Fantastic Dreams of Pamela K. Kinney: Wednesday

Showing posts with label Wednesday. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Weird Wednesday: Strange Facts You Never Knew

Sometimes some facts are useful knowledge. But then again, there are facts that might be considered strange and true, but not useful at all. Like the state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island is. But Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than Alaska does. Or Montana has three times as many cows as it does people. Would any of this be useful to you? And yet, weird as it may seem, someone might find this information interesting.

Do we really need to know that the United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people? Or that Japan only has 593 for every 1,000 people and Germany only has 540 for every 1,000 people? All that means is a lot of smog to me.

Other maybe useless, but maybe not weird facts:

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital.

One survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit pornography websites while they are at work. (Really? I don't even want to know what they might be doing in their cubicles while looking at the sites!)

There are three towns in the United States that have the name "Santa Claus".

In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than 50 minutes!

There are 18 different animal shapes in the Animal Crackers cookie zoo!

The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache on a standard playing card!

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos!

Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an insult!

Until the nineteenth century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia!

The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows!

It's illegal to drink beer out of a bucket while you're sitting on a curb in St. Louis!

A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein!

Clinophobia is the fear of beds!

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second!

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!

Cat urine glows under a black-light! (I wonder how someone determined this?)

Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone!

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie!

In Natoma, Kansas, it's illegal to throw knives at men wearing striped suits.

It was once against the law to have a pet dog in a city in Iceland!

Do you know any possibly useless strange facts that might maybe not be as useless as you thought? Leave a comment if you do.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Weird Wednesday: What is Weird To You?

Today, I am going to ask what you think weird is? What do you think is weird, and have you ever seen something weird? Tell me the strangest thing you ever saw or the most peculiar event you attended.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Huff and Puff, and I'll Blow Your House of Tombstones, Beer Cans, Paper, and Bottles Down?

It can be fascinating, but it can be strange too. Most homes are built of lumber and brick. But others are made most differently.

Like a house of tombstones. Like the one in Petersburg, Virginia that is in my new release, Haunted Richmond II from Schiffer Publishing. It was built in the 1930s, using tombstones from Poplar Civil War Cemetery. This house’s exterior walls are fashioned from the 2000 marble tombstones of Union soldiers killed during the Siege of Petersburg. Sixty thousand people were killed during the siege, which lasted ten months during 1864-65.

To save money, the city sold these tombstones to the builder, O. E. Young, for forty-five dollars. The ones used to build the house were put in facing inwards, and then Young plastered over the inscriptions. He even made the walkway out of the tombstones too, facing down. Wooden markers were placed upon the graves at Poplar Grove at first. But wood is not a very durable material and the weather destroyed them over a couple of years. In 1873 the government replaced them with marble ones. The soldiers’ names, states, and ranks were inscribed upon these new markers. Poplar Grove is the only cemetery in a national park where the tombstones lie flat. Besides being creepy enough to live in a hose of gravestones, the place is also haunted. To find out more about that, you have to buy Haunted Richmond II, to find out by whom or what.

Though this is the only place made of markers from graves I found, other materials a builder wouldn’t think of using nor ally, are used to build buildings. More than 50,000 cans adorn John Milkovisch’s Houston home in Texas. It also includes bottle caps, bottles and other beer paraphernalia. The project began in 1968 when Milkovisch, a retired upholsterer was tired of mowing grass and covered his front and back yards with concrete, inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks and other glittery items to create a unique lawn.
He then turned to the house and began decorating it with flattened beer cans, covering the walls and roof, and even creating beer-can wind chimes. Garlands made of cut beer cans hanging from the roof edges not only made the house sing in the wind, but also lowered the family's energy bills. Today the Beer Can House is a museum. Find out more on how you can visit it at http://www.beercanhouse.org/.

It was in Rockport, Massachusetts, in 1922 that mechanical engineer Elias F. Stenman constructed his two-room home, planning to insulate it with newspaper. Before long, he made the entire house out of paper, and two years and 215 layers of newspaper later, he moved in. At that, he went on to make all of the home’s furnishings — including the desk and the piano — out of newspaper as well. He worked on the project until his death in 1942. Although the frame, floor and roof are made of wood, the rest of the home is composed entirely of newspaper, all donated by Stenman’s friends and family. Although the Paper House is completely sturdy, it does have to be revarnished every few years to keep it well-preserved. Of course, you can visit it. You can learn more at http://www.paperhouserockport.com/index.html.

In the southern part of Virginia, actually in Hillsville, there’s a house made up of all things, bottles. In 1941, pharmacist John “Doc” Hope commissioned a builder to build for his daughter a playhouse made out of bottles. Glass containers that had contained castor oil to soda pop were used in construction of this place. But unlike most children’s playhouses, this one stretched from fifteen to twenty-five feet.

Nicknamed the “House of a Thousand Headaches” due to the wine bottles also used in its construction, unlike many homes today, this one has stood the test of time. It is said that unlike other homes made of bottles in the world, this one had all its bottles arranged backwards, making the inner walls green. Green bottles form an "H" pattern (for Hope) on one of the side walls. There is also a blue bottle chandelier.

Not the only homes and buildings made like this, you could probably google and find one in your area to check out.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Religion of Spock

Now, I am a big Star Trek fan, and into anything to do with Trek. But the one thing that took me aback, in its peculiarness, was a church called “The Spock,” that I accidently discovered when I googled. It is a few miles south of Lynchburg in Campbell County, in the state of Virginia.

Founded in 1977, it is in a large and attractive octagonal building. It is said to be the world's only church of Star Trek, a religion centered on the popular 1960's television series, featuring the adventures of a crew of interstellar explorers. It promotes beliefs associated with one of the popular characters in the TV series, Mr. Spock. The ideology of the church is centered on so-called Vulcan philosophy which includes the belief in pure "logic" and which emphasizes a lifestyle devoid of emotion.

A huge stained-glass likeness of Mr. Spock is featured in the sanctuary. Churchgoers recite sequences of dialogue from the series and participate in what they call a "Holy Mind Meld." It is said that many of the members wear stick-on pointed ears like Spock has during services and at other church functions. Supposedly, in one case of excessive dedication to the "faith," one member attempted to have his ears surgically altered. There were disastrous results, requiring extensive corrective surgery.

"The Spock" is not without controversy, as reportedly in the late 1980's, disagreement arose within the church. This due to the lengths in which members should go in emulating the purely logical and emotionless Vulcan approach to life. Some of them advocated a reasonable degree of emotion, due to Spock’s half-human part. Though a core group of hard-line members were adamant to stick to the Vulcan ideology. The stricter view won. Several members left the church, condemning the practices. One former member went so far as to publish a science fiction story based on his rigid and stifling upbringing in the faith, a story which concludes with the destruction of the Campbell County sanctuary by a "phaser" blast from an orbiting "starship" at his command. But despite the dissent, "The Spock" boasts a membership today of over 120. Active campaigns are done for new members at area fan conventions and at Star Trek movie showings in local theatres. Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Mr. Spock in Star Trek, has refused comment on "The Spock."

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Weird Wednesday-It's All About the Foam

In the western part of Virginia, there's something may be strange and yet, really cool. Like Foamhenge in Natural Bridge, Virginia. Mark Cline of the Enchanted Castle Studios made the full size scale replica of Stonehenge, all made of Styrofoam. It is painted to resemble the original. It first appeared on April’s Fool Day in 2004. It has appeared on MSNBC, Fox, Discovery Channel, and TBS, along in National Geographic for Kids, Washington Post, U.S.A. Today, international magazines, and in several books, and on the cover of Strange But True VA.

Got the itch to visit Stonehenge, but can’t afford the plane ticket to England? Well, then Foamhenge may be more within your budget. It’s free to visit and is open daily. The attraction is just north of the Natural Bridge on U.S. 11, near the Natural Bridge Caverns and the Natural Bridge Zoo.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Weird Wednesday: What is Weird?

By the dictionary, weird means involving or suggesting the supernatural; unearthly and outside natural law, or uncanny; fantastic; bizarre: a weird getup, and also concerned with or controlling fate or destiny. Weird has three different meanings. To me it all depends on what your definition of weird is. Not everyone thinks weird concerning the same thing or person.

Like to someone interested in the paranormal, it’s not weird, but fascinating, or something to solve or enjoy. To others though, it’s weird, frightening or uncanny. Maybe that guy at work some think is weird because of the way he does his job or packs his lunch, or even what he is interested in and wants to talk about, but you might be on the same page as his wavelength. It’s all about perception; right?

So Weird Wednesdays will go from photos to posts on what is weird or maybe not. It’s all depends on how you look at it.

What do you consider weird or strange? What strikes you as extraordinary or not of the norm?

To give you something to check out until next Weird Wednesday, here’s a website that reports weird news: Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Weird Wednesday Will Be Articles Not Pictures As of August 1st

As of tomorow there will be no more pictures for Weird Wednesday. Give me a week and August 1st I will have Weird Wednesday back, but posts about the strange and bizzare I hear about or find out about.