Turtle Thursday: What?!?! [2009]

This is Jay, a Map Turtle.

She seems to be annoyed that Mrs. Baxojayz is disturbing her swim time by taking pics with an Olympus FE-180 digital camera. Even pets find flashes obnoxious.

Thursday, August 27, 2026

writhen \ rith-uhn \ , adjective; 

• Archaic . twisted. 

Origin: Writhen has been in English since before 900. It is related to the Old English verb wrīthan meaning "to twist, wind" which in turn is a cognate with the Old Norse rītha meaning "to knit, twist." 

 

deface

• To remove a 'friendship' from facebook due to having either accidentally adding him/her as a friend or actually adding them and reconsidering later.

"Yeah, there was this guy in my network who added me. I thought he looked OK, but his updates were really cramping my news feed, so I had to deface him."

 

"I went on a date with a girl I met a week before and like the day after our date she changed her status to 'in a relationship.' I defaced her."

History

• Edwin Drake: drilled America's first successful oil well near Titusville, PA
• Krakatoa: volcano erupted in the loudest explosion ever recorded; the resultant tsunami killed 36,000 (1883)
• Anglo-Zanzibar War: the shortest war in history ended after less than an hour when Zanzibar surrendered (1896)
• Kellogg-Briand Pact: multinational treaty signed in Paris outlawed war — about 11 years before the same nations took part in WWII (1928)
• Mariner 2: the US launched a space probe to Venus; it flew past the planet in December (1962)
• Mars: the red planet got up close and personal with Earth — only 55,758,006 km away (2003)

Birthdays

• George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770
• Margaret Hungerford 1850
• Theodore Dreiser 1871
• Charles Rolls 1877
• Lyndon B. Johnson (U.S.) 1908
• Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Theresa) 1910
• Martha Raye 1916
• Jimmy C. Newman 1927
• Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi (South Africa) 1928
• Ira Levin 1929
• Carter Stanley 1935 - Musician (Stanley Brothers)
• J.D. Crowe 1937
• Tommy Sands 1937

• Daryl Dragon 1942 - Musician (The Captain and Tennille)
• Tuesday Weld 1943
• Tim Bogert 1944 - Musician (Vanilla Fudge)
• Marianne Sagebrecht 1945
• Harry Reems 1947
• Barbara Bach 1947
• Jeff Cook 1949 - Musician (Alabama)
• Buddy Bell 1951
• Paul "Pee-wee Herman" Reubens 1952
• Willy DeVille 1953
• Alex Lifeson 1953 - Musician (Rush)
• Diana Scarwid 1955
• Glenn Matlock 1956 - Musician (Sex Pistols) 
• Dean Delvin 1962
• Mike Johnson 1965 - Musician (Dinosaur Jr.)
• Bobo 1968 - Musician (Cypres Hill)
• Tony Kanal 1970 - Musician (No Doubt)
• Sarah Chalke 1976
• Jon Siebels 1979 - Musician (Eve)

  

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

Hasselhoff Wednesday: Pink

 

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

hypocorism \ hahy-POK-uh-riz-uhm, hi- \ , noun; 

1. a pet name. 
2. the practice of using a pet name. 
3. the use of forms of speech imitative of baby talk, especially by an adult. 

Origin: Hypocorism entered English in the 1840s from the Greek word hypokórisma meaning "pet name." It came from the verb hypokor(ízesthai) meaning "to play the child, call by endearing names."  

 

Manscape 

• The removal of excess body hair via waxing, shaving, plucking. Also manscap - ing, ed. See Metrosexual 

When your chick calls you a Yeti, it might be time to manscape.

 

Trivia

What 2-inch-long ocean creature is one of the noisiest animals on earth?

• The pistol shrimp, which makes a noise that can reach up to 218 decibels—30 decibels higher than the sound made by the blue whale. It does this by snapping its oversized pincer to fire off a 60-mile-an-hour blast of water that creates a low-pressure bubble with an internal temperature that is hotter than the sun. The bubble quickly bursts, emitting a high-decibel boom that stuns the tiny shrimp’s prey and provides it with food.
  

History

• Battle of Crécy: longbows helped the heavily outnumbered English defeat the French, marking the decline of chivalry and the rise of England as a world power (1346)
• 19th Amendment: women's suffrage became the law of the land in the US (1920)
• Donoghue v Stevenson: woman found a snail in her ginger beer; this case became a cornerstone of British law in the field of negligence (1928)
• MLB on TV: the first Major League Baseball game was televised from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York; the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers split a doubleheader (1939)
• Pope John Paul I: Italian cardinal dubbed the Smiling Pope assumed the papacy; he died 33 days later (1978)

Birthdays

•  

• Lee Deforest 1873
• Christopher Isherwood 1904
• Albert Sabine 1906
• Mother Teresa (Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu) 1910
• Jim Davis 1915
• Ronnie Graham 1919
• Georgia Gibbs 1920
• Ben Bradlee 1921
• Irving R. Levine 1922
• Jan Clayton 1925
• Ben J. Wattenberg 1933
• Tommy Heinsohn 1934
• Geraldine Ferraro 1935
• Don Bowman 1937
• Bill White 1939
• Vic Dana 1942
• Swede Savage 1946
• Valerie Simpson 1948
• Bob Cowsill (The Cowsills) 1949
• Michael Jeter 1952
• Brett Cullen 1956
• Alex Trevino 1957
• John O'Neill 1957
• Jet Black (The Stranglers) 1958
• Branford Marsalis 1960
• Jimmy Olander (Diamond Rio) 1961
• Chris Burke 1965
• Shirley Manson (Garbage) 1966
• Adrian Young (No Doubt) 1969
• Melissa McCarthy 1971
• David Grubka 1972
• Chris Pine 1980 (Captain Kirk)
• Macaulay Culkin 1980
• Shellie Chapman aka Tori Black 1988 (t3h pr0n)