Oddly Enough Blog

Try to remember the best of September

The figures are in for this blog’s most popular posts in September, and readers showed a wide variety of interests. They flocked to our pieces on rugby, especially the nude variety, and were eager to learn about flying machines and submarines you can build at home.

Throw in some arts, politics and entertainment, and you’ve got a well-rounded month for folks who no longer need constant supervision.

Thanks for coming back, readers.

Here you go, your top 10 for the month. Now go out in the yard and build those planes and submarines!

10.  Welcome to the Barney Fife Pistol Range

9. She’s the Darjeeling of the Tea Party? 

So it’s the nudes vs. the dorks?

Blog Guy, I’m looking to join a rugby team. I saw your item about Naked Rugby, but I seem to recall there are two different kinds of rugby. Is that right?

Sure. There’s the Stark Naked Rugby, and then there’s the Traditional Old-Fashioned Rugby.

Right! Traditional Old-Fashioned, that’s the one I want. I’m in! Tell me about it.

Well, you smoke a pipe and wear a top hat and frock coat, and zip around on your Segway, as you…

Wait a minute, Blog Guy. If this is Traditional Old-Fashioned Rugby, what are they doing on Segways?

Oh, they use older Segways, not the brand-new models.

The club doesn’t have a dress code, huh?

Welcome to another edition of our popular feature, “Stuff Maybe We Should Have Mentioned in the Photo Caption, but didn’t.”

For newcomers to the blog, the concept is simple. We just show photos that seem to raise a lot of unanswered questions.

Take these pictures of “Toni,” for instance. The caption says she’s standing on the street in Toronto, “half naked to promote her private club.”

Really? Maybe I just need to get up to Toronto more often, but what the hell kind of club does Toni have? Are these stamp collectors? Origami enthusiasts?

I mean, Toni’s club may be private, but she doesn’t have anything else that is. If you want privacy, don’t stand outside with your dress down around your knees, which tends to attract the riff-raff pretty fast.

But I’ve said enough. I don’t want to jeopardize my online application to the club.

Nobody booed, and the players were nude?

Okay, Blog Guy, it’s been two weeks since you wrote about any stupid sports. You must have something by now.

I sure do. Let’s turn our attention to rugby.

Hey, rugby may be foreign, but it’s not stupid!

It is when you play it naked, like the Nude Blacks of New Zealand.

Naked rugby! Who do they play against?

Last weekend they played a female Spanish team. The women wore clothes, as you can see here, and they played before a crowd of 1,500 people.

Oh, and don’t drink the water…

Blog Guy, you’re not gonna believe this. I live in Mexico City, and I saw some dude showering outside a few days ago!

Yeah, the city council set up some shower booths to teach people how to save water while taking a shower.

Really? Could that be effective?

Probably. I know if I ever had to shower in public it would be the fastest one I ever took.

Using that logic, I bet public outdoor toilets would lead to even more water conservation.

Yeah, or else some pretty serious kidney damage. Look, here’s the thing. Often, campaigns like this one are really aimed at teaching citizens something completely different.

Juicy fruits in our birthday suits?

Sit down, sir. As your neighborhood bank manager I appreciate you coming to us for your small business loan. Now, tell me a little about your idea.

It’s pretty simple. I plan to launch Lamar’s Buck Naked Door-to-Door Fruit.

Excuse me? The fruit is naked?

No, the people selling it are. We have a naked man and woman deliver fruit to your house in wheelbarrows. It’s never been done before.

Perhaps there’s a good reason for that.

Anyway, they’re selling apples and oranges… No bananas, or melons, too much risk of double entendre with those. We’ve done our homework, and we think we’ll make a fortune.

Go ahead, I’ve seen worse… Well, maybe not…

Blog Guy, what is your policy on negotiating with extremists?

My what?

Your policy. Now that you qualify as a Senior Blogger, you have to take some shifts directing counter-terrorism tactical units. You didn’t see that in the Facebook Network rules?

No, I guess I just clicked on AGREE, like everybody else. But I’ll tell you this, I will never negotiate with extremists. We will not compromise.

So what kind of heinous group are they from, anyway, and what are they threatening to do?

They are average people from Belgium, threatening to take off all their clothes in public.

There were no floats? I didn’t notice!

Okay, it seems a large fire swept through Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival center this week, “destroying thousands of costumes and floats and throwing preparations for Brazil’s annual festival of hedonism into chaos.”

I know this is a serious thing. They work pretty hard all year long on that stuff, and Carnival starts in three weeks.

But COSTUMES? Really?

We have hundreds of photos a year from Brazil’s Carnival, and I can’t use most of them here because I don’t have enough of those expensive protective rectangles to cover the stuff that needs covering to protect my readers. Now suddenly we’re acting like the wardrobe from “Cats” went up in flames?

I’m trying to imagine the emotional conversations with the samba dancers this week.

We NEED three more naked chicks?

Somebody please help me out here.

We have a story about how the Louvre, which is this really big museum in Paris, is asking the public to help raise the cash to buy it a 16th century painting deemed a “national treasure” by art experts.

The Louvre has scraped together $4.19 million for “The Three Graces,” an oil painting by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, but they still need another $1.35 million.

Here’s the thing. The Louvre already displays about 35,000 works of art. Now it turns out THIS is the one they needed all along?

Really? Then shouldn’t the person who bought the wrong 35,000 paintings get a verbal warning or something?

Also, does anybody else wonder how a painting by a German artist got to be a French national treasure?

You can see the painting on the right, with a few of those rectangular bars I am required to add for the protection of my readers. I mean, the Louvre needs three more naked chicks about as much as Charlie Sheen does.

Gives new meaning to buck privates?

Blog Guy, I know you’re an expert on military tactics and strategies. What do you think is the most effective fighting force in the world today?

That would be China’s feared Commando-Style Commandos.

I’ve never heard of them. Are they lean and mean?

No, more like lewd and nude. They operate stark-naked, creating diversions to help the regular troops.

They sneak up on the enemy, then jump up and down, naked and screaming. Their chief weapons are disbelief and revulsion.

Look here, you can see them in training, waddling silently to encircle the enemy, huddled around campfires on maneuvers…