For our first Christmas as a couple, my future wife gave me this sign. She and her brother had it engraved. I found this incredibly funny. Let me explain.

On our third date, we dined at Ruby Tuesdays in a local mall (Sorry ladies, I’m taken.) I got a kick out of this sign, and spent a good portion of dinner harping on it. Surprisingly enough, there was a fourth date. More surprising – she remembered the wording exactly and got me one for Christmas.

Years later, the sign still adorns my office wall. But I never knew whether or not this law was actually on the books. So I did a little snooping. Let me draw your attention to Section .2600 of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources code of conduct for food-service establishments:

“When customers are allowed to return to a self-service area, clean and sanitized tableware other than flatware, beverage cups and glasses, shall be made available for each return trip. Written notice shall be provided informing customers that clean tableware must be used for return trips.”

So there you have it. Don’t let me catch you using a soiled plate.

In which former flosser-turned-famous-author John Green and National Book Award winner MT Anderson explore some of the hauntingly beautiful and strange abandoned buildings of Detroit. Part of John’s ongoing and hilarious Brotherhood 2.0 video blog experiment.

You guys liked last week’s soundbite quiz so much, we decided to do another with a different approach.

CALLING ALL MOVIE BUFFS: turn your speakers up and have fun! And when you’re done, come on back and let us know in the comments how well you did or which clip was your favorite blast from the past.

Y’all may remember some exceedingly funny movies we posted a few months back, in an ersatz retrospective of the Los Angeles-based Channel101.com. Now, Channel 101 founder Dan Harmon has gone from bitter TV reject (he co-created the canceled-before-it-aired-but-nevertheless-cult-classic pilot Heatvision and Jack) to getting a second shot. It’s called Acceptable.tv and it airs on VH1 tonight. The premise is more or less identical to that of Channel 101 — regular joes create short TV “pilots” that are voted on, and the winners are “picked up” for more episodes — only in the Acceptable incarnation, the winners are shown on VH1.

Below is a sample of an Acceptable pilot, which Dan made himself, an hilarious and pitch-perfect parody of today’s most ridiculous competition reality shows called My Black Friend.

Ever wanted to audit a college course online, without having to pay for it? With MIT OpenCourseWare, you can access 1,550 courses on topics ranging from History to Physics and Women’s Studies. (Seriously, there’s a ton of content here.) It’s all free, and it’s all available right now — all you have to do is make time to do the work.

A typical courses includes the basics: a Syllabus, Calendar, Readings, Lecture Notes, Assignments, and Projects. There’s even a “Download This Course” link which allows you to take the entire course web site (including all the downloadable files, like readings) with you on the go. Some courses include audio and video content if the PDFs and text aren’t doing it for you.

The entire MIT OpenCourseWare system is available free, without even requiring users to register. The amount of content available is staggering, and after nearly six years, the program continues to expand (read the five-year anniversary press release from last April). MIT offers some interesting statistics about the program, for example: “61% of OCW traffic is non-US; East Asia-22%, Western Europe-15%, South Asia-6%, Latin America-5%, other regions-13%”

To get started with MIT OCW, visit the home page, check out the course list, and pick something you like. To learn more about the program and who has used it, read this 2003 Wired article or consult the press coverage archive. If you have used MIT OCW, let us know about it in the comments!

I’m nearly certain I’ve invented something original here and wanted to share it for two reasons: a) how many times do you really get to be self-congratulatory in life, eh? And b) if I’m wrong, and someone else has already coined this phrase, I’m hoping one of you loyal readers will now embarrass the bravado out of me, and quickly.

I’ve written about the concept in a novel I’ve recently finished, but thought it would be fun to drop it first here in the Word Wrap, as any new coinage is, of course, word-related. So here’s my thinking: most of us carry tunes around in our heads a lot of the time. As I type this now, for some odd reason I actually have two competing songs in my noggin at the same time: “Joy to the World” and the theme from Sesame Street.

Most of us also have a default song, that is, the song you default to when either there’s no song in your head, or you want to get a lousy song OUT of your head. Default songs can change as you change. For instance, when I was a kid, my default song was “Blinded by the Light” (the Manfred Mann remake, not Springsteen’s). As a pimply teen, it was first “Walk this Way” by Aerosmith and then somehow morphed into “Birdland,” by Weather Report.

Years later, in NYC, it became a tune in the fifth movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, but then, after moving to Los Angeles in 2005, somehow became AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” (Verily I say unto thee.)

(more…)

The pet project of David Humphries is finally starting to come out of the underground. Hair Wars, the much-hyped Cirque du Soleil of hair fashion, started out in ‘85 as a weekly hair show emceed by Humphries at Detroit-area clubs he promoted. It eventually outgrew its roots, and in ‘91 became its own entity, hitting the road in ‘94 and debuting eclectic styles that pretty much broke the fourth wall: enter the “hairy-copter”, the python-beehive, and the champagne-zipper bouffant…which, chances are, people have been posting as image comments to your myspace, or is that just me?

What’s with all the movies whose titles make them seem like kid-friendly animal flicks (you know, like Snakes on a Plane) until you plunk down your $12.50 only to discover that you’ve been fooled? (It’s enough to make you want to Black Snake Moan. Ugh, sorry.) Thanks to Cinematical for these animal movies that ain’t:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
What It’s Not About: A tabby trapped on top of a house … in the summer
What It Is About: A Southern family in crisis
What Does the Animal Represent? Maggie “The Cat” Pollitt (Elizabeth Taylor), who tells her neglectful husband, “You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof.” (Ever the romantic, he replies, “Then jump off the roof, Maggie. Jump off it.”)

Raging Bull
What It’s Not About: The running of the bulls in Pamplona, from the bull’s point of view
What It Is About: The rise and fall of boxer Jake LaMotta
What Does the Animal Represent? LaMotta. He’s an angry guy.

The Squid and the Whale
What It’s Not About: An unlikely under-the-sea romance
What It Is About: A dysfunctional family living in Brooklyn
What Does the Animal Represent? The exhibit of a giant squid fighting a whale at the American Museum of Natural History (so yes, this one does have animals in it — but not until the very last scene. Plus they’re dead.)

The Pink Panther (1963)
What It’s Not About: A wildcat with fabulous fashion sense
What It Is About: A bumbling French detective in search of a notorious jewel thief
What Does the Animal Represent? A valuable diamond with a flaw that resembles a leaping (pink) panther.

Elephant
What It’s Not About: A day in the life of Babar
What It Is About: Two students go on a shooting spree at an Oregon high school
What Does the Animal Represent? Gus Van Sant took the title from a British film about violence in Northern Ireland, by director Alan Clarke — who in term was alluding to the phrase “elephant in the room,” i.e., a problem no one wants to talk about.

12 Monkeys
What It’s Not About: A bunch of simians serving on jury duty. Or banging away on typewriters.
What It Is About: A convict, hoping to earn parole, who travels back in time to 1990 to stop a devastating plague
What Does the Animal Represent? A mysterious animal rights group called The Army of the Twelve Monkeys, which is wrongly accused of terrorism.

Did we miss any? (Ha.) What are some of your favorites?

The Signs of Life blog is a community art project documenting unusual signs from around the world. Most of the signs are wacky or contradictory (one of my favorites: On this spot in 1765 nothing happened), but others are touching (I want to hold your hand). Often the signs show cultural divides, or provide evidence of unexpected problems that necessitated signs (see: caution: frogs may be HOT!).

The best part of the blog is that you can submit your own signs. Maybe it’s time to submit Stop Hammer Time.

One thing we love to do here at the _floss is drop historical perspective. It’s something that separates us a bit from all the other smart websites out there. Yeah, you learn something new here, but hopefully you also learn something old, as well.

Along those lines, dig this: An article in the New York Times the other day began thusly, “Not since the Victorian age of starched sheets and starchy manners, builders and architects say, have there been so many orders for separate bedrooms.”

(more…)