As you can tell, I’m going through a Pirates of the Caribbean “thing” right now. It’s like my 11 year old self has taken over. Anyway, I found a rather fun quiz that asks you a bunch of questions then finds your pirate name for you. Here’s what I found out about me:

Your pirate name is:

Dirty Jenny Flint

You’re the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean — not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. Like the rock flint, you’re hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you’re easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Oh, this looks like fun. Austrian guy Felix Baumgartner (who, of course, speaks English better than we do) jumped out of a plane in the skies above Dover, England. But he didn’t just plummet to earth, or even parachute down. Felix was wearing “an aerodynamic jumpsuit with a 6-foot (1.8 metre) carbon fin strapped to his back” and glided…glid…glideded…um, whatever…22 miles across the Channel to Cap Blanc-Nez in France. And THEN he opened his parachute. And it kind of messed up, but he managed to fix it just in time. Whew! (According to a news report I saw on TV yesterday, he named his wingy thing Icarus. If he’d fallen, the irony would have been too great, eh?)

BBC news has got a terrific article about it, featuring nice photos and even a pretty cool graphic of the historic glide. Of course some of you will immediately start thinking of this as a promising new form of earth-friendly transportation, but some of the rest of us aren’t sure we’re willing to try it…

See, the thing is, I find weird stuff out there. And then I want to share it for some unknown reason. And my current obsession is with Pirates of the Caribbean. So I took a test to find out which of the characters’ unhealthy fetishes I am. And… As it turns out…

You are….

Ragetti’s dress fetish. Okay, so you like dressing
up. Frilly things are fun! There’s no shame in
being who you are, and you DO look rather
fetching in that strawberry number. Oh yes, and
you encourage your friends to come along.
After all, no one likes to look ODD, do they?

Which Pirates of the Caribbean Character’s Unhealthy Fetish are YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla

Here’s something random: a person who categorized everything he ate by calorie content, then compiled a sorted list with pictures. It’s worth reading for the bizarre meal choices (like hot dog water) and humorous notes on each meal, like:

Coke (without ice) contains 1,493 kilocalories per gallon, Gasoline (without ice) contains 31,000 kilocalories per gallon, so the energy density of gasoline is 20 times greater than Coca-cola.

Um, yeah. Just like that.

If you’ve wondered how it is that Homestar Runner gets produced (and paid for), Wired News has just the interview for you. I’m glad that the Brothers Chaps are able to fund the whole thing themselves; it looks like they have the right attitude toward it.

Thanks to Deana for the heads-up.