#4 - I've seen exactly that. My college's urinals had temp-sensitive rubber pads that read "GO GOPHERS!" when you, eh, engaged them. They turned from black to the school's colors, which was a nice touch.

A friend used to write for a small-town paper in Oregon. In one article about cell-phone tower installations near private homes (or something like that) he quoted a homeowner saying "... they'll have to take out the stinkin' stove to install the thing!"

The furious interviewee called the paper insisting she'd said "sink and stove". My friend says he wishes he'd fudged it intentionally instead of just mishearing it, since it managed to spice up the otherwise dry article.

Zimbabwe announced that it is knocking 10 zeros off its currency:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008067808_apzimbabwe.html

I'd give it three months before those zeros make it back onto the new note series...

I'm from the midwest and have lived in Seattle for 3 years. I've found it hard to pick out "the" Seattle accent with all the transplants, but it's there. Sorta midwestern, sorta west-coast, a bit drawly. Really drawly in some cases, but not in the American southern sense. Grizzly Adams on morphine perhaps describes it.

Then there's Ballard, where even I (from rural MN) think they're exaggerating the Scandinavian thing to mess with the newcomers.

I wore glasses as a kid, big Cokebottle things that got me hassled all the time. Being reasonably studious, and needing to read things like "words", I kept wearing them.

Until around age 12 when I broke my only pair while on a weeklong camping trip. I found I could get by just fine without, and with a little exercise I trained my good (left) eye to focus well enough to read. When I got back to school I promptly ditched the gogs, and never got contacts as I don't like the idea of a piece of plastic getting stuck in my eye socket.

A year ago (I'm 26) I went in for a pre-op exam for Lasik surgery on my bad eye. It turns out that my lopsided vision (20/20 left, 20/100 right) has forced my eye muscles to overcompensate when focusing. Thus I couldn't get Lasik in my right eye because I'd probably wind up with double vision (horribly crosseyed). Most likely, any form of corrective lenses would cause the same issue as well.

Lesson: ditching the glasses is kinda dumb in the long term -- you may never be able to fix your broken eye :) I never did lose the "smart kid" tag... growing up in a small town, everything follows you forever...