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Gentlemen apes prefer blondes

By on October 7, 2007 in General Skwib, Monkeys!

Gigantic gorillasIf the Carnival of the Insanities isn’t crazy enough for you, this story from Reuters puts the o-ran-dy into orang-utan:

Sibu the orang-utan has miffed his Dutch keepers by refusing to mate with females and showing sexual interest only in tattooed human blondes.

I could say something about the proclivities Dutch blondes (male and female) at this point, but I WILL restrain myself. However, it is worth noting that another famous ape also seems to prefer blondes, though it was never clear if Fay Wray was tattooed or not. (Certainly not anywhere we could see.) In either case, I place myself firmly in the ape camp vis-a-vis the issue of human female blondes.


Full story here, and important scientific information about orang-urades here.

It’s true: Canada once used maple syrup as currency

By on October 5, 2007 in Monkeys!, Parody & Satire

John Hodgman was on the Daily Show last night with his new column “Mentally Ill Money”. Apparently, the parity of the Canadian dollar with the US dollar is causing some concern and satire. Best line in the piece:

… the Canadian dollar, which was once garbage, can now be traded for actual goods and services, in a real country.

Thursday Evening Diversions

By on October 4, 2007 in General Skwib

If the gratuitous linking to Monty Python sketches wasn’t enough, here is some more fun for stuff to check out today:

Professor Quippy: Headphone theory

By on October 2, 2007 in Odd Science

Professor QuippyDo you hate it when your headphones get knotted up into a ball of unusable plastic? So does Dorian Raymer, a biophysicist at the University of California, San Diego.

So he worked out some experiments to figure out the phenomenon, and he discovered that headphone cables are the perfect length for getting knots in them. If they were shorter, they would get less knotted. Some of the knots he produced in the experiments were extremely complicated “prime knots” with more than eleven crossings.

And it turns out that having an advanced degree in biophysics doesn’t make untangling those knots any less annoying.

No word yet on how to prevent the “Raymer” Syndrome yet, nor on what happens to that sock that goes missing in your dryer.

Link: Don’t get to excited about reading this — you’ll need a subscription to read the whole story, and they never really explain what causes the phenomenon: Unravelled: The mystery of why strings tangle

Storyblogging Carnival LXXIX

By on October 1, 2007 in Skwibby fiction

We have a short carnival this weeks folks, two tales from the SF/Fantasy genre, plus an excerpt from my novel, THE AMADEUS NET.

Die Hippie Aliens
by Andrew Ian Dodge at Dodgeblogium (770 words)

A report from the battle on Libertarium

The History of the Domini, Part III: The First Legion
by Donald S. Crankshaw at Back of the Envelope | The whole story starts here
(336 words of a 2,531 word story in progress) PG-13

In a desperate act of magic, the Amaranthine and Domini summon the First Legion.

The Great Wal-Mart Stand by Mark A. Rayner
(3,800 words) PG-13

This is an excerpt from my novel THE AMADEUS NET (ENC Press, 2005), in which we learn how the psychotic American artist, Bella, got to the utopian city of Ipolis. (Available from ENC Press here.)

You can find out more about the Storyblogging Carnival at Back of the Envelope.