Category: Facts
Did you know?
Did you know?
- Soap shavings can be used as a cheap substitute for parmesan in an emergency. Most people can barely taste the difference.
- Officially, all carpets in England have to be approved by the Royal Carpet Classification Board (RCCB) prior to sale since an incident in 1933 when Edward VIII, then Prince of Wales, was sold a carpet that turned out to be several thousand butterflies poised for a moment, completely covering the floor of a room at Fort Belvedere.
- Chestnuts, also known as 'The Devil's Hazelnuts' are not in fact a type of very small breasts but are the strange lumps of lint and gubbage found at the back of the sock drawer
- Before 'myspace', websites had to be hand-written on chalkboards, photographed with a 35mm film camera, processed, scanned in with a hand-scanner, saved as a GIF and emailed as an attachment to the guys at yahoo, who would decide whether to link to it or not.
- An acre away, between pigs discussing their litigation nightmares, there lies a sniper who has trained his sights on the back of your head, and will shoot it you look at any one website for more than two minutes.
Did you know?
- Six pairs of scissors a day are manufactured without blades or handles, just the bit in the middle where they pivot, and these escape from the factory, usually by flying out of the window and drifting along on breezes, until they come to rest in treetops and begin to build nests for the harsh winter months ahead.
- You're looking very pleased with yourself.
- The smell of a person's earwax can be collected in tiny bottles and used to fend off evil spirits.
- If a door is able to open both ways without being split in the middle like a saloon door or double doors, it would not qualify as an official door and could be taxed as a luxury.
- By way of opposition, the fire brigade has the RNLI, who douse fires using the sea collected in their turn-ups on returning from long voyages. Luckily, the fire brigade is always able to entice the RNLI to use up their sea-water supplies in bars extinguishing lit cigarettes before any real fires demand their attention.
Did you know?
- Before the invention of the apostrophe in 1873, common compound phrases such as didn't and weren't had to be spoken in full, which meant that every day had to include one extra hour to make up for all the time taken in conversations.
- If everyone in the world ate the same amount as the average Texan, by teatime we would have eaten the entire planet Earth and half of the moon.
- Cake was discovered accidentally in the middle ages by alchemists. The lead content was phased out over the centuries as the cost of the soft metal became prohibitive to bakers.
- Every day, approximately six million bits of string are mistakenly eaten as spaghetti. By one man.
- For each light bulb successfully manufactured, four thousand rejects have to be discarded in order to keep demand up.
Blogariddim 11 Crunk Genealogy mix from wayne&wax which is well worth reading.
Did you know?
- it is illegal to refuse the offer of a beer in Australia. As punishment, the president is entitled to his choice of any item from the perp's next barbecue.
- It is considered bad form to smoke outdoors in Holland as it is feared that the regular plumes of smoke may attract warring Native American Indians.
- An egg contains 90% of the recommended daily amount of yellow for an adult male. Three eggs could kill a child.
- Elephants and horses have the ability to communicate to one another in a language impenetrable to both other horses and other elephants. And mankind.
- Before DVDs were invented, people amused themselves by watching the flickering shadows of burning computers cast against the walls of abandoned cinemas by piles of melting betamax VCRs.
isan - Lent Et Douloureux from Trois Gymnopedies EP
i can't believe it's not easter
a lot of bullshit gets talked about the origins of easter, and particularly easter eggs, but when all's been said and done i think its time we agreed jesus founded islam live on BBC's songs of praise by shitting out no less than fourteen hundred different sized eggs, each larger than the last, on January 16th 1970.
Multiple Choice
Which entry won most "best attempt to bring cartoon violence into confrontation with our quotidian existence" award?
Which of these would be a worthy addition to the game of Cluedo?
Which answer correctly identifies the most popular killing spree of the specified year?
Recently, I was asked a very bad question in an interview: would you say cohesion in teamwork is a Good Thing? (And yes, the capitalisation was clear from their tone.) Now, unless the interviewer was very generously giving me the opportunity to mention that day’s “magic word” (cohesion), to be rewarded with a place on an agency waiting list and the possibility of cake, this question serves no purpose except to weed out morons*. The interview panel then proceeded to ask me several questions designed to see what I thought of “diversity”. Running through my mind like tickertape was the answer “whatever diversity is, it can’t achieved by a tickbox exercise blu-tacked on to the end of your recruitment procedures” but it failed to find my mouth. Well, at least it wasn’t multiple choice.
Runners up in the worst question asked at interview include "tell us a joke" and "what's your favourite album?". Both jobs were, at best, tangentially connected to comedy and music.
Mississippi John Hurt - Frankie (from Candy Man Blues: the Complete 1928 Sessions
or Anthology of American Folk Music (edited by Harry Smith) depending on the size of your purse or wallet.)
* or maybe those with a lacklustre English vocabulary, such as foreigners.
They're at it again...
The Baghdad proclamation of Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude, March 19, 1917, accompanied by 600,000 troops:
"…Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Since the days of Halaka your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried off to wars not of your seeking, your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in distant places. […]
It is the wish not only of my King and his peoples, but it is also the wish of the great nations with whom he is in alliance, that you should prosper even as in the past, when your lands were fertile, when your ancestors gave to the world literature, science, and art, and when Baghdad city was one of the wonders of the world. […]
But you people of Baghdad, whose commercial prosperity and whose safety from oppression and invasion must ever be a matter of the closest concern to the British Government, are not to understand that it is the wish of the British Government to impose upon you alien institutions. It is the hope of the British Government that the aspirations of your philosophers and writers shall be realised and that once again the people of Baghdad shall flourish, enjoying their wealth and substance under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws and their racial ideals. […]
Many noble Arabs have perished in the cause of Arab freedom...It is the determination of the Government of Great Britain and the great Powers allied to Great Britain that these noble Arabs shall not have suffered in vain. It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth, and that it shall bind itself together to this end in unity and concord.
O people of Baghdad remember that for 26 generations you have suffered under strange tyrants who have ever endeavoured to set on Arab house against another in order that they might profit by your dissensions. This policy is abhorrent to Great Britain and her Allies, for there can be neither peace nor prosperity where there is enmity and misgovernment. Therefore I am commanded to invite you, through your nobles and elders and representatives, to participate in the management of your civil affairs in collaboration with the political representatives of Great Britain who accompany the British Army, so that you may be united with your kinsmen in North, East, South, and West in realising the aspirations of your race."
Extracted from Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation, which is an essential read, an inessential paperweight and a completely useless replacement watering-can.
Olivier Messiaen - Oraison (1937) (from An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music Vol.4).
Before the 1903 Split
Lenin had a wonderful time in Shushenskoye, Siberia.
Hieroglyphic Being - The Strenuous Life (from Machines For Lovers)
Watch and learn
Walking too near the kerb is easily done, I should seek to avoid it if I were you. I do seek to avoid it myself, as I am me, and to be frank you could avoid it yourself without me being you. So don't do it, even though the fine example of a man that we are here to discuss was often to be found just millimetres from the kerb - on both the pavement and roadside, no less - wavering like a moth without due care and attention to the treacherous mobility scooters all around, likely to shunt him straight into the path of oncoming pensioners at any time in the villages and suburbs where he walked. It was a bad example he set in these instances, but they must be recorded for history's sake, for the sake of his story, in completeness and omitting nothing, despite what tears we might shed at the brutal truth of it, and what reams of foolscap we might use in explaining the disclaimer for the needs of today's insolent, litigious generation.
For the man whose life these writings celebrate was by no means afraid of danger as far as we are aware. In fact he spent a great amount of worry on the possibility of dangers he himself was not aware of, spending a small fortune at one time on insurance for "unknowable circumstances" that might befall him or his belongings. No claim was ever made on this policy, perhaps due to luck, perhaps because the circumstances, being unknowable, could never have been shown to arise, or perhaps, as I prefer, because of the very fearless attitude of the man. An attitude that made him oblivious to mortal danger and thus somehow immune from it.
So it is worth remembering, while we can learn from our subject, his attitudes, actions and writings, we should not take literally his example, for we are not guided by the same internal and mysterious wisdom. The wisdom, those internal forces, I mean, that made Kenneth Trax that most individual specimen of a man; the zenith of Kenneths.
Rite To Cure Disease, Chanted By Nuns [Part 2]
(from Tibetan Buddhist Rites From The Monasteries Of Bhutan: Remastered)
