Being stuck in this house and this bed is driving me crazier than usual. Now that the Cov-19 has come and gone I still have a twenty-pound cast on my leg. I’m still limited by some door sizes which are too small for this freaking wheelchair to get through. Let me apologize, I immediately start to whine and feel sorry for myself when things aren’t going my way. It’s just human nature I suppose. I decided I would find a few items of trivia to help breakup your day. These are a mish-mosh of items collected totally at random. I hope you enjoy them.
An Egyptian papyrus, dated at approximately 1850 B.C., gives us the earliest record of a method to prevent pregnancies. It required putting into the vagina a concoction of honey, soda, crocodile excrement, and some sort of gummy substance.
Between the mid-1860’s and 1883, the bison population in North America was reduced from an estimated 13 million to a few hundred.
Not a single bank existed anywhere in the thirteen colonies before the American Revolution. Anyone needing money had to borrow from an individual.
After twenty years as a faithful unpaid servant of the Duke of Windsor, Walter Monckton was rewarded with a cigarette case on which his name was engraved – and misspelled.
In the seventeenth century, and principally during the period of the Thirty Years War, approximately sixty million people in Europe died from smallpox.
A conventional sign of virginity in Tudor England was a high exposed bosom and a sleeve full to the wrists.
If all of the water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere were condensed at the same time, there would be enough water to cover the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii) with twenty-five feet of water.
The British erected in London’s Trafalgar Square a statue of U.S President George Washington, whose armies overthrew British rule in the colonies.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, it was not a federal felony to kill a President of the United States.
For fear he might conceal a joke in it was one reason why Benjamin Franklin was not entrusted by his peers with the assignment of writing the Declaration of Independence.
I haven’t been posting much in recent weeks due in part to my broken ankle and my inability to walk. I won’t drag this out because other people’s medical problems are truly uninteresting to most everyone else. Here is my short version of events.
Ankle Surgery – 2 days in hospital
Returned home to discover my better-half diagnosed with Covid-19
2d day I was also found to be positive for Covid-19
A total of 12 days of isolation for us both accompanied by all of the fun Covid symptoms.
Now that Covid-19 has been dealt with we can once again try to get back to some kind of normal.
Thats the extent of my whining, bitching, and complaining about this run of bad luck. I’m still not very mobile but on the bright side, in four or five more weeks I should be back to what I once thought was normal. Hopefully my blogging will increase as well.
Since I decided to reduce my posting to three days a week thing have gotten even more screwed up. I just spent two glorious days in the Southern Maine Medical Center for surgery on my ankle. I was walking around my home, minding my own business, when I took a step from a carpeted room to the hardwood floor of the living room. Tip #1: Never wear thick cotton socks on hardwood floors. I went down hard after sliding on the floor and absolutely crushed my ankle. The surgery lasted a couple of hours and now I’m screwed for the next 6-8 weeks.
The two days in the hospital were exactly as you’d suspect; they were the worst. Uncomfortable beds, questionable food, and not just a few condescending staff members. I was my fun-loving self except for a few profane outbursts that frightened a few of the more sensitive caregivers. One exceptional nurse stood out from the others. She was everything you could hope for, and I wish there were many more like her. A big thanks to Heather for her handling of a big hard-to-get-along-with ape like me under really crappy circumstances. She did herself proud.
Needless to say, my blogging will be sporadic at best until the wheelchair arrives.
Today’s history lesson contains a few unusual occurrences as recorded by European media during the last 100 years. They are quirky and strange but nonetheless true. After reading some of these you can understand how we Americans are at times a bit bizarre as well. We get it honestly from many previous generations from the Continent.
On April 14, 1930, the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky shot himself. In his suicide note he said, “I do not recommend it for others.”
In 1931 the Spanish tennis player Lily de Alvarez Shop the tennis world when she appeared at Wimbledon wearing a divided skirt (culottes), the forerunner of shorts.
On October 23, 1933, a temperature inversion trapped fog and smog over London, obliterating the sun and causing total darkness at midday.
On December 24, 1935, the death of the avant-garde Austrian composer Alban Berg from an insect bite was reported.
In 1936 King Edward VIII once avoided what he thought might be an awkward interview with his private secretary by jumping out of a window of Buckingham palace and running away to hide in the garden.
On July 21, 1937, at six o’clock in the evening, all BBC transmitters and post office wireless telegraph and wireless telephone stations in the British Isles closedown for 2 minutes, to coincide with the funeral of Guglielmo Marconi the inventor of the radio.
On June 1, 1938, the Hungarian playwright Odon von Horvath, who had lived in fear of being struck by lightning all of his life, was killed in Paris when a branch fell on his head during a thunderstorm.
In 1939 a patent application was lodged for the “Wind Bag”, designed for receiving and storing gas formed by the digestion of foods. A tube linked the rectum led to a collection chamber, while the device was held in place under one’s clothes by a belt.
In 1940 during the height of the German spy scare, a vicar’s daughter in Winchester reported the British officer billeted with them to the authorities on the grounds of his suspiciously foreign behavior. The man had failed to flush the toilet.
On July 23, 1943, Eric Brown, blew up his paralyzed father by attaching a landmine to his wheelchair. He later explained to the court that he had not liked his father’s attitude. Brown was eventually declared insane.
I’ve posted about many odd and strange things that have taken place in the United States, and I think it’s only fair that these postings today give our European forefathers credit for some of their weirdness.
It’s time for me to try and convince you non-limerick lovers that they can be something other than lewd and bawdy. They’re fun to create and even more fun to read when written by members of the younger generations. Here are a few written by and for children. Enjoy!
There once was a young chap from Eugene.
Who grew so abnormally lean,
And flat and compressed
That his back met his chest,
And, viewed sideways, he couldn’t be seen!
😗😗😗
A sea serpent saw a big tanker.
Bit a hole in its side and then sank her.
He swallowed the crew
In a minute or two,
And then picked his teeth with the anchor.
😊😊😊
There was a young bather from Bewes,
Who reclined on the banks of the Ouse.
His radio blared,
And passers-by stared,
For all he had on was the news!
🙃🙃🙃
There are men in the village of Erith
Whom nobody seeth or heareth.
They spend hours afloat
In a flat-bottomed boat,
Which nobody roweth or steereth.
🤩🤩🤩
And here’s one final extra limerick for a nurse I once knew.
Believe me, this limerick is understating her illness. LOL
People love coming up with odd names or nicknames for just about everything. Even if a real name already exists, someone will attempt to create a nickname for it. I remember one from my childhood that was used to replace the term “bad breath” and it was “doggie breath”. We were stupid kids but never passed up an opportunity to create what would be considered a wise-ass replacement name. “Tubby’ was the skinny kid, “Slim” was the fat kid, and “brainiac” was the dumb ass. Why we felt the need to change the names of things that don’t need to be changed, who knows. Here are a few examples from history to further make my point without answering the big question, “Why do we do it?”.
The U.S. nickname “Uncle Sam” was derived from Uncle Sam Wilson, a meat inspector in Troy New York. During the war of 1812, Wilson’s “U.S.” stamped on meat barrels prepared for the U.S. Army was interpreted by some workmen to stand for their boss, “Uncle Sam” and the legend grew. (In newspaper cartoons during the Civil War, the figure of Uncle Sam took on the appearance of President Lincoln.)
During his career, Vladimir Ilyich Ulanov employed at least 150 pseudonyms. The best-known was Lenin. (1870-1924).
The most common name in the world is neither Ching nor John. It’s Muhammad.
The original name for the United Nations was “Associated Powers”. Prime Minister Winston Churchill affected the change to “United Nations” by quoting Lord Byron to President Roosevelt.
Millions of pounds recorded the, and anew.
Their children’s lips shall echo them, and say –
Here, where the sword united nations drew,
Our countrymen were worrying on that day!
And this is much, and all which will not pass away.”
Natives of Papua, New Guinea, who deposit their money in the bank at Port Moresby don’t get numbered accounts. Instead, they are identified by the names of fish and birds and other natural objects. One bank customer is called “sawfish” and another “hornbill”. Each depositor keeps his symbol secret.
The male Mayan Indian would change his name twice as he was growing up. His original name was linked with the date he was born. He would get a new name, describing a personal feature, when he was initiated into manhood. On marrying, he would take on his formal name.
A book of maps is called an atlas because the innovative 16th-century Flemish geographer Gerard S. Mercator’s books of maps detailing various portions of Europe sported on its cover a picture of the Greek titan Atlas holding the world on his shoulders – and thus this book became known as an atlas.
When Adolf Hitler was in charge in Germany, policemen and farmers were not allowed to call their horses by the name “Adolf”.
In 1935, “Iran” became the new name for what had been Persia, which was the new name for what had earlier been Iran.
There are an estimated 2.4 million people in the US named Smith, and over 1.8 million named Johnson, and over 1.6 million named Williams or Williamson, and over 1.4 million named Brown, and over 1.3 million named Jones. Keeping up with the Joneses would appear to be easier than keeping up with the Smiths.
As a kid, my given name was John. You can’t get much more boring than just John but that didn’t keep my friends from calling me just that, “Just John”. I had another nickname, “Crazy Legs” but the explanation for that one will remain a deep and dark secret that I’ll take to my grave. LOL
It’s painfully obvious to me that the month of February is boring. The craziest solution to liven up February is to assign ridiculous holidays and commemorative days to keep us all from diving off the nearest bridge. The following list is only a portion of the things assigned to February.
February 1, 2023 – National Freedom Day
February 2, 2023 – Groundhog Day
February 9, 2023 – National Pizza Day
February 12, 2023 – Lincoln’s Birthday
February 12, 2023 – Super Bowl 2023 / Super Bowl LVII
February 14, 2023 – St. Valentine’s Day
February 9-20, 2023 – Chicago Auto Show
February 20, 2023 – Washington’s Birthday / Presidents’ Day
February 21, 2023 – Mardi Gras Carnival in New Orleans, LA
February 21, 2023 – Fat Tuesday / Shrove Tuesday, Day before Lent
February 22, 2023 – Ash Wednesday
*****
That being said, here is a reposting of mine concerning Ground Hog Day and the insanity of living in western Pennsylvania.
This holiday means only one thing in Pennsylvania and that is the appearance of our old friend ‘Punxatawney Phil’ on Gobbler’s Knob. He’s scheduled to show his furry little face on the second of February every year to let us know whether we’ll have six more weeks of winter.
To reminisce a bit, way too many years ago I was a rookie state police trooper in Pennsylvania. To a newbie that means getting stuck with every crappy police detail they can find for you. One of the crappier of those was being sent to Punxatawney to guard “Phil” and for crowd control in and around Gobbler’s Knob. I thought they were kidding but they weren’t.
A few of us rookies were ordered to make the trek to Punxatawney, PA along with a veteran sergeant who must have lost the coin toss. We arrived in our cleanest and well pressed uniforms, met with all of the local politicians, and then were introduced to ‘Phil”’. He was cordial enough for a stupid gopher, but we were well advised to keep our hands away from him. He was a touch cranky and known to nip off a finger or two if provoked.
Believe it or not the crowds were huge. I’ve never understood why every local politician from miles around flocks to that ceremony. I guess they’re just hoping to get some free TV facetime or maybe even an interview with some of the local media. I met some mayors, some councilmen, and a few political hacks which unfortunately weren’t even as interesting as meeting ‘Phil’.
The only good thing I experienced that day was a rather buxom news reporter from a nearby town who took an immediate liking to my manly stature and my pretty uniform. She was much less furry than ‘Phil’ which was a plus and she also paid for my dinner. She even convinced me that dating her was the right thing to do. So, I did.
It’s sad to say but we all know any relationship built upon a Groundhog Day Ceremony was doomed from the start. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t care to drive to Punxatawney (a three hour round trip) every weekend. I finally explained to her that long distance relationships just never work out no matter what. It wasn’t her it was me. I dragged out all of the old clichés I could remember and disappeared from her life.
I thought I’d introduce you to something new today. I’ve posted hundreds of limericks over the years, and they were all basically the five-line standard. Another style of limerick is the extended limerick which are a bit longer than you normally see and more challenging to write. Here are two samples:
By Anonymous
There once were two cats of Kilkenny.
Each thought there was one too many,
So, they quarreled and fit,
They scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren’t any!
😛😛😛
By Anonymous
There was a strange student from Yale.
Who put himself outside the pale.
Said the judge:” Please refrain,
When passing through Maine,
From exposing yourself in in the train,
Or you’ll just have to do it in jail!”
😗😗😗
In my opinion they aren’t as exciting as a normal limerick, but many people disagree. Now let’s take a look at what’s called a prose limerick. It’s a totally different style but I enjoy these very much because of the narrative way they are written.
By Anonymous
When cars are left here for repair, our charges are modest and fair. And
owners may rest quite content that we test all work that is done with great care.
😊😊😊
In the shed at the end of the mews there’s a bucket of old bolts and screws, and
right at the back you will see a large stack of old junk that perhaps you can use.
🤩🤩🤩
The train that was due to depart at 8:10 is not likely to start. We’re
working to rule, you’d best get a mule or a bike or a horse and a cart.
I dedicate these limericks to all of the nurses I’ve known in my life and there’ve been a few. If there was ever a group that enjoyed naughty and lewd limericks, it’s them. Enjoy, all of you so-called nurse lovers.
In my younger days I spent a great deal of time wandering through the graveyards of Southern Massachusetts. I’ve always liked cemeteries and some of the oldest graves in the country can be found in and around the Plymouth area. Say what you want about the Pilgrims, but they brought their love of catchy epithets from the old country, and they are some of the best. I spent many hours sketching cemeteries and painting a number of interesting oil paintings which allowed me to sit for hours in a quiet and serene place. Here is a small collection of epithets from this country and others.
From Church Stretton, Shropshire, England
On Thursday she was born,
On a Thursday she made a bride,
On a Thursday put to bed,
On a Thursday broke her leg, and
On a Thursday died.
💀💀💀
From a churchyard in Oxfordshire, England
Here lies the body of John Eldred,
At least, he will be when he’s dead.
But now at this time he is alive,
The 14th of August, Sixty-five.
💀💀💀
From Middlefield, Massachusetts
Old Thomas Mulvaney lies here.
His mouth ran from ear to ear.
Reader, tread lightly on this wonder,
For if he yawns, you’re gone to thunder.
💀💀💀
From Keeseville, New York
Here lies a man of good repute.
Who wore a No. 16 boot.
Tis not recorded how he died,
But sure, it is, that open wide,
The gates of heaven must have been,
To let such monstrous feet within.
💀💀💀
From Chelmsford, Essex, England
Here lies the man Richard,
And Mary his wife.
Their surname was Pritchard,
They lived without strife.
And the reason was plain,
They abounded in riches,
They had no care or pain,
And his wife wore the breeches.
💀💀💀
Here’s a favorite from a grave in Winslow, Maine and proves that short and sweet is always the best.
everyuselessthing.com 