September 1: What's Jen Clicking on Between Newscasts

I'll be honest: I have fire fatigue.  Some days, covering a story brings up something else that piques my curiosity.  Something that I've always had a vague idea about, but never had the excuse to research and write about -- like the Mount Wilson Observatory, yesterday; I knew it was up there, and really old and historic, but until I wrote about it yesterday I never realized the scientific significance and the historic value of the equipment that's up there.

I have never visited the Observatory before, but now, if it survives the fire (and I hope it will) I will make a point of it.

Then there are days like today.  News fatigue sets in, and you get stories, in this space, about weird food and animals and stuff like that.  After the newscast today, I looked at my Twitter homepage and there was this story about baby chicks going down a conveyor belt and being chucked (WITH VIDEO!) into a grinder.  Oh, sheesh, really?  Thanks, Huffington Post, for that (yes it is kind of a mind blowing piece, but not at 7am ... enjoy your eggs, everyone!!)

But then in the sidebar column (as I was looking away from the picture of the chicks) there was, in the Comedy 23/6 section, a thing called  "7 Sites You Should Be Wasting Time On Right Now: Choose Your Favorite!"

Well, I didn't have to look far for mine.  Fancy Fast Food.  (You knew it would be that one, didn't you?)  "This site takes fast food and turns it into gourmet meals. Le Chicken McConfit (pictured here) is made exclusively from McDonald's meals," it says.

HOW awesome is THAT?!  We've come full circle.  Remember, the Egg Mc Muffin is really just a bastardization of your classic Eggs Benedict.

Check out the video here, to see how the guy running this site does it, and makes this dish out of the following ingredients:

• 1 ten-piece order of Chicken McNuggets

  

• 1 large French fries
• 1 medium Coke
• 1 Fruit & Walnut Salad
• 1 Barbecue sauce
• 1 Hot Mustard sauce
• 1 Sweet ‘N Sour sauce
• 2 bottles of water
• organic chives (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Just don't think about how those chickens got made into nuggets.

Now, even though this site was my #1 choice (before I even looked at the others) it's only ranked #7 by Huffington Post readers.  Come on, what could be better?  This guy goes from this:

to this??

It's brilliant.  Anyway, I digress .. my 2nd favorite (ranking #2 on the Huffington Post piece) is The People of WalMart.

Time Magazine says the site "catalogs the gloriously absurd attire that is sported by the big-box retailer's customer base. There are photos of fat people in sweatpants, a child with a rattail and a guy wearing a Captain America costume. But the website's founders, three guys in their early 20s who preferred to provide only their first names, aren't interested in stereotypical rednecks or run-of-the-mill mullet sightings. "Mullets are too common," says Andrew, who is 23 and lives in Indiana. "We want to document the kind of stuff that when you see it, you immediately have to call someone and be like, 'Dude, I'm at Wal-Mart and I just saw a goat.' "

The site is barely functional and prone to crashing, as I've found out by trying to peruse it a little this morning, which is a surprise to its developers who were really only doing it for fun, with a few of their friends.  More from Time:

"...the last week in August, People of Walmart went viral, earning mention on websites like Funny or Die. Its traffic increased by 700% on Aug. 27 alone. Photo submissions went from one or two to more than 120. The flood of visitors has even crashed the site."

These are my favorite of the 7 sites.  Yeah, the "Snuggie Sutra" gets an honorable mention, but for now I'll move on and back to the news stuff.  I only have time to waste on two.

See what else Jen is clicking on ...