If you’re like me, you sometimes dread going into a locker room. I’m not sure why, but Gold’s gym is the worst. Their locker rooms ALWAYS smell like the inside of a sock that’s been sitting in a broken toilet for a month (no, I’ve never actually smelled such a sock, but that’s the closest my imagination can come to the actual smell). Between work and home, there are four Gold’s, and even the brand new one smells far worse than your typical locker room … yuck.

What’s worse is that the Gold’s locker rooms are always filled with people who want to sit around in the buff chatting away like it’s Starbucks. Do they not realize the more you talk the more you have to breathe??? Or are they trying to prove that they can handle the stench better than their other half naked brethren? Is it a minor victory when they see someone run back to their cars, never to return again?

Maybe … which is why I actually end up putting up with the smell, and even chat a litte. Since I’ve realized that I’m just perpetuating the problem, I’m thinking that the next time I’m at Gold’s (which may be never), I’ll hang up a sign that says “YES, this room stinks! You don’t need to pretend that you like it in here”.

Really though, wouldn’t the world would be a better place if filled with such signs? Much more entertaining than “If you leave your lock on the door overnight, it will be cut off and confiscated”.

Given the circumstances, the chatting can be pretty annoying, sometimes even a little unnerving, which is why I’ve put together my list of the top 10 things you don’t want to hear in the locker room:

10. I’m completely unpredictable when people look at me the wrong way

9. Oh no! Anybody see my kid’s pet hamster (or gerbil, mouse, snake, etc)?

8. Ah … there’s no place I’d rather be than right here

7. I forgot my sandwich in the shower, can you grab it for me?

6. While the doctor’s still don’t have a name for it, they said that, luckily, only my feet are contagious

5. I can’t reach my back, can you help dry me off?

4. Ummm … anyone have some a few extra rolls of toilet paper and a mop?

3. Hey! Come here and check this out!

2. Looked like they cleaned up the blood, poor (insert name) … I imagine the imagery by this one would be far worse for men than women

1. I was admiring you in the shower and …

Without getting too graphic, has anyone ever say something similar while you were in the locker room? #10, #9, #4, #3, #2, and #1 are all from personal experience (mostly from high school though). Maybe that’s why I’m so leary of Gold’s now.

Have you ever wondered happens when you put tin foil or other objects in the Microwave? Today I saw a story on slashdot (a great site for techies) showing some really amazing results from putting common objects in the Microwave. Unfortunately, the writer provided a link filled with pop-ups, so instead of providing that link I’ve included similar videos here.

Please … DO NOT try any of these at home. Many of them could start a fire or ruin your Microwave. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy watching these little science experiments. Each video is short, so you should be able to watch them all pretty quickly. Some of the results, such as the oozing soap and the plasma matches, are really surprising.

Match - creates balls of plasma

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Match - catching the balls of plasma in a glass

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

CD - looks like spider web

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Soap - wow!

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Light bulb

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Grapes - surprisingly, more plasma balls!

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

And finally, the old standby … tin foil

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

What’d you think?

Here are 4 questions taken from a standardized high school Geometry test (redrawn by yours truly … proof that my B+ in 9th grade art was well deserved). I was trying to learn MacroMedia Fireworks (drawing software), so I didn’t have time to type in the boring multiple choice answers, so I included my answers instead:

How do you think I did? How would you do? Yeah, I know, that was bad … sorry, no more math humor for a while, off to bed.

All my life, I’ve been intrigued by “What If” questions such as this. Even as a kid, I would drive everyone around me a little nutty with questions such as “What if the sky just stopped being blue?”, “What if we lived on the moon?”, and “what if 2 + 2 actually equalled 33?”. Yeah, I was one of THOSE kids.

Apparently these questions are much cuter coming from a kid than an adult. I sometimes find a few people who love playing my “What If” games, others who look at me like I’m crazy, and the rest don’t say much … they are probably thinking “just smile and move away quietly before you are offered to see the spaceship” (or maybe they’re just being polite).

Here are a few of my favorite “What If” questions that, for some reason, rank high on the ‘walk away quietly’ scale when introduced in casual conversation. I have my own personal thoughts on the answers, but I’d rather hear your ideas and/or “What Ifs” (that is, if I haven’t already scared you off by now)

• What if I had been raised by a friendly llama instead of my parents?
• What if humans had two butts?
• What if we stepped through a Willy Wonka-esque teleporter, would our souls still be intact (woah, where’d that one come from)?
• What if topsoil consisted entirely of shelf stable beef?
• What if cows could talk, had opposable thumbs, and were smarter than people?

After reading these, if you are now wondering when I’m going to ask you to come back to my spaceship … don’t worry, I didn’t rent one this week. Though I think if I were to go upscale and buy a UFO, it would probably look something like this:

(thanks to arnet for the pic!)

And as an afterthought … if you ate pasta and anti-pasta, would you still be hungry?

The contest is now over. See our announcement for the winner and some of the funny responses to the bonus picture.

The premise of our second contest is pretty simple: leave a comment identifying each picture shown below to win at least $20 (up to $100, see details below), or a top secret mystery prize. There’s a bit of a twist though … you can enter as many times as you want, but only your last entry will be counted. So if you are a whiz and guess correctly tomorrow, but then look at everyone else’s guesses and re-enter, only your last guess will count.

To win, just be the first to identify pictures 1-5 (the most creative and correct answer for the bonus picture both get special recognition)

1. Beluga Whale (thanks sillydog) Not found on you What is that I see? You like to swim? Think caviar	2. Deer Bologna (on my countertop) Not too harmful What is for dinner? You might even like it Think hunting
3. Elmo slippers (thanks DottieboBottie) Not that easy What is TMX? You cold? Think she babies her feet?	4. Golf Ball (my son’s) Not too soft What is balata? You can hit it Think fore!
5. Triple Bypass Burger (thanks Master Shake) Not for the meek What is that inside? You like dogs too? Think mustard would go with that?	Bonus - “Tom Swift” costume (thanks Federal Land) Not me! What in the world? You want one, huh? Think this guy’s a goof

We’ll name the winner on December 15th (even if someone has answered correctly before this), and give them one of the following prizes of their choice:

• $20 cash
• $20 in some cash equivalent (gift card, 50 cans of pinto beans, 2000 blogmad credits, etc.)
• A super secret mystery prize worth approximately $20

If someone gets all 5 in the first two weeks (by November 30th), we’ll give them $100 or a really cool top secret mystery prize. Also, every week until the 15th we’ll reveal a little more of each picture and provide a clue, so come back weekly to compare your guesses to the larger pictures!

For our last contest (Mix-n-match the toilets), the mystery prize was a book entitled The Truth about Poop. If you’re looking for a great kid’s present or a gag gift for a friend, we suggest you click and buy it … it’s a fun read! If you win, we certainly hope you say “Door #3 Monty”, but if you don’t like surprises the other options aren’t bad either for playing this little game.

Have fun, we look forward to your entries!

If you could have just one superpower, what would it be … and why? Leave a comment to let us know!

Personally, I would want to be immortal. Maybe that’s cheating … are there any superheroes that don’t age? Even Superman, the most powerful of the superheroes, gets older in the comics and movies. I always wondered if a 95 year old superman would still be so super, or just be really good in wheelchair races. Why don’t they make a movie about Superman coming out of retirement? Rocky is like 70 and is still trying to fight, so why can’t Superman? Maybe “Superman Returns from the Proctologist” just isn’t that catchy of a title, but it would probably be entertaining, particularly if he fought evil side by side with the Italian Stallion.

My reason for choosing immortality is that at some point we’ll probably invent gadgets for all the other super powers (possibly even immortality, but I wouldn’t want to risk the wait). I could then be kind of like an immortal version of Syndrome from The Incredibles, errr … well … except I wouldn’t be evil, or have really bad hair, or wear tights and a cape, and I also would probably have no inclination to take over the world … so basically nothing like Syndrome except for having lots of cool gadgets.

Maybe it’s not as cool to have x-ray vision goggles vs. eyes that just see through everything, but hey … I could only pick one superpower, plus I’ve been to nude beaches and found that most people are best left revealed.

(BTW - thanks to Diesel at The Mattress Police for entertaining and inspiring us with his superhero antics the past few days, and thanks to davebluedevil for the pic!)

Are you old enough to remember when it was common for women to faint? My great-grandmother would talk about how she used to faint all the time when she was younger. Also, when my grandfather would say something disagreeable she’d complain of feeling faint (at which point the argument magically stopped).

Apparently fainting was not reserved to my great-grandmother, but was quite common prior to the past couple of decades (at least according to reliable sources such as Readers Digest and Wikipedia … hey, at least it’s not the Enquirer). Some older women are even lamenting the lost art of fainting, and with it the loss of a powerful tool in the arsenal of manipulation tricks.

Despite all such rumors to the contrary, fainting is not a completely lost art form. A type of goat, appropriately called the fainting goat, faints whenever it gets startled. Here’s the video from Google:

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

OK ladies, so if you want to practice your fainting skills, just follow the goat’s lead:

• Find a friend, preferably not your husband, to practice with
• Stand in a field, make funny noises, and walk in a circle
• Have your friend chase you around with a large opened golf umbrella until you faint

Once you have the knack for fainting, you can start removing some of the props until you can faint on command. Next time your husband starts moaning that he’d rather watch football than go to your parents for dinner, BAM, on the floor. The TV will be off all night (unless of course you hadn’t yet progressed past the need for walking in circles and making funny noises, in which case he’d know your trick and lock himself in the bedroom to watch football in faint-free peace).

If you’re into computer games (or your kids are), you probably know that this Friday is one of the most anticipated days of the year. For everyone else, I’ll give you a hint why it’s so important: it’s not because it’s the 18th anniversary of the ridiculous Star Wars Holiday Special, nor because it is Slovakia’s Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day. It’s the day Sony’s $600 Playstation 3 is released in the U.S.

(thanks to amitrunchal for the pic)

I’m not sure why, but there’s something about the new Playstation that drives people to act irrationally to buy one. For example, to ensure they receive one on game day, thousands will:

• Camp out outside local electronics stores, possibly for days (or stalk the perimeter for stores like Best Buy that call the police on campers)
• Pay $1500 (!!!) or more on eBay
• Try to find someone in Japan who already has one and is willing to sell it to them (yeah right)

OK, so what if you want one and don’t like those options? Maybe you can employ this pirate trick:

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Or … just wait a few weeks (like the rest of us) until the second shipment arrives. Personally, I’m waiting for the XBOX 720 to arrive in 2013

For the past few days, we’ve been working to create an illusion where a picture looks different from far away than close up. On a small monitor, you’ll need to get about 6-10 feet away. If you have a huge monitor, you may need to backup further. If you’re having a hard time seeing the far away image, let us know so can post smaller pictures that you can see from a closer distance.

In the first illusion, the “baby genius” turns into a young Einstein when you stand far enough from the computer:

A few people who saw the first one so far said “yeah, but I knew what I was looking for, which is why I could tell it was Einstein”. Good point, so we created this second image using the same baby … what does it look like to you from far away?

If you like these, let us know and we can post a couple other hybrid image illusions and also give you instructions on how you can make your own. This is particularly fun to do using your own children, for example … you can make one child turn into his or her sibling.

The past couple days we’ve been working on something pretty cool that we’ll hopefully have completed for tomorrow, but until then I wanted to share some short videos I found amusing. Unlike many of the videos we’ve shown here, I can almost guarantee you’ve never seen these (all are brand new and have less than 100 views in YouTube):

Cute/funny one from the makers of the “In the Jungle” video:

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Huh? This kid has problems, or just an insane craving:

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Another odd one: A kid and his banana friend:

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

And finally, a cute kid being badgered by his English dad:

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Hopefully you enjoyed these!, but let us know if you’d rather see more mainstream videos in the future.