Off-Kilter
Random Snippets Department: Our factory warehouse of bizarre facts and figures is overstocked. We are forced to liquidate the following true items:
* On a photo shoot in Ecuador, models for Sports Illustrated’s current swimsuit issue dined on a local delicacy of cooked guinea pigs, served with heads and limbs attached for added flavor.
* A rubber cow patty prop from “The Beverly Hillbillies” was recently auctioned off by Universal Studios as part of an online charity fund-raiser.
* About 20 million tons of salt are spread on American roads annually to melt ice and snow. That’s 61% of U.S. salt usage.
* In 1963, Hasbro tried to market a substance called Flubber as a movie tie-in, but when kids reportedly broke out in rashes after playing with it, a recall was ordered and Hasbro tried in vain to dispose of the synthetic rubber-and-mineral-oil goo. It was buried at sea, but floated back to the surface. It was torched but wouldn’t burn. Finally, Hasbro buried the gunk under a parking lot at its Rhode Island plant. But it won’t die. On hot summer days, Flubber still oozes through cracks in the pavement.
Pi R Barney Squared: Off-Kilter admits it sometimes has trouble deciphering the needs of its 77 readers. For example, last week we brought you the amazing news that President Clinton might be sleeping with space aliens and nobody responded. The same day we also printed an innocuous math trick and were bombarded with mail upbraiding us for wasting space on such an easily deconstructed formula. We apologize and promise from now on to publish nothing but the most sophisticated and important mathematical theories. We start with this item, forwarded by reader John Munce:
Take the phrase “CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR” and convert it to proper Latin lettering: CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR. Now remove everything but the Roman numerals: C V V L D I V. Convert those back to Arabic: 100, 5, 5, 50, 500, 1, 5. Add them up and you get 666. Thus, Barney is Satan.
Reverse Deja Vu: Our time-traveling journalist returns after several weeks aboard Caltech’s top-secret time machine, bouncing around from century to century to check out an amazing discovery from the year 2048. Here’s his report: “Scientists at Dan Quayle University announced today that they may have found a way to predict the exact date of the end of the world. By reversing hypnotic age regression techniques, in which people are led back through birth into past lives, researchers took 200 patients forward through their deaths and into future lives. The study began after a professor stumbled onto a phenomenon called ‘vuja-daze.’ Vuja-daze, the opposite of deja vu, is defined as an inexplicable feeling that you’ve never done something before. For example, you might be visiting Alaska for the first time when you’re suddenly struck with an eerie sensation that you’ve never been there before. What this means, scientists now believe, is that you will be reincarnated as an Eskimo. By using hypnosis to explore these future reincarnations, researchers hope to pinpoint the date of Armageddon--and also place some winning bets on horse races and Super Bowls.”
Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Live to Be 100 on Pizza & Spring Water” (Weekly World News)
* Roy Rivenburg can be reached by e-mail at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.
Contributors: Wireless Flash, U.S. News & World Report, “Toy Wars” by G. Wayne Miller
