Bart King's Blog, page 89

Soccer players are just as tough as any other athletes!

I mean, just look at how bravely this Leeds United player named Adryan takes a brutal blow to his... ankle.

"Hey, aren't you going to put some logs on that kindling?"

"I would, but I'm afraid of the fireplace!"Fireplace design by Renzo Mondgiardino.

Light a Literary Match

What are “Literary Lites”? Oh, just matches that you light in the bathroom. In case you need to, um, mask an odor. And each matchbox comes with a literary theme! The available classics include:
Great ExpellationsFart of DarknessThe Prince and the PooperVan Winkle RippedThe Great GasbyThe Ill Wind in the WillowsAtlas ShartedJane AirThe Outhouse at Pooh CornerOne Flew out of the Cuckoo's BumHoward's Rear EndA Rest Room with a ViewA Game on the Throne

Man, phones are going to look so weird in the future!

The Value of a Dollar

Dear Reader: I encourage you to read the following story. It has an important lesson. It also describes an event when I threw up several times. Ø Ø Ø ØI come from a long line of teachers. My father was a teacher, and my father’s father was an astronaut. (Okay, I lied about it being a long line.) Anyway, in the summertime, my father would usually get a job to keep himself busy until school started again.The problem was that Dad assumed that since he was working, his kids should work, too. The nerve of that guy! The fact of the matter was that the last thing I wanted to do in the summer was work.            When I was twelve, my father got a summer job for which he needed a “helper.” The job was to deliver newspapers in the early morning. What made this sound good was that Dad said that he would share a portion of his earnings with his helper. Ha ha! Money! I thought gleefully. Dad even made the job sound fun: “It’ll be the middle of the night! Nobody will be on the road, and we can finish the job and be back in bed with money in our pockets before anyone gets up!” Even though this was complete baloney, I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. With greedy visions  of MONEY ($ Cha-ching! $), I eagerly volunteered for the job. I’ll be rich! I thought.One part of the job I had not considered was my tendency for car-sickness. Back then, I tended to feel queasy if a street had a lot of twists and turns. (We called a street like this a “twisty-turny.”) As luck would have it, our delivery route was in a hilly district, with lots of  “twisty-turnies.” Dad woke me at 3:30 A.M. It was the middle of the night. I already felt sick to my stomach. He guided me downstairs to our VW Bug. By the time we made it to the newspaper pick-up site and loaded up the newspapers, I was feeling green.             Then the nightmare began.            Dad’s philosophy was that it was best to finish the newspaper delivery route as fast as possible. The orange VW Bug rocketed up and down the hilly country roads, with Dad swerving everywhere, safe in the knowledge that nobody else would be up at such an ungodly hour. Dad would take the curves tight, accelerating through them, deftly swerving to miss potholes, and then he would slam on the brakes . . . so that I could stick a newspaper in a tube. If Dad overshot a mailbox, he would shove the gears into reverse, wait for my delivery, then quickly shift back up to light-speed. He was driving like he was in a race, and the faster he drove, the more nauseous I became.            I asked him to pull over.            “But we don’t have a delivery here,” Dad answered.            “I’ve got a delivery! Pull over!” I cried, holding my hand to my mouth.            He pulled over. I made my delivery. Blech! After barfing my brains out, I got back in the car, feeling dreadful. (To read more, click on “Read More”)
            When we finally got home at about 6:30, I brushed my teeth and crawled into bed. When I awoke a few hours later; the night before seemed like a bad dream.             Had it really happened? It all seemed so awful and unreal.             Then I got excited. Money! How much money had I made for going through that terrible ordeal? It had to be a lot!With happy and greedy thoughts filling my head, I rolled over to my nightstand. I then saw that the nightmare was not over.On my nightstand was my payment for being Dad’s helper.            It was a single, green, one-dollar bill.

Let's watch robots play soccer!

This is a match at the RoboCup, an international competition for soccer-playing robots. It's insane!

The last word in this caption makes the whole thing hilarious

Just in case you thought the real penguin was on the left! (From the BBC.)

When ghosts show off

"I want the truth!"

"You can't HANDLE the truth! And the truth is, your eyes are freaking me out right now."

That's just mean!