Daily Dirt: All aboard to Goofy Ridge, Tightwad and Pee Pee!

Daily Dirt for Jan. 30, 2022

Bat soup, anyone? You’ll find the answer to that and more in today’s three thoughts … welcome to Vol. 198 of the Daily Dirt.

1. We all love a good guffaw when it comes to bizarre names for towns and cities. Who hasn’t chuckled when they have said “Monkey Run, Mo.” out loud? Or “Normal, Ill.” (As opposed to “Semi-Normal, Ill.”) With that train of thought in place, here are actual town names I find downright hilarious. Hopefully, you do, too:

Gold medal: Goofy Ridge, Ill. It’s located in Quiver Township (which isn’t bad in its own right) in Mason County. The population is about 350. It reportedly got its name when after a night of drinking, a game warden declared he was sober enough to shoot a walnut off a volunteer’s head. Fortunately the game warden succeeded, prompting him to say it was “one damned goofy thing to do” — and that name stuck.

Silver medal: Tightwad, Mo. It’s in the western part of the state in Henry County, with a population of about 60. The town was (allegedly) named out of spite following an incident in which a store owner ripped off a postman on a transaction.

Bronze medal: Pee Pee, Ohio. The town was named after the Pee Pee Creek that took its name from a settler who carved his initials “P.P.” on a nearby tree. Kind of a boring account, considering a number of other possibilities. Pee Pee is in Pike County in the southern part of the state. About 7,000 people live in the county.

Honorable mention: Hell, Mich., Santa Claus, Ind., Boring, Ore., and of course, Intercourse, Pa.

2. If I had my way …

• All new houses would be built with small refrigerators in the living room or the main TV viewing area. That would eliminate having to get up and journey to the kitchen for your next Zero Sugar Coca-Cola.
• All supermarkets would be required to have ample supplies of disposable Styrofoam cups, with the larger top lip.
• All supermarkets, convenience stores, etc., would be required to have ample supplies of the various Reese’s candies that feature the peanut butter flavoring in some fashion. Those all-peanut butter Reese’s cups are amazing but often hard to find.
• All supermarkets would be required to have ample supplies of those smaller, mini-karts. There are often dozens and dozens of the larger, cumbersome carts available, but those smaller ones are all too often gone
• More and more soft drinks are now available in the 7.5-ounce cans, which normally come in either a six-pack or a case of 10 or 12. I’m going to need those cages supersized to 20 or 24 at some point. And whoever came up with the idea of those mini-cans should be awarded a Nobel Prize or something similar.

3. In an ongoing quest to find the worst food dishes served around the globe, here’s the latest update:

• In many Asian countries, bat soup is considered a delicacy. Yes, bat soup. It’s exactly what you think it is. The soup contains whole bats, and according to reports “the meat of the bat has a strong and rather unpleasant odor.” Consider all that the next time you are sitting in line (and complaining) at a McDonald’s drive-through.
• Some Mexican restaurants offers specialty dishes built around the eggs of large, black ants. Yep, that’s all I needed to know. I didn’t any read any farther.
• In Iceland, for some reason “hakari” is popular, at least to some folks. Hakari is basically rotten shark meat. “Chefs have to wait patiently until it reaches the desired stage of decay,” says one recipe. No-o-o-o thanks. Just gimme a quarter-pounder and some fries and I’ll meat you at home.

Steve Thought O’ The Day
Steve thinks if you added potato chips to that one recipe, you’d be certifiably bat chip crazy.

Who doesn’t want to see Steve wash down a bowl of bat soup and a side order of hakari with a cold Zero Sugar Coca-Cola?