A few weeks ago I was at the Burbank airport. The gift store carried Mexican jumping beans. I bought a couple of boxes for my kids.

I was as delighted with the jittery beans as my daughters were, but I was even more charmed by the informational card that came with the beans. The irresistible, off-kilter writing style of the card’s author reminds of Dr. Bronner’s, with the added bonus of making sense.

Excerpts:

IT IS IMPORTANT TO KEEP CHILDREN OUT OF HARMS WAY. IN THE LAST 10 YEARS, I HAVE ONLY HEARD OF TWO INSTANCES OF CHILDREN SWALLOWING A MEXICAN JUMPING BEAN. ONE LADY CALLED BACK TO LET ME KNOW THAT THEY FOUND THE MISSING BEAN. IT IS MY BELIEF THAT THE STRONG ACID CONTENT OF THE STOMACH WILL KILL THE GERMS AND LARVA IN SHORT ORDER.
…
THE MEXICAN JUMPING BEAN IS UNDOUBTEDLY AMONG ONE OF OUR CREATOR’S
BEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS. IT UNDOUBTEDLY GIVES MORE PLEASURE AND
INTRIGUE FOR THE MONEY THAN ANY OTHER CREATION.
…
REGRETTABLY, THEY ARE DOOMED WHEN THEY LEAVE THEIR NATURAL HABITAT IN MEXICO. THERE ARE NO HOST PLANTS THAT WILL PERMIT THEM TO CONTINUE THEIR LIFE CYCLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT WILL KILL THEM FROM HEAT, DEHYDRATION, FREEZING. THE MOTH SHOULD BE PERMITTED TO FLY FREE IF THEY EMERGE FROM THE BEAN. A SCENIC TRIP AS IT WERE.
…
[Instructions for playing the Mexican Jumping Bean Game include the following legal advice:] If you wager, make it small amounts. The Government doesn’t like gambling unless they get a piece of the action.

Source: BoingBoing and Jumping Beans R Us

German woman fails in attempt to carry 21 beer mugs at once.
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Human beings could one day be identified by our smells according to research that shows individual “odourprints” cannot be masked by diet.
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An Oklahoma man plans to try and set a world record for inflating a meteorological weather balloon.

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A man has proven that you can never have too much underwear when he stole more than 130 pairs of panties from a Victoria’s Secret …

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Comic Book Resources has a fantastic first-hand account of ordering a live miniature monkey from a comic book advertisement.

Jeff Tuthill ordered one for about $25 in the early 1970s. Not wanting his parents to know, he had it shipped to his friend’s house:

It came in this little cardboard box. I mean, I’m saying small. It was probably the size of a shoebox, except it was higher. It had a little chicken wire screen window in it. There was a cut out. All you could see if you looked in there was his face. I brought it home, and I actually snuck it into the basement of the house.

…

No instructions [were included]. He had this waist belt on, a collar, if you will, on his waist, with an unattached leash inside the box. So I opened the box up inside the cage, the monkey jumped out, I withdrew the box and found the leash. I have no idea where it came from; I assumed it came from Florida. I figured, well, it’s probably near dehydration, so I opened up the cage to put some water in it. It leapt out of the cage when I opened it up the second time! I mean, it was eyeing the pipes that I was unaware of. As soon as I opened the cage, it leapt up and grabbed onto the plumbing up on the ceiling and started using them like monkey bars, and he was just shooting along in the basement, chirping pretty loud. It was heading towards the finished side of the basement, where there was a drop ceiling, and if it got into those channels, I never would have got it. It would have been days to get this thing out of there. I grabbed it by its tail, and it came down on, starting literally up by my shoulder, like a drill press it landed on my arm, and every bite was breaking flesh. It was literally like an unsewing machine. It was literally unsewing my arm coming down, and I was pouring blood. I grabbed it by its neck with both my wrists, threw it back in the cage. It’s screaming like a scalded cat. I’m pouring blood. My friend’s laughing uncontrollably, and my father finally comes in the basement door and goes, ‘Jeffery! What are you doing to that rabbit?’ And I go, ‘It’s not a rabbit, it’s a monkey, and it just bit the hell out of me.’ ‘A monkey? Bring it up here!’ I’m pouring, I wrapped a t-shirt around my arm to stave off the bleeding, carried the cage upstairs, and I don’t know why I bothered sneaking it in, because they fell in love with it, and it was like, there was no problem at all. They took me to the emergency room and I got 28 stitches on my arm.

Source: BoingBoing and Comic Book Resources

London’s Viaduct Tavern will be busy tonight with Halloween revelers in search of spooks.

“Sometimes, early in the morning, you feel somebody’s watching you, but you’re alone,” Bubpathong, 37, swears. “It’s very eerie when you’re here by yourself. Things just don’t seem right.” Read more…

A New Hampshire team that narrowly lost a year ago returned to Sunday River Ski Resort to win the ninth annual North American Wife-Carrying Championship.

Ri Fahnestock and Sarah Silverberg, friends from Dover, N.H., claimed victory Saturday and were awarded Silverberg’s weight in beer: five cases.

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A couple in rural Cambodia has terminated their 18-year marriage with a divorce settlement that entailed sawing in two the wooden house they once shared, villagers said Friday.

The husband, 42-year-old Moeun Sarim, has taken away with him all the bits and pieces of his half a house, said his 35-year-old wife, Vat Navy. The other half is still standing.

“Very strange, but this is what my husband wanted,” she said by phone from a village about 62 miles east of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. She said they ended their marriage last month.

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A defendant had a hard time facing the music.

Andrew Vactor was facing a $150 fine for playing rap music too loudly on his car stereo in July. But a judge offered to reduce that to $35 if Vactor spent 20 hours listening to classical music by the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin.

Vactor, 24, lasted only about 15 minutes, a probation officer said.

It wasn’t the music, Vactor said, he just needed to be at practice with the rest of the Urbana University basketball team.

“I didn’t have the time to deal with that,” he said. “I just decided to pay the fine.”

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