Year: 2009

What do the following 15 items have in common? * Eastern Tiger Salamander * Northern Cardinal * Monarch Butterfly * Square dance * Bluegill * Violet flower * Popcorn * Gold Rush Apple * Tully Monster * Big Bluestem *…

You just accidentally sent invites to EVERYONE in your address book to a book cataloging service. What do you do? 1) Laugh it off. “People get these every day.” 2) Freak out and immediately send an email to everyone in…

if you got a goodreads invite from me, you can ignore it. That was a total mistake on my part. I thought I was adding friends that were on goodreads already. I didn’t mean to send it out to my…

Take advantage of the day with the most sunlight, Summer Solstice on June 21. Some suggestions: Pull an all-nighter: I once did this when I locked myself out of my apartment on Summer Solstice a couple years ago. It was…

amehzing Definition: Combination of “meh” and “amazing.” The situation where one person finds something amazing and the other person finds it meh. In order to come to a conclusion about the situation, both parties can agree to call it amehzing.…

Let’s delete all the 50 states and use counties instead. We could have 3,033 states. Here’s what the map would look like. (take a look at the full hi-res version) There would be a problem that many of the states…

The U.S. Census Bureau offers free pdf map downloads. Fantastic! I downloaded the county map with the intention of making the county lines thicker than the state lines just to see what would happen if instead of states, we had…

We have two holes in the front of our head filled with goop. They are for seeing. These holes with goop are called eyes. We have two holes in the side of our head for hearing. They are called ears.…

Based in Chicago Half Letter Press publishes and distributes booklets about collaborative and experimental artwork. I recently discovered their shop at halfletterpress.com and ordered a bunch of books–for cheap! Here’s the message I wrote in part of my online order:…

Matt’s resume tip #34: Spice up the text version of your resume on Careerbuilder with some FIREWORKS: .·: * :·. Everyone loves fireworks. Tell me someone who does not like fireworks. Therefore, you should put fireworks into your text-version of…

I’d love to have a penny from every currency on planet Earth. I’d pay $10 for that. Someone should sell a collection that has every possible type of current penny. That would just be so cool. If someone sells the…

Last year I subscribed to all the U.S. presidential candidates to see what types of email I would get. Now I am unsubscribing. Here’s my message to Ron Paul. ========================== To: [email protected] Your unsubscribe link is broken. Please fix and…

Whenever I sign up to get something in the mail for free, I like make up a middle name that is related to the product. For instance, Oscar Meyer is giving away coupons for free hot dogs. I used the…

A selection of photos from various flickr groups on LEGO steampunk, tanks, and war. Some of these creations are just so COOOOOOOOL.

Oh the days of Scrabulous. Playing the super-duper fun game of Scrabble online. See what fun words my friends would come up with. Oh yes. After IMing my brother about how I miss Scrabulous, I did a google search for…

i think i burnt my water for my tea it tastes burnt like all the oxygen is missing i’m drinking pure hydrogen this tea tastes extra hydrogeny

The “right or wrong” on Fox Chicago news a couple nights ago was: “I agree with the survey saying CTA service has improved” 25% say right 75% say wrong This just in: 75% of Chicagoans are idiots. How in the…

My brother makes a strong (and correct) argument that Tony Gwynn is better than Cal Ripken. There’s some cardinals fan bloke commenting on that post saying Gwynn was hopped on steriods for a few years. Which is a complete joke.…

I’d like to see a tv show named “First Season.” Whenever someone says they are watching the first season of another television show, it’ll be promo for the tv show named “First Season.” It’ll be great. “I’m watching the first…

A fun two-line poem: ============= no delete co plete ============= yes! It rhymes and it forces you to complete the poem in your mind. You have to add the m. See! The m, it’s missing, but your mind adds it.…

Whenever I would have hot chocolate at work in my big mug, it always tasted bad. Was it the black mug sucking out the heat? Not really. Was it the Swiss Miss brand? Not really. Was it because I was…

It’s so much fun to type the website address as ALL CAPS into a browser. I’m going to TWITTER.COM. By typing it in ALL CAPS it tells my browser that I’m totally serious about going to twitter. Give me the…

Pilcrow Lit Fest has a lot going on this Saturday May 23. Matilda‚Äôs: 3101 N. Sheffield and Trader Todd‚Äôs: 3216 N. Sheffield, Chicago There‚Äôs a ton of free panels and workshops. http://pilcrowlitfest.com/panels.html For every time slot there are three different…

According to acronymfinder.com there are only three acyronyms for D.U.M.B. ‚Ä¢ Duke University Marching Band ‚Ä¢¬†Deep Underground Military Base ‚Ä¢¬†Disasters Usually Motivate Backups Shouldn’t there be more? There’s only two for S.T.U.P.I.D. ‚Ä¢ Smart Talented Unique Person in Demand (via…

Here are my notes from the Society of News Design meetup on May 16, 2009. (Pictured above is Theresa Carter, Audarshia Townsend, Whet Moser, Brad Flora, and Jeff Daugherty on the Social Media Roundtable) ———————— Matt Mansfield (president of SND)…

Any restaurant chain with more than twenty stores might be required to show the calories counts on their menu boards. Of course the restaurant industry opposes this. But isn’t it time for people to own up and know what they…

People who use air quotes with their fingers have “issues.” Now picture me saying that and raising my hands and making the hand gesture for quotations. The number of air quote pumps is directly related to the number of syllables…

The etymology of joy reveals that joy means to cause a person to be in a state of gladness.

“Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It’s a conjunction. Connective tissue.” —Eric Weiner,…

If you want to hear one of the strangest remixes ever, listen to the “Muppets Theme Remix” by DJ E Motion. There are over 30 results on amazon for “Muppets theme.” Most are fairly straightforward. Like the original theme song.…

lahp on twitter said: “We’ve already had a discussion about Klingon cloaking devices this ayem. Yep. We’re dorks.” When you say that you are a dork, doesn’t that diminishes your dorkness? Dorks don’t admit to being dorks. Or can you…