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Great news, everybody!

For everyone (that’s code for “both of you”) who’s been clamoring (sound of two people clamoring) for a Middle Zone Musings e-book – well, I have great news: the long, long wait is over! (Cue the fireworks, cue the band, cue the confetti! Hey! Somebody roll out that red carpet!)

That’s right, my very first e-book, Poke It with a Sharp Stick*, is finally ready for prime time, and best of all, it’s available in .PDF format right here at the Zone! (If anyone needs another format, let me know, I’ll see what I can do.)

Best of all, it’s completely free! Yaay! Hoo-rah! (And let’s not forget wazzoo, whoop-te-do, and hubba-hubba!) That’s right, it won’t cost you a nickel. Nada. Nuthin’. Zilch.

Inside this 21-page book you’ll find six of my favorite stories from the Middle Zone, all of which are (as they used to say at Mad Magazine) “suitable for framing or wrapping fish”. In fact (in case your bird cage needs a new liner), it’s formatted for easy printing on letter-size paper (just set your printer to “Portrait” mode and print – easy!)

Pretty soon (translation: as soon as I figure out how - bear with me, I’m a slow learner) I’ll have a cute little link up there in the left sidebar. In the meantime, go ahead, take as many as you like.

[UPDATE: The link is up there now (in the upper left sidebar); just right-click and save!

Read and enjoy, then (should you be so inclined) drop me a line and tell me what you think. Have I got a future as a writer? As a blogger? As a crash-test dummy?

Oh, and - pass it on, too.

*I’d like to thank Roger von Oech at Creative Think for suggesting the title (you can see it down in the comments). Roger, at least by my standards, is a genuinely whacky guy – after all, he invented the Ball of Whacks!

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Speaking of projects, Darren Rowse at ProBlogger Blog Tips throws caution to the winds by kicking off yet another one, and this time it looks like a pretty freewheeling sort of thing. Everyone is welcome to participate, but you’d better hurry; the deadline is Thursday, May 10. And, just to make things interesting, one lucky randomly-chosen entry will win $1001! That means everyone has an equal chance at winning. Pretty cool, Darren!

The topic is “Top 5″… and well, that’s it.

Well, there’s no way I could let that particular gauntlet (sound of gauntlet being thrown down) go unanswered, so I began to think (sound of grinding gears) about what kind of list I’d want to create for posterior posterity. Hmmm, let’s see now…. (picture of me, pacing back and forth – which is quite a trick in a 3-foot by 3-foot cubicle)

After approximately 8.79 milliseconds, it hit me (sound of dull thud); why not focus on things I’ve learned from the Internet? But, as is par for the course here at the Middle Zone, it can’t be just anything. I mean, c’mon - I’ve only learned about a bazillion new things in the 10 ½ months since I started. So, the question before the jury is, how do I filter it down to just 5?

All right, how about this? Among other things, the Internet is certainly a humongous repository for all kinds of knowledge, right? Some good, some bad, some actually quite profound, and some… er, not so much.

So after a further 5.18 milliseconds, I naturally chose to list the Top 5 strangest things I’ve learned (you knew that was coming didn’t you?) from the Internet. Now that sounds like a list to be proud of here at the Zone, don’t you think?

OK, here goes; but it means I’ll have to access my external memory banks for this one (sound of automobile engine fruitlessly turning over). And now, without further ado (because as you know, a further do would make no sense whatsoever) I present, in no particular order and for your edification…

The Top 5 Strangest Things I’ve Learned While Blogging

Have you ever awakened one morning and thought to yourself, “Aarrghh! I wish I could just blow up the whole world”? (Well, if you have – then I don’t want to know!) Then you may want to check out Sam Hughes’ exhaustive How to Destroy the Earth page. Sam provides a veritable A to Z of everything on the subject you may want to know, from your choice of methodology (a technical term favored by consultants everywhere meaning method) and its efficacy, to related subjects such as a handy list of things to consider should you choose destroying the Earth as a, er, career path.

Then, from the BBC News UK, there’s how to calculate the “beer-goggle effect”, which as you know, is the measure of how the cumulative consumption of alcohol affects the perceived attractiveness of your current date. Some crazy college kids researchers at Manchester University actually worked out how to quantify it.

Oh, and from “100 Things We Didn’t Know Last Year” (in this article the year referred to is 2005), I can’t let you go without mentioning this little tidbit (scroll down to #79 on the list): that 1 out of every 18 people have a third nipple. (Although where they keep it is anyone’s guess.)

And speaking of vocabulary (huh?), I also expanded mine by leaps and bounds when I learned, among other things, what dasypygal, gynotikolobomassophilia, and abscotchalator mean. I can’t wait to get to SOBCon ’07 this weekend where I might be able to use them in casual conversation! (But then again, you may simply flossify that.)

Finally, no Top 5 list of this nature would be complete without this one:

The strangest and/or silliest things pass for entertainment. Now, I could probably list countless examples here (and you could probably list countless more), but how about this one: www.cheddarvision.tv, where you can join over a million others in watching, live and in living color, a cheddar cheese as it ages to perfection. But don’t worry, you still have time to catch the show – there are approximately 134… no, 133… no, 132 days left before it gets shipped out.

Ah, the Internet – ain’t modern technology something?

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

… and try looking up this book. I highly recommend it.

But then again, you’d probably have a hard time finding it because I just made the card up!

(Thanks to Patti via Shawn for the link.)

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

And speaking of motivation…

A man went to the pet store looking for a talking parrot. The owner showed him a very fine specimen that easily demonstrated a vast vocabulary, so he took him home. Sure enough, when he got him home the parrot started talking – and wouldn’t stop. But this didn’t bother the man so much as the fact that he seemed to have developed what you might call a “sailor’s vocabulary”!

The man tried everything to get the parrot to either shut up, or at least use more socially acceptable language, until finally, in a fit of anger he grabbed the parrot, took him to the kitchen, threw him into the freezer and slammed the door. Alas, the blessed silence only lasted a few seconds.

For nearly five minutes the kitchen was filled with the sound of muffled screaming and curses, until suddenly all was quiet! In a panic, the man thought he might’ve gone too far and killed the bird, so he pulled the door open to check.

The parrot stepped out and said, “Thank you so very kindly for opening the door, my good man. I want you to know I appreciate what you’ve done for me and I promise never to use questionable language again and obey you in all things.”

The man was of course surprised and gratified. “Very well,” he said. “Let’s get you back to your perch.”

The parrot replied, “Thank you very much, I would really like that. But may I ask you a question first? Would mind telling me what the chicken did, and how long has he been in here?”

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

(Note: Before I take off for the next few days, I have some important information you may wish you’d known sooner.)

Here’s the thing. Christmas is only a few days away, and you’ve already completed your shopping (for last minute gift help just check yesterday’s post). Congratulations… almost.

Just when you thought you had it made, I need to warn you – that perfect gift you have for your spouse may not be so perfect after all. “Noooo!” you scream (as sweat begins to pop out on your fevered brow), “how can that be? I spent weeks looking for that exact shade,” or “that’s her favorite perfume,” or “but the guy on the phone guaranteed they’d like it!”

In a recent study by Davy LeRouge and Luk Warlop (all together now, “Who pays for these things, anyway?”), they found that instead of being a help, knowing someone intimately was more of a burden when it came to gift-giving. Strange, but there it is. What happens, see, is that as you get to know each other, you sort of project your own likes and dislikes on the other person, and end up with a tendency to give gifts you would like more than they would like. Sheesh! Ya can’t win for loosing! (And more importantly, why did it have to wait until now to find this out!)

But Clive Johnson at Collision Detection may have discovered what’s really going down.

“Mind you, maybe these sorts of errors are propping up the world economy. Think of it this way: What you really want is a new pair of jeans … but instead, your partner thoughtfully buys you a bunch of CDs of bands that he likes and you loathe. So you go out after the holidays and buy the jeans yourself. Essentially, there have been two rounds of gift-buying: Your partner’s addled, narcissistic purchase of crap you don’t want, and your own purchase of things you’d actually like. Double the spending — double the boost to the economy! And double the landfill!”

Could the whole thing be by design? Conspiracy theorists, unite! Let’s see if there’s truth to Clive’s assertions! But in the meantime… I suggest you might want to re-think that Clapper.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

I know, I know. With Christmas fast approaching (make that thundering remorselessly upon us like a runaway space shuttle), you barely have time to finish that last-minute shopping. So in the spirit of giving, allow me to help you out with a casual list of things you might want to consider for that special “oh-so-hard-to-shop-for” someone.

One website that’s hard to beat for cool, sometimes strange, but guaranteed pricey gifts is CribCandy. Some of my favorites are: the Carnivorous Plant of the Month Club (FEED ME!), the Doggy Judaica Yarmulke (Arf, arf, Shalom), and from the “I wish I’d thought of that” category (may I have a drum roll please?), the Mud Flap Girl toilet bowl flush lever. (Yep, you read it right!)

Then there’s the sofa train (I guess for those parties on the go?); for really, really careful drivers, there’s a glass garage door (hey if you live in glass houses…); to mix the crass with the class, you need these Christofle champagne straws; or for that always-fun “yech!” moment at your next party, you can get an extension cord that looks like a fish skeleton (third item down).

For the slickest way to make toast yet, you need the RollerToaster (you’ll love pulling this out and using it for your guests), and if you really, really love birds, here’s a cool heated bird bath. Then of course you might want to freak out your kids with the melting snowman canister set or the monster stockings. And then maybe a little something for yourself, like perhaps the world’s largest bed (12 x 10 feet!)

OK, now a couple of gifts for those, like me, to whom money is no object (after all, when you ain’t got any…)

How about a personal wax figure of yourself or your loved one from Madame Tussauds (about $270,000). Or, if that’s too ordinary, there’s also the chance for you and a guest to fly in space in Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (I say chance because the craft still has yet to get off the drawing board) for only $1.7 million.

Ah, well, if that’s a bit too rich for you, there’s always last year’s fruitcake.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.”

Pop Quiz: Who first penned the above lines? Well, according to Trivia-Library, it was Helen Wheeler Wilcox who first published the lines in the poem “Solitude” in 1883. It’s an interesting anecdote how the poem came to be written, but it begs the question: Why is this true? Actually – forget the weeping part, let’s just consider the first line.

The always-hilarious Scientific American has a story titled “Why the giggles make us smile” that may lend a clue. A Neuroscientist at University College London observed that people respond to verbal clues around them by subliminally wanting to mimic them. That explains why being around grumpy people will make you grumpy too. We all respond to these nonverbal cues. But what was interesting was that of positive (laughter) and negative (crying) cues, positive ones such as laughter led to stronger positive responses. In other words, we tend to respond to laughter more strongly (is that a word?) than we would to crying.

Is there a “funny” gene in the DNA somewhere, waiting to be discovered and exploited? Just imagine if one day you could “design” your children to be naturally funny and cheerful, and skip the “terrible twos” or those horrible teenage grumps.

Now there’s something that would deserve a Nobel Prize!

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!