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Create all sorts of fun maps thanks to the folks at the MLA: map language-speakers by county, by zip code, and all sorts of other good stuff.  Pull-down menus and such let you re-draw the map according to your curiosity.  (The above map, FYI, is of Hungarian speakers by county.  I think.  Of course, handily, I didn’t include the color-coded key, so if you’re really curious, you’ll have to dial up the map yourself.)

Three-year-old Robert Moore went fishing for a stuffed replica of Sponge Bob and ended up trapped in a vending machine.

…

A stuffed Sponge Bob in a vending machine’s bin caught Robert’s eye. He tried without success to fish it out with a plastic crane.  “I told him I could get it for him,” his grandmother said. “He’s a character. He said, ‘Oh no, I can get it.’” When she turned her back to get another dollar for a second try, Robert took off his coat and squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube.  “I turned around and looked for him, and he said, ‘Oma, I’m in here,” Bierdemann said. “I thought I would have a heart attack.”

And in the end… he didn’t even get the stuffed Sponge Bob.

(AP/Mercury News: “Toddler gets stuck in vending machine.” [Oct 24, 2006])

Who says you can’t craft a totally compelling story around a horned dog named after an imaginary card game?

Walter Moers’ 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear was most excellent, and this book surpasses even that. It’s cartwheeling, free-associating, spectacle-topping, coincidence-breaking fun, pure and simple. Though of course it isn’t simple. Nothing in Zamonia is, really.

The story begins with a tiny horned puppy, raised by dwarves (a kind of dwarf called a Hackonian, in case you were interested). But of course it can’t always be crumpets and daisies; sooner or later, everyone’s carted off to a free-roaming island by one-eyed giants that like to eat their prey live (the livelier, the better). And it’s from there that the story gets its wings and flies well beyond the stratosphere of creativity.

The titular Rumo is, as we find out, a Wolperting–a horned, superquick, civilized warrior dog. Held captive by the one-eyed beasts on Roaming Rock, he’s given the name ‘Rumo’ by a giant, eight-armed semi-aquatic and bulbous Shark Grub called Smyke.

But let’s not give away too much. Curious, astounding things happen, fate is defied, and we learn a little more about Zamonia and all its bizarre inhabitants in the process. Rumo’s a born hero–that much you should know: if you were hoping for a book centered around a vain, evil, megalomaniac badger-creature with wings, this isn’t the book for you.

Rumo is an epic like not much else. A different kind of epic. There’s alchemy, fortune-telling, sentient weapons, talking trees, living fog. Journeys beyond death.  Rumo falls in love, learns cabinetry, and journeys into lands typically braved only by the criminally deranged and the dangerously brutish.

More than that, the story is wickedly, brilliantly paced.  It’s filled with comical (and occasionally frightening) illustrations by the author, who also happens to be a cartoonist.  You follow Rumo along through danger and excitement with an unshakable curiosity and sense of awe, and before you know it, you’re at the end of the book, wishing you were only getting started.

Maybe you can go back and re-read The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.

It’s not so strange that some men experienced hallucinations after eating some popular fish–though it is apparently (and thankfully) rare.  The strange part is that it’s reported in Practical Fishkeeping magazine.  Though I guess eating fish you keep in your aquarium is all kinds of practical… Probably not the kind of practicality the magazine’s advocating, though.

A fun, related fact: the species of fish consumed by the men was used “as a recreational drug in the Med[iterranean] during the Roman Empire”.

(via PFK: “Men hallucinate after eating fish.” [Apr 19, 2006])

A Billy Madison reference, from a judge.

(And no, the previous sentence isn’t really intended as any kind of statement. It simply follows the rule of: the unexpected is funny. Ha ha.)

(via The Smoking Gun)

…you won’t find very much on the internet about the elusive “out-of-control doughnut trailer”, never mind how much danger it portends.

Think what you will; it’s hard to dislike an article that includes a chart with the title “Slugs and snails v sugar and spice”. Really. The article in the Economist looks at studies examining the differences between boys and girls, men and women, monkeys and monkeyettes. Some interesting, marginally inconclusive findings, all encompassed (mostly) by the subtitle: “Men and women think differently. But not that differently.”

(Economist: “The mismeasure of women.” [Aug 3, 2006].)

My Very Excellent Mother Could Just Serve Us Nuts, Pizza, Carrots ’n’ Xylophones!

…as a mnemonic to remember the new assortment of planetary bodies in the heavens.  Because everyone likes xylophones.

(NYT: “Planets Askew In Heavens, and Here on Earth, a Mess,” by Dennis Overbye [Aug 22, 2006])

Dutch findings suggest one in 25 people regularly hears voices.

(BBC News: “Voices in the head ‘are normal’” [Sept 18, 2006])

(2006) dir. Michel Gondry - w/ Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, plus also Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou, Emma de Caunes, Aurélia Petit, Sacha Bourdo, Pierre Vaneck, Stéphane Metzger, Alain de Moyencourt, and so on.

Synopsis: Any ‘plot summary’ you get is going to be deficient in some way; this is a movie that veers back and forth between the mundane and the serene, touching on both the surreal and the concrete with astonishing aplomb. It’s a movie that confuses dreaming and reality, but not in the tricksy way of a movie like Fight Club. The basis for the whole thing is Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) moving back home, getting a job, and falling for his next-door neighbor Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), dreaming in-between and along the way.

Review: This is one of the most gracefully heartfelt (and heart-breaking) movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s by turns sweet and cruel, fantastical and earth-bound, heart-breaking and hopeful. In spite of the props and dream-sequences and sometimes goofy dialogue, this is an eminently believable movie: I didn’t get the sense of watching a movie, but of watching a story unfold, of seeing something actually happening. The things I saw happen made me wince, cringe, laugh, sigh, grin.

“The Science of Sleep”, for what it’s worth, is not an American film. It’s done by the fellow (Michel Gondry) who brought us “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, but it’s light-years beyond that, if it’s even really fair to compare the movies. The people in this movie talk across languages and boundaries; they talk in French, English, Spanish, and a jumble in-between. The misunderstandings in this story come from barriers erected by language, emotion, manners, and chance. Stéphane tries to untangle these misunderstandings in his dreams. Whether or not he’s able to do this is maybe open to interpretation.

Stéphane and Stéphanie make things with their hands—crafts, gadgets, dreams—and this is how they relate to one another, and how they push forward even when they can’t relate. Imagination. Even the people around them, people you may not necessarily like, or sympathize for, prove to have their own creative sides, depths you didn’t expect them to have. This is a story that doesn’t try to explain so much as it tries to explore. It’s genuine, and tender, and harsh, and brittle, and confused, just like all the people populating its interior; just like life.

Rating: [•••••] out of [•••••]

…to find a wealth of live music recordings on the Internet Archive. Nonetheless, I’m surprised. Can you see it? The surprise?

(I discover this through the back door, finding a concert of A Silver Mt. Zion via some web page–I’ve long since forgotten which–and then discovering, also, some Handsome Family stuff as well. At time of press not having explored any further.)