There’s a Steampunk Festival in Weed, CA

Chalk this one up under “events I did not expect”: Weed, California has an annual Steampunk Festival, and it returns this year on May 21-22. Yep, the same town that hosts an annual 420 Festival (on April 20, naturally) somehow has a festival celebrating steampunk. Because of course it does. Weed has about 2,900 people,… Continue reading There’s a Steampunk Festival in Weed, CA

WTH?

Zoom in on the Google Map of Corvallis, Oregon, near downtown and this is what you’ll see: Er, what? How on earth did “Illinois” and “Nebraska” get in there?

Cascadia, State of Jefferson and other secessionist movements

Being in Portland several times over the past several weeks for beer happenings got me thinking about the (mostly inconsequential) debate about “Cascadian Dark Ales” (versus the other names of “Black IPA”, “American Black Ale” and so on) and about the “Cascadia” part of that name. See, here in the Pacific Northwest “Cascadia” can refer… Continue reading Cascadia, State of Jefferson and other secessionist movements

Items of recent awesomeness

Some of these links aren’t as shiny-new as they were when I started this post, but even so: The CDC’s zombie apocalypse preparedness plan: Yes, the CDC is all over the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. For real. If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease… Continue reading Items of recent awesomeness

Psycho!

The other day Dave posted a story riddle with a creepy punchline: the people who answer it “correctly”—i.e. a certain way—think like psychopaths. (Sorry to spoil the surprise.) It’s meant to illustrate a particular way of thinking that psychopaths exhibit: that of other people—even family—as impersonal tools to be used for their own benefit. (Fortunately,… Continue reading Psycho!

Oregon Lottery Space Invaders!

I find it rather surreal that the Oregon Lottery is now offering Space Invaders lottery tickets. Seriously. It’s part of their “Travel back” line of Scratch-Its. They look rather complicated though, and cost $3 a pop. Now they need to come out with other classic arcade games: Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Asteroids…

Links

Just a collection of links to things I like and/or found amusing recently. dive into mark: Spaceships “Parenting is like an ongoing episode of CSI. You’re always following the evidence back to the crime.” The Bend Bigfoot stuff: Jake’s original link The KTVZ story My Hack Bend post My photographic evidence of Bigfoot on Pilot… Continue reading Links

Mouse fire!

Okay, this is kind of an awful story… No, scratch that. It’s a story that seems like it should be awful, but I just can’t take it seriously. It just makes me laugh. I can’t help it: Mouse takes down house. On Saturday, a Fort Sumner man’s home fell victim to a mouse fire. Homeowner… Continue reading Mouse fire!