I’m too much of a cynic to be a big believer in superstitions. They’re fun to talk about and laugh about but only a small percentage of people actually believe most of that nonsense. We’ve all heard about “don’t walk under ladders” or “black cats crossing our path”, and dozens more. I happened upon some additional information that I’d never heard before concerning the everyday common egg. You can believe what you will, I’m just spreading the word for fun.
Superstitions about eggs are still held, particularly in rural farming areas. One such belief is that if you see many broken eggs, you will soon have a lawsuit on your hands.
If you find a snake’s egg in a hen’s nest, your friends are really your enemies.
It is bad luck to bring a wild bird’s egg into the house.
If a woman dreams of eggs, she will quarrel with her friends.
Two yolks in one egg means good luck for the one who eats them. Folks who only buy eggs fresh from the farm will have the opportunity to find these. Factory examinations these days usually eliminate double yellow yolkers.
Eggs laid on Friday will cure stomach aches. Of course, only folks who keep laying hens know when the eggs are actually laid. This superstition is impossible to follow in heavily populated urban areas.
In some parts of the Middle East if you buy a new car, you have to kill a chicken and pour the blood on it. The chickens’ blood was thought to ward off any evil spirits that may be lurking in the vehicle.
Throughout human history, more eggs have been eaten raw rather than cooked! Eggs have always been a chief source of protein for primal humans and still are in most cultures. Americans often drink raw eggs in eggnog, flavored with a taste of vanilla and doused with whipped cream, another source of protein.
As I’m sure you can recall over the last few decades eggs were first vilified as being unhealthy and a few years later some illustrious scientists changed their minds. All of a sudden eggs became a healthy addition to our diet. So much for the credibility of governmental and scientific experts. I simply love eggs, always have and always will. If eating large numbers of eggs is going to kill me, so be it (I think the bad water and air will get me first). At least I’ll die with a smile on my face because I just love eggs (with lots of bacon, of course).
I have what I think is a healthy sense of humor. It can be bawdy at times, unfunny at times, but well used at all times. I love people who can make me laugh and I love making others laugh. It’s one of the few joys I have, and I try to use it as often as possible. I have a new appreciation for standup comedians since I now have one in the family. Being funny all the time is extremely hard work but it’s really worth the time spent. It’s been said that laughter is the “best medicine” and while that is true it also serves many other purposes. The following paragraph was written by George Orwell the well-known author of 1984. It makes for some thought-provoking ideas. Every aspiring comedian should read this before each show. Enjoy . . .
“A thing is funny when – in some way that is not actually offensive or frightening – it upsets the established order. Every joke is a tiny revolution . . . Whatever destroys dignity and brings down the mighty from their seats, preferably with a bump, is funny.”
Eric Arthur Blair
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterized by lucid prose, biting social criticism, and a total opposition to totalitarianism.
Today I’m feeling a little odd which means I’m going to take a trip down the weird road. Here are few strange and weird facts which you may have heard before, but I doubt it.
Diabetes can lead to high levels of sugar in the urine. Before simple tests for sugar levels were available, doctors would taste their patient’s urine to see if it was sweet!
The belief that a person can cause bad luck for someone else simply by looking at them is known as the “evil eye.”
One evil theory to explain why a dunked witch would not float was that witches deliberately ate foods that made them fart. The gas would build up in their guts, making them lighter than air, so they could fly.
In Europe in the Middle Ages, it was believed that there were over 7 million demons in the air, which could be inhaled or swallowed and would cause disease or make a corpse turned into a vampire.
The human eye can see only about 3000 stars on the clearest night, even though there are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone.
The first rock music taken into space is thought to be a Pink Floyd tape taken to the space station Mir in 1988 by French astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien. Perhaps it was The Dark Side of the Moon.
According to a 1991 survey of Americans, 2% reported experiences that indicated they might have been abducted by aliens. This would mean that one in 50 Americans have been abducted – that’s over 5 million, at the rate of 2740 per day! Skeptics point out that this would mean the skies over America must be full of hundreds of alien spaceships every night.
Elephants are also among the world’s most potentially dangerous animals, capable of crushing and killing any other land animal, from rhinoceros and lions to humans. It is thought they may kill up to 500 people every year.
The mantis shrimp is a delicacy in China, where it is used in a dish known as “pissing shrimp” because the mantis shrimp urinates itself when put in a cooking pot.
Emetophobia is a fear of vomiting or of being around others who are vomiting. It is the fifth most common phobia according to the International Emetophobia Society.
Well, that fills my quota for today of the weird and odd. As always more to come.
“Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenness.”
🕳🕳🕳
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specializing in comparative anatomy. He has become known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his advocacy of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. After comparing Archaeopteryx with Compsognathus, he concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs, a theory widely accepted today.
Since we’re celebrating yet another Valentine’s Day, I thought a small collection of romantic limericks would be in order. If you’re expecting the lovey, dovey, type of rhymes you are about to be disappointed.
I decided to do a little trivia today but in a different way. Normally my trivia lists pertain to the same subject such as the human body, accidental deaths, or just about anything you can think of. Today’s list is a scattering of trivia facts and information that are hard to categorize so I’ll just throw them out there and you can read and enjoy them. Here they are . . .
The upside-down catsup bottle was invented by Paul Brown, who spent years developing a valve that would open when inverted and then close automatically without leaking. Now Brown’s patented valve is used by NASA (so that astronauts cups don’t spill) and by baby food and shampoo manufacturers.
“Brain Freeze” happens when something cold, such as ice cream, touches the roof of your mouth and causes blood vessels in your head to dilate.
Each year Americans spend $9 billion on candy and consume more than 25 pounds per person.
Women have played basketball from the sport’s earliest days; the first intercollegiate women’s basketball game, between Stanford and UC Berkeley, was played in 1896. Stanford won.
Beyond his weight, President Taft is remembered for being the first US president to throw out a pitch on the opening day of baseball season. Since then, every president except Jimmy Carter has followed suit.
The word “dictionary” was coined by the English in 1220. John of Garland wrote a book called Dictionarius to help readers master Latin diction. The first dictionaries were English language glossaries of French or Latin words with their English equivalents.
“The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep is sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
In 2012, a Florida man died after winning a cockroach eating contest at a reptile store. It wasn’t the cockroach that killed him; they are edible and frequently consumed in some cultures. Instead, the likely cause of his death was a rare allergic reaction to cockroach dandruff.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has sold more books then J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien combined.
The Twinkie was invented in 1930 in Chicago. Its creator, James Dewar, noticed that the machines used to produce Strawberry Filled shortcakes were idle for half the year when strawberries were out of season. His original recipe included a banana cream filling. The name was inspired by “Twinkle Toe Shoes.
Well, there are your ten little tidbits of trivia for today. More are sure to follow.
I’m sitting here looking out the window and it’s hardly worth doing. It’s snowy, sleeting, cold, and in general a real shit show. It’s a great day to be inside and to stay inside. It’s also a slow news week due primarily to the Olympics of which I really don’t care much about. With that in mind I thought I’d take you back 30 years to revisit some vintage bumper stickers. These were collected between 1988 and 1990 and might prove interesting to some of you and others won’t give a damn anyway. I’m feeling lazy today so here they are . . .
Watch Out! I Drive Like You Do.
Go Ahead, Make My Day.
I Brake For Idiots Like You.
Instant Fool. Just Add Beer.
Live And Let Die.
If It’s Too Loud, You’re Too Old.
Clothes Required, Underwear Optional.
Left-Handers Are In Their Right Mind.
Good Girls Go to Heaven. Bad Girls Go Everywhere.
Still Crazy After All These Beers.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Naked.
Old Musicians Never Die, They Just Decompose.
I’m Not Playing Hard To Get. I Am Hard To Get.
We Came, We Saw, We Yawned.
Sure, I’ll Respect You In The Morning. What Was Your Name Again?
I DON’T KNOW, I DON’T CARE, AND IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYWAY.
I thought I would offer up a few of the oldest limericks I’ve found so far. After reading a few of them I quickly discovered that the sense of humor then was a touch bawdier that many recent ones. Our ancestors probably needed something a little more attention getting in their humor. I’m sure many of them had very little to cheer about.
1882
There was a young sailor from Brighton
Who remarked to his girl, “You’re a tight one.”
She replied, ” ‘Pon my soul,
You’re in the wrong hole.
There’s plenty of room in the right one.”
1870
A young woman got married at Chester,
Her mother she kissed, and she blessed her.
Says she, “You’re in luck,
He’s a stunning good fuck,
For I’ve had him myself down in Leicester.”
1868
There was a young lady of Ealing
And her lover before her was kneeling.
Said she, ” Dearest Jim,
Take your hand off my quim.
I much prefer fucking to feeling.
1871
There were three ladies of Huxham,
And whenever we meets’em we fucks’em,
And when that game grows stale
We sits on a rail,
And pulls out our pricks and they sucks’em.
I hope to post many more of these. I live to keep the tradition alive and well here in the 21st century.
Sixteen years ago, I was a lonely bachelor living with two ferrets and a cat. Part of my routine at that time was to explore the internet, read blogs, and participate in selected chat rooms. It was about that same time I serious became interested in blogging but was really unsure just how to get started. One of my favorite blogs at the time was called gutrumbles.com. The gentleman that ran that blog was Rob Acid-Man Smith. He captured my imagination immediately because he was brutally honest, totally outspoken with absolutely no filters, and had a great sense of humor. I exchanged emails with him for a time, learned a lot, and I was hooked. That day he became my blog-father. To say he upset a large number of people over the years was an understatement, but he did it with humor and a whole lot of truth. After reading his blog for almost two years I decided to give it a try myself.
My four years of blogging on my first blog were eye opening. I was brutally honest and voiced my opinions loudly and crassly. I spent most of my time complaining about politics, religion, and any other topic that piqued my interest. It was great fun, and the responses were more than just a little interesting. I actually received a number of death threats from idiots around the globe. That was enough to convince me I had more to say and to hell with the critics.
But as with all things age tends to mellow a person. I decided to discontinue that first blog and then created Every-Useless-Thing. Hoping against hope that I could mellow my opinions down a little and make the blog something more than a bitch session. I’ve been doing Every-Useless-Thing now for approximately eleven and a half years and ten months ago I felt myself slipping and losing my edge. A lot of it had to do with my medical issues but it was more than just that. Anytime I felt myself slipping in the past I returned to gutrumbles.com to reinvigorate me. Gut Rumbles continues today at Rob’s request even though Rob passed away in 2006. It was and will always be my “Happy Place”.
Today after that lengthy and boring explanation I’m going to repost an article from Acid-Man’s blog. Hopefully you’ll read his thoughts and then understand where I’m trying to come from. I hope you enjoy a little of Acid Man, because I always have. If you want some good reading, go to his blog and read some of his archives. Here he is!
I have a Southern accent. I drop the “g” off the end of gerunds, so I say talkin,’ climbin,’ smokin,’ and runnin’ instead of speaking standard American English the way Dan Rather does as he lies his ass off on the CBS Evening News.
I say y’all. I have ‘druthers. I know how far yonder is. I know how to see ’bout that. Whatchadoon is a real word to me.
That’s the reason I don’t like to talk on the phone. I sound like a goddam hick. I AM a goddam hick, but I am educated and I can communicate well when I want to. Where I live, everybody understands me just fine when I say, “Whatchadoon? I’d ‘druther ya not go ’bout it that way. Lemme show ya sumpin. Thadded be better, doncha think?” That’s Southern English and it works well in person-to-person communication.
Try that shit over the phone when you’re talking to a yankee. I doesn’t work. The yankee gets all nasal, I talk Southern and the next thing you know, we may as well be from foreign countries. That’s why I would prefer to write to someone I don’t know. I can appear to be halfway intelligent on paper.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this communication gap. I COULD be like the BC and talk like a yankee at work and sound like the biggest hayseed on the farm at Quinton’s football games, but I’m not a chameleon, able to change my skin color and blend into the scenery the way she can. Everything that woman does is an act and she wears many masks. I’m not built that way. Like Popeye, I am what I am and that’s all that I am.
Sometimes, that’s not the right way to be. Honesty is not always the best policy.
everyuselessthing.com 