This morning, Lindsay Lohan is in the news because she failed a drug test and then Twittered (or tweeted) about it last night.  The news broadcast I saw this on said she, "poured out her heart".  To me, she is in the same category of "celebrity" as Paris Hilton, the husband and wife who crashed the White House party, and so many others who are famous for being famous.  All of that, following these people around, reading about them, wanting to know more is just a waste of my time.  WHY do I need to care about the latest drama in their lives and WHY does the media spend so much time on them?

So, back to the reason for this post.  I was looking at different news sites this morning, as I do every morning, looking for technology, science, or other news I can use, when I ran across a picture on one site of a man with many (turns out to be 400) straws in his mouth.  I thought, "what new craziness is being reported on now??"  So I clicked the picture and found myself on the web looking at pictures and short blurbs about The Guinness Book of World Records.

I collect basically useless information (just ask MBH) because I can, I guess, so this was a perfect site for me to visit.  I began to wonder why some people do the things they do in order to end up in this book.  I suppose there are several.

One is that they weren't even thinking about the book, they collect something (e.g., Mickey Mouse memorabilia), and someone else reports this to the Guinness people.  Another is that they want to be recorded forever, or, at least, until someone shows them up, in the book for whatever reason they can come up with.  There are probably others.  Go ask your therapist what those might be.

After reading the rest of this post you want to see more, the slide show begins here.  There is another set of 56 photos after the initial set, so just keep clicking the right-pointing arrow.

Here are three that I found most intriguing, because I don't know what would inspire others to do these things:

Yes.  This is a man rolling up a frying pan with his bare hands!  Apparently there are competitions, and the winner is the person who achieves the most compact roll.  The caption on this photo reads:

"The tightest circumference of a 30 centimeter (12-inch) aluminium frying pan, rolled with bare hands in 30 seconds is 17.46 centimeters (6.87 inches), set by Scott Murphy at the NXB Team Training Center in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on July 30, 2007."

The next one is truly bizarre in my book:

The caption:

"Melvin Booth (left) of Troy, Mich., had a combined fingernail length is 9.05 meters (29 feet, 8.3 inches). Lee Redmond(right), who had not cut her nails since 1979 and had them carefully manicured to reach a total length of 8.65 meters (28 feet, 4.5 inches), lost them when they broke off in a car accident in February."

According to an accompanying article, Lee admits that life is now easier without the nails.

The third one is the first one I saw of interest to me and is the real reason I continued to read:

She is considered the fastest female 100-meter swimming fin hurdler in the world.  She's German, and cuts a fine figure.

I am not disparaging these people.  They have found something to do with their spare time and they have pursued it with gusto.  I just don't understand how they chose those particular things and why they went that far with them.

So, as I said, there are people on this planet with too much time on their hands.  Apparently I have a little, or I wouldn't have found and written about these historical figures.

One more picture, though.  This one makes sense to me:

This is the world's largest display of Star Wars Clone Warriors done using "interlocking plastic bricks".  We're talking Legos here.  35,310 individual soldiers.  What's not to like?