CNN.com - Italian Study: "Clowns ease anxiety in young patients; Doctors and nurses annoyed, however..."

How surreal!

It's like that scene out of "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure"!!

CNN.com - Study: Clowns ease anxiety in young patients - Oct 3, 2005

(from Tom)

Now, I don't want to seem prejudiced, but I have to admit that I would always prefer my clowns outside the operating room... I mean, I'm not clown-phobic or anything, but that's gotta be nearly the last thing I wanna see when my mind's going under anesthesia!

Want the same effect without having to travel all the way to Florence? Not to mention, without the potential health risks?! Try your very own random "Evil Clown" generator here!

(from the Generator Blog)

Categories: Italy, WeirdScience, Humor, Fun&Games

Newsflash: Alexander the Great returns to Pompeii!

ANSA.it - Alexander returns to Pompeii

Categories: Italy, History, Art

First 100 visitors on my new counter... Thx!

Welcome to "MMC"!!

Categories: Blogs

Who can resist this ad?The "King of Bling"!!

Don't miss this historic exhibition of ancient "bling"! :-)

"The following are the only North American venues for the tour:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art: June 16, 2005 - November 15, 2005

Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale: December 15, 2005 - April 23, 2006

The Field Museum, Chicago: May 26, 2006 - January 01, 2007

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia: February 3, 2007 - September 30, 2007"



Categories: History, Art

What are we waiting for? The top 50 things every foodie should do!

The top 50 things every foodie should do (from The Observer Food Monthly)

(from grow-a-brain)

Categories: Food

Up a creek without a clue: Baby seal found twenty miles inland...

This is not new news, but a recent mailing from the New England Aquarium reminded me of the story...

"Squirt" seems to have swum up the Taunton River for 20 miles, up a small brook for another mile, and then crawled a quarter mile up a paved road before coming to rest on a suburban lawn!

Boston.com / Up a creek without a clue

Categories: Maine&NewEngland, WeirdScience

"If London Were Like Venice"

A "scientific romance" from 1899:
"If London Were Like Venice"

(from grow-a-brain)

Categories: Venice, Books, Fun&Games

Get your own custom Euro Oval!

Just what I needed!!

Generate your own custom "Euro Oval"!

(from the Generator Blog)

Categories: Fun&Games

"Weird and wonderful vocabulary from around the world"

Ah... not unlike the stories of the 400 eskimo words for snow, what seems like a large number of words like "schmuck" in Yiddish (another great post, apparently completely factual, on the journalist Peter Schmuck who once interviewed baseball player J.J. Putz here), and the story of Venetians who apparently have specific words for things like the reflection of sunlight from a canal onto a ceiling (which seems rather more lyrical, and yet I've never been able to find again... not even from Venetians!)

"How come only German has a word for 'a person who leaves without paying the bill' (Zechpreller) or that Albanians need 27 words for moustache? A compelling new book uncovers the globe's most weird, wonderful - and meaningful - words."

(While it seems to be a fun read, it's not apparently too reliable, however, as you can see here or here...)

(from Metafilter)

Categories: Language, Venice, Books, Humor

Movie Goofs...

Was just browsing IMDb for "...films around the world that were the first to use an entirely 'digital backlot' (i.e. the actors were all shot in front of blue- and green-screens with all the backgrounds added in post-production, a technique which has been used for TV, video and video game production for many years). Fans debate on which movie was shot first, but the other movies include: Immortel (2004), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), Casshern (2004), and Sin City (2005)."

And couldn't resist this goof for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow...

"Factual errors: 15 minutes into the film, there is a montage of newspaper headlines in English, French, German, Russian and Japanese. The writer/director and production designer admit that they used Internet translators for the headlines, so these may be inaccurate. For example, in the French headline, 'Gouvernement' (Government) and 'Tour Eiffel' (Eiffel Tower) are misspelled. Another example is the German headline 'Grosse Metalle Maschinen stehlen stehlen Reserven'. If literally translated it means 'Big metals machines steal steal reserves', which makes no sense. How ever it should be 'Big metal machines steal steel reserves', which should be translated as 'Grosse Metallmaschinen stehlen Stahlreserven'."

A budget of $70 million, and they can't be bothered with hiring French or German proofreaders? (Must be the high cost of that pesky euro...)

Categories: Film, Language, Humor

Snapshot of nearly 4 months of MMC

I'm in the process of switching counters, so here's a quick snapshot of the last nearly 4 months on Michelle's Mental Clutter...

It's not by any means near the top blogs at Technorati, but I'm gratified. After all, I may only just break the top 200,000 or so, but Technorati tracks over 18 million sites... so I guess it's all relative! :-)

I started this blog back in June because, love Venice though I do, I was so terribly homesick for my friends stateside that I wanted to pretend that somehow I was still in the loop. I'm not sure how effective that plan actually turned out to be... but since then, when time permits, I've posted prose, poetry and photos, not to mention the latest news about whatever grounds I'm stomping at the moment! When time permits less, I still post fun and unusual links about life, the universe and everything. By now, I have over 350 posts in over 20 different subject categories. After all, my brain's full... and the rest has to go somewhere!

Thanks as always for your kind attention!
Sincerely, Michelle

Categories: Blogs

Highlander in 30 seconds w/ bunnies

Have a hard time staying awake through films?

(You know who you are...)

Try Highlander in 30 seconds with bunnies! Not to mention other bunny 30-second reenactments...

(from Planet Tom)

Categories: Film, Humor, Fun&Games

Apple Saturday!

Today and next weekend is "Apple Saturday" at the last living community of Shakers in the world at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine:

"Apple Saturday at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village: Step back in time at the last surviving active Shaker community in the world this fall, when the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester holds its annual Apple Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon and 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. on September 24th, October 1st, and October 8th, 2005. Activities include a special exhibit and a walking tour (reservations required) of the apple orchards and a sampling of the historic and new apple varieties... (from http://portlandme.about.com)

Can't get enough of apples? Here's an apple muralist from Brazil (?!)

Want to make your own apple mural (or at least just snack on one or two?) Here's where you can follow the "Apple and Arts" trail in Maine to pick your own!

Categories: , Maine&NewEngland, Food, History, Art

My name's on the Walk of Fame!!

After a long illustrious film career of almost a whole entire decade, Charlize Theron has just been awarded a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

That's it! I want one, too!

Luckily, though it must not be too hard to get, it's actually even easier than you might think!!

Generate your very own here!

(from the Generator Blog)

Categories: Film, Fun&Games

Care & Feeding of Your Local Introvert

FYI... "Caring for Your Introvert"

(From The Presurfer)