MY LIFE: A Visit To Peculiar Missouri, Part 2: You Are Now NOT Entering The Twilight Zone, Have A Nice Day!

This is from me, and NOT reprinted. - OlderMusicGeek

A link to Part 1

So an hour or so later finds my daughter and I going up the Peculiar ramp.

We head up the Peculiar main street. I have to admit that we are disappointed to find nothing strange or out-of-place. Looks like a typical small Midwestern town. No buildings that look they're a cover or disguise for a secret lab or giant spaceship, damn it!

We stop to get gas at a Casey's, a typical – not peculiar! – convenience store you find scattered all over the upper Midwest countryside.

I asked the people in the store about their local restaurants. Nothing strange and unusual there either, damn it! A Subway, a Chinese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a truck stop, and a local greasy spoon.

And the people in the store seemed aggravatingly normal too! Didn't strike me as mind-controlled or demon-possessed or disguised aliens. Just typical small town Midwestern folk, damn it!


Well, in a vain hope of trying to find something peculiar, my daughter and I continue down the main street and check their other busy street.

Although we don't see anything peculiar, I make stupid jokes with my daughter, eyes rolling, about the Peculiar elementary school, Peculiar golf country club and Peculiar this-and-that.

It is at this point, I realize that this is exactly something my dad would do with us kids, and we would groan and roll our eyes too! Yes, so even though I'm becoming a woman, I'm still becoming my dad!


My daughter and I did – finally! - find something slightly peculiar in Peculiar. There, on the wall, of a small silo, at The Peculiar Feed Supply store, was a big ole happy face. My daughter even made me wait to take a picture of it, though typical teenager she was, she didn't want a picture of herself in front of it!


For lunch, my daughter went with the boring choice, Subway!

“Subway?! You're in Peculiar. You can go to a Peculiar restaurant, and you choose Subway?!”

“Yeah, why not?”

“What are you going to tell your friends when they ask where you ate in Peculiar?”

“I'll tell them I went to a Peculiar Subway!”

I just roll my eyes.

MY LIFE: A Visit To Peculiar Missouri, Part 3: The Robot Revolution And Why Peculiar Is Peculiar, And Not!

CULTURE/SOCIETY: Why Is 10:10 The Default Setting For Clocks And Watches?

I found this on Yahoo. I always wondered about this, and the answer was pretty much what I expected. But I still found it interesting and thought I'd share. - OlderMusicGeek

Why is 10:10 the Default Setting for Clocks and Watches?
by Matt Soniak - August 9, 2009 - 10:10 AM

Reader Humaira writes: “I have always wondered why clocks, watches, and timepieces always say (roughly) 10:10 before you set the correct time. If you go into a store selling any kind of time-telling device, that is the default factory setting. Why is that?!!”

First things first, let’s get the myths out of the way. There are plenty of people out there who think that clocks in advertisements and in-store displays are set this way memorialize Abraham Lincoln/John F. Kennedy/Martin Luther King Jr. because that was the time at which they were shot or died. In reality, Lincoln was shot at 10:15 p.m., and died the next morning at 7:22 a.m., JFK was shot at 12:30 p.m. CST and was pronounced dead 1 p.m. and MLK was shot 6:01 p.m. and pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m.

Another theory has it that 10:10 was the time that an atomic bomb was dropped on either Nagasaki or Hiroshima, and the setting is in memory of the casualties. The Fat Man bomb was actually dropped on the former at 11:02 a.m. local time and the Little Boy on the latter at 8:15 a.m. local time.

The real reason for the setting? Aesthetics. The 10:10 position gives the clock or watch a number of benefits:

• The hands not overlapping, so they’re fully and clearly visible and their styling can be admired.

• The arrangement of the hands is symmetrical, which people generally find more pleasant than asymmetry, making the product more appealing to customers.

• The manufacturer’s logo, usually in the center of the face under the 12, is not only visible, but nicely framed by the hands.

• Additional elements on the face (like date windows and secondary dials), usually placed near the 3, 6, or 9, won’t be obscured.

According to the folks at Timex (who set their products at 10:09:36 exactly), the standard setting used to be 8:20, but this made the face look like it was frowning. To make the products look “happier,” the setting was flipped into a smile (occasionally, you’ll still see the 8:20 setting on some clocks or watches where the manufacturer’s logo is at bottom of the face above the 6).