Category: Weird

Ubercool article about the wihtikow, better known as the terrifying Wendigo.

“In 1896 a man traveling through the woods with his family reported having a strange vision of a creature that apparently made him insane. He and the villagers believed he’d turned into a windigo and as his condition worsened, he was locked in a cabin. One eyewitness, a fur trader from Scotland, stated that he hardly looked like a human being at one point. The man was eventually executed by the frightened villagers, and huge logs were piled on his grave to make sure he couldn’t come back to life, as he had vowed to do unless a priest came to the village within three days. Strangely enough a priest did arrive, apparently the first ever in that area, and found all the villagers huddled in a shack, fearing for their lives.”

This article makes a surprisingly good case. The premise is that if Schwarznegger were to run (by the grace of a Constitutional amendment to allow foreign presidents) in 2008, Stewart would be the only hope for the Democrats and for the nation.

This wsj article (via) about weird interview requests includes things like this:

Rodney Archer, a 51-year-old engineering consultant in Silicon Valley, had spent several hours interviewing for a job at a tech company when his would-be employer posed an unusual request: Would he submit a handwriting sample?

Baffled, he asked why. It turned out the company had an analyst in Israel who regularly reviewed potential employees’ handwriting. “It’s a very effective way to find out what people’s true personalities are and what they’re like to work with,” he recalls being told.

The correct response is, “sure. Would you also like me to shave my head and give you a plaster cast of my skull so your company phrenologist can read the bumps for you?”

.c( whytheluckystiff )o. — Chunky Bacon Warrants Deletion —

Mefites apparently aren’t big on inside jokes they’re not privy to. LanguageHat in particular got quite snotty:

Once again we see that making short, cryptic comments that mean nothing except to the commenter and those few people either in the know or willing to do research on somebody else’s apparently pointless comment, though a source of deep satisfaction to the commenter, is probably not a good idea.

You know, despite my interest in language I generally can’t stand linguistics-oriented blogs. Perhaps linguistics bloggers as a breed are pedantic, both in the “obsessed with minutiae” and “stern, lacking a sense of humor” senses of that word.

Or maybe I just caught the Hatmeister on a bad day.