We all have our own way of ordering our world. Each of us has secret code in our heads that allow us to figure out where we are fitting that moment into the greater spin that earth is in.

As a child, I had some strange ways of figuring out language. (Maybe I’m a little more like Colin that I realize). Nouns were the most important letters in our alphabet. Letter “E” was king and should begin each word. After that, each noun, in the order that they appeared originally. Then, the bad consonants in the order they appeared in each word. This drove my mother crazy since I would ride in the back seat of the car mindlessly spelling words on the billboards as we would pass. Only, I was doing my “thing” with them. Finally I had to explain it to her (and SILLY her for not figuring it out on her own.) I think I was four.

For example: “Restaurant” is really spelled “eauarstrnt”. The word “house” is “eouhs”. “Beetlejuice” should read “eeeeuibtljc” (that was a fun one!).

I also believed that all dogs were boys and cats were girls.

Mondays were blue, Tuesdays were yellow, Wednesdays were green, Thursdays…red. Friday? Green again. Saturday was black and Sunday was purple. That still holds true sometimes if I don’t stop myself.

A few weeks ago, I was walking Erin and Colin to the school bus stop. It’s only about a two-minute walk. We hold hands and talk about what the day holds because if Colin doesn’t know what to expect, then he’s really anxious.

The day wasn’t hot or cold. No rain, no sun, just sort of an average fall day. It was a Wednesday morning and nothing special was going on in our neighborhood that day.

“It smells like Sunday, Mommy.”
“Really”
“Yes, it’s Wednesday, but it smells like Sunday.”

He actually stopped and looked around for a while. Whatever he was looking for wasn’t there, but his nose could pick it up. Maybe someone was burning a fire, maybe there was a roast in an oven, maybe no one will ever know what it was.

“Okay, it smells like Sunday. Is that okay?”
“Um, yeah, I guess.”

He walked a little slower to the bus that morning…looking around him the whole time as if anticipating something new. Like, maybe we should be getting ready for church instead.

I’m okay with Sunday having a smell, dude. As long as it’s okay with you that I think it’s purple!

sometimes you just gotta shit with your kid…

- – Here at  Foxsylvania, we spend much of our time looking for disgusting and unidentifiable creatures washed up on the shore which might be aliens, monsters, cryptids, or perhaps my old supervisor. It was then regarded as quite a find when this loathsome-looking thing was found by teenagers last September feebly crawling out of a cave in a town while they were playing in  Cerro Azul north of Panama City.

–Well, they did what kids anywhere would do, namely beat it to death with sticks and then threw its lifeless body into a pool of water!   This neatly does away with the need for health insurance or a retirement plan for unidentified life forms.

Regarded by some as a cousin to the Montauk Monster, the creature was later pretty conclusively identified as a hairless sloth, whose last impressions of humans were probably not favorable…and what will those kids say when Santa asks them if they’ve been good?

This story comes from Lynn in Louisiana.

Read it…. If you dare ……

————————————-

Yesterday I started to blog about how we ended up moving to manchester.

In short God was making me like Manchester before we even got there! At this point things started to get a little supernatural. If you pushed me to define my faith I would say that I am a charismatic evangelical christian. If you pushed me a little harder I would tell you that I find charismatic evangelical christian (including myself) a little strange. But, I believe the bible so I have to believe that God is involved in our world today.

So, I started to get dreams. That’s right. Dreams about Manchester (told you this was wierd).

 I had four dreams in total. Each dream was pretty similar. They all basically involved me talking to four significant people about what I felt called to do in Manchester. Each of the people in these dreams reacted in different ways. Their differing reactions have helped inform me and even begun to guide me in the steps I take. Even now I am still unpacking these dreams

 I won’t tell you about all the dreams but the first involved me and Vicki trying to convince a friend of ours who we both look up to, and who leads a church in the south of England, to move to Manchester. In the real world – I had said to a few friends that if this guy moved to Manchester to plant a church I would be there in a shot.

 Back in the dream – this guy freaked out. Walked out the room and said we shouldn’t tell anyone we had asked him.

 When I told Vix about the dream, I didn’t really get it. Vix said that she thought it showed that I needed to step up and do this Manchester thing myself.

Deep breath. More wierdness tomorrow.

Great looking line up for Art Basel courtesy of always incredible Wierd Records

Paper from Algae

Imagine wrapping paper that could be a gift in and of itself because it lights up with words like “Happy Birthday.” That is one potential application of a new biodegradable battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper.

Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. Among the most promising materials for these batteries are conducting polymers. However, until now these have impractical for use in batteries — for instance, their ability to hold a charge often degrades over use.

The key to this new battery turned out to be an often bothersome green algae known as Cladophora (pictured). Rotting heaps of this hairlike freshwater plant throughout the world can lead to unsightly, foul-smelling beaches.

This algae makes an unusual kind of cellulose typified by a very large surface area, 100 times that of the cellulose found in paper. This allowed researchers to dramatically increase the amount of conducting polymer available for use in the new device, enabling it to better recharge, hold and discharge electricity.

“We have long hoped to find some sort of constructive use for the material from algae blooms and have now been shown this to be possible,” said researcher Maria Strømme, a nanotechnologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. “This creates new possibilities for large-scale production of environmentally friendly, cost-effective, lightweight energy storage systems.”

The new batteries consisted of extremely thin layers of conducting polymer just 40 to 50 nanometers or billionths of a meter wide coating algae cellulose fibers only 20 to 30 nanometers wide that were collected into paper sheets.

“They’re very easy to make,” Strømme said.

Quick to charge

They could hold 50 to 200 percent more charge than similar conducting polymer batteries, and once better optimized, they might even be competitive with commercial lithium batteries, the researchers noted. They also recharged much faster than conventional rechargeable batteries — while a regular battery takes at least an hour to recharge, the new batteries could recharge in anywhere from eight minutes to just 11 seconds.

The new battery also showed a dramatic boost in the ability to hold a charge over use. While a comparable polymer battery showed a 50 percent drop in the amount of charge it could hold after 60 cycles of discharging and recharging, the new battery showed just a 6 percent loss through 100 charging cycles.

“When you have thick polymer layers, it’s hard to get all the material to recharge properly, and it turns into an insulator, so you lose capacity,” said researcher Gustav Nyström, an electrochemist at Uppsala University. “When you have thin layers, you can get it fully discharged and recharged.”

Flexible electronics

The researchers suggest their batteries appear well-suited for applications involving flexible electronics, such as clothing and packaging.

“We’re not focused on replacing lithium ion batteries — we want to find new applications where batteries are not used today,” Strømme told LiveScience. “What if you could put batteries inside wallpaper to charge sensors in your home? If you could put this into clothes, can you couple that with detectors to analyze sweat from your body to tell if there’s anything wrong?”

Future directions of research include seeing how much charge these batteries lose over time, a problem with polymer batteries and all batteries in general. They also want to see how much they can scale up these batteries, “see if we can make them much, much larger,” Strømme said.

The scientists detailed their last month in the journal Nano Letters.

Source

Really amusing. A lot of it doesn’t apply to this part of the world. Yet….

[/source]

Try telling the following address by telephone:

Slash_dot_at@dot.com

The English convention of using “at” or “at sign” for describing “@” is so lame. Other languages have done better. Here are some excerpts from herodios.com

Czech (Czech Republic):  Závinaˆc, which means a herring wrapped around a pickle.

Danish:  Snabel-a, “elephant’s trunk.”

Dutch: Apestaartje, “little monkey’s tail,” though sometimes Apeklootje, a rude word for another part of the monkey’s anatomy.

Hungarian:  Kukac, “worm or maggot.”

Italian:  Chiocciola, “snail.”

Mandarin Chinese (Taiwan):  Xiao Lao Shu, “little mouse,”or Lao Shu Hao, “mouse sign.”

Russian:  Sobachka, “doggie.”
Thai: Ai tua yiukyiu, “wiggling worm.”

Let’s be creative and come up with a good name for “@” in Hindi and other Indian Languages. How about:

Hindi: Jalebi (a sweet) [picture of a jalebi]

And why stop at “@”? All the other punctuation signs are just waiting to be described graphically.

.. så gick Mattias (som va med några inlägg sen) förbi mig i korridoren för några dagar sen. Han kollade på mig, började hoppa runt och boxade i luften som Rocky Balboa! (lite problematiskt kan man tycka pga hans arm). Riktigt coolt. Om du läser detta Mattias, så får du gärna göra det igen! Det va roligt!

för övrigt no. 2 Skriver ett brev till mig själv nu. Höjden av patetism.

Here is a new one just done! I have decided to name this one Captain Blue!

Day 2

Nothing much..Hanging around the score board with Shin Yi then walk around during their breaks..Haha,as usual..Got letters from my youth friend,thought it was from some child………………THink think think……………………..put it back to the HQ letter box,thinking tomorrow only take and see who’s it for and from who……….

Day 3

Went to church at 8:30am.Felt so sleepy but after I went there I felt so refreshed!Haha!So cool lar the children there.Mwahahahaha!!!!!Then got something sad happened larr tdy.Don’t wanna talk about it!LEt’s talk about good things~
Sin Yi became the bride!Haha!Together with Adrian kor kor~So funny!I was like “half crying,half laughing” Then we had the anointing of the Holy Spirit,the candles that represents we are the future leaders of God.Game masters,especially Gibien was the funniest lah.Didn’t know how to express the situation,so noisy!Haha,coz Gibien kor kor very funny.Every children sure agree!Haha!!!Terence kor kor and Samuel kor kor sooooooooooooo funny!!!!!

Then it was testimony time,Aunty Ursular wanted the helpers to talk.Then my hand started to get cold..Yiks!I asked Shin Yi whether she wants to talk or not then she say no so I also say no!Haha,very pai se to talk in front of so many children.I am not like the youths lar,so brave.Hehe~Anyway,if there isn’t them there isn’t me,helping me out at times..So blessed to have them.Talked to some of the youths and so and so.

Then it was photo session time!Haha!So funny!!!!!!!We have to pose for the camera,Andrew Chow kor kor was sitting at the ladder and we have to look up.I tell you,I feel so short with the children.Haha,they are all so tall!Sigh~So short!Haha,who cares anyway.LOL!Btw,I was standing wasn’t bending so I felt quite short lor.Haha,I feel so wierd!Anyway,church ended.It was raining………………………had to wait for the rain to stop so I went back church to keep some score board stuff back.Heh!Feel so happy!God’s love is with us!

Bye bye children,see you this December 19!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love you all! *muacks*
God Bless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- -A creepy string of calf mutilations in southern Colorado has a rancher and sheriff’s officials mystified.  Four calves were found dead in a pasture just north of the New Mexico state line in recent weeks; the dead calves had their skins peeled back and organs cleared from the rib cage.  One even had its tongue removed…

There were no signs of human attackers, such as footprints or ATV tracks.  Additionally, there were no signs of an animal attack by a coyote or mountain lion, which usually leave pools of blood or drag marks from carrying off their prey.

There have been other unexplained calf mutilations in the area, including three last March.  One of the other calves, found dead on a ranch near Trinidad, had its ears removed…

…some,  of course, believe that the mutilations are the work of aliens, and a UFO chaser has been to the Costilla County pasture to investigate.  The truth is out there!

Han ido al Paso y han tenido que parar en la tienda de Walmart? y cuando estan adentro empiezan a buscar en chinga algo por que temen que lo siguiente que vean sea un intento de britney spears y que te diga algo utilizando “spanglish” mientras mastica un chicle como si fuera una zorra? A poco no da miedo? Bueno en esta pagina ponen a todos los especimenes que uno se puede llegar a topar en la Walmart, desde la britney, hasta el señor que le gusta agacharse para exhibir su tanga, todos estos y mas en esta pagina.

[People of Walmart]

Late night post I know but I felt the wierd things that are Toe Socks deserved a mention.

I once owned a pair of red and black striped ones (dennis the menace style). They have since gone missing, possibly stolen for how cool they made me look?

Described by a friend earlier as,

“making her toes feel tingly and odd”

I agreed with the feelings but mentioned that I wasn’t convinced they actually did guys sizes, and it was a unisex version I had once owned.

How little I knew.

There is a larger supply of mens toe socks than I realised for instance here where there is whole pages of mens toe socks.

Tonight I learnt something.

Tell me what you think and whether toe socks make your feet tingle too?

No, io dico… Ma si può essere più idioti? Nasce in una Carens e la chiamano Kia. Porella…

So I find this picture pretty interesting. I can not seem to determine whether its trying to mock the government or trying to make it seem joyous. O.o

Apparantley doctors misdiagnose a lot of people. This one was in a ‘coma’ for 23 years.

A man thought to be in a coma for 23 years after he was left paralysed by a car crash was misdiagnosed by doctors and actually conscious the whole time.

Due to his paralysis, Rom Houben had no way of alerting doctors, friends or family to the fact he could hear every word they said, the Daily Mail reports.

“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” Mr Houben told the Daily Mail.

Thankfully, new hi-tech scans revealed the man’s brain was still functioning normally.

He told the Daily Mail this moment was like his “second birth”.

Aided by therapy, Mr Houben is now able to convey messages on a computer screen. A special device above his head allows him to read books whilst lying down.

His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper by neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.

“Medical advances caught up with him,” Dr Laureys was quoted as saying.

Laureys believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

His study claims that patients classed as in a vegetative state are often misdiagnosed.

Mr Houben told the Daily Mail: “All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.”

“I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me – it was my second birth.”

“I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.”

- – The man is the picture loves fishing…I mean, really loves it!  I will not speculate about what a human-Asian carp hybrid would look like.  I’m afraid enough  of the Asian carp…

These fish can exceed four feet in length, and 100 pounds in weight.  They can eat 40% of their body weight each day. And of course being Asian, they excel at math…

…just kidding about that last attribute, of course!   But these carp are crafty…they may have already penetrated an electronic barrier meant to keep them out of the Great Lakes, a barrier which cost nine million!

“We’re going to keep throwing everything we can at them to keep them out,” said the senior Great Lakes advisor to the EPA.   This reminds me of a Godzilla-vintage Japanese horror movie…

…“We must stop Mega-carp!–We will throw everything that we have at it!” (footage shown of tanks shelling an enormous fish, all to no avail.)  “Quickly!–Deploy the Super-X!“

…’scuse me, I lost my mind for a minute.–Anyhow, Asian carp escaped from southern fish farms into the Mississippi River during 1990’s flooding, and have been migrating northward since.  They decimate species prized by anglers and commercial fishers, and are known to leap from the water at the sound of passing motors and sometimes collide with boaters!   A worst-case scenario envisions them spreading “like a cancer cell.”

I dunno about you, but I’m sleeping with a light on, and an image of Mrs. Paul or maybe the Gordon fish guy in the room to protect me!

First of all, this is NOT intended to offend anyone! If it does I’m sorry!

But, after watching Paranormal Activity a couple weeks back, it had me aware of things that probably doesn’t even exist… but whatever!! You know?!

Moving on, a couple days ago, on my way to work I picked up a copy of the Metro Newspaper as I usually do before jumping on a train.

Above is a picture of part of the front page. I kinda skimmed the story to this ‘Bad Dream killer’ and then went on to read the rest of the newspaper, picking out the articles with pretty pictures and striking headlines otherwise, next!!

So what’s so spooky?? I’ll tell you!!

Well after skim reading it and breezing my way through to the ‘This Life‘ and ‘Nemi‘ along with the horoscopes I remembered something. If you have not seen Paranormal Activity then look away now if you don’t want any spoilers. In the film, most of the ghostly / demonic activity happens at or near 3.15am. Which is apparently the ‘witching hour‘.I remembered reading something in the first page article.

Now, take a look at this;

“At 3.49am, Thomas made the 999 call saying he thought he had killed his wife.“

OK, fine. Fair enough, this is like 34 minutes past the 3.15am spooky time but it is very close. Not only that, if he called them at 3.49am then maybe the event actually took place much closer to 3.15am. Remember he was sleepwalking so who knows when he woke up and came to his senses..?

In Paranormal Activity, [SPOILER ALERT] near the end the lady gets possessed by the demonic force haunting her and kills her partner at 3.15am. Now, I’m not actually trying to convince you guys that the same thing has happened here, but it’s awfully coincidental. However, maybe watching this has just made me develop an excessive imagination open to the unexplainable. On the other hand, it is not just Paranormal Activity. The Amityville Horror and the Exorcism of Emily Rose have the same concept regarding the 3.15am time where all the s*** goes down.

I don’t know, but like I said it’s awfully coincidental.

Again, I don’t intend to disrespect anybody in this post, just wanted to share something I found quite wierd and spooky. **Goosebumps**

I have no idea how I find this stuff but you should know that if I post it here, it’s the best:

Don’t blame me if you can’t sleep tonight…

April

I woke up this morning to go to work as is my usual doings in the morning, and my passenger car door was slightly open, and my passenger visor was down, and the mirror was open. Like someone came in looked at themeselves in the mirror and left.

Nothing else appeared to be disturbed, or stolen. I had some garbage on the floor. it didn’t look messed about. Now if it was one of my friends mucking about. Most of my friends don’t know where I live. I think only 2, both of them girls. One lives close, the other in Oak Lawn.

Or if it is some local kids, or thieves why not anything, I mean nothing was taking, or even damaged. Though not much of value in the car, but if your a punk, I’m surprised they didn’t fuck with anything.  Why the visor down, and the mirror. Looking at yourself in someone elses car.

I leave my car open most of the time, because I feel if they take, steal, or fuck up my shit they would do it anyway, locked door or not. Plus if I catch them, and I don’t know them I will pluck out their heart, and eat it while it’s still beating for being insolent fools to defile my property.

- – In Spartanburg, South Carolina a woman was udderly surprised when she found a 650-pound cow in her covered swimming pool.  Once again, there was one incredulous 911 dispatcher.  No one was sure what the cow was doing in the swimming pool, although the dog paddle was mentioned…

It took five men from county rescue and a sling to get the cow out of the swimming pool.  The cow was unharmed (although water isn’t good for leather), and thought to belong to a neighbor.  It was speculated that the cow escaped, thought that the covered pool was solid ground, and just kept walking…