about, the AP reports on the "frog juice" fad in Peru:

Carmen Gonzalez plucks one of the 50 frogs from the aquarium at her bus stop restaurant, bangs it against tiles to kill it and then makes two incisions along its belly and peels off the skin as if husking corn.

She's preparing frog juice, a beverage revered by some Andean cultures for having the power to cure asthma, bronchitis, sluggishness and a low sex drive. A drink of so-called "Peruvian Viagra" sells for about 90 cents.

Gonzalez adds three ladles of hot, white bean broth, two generous spoonfuls of honey, raw aloe vera plant and several tablespoons of maca _ an Andean root also believed to boost stamina and sex drive _ into a household blender.

Then she drops the frog in.

Once strained, the result is a starchy, milkshake-like liquid that stings the throat.

Photo credit: AP

Update: Chaz at Dustbury points us to this Joe Cartoon. NOT FOR KIDS

3,500 pounds of bat guano

The housing inspector said they might have a little bat problem . . .

An upstate New York couple didn't think a few bats in the attic were much of a problem when they were buying a house last summer. Months later, they found out how wrong they were when they discovered more than a ton and a half of bat droppings up there.

Houston museum needs roaches

If you live in or near Houston in a roach-infested hovel, your luck may just have changed for the better:

In a city with trillions of American cockroaches, the Houston Museum of Natural Science has agreed to pay a quarter per bug — up to 1,000 — as it seeks to populate a new insect exhibit alongside its Cockrell Butterfly Center.