Extreme Ironing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Extreme_ironing.jpg

“Extreme Ironing is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an ‘extreme’ sport with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt.”

The sport reportedly started in Phil Shaw’s backyard in Leicester, England, but his promotional tour quickly attracted followers in Australia, Austria, and Germany, and the 2002 world championship drew 80 teams from 10 countries. Following the 2004 Summer Olympics, British rowing champion Sir Steve Redgrave backed high-stakes ironing to become an Olympic sport.

“Ironists” have performed atop Mount Kilimanjaro, 100 meters underwater off the Egyptian coast, during the London marathon, and in a David-Blaine-style box 20 meters above Christmas shoppers in Leicester. And like any noble calling, this one has inspired others, including downhill vacuuming, inner-city clothes drying, and “apocalypse dishwashing.” Helen Keller wrote, “Life is either a great adventure or nothing.”

| Humor · Oddities

Let There Be Light

Obscure light-bulb jokes:

Q: How many existentialists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two: One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.

Q: How many Welsh mothers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: “Don’t worry dearie, I’ll just sit here in the dark, alone.”

Q: How many Marxists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None: The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.

Q: How many Greek Orthodox priests does it take to change a light bulb?
A: What do you mean, “change”!?

Q: How many Spaniards does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Juan.

Q: How many Zen masters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: A tree in a golden forest.

Q: How many postmodernists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: In a Derridaist reading, wherein light is a social construct, there is a dialectic between Darkness as a reality and reality as a mode.

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fish.

| Humor

R.I.P.

Epitaphs:

Joseph Palmer
Persecuted for
Wearing a Beard.

— Leominster, Mass., 1873

HE CALLED
BILL SMITH
A LIAR.

— Cripple Creek, Colo., c. 1875

DOROTHY CECIL
Unmarried as yet

— Wimbledon, England, c. 1900

Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the Lord he sent them manna,
Old Clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil he sent him Anna.

— Ribbesford, England, c. 1770

Here lies my wife,
Here lies she,
Hallelujah!
Hallelujee!

— Ulverston, England, c. 1750

Jared Bates
Sacred to the Memory of Mr.
Jared Bates who Died Aug. the 6th
1800. His Widow aged 24 who mourns
as one who can be comforted lives
at 7 Elm Street this village
and possesses every qualification
for a good wife.

— Lincoln, Maine, 1800

| Death · Humor

“A Chicken Is a Noble Beast”

William Topaz McGonagall is renowned as the worst poet in the English language. Sample:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

He didn’t even get the facts right here — 75 died.

In the opening to his Poetic Gems, McGonagall wrote, “The most startling incident in my life was the time I discovered myself to be a poet.” Millions agreed. Stephen Pile, in The Book of Heroic Failures, calls him “so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius”; his temperance speeches were wildly popular with “poet-baiters” in Dundee, who pelted him with eggs and vegetables, and he was allowed to play Macbeth only if he paid in advance.

When Tennyson died, McGonagall visited Balmoral to ask if he might become poet laureate. He was told the queen was not at home.

| Art · Humor · Poems

Churchill Anecdote #1

When Winston Churchill won a seat in Parliament at age 26, he grew a mustache to make himself look older.

“Winston,” said a female opponent, “I approve of neither your politics nor your mustache.”

“Madam,” he replied, “you are not likely to come in contact with either.”

| History · Humor

Leggo My Soul-Corroding Ennui

If you work in a spirit-crushing cubicle farm and can’t remember the innocent joys of childhood, here’s a compromise: Get a cube farm playset, including office furniture, a meaningless job title generator (“Domestic Engineering Associate”), and downloadable decorations.

If that’s not highbrow enough for you, theory.org has Lego versions of social theorists Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens, Angela McRobbie, and Michel Foucault. Post-structuralism sold separately.

| Humor · Society