Category: Random

an after-Christmas snack

I received an e-mail today that taught me some things:

Christmas trees are edible. Many parts of pines, spruces, and firs can be eaten.  The needles are a good source of vitamin C.  Pine nuts, or pine cones, are also a good source of nutrition.

I’m not sure about eating pine cones…

If you have any experience with eating Christmas trees, we’d like to hear about it.   I’ve never heard about such things before…

But I reckon if you have a live Christmas tree and you can stomach it, that would be free food, since you already had the tree anyway…

funny remix of Deck the Halls

Recently I went to a free concert by the Conway Men’s Chorus, and they performed a funny version of Deck the Halls (Fa La La La) where they incorporated various other songs in with it, in a way you wouldn’t expect.  It’s in the video below, starting at 3:55.

Merry Christmas!

when it’s cool to be fat

I watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer the other day, which is an awesome show.  It’s part of my Christmas tradition.  I used to feel like a misfit, so I can relate.  Now I’m awesome, just like the show works out for our misfit friends.

One part of the show that always amuses me is Mrs. Claus telling Santa Claus, “Eat! Eat!  Whoever heard of a skinny Santa?”  Now that’s the kind of job I need! Of course Santa has other major responsibilities, like overseeing toy production and delivering toys, but that wouldn’t take up too much time.  The rest of his time is devoted to being fat.

What would you think if part of your job requirement was being overweight?  Could you handle that?

With Santa, it’s cool that he’s fat.  (Yet he’s in good shape, since he has the endurance to travel the world in one night and deliver billions of toys.)  With Santa, people like it that he’s overweight.  Think about the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, where it says:

He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!

For most of us, if our belly shakes when we laugh, people look down on that.  But with Santa, it’s cool.

So with all that in mind, I’ve decided I want to be Santa Claus when I grow up.

how to make Google Translate beatbox

Some people with a lot of free time have figured out how to make Google Translate make beatboxing sounds, among other sound effects.  (If you aren’t sure what beatboxing is, it’s what some rappers used to do to make beats with their mouth, especially in the ’80s.)  Here’s the first one I came across:

1) Go to Google Translate
2) Set the translator to translate German to German
3) Copy + paste the following into the translate box: pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvpvzk kkkkkk bsch
4) Click “Listen”.  (If you don’t have Flash installed, you may not see it.)
5) Be amazed  🙂

If that’s too much work, here’s a shortcut that does it for you (except for #4 and #5).  Beatboxing with Google Translate.

Of course this has spurred competition in certain corners of the Internet.  Here’s some other attempts at beatboxing with it: another beatbox and another.

People have also figured out how to make it produce a helicopter sound, and something which I have no idea about (in Latin, even), and one that illustrates a major loss in translation (listen to the one on the left, then the one on the right).

I’m sure there’s lots of possibilities for this, but it requires someone who has a lot of free time on their hands…