356 - One Sentence

Story #674 I came across onesentence.org, a website "about telling the most interesting or poignant story possible in the least amount of words." All of the stories are user submitted, so as you might imagine, many of them are really lame. Today, I'm going to break format a little bit to give you some that I think are pretty good. If you decide to write a story like this, please let me know.

Story #890 Story #625 Story #706 Story #227

Story #829 Story #406 Story #808 Story #286

Story #285 Story #433 Story #844 Story #730

Story #498 Story #617 Story #361 Story #355

343 - with Links!

1. Charles Nelson Reilly: Dead It is so awesome that an actor, by sheer power of personality, could become a household name by only appearing in guest starring roles. Charles Nelson Reilly never really had a starring role, in fact, for all his appearances, he was never really a regular cast member on any television show. But his appearances on TV throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, especially as a celebrity guest on The Match Game have cemented him in pop culture history.

2. Script Frenzy I'm not sure is two days is enough time to prepare for writing a screenplay, but if you've had an idea for a movie or play that you've been meaning to get down on paper, June 1st is the beginning of a month long writing event that encourages prospective writers to get a 20,000 word script done in only 30 days. They also provide tips on formatting and other writing resources.

3. Air-Car Reaching 68 mph and a range of 125 miles per fill-up of a compressed air tank, the Air-Car is set to end pollution in India from internal combustion engines.

4. Lemmings You could easily waste most of your day playing the classic Lemmings game with this Javascript based emulation.

5. Airtistique Speaking of javascript, these guys mixed up traditional stage magic techniques with some fancy-pants web coding to create an interactive short film that totally screws with your browser windows.

339 - Days Today

1. Useful Today is Towel Day. Fans of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are encouraged to carry a towel today in remembrance of his "the humor and insight." (Quotes used because this phrase is taken from the website, not because I'm being sarcastic, like later when I considered putting quotes around the word "actor" when used to describe Mike Myers.)

2. The Force Today also marks the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. Fans of the classic film franchise have suggested that May 25th become the Universal Day of the Jedi in remembrance of a time that existed after Jawas and the Millennium Falcon but prior to Jar Jar Binks and Midichlorians. And don't try to tell me that Revenge of the Sith was good. You know in your heart of heart that it sucks. Just admit it already.

3. Born May 25th also marks the birth date of musician Miles Davis, who would have been 81 years old. A lot of people will tell you to listen to Kind of Blue, but I'm recommending this Milt Jackson collaboration.

4. Celebs A bunch of other "famous" people were born today as well, including, actors, Mike Myers, Cillian Murphy and Ian McKellen; singer, Lauryn Hill; writers Raymond Carver, W.P. Kinsella, Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Robert Ludlum and Poppy Z. Brite; director, actor, puppeteer and voice of Yoda, Frank Oz:; and comics creators, Barry Windsor-Smith and Stan Sakai. I'm sure a lot of other great and nice people were born to day too, But I've probably never heard of most of them.

5. Missing Today is also National Missing Children's Day so if you've found any kids recently, this is your best opportunity to turn them in.

275 - with Links!

1. Pastry Avalanche A rare combination of snow texture and air temperature conspires to create giant, rolling, mountain doughnuts.

2. Stringfever Bolero Ravel played by four dudes on one single cheesy see-through cello.

3. Do Not Fly/Read List One guy banned from two different flights on the basis of his in flight reading materials; Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, a novel about an environmental terrorist and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the story of a young wizard coming of age.

4. Planned Squares Another one of these damn games that looks like it should be easy, but is actually pretty difficult.

5. Correlation Does Not Neccessarily Imply Causation It seems likely that Debbie Bird really does have some kind of allergy, but her conclusion that electromagnetic fields, microwaves, and gamma rays seems pretty far fetched. Unsurprisingly, "doctors say there is little scientific evidence to back up a link between EMF and poor health" and smart commenters on the article have suggested means of determining the cause of her condition.

255 - with Links!

1. Boston Bomb Squad at It Again After the Great Mooninite Scandal earlier this year you'd think the Boston Police department would more carefully check out suspicious "hoax devices" before blowing them up. In this case it turned out to be a totally innocuous traffic counter that pretty much any police officer should have been able to recognize.

2. Who's Gonna Pony Up the $2 Million And then they really, really go too far when dealing with this guy's hoax jacket.

3. I Need an Adjective News-Sentinel Staff Writer, Layla Bohm must have earned her degree from the Madlibs School of Journalism. "A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi."

4. Whose Films Really? After spending time and money producing the promotional materials for a new website backed by the UK Film Council, somebody decided to check into whether or not the domain name was actually available.

5. I Scream for Malt Liquour Steve Harrison pleaded guilty to two offences of unlicensed alcohol sales after being caught using his ice cream truck as a undercover mobile liquor store.

227 - with Links!

1. Pencil Napper Man banned from Home Depot for accidentally walking away with the cashier's pencil. Home Depot later drops the ban. Slow news day.

2. Nimoy It is amazing to think that The Lord of the Rings books were even more popular in the 1960s-70s than they were during the time that the Peter Jackson movies were released.

3. Blipvert McDonald's ads on Food Network. Subliminal or technological error.

4. Paper Toilet Waste paper virtually.

5. Scottish Fold Watch the first 2 seconds of this video and then spend the rest of your day thinking about it.

136 - with Links!

1. Stingo: Dead William Styron, author of the tragic post war novel, Sophie's Choice, died Wednesday at 81. This time it isn't an exaggeration.

2. Will It Blend? Blentec makes a blender that will puree just about anything, ice, Coke cans, glass marbles, etc. Also would probably make a great lamp.

3. Write a Novel Month I probably should have mentioned this a couple of days ago so you'd have time to prepare something. I also probably should have prepared myself to get working on the book I started a couple of years ago.

4. No Grunting This (and a complete lack of motivation) is the exact reason why I don't go to the gym.

5. Star Wars Shortened Part two, as promised, covering the original trilogy.

129 - with Links!

1. Auspicious Beginnings This kid is getting an early start on his career as whatever the opposite of "escape artist" is. Before you assume this is a rare occurrence, take a look at this and this.

2. Plain Brown Popper Since a movie theater food poisoning incident, I've been avoiding popcorn. Alton Brown's simple method for chemical free microwave popping makes me consider eating it again.

3. Six Words Wired magazine challenged a group of writers (from Darren Aronofsky to Howard Waldrop) to create epic stories using only a half dozen words.

4. Loose Wheel The British are so polite that even their race car tires are well behaved.

5. 1000 Words I think I'll just let this picture stand on its own. This is the one link to look at today.

101 - with Links!

1. Cheese Dupont recently sponsored a grilled cheese sandwich recipe contest. I doubt I'll try any of them because I'm really too lazy to make even a normal sandwich. I'm not sure how sick the judge/author was after eating more than 6,000 sandwiches, but I'm pretty sure that there were no sandwiches featuring the image of the Virgin Mary.

2. It Really Is A Small World In 1987, a bunch of art historians in Brussels, Belgium decided to make 1:25 scale models of 100 of Europe's most famous monuments. Looming over the whole of Europe is a giant geometric sculptural building , The Atomium.

3. Pothead Heaven Temple 420 is a new "religion" that claims to afford its members with the legal right to own and use "religious marijuana." While I feel that drugs should be made legal, I suspect this "church" might be nothing more than a boats-for-criminals style sting operation designed to collect the names of all the outspoken pot smokers in the United States.

4. Saidie Like I occasional do, Megan makes recommendations of noteworthy items for sale on Etsy. She has pretty good taste. So far everything she has featured has been interesting to me.

5. Karl Pilkington I've decided to use The Top Five as a make-shift Christmas list. So from now to the end of December, I'll occasionally be posting things that I want someone to buy for me. If you really love me and want to get me a gift, look for the Christmas label.

099 - with Links!

1. Message in a Bottle Dennis Davis wrote a note, put it in a corked bottle and threw it in the ocean off the coast of Florida. Three years later it washed up on a beach in Spain. You can easily be the online equivalent of Dennis by throwing your messages out via Oceangram.

2. Up and Away A Canadian RC plane enthusiast hooked up a crazy head-movement controlled camera rig to his airplane. When he turns his head left, the camera turns left. When he turns his head right, the camera turns right. To top it off he runs the signal to a set of virtual reality goggles in order to get the full experience of flight.

3. Permakittens Tenderbutton has come up with a scheme for producing and marketing cats which never grow beyond kittenhood. If you think this is a far fetched concept, engineered pets that are completely hypo-allergenitic are already a reality.

4. Zwok Zwok is a simple multiplayer online game in which the player lobs projectiles at his opponents. The more you play the better your character gets and the larger he grows.

5. Dominool Playing a game of trick shot billiards across four tables via the domino effect.