Day 171: Picking The World’s Brains

originally published June 19, 2012 It may come as a surprise to some of you – particularly if you read this site on a regular basis – that I am, in fact, a member of Mensa. Well, I was. I allowed my membership to lapse once it became clear to me that the organization was […]

Day 170: Pop Goes The Art

originally published June 18, 2012 Pop art is a wonderful thing. Because of its nature, it can be a field so wide and vague that acceptance within its community can appear arbitrary to the outside observer. I would be one such observer. Don’t get me wrong – I can appreciate Warhol’s alternate perceptions of Campbell’s […]

Day 169: A Father’s Day Quiz – Food Corporate Mascots

originally published June 17, 2012 As a Father’s Day treat, I’m going to change things up for today. Instead of my usual kilograph on the quirks and weirdnesses of pop culture and history, I’m offering up a quiz. The following questions all pertain to fictional characters who at one time shilled food products. Some of […]

Day 168: Are The Swiss A Bunch Of Cheese-Eating Allah Haters?

originally published June 16, 2012 Remember a few years ago, when radical Muslims were planning to build a mosque / terrorist training center right across the street from Ground Zero, with the expressed intent of burning American flags in the front lobby and cranking “Death To America (DJ Abdulisco Funktronic Remix)” on loudspeakers each July […]

Day 167: A Onesie For Your Face

originally published June 15, 2012 Of all facial accessories, from 80s-style Rayban Wayfarers to bovine-ish septum piercings, without a doubt the one which most cranks my giddy-nerve is the monocle. You can’t look trashy in a monocle. People assume you’ve achieved something in life if you’re sporting a monocle. Either that or they assume you […]

Day 166: Let’s Make A Probability Puzzle

originally published June 14, 2012 I may have unearthed the most lengthy and mind-taxing article in Wikipedia about goats. Seriously, this thing reads like a textbook chapter, delving into variants, theorems, and something called the quantum version. It even features this: I’ll be ignoring that portion. Today we’re dealing with logic and, to a lesser […]

Day 165: Master Of Muppets

originally published June 13, 2012 There are some topics I select because they tell an interesting story. Some topics I choose because of my fascination with pop culture minutiae. Other topics I write about because they are bacon. Today I’m indulging my own curiosity. Ms. Wiki tuned my dial to a man whose handiwork (sub-mediocre […]

Day 164: Titus Oates – Rouser (And Inventor) Of Rabble

originally published June 12, 2012 Titus Oates knew how to get ahead in life. He became famous for riling up the public with fear and paranoia, feeding oxygen into a fire of public distrust of a certain religion’s followers, and displaying a stunning acuity for spewing false bullshit into the realm of public truthiness. Titus […]

Day 163: My Overdue Cliff Notes

originally published June 11, 2012 As a self-proclaimed music geek, I’ve assumed an obnoxious, smug confidence in the breadth of my knowledge of popular classics. I’ve sat through the entirety of Thick As A Brick, skipped out on buying Roxette tickets in high school so that I could see the Everly Brothers, and even named […]

Day 162: Where The Wallys Are

originally published June 10, 2012 Stonehenge. It’s one of the great mysteries of the earth. And it’s the locale for today’s tome of historical weirdness. This is the story of the Wallys. The original Wally was a British guy called Phillip Russell. Phil fell in with a group of late-era hippie counterrevolutionaries who called themselves […]