Unreal. This guy is incredible.

My little student came running up to me today, so excited to tell me something!

Me: Hey, you!

Student: Ohmygosh, guesswhatIsaw?

Me: What?

Student: I love it I love it I love it. (spinning around) It's a musical!

Me: Oh, was it Grease?

Student: No.

Me: What was it?

Student: It's that one. You know! About the hairdresser!

Me: Um, Edward Scissorhands? I guess that's not really a musical though...

Student: No! They filmed it in London? The hairdresser lives there? (whispering) They take flesh and make pies?

Me: O000hhhh, Sweeney Todd!

I loved it because she so genuinely enjoyed it. It's her new favorite musical. Plus, how sweet is it that, to her, Johnny Depp is a hairdresser?

I Wish Lit'l Smokies Were Somehow a Factor

Did anyone else catch this story about the guy who broke into a house belonging to two farmworkers where he "rubbed one with spices and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing"? I guess they just woke up to the burglar "applying spices to one of them and striking the other with an 8-inch sausage." Seriously? What would you do if you just woke up to the pungent aroma of corriander being slammed into your face and then, you opened your eyes, and WHAM! A huge sausage blow right to your cheekbone. You would be so torn, alarmed by the violent attack, and yet pleased by the deli-like aromas. Every time you ate a salami sandwich, your face would just twinge right where the robber nailed you.

What is your worst fear? Dogs? Bees? Dogs that when they open their mouths, bees fly out? I am obsessed with a new phobia. It's called koumpounophobia, and it's the fear of buttons. You heard me right - buttons.

Okay, at first I didn't believe it. I was like, what is the least threatening item you can think of? A button, right? So, how could it scare you? I just pictured people like, opening a drawer and seeing one lying in there, and then their eyes would just bug out and they would shriek and run away. It turns out, it is sort of like that.

Some people are afraid that if they see one, they'll swallow it. Or, if they touch one, they immediately must wash their hands. I found a blog post about it online and one lady described her worst nightmare as seeing a plastic button, in a puddle of water, with the water coming up through its four holes. She said she was shaking as she was typing the words. Seriously? That's the worst thing you can think of? Not like, dying in an avalanche or being eaten by a lion? Just, seeing a button in some water? I sort of wish that was my worst fear.

It got more interesting as I read. For nearly all koumpounophobics, metal buttons are no problem, it's just the plastic ones. Especially the marbled clear ones. They induce a sort of immediate nausea. Many will actually feel so nauseous when they look at one for an extended period of time, that they throw up. Can you imagine?

Of course, my first instinct was to make fun of these folks. I was laughing out loud as I read their tales of terror, but then - the strangest thing happened - and this always happens when I really want to make fun of someone- as I immersed myself in their world, the stories became less and less funny, and more and more sad and legitimate. As children, if their mothers picked them up while wearing a button-down shirt, they would just fling themselves wildly out of her arms and scream. The phobics online were so grateful that they weren't alone, they were finally connecting with other people who had the same problem. So, my desire to make fun of them really disappeared and gave way to not just a true sympathy for them, but an empathy. I feel kind of like I'm one of them. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'll put my hand right into a bowl of buttons no problem, but I am kind of an irrational fear afficionado. You should see me walk into a spiderweb. I mean the button people would just laugh in my face. And like me, they really can't control it- they hate it. They just want to be able button up a shirt without puking.

Some people think it's an evolutionary instinct, like the buttons remind them of something dangerous, and so they are programmed to avoid them. What out there was button-shaped and predatory, I'm not sure. I actually heard that Steve Jobs hates buttons, not necessarily the shirt kind, but the ones you push, and the elevator in the Tokyo Mac store doesn't have any. Hello iPhone touch screen.

I kind of wondered if one might create a "buttonless" clothing for these poor people. Then I remembered someone already invented T-shirts. And turtlenecks. Steve Jobs actually loves turtlenecks, so maybe his button fear really is all inclusive. In any case, I wouldn't want to make money off other people's phobias. Like the guys on The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch. They invented "The Handler." It's a keychain that opens door handles without you having to touch them.

You should have seen how uncomfortable one of the inventors got as he was describing door handles. He was like, "Well...there are all sorts of ...um...germs...on every surface that we see andthat'swhyIinventedTheHandlerDonnybecauseIhategerms."

He was just totally sweating thinking about. You know so many people were relieved to see something like this on the market. So, these kind of products can be valid and helpful, but I also think it's kind of enabling and lousy in a way. It's like capitalizing on a problem that one should be motivated to cure, not accommodate. I mean, you don't see me trying to sell people spider suits to arachnophobes so they can avoid spider bites while they sleep. Although, I kind of do want to invent that... immediately. It would be sweet if it actually looked like a Spiderman costume because it would totally cover all surface area and be delightfully ironic at the same time. See, what I mean, how can I make fun of the button people when I am such a nerd?

I think that at first, when it comes to crazy phobias, you are incredulous - like how could anyone be scared of a button? But then, when you think of your own fears, maybe you can relate. We all have these strange brains and memories and triggers and we're just trying to make it through the day without having a brown recluse give us a flesh-eating venom bite. All I know is, I'll make sure the spider suit has a zipper. You're welcome.

Dear Mark Paul Gosselaar,

Your haircuts continue to alarm me.

Sincerely,

Caitlin

The Oxen Have Dysentery

100% Whole Wheat Hunk

I saw this on gigglesugar and I was dying. It kind of reminds me of Scott when he bakes.

Are These Robots in The Grapes of Wrath?

Wait, don't even look at this blog. Go to this blog , http://www.retrothing.com/, where they are PAYING me to write about ROBOTS! Which, I mean, let's me honest, I would do for free. It's a guest blog gig at Retro Thing! Check it out!

Michael Phelps is unstoppable. He's superhuman. He's going to fill a Scrooge McDuck money bin full of gold medals, swim through them, and win another gold medal. Here is a photograph of his biological mother. I've never even cared about swimming until now.

But, When is it Cold?

So, Coors made a breakthrough a la Generra Hypercolor and created bottles whose mountains turn blue when your beer is cold. More specifically, according to an old press release: 

The new Coors Light Cold Certified Bottle features proprietary temperature-sensitive thermal chromatic ink technology that turns the Coors Light mountains from white to blue when the beer is chilled to four degrees Celsius or less, signaling the beer is ice cold and ready to enjoy.

What Coors failed to remember is that I already have a special "temperature-sensitive" device that detects when the beer has reached optimum frigidity. Take a look at it here. 

Hoaxes Rule!

Scott and his buddy Craig once went to a Bigfoot convention held at Mt. Baker. They quickly discovered that the only people convening there were three really old guys talking about their Bigfoot sightings at a local dive bar. They proceeded to drink beers with these guys and stumble through the forests of Mt. Baker, until, legend has it, Craig woke up in his driveway.

Who hasn't wondered if crazy creatures like Bigfoot are real? I caught this Memorial Day footage while watching a documentary called Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. In order to test whether or not the creature filmed could've been human, the crew enlisted the help of three-time All-American sprinter, Derek Prior. I think he actually ran for WSU. In any case, they set up the shoot at the same hillside and timed Derek running across the same path. It turns out he ran twice as fast as the alleged Bigfoot, so in your face Bigfoot! What remains unexplained though, is the fact that the creature appears to grow taller at the end of the footage, almost like it has a baby on its shoulders. They analyze it here at about minute 4:30.

What I loved, though, is that on the first try, poor Derek bites it. He's not hurt or anything, thank goodness, and he finishes the job on the second try, but I just keep thinking of him like, losing his full-ride scholarship over this endeavor. How pissed would his coach be? What if they were like, "What caused your fall, Derek?" and he was like, "I don't know - it looked like it was a dragon!" And then, they would just have to analyze that footage and see if it really was a dragon, or perhaps a human in a dragonsuit. Well, never mind. If you're bored, the full footage is below. Derek Prior appears at about minute 2:30. If you do watch it, check out how serious the investigation is.

I'm not sure if any footage we have of Bigfoot is real, but as a kid, I was strongly affected by photographic evidence of monsters. That's why I was astounded when, in 1994, they revealed that this famous shot of Nessie was a hoax.

It turns out that it was really, according to Wikipedia and Unmuseum.org, to be:

"essentially a toy submarine with a head and neck made of plastic wood, built by Christian Spurling, the son-in-law of Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter who had been publicly ridiculed in the Daily Mail, the newspaper that employed him. Spurling claimed that to get revenge, Marmaduke Wetherell committed the hoax, with the help of Chris Spurling (a sculpture specialist), his son Ian Marmaduke, who bought the material for the fake Nessie, and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent), who would call to ask surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson to offer the pictures to the Daily Mail."

First of all, I'd like for someone to also admit to the hoax of the clearly-fabricated and overly-British name, "Marmaduke Wetherell." In any case, the pic was a fake, and that shocked me. Although, when I went to Loch Ness at age thirteen, I did totally threw rocks in the water and snap photos of the splash. I would later show people the photos, giggling and claiming they were Nessie. Somehow, I forgot that Nessie was a water monster, and not an underwater grenade, as most of the photos seemed to show evidence of.

Which brings us to crop circles. The beloved math-nerd hoax that provides acne-riddled MIT students an outlet for which to create larger than life fractals in an outdoorsy setting they might otherwise avoid due to their severe hay fever. I say this of course, with total jealousy, because I only wish I was as smart and sneaky as the people who create them. I mean, look at this one:

Or what about this one?

In any case, these people are great. I actually saw a TV special featuring Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two old Englishmen who admitted that they had created crop circles by stepping on boards tied with string. STILL at the end of the show, the voice-over guy was like, "But we'll never really know what is behind these strange occurrences." I was like, but those old guys just showed you how they did it!

One of the first reports of a crop circle was explained like this.

How much does the "mowing devil" remind me of every picture in the scary book section of the Westwood Elementary School library? Does anyone else remember that other little devil that made hoof prints in the rooftops of snowy English houses? The "Jersey Devil" or the "Leeds Devil"? Yeah, well I'd like to confront him and let him know I would have liked to have actually fallen asleep in 5th grade. I mean, I don't know why it scared me, it just looked like this

What's scary about that? I'd like to close with something my dear friend Richelle Mead witnessed and shared with me. Like me, she also spent many a sleepless night worried that aliens were coming for her, and this video of a purported alien on Larry King Live only re-agitated her fears. If you don't want to watch all fifteen minutes, fast forward to about minute ten and at least watch the reenactment video which is priceless. Also, if anyone wants to join me in my efforts to get Derek Prior to dress up like a yeti and run like the wind over some tundra, let me know. We can share the profits equally.

I Believe This Speaks for Itself