Pesky pachyderms

• By: mrbongo
• On: 07/01/2008 12:20:52
• In: Uncategorised
• Comments: 42

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?!