Usborne Book of The Future: Better at Prophecy Than The Bible!

Back in January, I posted about the Usborne Book of the Future which was published in 1979. If you didn't see it, click here to check it out.

Under the 1991-2000 heading, it said this:

First major collision between satellites in orbit. Beginning of the formation of Earth's 'junkyard' ring.

Well, guess what happened last week?

At 04:56 GMT on 10 February an active communications satellite owned by Iridium Satellite of Bethesda, Maryland, and a defunct Russian military-communications satellite collided some 800 kilometres above Siberia at more than 10 kilometres per second. The cloud of debris initially consisted of 600 objects large enough to be tracked by the US space-surveillance network, and experts expect that number to grow to more than 1,000 within the coming weeks. Simulations suggest there will be millions more pieces too small to track.

Source here

Too bad Usborne had predicted this ten years too early. Still, this book is already having a much better track record than other sources who have declared themselves as prophets (ie. The Bible).

Perhaps this is a great time for me to start a new religion: Usbornology. All contributions and donations will go toward me picking up more goofy stuff I find in thrift stores to blog about.

Just for fun, let's go out on a limb and post some more goodies from this fascinating book...

Smoke Free Grads in the Year 2000

Way back in 1991-1992, there was a smoke-free promotion going on in my city. In High School art class, we were asked to create anti-smoking posters. I created one with a picture of a grave being used as an ashtray with REAL cigarette butts glued to it, and huge letters that said "Smoke and Die" (I stole the idea from the "Skate or Die" Nintendo game). I won in the category of "strongest message" and recieved a free POW t-shirt. Here's a picture of me wearing it while hitting my cousin over the head with a meat tenderizer:


(I scribbled out his ex-wife's face)

A few years later, I started smoking. It just goes to show that these campaigns don't do shit.

Anyway, here's the incredibly terrible public service announcement that aired on the public access channel:



By the way, if you really DO want to quit smoking, I highly recommend the book Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking because it worked for me.

Mid-Winter Slump

I think I've hit the mid-winter slump. I haven't been out much to thrift stores lately to find new stuff to post about, garage sales are nowhere to be found, and the trash is either scarce of unique goodies, or just all covered in snow. In other words, I'm scrounging my collection of oddball stuff that is blogworthy, and I'm trying to find the time to write about it. Not only that, I've got stuff kicking around here that needs to be either repaired or hacked (glancing over at the dismantled and be-headed Teddy Ruxpin doll) and just don't have the desire (nor time) to go into the cold garage and work on it.

So, welcome to the slump. The camera pics are at least filling in some of the gaps (I still love that car picture!)

The Stephanie blog has been suffering frequent updates because of lack of time, and anticipation for the next new blog that I want to create for more curbside computer goodies (the next one will be freakin' hilarious - I promise!)

I also have a major announcement that I've been holding back regarding something I posted a while back. Some of my friends know what it is, and are in disbelief. Trust me, it's really cool, and I'm going to milk all the publicity I can from it :)

I also want to launch my online webshop full of shitty products that nobody wants, but will purchase anyway. Hey, that's basically what I do to fill this blog with content! And if you don't like the products, at least read the descriptions because they're pretty funny.

So please be patient as we coast over this mid-winter slump, and I'll try finding some more cool stuff to post about.

Candid Pic: 09/02/21

Trunk Bumper

I just had to take a picture of this car driving around with a big fucking hole in it.

I Got My Education Out Behind The Barn

Last summer, I picked up a whole box of 8-tracks for, I think it was one dollar. There was a lot of shitty tapes in it (Sonny James, Anne Murray, Charlie Pride, Meat Loaf) but about half of them were home-recorded tapes which is what really caught my interest. For some reason, I enjoy listening to other people's mix tapes and will often purchase them.

All of the home mixes were on these 40 minute Audio Magnetics tapes. Lots of 70s easy-listening, country, and polkas, usually all three on one tape. This one has Olivia Newton John, Bill Withers, and Peter Hnatiuk - a Ukrainian comedy singer who put out quite a few albums that I actually own, passed down from my Ukrainian grandmother.

To my surprise, there's two (out of three) Peter Hnatiuk songs that are sung entirely in English, one called "Please Re-grease Me" (a parody of Engelbert Humperdinck's "Please Release Me") and this catchy little redneck song called "Out Behind The Barn". It is by far my most favorite song out of all the tapes in the collection. Give it a listen:



In case you're wondeing, my 8-track player is a Realistic model TR-802. It's a fine player/recorder that I picked up for $5 at a yard sale about 15 years ago, solely because it has Dolby noise reduction (and that cool mechanical eject seen at the end of the video.)

Candid Pics: 09/02/05

Saw a pretty interesting car accident today. I'm guessing they had cleaned some of it up by the time I got there. These people seem to just be waiting to get towed out of the ditch.

Candid Pics: 08/10/06

These have been kicking around on my hard drive for a while and I've forgotten to post them...

Poor Handyman


I'm really not sure why someone would even think about transporting a ladder this way.


Tooth Graffiti


This happy little fellow looks quite pleased that he pulled out his own tooth.