As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. NASA advertised them in December 2008 for $400,000 to $800,000 each, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artifacts, for the cost of transportation and handling.

Alright guys, we missed our shot at a T-Rex skeleton. I don’t expect you to chip in for a whole shuttle. But we can surely raise the money to cover shipping for a mere 7000 pound engine.

We’ll keep it at my house, and anyone who contributes can come visit whenever they like.

I’m reluctant to use an article from a digital rag like The Sun, but this can also be found in the Washington Post. In this case, however, The Sun’s ridiculous photos get it the link.

He said the service was an update of a traditional back-to-work ceremony called “Plow Monday”, in which villagers gathered to bless a symbolic farming implement dragged to the church’s door.

If you check more modern translations of the Bible, you’ll see that Isaiah 2:4 reads “They will beat their swords into BlackBerrys and their spears into MacBooks”.

It’s cold in Florida right now, really cold. Exactly how cold is it?

Across the so-called Sunshine State, oranges and strawberries are freezing, icicles are hanging off palm fronds, and iguanas paralyzed by the cold are falling out of trees.

It’s iguanas-dropping-from-trees cold. The idea of iguanas slowly going motionless, before ultimately dropping from trees, cracks me up¹. That may just be because I’m a terrible person, but give this a read:

On Wednesday, many iguanas were spotted in “frozen” states, clinging from trees or stuck on the ground.

“Generally speaking, if it warms up afterwards, they can recover,” Magill added, but a long cold snap can also kill iguanas.

Magill warned against trying to remove iguanas since they might quickly spring back to life.

“I knew of a gentleman who was collecting them off the street and throwing them in the back of his station wagon, and all of a sudden these things are coming alive, crawling on his back and almost caused a wreck,” Magill said.

I think we can all agree that that is hilarious.

I’ll tell you, if I were a weatherman in Florida, I’d be having a field day with this. Puns, hilarious graphics, and maybe even a guy in an iguana costume. If only…

---

Footnotes:

1. Do the falling iguanas ever hit unsuspecting passersby? They must! Better still, some of those people are snowbirds, the retired folks who live in Florida only during the winter months. It’s such glorious payback by Mother Nature.   ↩

There’s really not a lot to say about this. Throwing out unsold clothing instead of donating it is bad. But destroying it, so that it can’t be worn at all, even by folks trying to salvage it from the trash? That’s just reprehensible.

I can just see the future resumes of these wage slaves:

Employer: H & M
Dates of Employment: October 2009 – May 2010
Responsibilities: Rending garments, making the world a shittier place.

Update: No doubt looking to stem the bad publicity from the first link, H & M has now pledged to stop destroying clothes.

I’m still curious why Wal-mart, who claims to never destroy clothes, apparently has a machine expressly made to do just that (“Each piece of clothing had holes punched through it by a machine.”).