Typographic Tesselation

What's it from? Poster, wallhanging, sign? Go over to the Double-Breasted Dustjacket to find out.

Turkey In The Driveway

When backing into my driveway, I suddenly noticed something large and dark-colored hanging out in the driveway. First thought was "dog", but then I realized it had two few legs to be an average city animal:

Now, I admit we live in Fargo, not the most urban of communities, but we live about a block from downtown and a good mile or two from the river. Lady Wild Turkey here had been wandering through town quite a while, in the middle of the afternoon, before stopping to snack on weeds along my driveway.

She hung out long enough for me to run back into the house, grab the camera, order my wife to "follow me outside right now", and then get a couple snapshots of our esteemed visitor. Wifey said I should have backed up faster, and we could've saved it for Thanksgiving dinner! The turkey makes for the second batch of wildlife to stop in our yard: we had a momma wood duck and four ducklings in our flowerbed about two months ago, too.

Lightpost: $10,000

Somebody in Appleton, Wi, is labelling objects in public with amateur appraisals; a light post is worth $10,000, a fencepost $100. The city is treating it as graffiti, and is prepared to fine whomever is caught assigning value to things:

Tattooed Dead Pigs

In today's interesting meshing of medium and method: tattooed taxidermy swine. (Warning: very crappy Javascript navigation; click on "stuffed tattooed pigs" At the top)

Homer Simpson Euro

A shopkeeper in Spain was surprised to see a famous cartoon character peering back from the obverse of a Euro:

It is, in fact, a real Euro altered to look like Homer Simpson (not sure if that affects its ability to be used as currency, though). Anyhow, it's internationally famous, which makes it worth a bit more than one Euro.

Al Franken: Master Cartographer

Al Franken can draw a map of the United States of America freehand.

Smallest Snake In The World

Meet the smallest snake in the world -- found in Barbados under a rock, the snake is tiny, easily mistaken for a worm or millipede. Creature moves to small island, creature becomes small as well.

Crazy Jobs At All-Time High

Canine Haberdasher may not be as obscure a job title (or as cool a band name) as you might think: commercial insurers are having trouble fitting these narrow job descriptions into their rate tables. When I worked for an insurance company and gave a presentation on disability rates, I found examples using the oddest job descriptions I could find -- 'knifemaker' and 'missile operator' were about the most obscure; I can imagine those rate calculators are twice as big today as so many people find themselves in the long-tail of employment.

Funny Graffiti

Here in Fargo, along one of the main thoroughfares was a business that had a billboard that was blank for many years, until some inventive fellow wrote "ENJOY WORK, ROBOTS!" in spraypaint. I regret never getting a photo of it. The London Paper has an excellent slideshow of funny graffiti photos. Favorite: The Asteroids one.