Rene Descartes had a fetish for cross-eyed women.  He claimed the fetish stemmed from his childhood love being cross-eyed.

My childhood love wasn’t cross-eyed, which explains why I have a fetish for girls who aren’t cross-eyed.

The plastic tips on the end of shoelaces are called aglets, from the Old French aiguillette, which is a diminutive form of the French word for needle.  Before the invention of buttons, aglets were very helpful in fastening clothes. 

Before the invention of buttons????

Buttons have been around for thousands and thousands of years, but apparently more for decoration than functionality.

Functional buttons used to close or fasten clothes first appeared in Germany in the 13th century.

When you start with an exciting fact about aglets and then move to buttons, you know it’s going to be a good day.  No ifs, Ags, or Butts. 

First (and worst) pun using “aglets” and “buttons.”

The bikini was invented in 1946.  I don’t really understand how it was “invented” in 1946.  Could no one honestly figure this one out on their own?  Anyway, the “inventor” named the swimsuit after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests earlier the same year.  I was at the beach this weekend.  As great as bikinis can be, there really is a fine line between a swimsuit and a weapon of mass destruction.

I always wondered why people loudly hit their hands together to show their approval of something.  Why don’t we “armpit fart” or snort or just babble some gibberish when we are pleased? The act of clapping has been used as a sign of approval for basically all of recorded human history.  There were even professional clappers.  In France, for instance, a claque was a group of professional clappers (claquers).  They would go to French plays, operas, and concerts by the request of the director to make the performance seem like a bigger hit.  It was an old school laugh-track.  But claques weren’t always so jubilant.  They would also cement themselves as a form of extortion by threatening to boo a performance unless they were paid a handsome fee.  A claque seems like the most pompous, unintimidating organized crime ring ever.

The word “mortgage” comes from the Old French, mort gaige, literally meaning “dead pledge.”  The naming derives from the thinking that the deal dies when either the debt is paid or when payment is neglected.  “Dead pledge” should have been saved for something way cooler.  Like something a bunch of pirates created before they told the secret of where they buried the treasure.  Or something that you establish with your husband/wife to determine whether you pull the plug or not.   I’m going to stick with the pirate one.