Daily Articles

A Calendar of information

April 2nd

Today I am launching a website. My name is Frank A. Bennetto. I'm a 24 year old and that's enough for you to know about me for now. I'm launching this website as a sort of oddball "today in history"-ish project. Each day, I'll have a short passage on a specific topic on the site. Topics will include both the dorky and the bizarre. In these first three days I'm talking about anime robots, a horror ARG, and a NASA spacecraft, and topics spiral from there. I do have a few disclaimers before we begin. Don't expect anything in depth. We are just inspecting the entrances to rabbit holes, not going down them. Obscurity is subjective. you might have heard of everything on this site before or you might have heard of none of it depending on your age, location and how much you look for this kind of stuff, and how strict your parents were/are. If I make any mistakes, message me at: (wsthtomtab@gmail.com) so I can correct them and put the mistake in the "Human Error Gallery". Same email also works for any other questions, suggestions, complaints or other inquiries.

Well everyone, Weird Stuff That Happens has made its first complete run around the sun. I'm writing this ahead, but I've already gotten more out of this funny little website than I could have ever imagined. I feel like I've developed a solid readerbase and all the feedback I've received has been great. I do feel like working on this site has brought me closer to this site's lovely crew. Mouse, you've done so much for me every month editing the daily articles. David, I think everything you've had to share here has been amazing and I can't wait to see what you work on next. Ariel, I'm sorry I didn't get you involved earlier but I'm glad to have you on the team. I couldn't do this without all of you on the writing stuff and moral support. I love you guys. I've also met a lot of great people on this site, especially Calexta. Even as one of my friend's cousins, I don't think I would have ever met them without this site. Cal, you've become a spectacularly important person to me in a short amount of time, and I'm glad I'll have you by my side for this next year on this site. Joey, I'm glad we are better friends now then we were last year, you're a sharp dude and a good movie night pal. And Pim, I'm glad you found an online stomping ground you like even if you can't stand me or something. And to anyone who has started reading WSTH in this first year, thank you so much for your support, and thanks for taking a chance on all this. With this new year, I decided I wanted to do something a little bit different with the site's format. Last year I did daily articles, something I lost a little steam with at the end. In this second year of the website, I'm going to mix things up. The Friday features will stay intact, but instead of daily articles I'm going to be trying out a weekly article format where the week's dailies all come out Sunday. And this is the first of those Sundays.

April 3rd

Today, 70 years ago, the first chapter of Astro Boy (Mighty Atom In Japan) was published. Astro Boy is a good series to get into if you want to get sad about robots. It's about a man who replaces his dead son with a weaponized robot, and then starts being an abusive father to said robot for not being exactly like his dead son. Anyway Astro ends up getting sold to the circus, but the Japanese government gets him out of there and he ends up becoming a superhero. For the record I don't specifically recommend the original manga, because while it was considered progressive when it was first published in 50's -70's Japan, and was intended to be anti-racist, nowadays… well, there are a number of individual stories that have aged like milk. If you are interested, I recommend the 80's anime that I haven't watched in ten years (I need to rewatch it) but I know is a lot milder, or even the Naoki Urasawa manga "Pluto”, which retells the "The Greatest Robot on Earth'' story arc in a very 00's way.

Today is National Film Score Day. Film scores are definitely an underrated form of art. Now for some clarification on today's topic, a film's score is different from, but contained within, a film's soundtrack. While a soundtrack refers to all of the music present in or written for a film, the score exclusivity refers to background music written or reworked to accompany a film. A good film score is incredibly powerful, and can give every action in a scene a powerful punch it wouldn't otherwise have. There's just something from it you just don't get in stock music, having every note click with motion. I always appreciate when musical scores get public releases. I rarely give homework, but I'd say today, go out and see if your favorite movie has its score online or on record, and try to listen to it if you can.

April 4th

Today is the birthday of the fictional character Alex Kralie from Marble Hornets. Marble Hornets is a horror web series and alternative reality game that ran from 2009-2014 for five years on the date. It's about a Something Awful goon named Jay Merrick investigating why an indie rom com he worked on in college never got finished. The answer is Slenderman, and he has to deal with the answer being Slenderman. The web series debuted 10 days after the original Slenderman pictures were posted on the Something Awful "make paranormal images" board and honestly I wonder how weird that was for the guy who made Slenderman. Like, you post a photoshop, and two weeks later some guys in Alabama have a video of your photoshop monster. Anyway, I know Slenderman isn't real, because he would have killed me in 2014 if he was. Today is World Rat Day, and I'm going to use this as an excuse to talk about a goofy meme I like. Yes, I'm going to talk about the rat movie. "Rat Movie: Mystery of the Mayan Treasure" is a 2014 short film by self proclaimed "Internet Clown" Jeremy "Jerma985" Elbertson. Made in 3D Movie Maker and holding over 3 Million views on YouTube, This short is the borderline nonsensical story of some rats and some robbers and treasure. The video is best known for its first 20 seconds which has a little song that the rats sing about themselves. Rat movie has a sequel, "Rat Movie 2: The Movie", that has an equally memorable rat birthday song and a meta plot about the production of the video's sequel. I recommend watching both rat movies and don't ask me questions.

April 5th

Today is National Caramel Day. Caramel is what happens when sugar is heated up, usually with an amount of usually dairy-based fat, enough so it gets brown and tastes great but not hot enough it burns and tastes awful. Because of this, it is probably one of the easiest places to point in a kitchen and exclaim like, "yep, that's chemistry". Caramel is easily as pretty as it tastes. Something about that golden transparent color just always catches my eye. One funny thing about caramel is people like to argue about how it's pronounced. The argument is usually whether it has two or three syllables, and in the United States at least usage is regional enough that people have made maps of where people say it which-way-where. Turns out it's an "east coast vs everyone else" split. Personally, I say both interchangeably. Today is the birthday of a strange yet beautiful cartoon. Adventure Time first premiered on Cartoon Network on this day in 2010, and ran for 8 years, 10 seasons and nearly 300 episodes. And that's not including shorts, specials and spin-offs. The show even has another continuation, "Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake", currently in production. Because I don't want to get into spoilers, I have a meta fun fact about this series. It was originally planned for a different network. The pilot for the series appeared on Nickelodeon's Random! Cartoons, an animated anthology series produced by Frederator. With the objectively well animated but mix reviewed "Fanboy & Chum Chum" being the only other segment from Random that got a full series, it feels very interesting that Adventure Time went all the way by swapping networks.

April 6th

Today is the anniversary of the first Tony Award ceremonies. For the unaware, the Tonys is the big boy award show for Broadway theater. It maintains its place as the least culturally relevant of the "Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony" combo by being a form of media where unless you live in the right place with enough money to go to these things regularly (or are knee deep in theatrical bootlegging) you definitely haven't seen anything getting an award that year, and can only hope to pick out someone to root for based off soundtracks or the media that the play is based on. The Tony awards are named for Antoinette "Tony" Perry, an actress best known for having the Tony awards named after her. There wasn't really a "best play" at the first awards, more of a lot of general honors for a bunch of plays I've never heard of before, and unless you are a theater buff that already knows more about this than me, you probably haven't heard of em either. One of them was titled "Happy Birthday" though, so that's fun. Regardless, I hope anyone who was there in 1947 had a good time. Today is Fresh Tomato Day. Personally I like my fresh tomatoes a particular way so I have a short and simple recipe to share. You'll need a Tomato, your favorite vinegar or vinaigrette , some garlic and some dill. Drizzle the vinegar and the herbs over the tomatoes in a small bowl and mix it together. If you want you can chill it and it tastes even better but I like it warm too. It's not much of a recipe but I like eating it.

April 7th

Today in 2001, a bunch of NASA scientists sent up the Mars Odyssey off to Mars. Its mission is to hang out around the outside of Mars with a bunch of science tools and both record its own data and help earth communicate with the rovers. As of 2022, the craft is still in operation over twenty years later. The craft shares its name with the classic Greek epic, but it was named for the book "2001: A Space Odyssey", which is best known for its film adaptation. It was kinda too perfect not to do, and plus they politely asked the guy who wrote the book if they could call it that and he was honored so they went for it. Today is International Snailpapers Day. The funny thing about International Snailpapers Day is that "Snailpapers" is not really a phrase outside of this holiday's name. It's supposed to refer to print media delivered to people, like how some people started calling mail "Snail Mail" after email was invented. That being said, Snailpapers feels like a very redundant phrase because people don't really call digital news coverage papers. I agree that print media is important, I still get my Readers Digest every month, but I can't get behind the phrase Snailpapers. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Snailpapers is a good screen name, or perhaps an okay indie rock band.]

April 8th

Today I'll be telling you about one of the first animations. Ever. "Winsor McCay: The Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics" aka "Little Nemo" was an early theatrical short made in 1911, when cinema was still a baby and animation was but a metaphorical fetus. The animation itself is very fluid, and while some of the character designs look kinda "aged bad" they are extremely animated for being from a time when animation wasn't really a thing, and some versions of the short have a prelude of McCay's friends laughing at him for trying to make comics move. And the animated part is even in color.

April 9th

Today is the birthday of the guy that invented Jell-o shots and "Geek Rock", Tom Lehrer. As of writing, Lehere is still with us and is turning 94 today. Lehere is best known for his satirical music stylings and "The Elements Song", in which the periodic table is recited to the tune of "Modern Major General. One thing that's really cool is that Leher has put all his music in the public domain, which means you can do whatever you want with it pretty much. This is really great; he did that because the public domain system is constipated for no good reason. If I ever do anything cool, I'll put it in the public domain when I die. If this website is the cool thing, well, I don't have anyone else to run it if anything happens to me at the moment. I'll look into fixing that. [EDITOR’S NOTE: You do now, Tom.]

April 10th

Today we are talking about probably one of the most recent topics I'll cover, because only two years ago, scientists got the first actual image of a black hole. And the image was mostly orange, which is kinda a contrast to most people making them purple or blue beforehand. I remember hearing a few people say the images looked a bit blurry when they came out, but you also have to realize how far away it was. 55 million light-years away, which technically means the imagery as it hit our planet was 55 million years old. After they get big enough numbers start to feel fake, but you have to appreciate how old and far away it was just for us to manage to take its picture. Today is Encourage a Young Writer Day, and while I'm uncertain of how many young writers will find this, I have a message from a writer who's starting to get a little older, but I've still got a lot to learn. For my own writing, it feels like I'm trying to mold words into a desired emotion or set of information. There's something conceptually absurd about writing, that we as a species can hold information in symbols people we may never interact with otherwise can understand on sight. My best advice for writing is that you really have to go with the flow. You usually don't have to write everything in order, so if you have a part of whatever you want to write that you have in mind that happens after the part of the story giving you a mental paper jam, write ahead and go back. I do it all the time and I do a ton of writing.

April 11th

Today is National Pet Day. Pets are a thing I'm glad exist. We really went right when we decided to just have animals around for companionship and started the process now known as domestication. They say unlike most other domestic animals, cats domesticated themselves by just showing up on farms and eating the mice and moles that would eat the crop and the farmers would let them stay because of free pest control. People tend to forget pigeons are domestic animals, being domesticated doves. I don't know if any of the reptiles, amphibians and fish we keep as pets are domesticated the way mammals or birds are, but a number of them make good pets from us simulating their habitats for them in our own homes to sadly mixed results. Always do research before getting a new pet because the needs of an animal can be very specific. Today is the birthday of a weird movie I think I had on DVD as a kid but I didn't retain much of it. The Pebble and the Penguin is a film from the famed director Don Bluth, but as inconsistent as his filmography can be, this is considered one of the better of his weaker films. The story is a love triangle set up, with an everyman hero taking on a villain for the attention of a female, but in this movie the lady penguin doesn't like the bad guy at all; he's just threatening her with violence if she refuses to marry her. What a fun and totally not creepy dynamic for a singing penguin movie. Anyway, I kinda hate how most of the penguins in this film look. Like I'm a guy who can appreciate a good anthropomorphic bird, but the romantic leads look over polished to be as kid friendly and marketable and competing with Disney as possible, and the antagonist makes Pim look subtle with his villainy, despite being a random penguin. Oh, I just remembered what I really hate about this movie. The penguins have teeth. That being said, you may find this film charming if you don't mind penguins having human teeth.

April 12th

Today Disneyland Paris opened for the first time, but it wasn't Disneyland Paris yet. When it first opened it was called Euro Disneyland. Out of the 6 "Castle Parks" Disney has, it is the third and the first one outside of the US. Disneyland Paris is the only Disney park in Europe. [EDITOR’S NOTE: OBJECTION! EuroDisney, as it was colloquially called, opened today in 1992, but Tokyo Disneyland opened on April 15th a whole nine years earlier. The Parisian park was the FOURTH castle park, and the second non-US park. You better put on this little green hat and several questions about your anthropomorphic relationship to Pluto, Tom, because you’re a goof now. Also, while I’m here? Nobody in Europe uses “Euro” to refer to continental matters, so Disney was being extra cultureblind here. They named their failed moneymaker “Dollar Disney.” Appropriate.] When it was built a lot of people were pissed off that they were bringing the very American concept of a Disney park to France, and nobody showed up until they made Space Mountain. This space mountain was themed to the book " From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne. A lot of people said it was even better than a regular space mountain! So then they took out the cool parts and changed it to be Star-Wars themed. Because Star Wars. Today I'm going to try something new. At least once a week or so I'm just going to give the other Mods a freebie space to talk about whatever interests them. I'll just open with "Today is a grab bag day" and let someone else take over. That being said, today is indeed a grab bag day so I'll pass this over to Cal. Hello world, It's Calexta. Today I have an odd animation thing to talk about. I've been watching a lot of animated specials recently, usually either with Tom or Joey and one in particular has been hurting my brain. P. J. Sparkles was a late 80's light up baby doll. In 1992 they put out a 25 minute animated adaptation of the doll line, and it's just kinda odd. The Protagonist is introduced as P.J., an orphan girl who's lonely. She's lonely because all her little orphan friends keep getting adopted and, the thing that really bugs her more than anything, she doesn't have a last name. This orphan child doesn't want or get parents. I won't say too much more because it does get weirder, but P.J. does get her last name, sudden responsibilities and yelled at. The whole special is online, and I recommend it if you want some girlie girl so bad it's good.

April 13th

Today is the birthday of a board game I'm bad at: Scrabble. Scrabble started off as a game called Lexiko, which got reworked into Criss-Crosswords, which got reworked into Scrabble. And then Captain Macy's got into it and now it belongs to Hasbro. My friend Mouse, who is in a board game club, says the key to being good at Scrabble is to memorize the dictionary. I think she's right because of a guy named Nigel. Nigel Richards won the French scrabble championship after memorizing the French dictionary, and he didn't even speak French. [EDITOR’S NOTE: While it’s come in handy at Tabletop Tuesdays, I actually learned the dictionary thing from my dad. It’s true. And to everyone who has a different, much stronger association of what this day is? Don’t tell Tom. We must keep some innocence in the world.] Today is Plant Appreciation Day, and I would like a second just to contemplate plants as a concept. They are usually green and very important to everything. Plants are one of the major forms of life found on this little blue planet, and they are mostly categorized by their ability to metabolize sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into nutrients. The oxygen most animals need to breathe is a byproduct of this process, but in turn animals breathe out carbon dioxide, and both classes of life form mutually recycle each other's breath. There's a lot of cool plants in the world: The corpse flower, giant flowers that smell like rotting meat. The Durian, a giant variety of fruit that also smells like rotting meat. Orchid flowers that look and smell good. Venus fly traps, which can eat bugs for extra energy. Fruits and most Vegetables in general, it's amazing that plants taste as good as they do. And one last shout out to, aloe vera, a plant that can help heal burns. There's a lot more cool plants than all those but it's a good start.

April 14th

Today, 2001 ago, the first Animal Crossing game came out on the Nintendo 64 in Japan, a game that never hit the states, Dōbutsu no Mori, or Animal Forest in English. Unlike the GameCube game that came to the English speaking world a year later, Animal Forest was deemed too wordy and Japanese to translate, but they changed enough content when they ported it to GameCube that they decided to translate it. While not an entirely different game, there were a lot of little and less little changes. They didn't have the clothing store or the boat rides. Holidays were reworked. They removed a blood splatter shirt and replaced it with a fish bones shirt. Stuff like that. Today is "Look up at the Sky Day". And you should look up at the sky, it's a lovely thing I don't think enough people appreciate, daytime or nighttime. For me today, it's raining, and the sky is a pure sheet of a full white. The exact opposite of not a cloud in the sky. It's all clouds and you can't tell where any of the clouds begin or end. There's on and off rain. Maybe I'll leave the other half of This article and tell you how the weather is going tomorrow. Ok second day, and while the rain is gone, the Cloud cover is still blocking any blue skies. It might warm up a bit later in the day and the blue skies might return, but for now it seems to be that same bright white wash over the full sky. I wish I could report more exciting weather, but I'm working with what I'm working with.

April 15th

Today a bunch of years ago Cartoon Network got it's first tv show, not counting the Moxy show which was more of a tv block, but that's it's own can of worms. We are talking about "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" today. A show with the simple premise of having "Celebrities" interviewed by old Hana Barbara characters. The show did remarkably well, running for 11 seasons and 108 episodes, 2-5 spin off shows, and it's also the reason Adult Swim is a thing. It's hard to decide what to say about this one as the show did a lot of weird and fun stuff, but this one sticks out off the top of my head. They had an episode where the episode didn't really have an ending, and if you wanted to know the ending you had to buy the script off eBay. I think that script is lost in the lost media dimension now, assuming it was ever real. Today is Record Store Day, a holiday for wherever music is sold (excluding major chain stores). I'm sad to say I've never actually had a chance to go to a record store. The closest one is like an hour away one way and I can't drive. That being said, I would like to get a new record player and some of those new colorful TMBG Vinyls sometime, but I have bigger priorities I suppose. To be honest, this is a holiday I mostly know about From Homestar Runner. I know I'm checking in as a complete dweeb on this one, but what can you do? That being said, I would like to just say "The B-est of B-sides" is a great song. This is a weird holiday anyway it's just supposed to be a Saturday in the middle of April and I have no idea who decides what day this one lands on or why.

April 16th

Today is the birthday of an artist you have probably seen the work of but don't know by name. Florentijn Hofman is an Dutch artist best known for his giant, often inflatable statues. While his 21 meter inflatable hippopotamus "Hippopothames" and his 82 ft tall "Moon Bunny" are marvels in their own right, he is best known for a particular duck. If you have ever seen that picture online of a giant rubber duck in a harbor, dwarfing boats and making men look bug sized, you have already seen "Rubber Duck", Hofman's best known work. Sponsored by " Yogho!Yogho!" This giant duck was actually 4 or so different ducks varying in size, situated in different cities, but they were all modeled after the same base duck designed by Tolo Toys. Today is the beginning of another week, and with it another great week of articles and an announcement. Kevin is officially on board as a B-Mod this week. He didn't want the full mod responsibilities on top of his school work, his job at the Silly Bird Pizzeria, His writings, and other obligations. That being said he does have some stuff to share so keep an eye out for his contributions.

April 17th

Today is Bat appreciation day and if you think we need to wait till October to be talking about bats get off my website. Anyway bats are mice evolved to have superpowers that would be extraordinarily powerful if it wasn't still mouse sized. They have two main tricks. The first is that they can fly with weird wing arms, not gliding like squirrels or sugar gliders but flying like birds do. The second is echolocation which is self explanatory, they use echoes to location. All of this might be painfully obvious If you are old enough to be on this website (it's 14+ here if you skipped the FAQ) but sometimes it's worth restarting the obvious, just for calibration. That being said, the biggest type of bats are known as flying foxes and those guys are pretty big. The actual vampire bats that eat blood are actually really tiny, like golf ball sized. Today is Bla Bla Bla Day, and I've decided to use the occasion to talk about something I like. Songs with nonsense lyrics. Like, not just lalalas or nananans, but like having an onomatopoeia or nothing word and singing it. I've decided to provide a short song list of some of my favorite songs like this for the rest of the article. I will note most of these are covers and I'm going for a vibe. Please comment if you know any more. I'm trying to expand my playlist. Bla Bla Bla - Gigi D'Agostino Who Put the Bomp - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Witch Doctor - Cartoons dk Rama Lama Ding Dong - The Boppers Mahna Mahna - CAKE Papa Oom Mow Mow - The Muppets (ft.Rockapella) [EDITOR’S NOTE: “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root is another such song. I bring this up only because everyone who covers the dang thing replaces the gibberish with what they think it said, despite the band’s claim that they didn’t want to be “held back by Dictionary Words”. I wouldn’t care about this if that wasn’t the most admirable, pretentious hippie thing I’ve ever heard.]

April 18th

Today is the release anniversary of a classic video game, Portal 2. It's actually turning 20 this year. Portal 2 is such a classic at this point it feels weird looking back on that first playthrough, I got it because I had thought the robots looked cool and man I was blown away. I kinda wish I played Portal 1 first but I was like, kinda young when it came out. It's hard to pick out one detail of portal two to point out as something odd and wonderful. I mean everything from the ratman to the music to the potato ARG, to the old 2013 online culture around it. Or it's weird crossovers in the Poker Night 2 and LEGO Dimensions games. I'm just going to heavily suggest you play it if you haven't before. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Nintendo and Valve recently announced a re-release of both games as part of the Portal Companion Collection for the Nintendo Switch, if you’d like to pick up both for a total of $20, though they haven’t given a release date outside of “2022”. Also, if you think we’re sponsored, you’re insane.] Today is a Grab-bag day. And today's guest writer is Kevin. Heya bud! Kevin here. Today I wanted to tell you guys about a game called “Peasants Quest (2004)”! Peasant’s Quest was a flash text adventure game made by the Brothers Chaps of Homestar Runner fame, parodying many similar text adventure games such as King’s Quest. You play as Rather Dashing, a peasant who recently came back from vacation, only to see his village burnt down by the infamous “Trogdor the Burninator”. You take it upon yourself to avenge your village and slay the dragon once and for all, yet a knight in shining armor will not let you pass through into the kingdom of Peasantry until you “look like a peasant”, which proceeds to kickstart a chain of quests you must complete before you can take Trogdor on. Thankfully the text commands are easy enough to perform. Now I’ve played this game many times, so I know it like the back of my hand, and I could probably even speed run it at this point. However, it's worth slowing down to appreciate the humor this silly game holds. You gotta give props to the Chaps for putting so much love into these pixels. On February 6, 2005, the Brothers Chaps released “Peasant’s Quest Movie Trailer”, a spoof on video game-based movies and was never intended to be followed up by a real film, but still recreated many iconic moments in the game in live action. Then on Trogdor’s 20th birthday, a video on the official Youtube channel released a teaser for a “remastered Peasant's Quest the Movie the Game” that was supposedly never finished (at least in the fictional world of Homestar Runner). The game was recreated in a similar fashion of the Mortal Kombat games, utilizing real photos of actors to create the sprites, and also replacing the text element with action buttons. The dedication in recreating old school graphics is very charming. It goes to show just how much the Chaps appreciate their craft, even when they aren’t uploading nearly as much as they used to.

April 19th

Today is the publication anniversary of a very interesting case of someone predicting the future and being fairly accurate. In 65', Gordon Moore, who is now known for co-founding Intel, made the prediction that "the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years". If you don't know what that means, it means the power number on a microchip, well, doubles about every two years. The funny thing is he was right. Was being the key word. Scientists are about to the wall where we can't get 'em small enough fast enough. That being said we did go from that transistor number from the 10⁴s to the 10¹⁰s in that time, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Today is National Garlic Day and I owe so much to garlic. What a perfect clove. Native to Asia, garlic is known for both being powerfully delicious and good for your immune system. It's even believed to have supernatural properties, being able to ward off evil spirits and the undead. Needless to say, it's never a bad time to have a little garlic. I enjoy cooking so I always make sure I have at least three different types of garlic in the house. I don't have anything else to say about garlic so I'd figure I'd used this as a diary spot again. I'm writing this in mid November and I'm marathoning writing articles for a personal challenge and I'm in that last bunch of them but I'm hitting the big problem of hitting WSTH year two and I only planned out a year's worth of topics when I first started this project. So now I gotta figure out what to do now I'm in year two. Also I'm not that far into year one yet either. I'm just writing five months ahead. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Have you thanked garlic for being in your life today?]

April 20th

Today is National Banana Day. Bananas have a dark secret I'd love to talk about. We might lose bananas as we know them and it wouldn't be the first time something like this happened. Until the 1950's the go too banana was the "Gros Michel". The problem was disease struck the variety and wiped out the crop. The reason the problem got so big was because of the way bananas are grown, as there's not a ton of genetic variety from the asexual way they usually reproduce. Anyway, they swapped banana varieties to "Cavendish" and it's been going great for years but Cavendish has the same genetic vulnerability of its successor. We can only hope the bananas stay healthy. Today is World Storytelling Day. So I'm going to make up a story on the spot. Once there was a duck named Rory. Rory lived near a nice pond with turtles in it. Then one day a strange thing appeared near the pod. Rory didn't know what it was. He knew about other animals and plants, but this was none of those things. The thing was very quiet and colorful. It was round like a fruit and as big as he was. Rory decided to bite the thing to see how it would react and it exploded with a loud bang and a spray of its skin. Rory didn't know what that thing was but it hoped never to see one again. I have no idea why I wrote a children's story about a duck being scared by a beach ball but that's the story inside me I suppose.

April 21st

Today is the anniversary of the Broadway debut of the musical Annie. You probably already know this one but on the off chance you don't it's the story of a little red haired orphan girl who's adopted by some rich old guy who wants a boy but starts to adjust to being a girl dad. I won't spoil the rest for you but if you've somehow seen the Stuart Little movie before this one the plot will feel familiar even if it did it first. There's two places where it gets weird. The first is that it's actually based on a comic strip where her foster dad's wife keeps kicking her out of the house, until he died because he hated that Franklin D. Roosevelt got re-elected as president. But her on-and-off dad wasn't really dead, just in a coma, that he came out of once FDR died. The second is that in the musical Roosevelt is the big good guy who fixes everything. I don't know who made that change but they definitely knew what they were doing. Today, Cal just wanted to do a normal article, so I'll pass it on to them. Hello world, It's Calexta. Today is the anniversary of the launch of the AroMagic doll line. Released by Pollymeriz Toys in 1985, this short lived doll line is best known for Its scented doll gimmick, Not unlike its contemporary Strawberry Shortcake or Rose Petal Place Doll lines from Kenner. The thing with these dolls is their scents were a bit more abstract than baked goods or flowers. There were seven dolls in the line, each with a signature "Magic" sent: Rainbecka (Rainbow), Sunsephane (Sunset), Lunlaura (Moonlight), Daygan (New day, reportedly new car smell), Wildelle (Outdoors), Airlissa (Fresh Air) and Beacherly (Tropical) Believe it or not most people that got the dolls reported they all smelled more like car air fresheners than something you'd expect from a doll. Mix theses with bad sculpts and this doll line didn't sell very well. Nowadays they are kinda rare but there's no real collectors market for the dolls. [EDITOR’S NOTE: I always thought of them like anthropomorphic Yankee Candles. Y’know, what with the abstract scent ideas.]

April 22nd

Today is Earth day. A day dedicated to that lovely little rock in an ocean of void we all call home. If you don't call earth home, e-mail me. Anyway, Earth. I'm going to share some classic Earth Day fun facts, true of 2022 when this was posted. The highest mountain is Mount Everest at 29,031.7 ft tall. The lowest trench is the Mariana Trench 36,037 feet deep. The biggest animal is the blue whale, and they are usually 80 feet long and 300,000 pounds heavy. About 71% of the surface of the earth is oceans and water. Today is National Jelly Bean Day. And of course I'm going to be talking about "Jelly Belly", which is the company that makes the weird jelly bean flavors. Even disregarding the purposely bad flavors from the "bean boozled" line like dog food, toothpaste, and dead fish, they have some interesting flavors. Standouts in my mind are definitely the buttered popcorn, chocolate pudding, and toasted marshmallow. That being said, the company also does mellowcreme candy, mellowcreme being that caramel-vanilla-honey-marshmallow stuff candy corn is made from, if you ever wanted candy corn shaped like ice cream cones or cupcakes. Personally I like to get the imperfect jelly bean bags if I can find them, because it's everything but the gross flavors for a bit cheaper but it tastes the same.

April 23rd

Today, too many years ago by now, the first YouTube video was posted. "Me at the zoo" was posted on a blank YouTube, a website barely resembling the current juggernaut of a website it is now. The video itself is exactly what you'd expect from something called "me at the zoo". It's a 19 second clip of home footage of YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. He's standing in front of the elephants and telling the camera they are cool because of their long trucks. You gotta apprentice how mundane it is. A video that would have just been sentimental at best if not weaved into the history of one of the most popular websites on the internet. Today is World Book Day, and so I decided to poll my Mod team for their favorite books. Personally I love the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, but I was curious about everyone else. Mouse - [Couldn’t decide– too many options!] David - The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin) Cal- Pluto (Naoki Urasawa) Ariel - Matilda (Roald Dahl) Kevin - House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski) Joey- Sam and Max: Surfin' the Highway (Steve Purcell) Pim- Aesop's Fables (Aesop)

April 24th

Today in 2006 Pluto got demoted from an outer circle planet to a dwarf planet. A lot of people say Pluto is no longer a planet but I feel like this is misleading. Pluto is now classified as a dwarf planet and is one of 5 named dwarf planets,the other four being: Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake. Personally I think we should count the dwarf planets in discussions of our solar system, as even if they are small and wild, they have enough of a level of consistency among themselves. If anyone asks me how many planets there are, I'll tell them 8, still, probably, if I don't have time to explain. But if I do have a chance to make my case, my answer is 13. Today is a Grab-bag day, but I'm taking it for myself. Last month me and the rest of the rest of the WSTH Mods in my area went to the big city to see They Might Be Giants in concert. Now TMBG is my favorite band, and I've seen them twice before, and once again they delivered a once in a lifetime concert. It was a show where they played all of the band's most popular album, Flood. This made the show perfect for those on the mod team not yet a few thousand songs down the TMBG rabbit hole, but they still had a lot of fun favorites for those of us with IFC cards in our wallets. Aside from the entirety of Flood, they also played some songs from their new album, Book. Much to my delight, They even played Brontosaurus, my favorite song on the new album. Next to that, I was really glad to hear Authenticity Trip, Man it's So Loud In Here, and Doctor Worm among other songs. This show was at a new venue then the band usually frequents, and Both Johns made plenty of jokes about it. Linnell in particular stated the venue reminded him of "That movie with the lady and the killing". He later remembered he was thinking of the Hunger Games, a fictional dystopian deathmatch, that Linnell then claimed he survived despite it being more violent in real life than in the books. Other banter highlights include the band trying to figure out which of them was Gilgamesh, them admitting the first time They were booked for the Variety playhouse They initially confused it for the Varsity, and apparently Flansy lived in Atlanta in the 80s and didn't like it. I will say we left after the first encore so we didn't catch the last two songs on the setlist, but it was getting really close to 11 at that point, and we had 6 people for an hour drive. That being said, Fingertips was the perfect way to end the night in my book. All in all I'm looking forward to the next time they swing around Atlanta, probably for their next album that's already been confirmed to be in production.

April 25th

Today we celebrate a funny little bird. That's right it's Penguin Day. Penguins are funny little dudes who live south of the equator, and contradictory to popular belief, they don't all live at the south pole. Along with one variety that lives on the equator, and there are a number of Australian penguin subspecies. Probably the best known penguin breed is the emperor penguin. Of all the kinds of penguins they are the tallest and they are known for doing this egg thing. The thing is the male penguins hold the eggs a majority of the incubation while the mama penguins go hunt. On the flip side, the smallest type of penguin is the blue penguin, and it is actually blue. Today is the birthday of the fictional superhero Batman. I'm not going to pretend I don't like Batman. I'm most familiar with the characters animated outings, with my top Batman things I'm familiar with being the following: Batman The Animated Series and the DC Animated Universe that popped up around it; Batman The Brave and The Bold, which gets really in depth with the DC superheroes that get featured; and the Lego Batman movie, which is a fun deconstruction of the characters’ concepts. While Adam West and Christian Bale are considered particularly notable actors to have played the Bat, to be honest my favorite actor to play Batman is the recently deceased Kevin Conroy, who voiced Batman in Batman The Animated Series. Even though this article is coming out months after his sudden passing, I am writing this article in November and I don't know how I couldn't mention it in this article. I can't say I met him, but I can say, being familiar with his work, he clearly put a lot of heart into his performances and everything I've heard about him paints him as a remarkably kind and loving individual. Batman was his biggest role and he really made one of the most popular characters in modern pop culture his own. He will be missed, to say the least.

April 26th

Today is the oldest date I can find for a YouTube video that won't leave my head. One that objectively has meaty organs in it but it always makes me feel something. Teddy Has An Operation by ZeFrank was a video made for the BuzzFeed website and true to the name a guy performs surgery on a teddy bear. The thing is the bear has organs. Non plush organs. This is not a video for a squeamish and I've seen people kinda compare it to "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared", but it's kinda a different flavor of irony. There's just something oddly genuine to the short. It feels childlike in a "what kids are actually like" way. Like if you asked a kid what happens at a stuffed animal hospital this is what they would describe as what would happen there, or maybe just me. I was a weird kid. Today I'm going to say screw it! I'm making up a holiday! I declare April 26th Glitter GIF day. A holiday for glitter GIFs. Celebrate it by sending everyone you know a glittery GIF today. The more overly ornate the better. Make some glitter GIFs if you know how. Part of why I'm going to try to do this is just to see if I can. Could I get other people to join me in my efforts to honor a simple yet sentimental form of art? Because even if they can be a bit kitsch, there's just something nice about a little animation that's supposed to be as pretty as possible wishing you a good day or happy birthday or good night or feel better soon. Or no words, maybe it's a cute animal or flowers or nature. Regardless I want to honor the flashy beauty of animated glittering butterflies wishing me a happy Tuesday.

April 27th

Today is the anniversary of a famous television broadcast interruption that isn't the Max Headroom incident. In 1986, a man going by Captain Midnight hacked the satellite video feed of the channel HBO, his message was one of frustration: GOODEVENING HBO, FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT, $12.95/MONTH? NO WAY ! [SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]. Nobody who watched it was really that concerned but the HBOFCCFBI combo definitely were. The guy got hit with a fine and probation, and they made the laws stronger to make sure people didn't do it again. To this day, the guy who did it maintains he just wanted to give HBO a polite message and he was just disappointed with the $13 a month. Today is a grab bag day, take it away Ariel: Hiiiiii! Welcome to Ariel with the Weather, one of your new grab bag specials! You may be surprised to learn that I actually know quite a bit about meteorological phenomena. Meteorology, or the study of the atmosphere, allows us to make accurate forecasts of the weather. You’re gonna learn a great deal from me—how clouds evolve, what specific clouds mean, signs of a tornado, types of lightning and other luminous events, why you can’t chase the end of a rainbow, and much more! Your newfound knowledge could save you in the most dire situations, or just give you fun facts for small talk. Our very first article is a personal request from Tom—ball lightning. Because honestly, what could be better than kicking off with a mysterious, rare anomaly? Ball lightning is a currently unexplained phenomenon related to lightning, occurring during electrical storms. What differentiates it from your average bolt of lightning is, firstly of course, the fact it is indeed described as spherical, but also that it purportedly lasts seconds to even minutes longer than a bolt. It is said to hover through the air, often mere inches above the ground. There are many characteristics ascribed to ball lightning, some of which may seem a little contradictory, but that’s just how weird and understudied this lightning is! Ball lightning commonly presents as a luminous orb of light with fuzzy outer edges, making it appear as though it doesn’t quite fit in with its surroundings. The orb can be smaller than your fist or as large as a grapefruit, perhaps even larger. Sometimes these orbs come in through open windows, or materialize right next to windows—even indoors! Stranger still, some witnesses claim they have seen ball lightning phase through solid walls and doors. Ball lightning tends to have erratic, wandering trajectories, making their paths unpredictable—however, they reportedly have been seen actively avoiding objects, as though they have sentience. This could be a trick of electromagnetic fields, but who’s to say? In some cases the lightning actually merges onto a power line or cord and runs down the length before causing a blow-out. The manner of which ball lightning dissipates varies between accounts. Some claim the orbs will explode violently in a blinding flash of light, which is the most dangerous way to go. This is often how people say they were injured by ball lightning—heck, there are even historical accounts of people getting killed if they got too close, such as the 1753 account of physicist Georg Richmann. Others say the orb quietly shrinks into thin air. If the orb doesn’t dissipate, you can sometimes find it making its way back into the sky, phasing through solids or flying through open passageways. Upon explosion, witnesses have said a nauseating odor was left behind—something between sulfur and overheating electrical devices. People have mistaken other weather phenomena for ball lightning, such as transient luminous events (TLEs) and St. Elmo’s fire. These are distinctly different occurrences that are officially recorded.

April 28th

Today Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon'' was first unleashed to the masses. Aside from its iconic album art and being a good record, it's best known for people playing it over the Wizard of Oz, and there being some points where it lines up too well. Some people swear the band somehow did it on purpose but it's all coincidence. The thing is it is all just confirmation bias, as people have tested the album with other, silly movies like Shrek and Paul Blart 2. So I think the album just lines up with stuff well. I like the one guy who did different They Might Be Giants songs over the Wizard of Oz, that was cool. Today in 1996, Cartoon Network got its first Cartoon Cartoon. Dexter's Laboratory was the first full series to come out of Cartoon Network's early animated anthology "What a Cartoon!", which was created with the intent of spawning new classic cartoon characters by giving aspiring animators a high level of creative freedom. Considering that the series contained the pilots of 7 future cartoon network shows, and even an early form of the show Family Guy, it's fair to say they succeeded. Dexter's Lab was created by the now legendary animation director Genndy Tartakovsky, and is about a boy genius named Dexter, and his secret "la-bor-A-tor-E" (that's how Dexter says it). The thing is his attempts at invention are often thwarted by his older sister Dee Dee, his rival Mandark, or Dexter's own pride. This shows a classic, and it's definitely worth a rewatch. And maybe check out its original shorts while you're at it. [A Note: I'm surprised you didn't talk about Rude Removal, the actually real and finished episode of Dexter's Lab where Dexter and Dee Dee spend most of the episode swearing like sailors. It never aired on Cartoon Network but it went around conventions for a decade before Adult Swim put it online]

April 29th

Today it's time to get down. It's International Dance Day. Chosen for the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre aka the guy who invented "modern ballet", this holiday is about dancing. I'm going to use this as an excuse to tell you about the dancing plague of 1518. So in 1518 a lot of people, usually guessed to be around 50-400 people, just started dancing and kept going for a couple months. A lot of people say most of them died but other sources say that's bullcrap and there were no casualties reported at the time, and it was so long ago I imagine there was a lot of telephone game about the situation either way. But regardless, the 1500's were wild. Today is Viral Video Day. Viral videos are funny little videos you send to all your friends. At the tender age of 11 I watched my first viral video, that being Charlie The Unicorn, an odd and violent animated short I haven't thought about in years but I think it got a lot of sequels or something. I also have to give some shout outs to some of my favorite viral videos from the golden age of YouTube: Trogdor, Rejected, ASDF Movie (I think I've only seen up to five though), that dramatic hamster, keyboard cat, do you like waffles by Parry Gripp (of Nerf Header), daft punk hands, Carameldansen. That's all my favorites off the top of my head.

April 30th

Today Pokémon Emerald was first released in the United States. Now I'll admit I probably care about Pokémon more than the next guy. Not the most spicy confession but if you haven't figured out I'm a dweeb yet, I can't help you. Anyway yeah Pokémon. But this is a mostly sentimental entry because Emerald was my first video game. I had gotten hooked on the anime, and there was a Gen 2 Pokédex book in my elementary school library I had already memorized by the time November hit. So My folks decided a black Gameboy SP with the new Pokémon game would be a good gift. I wish I still had that Gameboy.

Today is National Raisin Day, so I'm going to have to talk about the California Raisins. The California Raisins was an ad campaign produced by Will Vinton studios for the California Raisin Advisory Board. The ads, which featured musical stop motion raisins, were popular, but a mix of cost, declining popularity and raisin politics were all factors in the characters becoming mostly retired. but you can still find them around to this day if you know where to look. One particularly odd thing about the California Raisins is that they had a video game that was finished but never published."The California Raisins: The Grape Escape" was Developed by "Radiance", and planned to be Published by Capcom for the NES before the aforementioned popularity and money problems made it so the only legal copies of the game ever produced were for review. The game itself is a side scroller where your raisin walks, jumps and moonwalks through five levels. That being said, this game is found media, so you can find videos and ROMs of it online. [EDITOR’S NOTE: This game also has one of the NES’s finest victory screens.]

Miscellaneous Articles

Whatever I felt like writing

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