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.

[Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, photography, travel & foreign lands by Jeff Scheuer
No Comments »

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
No Comments »

“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.

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, ends & odd by Sean Cunningham
No Comments »

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

7. Idiots who keep shouting “Show me the bunny!”

6. The fact that, if he gets run over hopping across the freeway, four people get good-luck charms for their key chains

5. The way all the chicks ignore him

4. How scientists are unable to decide whether eggs are God’s gift to nutrition or little white death bombs

3. The fact that you need an advanced degree in calculus to determine the date Easter falls on

2. Way too much friggin’ pastel

1. Those people who mistakenly think he’s leaving a trail of Raisinets
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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?!”

7. “Hey, that green beer exactly matches your face!”

6. “What do you mean, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ The whole city is a bathroom!”

5. “When I get this drunk, my shillelagh goes limp.”

4. “Today the President’s signing everything O’Bama.”

3. “I dreamed I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in my Erin go Bragh.”

2. “I haven’t seen this many people sick since we got off that Carnival Cruise.”

1. “I hear Jodie Foster is practicing her Gaelic.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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

7. You’re the photographer who videotaped Hef’s wedding night, and you can’t stop shuddering

6. Your wife’s resolution was to give up you

5. Because you didn’t win the Heisman Trophy, your imaginary dead girlfriend has decided to dump you

4. You’re Honey Boo Boo’s grade school teacher

3. You’re just waking up from your 2011 New Year’s Eve party

2. Your first name is ‘Lance’ or ‘Mitt’, or your last name is ‘Petraeus’

1. Someone had to Heimlich you in order to retrieve your cat
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
1 Comment »

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.”

7. “Lots of people make love on a couch. I was just eliminating the middleman.”

6. “It was a convertible sofa, so it was just begging me to sleep with it!”

5. “It was a dead ringer for my last girlfriend.”

4. “Plenty of men fantasize about what I did. I mean, look at all the fan pages dedicated to Sofa Vergara!”

3. “Those cushions were just so plump and succulent, and it had the sexiest legs I’ve ever seen.”

2. “I consider myself the Sofa King, sofa king the couch just seemed natural.”

1. “You know what they say: In the couch spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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
3 Comments »

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

7. I resolve to not blame the dog when I fart

6. I resolve to finally give up trying to lose weight, and instead will grow six inches taller

5. I resolve to e-mail back that nice Nigerian prince who keeps trying to contact me

4. I resolve not sit at the computer all day (I’m writing this standing up)

3. I resolve to only eat white snow

2. I resolve to keep all my resolutions to myself this year

1. I resolve to be more resolute with all my resolutions!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

10. Stuffing the stocking

9. Unwrapping your presents

8. Trimming the tree

7. Roasting your chestnuts

6. Making eggnog

5. Putting the bird in the oven

4. Choosing either breast or leg

3. Pulling your cracker

2. Donning your gay apparel

1. Coming down the chimney
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

10. Bed, Bath and Bewildered

9. Amy’s Wine House

8. Abercrombie & Bitch

7. Crooks Brothers

6. Banana Dictatorship

5. FU’s Wholesale Club

4. Vasectomy Pagoda

3. J.Screw

2. Chick-fil-A-hole

1. Petraeus’s Secret

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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
1 Comment »

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

7. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t come inside

6. You check to make sure cheese isn’t supposed to fizzle

5. Your bathroom has hot and cold running roaches

4. When you accidentally moved your Christmas tree, you finally found out where Gramps has been all this time

3. The odor has that certain ‘skunk-in-an-outhouse-getting-a-perm’ mystique

2. Your “bean bag chair” is made of accumulated lint

1. Your “dust bunnies” are actually breeding
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

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
1 Comment »

When you’re working in a group, it’s hard to know what you truly think. We’re such social animals that we instinctively mimic others’ opinions, often without realizing we’re doing it. And when we do disagree consciously, we pay a psychic price. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that people who dissent from group wisdom show heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the sting of social rejection. Berns calls this the “pain of independence.”

Take the example of brainstorming sessions, which have been wildly popular in corporate America since the 1950s, when they were pioneered by a charismatic ad executive named Alex Osborn. [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, ends & odd by Mike Farrell
No Comments »

Recently I was browsing in a used book store when I stumbled upon a soldier’s Japanese phrasebook from World War II. Between faded orange covers I found a treasure trove of fascinating words and phrases- certainly it’s the most useful text published by the U.S. War Department I’ve encountered since that pamphlet on sexual hygiene for GIs I found in a Texas ghost town a few years back. It does lack for detailed diagrams of human genitalia, however.

Like most phrasebooks it contains all the standard terminology related to greetings, asking for directions and finding lodgings, but the structure and at least half of the language is strictly determined by the context of war. Thus it begins not with “Hello” and “My name is…” but rather a set of “Emergency Expressions” the very first of which is: [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, travel & foreign lands by Daniel Kalder
No Comments »