politburo diktat 2.0

My sister seems to have too much real estate on her hands, and is making this unique raffle offer on her house in New Hampshire (North Conway area).
Unique offer.

Small Town Tests Stomachs With Testicle Festival

MOUNT STERLING, Ill. — For the fourth year in a row, the small town of Mount Sterling, Ill., held its Testicle Festival. Proceeds from last weekend’s event were donated to the town’s new community emergency building and to volunteer firefighters and rescue workers. For those attending the festival, the […]

from 60 Things worth shortening your life for — Esquire.com
Items 44-48. The Five Most Decadent Burgers in the United States of America:

The cheeseburger at Shady Glen Dairy Stores in Manchester, Connecticut.
Four carefully arranged pieces of cheese extending far beyond the border of the patty melt directly on the grill, creating a chewy crust that is […]

Author Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84
In books such as “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle,” and “Hocus Pocus,” Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound. Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at 84. He had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall […]

Antarctic hut eerily intact after nearly a century

A neat stack of seal meat sits in an enclosed porch, tins of cocoa and cabbage are piled on shelves inside, and all seems ready for Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton to take shelter.
Of course they won’t: their kind of exploration of the southern […]

Stonehenge makes list in new seven wonders vote
Only one of the ancient wonders of the world still survives — now history lovers are being invited to choose a new list of seven.
An original list of nearly 200 sites nominated by the public was narrowed to 21 by the organizers and experts, including the former director […]

Honeycrisp Apples
If you haven’t tried these, you haven’t lived.

J. Peder Zane sees the rise in trivia books as a symptom of what he calls “jolt culture.”
Jolt Culture is often conflated with the “dumbing-down” of America. They are, undoubtedly, partners in crime. Trivia books — which strip meaning from knowledge, providing us with information but the not the context we need to apply it […]

[by j.d.]
This is a bit of a follow-up to Barry’s earlier post on notebooks. He mentions his preference for Moleskines.
I’ve been around enough art supplies, pens, and paper types to have tried several dozen different combinations. I’m kind of partial to the Pilot “Better Retractable” and the cheap notebook.
Pilot has been making this pen for […]

Not a word from me today about Lieberman’s loss to Lamont in the Connecticut primary - there’s a bumper-crop surplus of bloggage about that (it even dragged The Commissar away from fishing to post!) and I doubt very much that I have anything useful or even interesting to add.
Instead, let me tell you about these […]

Searchlight Crusade Today’s Turkey

Over at my other site, I’ve got a feature called “Hot Bargain Properties” Being as the market is swinging more strongly to the buyers every day, it’s what you might call a “target rich environment”. On the other hand, there are still folks in denial, and just plain “What were you thinking” […]

Blast Levels Manhattan Town House; Inquiry Focuses on Injured Owner
A gas explosion destroyed a four-story town house on the Upper East Side yesterday morning, and law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether the thunderous blast was a bizarre last chapter in a divorce battle over who would end up owning the building.
Chunks of flying […]

Man severs own penis, throws it at officers
Before cops threw the book at him, Jakub Fik threw something unusual at them — his penis.
Fik, 33, cut off his own penis during a Northwest Side rampage Wednesday morning. When confronted by police, Fik hurled several knives and his severed organ at the officers, police said. Officers […]

Suppose that next month a committee of theologians, scientists, philosophers, and hunter-gatherers will announce whether or not God exists. They will make a definitive, accurate determination, not merely reach a consensus. (Or a crack research team, with a god detecting machine, will announce it. Or aliens, or any unimpeachable, trustworthy, source you might […]