Not sure if you guys read about this, but BoingBoing was reporting today that NASCAR has launched a new line of meat products (their slogan is “Taste the Excitement.”) It’s true! From hot dogs, to bacon, to sausage to lunch meat, NASCAR’s definitely all over the grocery aisle, and it kind of reminds me of the time the WWF got into the cologne business. Of course, BoingBoing made a crack that the goods probably taste like burned rubber and car crashes. We’re not one to upset potential investors, though. That’s why, to me the scent of NASCAR in the morning probably smells like hope.

As for branding, though, Johnny Green wrote up a great bit about Lacoste, and how the crocodile was actually the first logo to be placed on a shirt. I just thought had to include it… (more…)

Sometimes I forget what a crafty genius I am in the morning. Last night I made the mistake of trying to outwit my morning self by setting my alarm for the ungodly hour of 6, and placing it on my desk on the other side of the room. That way, I figured if I hit the snooze button multiple times, which I’m ashamed that I’m prone to do, I’d at least get a workout doing laps until I woke up (I’m also ashamed that that’s what my workouts consist of). I did NOT, however end up doing those laps. Instead, when I actually woke up, I looked at my clock and realized that at 6 I had rationalized to myself that I needed an extra 3.5 or so hours of beauty sleep and reprogrammed the alarm to go off at 9:30!

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I did a little research this morning, and found a link to the scariest alarm clocks ever made. These are definitely the things (my) nightmares are made of. From hand-grenade alarm clocks that your so-called “friends” can throw into your room to wake you up (the piercing ringing only stops when you find your friend and have them replace the pin), to electronic monstrosities that you have chase around your room and tackle just to hit snooze , to a chicken alarm clock that keeps dropping eggs all over your floor and clucking up a storm until you replace ‘em, I think this is exactly the sort of technology the Unibomber was warning us about! Check them out here at your own risk.

Sad news for anyone who enjoys air travel or has ever thought a stripper was hitting on him: after three short years flying the friendly skies, Hooters Airlines is discontinuing public service. (Sports teams and “tour groups” can still book flights, however.) Anyway, I played through my pain and decided to do some research on defunct discount carriers. I found the amazing story of the rise and fall of Sir Freddie Laker, which I present to you now.

In 1977, Freddie, who taught himself how to fly a four-engine aircraft three decades earlier, started Laker Skytrain. It was the first low-cost carrier there ever was, and when I say low-cost, I’m not kidding: around $200 New York-to-London roundtrip. You can find pictures of his dream machines here.
Things were going really well for Freddie – he was knighted, Margaret Thatcher applauded his work for the common man, The Police toured the States in one of his planes – until 1982, when he was forced out of business (illegally, it turns out) by the bigger airlines and by some poor business decisions. Either way, he was the inspiration for all low-cost carries, from the successful (Southwest, Ryanair) to the not-so-successful (Hooters Airlines).

What’s Sir Freddie doing now? Well, he died in February. But the last line of his obit in The Economist (no link…sorry!) says it all: “Nonetheless, the man on the 9.30 from Stansted to Palma, crushed in a middle seat between crying children and with a home-made sandwich as his sustenance, should raise a plastic cup to freedom and to Freddie.” Here, here!

Today is the 410th birthday of noted French philosopher and mathematician Rene “I think therefore I am” Descartes. Known as the father of both mathematics and philosophy (he also fathered a daughter, Francine, out of wedlock), Descartes’ work and life are plenty fascinating. But we bring up his birthday only because it is our best opportunity in weeks to share our favorite fact in the entire history of facts, which we learned from Britannica via floss contributor A. J. Jacobs:

Rene Descartes had a fetish for cross-eyed women, a fetish that turned out to shape his beliefs about free will and presage Freudian psychology. After spending his early adulthood ceaselessly attracted to women with strombosis (as crossed eyes are now known), Descartes determined that his fetish went back to his childhood, when he’d had a cute and cross-eyed female playmate. By recognizing the root of his fascination, he was able to rid himself of it with his free will.

That’s all fine and good for Descartes, but in retrospect, maybe he should have kept his fetish. When you look like a very surprised Inigo Montoya, after all, you can’t really afford to be picky. Seriously:

I was doing research today on good ol’ Chaz Chaplin and how he was run out of the country for being a communist (just a blurb we’re doing for AOL’s Research and Learn page). I read today that Charlie was so angry, that he publicly claimed, “I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was president.” (Actually, he ended up coming back during the Nixon administration to pick up a Lifetime Achievement Award.)

Anyway, that’s not my point. I’m writing because in my digging I realized, I can’t tell you how many times I keep running into THIS OTHER FACT about Charlie Chaplin. Sure, it’s charming and all. But when I stumbled into comedian BJ Novak’s take on it, I figured I had to publish it. This is straight from his myspace blog:

“In 1915, Charlie Chaplin won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

This anecdote is, of course, very amusing, ironic, and charming.

But imagine if he had won first prize.

Everyone would have said, ‘What a dick!’”

This AP story, which is presumably headlined “Pet Boarding Industry Finds Pampering Pays” because the title “People Willing to Pay $78 a Night So Their Dogs Can Have Storytime Are Idiots” would have been too long, got me to thinking about history’s most pampered pets, and frankly the Doggy Camp industry has a long way to go before they can match my Top 3:

1. Caligula’s horse Incitatus. Roman historians claimed that Incitatus had “a stall of marble, a manger of ivory, … and a collar of precious stones.” There’s also a long-standing, probably apocryphal story that Caligula intended to make the horse a consul.

2. Lots of people have left money in their wills to ensure the care of their pets (including one 19th century Brit, who left 10 pounds a year to, and I am quoting directly here, “my monkey, my dear and amusing Jacko), but no pet owner could match Eleanor Ritchey, who had taken in some 150 dogs by the time of her death and left them her entire estate: 4.5 million bucks.

3. Alexander the Great liked naming places after himself (he founded no fewer than 19 Alexandrias). So you know he really liked his horse, Bucephalus, because Alexander strayed from his usual self-congratulatory town-naming after the horse’s death, declaring a town in modern-day Pakistan Bucephala.

I feel like everyone’s always looking to the Jetson’s and asking “Where’s my flying car?” instead of looking to the Flintstone’s and thinking, “Man, I could really get down to the swinging sounds of a cat piano.” According to the Internet (and I believe everything I read online), inventor Anthanasius Kircher invented this horrid thing way back in the 17th century to bring a smile to a melancholy prince’s sour mug.

Apparently, kitties of ascending meow pitches are placed in individual pens (see elaborate diagram for details!), and everytime a key is pressed, it pokes one in the rear. Probably not something I’d want to find under the Diwali tree (I’m an animal lovin’ vegetarian after all), but the idea certainly made me laugh.

BY THE WAY: just as a sidenote, I wasn’t sure what to call this post… Meowy-Melodies? Take me to your Litter? Kitty Porn? (I know, that doesn’t make sense… but it’s got a nice ring to it.) I went with Cat Power just for the indie cred. If you’ve got a better headline solution up your sleeve (and by better, I mean punnier), send it in already!