The City So Nice, They Made It Twice

I used to be a great road tripper. In the past, I've taken a couple of extended road trips with my brothers, my father and my friends, and we always prided ourselves on making great time, finding new places to eat and making as few stops as possible.

This is no longer the case.

Much like my waist size, my road trip time has expanded and become more unpleasant since I had children. What used to be a four-hour trip to our family cabin now takes approximately 24,601 hours, or so it feels. If only I could make an exact replica of our vacation destination and put it only 22 minutes (the length of one Phineas and Ferb episode) away from our home. But that's crazy talk, isn't it? No one in their right mind would clone an entire city, right?

Right?



Huh. Go figure. Of all the popular cities out there, I wouldn't have guessed that Hallstatt, Austria was a town that merited cloning. Perhaps Hallstatt (Part Deux) in the Huizhou, Guangdong province is just the beginning, or testing ground for the clone city concept. If the experiment goes well, perhaps there will be more clones, like a Paris in Idaho, or a London in Ohio, or maybe even a Hell in Michigan.

Which begs the question, faithful readers, if you could clone any city and move it to a location closer to where you are now, which would it be? And why? And would it have the same charm?

For now, though, I guess when in China, do as the Austrians do.

Maybe She's Born With It

Believe it or not, faithful readers, some of my faithful readers are women. And I want to dedicate this post to all of my female readers out there.

Ladies, I feel your pain. I know how annoying unwanted advances can be -- after all, I was a security officer for five years, and I can't tell you how many women tried to hit on me while I was a man in uniform. And it's just not easy or pleasant to let someone know you're not interested in them when they're obviously interested in you, am I right? Don't you wish there was a way to deter someone from hitting on you when you don't want to be hit on?

Well now there is! Check it out:

Yikes! I probably should have put a warning before that picture, shouldn't have I? No, those are not the legs of the average testosterone-filled male. And no, those are not the legs of a testosterone-filled female, either. Yes, they are female legs, but the hairiness is caused by manufactured leggings, not hormones. This hosiery has hair (it's unclear whether it's real or artificial) woven into the fabric to create the appearance of extreme unshavenness.

These shaggy stockings are all the rage in China, where apparently smooth operators are thwarted by unsmooth limbs. It seems that it would be much easier (not to mention cheaper) to just go without shaving, but perhaps your leg whiskers don't grow in full enough, and you're still turning men's heads instead of their stomachs.

I'm sorry to say that these nylons aren't widely distributed yet, so until they are, we'll just have to dream (or have nightmares) about independent women flaunting these leggings around.

My "thanks" to alert reader, Rob, for sending this in.

Doctor, It Hurts When I Sit

Hello, faithful readers. Here's a quick little math equation for you:

This

Plus this

Equals this

This is how the Chinese are controlling bench hoggers in their overcrowded park areas. The park officials got the idea for this modern torture device from a German sculptor named Fabian Brunsing. Brunsing was creating a hypothetical representation of the overcommercialization of society -- the Chinese government saw a way to keep people from sitting on park benches all day AND make some money in the process.

I hope you're happy with the results, China -- this may keep regular folks off of your benches, but now your parks are going to be a magnet for goths and sadomasochists from around the world.