My Congresswoman Virginia Foxx caught a lot of heat for her support of the Teapot Museum in Sparta, NC.  Well let me tell you that there are stranger ideas out there and Mental Floss has a few of them.  They include:

• The Barbed Wire Museum (McLean, Texas)
• The Washington Banana Museum (Auburn, Washington)
• The Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia (Burlingame, CA)

I doubt anyone would have thought twice about the Teapot Museum if it hadn’t been for the fact that Rep. Foxx was trying to get federal funding for the project and it made a perfect political punching bag for thsoe folks trying to attack pork barrel spending.  There’s also no indication that any of these museums received any kind of public funding, but if they did then I’d say by comparison the Teapot idea looks great.  And lest we make fun of people who collect and marvel at things like teapots and PEZ dispensers let’s remember that eBay was started as a PEZ trading site.  Those PEZ geeks are laughing all the way to the bank.