Pretzels, Microbes, Boogers, Nimrods, Fighting Artichokes and Gasbags

An incredible database of high school, college and pro sports team nicknames. Are they missing your old alma mater's? Let them know and they'll add it. (via a thread from SportsShooter) A much less exhaustive list can be found here, included only because it includes some more detail on the origins of some of the nicknames. Finally, a list of someone's Top Ten Mascots, the highlight being the great photo of the UC-Santa Cruz Banana Slug.

PS. It's the Freeport (IL) Pretzels, Waterloo (IA) Microbes, Bonham (TX) Boogers, Watersmeet (MI) Nimrods, Scottsdale (AZ) Artichokes, and the Iola (MO) Gasbags

Leggo my logos!

Bushparty looks at some of the ugliest hockey team logos ever. (via Cardhouse), and ESPN explores the good, bad and ugly in NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB logos.

Your words, someone else's mouth

Type in something and have pop stars sing it for you.

(via Memepool)

It could have been worse... It could have been Diet

Those goofs over at Jones Soda have really done it this time.

J-Walked Links, Baker and Footnotes

Allow me for a moment to rave about fellow blogger John Walkenbach and his continually amusing and amazing blog J-Walk. I can't count¹ the number of links I've hijacked from him since the inception of this humble little space. But a few of the recent gems he's turned me on to include The Book of Ratings, The Dullest Blog In The World and The Telephone EXchange Name Project (complete with Bell Telephone's 1955 Guidelines for Telephone Exchanges)²

The other morning I was lurking around some of the more backwater pages of J-Walk (I, of course mean that in the nicest possible way) and found that John is also a very big fan of one of my favorite authors, Nicholson Baker. Baker's The Mezzanine is a small treasure, with the entire storyline set in a single lunch hour of our protagonist. The plot is pretty slim (he heads out for lunch, breaks a shoelace while tying, buys a box of popcorn, a hot dog, milk and cookie and stops at a local drugstore to buy a pair of replacement shoelaces). How can someone write a whole book about that?! Yet The Mezzanine manages to shoehorn in enough humor, amusing observation and footnotes³ to make it a great read.


¹Okay, I probably could count them, but that seems a little too anal-retentive even for me

²I currently have a SYcamore1 phone exchange, which has an appropriately '1950's ring^* to it. I recall that at a house my buddy and I rented for a while, we usually gave out the phone number as GAG-DOG1, which while fairly memorable, created at least one slightly embarrasing situation. It seems that one of our friends was trying to call our number, but was having trouble getting through. She called the operator for assistance and when asked for the number she was trying to reach, said friend realized she never bothered to learn the number itself. Sheepishly she admitted she was trying to call GAG-DOG1, much to the amusement of the operator.

³Did I mention the footnotes? This may be the record-holder for the most footnotes in a single work of fiction. And not just those cryptic little ibids and the like, but gloriously detailed footnotic ramblings often sprawling on to the following page, ranging from his musings on the decline of the drinking straw once they changed from paper to plastic to the argument against hot-air blowers in bathrooms vs. the traditional paper towel.

^*Pun probably intended

I'm guessing using duct tape would be considered cheating...

How long can you Hold The Button??!!

(via Bifurcated Rivets)

AuWa!! ItAi!! Pupu!!

Ouch!
Don't desert me
Ouch!
Please don't hurt me
Ouch!
Ow-ow-ouch!
The Rutles -- "Ouch!"

The exclamations in the title might look weird, but they're really just the equivalent linguistic counterpart for "Ouch!" or "Ow!" in English (North American English, anyway). By the way, the three listed above are Polish, Japanese and Basque, respectively.

I can see my house from here

The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. Although not generally drawn to scale, they show street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective.

A collection of over 1,700 U.S. and Canadian panoramic maps from 1847-1929.

(via Neat New Stuff on the Net)

Writer's cramp to the power of infinity

A while back I mentioned a cool way to show the time online with HumanClock.com. Another nifty variation here in this handwritten clock.

(via Pop Culture Madness)

"I've looked at castles from both sides now..."

If you're in the real estate biz, castles can be a real tough sell. Hot in the summer, impossible to heat in the winter, and who wants to maintain a moat in this day and age? Not to mention defending it from every marauding yahoo that decides to lay siege in your front yard. For all you castle owners out there, Castle from XGenStudios lets you vent the frustration.

And on the other side of the coin, there's Catapult. (Shockwave plug-in required for both games)

They can't all be a Sgt. Pepper's...

But then again, they can't all be as bad as these. The Worst Album Covers Ever (Volumes 1 and 2) (submitted by Brian "Booji Boy" Holt)

But that's just an appetizer. For the full nine-course banquet in bad album cover art, feast your eyes at BizarreRecords.com.

To cosmically balance things out, and to cleanse your palate after the horror mentioned above, here are Rolling Stone magazine's 50 Best Album Covers.

"Attention, shoppers"

You know, there are still 42 shopping days until Christmas.

Even so, you may be scurrying around from shop to shop Christmas Eve, desperately searching for that last "perfect gift". Trust me, no matter how tempted you may be, I really, really, REALLY don't want this. Really.

My sharpener doesn't do that!

Cool pencil carvings

(via J-Walk)

Equally cool eggshell carvings

(via Boing Boing)

Break out the tetrahydrozoline

Although I hear it just missed entry as a recognized Olympic sport, staring contests are making quite a comeback. Have a chance to stare down Sally, a big cyber-eyeball, or a host of others. At least doing it online is safer than in person.

And if your peepers are still up for it after their workout, confuse 'em with these.

P.S. Whaddaya mean, "What's tetrahydrozoline?"

A little something for you Mac users

"Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline,
you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with
a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes.
I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes.
The reasons for updates are to present more new features."
-- Bill Gates, on code stability, from Focus Magazine

"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good."
-- Bill Gates on the solid code base of Win9X

It's here! The latest and grea... well, the latest anyways... from Microsoft. It's Windows RG (Really Good Edition)!