Karate

Karate (Karate) pr.Ka-Ra-tay or karate-do is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Islands from indigenous fighting methods, it is the fighting style of Karate, the sidekick of the eponymous hero in the animated TV series Batfink.

It is primarily a striking art using punching, kicking, knee and elbow strikes and open-handed techniques such as knife-hands and ridge-hands. Grappling, locks, restraints, throws, and vital point strikes are taught in some styles. A karate practitioner is called a karateka. But we need not dwell on this as this article concentrates mainly on the more important practitioner, Karate.

hmmm firm batfink

Karate was in the bath one day on one of the Ryukyu Islands and he was trying to figure out a way of being more badass than any mubber fubster alive. He never said "fucker" only "fubster" as he'd always know he was destined to be a violent children's entertainer.

Karate thought he'd organise a meeting between all the badasses in the land, except for hugo agogo who he thought was a twat.

Most baddases at the time practised a fighting system known as "ti" (or "tea"), popular among the pechin class of the Ryukyuans.

His plan was brilliant, he would get all bad abb mubber fubsters in the land together and they'd exchange new technique based on their training in a ti (tea). Many forms of Chinese martial arts were introduced to Ryukyu Islands by the visitors from China, mainly originating from the Fujian Province.

Karate had a plan up his sleeve, he would learn all of their bab abb moves and not tell them his. That way he could invent his own system of martial arts and call it karate, and what's more, make sure that he remained the moral and spiritual leader of the badaabbmubberfubsterfubbingcubs.

As soon as the other bad asses asked him to show his special karate move he simply used his new found skills in ninjitsu, Daito-ryu aiki-jujutsu, Shuri-te, Naha-te, Tomari-te, and internal wall skreeding to escape. He then waited for them to calm down and forgive him.

A screed is a flat board, or a purpose made aluminium tool, used to smooth concrete after it has been placed on a surface. Also used to assist in leveling the application of plaster.

Screeding is the process of cutting off excess wet concrete to bring the top surface of a slab to the proper grade and smoothness.

Wall screeder is the most inadvisable character class to use in many computer based RPG s.

But the only wall screeding you need to know about is the screeding used to construct the great wall of china, which karate built using his wall screeding skills. Karate had now become the greatest martial artist ever. Karate was able to retreat to his cave and was safe in the knowledge that he had kept his rivals in china and more importantly had managed to avert hugo agogo's attempt to invade china that night with his mongol hordes.

Karate was immortal now due to knowing all the martial art techniques.

Karate knew he could rest and meditate until all the other twabbing muddy fubbsters had died of old age and television had been invented. So he sat there until 1966 because he wanted to make sure he was in full colour awesomeness for his TV debut.

Karate arrived at a New York casting session looking for a new series to star in but to his horror, when he arrived hugo a gogo was trying out for the part of Karate as was Walter Timley (a talking bat from Surrey, England. better known as Batfink).

Karate was concerned for he knew that Walter Timley was classically trained actor with wings like a shield of steel. Walter had also taken elocution lessons, something which Karate had problems with, some people say he sounded like an American impersonating a Chinese man during his audition.

Karate was less worried about Hugo Agogo getting the part because he thought that Hugo was a bit of a twat.

Eventually Batfink got the part of Karate and Karate was forced to have steal wings crafted on his arms.

Fortunately a problem was discovered when a director asked Karate to practice Karate on Karate. Both Karate, the actor and Karate the character went to do a Karate chop on the other protagonist. Walter Timley was killed instantly and had to be replaced by his twin brother, Batfink. After some more confusion the director decided to give the role of Karate to Karate and Batfink to Batfink, though they gave the roll of Hugo Agogo to a classically trained actor as the real Hugo Agogo is some kind of twat.

Jazz

Jazz is an original American musical art form which originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States out of a confluence of African and European music traditions. Jazz borrowed heavily from blues, sharing both it's blue notes (flattened 3rd flattened 5th and flattened 7th) and also it's philosophy "the idea is not to make yourself unhappy but to make the listener unhappy". The main difference is in the delivery, while blues is delivered in a way to induce pathos for both the player and self pity for the listener (typically following a I-IV-I-V-I preogression) jazz attempts to make the listener feel bad while the player gloats shamelessly.

Below is a diagram showing the different faces of musicians taking solos in 3 different styles:



Jazz has, from its inception in the early 20th century, spawned a variety of subgenres, each bringing with it more outlandish slang, from the southern fried tinge of New Orleans Dixie land to the mind stomping psychodelic jibba jive of acid jazz. Below is a diagram of time plotted against slang with each of the key stages of jazz marked on as milestones, the graph indicates a possible future outcome of jazz slang based on previous trends usings oslow's meen trajectory of multiple regression trend prediction.



Origins

By 1808 the Atlantic slave trade had brought almost half a million Africans to the United States. The slaves largely came from West Africa and brought strong tribal musical traditions with them. Lavish festivals featuring African dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843

In the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play Western instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European-American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized such music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment.

Similarly many African slaves formed wandering bands where they whited up and played chamber music to a primarily African audience

Ragtime

Rag time was popularised between 1899 and 1918, rag time was probably created by the white composer William H. Krell. Krell was working on the first car wash (technically a carriage wash as cars were still not common place) he'd trained a young slave to wash the windscreen of incoming carriages and he'd personally entertain the dignitry while they waited with a piano recital. Unfortunately his classical pieces would last longer than time it took his slave to cleen the carriage windows (leading to long queues). So he invented a fast shuffle music based on cakewalk in 4/4 with the accents on the odd beats, he called it rag time as it matched nicely with the amount of time it took his slave to cleen the windows of a carriage with a wet rag.

In 1897 Krell published his "Mississippi Carriage-wash Rag" as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece. The classically-trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his "Original Rags" in the following year, then in 1899 had an international hit with "On the Rag." He wrote numerous popular rags combining syncopation, banjo figurations and sometimes call-and-response, which led to the ragtime idiom being taken up by classical composers including Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky.

New Orleans Music

New Orleans music refers to music played in New Orleans. A typical dixieland band would consist of a large brass section, a banjo, a washboard and some guy punching an array of miniature dogs.

Many early jazz performers played in the brothels and bars of red-light district and anywhere in public that allowed dogs. Among the peformers on the circuit was one Jelly Roll Morton

In around 1900 Afro-Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton toured with vaudeville shows around southern cities, also playing in Chicago and New York. Jelly Roll Morton claimed that he had actually invented jazz, this was not unusual for MOrton though as he had previously claimed to have invented shoes, the television (which hadn't even been invented yet) and trees.

Jelly Roll Morton claimed that his name had been given to him because of his ability to fit 9 jelly rolls in his mouth without chewing. Unfortunately just before a show folklorist Alan Lomax challenged Jelly Roll to eat the nine Jelly Rolls which he had stored in his attache case. Jelly Roll later (after the gig) confessed to Lomax that his "Jelly Roll" nickname is a sexual reference and proceeded to explain the whole scordid tale to him, unfortunately it was so rude that Lomax fell into a coma for 38 years.

In 1938 Lomax awoke from his coma, Lomax invited Morton to record music and interviews for the Library of Congress.

Lomax was very interested in Morton's Storyville days and some of the off-color songs played in Storyville. Morton was reluctant to recount and record these, but eventually obliged Lomax. Some of the Library of Congress recordings were unreleased until near the end of the 20th century due to their nature and the fact that some of the swearing was so far ahead of it's time that noone except Jelly Roll could understand them.


Swing

In 1994 R-Kelly unleashed a form of music on the world based on laid back soul and hip hop, he decided to call this music "swing". Unfortunately he didn't realise that Glenn Miller, Count Basie and Duke Ellington had already beaten him to the term swing 66 years ealier. Undetered by this setback he renamed his musical form r'n b unaware that in 1947, the term rhythm and blues was coined as a musical marketing term in the United States by Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine. R-Kelly was about to rename his musical format skiffle when several police officers burst into his home and arrested him.

The original swing music had of course already been invented and was known for it's slightly SWINGY feel.

European Jazz

Le jazz manouche est le style révélé par Django Reinhardt et Stéphane Grappelli. La relève a tout d'abord été prise par ceux qui côtoyaient Django, c’est-à-dire entre autre la famille Ferret dont les représentants actuels sont Boulou Ferré et Elios Ferré. La musique manouche — pas le « jazz manouche » — existait bien entendu avant Django ; mais ce dernier, en introduisant le jazz dans la culture manouche, a réussi à créer un nouveau folklore. Les musiciens manouches lui vouent un véritable culte, dont la célébration se concrétise par un festival qui a lieu tous les ans à Samois-sur-Seine en seine et marne, vers fin juin, où l'on va même jouer sur la tombe de Django pour lui rendre hommage.



bebop

In the mid-1940s bebop performers helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music into the inaccessible music which jazz fans love today.

In February 1940 saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk gathered for a meeting about how jazz had become too accessable and acceptable, they yearned for the days when respectable folk ran away from Jazz. During this meeting they discussed a number of theories where you could play every note that wasn't in the accompaniment and still sound like you were playing with the band.

The basic idea was that if you know enough musical theory and are able to play the right notes then you can play the wrong notes all of the time and noone will notice. If however you walk up to an instrument without at least a strong knowledge musical theory and try and play everything wrong then it will just sound like noise.

Thus jazz became unpopular again. Where it has proudly remained to this day.

I is for Illusion

This week I've been learning about illusions, An illusion is a distortion of a sensory perception, the most common form being optical illusions. This is not to say that all illusions are optical though. The famous illusionist David Copperfield tried auditory, tactile and finally olfactory (smelly) illusions before settling on optical illusions, some people say he was the greatest olfactory illusionist ever to live but rumour has it that he gave up olfactory illusion in order to break into television (which at the time had no smellysence like it does today).

optical illusions are the most well known and understood form of illusion. The emphasis on visual illusions occurs because vision often dominates the other senses. For example, individuals watching a ventriloquist will perceive the voice is coming from the dummy since they are able to see the dummy mouth the words. This illusion is sometimes so good that parents fail to notice anything sinister about their children watching a show primarily about a man with his fist up a little boy's bottom grinning like a cheshire cat.

Some illusions are based on general assumptions the brain makes during perception. These assumptions are made using organizational principles, like Gestalt, an individual's ability of depth perception and motion perception, and perceptual constancy. Other illusions occur because of biological sensory structures within the human body or conditions outside of the body within one’s physical environment

Mimes are known for a repertoire of illusions that are created by physical means. The mime artist creates an illusion of acting upon or being acted upon by an unseen object. Unfortunately mime artists get too close to the illusion of these unseen objects and develop the belief that mime is actually art rather than tedious, this has been know to reduce their life expectancy

Mimes are often confused with clowns, the main difference is that a clowns stupidity makes his car doors fall off where as a mime pretends to mourn the loss of his car doors. Noone knows why.



Optical Illusions

An optical illusion is always characterized by visually perceived images that, at least in common sense terms, are deceptive or misleading. Therefore, the information gathered by the eye is processed by the brain to give, on the face of it, a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source.

The Muller-Lyer illusion is one of the most famous optical illusions. It was created by German psychiatrist Franz Muller-Lyer in 1889. The Muller-Lyer illusion consists of two arrow-like figures, one with both ends pointing in, and the other with both ends pointing out. When asked to judge the lengths of the two lines, which are equal, viewers will typically claim that the line with outward pointing arrows is longer.



Unfortunately in 1891 a young psychiatrist called Funk Fritz-Gruber invented an illusion of much greater significance, Fritz-Gruber invented the worlds first physical illusion, he took Muller-Lyer's illusion and made it so that even if you measured the lines they would appear to be of different sizes, but really they are both the same size.
Muller-Lyer was devastated and dedicated the rest of his life to working out how Fritz-Gruber's illusion worked.



Auditory illusions

An auditory illusion is an illusion of hearing, the sound equivalent of an optical illusion: the listener hears either sounds which are not present in the stimulus, or "impossible" sounds. In short, audio illusions highlight areas where the human ear and brain, as organic, makeshift tools, differ from perfect audio receptors (for better or for worse). If you play one sin wave in your left ear and the opposite sin wave exactly one octave up in the other you can actually taste the colour green.

Olfactory Illusions

An olfactory illusion is an illusion of smells. The most noted olfactory illusion was David Copperfield's famous olfactory illusion. In this illusion Copperfield would shove 5 items up his anal passage a rose, a baby bell (small cheddar cheeze), a small slice of cake, a whole pineapple and a playing card. He'd then invite a member of the audience up on stage and get them to pick a card and show it to the audience. Copperfield would then blindfold the member of the audience and get them to smell a number of items in the opposite order starting with a miniature pina colada, a whole cake, a wheel of cheese, and a bouquette of flowers. As each object was passed under the audience member's nose he'd let out a fart of the opposite fragrance and get the volunteer to say what they smelled.
Once the volunteer had got each one wrong he'd get them, still blind folded to remove the playing card from his pert anus

 

Houdini

From Bongopedia, the confused encyclopedia

Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 – October, 1926), whose real name was Barrie Bambini (which was changed from Barrie Bambini when his manager, Barbara "Babs" Babbage suggested he changed his name to something with less B's in it), was a Hungarian magician, Escapologist (widely regarded as one of the greatest ever), proctologist, zoologist, biologist as well as a skeptic (known as a Skeplogist at the time) and investigator of spiritalists, a film producer, actor, and an amateur aviator.

Biography

Harry Houdini was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungrary. His given name is found spelled differently in different sources, and his birth date is uncertain. However, years after his death, a copy of his birth certificate was found and published in Heat Magazine (2005): Escapologist Exposed Special. According to that original source, he was born on March 24, 1874 as Barrie Bambini. Houdini himself spelled his name The Artist Formerly Known as Barrie Bambini, as can be seen from this letter to from his mother:



As to his birth date, from 1900 onwards, Houdini claimed in interviews to have been born in Appleton Wisconsin,, on April.6 1874.

Houdini's father, Mayer (Mayo) Samuel Bambini (1829-1892), also known as "Barmy" Bernard Bambini, was a rabbi; his mother was Bethany Balboa (1841-1913). Barrie had six siblings: Benjamin Bambini (half-brother) (1863-1885); Babette Bambini (1870-1927); Barnabus (1872-1925); Bertrand (Zucchini) (1876-1945); Leopold D. Weiss* (1879-1962); and Bambi "BAR-BAR-BAR-BAR-BABY-BELL" Bambini (1882-?).

He immigrated with his family to the United States on July 3 1878, at the age of four on the SS Fresia with his mother (who was pregnant) and his four brothers. Houdini's name was listed as Barrie Bambini.**Friends called him "Ehrie" or "Harry".

At first, they lived in Appleton, where his father served as rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. In 1880, the family was living on Appleton Street. On June 6 1882, Rabbi Bambini became an American citizen. After losing his tenure, he moved to New York City with Barrie in 1887. They lived in a boarding house on East 79th Street. Rabbi Bambini later was joined by the rest of the family once he found more permanent housing.

As a child, Barrie took several jobs, and was constantly bullied at school for looking like MAD magazine's Alfred E. Newman. Kids would often gaffer tape Barrie to a tree in his underware and leave him there. Once Barrie had mastered un-gaaffering himself the older boys turned to much more secure ways to shackel the great escapologist. As you can see from the picture below he was able to seperate himself from the tree before freeing himself, at this age though it would take upto a week to remove the manicals.



then became a champion cross country runner. He made his public debut as a 10-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself, "Barrie, the trapeze artist."
Magic career
In 1893, Bambini became a professional magician and began calling himself "Harry Houdini"

Initially, his magic career resulted in little success. He performed in Dime Museums and even did some pay to play gigs often losing the dime he'd made the previous day, and even doubled as "the beirded lady" at a circus.

Houdini initially focused on traditional card tricks. At one point, he billed himself as the "Houdini the card magician." But he soon began experimenting with escape acts. In 1893, while performing with his brother "Zucchini" in Coney Island as "The Brothers Houdini," Harry met and married fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner. Bess replaced Zucchini in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis." For the rest of Houdini's performing career, Bess would work as his stage assistant.

Harry Houdini's "big break" came in 1899 when he met manager Babs Babbage. Impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act, Babbage advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum Vaudeville circuit. Within months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the country. In 1900, Babbage arranged for Houdini to tour Eurpoe.

Houdini was a sensation in Europe, where he became widely known as "The Man Who Does Handcuff Tricks." He toured England, Scotland, the Neverland, Germany, France, and Russia. In each city, Houdini would challenge local police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails. This would often lead to him receiving a bludgeoning from ususpecting police who simply thought he was a kinky pervert.

In many of these challenge escapes, Houdini would first be stripped nude and searched (he insisted that they search his man parts several times to be sure). In Moscow, Houdini escaped from a Siberian Prison transport van. Publicity stated that, had he been unable to free himself, he would have had to travel to Siberia, where the only key was kept. In Cologne, he sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who claimed he made his escapes via pimping himself to the guards.*** Houdini won the case when he opened the judge's safe (he would later say the judge had forgotten to lock it) and proceeded to pull the card which the judge had been thinking of out from inside.

With his newfound wealth and success, Houdini purchased a dress said to have been made for Queen Victoria. He then arranged a grand reception where he presented his mother in the dress to all their relatives. Houdini said it was the happiest day of his life. In 1904, Houdini returned to the U.S. and purchased a house for $25,000, a brownstone at 278 W. 113th Street in Harlem, New York. The house**** still stands today.
From 1907 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from jails, handcuffs, chains, ropes, and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope in plain sight of street audiences. Because of imitators and a dwindling audience, on January 35, 1908, Houdini put his "handcuff act" behind him and began escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can. The possibility of failure and death thrilled his audiences. Houdini also expanded his challenge escape act -- in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him -- to included nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into the water), riveted boilers, wet-sheets, mailbags, and Alcatraz while dressed as Clint Eastwood At one point.

In 1912, Houdini introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water and full of live piranhas. The act required that Houdini hold his breath for more than three minutes. Houdini performed the escape for the rest of his career. Despite two Hollywood movies depicting Houdini dying in the Torture Cell, the escape had nothing to do with his demise.
Proctology
Houdini claims to have been a qualified proctologist although there is some debate among historians as to whether this was true, in one act a member of the audience was asked to bend over while Houdini pushed his finger up their anus. By Mearly licking his digit Houdini would tell the audience what that volunteer had eaten for their lunch the day previously.

Zoology

Houdini's studies in zoology all seem to have revolved around sticking his finger up animals and licking his finger, from this, people have said that he could deduce what they had for dinner the previous day.

Debunking spiritualists

In the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother, Bethany, he turned his energies toward debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums. Houdini's magical training allowed him to expose frauds who had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. As his fame as a "ghostbuster" grew, Houdini took to attending seances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer (who had previously searched Houdini while naked).
Death

The most widespread account is that Houdini's ruptured appendix was caused by a blow to his abdomen from a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, in Montreal on October 22. The eyewitnesses to this event were two McGill University students named Jacques Price and Sam Smilovitz (sometimes called Jack Price and Sam Smiley). Their accounts generally agreed. The following is according to Price's description of events. Houdini was reclining on his couch after his performance, having an art student sketch him. When Whitehead came in and asked if it was true that Houdini could take any blow to the stomach, Houdini replied in the affirmative. Whitehead then shouted "right lads, chocks away", at which point a large battering ram plowed through the side of the dressing room hitting Houdini in the stomach with considerable force, and Houdini acted as though he were in some pain. Price recounted that Houdini stated that if he had had time to prepare himself properly, he would have been in a better position to take the blow. After taking statements from Price and Smilovitz, Houdini's insurance company concluded that the death was due to the dressing-room incident and paid double indemnity.

When Houdini arrived at the Garrick theater in Detroit, on October 24, 1926, for what would be his last performance, he had a fever of 104 degrees F (40°C). Despite a diagnosis of acute appendicitis, Houdini took the stage. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit's Grace Hospital. Houdini died of battering ram to the stomach at 1:26 p.m. in Room 401 on October 31st (Halloween), 1926, at the age of 52.

References

*Hardeen Dead, 69. Houdini's Brother. Illusionist, Escape Artist, Lobotomist, philatelic philanthropist (he gave old stamps to the poor) and a Founder of Magician's Guild. Gave Last Show May 29.",  New York Times, June 13, 1945, Wednesday. Retrieved on 21-07-2007. “Theodore Hardeen, a brother of the late Harry Houdini, illusionist and a prominent magician in his own right, died yesterday in the Doctors Hospital. His age was 69."

** US National Archives Microfilm serial: M237; Microfilm roll: 413; Line: 38; List number: 684 (as if you really care)

*** Houdini!!!: The Bumming of Barrie Bambini by Borris Babette, 1996, page 81

Gentlemen

The term gentleman (from Latin genitalismaximushomo, meaning man who acts like he has a big cock, cognate with the French word gentilhomme and the Italian gentil uomo or gentiluomo), in its original and strict signification, denoted a man of good family the Latin generosus (its invariable translation in English-Latin documents).

William Harrison says "gentlemen be those whom their race and blood, or at the least their virtuse, do make noble and known and stuff". A gentleman was in his time usually expected to have a coat of arms, this was not a coat of arms as we know it today, but a coat fashioned from chimpanzee arms. A gentleman would use the little hands to carry around his worldly posessions, it wasn't until around 1600 that pockets were invented.


Shakespeare himself was demonstrated, by the grant of his coat of arms, to be no "vagabond" but a gentleman. The inseparability of arms and gentility is shown by two of his characters:

Petruchio: I swear I'll cuff you if you strike again.
Katharine: So may you lose your arms: If you strike me, you are no gentleman;
And if no gentleman, why then no arms.
Petruchio: You can take my life, you can take my freedom but you'll never have my monkey jacket
(The taming of the schrew. Act II Scene i.)

Although the monkey coat was highly important for early gentelmen, in later years a gentleman was defined by his actions rather than social status. Social decorum, ettiquette and manners all became part of being a gentleman.

Social Decorum was first invented by Lord Chesterfield in 1725 in an attempt to unify several different white papers which had been submitted on manners and etiquette.  Lord Chesterfield was forced later to reduce his paper on conduct due to constant changes in the rules governing social behaviour.

Unfortunately for Lord Chesterfield, he was hoisted by his own petard, he'd failed to keep up with the rules of etiquette, spending too much time in the house of lords and not enough time keeping his elbows of his well polished dining table. In 1732 Chesterfield demanded several of his guests removed their underpants and prepared to be inspected for lice. While this would have been socially acceptable in 1725 it was considered at the time to be the biggest social faux pas in history.

Chesterfield's guests were governed by the rules of social etiquette and were forced to go along with this request rather than speak out to Lord Chesterfield. One guest even posed for a commisioned picture of the act (See below) crouching with his buttocks exposed for 6 hours. The embarassment was too much for Chesterfield and he never recovered. It is recorded that on his deathbed his last words were "damn and blast those stupid lice"



It was after this terrible incident, that the Emperor of Britain decided that the strict rules of social etiquette should no longer apply to gentlemen and they should be judged to be a gentlemen based on social standards of the time rather than rules and social status.

In 1731 the act of being a gentlemen was so popular that The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London by Edward cave . The original complete title was The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer. Cave's innovation was to create a monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry. 

The earliest eddition, in existence today is the 1755 issue where a competition was held  for single men around the country to draw a picture of what a naked lady might look like.

The compeition was judged by a man called Burt Ringledinc The Third who said he had seen his wife naked once. Charles Weisenthal won this competition with the entry below, which later became the first blueprint for a modern sewing machine. Some historians today believe that Charles Weisenthal wasn't that close with his illustration and question the authenicaty of Mr. Ringledinc's claim that he had seen his wife naked.

Pesky pachyderms

I was considering following my previous talk about dinosaurs with a talk about elephants I had considered doing an A - Z of "Things and Stuff" but I would be hindered by two things:

1) I started on D for Dinosaurs
2) No-one actually knows anything about elephants, they are one of the biggest mysteries of the modern world

Indians actually revere these mystical creatures. Not only the indians from india but also the American Indians who've never even encountered elephants. Such is the mystery of elephants.


Indians from India or at least the hindu ones worship Lord Ganesha, Ganesha or Ganesh to his close personal friends believe the following story:

Lord Shiva, the Hindu God of death and destruction was away at a war. His wife Pavarti, who was a goddess in her own right, wished to bathe. Having no-one to guard the door to her apartment (for some reason she couldn't afford a house due to the housing boom) conceived of the idea of giving birth to a son who could provide this service for her. Thus Ganesh was created, since goddesses have the power to do such things (at least that's what she told Lord Shiva).

Pavarti gave Ganesh instructions that he was to stand guard at the entrance of her apartments and that he was to admit no-one until she gave word that it was OK to do so. Ganesh took up his post and undertook his assignment enthusiastically.

In due course the Lord Shiva returned from his war and went to enter. Ganesh, according to his instructions, forbade him entry. Shiva was enraged by Ganesh’s impudence and drew his sword and cut off Ganesh's head.

Pavarti emerged to find Ganesh decapitated and flew into a rage. Even though he was immensely powerful Shiva was upset with Pavarti’s rage. He swore to make amends by taking the head of the first living thing he found to replace Ganesh’s head.

Shiva obviously failed to consider the possibility of simply regrafting Ganesh's head back onto his body rather than going and decapitating the first pink elephant he saw, he'd obviously never seen the harrowing film The Elephant man.

Below is an illustration of how inpractical an elephants head would be on a normal size person's shoulders.

The diagram below illustrates a scale of impracticality of head grafts:



But this talk is not about elephants as elephants are a mystery and no-one knows anything about them. This talk is actually about football (because it begins with the letter f and it was the second word beginning with f to enter my head).

Football, as we know it today started off as a much more barbaric sport, often referred to as Kill The Guy With The Ball™.

In 1313, Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of London commisioned the creation of a ball made from an elephant prostate (a huge status symbol at the time) and after a month of tayloring was the proud owner of a neatly stiched elephant prostate.




Unfortunately the local yobs heard about it and started a game of Kill The Guy With The Ball™. Nicholas de Farndone took his ball and hid in exile for the rest of the year in a coal bunker.

In 1314, Nicholas de Farndone issued a decree banning football (in the French used by the English upper classes at the time. A translation reads: "[f]orasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large foot balls [rageries de grosses pelotes de pee] in the fields of the public from which many evils might arise which God forbid: we command and forbid on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future." This is the earliest reference to football.

Unfortunately Nicholas de Farndones attempts were in vein as mob games broke out all over England and France.

In 1848, at Cambridge University, Mr. H. de Winton (who had recently bought a football and been forced into exile) and Mr. J.C. Thring, who were both formerly at Shrewsbury School, called a meeting at Trinity College, Cambridge with 12 other ball owners from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Basingstoke and Shrewsbury. The agenda of their meeting was to come up with a game which would distract the locals from murdering them and steeling their precious footballs.

Unfortunately no one could agree on the form that this game should take Mr. Winton believed that FOOT-BALL should be a game played with a BALL which you kicked with your FOOT. An unnamed professor from rugby suggested that FOOT BALL should be played using a PROLATE SPHEROID where teams mostly ran up the pitch HANDING each other the PROLATE SPHEROID.

Graham Blake from Basingstoke (known to his friends as Grazzy B) suggested that the game should be played using a CUBE OF GELLATINE which neither team were able to touch. Unfortunately before the rules could be finalised an angry mob of Kill The Guy With The Ball™ players arrived on the scene and all 14 men were forced to escape through a coal scuttle.

13 out of 14 of these men escaped but Grazzy B insisted on using his cuboid wheeled bycicle to forge his getaway. no-one, to this day knows how his game was supposed to work, Mr. Winton described it as being "A game wrapped in a puzzle inside an enigma, and even more puzzling and mysterious than a heard of elephants"


And that's all that you need to know about football ALRIGHT?!

MEGALODON!!!!!!!!

After yesterdays highly infomration packed talk on dinosaurs I've been learning about prehistoric sea creatures
or prehisycreats as scientists and boffins call them. I've been mostly learning about the megalodon.

The megalodon probably lived between about 16 to 1.6 million years ago. It is likely the largest predatory fish to have ever lived.
below is a picture of a lady who is payed by the natural history museum to keep a set of megalodon teeth cleen and free from plaque. A trip to the dentist for such a set of teeth would cost the entire museum's budget for the year.

look at dem pearly whites

As you can see the megalodon is probably very similar to the great white shark. Below is a picture to indicate scale of such a beast

As with all other sharks, the skeleton of megalodon was formed of cartilage and not bone, resulting in the poor skeletal fossil record. However, megalodon's large teeth have survived the ages. The teeth are in many ways similar to great white shark teeth and can measure up to 168 mm (6.61 in) long (maximum slant length).

Recent studies cited by Roesch suggest megalodon was a "close relative" of the great white shark. However, a growing number of researchers dispute this close great white shark–megalodon relationship, instead citing convergent evolution as the reason for the dental similarity. Nevertheless, it is extrapolations from the tooth size of megalodon to modern sharks that provide most scientists with a conception of what they believe this ancient superpredator was like.

I would personally be more inclined to believe that the shape of the teeth was due to convergent evolution, and I have illustrated, using circumstantial evidence, what I bvelieve this predator may have looked like below:



Thanks for your time fellow scientists.

This week I have learned some things about dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are awesome, and anyone that disagrees is just a stupid willie head. OK?
The most important thing to remember about dinosaurs is that they were usually very big.

Look at the size comparison between two guys grouching down for a shit and this doublofannysaurus

Just incase the size comparison above wasn't enough here's a size comparison of the same dinosaur and a girl trying to lasso a dolphin


Dinosaurs were usually big but sometimes other things are bigger, here is a picture of the jolly green giant who likes frozen sweetcorn and pees


The other thing about dinosaurs is that they suffer from perspective like us but twice as much

Here we see david hasselhoff from 2 feet away and a big fucking dinosaur standing only 5 meters away.


This may be how the dinosaurs died out. Mammals don't suffer from double perspective like dinosaurs

The term dinosaur is sometimes used informally to describe other prehistoric reptiles (if you are a stupidy), such as the pelycosaur Dimetrodon, the winged pterosaurs, and the aquatic ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, although technically none of these were dinosaurs.

If you think that they are then you are a silly face.

I drew this picture to help you identify if something is a dinosaur or not