While I have issues with Eddie Van Halen (nearly everything that's happened since the year and the album 1984, for example), it's getting hotter here and my birthday is coming up this month. While I generally grab a bunch of Old Navy flip-flops each year for a couple bucks, maybe it's time to upgrade to $30 ones that proclaim my allegiance to songs like "Panama"?

[Van Halen Store]

Local comedienne J.L. Godwin promises "the worst relationship advice on the planet, guaranteed" on her blog.

Her blog persona, The Big Chicken, is a self-described "big human person" who has a dream to "roller skate all across the land and make a movie about my funny adventures."

The Big Chicken jokes about breasts, legs and thighs and likes to eat bugs. Check out the adventures here.

• Illustration Ryn Gargulinski
• Last rites for a bumblebee

All hail the black-and-yellow bumblebee.

Many of us are reminded daily of how annoying bees can be—especially when we see the big, fat carpenter bee that somehow manages to stay bobbling through the air with the body the size of Asia. But many of us have also forgotten how painful sting can be.

The first and only time I was stung was as a toddler at a fateful family picnic in Dearborn, Mich. The incident forever prompted me to eat grilled food in the car. I have since learned not to swat, bat or otherwise make panicked flailing motions in a bee’s general direction. I've also learned not to wear vanilla-scented skin lotion while trekking through the forest after an equally ill-fated hike in upstate New York.

I thought I had insect habits mastered.

But recently, a stealthy little devil bee caught me by surprise. As I stuck my hand in a bucket to scoop out dead leaves. I felt a searing, sharp prick on my ring finger. I, at first, thought the prick was from a mesquite thorn or one of those burry goat heads, but as I pulled my hand from the bucket, I saw the prick was attached to a writhing, dusty, deflated bee.

Did I mention the word prick?

Remember when those wolf howling at the moon shirts were the ironic clothing item of choice? Well, Mountain Retail Store's selection of 3-D seeming animal face t-shirts take amusing ugliness to an entirely new level.

While the world focusing on one British wedding this weekend, let's take a moment to think of those who aren't quite so lucky in love, including Misery Bear.

Enjoy this compilation of minor mishaps from this weekend's Bring Your Own Big Wheel event in San Francisco. It will become immediately evident why they make participants sign a waiver.

This is disappointing to me on several levels. Am I not really a winner when those windows pop up? Is owning an unicorn less than the wondrous experience I dream it to be?

I don't really understand Earth Day at all, but this classic clip from Da Ali G Show with Christine Todd Whitman makes the event seem fresh and relevant, at least:

I can’t wait to put “quinoa” over a triple-word-score space on the new Scrabble: Cooking Edition. The twist is that players get bonus points for laying down food-related words and names of celebrity chefs.

Allowing the use of chef’s names is a clear violation of the rule prohibiting the use of proper nouns, but who cares?

This is quite possibly the only board game I’ve considered buying in more than a decade, and I see some serious Scrabble-athons on the horizon.

• Photo and experiment by Ryn Gargulinski
• Peeps at the start of experiment in Tucson tree.

Although the sugary snacks have several claims to fame—such as their astounding array of colors that now include bright blue, and shapes that go way beyond Easter chicks—their main claim to fame is their shelf life.

Peeps supposedly stay fresh, sweet and edible for an incredible two years. That is, of course, if you keep them wrapped in their plastic, far from greedy little fingers—and out of the Arizona sun.

We wanted to test Peeps' longevity through a Tucson summer so we stuck them on a stick in a tree last March, right before Easter 2010.

You’ll be amazed and perhaps even surprised at what we found.

First off, Peeps do not melt in the Arizona sun. They instead become hard and dense, not unlike those sugar roses on wedding cakes you’re not supposed to eat, but still try to every time.