And bonus points for "Unidentified blue fungi"

holy moley: Seattle man used Limewire for identity theft. What's sad about this article is that there is no hacking involved at all--this guy used limewire to copy files that people had IN THEIR SHARED FOLDERS. Keeping ur data safe on teh internets: ur doin it wrong.

I also enjoyed this one: Giant meat-eating plant found. Meat-eating plants are inherently cool, but this one is doubly cool because it is named for David Attenborough. In future versions of Planet Earth, he should get 40 seconds to show his plant eating, like, a ferret, and then lapse into OMG MY PLANT?!? freaking-out enthusiasm before he regains his normal air of erudite calm. David Attenborough: you have 40 seconds to be really, really excited. GO!

good stuff recently added to delicious. there are a bunch of these. i shall not categorize.

The Meeting Ticker - This is one of my obsessions. I do this all the time at meetings, calculate how much money is being wasted.

Texts from Last Night - Their slogan sums it up. Remember that text you shouldn't have sent last night? We do.

From the National post - 101 Muppets of Sesame Street. Amazing!

Green Edmonton - I am just happy that a blog like this exists. As the summer progresses I grow more and more obsessed with gardening and canning and other activities that 10-years-ago Jocelyn would have found repellent. I was recently thinking about keeping bees. And/or chickens.

The Internet Mapping Project

In the Wacky News category: Real People Fill In For Trafalgar Square Statue

From the New York Review of Books: Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood. I believe this is excerpted from his new book.

And finally: The Invisible Library, a list of books that don't exist.

saddest novelty news story of the day: the same-sex penguin couple at the San Francisco Zoo broke up, reportedly over a girl penguin.

Stupid pirates

This news story really made me laugh: Pirates captured after firing on German naval ship. These pirates fired on what they thought was a commercial vessel, and instead...

The German sailors returned fire and pursued the skiff while also calling for support. Several naval ships — including a Greek and a Dutch frigate, a Spanish warship and the USS Boxer — rushed to the area while a Spanish marine aircraft and two U.S. Marine Cobra helicopters joined the pursuit.

Ha. That's what you get for being dumb: Marine Cobra helicopters chasing you.

and Nazi zombies are the worst kind too

ALSO:

Electronic Traffic Signs Hacked with Hilarious Results

The baby was like, "Please don't let him raise me in this enrivonment"

File under wacky news: B.C. dad arrested after baby dials 911 from grow-op

File under "wacky news"

Police: Man Stole Miami-Dade Buses, Drove Them On Routes. And yet! Arrested. Sad face.

Attention, The Internet:

I would like to bring your attention to an adorable puppy, born without front legs, who now gets around with a little body harness and model airplane wheels. Built for her FREE OF CHARGE, because, as everyone knows, puppies do not have health insurance. I was having a really bad, tired day today, but I feel about 15% better just from this one photo. The world is not the worst ever, as I had previously thought.

That is all.

Alberta to require ignition interlock for drunk drivers

As of July 1, Albertans who are convicted of having twice the legal alcohol limit, refuse to give a breath sample or have been repeat offenders in the last 10 years will be ordered to attach a mandatory ignition interlock device to their vehicle ignition.

They have to give a breath sample in their car before they can drive. That's so cooooool. Science!

Although you really have to wonder, what kind of person is a repeat drunk-driving offender? I mean, doing it once is bad enough, but you'd have to be a moron to be convicted more than once. Like, a double-moron.

I stop for lizard tunnels

Salamander crossing to provide squish-free passage via kwout

From CBC News: Salamander crossing to provide squish-free passage. The best part of the story is the photo of the very well-constructed and sturdy-looking tunnel above. It's so funny that human beings will destroy this entire planet, but we will also spend a quarter of a million dollars building a fancy tunnel for salamanders. Irrational behaviour FTW.

It's been awhile since we had a linky Monday, so:

Six degrees of Wikipedia. Just what its name would suggest.

Sad/wacky news: Wayward Alzheimer's patients foiled by fake bus stop. I'm not sure if this seems funny, mean, compassionate, or all 3. Plus it reminds me of Ghost World.

A friend sent me this link to an extremely cool card catalogue quilt.

A couple recent ones from McSweeney's: The Opening Act from the Original, Unused Teleplay of LOST's Pilot Episode and Borges teaches self-defence.

I got my iPod, sweet Josephine, back from James. I also have to take the bus for quite a long time (almost an hour) to get to and from my new job. Serendipitous circumstances for podcasts! I know that podcasts have been around for a long time, it's not like I just discovered them, but it suddenly makes sense for me to listen to them when it didn't before. So I've just subscribed to the New Yorker fiction podcast which I am really liking so far. Contemporary fiction writers choose a story from the New Yorker archives, read it, and then there's a short discussion with the magazine's fiction editor. The one I listened to on the way to work this morning was Mary Gaitskill on Nabokov. It's not released that often (monthly I think) so I'll have to make my way through the archives.

THEY should take the road less-travelled

Haha, teenagers who broke into and trashed Robert Frost's house have to take poetry classes as part of their punishment. That's poetic justice, technically. I'm sad that the title of that article stole my joke. Get it, poetic justice?

I see your "eewww," and I'll raise you a "gyeeegh"

The CBC reports: Urine bottles found along New Brunswick highways.

Yeah. Gross. I like that this is enough of a phenomenon to warrant a mention on the national news.

A whale and a dolphin could fall in love...

This is pretty much the most adorable thing I have ever read in my life: dolphin rescues stranded whales.

I needed some cute animal cheering up because I seem to be operating at 40% of my normal brain capacity. When I was walking to work this morning, I stopped at a red light, and when the little white man appeared, I thought: I can't move. I am actually too tired to start walking again. Then I did start walking again, but just barely. Then, when I got to work, I rode the elevator to the top of my building because I forgot to get off. Yep.

Also Lawrence Lessig apparently told off Andrew Keen (Internet critic and author of the book Cult of the Amateur) at a conference last weekend. I find Keen's online presence HILARIOUS and HYPOCRITICAL. I mean, for a guy who hates everything 2.0, the guy sure blogs enthusiastically. Anyway, I love Lawrence Lessig. His book The Future of Ideas changed my teh internets life. (Along with Siva Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs.)

The funniest Go Fug Yourself I have read in quite awhile. JT [nonexistent emoticon that represents the "forever," a 4 where the middle bar of the 4 turns into an arrow]

in which I learn interesting things on the Internet

Today, I learned on the Internet that infertile North American and European couples' pregnancies are being outsourced to India. This is like something that would happen on Futurama, only real.

I also learned from the Internet that Bret McKenzie, of Flight of the Conchords, was in The Lord of the Rings. He was basically an extra, but his character has been lovingly named by the fans: Figwit, which stands for "Frodo is great... who IS that?" because of the way his appearance distracts from the heroic moment when Frodo agrees to carry the ring into Mordor. Heh. I love LOTR, the Internet, Wikipedia, fandorks, and the whole world really.

James and I just finished watching the first season of Flight of the Conchords' HBO show yesterday (I gave it to him for Christmas) and I have to say that it is AWESOME. It's a deadpan, hilarious, hipster gem with funny animal sweatshirts and musical interludes. You should rent it, if you can, or better yet, you should BUY it. And you should buy one for me. Because James has one, but it's at his house, and we don't live together, so I can only watch it at his house, or if I borrow it, instead of all the time as would be ideal.

I also saw some other things that were not as good as Flight of the Conchords: season 9 of The X-Files, which I finished yesterday, was good but the finale was disappointing, too epic in some ways and not epic enough in others; Battlestar Galactica: Razor, which was OK, but sort of like a longer version of one of the crappier episodes in the second season; No Country for Old Men, which baffled me because I've seen it in/at the top of so many film critics' Top 10 of 2007 lists and I didn't really get what all the fuss was about; and I Am Legend, which was pretty good in the sense that it fulfilled all my post-apocalyptic New York needs.

A Christmas Miracle, III.

From ABC news: Not Sure of His Size? Try A Shoppenboy. [via jezebel] A French store has a bunch of men of all different sizes who stand around in case a woman needs help shopping for the men in her life. It seems they're not even employees but volunteers. The article is sublimely puzzling.

The group now has produced a dance routine, a calendar and has even spun off a few celebrities, like 19-year-old Shoppenboy Hugo, who can be seen posing as Spiderman online in the signature red undies.

Although the men do not want to be taken seriously, some think the gentleman are having an important impact on the male psyche. It's not all about looks. Size matters, too.

I think the main reason I am linking to this is the word "shoppenboy," which is fantastic.

OK: clothes, coffee, work! Back on track, people!

Linky monday, wacky news edition

Fark.com is trying to trademark the phrase "not safe for work".

Heh. The US House of Representatives is banned from editing certain Wikipedia articles.

Some nerd got Neil Gaiman to propose to his girlfriend for him.

Sick.

From the LA Times: They love to do their homework. A Southern Baptist seminary is now offering a "homemaking" major. And of course, the classes are only open to women.

A model house, to be completed by next fall, will allow women to get credit toward bachelor's degrees by learning how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation.

Time for me to take out more student loans, apparently. My dinnertime conversation SUCKS. Also, I may be stating the obvious, but you don't need to go to college to learn these things, you can just watch HGTV.

love, and fish biscuits

A news story about a giant LEGO minifig that washed ashore in Holland. The story recounts, "The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall." Good to know.

Looking for off-the-beaten-path philanthropic opportunities? Passionate about preservation? Save a Film lets you make a donation to have an endangered 16mm film (most of them from the 1950s and 60s) digitized and put online, so others can have free access to it! In some cases, the 16mm print in the Academic Film Archive may be the only existing print, ANYWHERE. I kind of want to be a film archivist (when I grow up) so I probably get more choked up about endangered films than most people. Nonetheless, it would make a good gift, too, if you did it in someone else's name. Starting at $110. Here are some of the films eligible for upload.

and we are all very, very old. Yes, even you. Especially you.

the baby from the Nirvana album Nevermind is now 17.