LMNOP

If you, like me, were in love with those Norwegian curling pants, then boy do I have a link for you.  This t-shirt will let you immortalize your love.  (Big thx, Amanda and Danielle, for making sure I saw this)

The defaced Presidents Flickr pool is full of awesome pictures of dollar bills that have been . . . . enhanced.

Baby fennec foxes!

This dog is huge.

My fave Black and WTF pic of the week: hello, smoking chimp in a sweater.

I think I need to stock up on these awesome Ctrl +Z "I'm sorry" cards.

Evidently some New Zealand company is now selling personal jetpacks for $50,000 a pop.  Soooo if anyone wants to donate $49,999, things could get really awesome for me really fast.

These are some high-quality llamas!!

Make your own solar system here.

Awesome slideshow alert: A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things

Headline of the week has to be the one on this article.  (thx, Em)

Cute pics of Olympians as kids.

And finally, here's Ke$ha singing "Karma Police" at her middle school talent show in 2000.

Last week was unusually busy, and this week isn't looking much better.  Squeezing in some links while I can.

This week in bunnies: this widdle guy, and this big one (40 lbs.!!!!).  That is the full bunny spectrum, people!

This dude is selling a crapload of banana-themed memorabilia.  The suit in particular looks AMAZING.

Great Olympics equipment FAQ/trivia on Mental Floss.  I liked learning where curling stones come from.

Best page markers ever: these totally blow those red and yellow Post-It flags out of the water.

The 10 Most Forgettable Presidents.  Longtime LMNOP friend James Buchanan makes an appearance!

Also, the 10 Best Presidents!  Well, from the movies, anyway.  Kelly, I know you loved Michael Douglas in The American President.  Don't lie.

And, while we're on a Presidential kick, this is awesome.

This might be the only website you'll ever need: DO IT, ROCKAPELLA!

Kids' adorable letters in defense of Pluto. (thx, Matt)

Look, it's not easy being Executive Vice President of the Noms, Playing and Cuddles Division of the Department of Puppy Activities.  Sometimes you get really tired.

Cat of the day:

Dog of the day:

Crazy pants continue to be an awesome Olympic feature.  In addition to fake snowboarding jeans, we also have the following to admire:

Azerbaijan's Opening Ceremony Pants

If I had three wishes, I would use all three to ask for three separate pairs of THESE PANTS.

Czech Republic's Opening Ceremony Pants

I have a slight preference for the wacky Azerbaijani paisley print, but these are also spectacular.

Team Norway's Curling Pants

I think if curling qualifies as an Olympic sport, so should pants-making.  And this design is in medal contention right now.

In some jobs, spelling errors really count.

Mental Floss quiz on This American Life.  Go nuts.

Picture of a moonbow (rainbow that appears in moonlight) in Hawaii.

Videos featuring mousetrap chain reactions.  Snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap.

What will this cost me in Gaga dollars?

Scott Hamilton's list of the five most memorable Olympic figure skating falls.

A website with a simple, but brilliant concept behind it: Tom Selleck + waterfalls + sandwiches. (thx, Kristin!)

Animated GIF of the week.  Slash life.

You'd think with all the snow, I'd have nothing better to do than look at the Internet all day; however, I've barely been barely able to sit still and look at the computer for more than a few minutes at a time these past couple days.  Despite this, the following video was able to hold my attention quite well.

The Olympics start this Friday, which means I will soon start watching NBC every night instead of just Thursdays.  For reasons previously mentioned on this blog, I continue to love me some Olympics, and the Vancouver games will be no exception. 

I've been wanting to do some sort of Olympic preview on this blog, but I really don't know much about any of the sports or athletes.  (Rather than overdo it on trying to prep myself with this type of knowledge, I prefer to let Bob Costas fill me in on the details as we go.  I trust him more than he must trust whoever does that shiny, never-changing hair of his.)  So--what to preview?

Obvi.  Clothes.

I did a little research on some of the outfits we will be seeing on our U.S. Olympians at the Vancouver games, and they run the gamut from cool to . . . the U.S. snowboarding team outfit.  (It involves fake jeans.  You'll see.)


First up, we have the Opening Ceremonies outfits for Team USA, designed by Ralph Lauren.  See them below:


I'm liking the jacket.  The hat is pretty OK, but also ridiculous enough that it will look hilarious on some of the athletes, which is always a plus.  But whoa--pants.  Paaaaaaaants.  If I have learned one thing from dropping whatever I am doing and watching the movie Apollo 13 every single time it comes on TBS, it is that those pants are exactly what 1960s astronauts wear as long johns under their space suits.  And while there's nothing more American than the space race, come on--astronaut undies did not need to be reincarnated and put on the bodies of our finest snowthletes in 2010.


Nike has designed these outfits for our medalists to wear on the stand.  The recurring theme here already seems to be "Vancouver 2010: Questionable Pants."  While I am once again OK with the jacket choice, those pants are a little on the dumpy side.  And pants that are a little on the dumpy side on models are going to be a lot on the dumpy side on people with Olympic athlete-grade leg muscles.


Here is a shot of the US Snowboarding Team uniform.  Plaid coat complete with Tool Academy patch, and--why yes, those are fake jeans made from Gore-tex.  Because snowboarding is edgy and extreme!  And nothing says "extreme" like A DENIM ILLLLUSION!!!!! (Read this in your G.O.B. Bluth voice, please.)


USA Hockey is going with a retro look, which I like.  I sign off on these uniforms.  They're not too exciting, but let's be honest--neither is your typical ice hockey player.


These two are grouped together because, as this article explains, they were both created by Under Armour with an "Evil Knievel aesthetic" in mind.  These uniforms are obviously awesome.  I love them.  I want the ski outfit (right) to be my pajamas, and the bobsled outfit (left) to be what I wear everyday secretly under my clothes.  The ski outfit in particular looks like what Captain America would wear to fix cars.



The design of luge uniforms, as this article informs us, is "critical in a sport where fractions of a second make the difference."  With that in mind, Team USA actually chose uniforms manufactured by a Canadian company called Karbon after testing suits from four different companies in a wind tunnel facility.  While I give these uniforms points for being wind-tunnel-approved, I must dock points for the use of flames.  Flames are soooooooo cheesy, and they don't even make sense when it comes to connoting speed in winter sports.  Here, flames don't represent speed, they represent melting your playing field.

God bless America.

That's all I can find for now to preview, but it's good to leave some things to surprise us anyway.  In conclusion: USA! USA!

We've been snowed in lately, which has had the unfortunate consequence of turning me into a COMPLETE AND TOTAL LUNATIC.  On Friday evening, as the forecasts were calling for two-to-three feet of crippling snow to dump down on the D.C. region, I suddenly got it into my head that it would suck to have some kind of medical emergency over the next two days and not be able to get out of the house because of all the snow.  Because I enjoy panicking like some people enjoy racquetball.  A few minutes later, Pancake jumped really close to my face and almost hit my mouth.  "OMG," I thought, "I could have totally just broken a tooth."

Because I vaguely recall being told in elementary school that you should put a broken tooth in a bowl of milk and get to your dentist within the hour, the Broken Tooth Fear dominated my entire weekend.  It would be the perfect catastrophe: not urgent enough to call an ambulance, but awful enough to really suck, especially if not fixed in a timely fashion.

As a result, I spent the entire weekend being extremely, absurdly, neurotically protective of my teeth.  Here are some things I did:

• Advance-Googled "what to do if you break a tooth"
• (Six times)
• Screamed "WATCH OUT FOR THE TEETH!" any time one of the dogs got near me
• Refused to eat the delicious apple I had bought for myself, because I knew a kid in third grade who broke his tooth on an apple
• HAD A DREAM THAT I BROKE A TOOTH
• Woke up from said dream at 9 a.m. and could not fall back asleep (note: this is approximately four hours earlier than I usually wake up on the weekends)
• Purposely Googled more serious medical problems ("causes of sudden death without warning," anyone?) to scare myself into thinking about something other than teeth

This was obsessive thinking at its best, and I'm sure that if I had been snowed in even longer I would have probably ordered a set of replacement teeth on eBay, just to have around in case I needed them.  But as of today, the roads are passable again, leaving me free to join a Fight Club and start living on the dental dark side.  Thank GOD.

Waiting to go back inside after playing in the snow.