At their most basic, fish have eyes very much like people that feature a cornea, iris, pupil, lens and retina. But there some major differences like the ability to see right and left simultaneously and the lack of eyelids. And, as a result of living without a neck to turn their heads, most fish can’t see anything below or directly behind them.

Fish eyes are a delicacy throughout southeastern Asia, and the giant eyes of tuna are offered in most Japanese grocery stores for eating. The eyes are simply boiled and seasoned to taste. Surrounded by muscle and fish fat, it is said to taste like squid.

While the results can sometimes be otherworldly, the use of a fisheye lens is more likely to be met with smiles and enthusiasm. Originally developed in the 1920s as a meteorological “lens for the whole sky,” the fisheye has developed quite a photographic following on account of the unique, unusual and often distorted images they often produce.

While fisheyes lenses are really fun to play with, a quality fisheye for your DSLR can cost well over $500 – a little much for what amounts to a toy for most people. Holga, which make great plastic film cameras, has developed a plastic lens for your digital camera and a fisheye attachment for just $40.

Yes, it’s plastic. And yes, it essentially turns your camera into a toy camera. But it’s a fantastic toy that can produce wall-worthy photos.

To maximize the fun, you’re really going to want the whole kit – for just $109 you get a wide angle, telephoto, macro and the newly released fisheye. And, unlike their plastic cousins, you don’t have to buy any film. Smile!

While they called themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, they were known as  “Shakers” on account of their crazy dancing and talking in tongues. To be fair, they had a lot of pent up energy to get out – they were completely celibate.

Beyond giving up sex, they sought spiritual perfection by living communally, regularly confessing their sins and by separating themselves from the outside world. They also believed in cleanliness, public sanitation and the purity of food.

And what was most remarkable about the utopian society beyond the now highly prized furniture was their strong belief in the full equality of men and women – a revolutionary idea 150 years before women had the right to vote.

At their height in 1840, there were more than 6,000 believers in 19 communal villages across the country. But given the vow of celibacy and the changing time, their numbers had dwindled to around 2,500 by 1875 and down to 1,000 by 1900. While there are a few remaining practitioners, the last sister from the original order died in Canterbury, New Hampshire in 1992.

To be sure, the rest of us still have shakers and they are for our spirits. And one great recent twist on the cocktail shaker is Metrokane’s Fliptop Cocktail Shaker, $29.

The 24-ounce shaker’s double-walled steel keeps condensation from forming on the outside, and the pop-up top with built-in strainer can be lock securely for leak-free mixing. It means having a dry grip, no fussing with that tiny top and no struggles or spills even late into the night.

Is there any doubt, Americans love hot dogs? They love them so much, in fact, that during “Hot Dog Season” – Memorial Day to Labor Day – Americans usually eat about 7 billion hot dogs, or 818 hot dogs a second. Surprisingly, Los Angeles residents consume the most hot dogs of any city. Less surprising, the airport where travelers bite up the most hot dogs – Chicago’s O’Hare International.

There’s just something undeniably delicious about an all-beef hot dog, especially when it’s cook to juicy perfection with a sweet and smoky flavor. One of the best tasting and understandably best-selling bargain hot dogs is the Bar-S Beef Frank. It’s an all-beef frank that can feed a crowd and save money that can go toward buying something important – like higher-quality liquors.

But as much as we love hot dogs, it’s important to be mindful of just how hot dogs can get in the summer. According to the Animal Protection Institute, if it’s 85 degrees out, the temperature inside a car, even with the windows left slightly open, can soar to 102 degrees in 10 minutes, and can reach 120 in just half an hour.

At those temperatures, dogs can easily fall victim to heatstroke and die. Working to keep dogs safe, Denice Pruett has invented an illustrated static cling window thermometer that she says “serves as an educational and safety tool.” The Too Hot for Spot thermometer, $13, is available directly through Pruett’s web site.

In an effort to make use of the enormous and growing amounts of scrap wood left over from the manufacture of Model Ts, Henry Ford starting making charcoal briquettes – a process of chipping the word, grinding the ensuing charcoal into powder before binding and pressing the mix into little squares.

From this the Kingsford Company, originally called Ford Charcoal, was created when E.G. Kingsford, Ford’s relative, brokered the site selection of the charcoal manufacturing plant. Kingsford remains America’s leading manufacturer of charcoal – they convert more than a million tons of wood scrap a year.

Once you’ve got a fire going, you’re going to want to cook the perfect steak. According to the New Yorker, you’re going to want a 14 to 16 ounce New York Strip steak that’s exactly 1½ inches thick. You’re going to want to bring it to room temperature by leaving it out of the refrigerator for 30 to 40 minutes, and before you put it on the grill, you need to push the edges to the center to make it as tall as possible.

With that steak cooked to perfection, you’re still going to need a knife to cut through the juicy goodness. To keep things as manly as possible, you could choose this great set of four steak knives, $20, that look like a hand-held saw. The serrated 5-inche blades are stainless steel and the easy-to-grip handles are plastic – hey, it’s 20 bucks, what did you expect?

“Scrabble,” means “to scratch or claw about clumsily or frantically,” according Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. It’s also such a popular game that it can be found in some form or another in one in three American households.

Madonna, Martha Stewart, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Keanu Reeves and Queen Elizabeth II are among the game’s fans who have played on one of the more than 150 million Scrabble sets that have been sold in 121 countries since its creation in 1931.

Scrabble was invented during the Great Depression by an out of work New York architect named Alfred Mosher Butts who studied what he believed were the most enduring games in history — board games, numbers games like dice or cards and letter games like crossword puzzles — and sought to combine all three.

Scrabble’s big break came when a vacationing Macy’s executive discovered the game and decided to stock the game. In 1954 alone, nearly four million Scrabble sets were sold.

Each game contains exactly 100 tiles, including the two blanks. All piled up, that’s a lot of tiles. If you lose one, Hasbro will replace all 100 tiles for about $7. The left over pieces have also recently been finding homes as custom cufflinks. Knoxville-based Stacey Steward will give you a pair of vintage Scrabble letters of your choosing with a silver bullet backing for just $13.