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So you're asleep in bed one night, and you find yourself awake with a strange sensation that there is someone, or something in the room with you. And then you see it...

Just a note to let you know that I've been doing some housekeeping. From now on anything political/cultural/business related will be posted on NuclearPotato, while anything church or religion related will be on nomrom.com. I'll keep andlewis.com as the clearing house for wacky, funny, and interesting links that aren't categorizable. Any questions, or comments? Let me know!

I think some people are just too into somethings. Like trains, like every single train system on the planet in detail. But I suppose if you're looking to take a train ride across Canada, these sorts of things come in handy.

One of the shortest runways in the world that 747's land at is on St. Maarten, a french tropical island in the Carribean. It's a frightening, amazing sight.

The following was found on the internet. It's not mine, but I found it amusing:

10. Noisy doors.
You can't walk three feet in a starship without some door whooshing or screeching at you. My office building has automatic sliding doors. They're dead silent. If those doors went "wheet!" every time a person walked through them, about once a month some guy in accounting would snap and go on a shooting rampage. Sorry Scotty, the IEEE has revoked your membership until you learn to master WD-40

9. The Federation.
This organization creeps me out. A planet-wide government that runs everything, and that has abolished money. A veritable planetary DMV. Oh sure, it looks like a cool place when you're rocketing around in a Federation Starship, but I wonder how the guy driving a Federation dump truck feels about it?

And everyone has to wear those spandex uniforms. Here's an important fact: Most people, you don't want to see them in spandex. You'd pay good money to not have to see them. If money hadn't been abolished, that is. So you're screwed.

8. Reversing the Polarity.
For cripes sake Geordi, stop reversing the polarity of everything! It might work once in a while, but usually it just screws things up. I have it on good authority that the technicians at Starbase 12 HATE that. Every time the Enterprise comes in for its 10,000 hour checkup, they've gotta go through the whole damned ship fixing stuff. "What happened to the toilet in Stateroom 3?" "Well, the plumbing backed up, and Geordi thought he could fix it by reversing the polarity."

Between Scotty's poor lubrication habits and Geordi's [darn] polarity reversing trick, it's a wonder the Enterprise doesn't just spontaneously explode whenever they put the juice to it.

7. Seatbelts.
Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you'd think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain's head with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, "You know, we might think of inventing some futuristic restraining device to prevent that from happening." So of course, they did make something like that for the second Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor lubrication), but what was it? A hard plastic thing that's locked over your thighs. Oh, I'll bet THAT feels good in the corners. "Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirk's torso!"

6. No fuses.
Every time there's a power surge on the Enterprise the various stations and consoles explode in a shower of sparks and throw their seatbelt-less operators over Picard's head. If we could get Geordi to stop reversing the polarity for a minute, we could get him to go shopping at the nearest Starship parts store and pick up a few fuses. And while he's shopping, he could stop at an intergalactic IKEA and pick up a few chairs for the bridge personnel. If you're going to put me in front of a fuseless exploding console all day, the least you could do is let me sit down.

5. Rule by committee.
Here's the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last year:

Star Trek:

Picard: "Arm photon torpedoes!"
Riker: "Captain! Are you sure that's wise?"
Troi: "Captain! I'm picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it appears that you're a 'fraidy cat."
Wesley: "Captain, I'm just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say something."
Worf: "Captain, can I push the button...?"
Giordi: "Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first."
Picard: "I'm so confused. I'm going to go to my stateroom and look
pensive."

Firefly:

Captain: "Let's shoot them."
Crewman: "Are you sure that's wise?"
Captain: "Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I'll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize who's in command."
Crewman: "Aye Aye, sir!"

4. A Star Trek quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to a planet. Which one isn't coming back?

3. Technobabble.
The other night, I couldn't get my car to start. I solved the problem by reversing the polarity of the car battery, and routing the power through my satellite dish. The resulting subspace plasma caused a rift in the space-time continuum, which created a quantum tunneling effect that charged the protons in the engine core, thus starting my car. Child's play, really. As a happy side-effect, I also now get the Spice Channel for free.

2. The Holodeck.
I mean, it's cool and all. But do you really believe that people would use it to re-create Sherlock Holmes mysteries and old-west saloons? Come on, we all know what the holodeck would be used for...

1. The Prime Directive.
How stupid is this? Remember when Marvin the Martian was going to blow up the Earth, because it obstructed his view of Venus? And how Bugs Bunny stopped him by stealing the Illudium Q36 Space Modulator? Well, in the Star Trek universe, Bugs would be doing time. Probably in a room filled with Roseanne lookalikes wearing spandex uniforms, walking through doors going WHEET! all day. It would be heck. At least until the Kaboom. The Earth-shattering Kaboom.

(source)

"...a comprehensive set of instructions that are meant to aid a person who is planning to remove an appendix and has not done so before. It is always preferable, when appendix removal becomes necessary, to have the procedure performed by a person who has some experience, for example: a doctor. Many doctors, especially surgeons, have removed a part of a person already. However, if you know someone who needs their appendix to be on the outside of their body, and you do not want to “drive” them to the doctor, you should be able to perform the procedure, simply by following these easy instructions. "

Who doesn't like meat that's gone bad? No sir, not me! And have you ever wondered what would happen if you put meat on a plate and left it out in the sun for days? Well, ok, maybe not, but someone has: Look if ye dare! Tremble with fear at the Stinky Meat Haiku's. (see also, Stinky Meat 2) Oh, and remember, since you can't get enough, everything should taste like bacon, even ice cream, and candles!

(via Curtis Gibb)

Mark Malkoff visits 171 Starbucks, buys something, consumes it, and sets some kind of wacko record for shallow people.