What To Get: Dave Barry's annual Gift Guide is up.

Weird Laws: Somebody said they'd heard it was illegal to own a dog and a cat in Provo, UT. As in, you could have three or four dogs or three or four cats, but no mix thereof.

Apparently, this was true, but it's now being changed.

While looking, I found this other website: Dumb Laws

Some of the stuff in it's pretty crazy. In Riverside, CA, where I work, "One may not carry a lunch down the street between 11 and 1 o'clock." In Florida, "You are not allowed to break more than three dishes per day, or chip the edges of more than four cups and/or saucers."

Some are clearly left over relics of bygone eras. In Redlands, CA, for example, it says, "Motor vehicles may not drive on city streets unless a man with a lantern is walking ahead of it."

However, while some posts contain links to the original laws, not all do. Since there is no source attribution at all, I'm left wondering about the veracity of laws like San Francisco's alleged law, "Persons classified as "ugly" may not walk down any street."

And on many of the laws that do contain text, a quick reading of the law lets the air out of the strangeness. For example, it says that in Fresno, CA: "Permanent markers may not be sold in the city limits." Sounds nutty, right?

Well, the actual law reads: "It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation doing business within the City of Fresno to store, stock, keep or display for sale or transfer any aerosol spray paint container, or any indelible ink marker pen . . . . in an area other than a place that is locked and secure or is otherwise made unavailable to the public and which is accessible only to employees of such businesses."

Slightly different than what the blurb asserted.

So who knows whether Los Angeles, CA could really arrest you for hunting moths under a streetlight or crying on the witness stand? Who knows if the Chico, CA town council really thought a $500 fine was the appropriate punishment for detonating a nuclear device within the city limits?

I don't.

Voyage of Discovery I gave the speech to introduce next year's theme at our region's Christmas Party/Awards banquet tonight. They'd adopted a space theme before I came to the region, with stores being called "Starships" and managers being called "Captains." Area Management are called "Admirals."

Two years ago, the theme was "Reach For The Stars." This past year, it's been "Reach Beyond The Stars." For next year, our theme is going to be "Voyage of Discovery." As in, now that we're beyond the stars, let's see what we discover while we're here.

For my speech, I outlined four ways discoveries can be made, and gave four examples to go with them.

Exploration The most famous example of discovery is Christopher Columbus. Not so famous is the reason why most nations were reluctant to fund his voyage. It wasn't because they were backwards and thought the world was flat. It was because they had good mathematicians around who knew his estimates for the size of the Earth were too small. In fact, even the mathematicians had the Earth too small! Columbus was just wrong.

However, he was still determined to make the journey. And while he didn't come back with the tea and spice and silks he'd set out to find, he still came back with chocolate and coffee and tobacco and gold. The point was he explored, and in exploring, he discovered.

Inspiration The greatest scientific discoveries of the last century were not made in a lab. Many of them were done by a very smart man sitting on a park bench, and were done entirely in his head. Albert Einstein's thought experiments, as he pondered questions like, "What would happen as I get close to the speed of light?" he was able to get his mind around the very interesting answers he found. Inspiration comes as an answer to deep thinking and pondering.

Observation Nearly everybody knows the story of penicillin. Sir Alexander Fleming found a bit of mold had made its way into one of his Petri dishes containing bacteria. Rather than throwing it out, like you or I would have done, he sat back and observed the results. When he saw the mold killing the bacteria, he set about figuring out what the chemical that had killed the bacteria.

What not as many people know is why he was so quick to observe this was that he'd had a bit of luck with a Petri dish a few years before. That time, believe it or not, he had sneezed, and a little bit of mucus had made it into the Petri dish. A few days later, he noticed the bacteria around the mucus had been destroyed. He discovered lysozyme, a lesser known antibiotic, was a chemical in the mucus.

So by observation, we can discover solutions and answers in places we wouldn't have thought they would be.

Perspiration Thomas Edison is known for this one. He didn't get to the wrong place--he set out to make a light bulb, and he knew it should work, so he kept right on going until he found the perfect filament.

But he also knew the value of hard work, no matter what the results. He once said, "Just because something doesn't do what you wanted it to do doesn't mean it's worthless."

Hard work is bound to get you something you didn't have before, and you'll be better off for it.

More Than Meets The Eye: Interview with the producer of the Transformers live action movie up here.

From Mr. Willy Wonka: If you haven't seen the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory trailer, or if you still aren't conviced that Tim Burton is out of his gourd, click here.

Geeky Stuff: It's been confirmed all over the internet that Orson Scott Card will be doing a 6 issue mini series for Marvel Comics featuring Ultimate Iron Man.

Not quite sure how I feel about this one yet. It's not quite the same level of excitement as when H*R and TMBG hooked up.

Iron Man never really set my world on fire. My brooding, alcholic superhero with no powers of choice was Moon Knight.

Stop laughing, I'm serious.

Blogging: You know, there's nights I wonder what the heck I'm really blogging about, anyway.

I look at other blogs which, although they do not have a written agenda, still follow a cohesive pattern in the majority of their posts--whether that's promoting a certain agenda or proving info on a certain topic--simply because their owner's personal interests focus so strongly on one cohesive line of conversation.

This blog contains nothing of the sort. Yeah, I blog about specific topics a lot. Cooking, writing, magic, finance, diet, and politics all pop up pretty regularly. The problem is that while it may be regularly it's not often. Anybody interested in what I have to say about, say, magic, would get sick of waiting for me to say something else about it to bother to keep checking back.

Blogshares (A site which I still do not understand) has me listed as "satire." I like that label, but have a couple problems with it, not the least of which is that any time I think of something funny, I feel guilty about putting it here instead of over at my other, pitifully neglected humor site.

I don't really consider myself a "life blogger" although on occasion, I'll post something like this, that's just my random thoughts on no particular topic, or a picture or two of my girls if they're too cute to pass up. Usually, if I find myself mentally composing a blog post in my head, it's something borderline preachy.

I realize that I'd probably get bookmarked more and get more hits if I actually pinned down one or two coherent topics and stuck with them, or if, perhaps even better, I put more thought into making each blog post I made entertaining and coherent rather than just spouting whatever sprung into my mind. Then I might have someone reading this blog besides just people who know me and are trying to avoid an awkward moment where I reference something I blogged about and they have no idea what I'm talking about.

Or, for that matter, more people who do know me might find the prospect of reading the blog less repulsive than the prospect of the awkward situation.

So will I change anything based on these thoughts? Who knows. But aren't my daughters cute?

Endangered Good Eats: In case you're wondering, pirarucu is delicious.

I would recommend, though, that if you have a choice you go with the tucunaré--peacock bass. Fantastic fish, when it's fresh.

Obscure Movie Review Of The Day: Shaolin Soccer

Imagine if Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix got together with The Bad News Bears or maybe The Big Green and spawned a film offspring, with a tiny bit of Naked Gun's genes thrown in as seasoning.

You'd have Shaolin Soccer, a Hong Kong action comedy about a group of Shaolin Monks who have had trouble adapting their Kung Fu skills to the real world, until they come across Golden Leg, a former soccer star who's now a bum after having his life ruined by the sadistic coach of Team Evil.

Perhaps no scene sums up this movie better than the one that comes early on in the picture--after a bystander proclaims that sometimes, "I just have to sing, other wise I'll explode!" the camera zooms in to show a raging fire in his pupil.

Suddenly, we zoom in on a half dozen pupils, and find the same fire in a half dozen eyes.

And just as suddenly, all half-dozen people launch into a dance number to a rousing version of "Celebrate!"

The entire film is such a blend of intense special effects used to pull of goofy gags. Surprisingly, while much of the film's humor is goofy, they still give the audience credit for intelligence. For example, one of the teams they play in the "Super Cup" tournament is clearly made up of women disguised as men in order to play. However, this is never once referenced or pointed out--it's left to the audience to figure out what these girls are doing and why.

I highly recommend it to any fans of goofy comedies, Matrix-style special effects, or Hong Kong comedies.

Speaking of Money: I also recommend Dave Ramsey for good, basic, nuts and bolts financial stuff. His radio show started up a few weeks back here in town, and since I've read good chunks of his books standing in the Business/Finance section of Barnes and Noble.

His Baby Steps are as good (and sane) a place as any to start a financial turn around.