selling smooth

Cascading locks, small waist, tight rear…yeowch. Hottie alert. She turns towards you, and you get ready to deliver your best “you’re smokin” look. That is, until you realize that she’s not that girl in your class, but could be her mom. So cruel.

Today, women, and men, have a potential arsenal of technologies to deploy in an attempt to soften the effects of the incessant March of Time. Botox, hair dye, pills, fancy face creams… How do some of these work? Do they work? Are they safe?

consider litter

I’ve got something to get off my chest… This goes back to my playground days; it started with those boys teasing me, saying that they’d heard I’d found condoms in the sandbox.

Of course I denied this vehemently, and when they left me alone (my third grade reputation intact, for the time being) I went to go figure out what these “condoms” were.Rumors were that they were white, soft and round, and by the way the boys were taunting, items you didn’t want to be touching…

Now I was worried. Because I had uncovered white colored, soft cylindrical things while sifting through the sand. So, I asked Mom.

Turns out what I had been digging up were not condoms, but cigarette filters, remains of the litter of loitering teens.

Phew, now that that’s out of the way, this brings me to: litter.

Trash, waste, rubbish, jetsam, junk.

salty streets

What’s cold, sometimes black, and makes you walk like a granny?

Yerp, it’s sidewalk ice. And if you live in a place where you’re lucky enough to experience below freezing temperatures, you’ve probably had a run-in with the slippery stuff at some point.

But when things get slick enough, people bust out the bags of blue and white salt, and trucks dump the pellets on the roads, like rusty, smoggy winter fairies.

But why all this cement seasoning? What’s the point? Besides giving us extra-crispy pant hems…

dirty birds

Winged rats. Filthy pests. Dirty birds. What do you think when you see those pudgy blue and gray feathered creatures loitering under overpasses, in parks or fouling statues? You know; pigeons.

But are they as bad as our moms made them out to be? Are they couriers of disease?

Pigeons, also known as Rock Doves, came to North America with settlers of Nova Scotia (that’s in Canada) in the early 1600s. Escaped Rock Pigeons eventually established the feral flocks we see in cities today, probably helped out by some escaped homing pigeons and racing pigeons too.

Surprisingly, pigeons can be speedy and smart, and have been used by people to communicate for thousands of years, including during the ancient Olympic games. In the late 1800s a pigeon carrying messages in New Zealand averaged 77 mph, and champion racing pigeons can travel over 500 miles in a day!  Pigeons played a vital role in World War I and even during WWII to get messages across enemy lines and to send out distress messages of sinking ships.  It’s crazy, but a “pigeon post” was still in use in India until 2004!

So, it might be hard to believe that the waddling flocks pecking at trash on the sidewalk could be the same heroic birds that delivered the first ‘texts’ thousands of years ago. But, the pigeons we see today have a surprising amount of intelligence; they can see color, much like we do, and also see ultra-violet light. They may use highways and other landmarks to help navigate, and they also are among an elite group of animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror.

stinky sneaks

Why are old sneakers rank? And why do they seem to reach a whole new level of awful when they get wet? Well, it’s not the shoes’ fault really, and it’s not your (or your friend’s, or that guy’s on the bus) fault either.

We can actually blame microscopic bacteria. These single-cell critters live all over (and all through) our body, and the ones on our feet munch on our skin oils, dead skin and like to multiply in sweat. Since feet in shoes don’t air out very well, and it’s nice and dark in there, the bacteria have an intimate buffet, and make waste products that stink (and who doesn’t…?).

neon signs

So three guys walk into a bar…and one wonders: “what’s with the neon lights?” You know, the colored sign in the window, broadcasting that kegs of your favorite drink were rolled in that morning and frosty mugs of it are available inside. But did you ever wonder how they work?