The secret of the Great Penny Pyramid (see original photo here) is that a roll of quarters is hidden inside the King's Chamber.

"A Sick Dali Egg" by Ken Clinger could be referring to:

This egg near near the London Eye
The Dali Egg pumpkin
These eggs atop a museum in Spain
The Birth of the New Man by Salvador Dali
Fried Egg on a Plate Without the Plate by Salvador Dali

or perhaps something much sunnier

but probably not this giant egg that oversees the folk dancing.

Living Chess

A blog about Emigrating to New Zealand by a British couple, Jonathan and Rebecca

Volcano Camera - White Island crater

Stamps of Antarctic research centers for glaciology, meteorology, geology, and biology, on Kiwi philately

Ancient Maori Kites

Outdoor chess in Christchurch

A proposed new New Zealand Flag

Bed & Breakfast & Four-Wheel Drive combos: Kiwi Housetrucks

"Southern lights" aurora on APOD. New Zealand from space (Click to biggify. Another angle)

Maori liquor made from Ti-Toki berries

Walking upside down on the Southern Hemisphere

World's largest tape ball

Penguin Crossing

This is a post that I am “co-blogging” with Hanan Levin of Grow-a-Brain. Thank you, Hanan!

The Laws of Average

"An Average Coffee Mug Trapped in Abstraction."

A snowman named "Average Joe."

Average Joes Dodgeball team is so average that they have no individual faces.

"Born as an Average" (a Bossa Nova Ballad).

An average awakening for Joan Collins?

Just another day in the life of an average suburban housewife?

Not your average house cat.  Neither is this.

Not your average Italian Bow Tie Soup.

Not your average bake sale.

South Korea's Youn Sun Nah is not your average jazz chanteuse:


Not your average dictionary, if I do say so myself.

A family friend once boldly announced during a conversation that "Spinoza was an idiot."  As of this blog posting, no one indexed by Google has ever written that exact phrase.

People have said that Spinoza was:

"beside himself with grief and rage"
"dependent on his own work for a livelihood"
"little understood in his time"
"accused of abominable heresies and monstrous deeds"
"uncanny, both personally and philosophically"
"an easy man to revile but not necessarily an easy man to dislike"
"as close as philosophy could come to sainthood — a life of austerity, rationality, independence, principle, rarefied thought"
"loveable"
"offered 1000 florins to keep quiet about his views, but refused"
"unique to the point of solitariness"
"not at all put out by this"

While looking up Spinoza humor online, I discovered that there are no jokes indexed on Google that begin, "Spinoza walks into a bar."  The phrase "Did you hear the one about Spinoza" also returns zero results.

I guess Spinoza had the last laugh.

From Jonathan:

Q: How did the Italian Renaissance begin?

A: The Italian Renaissance began when Dante discovered the letter "U" in the wild. Within a few short decades, the outgoing and charismatic "U" had almost completely replaced the Roman "V" in secular vowel applications. Without Dante, modern developments like "U Pull It" junkyards and U-Haul truck rental franchises would have been impossible.

(Literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's plays, stories, essays, letters, parodies, wordplay, witticisms and miscellaneous tomfoolery can be found at Monkeys 1, Typewriters 0.  Here you'll encounter frivolous, urbane writings about symbolic yams, pigs in bikinis, donut costumes, vacationing pikas, nonexistent movies, cross-continental peppermills, and other compelling subjects.)

I enjoyed this description of my "Fortune's Navigator Compass" by Woof Blister:

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

You're (Literally) the Top
(inspired by Cole Porter, of course)

You're the top;
you're the peak of Dante;
You're the top—
blue-chip picante.
You're the jewel in the crown of a dinner gown by Klein.
You're Dorsey's trombone,
you're Kheops' capstone,
you're altar wine.
You're the top—
as in "hat," on Fred's head.
You're the quip
dear old Oscar Wilde said.
I'm an inarticulate voiceless glottal stop.
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

You're the top;
you're the head of Acme
(placed there
by imperial decree).
You're the high point of a fairy tale by Grimm.
You're lemon zest,
you're Arthur's crest,
you're the Battle Hymn.
You're the top—
you're the Everest summit.
You ascend
where others plummet.
Compared to me John Falstaff is a fop.
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

The day I learned Eskimos don't have hundreds of words for "snow," the world seemed so much more ordinary.  Just don't tell me Pocahontas couldn't "paint with all the colors of the wind."

Q: What, precisely, is a first cousin?

A: The relative who sits closest to the conductor.

(Literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's plays, stories, essays, letters, parodies, wordplay, witticisms and miscellaneous tomfoolery can be found at Monkeys 1, Typewriters 0.  Here you'll encounter frivolous, urbane writings about symbolic yams, pigs in bikinis, donut costumes, vacationing pikas, nonexistent movies, cross-continental peppermills, and other compelling subjects.)

I laughed when I came across this line in a review of the film Anazapta (a supernatural tale set in the Middle Ages):


That would make a fun test question: "Rank the following according to menace."  What would the correct answer be?  (Hint: The worst one of them leaves a burning sensation.)
 

• an alien burst through his chest in Alien
• he was taken to the dreaded "Room 101" in 1984
• Sir Thomas More wouldn't give him a job in A Man for All Seasons
• when his elephantitis was exploited in The Elephant Man
  

• his lover turned into a roaring leopard in Cat People
• a guy in his bar was just trying to get back home in After Hours
• he learned about the interdependence of all systems in Mindwalk
• when his family adopted a wayward girl in Rambling Rose

The first diagram is my recreation of "The Pickle Theory of Value."  (This is a serious theory about the perceived value of start up businesses, and it is explained here.  Between you and me, I think all graphs should feature vegetables instead of boring lines.)

The second diagram is my spin-off of the pickle theory.  I call it, "Ceci n'est pas une cornichon."
 

Did you know that L. Frank Baum considered Little Boy Blue to be genuinely overworked?

From Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:


Literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's plays, stories, essays, letters, parodies, wordplay, witticisms and miscellaneous tomfoolery can be found at Monkeys 1, Typewriters 0. Here you'll encounter frivolous, urbane writings about symbolic yams, pigs in bikinis, donut costumes, vacationing pikas, nonexistent movies, cross-continental peppermills, and other compelling subjects.

The La Dolce Vita blog got empowered by my Follow Your Bliss Compass.  Here's an excerpt:

In Japan, most statues of Thousand-Armed Kannon, a Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, show only 42 arms.  Two are normal arms, and the remaining arms each represent the 25 Buddhist worlds.  40 times 25 equals 1000, plus two regular arms equals 1002.  Whether a statue has 42 arms or 1002, it still seems to misrepresent the goddess by minimizing or exaggerating her arms!

Tibetan art seems to have a better grip on one thousand arms.  This painting of Thousand-Armed Chenrezig (a.k.a. Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion) looks convincing.

This Chinese statue of the Goddess of Mercy also appears to get the number right.

But who's counting?

My friend Jonathan wrote to me about "making pesto like an Italian grandmother."  I got to thinking that fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil aren't enough, in and of themselves, to make pesto on par with an Italian grandmother's.  It occurred to me that in order to make pesto like a real Italian grandmother, one would have to somehow be an Italian grandmother.  Improbable, perhaps ... but not impossible, thanks to the Honorary Italian Grandmother (and Saint) Certificate.

Italian grandmothers are famous for being dauntless, affectionate, and inspirational.  The spirit of Nonna, the archetypal Italian Grandmother, is the zest for life.  Nonna is present whenever a family and guests are well fed and whenever something is created by hand, with care and love.

I created the Honorary Italian Grandmother (and Saint) Certificate for those rare individuals with a flair for maintaining tradition, improvising without blinking, and turning anything into a nurturing experience.  The Certificate is personalized in fine calligraphy, easy for you to generate, and completely free!  Click here to check it out.