Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you.

Following a link to a link to a link led me to “Cleaning pennies with taco sauce” on Cruftbox.

When I was in high school back in the 80s, I worked at Taco Bell. Work was not really tough at Taco Bell, so I had lots of time to goof off. One of the things I discovered was that the hot sauce would clean pennies. I’ve showed the trick to people many times over the years, but never really understood why it works so well.

I looked on the internet and found a wide variety of explanations from the silly ideas, like the idea the somehow hydrochloric acid is forming to the more reasonable ideas involving the acid already in the sauce. None of them seemed to make complete sense to me.

I decided to do a little investigative journalism and find out.

CNet News.com has eight photos taken inside Dell’s Austin assembly plant.

X-Entertainment has generously made many of the best 80s TV commercials available for free download, in Windows Media (WMV) format. Note that the latest Winamp 5.x plays WMV just fine.

We’re talking the Stephen King American Express ad, a LazerTag ad, and the annoying Encyclopedia Britannica kid with the red shirt and long hair, among many others.

Be sure to support the site by clicking the ad links on the video download pages.

Note: It’s just an image. Clicking it will not accomplish anything.