I have a tooth in my eye! (No, seriously).

This story sounds like it should be a parable in the Bible, minus the part where red-hot liquid aluminum explodes on the guy at a recycling plant.

Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son’s tooth in his eye

DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son’s tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday….

….The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw. McNichol’s right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth….

….”Now I have enough sight for me to get around and I can watch television. I have come out from complete darkness to be able to do simple things,” McNichol said.

For All The Self-Discriminating White People…

This blog is for you:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com

The blog offers an element of self-reflection rarely found in the bloggersphere. It made me, a white person, ask myself - “Well now, here’s a thought - how white am I?”

According to the first few posts I was less white a few years ago when I drank tap water, did not want to move to Canada, and hated watching the Oscars. Apparently some personal gentrification has occurred, however, because I have gained some pigmentation points. Nowadays, I use a Brita, I realized that my family is a bunch of Quebexicans (we immigrated from Canada) and on Sunday I watched the Oscars for the first time in about ten years. Oh, and I was invited to an Oscar watching party, but I did not attend.

(Still holding out on my whiteness).

Overall, the site is pretty amusing. Enjoy, but come back and visit Absurdities! when you’ve decided that there just too much stuff that white people like and well, you’ll never measure up anyways.

The Cult Has A Song, It Just Needs A Dance

So Obamamania has taken on a whole new meaning in my life — in the form of a mix-cd. Last night I just received the best indication of my political nerdiness factor when a friend sent me a “Hope The World a Better Place” mix cd full of speeches and songs, all with some relation to the Obama campaign, hope or change messages:

itunes.pdf

Better Way - Ben Harper
Don’t Stop - The Rolling Stones
We Shall Overcome -MLK Jr
Running Down A Dream -Tom Petty
Better - LMNO
Waiting On The World To Change -John Mayer
Fired Up And Ready To Go - Bergevin Bros
2004 DNC Keynote Address - Barack Obama
Changes - 2PAC
Hope - Shaggy
I Won’t Back Down - Tom Petty
I Got A Crush On Obama - The Obama Girl
One - U2
Yes We Can - Wii I Am
Signed Sealed Delivered - Stevie Wonder

Previous to this, the Obama campaign has already played an amusing role in my life. It has brought ex-boyfriends who I swore I’d never talk to again back on speaking terms. It has afforded some entertaining road trips through South Carolina and a new found love for “Bo-Tatoes.” It has brought me closer to old friends who choose to text message me absurdities like “DOMINATION” when Obama won a league of states on Super Tuesday.

Overall, I have been quite impressed by the enthusiasm for this election within my generation and now I have my own personal soundtrack to appreciate it all even more.

Can I F**k Matt Damon?

I mean who doesn’t have a crush on Matt Damon. I know that after Good Will Hunting came out every man, woman and child was all about “them apples” - aka Matt. But apparently, Jimmy Kimmel doesn’t feel so warm and fuzzy inside about the thick Boston accent and boyish good looks. After his girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, posted her amazing music video about “F**king Matt Damon” things went a little sour between Kimmel and Damon. Kimmel took it in stride, however, and did what any smart guy should do: he got revenge by screwing the best friend - Ben Affleck.

This is one of the best uses of the celebrity self-infatuation machine I have ever seen.

Get Off My Turf

According to the New York Times, chicks rule - the Internet. It seems that young ladies these days are taking over cyberspace as the best place for creative expression and a new way to gage popularity. I was a little irked that the article appeared in the Style section, not the Technology section of the Times and also glittered with stereotypical statements such as:

“The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts — entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.”

I would hope that the New York Times can think of a few other things that teenage girls might be interested beyond cupcakes and zits - but alas, they failed to notice the activist campaigns, volunteerism and faith based initiatives that many young females are also amused by.

Politics aside, when I asked whether this idea would move beyond the years of high school self-infatuation and lead to more fulfilling careers as Internet Geekettes, I got this lovely little image in my email box. An amazing (and frightening) graphic created by Straight Frommy Brain:

SO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY IS: What will your Facebook status be when you’re 93?

Pissed Off? It will cost you.

A customer tab at an Italian restaurant in England incurs a freudian slip when one passive aggressive waiter stirs up emotions for a few diners by giving them way more than what they asked for - fish cakes with a side of profanity.

Restaurant sorry over F word bill

A restaurant owner has apologised after diners had their very own F word experience - without Gordon Ramsay.

Ten friends found the abusive and sexually-explicit message on their bill at Joe Delucci’s Italian restaurant in Bird Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Diner Clare Watkin said she thought it was written after they complained about poor service.

The party from Walsall had gone to the restaurant on Friday. Owner Nigel Langsdon has begun an investigation.

Ms Watkin said: “I couldn’t believe it. The bill read ‘fish cakes’, which one of us had for a starter, and it was written right above it - absolutely disgusting language….

Working Hard, or Hardly Working? No One Cares!

People, please, go home, it’s Friday. And also make sure that your co-workers leave too.

Pillow Fight!

Perhaps the best display of love and affection I found for Valentines this year was the 3rd annual pillow fight in downtown San Francisco. Thanks to Laughing Squid for covering it in person.

True Life: I was a HRC Supporter

Yikes! I just watched this video. Looks like Mickey Mouse Club, 2008 Presidential election style. If any of these kiddies are at all similar to the cast of characters from the old MM Club, several of them will end up in rehab, potentially shave their head, expose themselves in public, create a boy band, moan when one of them finds outrageous success as a non-perve Michael Jackson, and the rest will spend their days twirling Hilary signs with remorse and ending up on True Life: I was a HRC supporter.

Official Pirate Business

One of the places that has inspired my appreciation for irony and absurdity is 826 Valencia - a writing center in the Mission District of my hometown of San Francisco. 826 was started by Dave Eggers, one of my favorite writers and literary philanthropists. 826 is a publishing house and also gives free writing workshops to high school students. It disseminates volunteers to San Francisco public schools to help children start newspapers, write books and explore the depths of vocabulary and sentence structure.

Perhaps the most intriguing part about 826, however, is the pirate store propped up to fit the zoning requirements of the commercial real estate space. The pirate store sells everything a traditional pirate would want - a glass eye, message in a bottle, scoop your own lard, peg legs, dice, pirate booty, eye patches, dice, and these fantastic pirate signs that are scattered all over the store:

I visit 826 every time I’m home in San Francisco - there is always something new to catch my eye and make me laugh at the pure ridiculousness of it all. The beauty of the store is found in the nonsensical details - like the fish theater - a small room closed off by a velvet curtain, with seats for two, a large fish tank and signs detailing the world Karl, the puffer fish. I like to buy gifts from this pirate store to utterly confuse my friends and secretly hope they find the strange pirate humor as amusing as I do. The store certainly stirs up your creative vibrations and imaginative sense of humor - and it makes every ridiculous pirate prop purchase worthwhile because it helps support the stores mission: children’s literacy.