Useless Facts and Trivia: Volume 8

Here are some more Useless Facts and Trivia for you! (And MY COMMENTS in bold italics!)

1. Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there. Also, the powder on the bark of a quaking aspen tree works as a mosquito repellent. (So, they don't see the giant that is making the big swatting gestures and swearing?...that would be me.)

2. Wild plants that are edible:

--Dogwood berries, but not the plant

--The inside bark of a cottonwood tree (Inside Bark? What does THAT mean? You gotta peel the bark?)

--The white inside part of a cattail (tastes good! Sort of like a really mild cucumber.) (Yeah, right...and my armpit hair tastes like coconut!)

--Watercress (sold as a delicacy in restaurants, it tastes like a really spicy radish) (It figures, I hate radishes!)

--Poplar bark (That is poplar, not POPULAR)

--Anise (Very good, if you like black licorice!) (Remember when you were in grade school and when they said anise you thought they said ANUS and giggled uncontrollably? Do you STILL want to try anise, now?)

--Dandelions. The leaves make a great salad, and the roots can be roasted and ground into something kind of like coffee. (I don't know about coffee but it makes a heck of a wine....dandelion wine tastes like whiskey, and it is STRONG. I know, I had the headache to prove it once!)




--Any kind of mint, which is recognizable from the smell (This would not help ME, because I hate all of the mints. This proves difficult in picking out toothpastes. I get vanilla scented Crest.)

--Wild rose hips, but not the plant (the hips are high in Vitamin C and are an ingredient in many teas.) (My hips are wild, but not edible. Maybe lickable, but not edible.)

--Thistle (Scrape the thorns off! Eat the leaf or the inside of the blossom.) (Yeah, right. I will leave this up to my Pine Siskin birds, thank you very much.)

--Quaking aspen leaves, but they aren't exactly for eating. Make a tea of them to kill minor headaches because they contain salicylic (sic?) acid, the active ingredient of aspirin. (I think I will just deal with the childproof capped Bayer. Except that it gives me another headache trying to get the damn caps off).

--Some berries, including strawberries, raspberries, chokecherries (too much pit to be worth it), currants (TART!), serviceberries, gooseberries (green and stripy and TART!), purple elderberries (red ones are poisonous), etc. Don't eat sumac berries, they are poisonous! (Of course strawberries and raspberries are edible! Who IS this person who wrote this article that I totally, allegedly stole? Does he live in a cave not to know that strawberries and raspberries are EDIBLE??? And, they make great jellies and jams out of those others too!)

--Prickly pear. If you scrape off the skin and boil the inside, it tastes good! (Does anyone other than me NOT know what a prickly pear IS? I know what a PEAR is, but a prickly one? )

--Clover. Not sure how that tastes. (Ask the bees, silly!)

3. Wild plants that are poisonous! :
--Nightshade, recognizable by its purple and yellow flower (how can you see the color if its in the nightshade? I would be munching in the dark and then they'd find me slumped over in the morning).

--Dogwood

--Houndstounge (I detect a trend here with poisonous things being related to dogs and hounds)

--The wild rose plant, not the hips (again with the hips! The guy that wrote the article that I totally allegedly stole has a thing for hips!)

--Most mushrooms. (Does Pizza Hut know this?)

--RED elderberries. Purple ones are okay. (So all the dead people you find in the woods were evidently, colorblind).

4. Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush. (Oh, Lord. Now I gotta put my toothbrush in the living room! Thanks, thanks alot.)

5. The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma. (I never saw HOUSE do this, did you? Not even McGyver did this! How do we know this? Did someone survive after getting an IV full of coconut liquid instead of plasma? And whose idea was THAT?)

6. No piece of paper can be folded in half consecutively more than 7 times (doubling factor... you end up folding 2⁷ == 128 sheets of paper). (Someone who tested this needs a life!)

7. One in every 4 Americans has appeared on television. (Does it count if you didn't mean to hold up that bank and get on TV?)



8. You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television. (Ah ha! I fooled them on this one because I often fall asleep while watching television!)

9. Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older. (How do they know when they turn 50? Is it like when you turn around 50 and hit menopause ? Then your ovaries no longer function as well? Maybe the acorns are like the oak trees' ovaries...no longer good? So they just drop them on the ground!? )

10.The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum. (Of course, the bars LOOK like little bars of gum. Thank goodness the first product with a bar code wasn't a condom or a bra! Think how funny the bar codes would look THEN!)

There are your 10 Useless Facts and Trivia for this week....stay tuned for more where these came from.................