The Week: June 24, 2011

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind. Rand and I have found ourselves running around both coasts of the U.S., skipping from city to city, appointment to appointment, TSA groping to TSA groping. It’s enough to make anyone a little loopy.

How loopy, you might ask? I might have taken to laughing at all sorts of nonsense this week. That doesn’t exactly mean that everything I came across was funny, per se, but merely that I was laughing at all of it. Not unlike a madwoman.

So enjoy this week’s links. I, personally, found several of them to be hilarious. But I also find humor in defacing countless Alaska Airline magazine crossword puzzles by filling in “Dale Midkiff” for every answer. (A pastime which I will continue to engage in until they publish my article, Yakima: Wonderland of Dust.)

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I’m completely against torture. Unless it’s torturing Sims characters, which I find to be actually quite amusing and delightful (if very, very wrong).

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Leave it to the brilliant Carl Sagan to put all of human existence into perspective.

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Want to relive the delightful torture of being young and in (unrequited) love? Check out Letters to Crushes. It’s excruciating. And familiar.

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In more evidence that god likes to get drunk, the Everywhereist made the Forbes‘ list of Top 100 websites for women. No one is more surprised than I.

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A tale of a 5-foot tall giant metal chicken. Named Beyonce. Clearly, the bloggess and I are soulmates, because this sounds REMARKABLY like something I would do.

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Some sad news this week: Peter Falk, known for a lifelong career and numerous roles, but most importantly The Grandfather from The Princess Bride, passed away.

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Slate’s Jack Hitt describes his battle with a New York Times chowder recipe that’s so enigmatic and impossible, it requires him to fry celery leaves. Fear not: he emerges quasi-victorious.

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You know the classic scene in every 80s action film, ever, where someone blows a hole in the hull of a plane at 30,000 feet, and everything gets sucked into the vacuum? Apparently that doesn’t always happen. I know. I hate it when movies lies to me, too.

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As someone who has ZERO musical talent, I found this collection of videos positively fascinating. I may have even drooled a little.

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The evolution of the glass Coca-Cola bottle. Personally, I wish they had included the 1.5 liter plastic monstrosity of the modern age alongside its dainty predecessors.

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Rare behind-the-scenes photos from Star Wars. I would not object to being smooshed in the middle of that Lando-Han hug.

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I seem to have a serious thing against sparkly vampires. Good thing I’m not alone.