1. My first find was a blog post by photographer Robert Bieber. After visiting the bird sanctuary at Cape St. Mary’s Beiber returned to his hotel to learn "just how strange Newfoundland can be.”

Beiber discovered that the shower in his room had the knob for hot water on the right and the knob for cold water on the left. The knob on the coldwater knob turned to the left to open but the hotwater knob turned to the right -- meaning the user has to turn the knobs in two opposing directions to get a mix of cold and hot water. The kicker, according to Bieber, is that the shower drain is in the opposite side of the tub from the faucet.

I don’t know, maybe you have to live in Newfoundland a while before you realize that the intricacies of our plumbing are really just the tip of our big iceberg of strangeness. I surf onward...

2. Karen, of BitStop, told readers of List of the Day’s World’s Best City Names that strange Newfoundland place names include: Come by Chance, Spread Eagle, Joe Batt's Arm, Blow Me Down, Tickle Cove, Ha Ha Bay, Snake's Bight, Bad Bay, Dead Man's Bay, Savage Cove, Wreck Cove, Petticoat Harbour and Devil Cove.

I may be a little biased but I think she forgot the best one, my hometown, Happy Adventure. Coolest. Name. Ever.

3.

This video of a strange fish caught in Burgeo was posted to YouTube in July 2008. According to a commenter it is a lesser deep sea angler… or maybe a decomposing bird. My money’s on the anglerfish hypothesis and not just so I can segue into this conversation...

Did you know that the male anglerfish lives solely to find a mate?

I know what you’re thinking – how’s that any different from the male of any species? Well, the male anglerfish has elevated to quest to a whole other level.

Male anglerfish² are signifantly smaller than their female counterparts and have trouble getting food in the harsh deep sea environment. The men...er males... need females to take care of them. When they find a female they bite into her and secreate a digestive enzyme that causes the breakdown of their bodies. The males slowly lose their digestive organs, then brain, heart and eyes before finally becoming nothing more than a pair of gonads fused to the female's side, releasing sperm in response to her hormones.

In the anglerfish world that's a healthy relationship. Think about that on Valentine’s Day.

4. GI Jane told the users of the Lounge at the Calorie Count forum that Newfoundland is the “place to go if you want to hear English spoken as it might have been a few hundred years ago." She continues, “I found a web-page of 'strange Newfoundland expression' and, to me, they sound perfectly normal!!”

Some of GI Jane’s expressions include 'smudge’ 'flipper' 'swig' and ‘clobber’.

Hmm... they sound perfectly normal to me too, but what do I know? I’m from an outport village called Happy Adventure¹.

5. Finally, Anne Porter told members of the Leonard Cohen Forum that Phil Churchill and Andrew Dale of The Once called Amelia Curran "Leonard Cohen's strange Newfoundland daughter (if Leonard Cohen had a strange Newfoundland daughter)."

I love Curran and you don’t have to listen long before you understand the comparison. If you’re not familiar with her work you should remedy that – her collection is available at iTunes.

If you’re still in the mood for Cohen check out The Once and their beautiful cover of his Coming Back To You.