Archive for the ‘trivia’ Tag
I’m a huge fan of statistics. No matter how you shake them out you can always get them to support your idea. I know because I’ve done it a few times myself and they made me look awfully smart. So, when I see information published and supported by statistics, I can’t wait to see how silly they are and how they might have been manipulated. Here are a few that made me smile.
- You’re unlikely to kill yourself by attempting suicide. Fewer than one in twenty-five suicide attempts are successful unless your a senior citizen. They take it more serious with a success rate of one in four.
- More than 70% of serious injuries at American colleges and universities are caused by cheerleading.
- You have a better chance of being killed by a donkey than of dying in a plane crash.
- You’re slightly more likely to die from a cave-in than from contact with tap water.
- It’s more likely you will die from your pajamas catching fire than from the bite of a venomous spider.
- Mosquitos are the deadliest animal on earth causing human deaths at 600,000 per year.
- More people are killed each year by freshwater snails than by salt-water crocodiles.
- You’re slightly more likely to drown in a bathtub than to die from electrocution.
- More than 100 billion (give or take a few million) people have died in the history of the world.
- And last a really stupid death. Cynthia was a topless dancer who died while performing her famous act of jumping out of a cake. Unfortunately, the cake was well constructed and apparently airtight. Cynthia suffocated after waiting 90 minutes to surprise the lucky groom.
*****
GOTTA LOVE STATISTICS
I was wondering to myself if the response to this posting will be affected by the unusual title. I guess I’ll have my answer sometime tomorrow, but nothing would really surprise me. It’s just my sneaky way of beginning a post on religion. I’m not a big fan as you would already know if you’ve read this blog in the past. I have a friend or two that are true believers, and this is my subtle way of expressing my thoughts on the subject. Many religious folks enjoy using their religions sacred writings to make their points with me, but I find that a bit ludicrous. To take those documents as the literal word of some god is frightening in its naivete. Here are a few blurbs from various religions to help me make my point once again.
- According to the Bible If your wife defends your life in a fight by grabbing your attackers genitals, you should cut off your wife’s hand and have no pity on her.
- If robbers came to your house while you were having guests, it’s better to offer up your two virgin daughters to the robbers than for your guests to come to any harm.
- The proper way to seal a deal in the Bible is to exchange sandals.
- More than 60% of Americans think the story of Noah’s Ark is literal truth.
- It is better to dwell alone in the desert than at home with a nagging and complaining wife. (Proverbs 21:19)
- More than 46% of Americans believe God created humans in their present form, at one time, within the last 10,000 years.
- God has commanded Mormons to avoid coffee and tea.
- On the eve of Yom Kippur, some observant Jews swing live chickens over their head three times to atone for their sins. It’s called kaparos.
- If you want to sleep with your brother’s wife, it’s better to masturbate – or better yet, to pull out early and ejaculate on the ground, in order to avoid getting her pregnant.
- Men should not shave any parts of their head and beards.
- May the Lord bless everyone who beats your children against the rocks. (Psalm 137:9)
- Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden was located in northern Missouri.
GOD IS GREAT, GOD IS GOOD! YEAH GOD !!!
(Sarcasm Off)
For months I’ve been posting a collection of rather tame limericks written by and for children and young adults. While I certainly enjoy them, I still miss the naughtier limericks that I find absolutely hilarious. It’s true than many limericks are really crude and nasty but be sure those will never see the light of day on this blog. For today these limericks are:
RATED PG
Parental Guidance is Recommended
*****
In the Garden of Eden lay Adam,
Complacently stroking his madam.
And loud was his mirth
For on all of the earth
There were only two balls and he had’em.
😍😍😍
There was a young fellow from Leeds
Who swallowed a package of seeds.
Great tufts of long grass
Sprouted out of his ass
And his balls were all covered with weeds.
😛😛😛
There once was an old man from Maine
Whose prick was as strong as a cane.
It was almost as long,
So he strolled with his dong
Extended in in sunshine and rain.
😎😎😎
There’s a charming young girl in Tobruk
Who refers to her quiff as a nook.
It’s deep and it’s wide,
You could curl up inside
With a nice easy chair and a book.
💥
LET’S GET APRIL STARTED PROPERLY
Unfortunately I won’t be blogging about April Fool’s Day pranks but if you must know I was a hardworking, inventive, dedicated, and persistent prankster for most of my life. Enjoy the day and prank as many people as you can. It’s just so very satisfying.
I thought I would also post a number of trivia items that you normally wouldn’t see. My feeling is the more obscure the better. Here we go . . .
- Most healthy adults can go without eating for a month or longer. But they must drink at least two quarts of water a day.
- The Romans were so fond of eating mice that the upper classes raised them domestically. The rodents were kept in specially designed cages and fed a mixture of assorted nuts.
- When tea was first introduced in the American colonies, many housewives, in their ignorance, served the tea leaves with sugar or syrup after throwing away the water in which they had been boiled.
- The modern dinner plate is a fairly recent development. Until the fifteenth century, it was customary to eat on a thick slice of stale bread, called a “trencher,” that soaked up the juice.
- At the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, Richard Blechynden, an Englishman, had a tea concession. On one very hot day none of the fairgoers were interested in hot tea. In a desperate attempt for business, he served the tea cold – and invented iced tea.
- Kernels of popcorn were found in the graves of pre-Columbian Indians.
- To celebrate in 537 AD, the dedication of the new church, Hagia Sofia – Emperor Justinian held a banquet that caused the slaughtering of more than 10,000 sheep, oxen, swine, poultry, and deer.
- To make one pound of honey, bees must collect nectar from approximately two million flowers.
HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY
Bill Haley & the Comets
I love Rock and Roll. I mean the old-style Rock & Roll of the 50’s, 60′ and 70’s. The current music trends leave me flat due primarily to the unavoidable bad influences of Rap which is highly overrated and just plain sucks. Only Rhythm and Blues still seem as smooth and sexy as always. Today I’m going to throw out some trivia from the golden age of Rock & Roll for those of you still interested in good music. This trivia is a little obscure but nonetheless interesting.
- Link Wray’s hit instrumental “Rumble” from 1958 sounded so menacing that it prompted a ban by several US radio stations.
- In 1986, Duane Eddy teamed up with The Art of Noise, an electro-pop act, for a revival of his old “Peter Gunn” hit.
- A bobbysoxer teen idol, Ricky Nelson returned in 1972 with a singer-song writer style hit, “Garden Party”.
- Chantilly Lace almost scrapped a top 30 placing in 1972 for legendary rock and roller Jerry Lee Lewis.
- The Drifters returned to the British charts in 1972 with a revival of their mid-60’s single “Come on Over to My Place”.
The Bee Gee’s
- The Father of Rock & Roll, Bill Haley, died in 1981.
- MC5 and Roy Wood attracted boos and worse at the London Rock ‘n’ Roll Show held at Wembley Stadium in 1972. The crowd was upset that they all had long hair.
- The Beach Boys released a song by cult hippy leader Charles Manson on the B-side of their1968 single, “Blue Birds Over the Mountain”. Originally called “Cease to Exist“, the band gave it an even stranger title of “Never Learn Not to Love”.
- The US hard-rock band Aerosmith made an unlikely appearance in The Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band film performing the Beatle’s “Come Together“.
- The Bee Gee’s first number one single hit in the US, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”, went nowhere in Britain, which is all the more surprising because it’s since become a standard.
The Beatles
ROCK ON ! ! !
Any day is a good day for limericks whether they be bawdy, funny, or cute. Anything to make us smile a little is certainly worth the effort. Since we’ve all loved our years of school and our family pets, here are four related limericks and they’re relatively child friendly as well.
😈😈
A small boy when asked to spell “yacht,”
Most saucily said, “I will nacht.”
So his teacher in wrath,
Took a section of lath,
And warmed him up well on the spacht.
😠😠😠
A teacher whose spelling’s unique
Thus, wrote down the “Days of the Wique”:
The first he spelt “Sonday,”
The second day, “Munday”
And now a new teacher they sigue.
😖😖😖
A cat in despondency sighed,
And resolved to commit suicide.
He got under the wheels
of nine automobiles,
And after the last one he died.
😣😣😣
There was a young man from the city,
Who met what he thought was a kitty.
He gave it a pat,
And said, “Nice little cat!”
And they buried his clothes out of pity.
😈😈
Enjoy Spring
“A unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
I thought I’d continue with another installment of interesting questions created to assist us in self-evaluation. These installments have made for some lively discussions with my better-half after we discovered some surprisingly different answers. I hope you have a partner or spouse to discuss them with. It can be quite enlightening.
*****
- If you knew your child would be severely retarded and would die by the age of five, would you decide to have an abortion?
- Do you find it hard to say “no” when you regularly do favors you do not want to do? If so, why?
- If you began to be very attracted to someone of another race, how would your behavior differ from what it would be toward someone of your own race?
- Would you rather spend a month on vacation with your parents or put in overtime at your current job for four weeks without extra compensation?
- Would you like to know the precise day of your death?
- Would you accept a guaranteed, lifetime allowance of $50,000 per year (adjusted annually for inflation) if accepting it meant you could never again earn money from either work or investments.
- What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
- Do you ever spit or pick your nose in public? What about cleaning your teeth with a toothpick?
- A close friend asks, and genuinely wants your opinion about something, but your opinion is one that he is likely to find quite painful. For example, your friend is an artist and asks your honest estimate of his chances of being successful. You think he is an atrocious artist who hasn’t the slightest chance of success. What would you do?
- Do you have a favorite sexual fantasy? Would you like to have it fulfilled?
*****
HAVE FUN WITH IT
I just love reading and listening to news and current events, not for their overwhelming truthfulness but for their misleading and sometimes stupid inaccuracies. Once upon a time the news was reported by actual journalists who dug up the information and submitted it to highly capable editors to keep things as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, these days we have a huge selection of news readers and talking heads with nice hair, big boobs, all handsome and beautiful, who all get their stories as reported to them by the general use wire services. They’re lucky if they can pronounce some of the words properly. Here are a few of my favorite headlines that are both ridiculous and ludicrous.
LARGER KANGAROOS LEAP FURTHER, RESEARCHERS FIND
ALCOHOL ADS PROMOTE DRINKING
CHILDS DEATH RUINS COUPLE’S HOLIDAY
QUEEN MARY HAVING BOTTOM SCRAPED
ILLITERATE? WRITE TODAY FOR FREE HELP
SURVEY FINDS DIRTIER SUBWAYS FTER CLEANING JOBS WERE CUT
SCIENTISTS SEE QUAKES IN L. A. FUTURE
MAN SHOOTS NEIGHBOR WITH MACHETE
I think these headlines have helped make my point. Pay close attention to all of those alleged reporters as you watch their multitude of news programs and opinion pieces!
To quote my ever so critical late father:
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS S*** UP
For most of my life I’ve loved the winter and snow and cold weather. That being said this may have been the worse winter ever with continual losses of electric power, telephone coverage, and internet and that doesn’t even include my fractured ankle and finally being exposed to Covid-19. As global warming continues to wreak havoc on the weather patterns, there’s no normal anymore. Maybe it’s time for me to move further north and live above the arctic circle. The snow, ice, and cold remain consistent there.
Here are a few items of weather-related trivia that you might find interesting.
- The Antarctic ice is forced out over the Ross Sea – a large inlet into Antarctica – in a layer hundreds of feet thick. It is called the Ross Ice Shelf (see above) and it’s area is about that of France.
- At the height of various ice ages of the last million years, as much as thirty percent of all the land of the planet was covered with a thick layer of ice.
- The first mention of an iceberg in world literature did not come until 800 A.D. An account of the travels of the Irish monk, St. Brendan in the north Atlantic, three centuries before, appeared around then and mentioned having sighted a “a floating crystal castle”,
- An iceberg larger than Belgium was observed in the South Pacific in 1956. It was 208 miles long and 60 miles wide – the largest ever seen.
- The temperature can become so cold in eastern Siberia that the moisture in a persons breath can freeze in the air and fall to the earth.
- The most recent ice age reached it’s peak in 16,000 B.C., and it wasn’t until 8000 B.C. that the ice began it’s final retreat. In 6000 B.C. the Great Lakes were clear, and for the first time in 25,000 years Canada began to lose its ice cover. It was not until 3000 B.C. that the ice retreated to its present location; by then human beings were establishing cities throughout the Middle East.
After reading all of that, maybe this wasn’t such a bad year after all.
TIME FOR WARM TEMPERATURES AND HOT SAND BEACHES
I’ve been trying for days to post something but these damn storms are screwing up almost everything. Our power and internet returned today after 24 hours of silence and I wanted to post before the next catastrophe arrives.
*****
It feels good to be back to some semblance of normalcy. My first post-op inspection revealed my poor fractured ankle is on the mend. The doctor assures me that only five more weeks of a walker and wheelchair and I should be good to go. That news eases the pressure a little and makes getting back to this blog a little easier. I’ll be happy to provide a few limericks today to make you smile as little.
❤
A lisping young lady named JoBeth
Was saved from a fate worse than death.
Seven times in a row,
Which unsettled her so
That she quit saying “No” and said “Yeth.”
😂😂😂
Therre was a young fellow named Goody
Who claimed that he wouldn’t, but would he?
If he found himself nude
With a gal in the mood,
The questions not woody, but could he?
😁😁😁
There once was a young lady of Arden,
The tool of whose swain wouldn’t harden.
Said she with a frown,
“I’ve been sadly let down,
By the tool of a fool in a garden.”
😜😜😜
A flatulent nun of Hawaii
One Easter eve supped on papaya,
Then honored the Passover
By turning her ass over
And obliging with Handel’s Messiah.
🤩🤩🤩
LIMERICKS HAVE RETURNED
everyuselessthing.com 