Aug 25, 2009

Random Tuesday

When I die, I do not want “visitations” and a funeral. Just throw me on the bonfire and let my ashes preside over a wake. Then do something interesting with my ashes. Like, divide them up into those snack sized zip lock bags and then pass them out as party favours.

I’m not implying that the funeral I went to yesterday was bad, in fact there were so many people it had to be held in a church instead of the funeral home. Take note, anyone who wants a super big turn out at their funeral, join lots of service clubs.

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Here’s an interesting random fact. Anyone out there know where chintz fabric came from?

More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years, the Chinese kept this discovery a secret. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky. Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.

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Only about 1.6 percent of the water on Earth is fresh. Most of it is locked -- unusable for living things -- in snow and the ice at the poles and on the peaks of the highest mountains.

The Statue of Liberty's index finger is 8 feet long, and it displays a fingernail measuring 13 by 10 inches.

Here’s one of special interest to writers. The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words. More than 2 billion pencils are manufactured in the U.S. annually. If these were laid end to end, they would circle the earth nine times.

The brain reaches its maximum weight at age 20 - about 3 pounds. Over the next 60 years, as billions of nerve cells die within the brain, it loses about 3 ounces. The brain begins to lose cells at a rate of 50,000 per day by the age of 30.

And just to keep the continuity of this post, I’m going to end as I began, with death. :-)

Here’s something fun to check out: the Death Clock . Try playing around with the mode setting, if you're a pessimist change it to an optimist, etc. If I was a smoking pessimist I'd already be dead for three years!

My personal day of death is Friday, March 14, 2036. Looks like I’ve got a few good years left in me yet. :-)

2 comments:

Jamie D. said...

Huh. According to the Death Clock, I'll be dead on Monday, June 14, 2066. I suppose I can live with that, so to speak...I knew Mondays were evil.

I'm not really a "funeral-type" person. I prefer to remember the dead as they were, so while I do attend funerals when necessary to show respect, I'd be just fine if whoever buries me wanted to just lower me into the grave and call it good. No fanfare necessary.

I didn't know that about the chintz...not sure why I never related the phrase to the fabric before. Hmm.

And I have this sudden urge to go paint that fingernail...talk about a huge canvas for nail art! :-)

C R Ward said...

I orginally had the Death Clock set with me as a pessimist and it said I'd been dead for 3 years!