A Saturday Collection of Links

The Bloglines queue is already full again, and though I usually list the collection in alphabetical order by blog, there are a couple from this batch that are so damned wonderful that I’m saving them until the end of the list. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

• Food Dude posted this awhile ago, and while the restaurant review is fine it’s the introduction to the review that I like best. The story of who he chose for his dining companions that night is pretty cool. He also found this fabulous video, which had me giggling last night.
  

• Over at Damn Interesting, there’s this tidbit about Germany’s “Pleasure Dome.” (I have a feeling I know where the boys from the World Cup Blog are going to be spending their time in Germany.) Additionally, there’s this about potential alternatives to the gas tax right here in Oregon.
  

• Victoria at Europe on an Alphabet got poked in Portugal – and not in a good way! She also posted this tale about vegemite that reminded me of a story. When I was in Australia in January 1992 with my college choir, I recall one breakfast buffet where there was a bowlful of a dark brown substance beside the bread, toaster and jams. A soprano I didn’t particularly care for who had just spent a semester in Vienna arrived late to breakfast and enthusiastically began heaping giant spoonfuls of the brown gunk on a slice of toast, exclaiming, “Oh, goodie! Nutella!” I dearly wish I’d been more vindictive back then and kept my mouth shut, but instead I said, “Um, I don’t think that’s Nutella.” She stuck a tentative pinky-finger into the oozing pile on her toast and tasted it. Sure enough, it was vegemite. She dumped the contents of that plate into the trash and started over. And I kicked myself under the table.
  

• From Grey Duck comes this Wikipedia meme – type your birthday (minus the year) into the search box, and then list three events, two births and one death that happened on that day. So, for February 25th we have the following:
  Events:
  1793 – George Washington holds the first Cabinet meeting as President of the United States
  1837 – First U.S. electric printing press patented by Thomas Davenport
  1919 – Oregon places a 1 cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax (interesting coincidence, given the Damn Interesting post above)
  Births:
  1841 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter, graphic artist and sculptor
  1888 – John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State
  (But I can’t stop at two, though – there are some pretty interesting names on this list, including George Harrison, Sally Jessy Raphaël, Zeppo Marx, John Doe [the musician, not the unknown dead guy at the morgue] and José Maria Aznar [the former Prime Minister of Spain]. What an interesting birthday party that would be!)
  Death:
  1983 – Tennessee Williams, American playwright
  And even though this wasn’t asked for in the meme, I notice that February 25th is also Kuwait’s National Day. Apparently I should be there for my birthday some year so I could pretend the whole country was celebrating my birthday.
  

• Conor is back from his second stint at the orphanage in Nepal, but he’s still writing about the kids. This post made me cry, no joke. In a good way.
  

• James Tata links to an article which introduces the idea (at least to me, as I hadn’t heard it before) of rebuilding New Orleans as a water city like Venice.
  

• The Record Store Geek quotes from a Rolling Stone article about how the proverbial generation gap isn’t so much anymore. I have, on occasion, wondered when I was going to start thinking the music that “kids today” listen to is too loud, too annoying, or too something. And sure, I don’t like everything that’s current, but I didn’t when I was 17, either. I guess there’s hope that my niece and nephews will think their Aunt Jessie is cool even when she’s in her 50s. I can hope, anyway.
  

• William Bragg (ever-present in my Bloglines posts) links to a couple interesting things here – in particular, I really liked the first one (the “wicked, but creepy” one) and the love/hate shirt.
  

• Bob at World Cup Blog has posted a couple stories about streakers (whether that’s because they’re a pretty typical part of soccer/football worldwide or because Bob has a secret desire to emulate them I refuse to speculate), but this video takes the cake as far as I’m concerned.
  

• Finally, the abso-frickin-lutely great things you’ve been waiting for – the ones you’ve read through all this other mumbo-jumbo for. (Well, not really – it’s all good stuff – oh, hell, you know what I mean.) These finger-lickin’ good clips are all from Frytopia. First there’s this juggling video, which apparently has been around for awhile (I hadn’t seen it), and which I think is pretty damned cool. Then today there’s this, I guess you’d call it a rebuttal of sorts. Even more amazing, and funny to boot. Everyone loves a parody. (Except the person being parodied, I imagine, though Al Franken is quick to point out that parody is protected even if the person being parodied doesn’t get the joke.)
  
  But even better than the dueling jugglers, my friends, is this gem that has me crying I’m laughing so hard every time I watch it (and I’ve watched it about six times today). I have no idea how many times I’ll have to see it before it’s no longer funny… I don’t think it’ll ever not be funny. If it is, I don’t want to be alive anymore, because that’ll just be a sad, sad day. I have now also decided that I absolutely must teach my cats to do some kind of trick. It’s imperative that they become Internet superstars.