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4 Incredible Facts You Want To Know (and how to make Pac-man sounds)

By nuclearchainsaw on March 19, 2013 • ( 1 )

They say that you learn something new every day. That’s probably true unless you’re hungover for 30 straight hours. But even then you’ll probably learn something new…like how you and tequila don’t mix, or how you can still wet your bed no matter how old you are. Either way, you learn something – be it useful or not…so here are enough new facts to get you through the work week (that means 5 unless you work for the gub’ment).

#5 – Make Your Own Personal Pac-man Sound

wucka-wucka-wucka-wucka

Have you ever stuck your pinky* (I’m so good) into your ear and wiggled it to and fro? If you have – and you have – you made the sound of the original Pac-man eating those dots that he loves so much, you probably just didn’t make the connection. You made the sound so accurately in fact, that you can’t stop doing it…at least until someone walks up and asks you what the fuck you’re doing.

Try it, I’ll wait… See? Awesome, huh?

Now take your finger out of your ear. For those of you that don’t know the original Pac-man sound, that’s what it sounds like, and if you’re kind of a wuss and don’t want to stick your finger into your own head, have a friend stick their finger in your head so you can hear it…or you can just listen to the original sound here.

Congratulations, you’ve just learned a cool trick that you can’t show anyone. I guess technically you could, but from their point of view you’ll just be standing there wiggling a finger in your ear while looking at them and yelling, “YOU HEAR THAT?! YOU HEAR THAT?! IT’S PAC-MAN, BUDDY!”

*”Pinky” is one of the ghosts in Pac-man. He’s the pink one…duh.

#4) There’s A Lightbulb That Has Burned For Over 100 Years

I know what you’re thinking and I’m thinking that exact same thing, but now isn’t the time nor the place for that.

On the other hand, this little homerun-hitter is the Livermore lightbulb located in a firehouse in Livermore, California. It was first fired up around 1901 (yes, it’s roughly 110 years old as of this writing) and has outlasted most fire stations that it has burned in, which is officially the most ironic thing ever.

The Livermore bulb has only been turned off a handful of times in the last 100 years for routine maintenance or emergencies then turned back on to keep on keepin’ on. It’s so famous and so damn stubborn that the fire department has actually set up a camera so that you can log on and see the bulb in real time.

Just to put this in perspective, this light bulb has been around so damn long that it has seen Amelia Earhart disappear, the great depression, Seabiscuit beat War Admiral, the Titanic sink and get built, was still alive through the hippy years and was hanging around when you were born. It still hasn’t died. This thing is the fucking Keith Richards of light.

#3 – You Could Have Kicked A Velociraptor Like A Football

If there are two things that Jurassic Park has taught us, it’s that

A) If your sister keeps dickin’ around with a flashlight while a T-Rex is looking at you, you should slap her and turn it off yourself, and

B) Velociraptors are about the meanest, scariest SOBs in the Jurassic period.

…Except that they weren’t. What you saw on the screen was something of a hybrid and a whole lot of fantasy. The “clever girls” in Jurassic Park were really a combination of a deinonychus and velociraptor…both of which probably had feathers as well. Why did they use a deinonychus instead of a velociraptor? Probably for the same reason you just stumbled on the word “deinonychus”…it’s really hard to pronounce on the first try.

Velociraptors (although they sound very cool) were more like turkey-sized balls of terror…no more than 3 feet tall and weighing 20-30 pounds. If one were running at you, and you timed your kick pretty good, you could probably knock it out or at least make it think twice about gnawing on your shoe. In fact, after researching these things a bit, I’ve come to the conclusion that other than being the best cockfighters the world has ever seen, their only practical use would be to look adorable in my front yard.

See?

#2 – You’ll Rarely (if ever) Hear The “Happy Birthday” Song On T.V.

nom nom nom

Maybe in a huge production movie you’ll hear the classic birthday song, but almost never in a television show or commercial. Why? Because the classic birthday song that you sing to yourself while withering alone in your room because everyone forgot it was your special day, is copyrighted.

Yep. If you want to sing this song other than your “private performance” in your own home, it will cost you in the area of $5,000-$30,000.

The song is owned by the Warner Music Group who has at least once been what some people would call “Dickish” in their ownership of it. They once warned a girl scout group that they would have to pay if they sang it.

The copyright on the song is the reason you only hear it at home around family and not in restaurants…that’s why places like Joe’s Crab Shack and Applebee’s sing their own personally tailored songs when they bring out their waiter and waitress quartets…so they don’t get sued and have to pay royalty fees.

So why is it copyrighted? Well, Warner Music Group still makes about $2 million a year on it through musical birthday cards, karaoke and ring-tones. Some big-time movies may even pay the royalties to make birthday scenes seem more natural.

Although it’s pretty sad that you can’t sing happy birthday to your own kid in public without the fear of being sued (extreme case, mind you), this does bring about one good thing…armed with this knowledge, it’s really easy to get someone else to stop singing to their kid in public.

#1 – There’s A Place In Scotland Where Dogs Commit Suicide

The Overtoun House is a gigantic and awesome mansion located in this word —————–> Dunbartonshire. That word is located in Scotland. Near the Overtoun House in Dogoiugjkshre, Scotland, is a bridge creatively named Overtoun Bridge. That bridge is where a butt-load of dogs apparently realized what “neutered” means and decided to end it all (see inset).

Apparently as far back as the 1950’s, dogs have been committing suicide by leaping over the 50-foot bridge at the rate of a dog per month...normally I would wonder why people keep taking their dogs to the bridge with that kind of certainty, but the other side of me kind of wants to take a dog on it just to see for myself (shut up, PETA).

Even though this phenomena is something out of a Steven King movie that ends with some kind of hybrid Bat-dog eating Scotsmen, it’s absolutely true – so they did a study…”they” being the mad scientists with crazy eyes that presumably live in the basement of the mansion.

Anyway, “they” found that only dogs with long snouts jump off and it’s only on clear days…sometimes, these crazy canines will survive, come back up, then jump off again. Naturally, being hunting dogs (and nuts), they figured a scent was setting them off…that scent is that of male mink urine. Apparently these dogs go cuckoo for coco-piss and without regard for personal well-being, jump to their deaths out of excitement. As weird as that sounds, I believe I’ve seen that same behavior in humans…right about the 0:27 mark: