A Void: a book without the letter "E"

‘E’ is the most commonly used letter in the alphabet. That’s why it’s so hard to believe that a whole novel exists without a single use of the letter ‘e’.

The book in question was originally written in French in 1969, by author Georges Perec. La Disparition (The Disappearance) is a 300-page lipogrammatic novel – a kind of book that consists of constrained writing or a word game.

There is absolutely no mention of ‘e’ throughout all 300 pages, except the author’s name of course. Even the most common word of the French language, ‘le’ (which means the), makes no appearance at all. La Disparition was later translated into English by Gilbert Adair, with the title A Void.

Georges says that he was careful not to let the word puzzle overpower the story. The book itself is an elaborate metafictional word puzzle, and a parody of noir and horror fiction. Georges employs several stylistic tricks, gags, plot twists, and finally, a grim conclusion.

The plot of ‘A Void’ follows a group of people looking for their missing companion, Anton Vowl. Vowl is a middle-aged scholar who shares the author’s liking for wordplay. Slowly, with the help of the clues left behind by Vowl, his friends figure out which symbol is missing, but aren’t comfortable discussing it. Anyone who risks talking about it could be fatally injured.

Georges keeps the book alive with antic humor. And there’s something for the reader as well – to find a solution to the logogriph, the world puzzle. The book is littered with hints such as the absence of chapter five. If you love solving puzzles and linguistic gymnastics, this is one book you cannot miss.

French Cafe Charges Extra for Rudeness

The French aren’t exactly world-famous for being polite, which is why I was quite surprised when I read about this. A French Café is actually charging customers extra for being rude to its staff, and offering discounts to those who are nice.

The Petite Syrah Café, located in the French Riviera city of Nice, has the new pricing scheme on display. If you walk in and simply ask for “A coffee,” you will be charged €7 ($9.5). For “A coffee please,” the price is much lower – €4.25 ($6). And if you decide to go the distance and say, “Hello, a coffee please,” that will make the folks at the Petite Syrah so happy they’ll only charge you €1.40 ($2).

The concept is so awesome – I think it’s a win-win. I’m sure the patrons love $2 coffees; they’d keep coming back for more and be polite each time. It’s great for business and makes a nice work environment, so the staff at the café must be happy too.

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Guy Spends a Year Tracking Down Woman He Met Last New year’s Eve after She Tells Him “Find Me”

25-year-old New Zealander, Reese McKee, started a social media campaign that fired the imagination of thousands of romantics on the internet. His plea for help in locating the whereabouts of his soul-mate went viral within hours. In fact, he had to delete the campaign because it all started to spiral out of control.

In his original campaign, Reese said that he met a girl on New Year’s Eve, 2012, in Hong Kong. He spotted her crying alone on the side of a road; she was lost and couldn’t find her friends. “I just cheered her up,” Reese said. “I sort of have this undeniably bad sense of humor that no one can resist laughing at.” The two spent the night partying, dancing and talking, before the girl caught up with her friends again. As they parted, she told Reese that her name was ‘Katie’ and she was from DC. She let him take a picture of her, and left with these final words: “Find Me.”

The next morning, as Reese looked at Katie’s photograph on his phone, a flood of great memories came back to him and he was determined to find her. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember the e-mail address she’d given him, so he decided to turn to Facebook for help.

“The chances are billions to one, but I like those odds. This is me putting all my chips on the table because it’s go hard or go home and I am not going to give in.” These words, apparently, were enough to touch the hearts of thousands of netizens, who began to frantically search for ‘Katie from DC’. They tracked down the real Katie in no time at all, and bombarded her with tons of messages. It all got so out of hand that Katie had to delete her social profile.

To make matters worse, Reese’s worldwide manhunt received widespread media attention. Although he refused to make an appearance on T.V., his story has been covered extensively. He admits that he didn’t realize his campaign could attract so much attention, and says that things quickly spiraled out of control.

“We found the girl,” said Reese. “She is from DC, she’s not there at the moment, but she’s sorta taken down all her public profiles for a bit.” The general impression is that Katie isn’t too happy about being found. But MailOnline has a different story to tell. They tracked down 20-year-old Katie, to get a statement from her. According to their reports, she’s very much single and is actually “waiting for him to get in touch.”

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Lady Sif visits children's hospital

Jaimie Alexander plays Lady Sif in the Thor movies. She recently visited the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, but instead of going as Jaimie Alexander, she went as Lady Sif. Sword, armour, the works.

OK, so maybe it's not quite as cool as having Thor himself turn up, but it's still pretty damn cool. Especially since that sword looks kinda real.

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The Unbelievably Cute Blacknose Valais Sheep

The Valais Blacknose sheep are some of the cutest animals I’ve ever seen. On first glance, they don’t even look real; many people have mistaken them for well-crafted felt projects. I wonder why they aren’t more popular on the internet. They do have a Facebook fan page with over 3,500 likes, butI think they ought to be more well-known.

The Blacknose sheep originate in the Valais region of Switzerland. They are a dual-purpose breed, raised for wool as well as meat. Their most notable features – a black face, black ears, black knees and legs. The rest of their coat is stringy, white and unbelievably fluffy; you’d just want to cuddle up with them. But they’re a pretty tough breed.

 

The Valais Blacknose are a Heritage breed. These domesticated animals are well suited to live in the extreme climatic conditions of the high mountains and are good at grazing on steep, rocky slopes. Each sheep weighs 80 to 100 kilos and produces about 4 kilos of wool a year. Their earliest mention dates back to 1400 A.D., but they were first recognized as a separate breed in 1962.

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A girl is dating her way to top restaurants

A 23-year-old struggling actress from Canada is trying to prove you don’t have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to enjoy the finest cuisine Toronto restaurants have to offer. With a predestined name like Erin Wotherspoon, this Canadian foodie is on a mission to date any rich men who can afford to satisfy her appetite for gourmet food.

Burgers and fries? That’s not this girl’s idea of a fine meal, and to make sure she gets the best food money can buy, she goes out on fancy dinner dates with unsuspecting men and then ditches them. She wines and dines every night of the week with different gents and then spills the beans on her blog where she writes snippets of her usually-bad but sometimes-good dates. “I’ve got a pretty face and a pretty extensive Urban Spoon wish list. We all know that getting what you want in life can be tough. Which is why I’ve decided to let someone else finance my dreams. My dream? To eat in pretty restaurants without costing me a penny,” the introductory message on her site reads. Erin likes to chew and tell, and confirms that there is no such thing as a free meal, suggesting that readers should “follow me to learn who I screw over, bang and love as I navigate Toronto’s diners, drive-ins and dives.”

She also writes about her “victims”, who are usually unattractive men; A date with a unibrow-sporting gentleman and particularly bad dinner conversations are on Erin’s list of negative experiences, but it seems there’s nothing this girl can’t stomach in order to fulfill her ultimate goal – to sink her teeth into juicy, delicious elk tartar, foie gras or her favorite oysters. She finds her dates on various dating websites where she likes to take on different fictional names, depending on what type of men she wants to lure in. The actress even has an account on J Date – a Jewish dating site. “Willing to convert to Judaism for a good meal? umm YES,” she writes. Like taking candy from a baby.

Now that her secret is out, Erin Wotherspoon is really walking on thin ice, as some people have expressed their burning desire to dine and dash, leaving her with a huge check to pay. Something similar actually happened to her and it’s all documented on her blog. A man who she actually found interesting asked her to split the bill after showing her a picture from her site reading “Date Night! Oh wait, that’s every night…” But you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs and even after she paid her own bill, the two hit it off and made a night of it. Still, this serial dater has learned her lesson and says that from now on she plans on only going out with “guys who are fresh off the boat & literally have no friend based established in the country yet.” So, emigrants beware!

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World's Biggest Burger Fan

For 57-year-old Harry Sperl of Daytona Beach, Florida, burgers are not only a tasty fast-food treat, but also representations of American popular culture that deserve a shrine. “They taste good, they look good and the hamburger is an icon of the United States of America”, explains Sperl. This is the reason why for the last 23 years, this burger enthusiast has been adding hundreds of items to the “Burgerbilia”, the world’s first (and, so far, only) burger museum, located in Sperl’s own home.

Sperl has been using burger memorabilia to decorate his house: he has a hamburger phone, a cheeseburger lamp and even a custom-made hamburger bed with little hamburger pillows. He also has custom carpets with hamburger designs, hamburger-shaped music boxes, erasers, clocks, trays and lots of magnets. Sperl’s passion began when he purchased some hamburger items from a toy store. From that moment on, not only did he start collecting items for the Burgerbilia from flea markets and garage sales, but he also designed his pride and joy – the Hamburger Harley, a unique hamburger-shaped tricycle, with onion wheels and pickle handles. He originally thought of using a Volkswagen Beetle, but he decided he didn’t like the sound of the air cooled flat 4 engines. Sperl then considered a hamburger dragster or a cheap go-cart, but in the end his love for Harley Davidson got the best of him.

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Woman Decides to Live in the Victorian Era

 

While some people want to make the most of technology by adding more and more fancy gadgets to their daily lives, others simply prefer going back to the basics. Meet Sarah Chrisman, a 33-year-old Seattle resident who decided to ditch almost every aspect of modern life, from cooking to clothing, and embrace a Victorian-era lifestyle.

Although she has liked the stories from the Victorian age ever since she was a little girl, the big change took place just 4 years ago, when Sarah received a unique birthday present from her husband. “I have always loved the Victorian era, ever since I was a little girl. My first corset was given to me by my husband on my 29th birthday, and unexpectedly, I really thoroughly enjoyed it.” The feeling she had when wearing the corset determined her to change her lifestyle entirely: Sarah now wears custom-made Victorian clothes, tries not to use any appliances that didn’t exist in the Victorian age (such as the now mundane washing machine), gave up her car for a 100-years-old bike, she uses old fashioned cleaning methods instead of modern detergents and cooks using the recipes found in 19th century women’s magazines. That’s right, this modern-day Victorian woman enjoys the 1889 edition of Cosmopolitan, and because she considers her lifestyle very exciting, she even wrote a book, “Victorian Secrets. What a Corset Taught Me About the Past, the Present and Myself”. She also studied the Victorian age etiquette.

The people’s reaction to Sarah’s nowadays unconventional ways is usually a positive one, with very few exceptions. “People have mixed reactions. Some are enthusiastic and positive. The other day an old man ran out of a restaurant to tell me I made his day, he said: . But there are perfect strangers who find what I wear such a point of contention. Some women scream oppression — that I choose to wear a corset. But I focus on the positives. I don’t find it restricting at all, in fact I’d venture to say that it’s liberating to live how I want to!” Sarah chooses to explore only the bright side of the Victorian age. What you may not have known is that some ideas of today’s technology were born in those times. “As far as technology goes, people don’t realize how early a lot of technology came into being. You could say the Victorian internet was born in the 19th century. And in the 1870s, two inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell independently designed the telephone. And the world’s first public electricity supply was provided in late 1881, when the streets of Godalming in the UK were lit with electric light”, Sarah explains. 

Although Sarah and Gabriel have cut out or reduced the use of modern day technology, they are very much aware of the times they live in. “We can’t travel back, though we try.” But there is one aspect of modern life not even this Victorian-age lady can’t resist, Facebook. Yup, she has her own Facebook account.

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Pokemon Family Cosplay

This picture should be titled “parenting done right”. Pokémon is perfectly suited for family cosplay, and if you have to make a grocery run while you’re in costume, so be it. The little Pikachu is looking especially precious.

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Awesome Reading Nets for Libraries

This is the Reading Net designed by Spanish creative studio Playoffice. Of course I'm not sure how much credit Playoffice actually deserves. It's not like they invented nets, they just came up with the idea of hanging them in home libraries to give your kids a place to hang out and read the herpes-free books you've collected over the years.

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