In the fall of 2009 I traveled to Jordan and Syria with a group organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war, which to date has killed some 93,000 people, I’ve often thought back to the peaceful country I visited just a year and a half earlier.  I found a  landscape of green hills, desert and sea that in some ways resembles Oregon, cities full of friendly people and intriguing souks, and everywhere wonderful smells of fruit, spices, and flowers.  I think back on those scents and they return to me as an emblem of Syria’s beauty and a prayer for peace.  Here are a few photographs of my trip.

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Tags: ends & odd, photography, travel & foreign lands by Jeff Scheuer
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Don’t worry, there are no dinosaurs.

This Friday, April 19, will mark the 20th anniversary of the fire that brought an end to the Waco siege, after a 50-day-long standoff between David Koresh, his followers and the FBI. Seventy-six people died in the inferno, and the name “Koresh” is forever infamous as a result. What most people don’t know is that a century earlier, there was another Koresh – also American and just as messianic, if less randy. [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, religion & philosophy, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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“Stephen Baldwin is set to make his directorial debut in ‘Riding Destiny,’ a feature film about an extreme-sports surfer-stuntman who returns home to fix his broken cowboy family.”

I’ll give you a moment to recover from having your mind blown.

(Pause)

That’s all I can spare. Behold it again.

“Stephen Baldwin is set to make his directorial debut in ‘Riding Destiny,’ a feature film about an extreme-sports surfer-stuntman who returns home to fix his broken cowboy family.”

And suddenly the world is a very different place.

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Tags: art & entertainment, ends & odd by Sean Cunningham
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10. Not being allowed to keep a naughty or nice list because of potential copyright infringement

9. Inhaling so much plastic grass, he’s developed artificial hay fever

8. Not getting time and a half for working on Sunday
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10. “How can you say I have a weak stomach? Look how far I’m throwin’ it!”

9. “Cover your eyes, kids!”

8. “No, that’s not a leprechaun. But since when is Tom Cruise Irish?!”
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10. Your New Year’s kiss left smudge marks on the television screen

9. Your co-workers posted on YouTube the video of you at the office Christmas party, Xeroxing your butt

8. You started the new year with ten fingers and ten toes – now, not so many
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10. “It was a love seat.”

9. “I figured it was safe sex. It was wearing a plastic slipcover.”

8. “My recliner at home recently left me.”
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The obituary of Robert H. Bork in The New York Times (Dec. 20 2012) notes that, “In a 1971 article in The Indiana Law Journal, [Bork] argued that the First Amendment’s protection of free speech had been wildly extrapolated beyond the intent of the Constitution’s framers. In a starkly narrow interpretation, he said free speech existed to perpetuate the process of self-government; therefore, he wrote, only explicitly political speech about governing was protected.” That is indeed a tortured reading. Explicitly political speech about governing could be construed as narrowly as speech about whether the Senate should change the filibuster rule. To Hell with freedom of speech about everything else. But there is a striking comparison between Bork’s First Amendment and the Second Amendment as it relates to the recently re-ignited gun-control debate. The Second Amendment has indeed been “wildly extrapolated” by the gun lobby beyond its original intent. The crucial difference is this: the limited original intent of the Second Amendment is clear, and is thrown into relief by the massive social and technological changes since it was written, whereas the narrow reading of the First Amendment is almost certainly not the intended one, nor is that amendment so antiquated.  [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, diatribes, ends & odd, on the law by Jeff Scheuer
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10. I resolve never again to smash into somebody’s car just to knock the cell phone out of their hand

9. I resolve to eat my weight in penuchi

8. I resolve to finally find Waldo
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10. Stuffing the stocking

9. Unwrapping your presents

8. Trimming the tree
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10. Bed, Bath and Bewildered

9. Amy’s Wine House

8. Abercrombie & Bitch
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10. When people first meet you they say, “Lemme guess…Sumo wrestler?”

9. The super in your building just changed the sign in the elevator to read “Maximum Occupancy: 1”

8. When you get on a plane from New York to Los Angeles, it has to taxi the whole way

7. A policeman came up to you and ordered you to disperse

6. Both Ben and Jerry have friended you on Facebook

5. You just caught the flesh eating bacteria, and were given 93 years to live

4. Just like one of those turkey thermometers so you can tell when it’s done, your belly button just popped out

3. Everyone in New Jersey keeps calling you “Governor”

2. You had to sell your laptop because you no longer have a lap

1. You got winded just reading this Top Ten List
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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Via the Comic Treadmill

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Tags: books & writing, ends & odd by Michael Cade
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10. “Try it! It tastes as good as the real thing but it’s much healthier!”

9. “It always takes me a full year to forget how much I loathe each and every one of you.”

8. “How’d I get the turkey so golden brown? Don’t tell anybody, but my little secret weapon is shellac.”

7. “This year I couldn’t afford mince or pumpkin pie, so I went with moon.”

6. “You’re right, it’s not the best looking turkey. So what part do you want, bone or gristle?”

5. “What am I thankful for? That nobody’s discovered the body yet.”

4. “When I made the turducken, I got the duck and the chicken right, but I misunderstood the turd part.”

3. “Run for your lives! Runaway electric carving knife!”

2. “The cable’s screwed up. All we can get is the Oprah Network.”

1. “9-1-1? How do you get someone out of a tryptophan-induced coma?”
 
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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I don’t even know where to start with this one, so I won’t, other than saying maybe it’s actually genius in the way they’re going for the must-watch-car-crash factor.

It’s fun to let kids get involved in design.

Tags: all work, ends & odd by Andrew Turner
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From down on the Willamette River last night.

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Tags: ends & odd by Michael Cade
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10. You have more empty takeout containers than P.F. Chang’s

9. You’ve lost three pets to indoor avalanches

8. Your refrigerator mold and your oven mold are caught in a life-and-death struggle
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10. All your chocolate is of the ‘baking’ variety

9. Your Easter eggs have little fuses coming out of them

8. The grass he uses in your Easter basket is from the Dog Park

7. He has “F.U.” shaved into the fur on his back

6. He starts each day by egging your car

5. He told you that Santa wasn’t real

4. He says he wants to cut off your foot to carry around for luck

3. He’s always dissin’ your peeps

2. The eggs hidden on your lawn are six feet deep

1. Those ain’t Raisinets
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. “Yes, that’s a snake in my pocket, and I’m glad to see you!”

9. “My lips aren’t the only things that are magically delicious.”

8. “You sure know how to turn a guy’s blue balls green!”

7. “My small statute makes some things appear much larger by contrast!”

6. “You sure know how to put the Irish spring in my step!”

5. “I’ll grant ye one wish – as long as it involves my pants.”

4. “In today’s market, do you have any idea what a pot o’ gold is worth?!”

3. “You sure are cute! Part of me is Dublin already!”

2. “Top of the mornin’ to ya! Or would you rather be on the bottom?”

1. “What to see my shillelagh?”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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Whitney Houston is dead at 48 due to a self-administered overdose of warm, soapy water; to which she was addicted. It is unclear when she set off down this path. Many observers blame her widower, Bobby Brown, saying that before he came along Whitney took showers, ran through the car wash or just re-applied her hairspray. What cannot be denied is that hers was a daily habit involving gallon upon gallon of the substance she clearly felt was so sweet and embracing but wound up taking her precious life at a tender age. There has been some confusion and dissembling. It should be obvious why Big Bath would be interested in diverting attention from their own intoxicating wares and onto the drugs prescribed for Ms Houston by her doctors or perhaps onto those medicinal preparations from her herbalists. These monopolist robber-barons are already in a stink owing to the epidemic of bath-salts snorting among teens. They fear that their decades…. nay, CENTURIES of sloshing murderous tubs and fragrances onto a hapless humanity (at a tidy profit) might finally come to an end. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, drugs & alcohol, ends & odd by Ken Watson
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