This May Surprise You

Where's the overlap between the beloved vampire film The Lost Boys and the open world game of Grand Theft Auto V?  Besides the vampire tooth of the game's Roman numeral and besides the boardwalk setting?  Off the top of our head, there are two music-related overlaps.  First, there's the band Age of Consent, who provide GTAV's infectious theme "Colours" (chant it with us: "go out, late night; come home, daylight").  They recorded a cover of Tim Cappello's "I Still Believe" from The Lost Boys soundtrack.  Second, the artist Twin Shadow (who serves as the DJ of Radio Mirror Park in the game and who offers the other standout track in the game, "Old Love / New Love"), has a song called "Golden Light," the chorus of which is an homage to the chorus of the film's memorable "Cry Little Sister" theme (chant it with us: "Thou shall not fall; thou shall not lie; thou shall not fear; thou shal not kill").  Twin Shadow's own lyrics are in the spirit of the film, too -- consider how this line, "Some people say there's a golden light -- you're the golden light -- and if I chase after you doesn't mean that it's true," recalls the film's character Michael who has newly arrived in the golden state and, feeling hopeless, chases after a creature of the night.  

We've answered an age-old question.  Which came first: the inverted cross of black metal or the egg?  Well, it's actually something of a paradox, as an egg with an inverted cross came first.  Our illustration appears in De la Formation du Blastoderme dans l'Oeuf d'Oiseau by M. Mathias Duval, 1884.

We have discovered a non-surgical, instant way to be your own cat.  We call it, How to Be Your Own Cat.  There are 25 chapters with the steps involved, but results begin immediately.  Jonathan Caws-Elwitt blurbs, "It’s commonly known that you can be your own best friend or your own worst enemy.  It’s even well established that you can be your own grandpa.  But it takes a Professor Oddfellow to teach you How to Be Your Own Cat—and isn’t it about time?"

Martha Brockenbrough, author of The Game of Love and Death, notes: "I am also curious about how to be Schrödinger's cat."  There actually is much to say about being Schrödinger's cat!  We would begin by installing slatted blinds in the windows, because when light goes through a slit it's both a particle and a wave (plus, that's how the Cheshire cat got separated from its grin).  We'd get an "I am not a doormat" doormat so as to foster uncertainty.  We would collect nesting boxes.  We would always leave some mail in the mailbox  and a newspaper in the driveway so as to suggest the possibility of not being home.  We would play music by the dance band M-Theory and spin to it.  We would study ways to entangle strings (putting the macramé into M-theory).  We would adopt the pat answer of agnosticism, "I don't know."  We would collect (infinite) monkey memorabilia.  Then we'd sleep like the dead.

Of course, before you can become Schrödinger's cat in particular, you must transform into a cat in general.  Hence, How to Be Your Own Cat.

The eye in the pyramid begins life as a polyhedron.  From Alpine Flowers for English Gardens by W. Robinson, 1870.

You've heard of "graduating from PMS" (Menopause and Estrogen: Natural Alternatives to Hormone Replacement Therapy), but did you know you can get an actual degree?

Even a globe has magnetic poles.  A photo from the 1928 National Air Races, Los Angeles.

You've heard of someone being "bird brained," but here's the exact location of the avian part of the brain (and yes, it's egg-shaped), from Psychology and the School by Edward Herbert Cameron, 1921.

"Airline technology has not gone through any radical changes" (Brian Clegg, Final Frontier: The Pioneering Science and Technology of Exploring the Universe).  Image courtesy of the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.

You've heard of a palmist.  You've heard of a psalmist.  Here's where they overlap -- a woodcut diagram of the Guidonian hand, a mnemonic used for teaching music, 1492.  

You've heard that a person has a light side and a shadow side.  However, "you must remember that you have two light sides instead of just one" (Popular Science, Sept. 1941).  Our photographic proof is from a 1939 yearbook scanned by Miami University Libraries.

It's all-too-easy to idealize the past, but did you know that before Dec. 31, 1979, every California-grown avocado offered not only a free tree but also someone to talk to?

We call a studious person a "bookworm," but did you know there are bookworms of ignorance, too?  We find our evidence in this illustration by Rocha Vieira, 1920. 

"It's always breakfast time somwhere."  Colour lithograph after Dorcy for the Chicago National Dairy Council, 1935.

You knew about the Masonic influences in the design of Washington D.C., but did you know the heart of the city is itself a great pyramid?  From Popular Electricity Magazine in Plain English, 1913

"Won't someone press the shutter for me?"  (This demonic camera can't take its own pictures, luckily.)  From Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger.

This "may surprise you: Writing and reading are not natural to human beings." —Political Writing: A Guide to the Essentials

"[H]ow nearly the state of grace resembled the state of Idaho." —Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

You knew that a hat is scaled to fit the head of the wearer, but here's how it's done.  From Daily Colonist, 1900.

You've seen paisleys with geometric central elements.  These are armed citadels.  Our exemplifying collage shows the stronghold Fort Independence on the paisley Castle Island, Boston Harbor.