Will it blend?

You might’ve heard of the website called .  It’s a collection of videos where they use a Blendtec blender and try to blend all sorts of objects.  In a way, it’s like one of those stupid games you might see on David Letterman, but this is better than most of that stuff.  It has the look and feel of an old TV game show, which is neat in a retro sort of way.  But what sets this apart from other websites is how random and unusual it is.  Have you ever wanted to put non-food items in a blender to see what happens?  The guy in these videos gets to do it for his job!  And he does a good job, possessing a super cheesy smile while various items are being blended into a big mess.

Some of the things they’ve blended are a dozen , 6 Bic lighters (which creates an interesting explosion), even an (which he then put on eBay with a blender and it sold for $901), , a , , a can of soup, (really), , (which create cool glass dust), and much more.

The latest video is bad guys versus Chuck Norris.  Since the real Chuck Norris was unavailable at the time, he used action figures.  He tossed several bad guys and Chuck Norris in the blender, to let them duke it out in there.  The results are amazing.

Perhaps I need to get one of these blenders, because they look like a lot of fun…

Are greenhouse gas emissions beyond “worst-case” scenario?

In the news today, one of Australia’s leading climate change experts said global greenhouse gas emissions are already beyond the “worst-case” scenario.  He’s referring to a scenario defined by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) back in 2001.  For one thing, I thought they just met again this year in some big conference to discuss global warming and all that stuff, so why haven’t they updated their models with current data?  And another thing, the weather here seems mostly normal, so their “worst-case” scenario wasn’t well thought out, in my opinion.  Go outside and observe your weather, then consider if it’s anything near “worst-case”.  It’s not here.  If it is elsewhere, maybe more folks ought to move to Arkansas, because we’re having good weather right now.  (Just don’t bring your greenhouse gas emissions here!)

In fact, I was standing outside after lunch today, talking to some friends and enjoying the good weather.  I had no idea we were in the “worst-case” scenario!  Perhaps I should join the IPCC and explain what “worst-case” really means.  Have these people never seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow?  I’m thinking that would be worst-case.  Or, if you want to be really pessimistic, worst-case would be the Earth becoming uninhabitable.

Now, I realize I’m no important scientist, and sometimes we should leave stuff up to the “experts”, but I think they really dropped the ball on this one.  Are they just trying to scare us with these climate forecasting models and subsequent news releases?  It sure doesn’t sound like they’re downplaying it, because it’s all over the news, but today’s news release really has me befuddled.  It looks like they’re crying “wolf”.  And anybody who knows their children’s stories should realize that’s a bad strategy.  If we’re now beyond the worst-case scenario, it doesn’t seem so bad.  So is all their ballyhooing for naught?  I don’t know. I think we do need to reduce pollution and quit burning so many fossil fuels, but I don’t see how we’ve went beyond the “worst-case” scenario…

If their worst-case model shows some drastic changes over the next few years, like billions of people dying, then they should let us know.  But the news release said nothing about such things.  Perhaps they just don’t really know what they’re talking about…

the special days of October, pt. 2

Here’s part 2 of our analysis of the special holidays in October.  These are all valid holidays (as far as I can tell — at least I can say that I didn’t make them up).

First, let’s look at the week-long celebrations.  Week 1 is Get Organized Week.  Oh, whoops, I missed that one already!  (I reckon I wasn’t organized enough to get this posted in time.)  Week 2 is Pet Peeve Week.  One of my pet peeves is stupid people, so I’m going to fast from stupid people this week.  🙂

Now we’ll look at the single-day holidays in October, with some custom narration and analysis that you won’t find anywhere else :

  • 1 Homemade Cookies Day — It’s already past this one now, but it should still be observed.  Better late than never.  Besides, it’s Cookie Month, so you should be celebrating cookies all month anyway.
  • 2 Name Your Car Day — I could name my truck Budro, but it already has a name : Rolling Thunder.  What would you name your vehicle?
  • 5 Do Something Nice Day — That’s a good idea.  It’s too bad I didn’t get this posted in time to observe this one.  Maybe next year…
  • 6 Come and Take it Day — This is interesting-sounding, but you won’t be able to take any of my stuff, so don’t even try!
  • 6 Mad Hatter Day — This is a day to be silly and celebrate silliness.  It’s based on a character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  The date 10/6 was chosen because the inside of The Mad Hatter’s top hat it says “10/6”.  So be silly this day.  (And this blog is a great place for that!)
  • 8 American Touch Tag Day — Tag, you’re it!
  • 8 Indigenous People’s Day — Hey, that’s me!  I’m an indigenous people!  (Really, my family has lived in this area of the country for generations.)  So we get to celebrate me today!
  • 9 Moldy Cheese Day — This is an actual holiday, but I don’t know why.  I’m not eating moldy cheese!  Although, if you think about it, mold is part of some cheeses, like blue cheese — the blue parts are mold.  I prefer non-moldy types, like American, Cheddar, Mozzarella, etc.  Mmm… cheese…
  • 10 National Angel Food Cake Day — This is more like it.  Someone should bake an angel food cake and bring it by the Buffet o’ Blog office.
  • 11 It’s My Party Day — If you need an excuse to host a party, here ya go.  The baseball playoffs are underway now, which is also a great occasion to host a party.  And it’s a good idea to provide food, like pizza and/or cheese dip.
  • 11 Take Your Teddy Bear to Work Day — I read about this on a website that was giving advice on these holidays, and it said, “We think you know how to celebrate this day.  Dress him up for the big event.  Plan for a big day.  Take your Teddy Bear on a tour of the workplace.  Bring Teddy to lunch in the work cafeteria.  If your boss allows it, let Teddy do a work-related project.”  Hmm…  That’s not what I was thinking about, but whatever floats your boat.  Just know that some people might not think it’s all cute for you to be carrying your teddy bear around work with you.  Some people just wouldn’t understand.  I think a better use of this holiday would be to work from home, then you could show your teddy bear what kind of work you do, from the privacy of your own home.
  • 14 National Dessert Day — What you should do on this day is obvious.  As one website put it, “take an extra helping, or two”.  Sounds good to me!
  • 16 Dictionary Day — This is in honor of Noah Webster, who was born on this day in 1758.  He started writing his dictionary at age 43, and it took him 27 years to finish it.  (If he had just put less words in it, it wouldn’t have taken so long.)  I’m not recommending you read a dictionary this day, because that’s just nonsense.  But I do advocate learning a new “big word” that you can add to your vocabulary.  I’ll recommend a few for you : duplicitous, logorrhea, erudition, chicanery, purveyor, debacle (this one comes in handy a lot), fatuous, elucidate, inscrutable, bloviate, juxtapose.
  • 27 National Tell a Story Day — This can be from a book or from memory, or you can just make it up as you go.  Perhaps on that day we should put special emphasis on our original stories (that everyone is invited to participate in), in the free-for-all-stories category.
  • 30 National Candy Corn Day — Ah, what a wonderful treat!  Little pieces of candy, made mostly of honey and sugar.  One word of warning, though — I’ve seen with my own eyes what can happen if you eat excessive amounts of these just before bedtime.  One of my college roommates did this (and drank cream soda with it), and he went to bed while the rest of us were watching TV in the other room.  We kept hearing noises that sounded like Cornholio, and it was because that guy couldn’t sleep (and couldn’t relax at all!).  It was funny, for us anyway.
  • 31 Carve a Pumpkin Day — No surprise here, as it’s also Halloween.

There’s the (partial) list.  There’s some more obscure holidays we didn’t list, but hopefully among these you found some you could celebrate and have fun with.  We should all make time for having fun, or better yet, have fun with about everything you do (when appropriate).  I heard that laughing adds 8 years to your life, so be sure to laugh every day (and then we’ll all live for a long time).

the special days of October, pt. 1

It’s now October, and like we did last month, we’re going to look at some of the special holidays this month.  There’s a bunch, and we’re going to cover less than half of them (mainly the humorous and fun and random ones).  Let’s begin with the celebrations that last for the whole month.

October is :

  • Awareness Month — This is for those people who don’t have a clue.  This is the month you should try to figure out what’s going on in the world.  And, fortunately for you, the staff at Buffet o’ Blog are here to help.  You can ask any question via the “contact us” form, and we’ll probably give you an answer.  We know lots of stuff.  Go ahead and try it out.
  • Cookie Month — This one is awesome.  For the whole month, you should appreciate cookies.  And what better way to appreciate them than to eat them?  So you should eat cookies every day.
  • National Pizza Month — Another wonderful food to celebrate!  Pizza is truly one of the best meals possible.  And we are supposed to celebrate it for a whole month!  So that means we all need to eat a lot of pizza and not take it for granted.  Now, I realize that pizza can be unhealthy sometimes, but this is a holiday, so diets don’t apply.  So eat all the pizza you want.  And I’d like to send a big shout-out to whoever thought up this holiday, because it was a great idea.
  • National Dessert Month — This is almost too much awesomeness for one month, I think.  Cookies, pizza, and all desserts, to be eaten all month.  Is November the national diet month?  It can’t be, because of Thanksgiving, where you’re expected to eat as much as possible.  Anyway, if there’s still room for more food after all the pizza and cookies, eat lots of desserts.
  • Sarcastic Month — Whoa!  By my interpolation of this, it means we get the license to be sarcastic all month!  I wonder who thought up this holiday (and if they thought it through).

    • I’m still thinking about how to best handle the food situation for October.  (I can’t help it — it’s exciting!)  Because when I fully appreciate pizza during a meal, there’s usually no room left for dessert, even cookies.  But I don’t want to leave anything out.  So here’s the tentative plan.  I’ll eat cookies for breakfast, all-you-can-eat pizza for lunch (preferably Larry’s Pizza), and then have desserts for supper/dinner.  And for those of you with a voracious appetite, all three of those options make excellent snacks, too.  So what more could you ask for?

    Of course, you aren’t limited to just those foods.  And beverages will be required also.  The official Buffet o’ Blog recommendation for drinks that fit with these meals is sweet tea with the pizza, and milk with the cookies and desserts.  You can’t go wrong with that, and it is actually the best option, too.

    Well, we haven’t even got to the weekly and daily holidays yet for October, but this is getting really long, so I’ll continue them in the next post.  Stay tuned…