Ever find yourself standing in front of a butcher’s counter and wonder where in the world certain cuts and preparations of meat got their names? Here are the stories behind a few popular meals.

1. Boston butt

Don’t be too grossed out when you hear this name; it doesn’t mean “butt” as in “rear end” – the cut actually comes from the front shoulder of the pig. So why “butt”? During colonial days New England butchers tended to take less prized cuts of pork like these and pack them into barrels for storage and transport. The barrels the pork went into were called butts. This particular shoulder cut became known around the country as a New England specialty, and hence it became the “Boston butt.”

2. Porterhouse steak

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It’s an all-new 5-day trivia hunt,
with an all-new set of puzzles, prizes, and collaborators!

First, the prizes: In addition to the usual $100 and $50 gift certificates to our store for the first place winner and the random winner, we’ll be giving away a brand-spanking new Mino HD Flip cam, courtesy of Pure Digital Technologies. This is a simple-to-use, ultra-cool, full HD cam that fits in your pocket and doesn’t need a charger (‘flips’ into your USB port to transfer files AND charge). We’ve used it over on our Facebook page (are you a Fan yet?) to drop clues and hints for past Hunts, and it’s amazing. So, if you’re one of the first 20 people/teams to submit all the correct answers, you’ll be entered into a drawing. We’ll pluck one name from the twenty, randomly, and the winner gets the cam. So even the first place winner has a chance at winning the cam.

If you missed Day 1, you can check that out here. Day 2 can be found this-a-way. Today, we’ve got another fun challenge for you. Check out the Sister Salad vid below to get your Hunt on!

If you’re new to our five-day hunt, you can read up on our Rules page here. You’ll also want to check out last month’s hunt and read up on our defending champion, Neil Konouchi. Ready to get your Hunt on? Click on through.

Most of us in the US are familiar with the cryptid Sasquatch (or Bigfoot) and its Asian counterpart the Yeti (or Abominable Snowman). Those are far from the only mysterious giant apes or hominids lurking in either deep forests or our imagination. In fact, such rarely-seen animals are reported all over the world. Let’s take a look at just a few of their lesser-publicized cousins.

1. Almasty

The Almastys roam the Caucasus mountains of central Asia. Dr. Marie-Jeanne Koffmann collected over 500 accounts of Almasty sightings in many different languages throughout the Caucasus region, with virtually the same description:

“The Almastys are like people; they have arms and legs like people, except that they are covered with hair. The hair is like that of a bear, and dark. I always saw them without clothing . . . they do not know how to speak; they only mumble or bellow. They are not afraid of people, only of dogs. They run very fast.”

The picture above is a sketch made right after a 1955 sighting by a member of a Russian geological expedition. An animal of the same description is called Almas in Mongolia.

2. Skunk Ape

The Skunk Ape appears now and again throughout the American Deep South, from Oklahoma to North Carolina, but most sightings have been reported in Florida. The creature gets its name from its awful odor. In 2000, an anonymous letter accompanied several photographs purporting to show an ape in Myakka City, Florida. The writer of the letter seemed to think this was an escaped orangutan, but no missing ape was reported. Later, an investigation was launched over a horse that was injured by an unknown animal in the same area.

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The answer to today’s Brain Game may not be as simple as it might appear. Good luck!

At the top of each hour, a digital clock lets out a very quick “beep” once every second to denote the hour. So at one o’clock, the clock beeps once. At two o’clock, it beeps twice, and so on. You note that when it’s six o’clock, it takes the device five seconds to sound all its beeps. With this in mind:

How long should it take the clock
to sound 12 beeps when it’s twelve o’clock?

I was researching a post about murder ballads — a fascinating musical genre all its own — when I happened to discover an even more rareified subgenre of murder ballad: the serial killer song. A lot of people find serial killers fascinating, and it seems musicians are no exception; from Jack the Ripper to the BTK killer, almost every serial killer of even minor notoriety of the past hundred years has had a song written about them. (Feel free to debate the merits of honoring the most brutal members of our society with these kinds of tributes in the comments.) There are a lot of these songs out there, and I wanted to cover a wide range of them, so this’ll be the first of a two-part blog.

Jeffrey Dahmer: Pearl Jam’s “Dirty Frank”
I heard this song plenty of times growing up, but because Eddie Vedder’s singing is incoherent on this track, I could never figure out what he was singing about. Until I looked it up:

Dirty Frank Dahmer he’s a gourmet cook, yeah.
I got a recipe for anglo-saxin soup, yeah.
Wanted a pass. So she relaxed. Now the little groupie’s getting chopped up in the back.
I got a cupboard full of fleshy fresh ingredients

Apparently it was inspired by a creepy bus driver named Frank, who Vedder jookingly theorized might actually be a Dahmer-style serial killer. They were touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers when they wrote this, and the stylistic influence is undeniable.

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Jake Bronstein set the world record for longest whisper chain, passing a message through 59 people. The successful message was a marriage proposal to his girlfriend!
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A 1954 version of Ghost Busters, starring Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and Fred MacMurray. A masterful mashup of 17 movies and TV shows.
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Make your own “Crunchy Frog” confection, made famous in the classic Monty Python sketch using Gummi frogs, Pop Rocks, and chocolate. “If we took the bones out it wouldn’t be crunchy would it?”
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10 Incidents of Cannibalism. As repulsive as the practice is, there’s a world of difference between eating corpses to survive and killing people to eat.
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Marvin Heemeyer spent a year and a half modifying a bulldozer into an “armored vehicle of vengeance”. In 2004, he rampaged through the town of Granby, Colorado, smashing vehicles and buildings, including the homes of those he felt had plotted against him.
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Upright Animals Looking Weird Doing Stuff. Cute, yes, but a bit unnerving, like maybe they are plotting against us.
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10 Ways to Vent Your Job Frustration Online. With so many people out of work, you might feel guilty about complaining, so these activities might help you work off steam.

I keep coming across musicians who have appeared on Sesame Street (usually singing the Alphabet Song), and the performances are uniformly awesome. (One of the best videos from my Late Movies segment last week was Stevie Wonder live on Sesame Street, and in a previous week, Paul Simon was on Sesame Street.) I’ve collected some favorites here for your viewing enjoyment.

Feist, “1 2 3 4″

Feist performs her hit “1 2 3 4″ with a twist — it’s now more specifically about counting than about growing up. Totally adorable.

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All-Star invites and MVP awards are nice, but you haven’t really made it as an athlete until you’ve written an autobiography detailing your rise to athletic glory. While some figures pick boring names like My Life (Magic Johnson), My Story (Bobby Knight), or The Sally and Tommy John Story (Sally and Tommy John), others come up with more inspired titles for their additions to the literary canon. Let’s see how well you know the words of your favorite jocks. Maybe you’ll pick up a few holiday gift ideas along the way.

Take the Quiz: Athlete Autobiographies

If you’ve been reading the Quick 10s for a while, you know that I have a fascination with horror movies and Halloween and all things creepy. So when I saw The Book of Lists: Horror, it seemed like a no-brainer to add it to my ever-growing collection of trivia books. Scary stuff plus lists?! C’mon! I’ll no doubt share more of these lists as we get closer to Halloween (only 93 days, you know), but for now, here’s one to tide you over at least until Fall gets here.

1. Winston Churchill. Yep, before he was a politician and world leader, Winston Churchill was a writer and journalist. Man Overboard was published in the Harnsworth Journal in the late 1890s, when Churchill was in his 20s. An example of his writing: “A startled brain suggested the word ‘Help!’ and he bawled this out lustily and with frantic effort six or seven times without stopping. Then he listened.”
You can read the whole thing here, if you like – it’s not very long.
2. John Lennon. Beatles fans probably already know this. Lennon penned several books of short stories and poems and musings, and in his first, In His Own Write, there’s a little number called “No Flies on Frank.” Frank murders his wife and then wonders why she is covered in flies and he isn’t. Then he delivers the corpse to his mother-in-law and laments that she didn’t invite him in for tea.

3. Truman Capote. Of course he wrote In Cold Blood, which was horrific due to the fact that those events actually occurred. But Capote also wrote horror fiction on at least one occasion. “Miriam” is a short story about a woman who is pestered by a little girl who shares her name. The girl keeps popping up at strange times, making larger and larger demands and eventually announces that she is moving in. There’s no gore, but the story is more than a little chilling, nonetheless. It’s another quick read if you’re looking to kill some time.

4. F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you saw the recent movie with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett you might not consider The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to be scary, exactly. But the original short story definitely has some supernatural elements to it that make the reader stop and wonder exactly how Mr. Button got into his peculiar state. (more…)

Make room in your t-shirt drawer, because today we’ve added three new shirts to the mental_floss store: “I’d Give My Right Arm To Be Ambidextrous,” “Thomas Aquinas: The Original Deep Fat Friar” and “The Comma Sutra: Making Grammar Sexy since 1875.”

To celebrate their arrival, all our shirts are currently 15% off. Just enter the coupon code “moretees” before checkout. (Discount doesn’t apply to package deals or Outlet Store items.) If you’re pondering a shirt purchase, consider adding a subscription to mental_floss magazine, which is like a witty t-shirt, only rectangular and with more pages.