Discussion Forum

Some day a man will develop a catalogue listing all other catalogues.

It will be come a popular recycling item.

A man could spend a lifetime trying to develop the definitive, all-encompassing catalogue of catalogues. And still never get there.

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Quote: victor nicholas

Some day a man will develop a catalogue listing all other catalogues.

It will be come a popular recycling item.

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It's that Platonic philosophy. Any religion based on the study of platters plates and plaits is bound to have trouble.

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Quote: Jesus Budda

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Quote: victor nicholas

You wouldn't happen to know why St. Augustine became a saint now would you?

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You asked for it, Victor, and by the end of this shit you will have regretted that question....


Augustine was born at Tagaste on 13 November, 354. Tagaste, now Souk-Ahras, about 60 miles from Bona (ancient Hippo-Regius), was at that time a small free city of proconsular Numidia which had recently been converted from Donatism.

Augustine received a Christian education. His mother had him signed with the cross and enrolled among the catechumens. Once, when very ill, he asked for baptism, but, all danger being soon passed, he deferred receiving the sacrament.

In 383 Augustine, at the age of twenty-nine, Augustine went to Rome.
He began to dream that he and his friends might lead a life dedicated to the search for it, a life purged of all vulgar aspirations after honours, wealth, or pleasure, and with celibacy for its rule...but he still wanted a wank and a bit of a ride.

His Mother turns up and told him to marry, but his betrothed was too young (dirty fucker).
Confused, Augustine started to read the Bible again (as you do in such circumstances...not) and LIGHT PENETRATED HIS MIND!

WOW!

Augustine gradually became acquainted with Christian doctrine, and in his mind the fusion of Platonic philosophy with revealed dogmas was taking place.


Now, why did such a sick, sad loony get honoured with the title of Saint?
He was an inspiration to saddo's and fitted the Papacies 'token black guy rule'.


And that, my dear Sir, is that.

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There is River Plate, so called because it is made of fine porcelain.

The Missouri Breaks are located nearby where Native Americans often celebrated by drinking Ouzo, dancing and smashing pottery.

A papal bull is not much use when you think of it, and not a very happy creature either.

Hooray!

Fascinating fascination still fascinates me and others too no doubt.



Alan Alexander Milne was born on Jan 18th 1882, in London. His son Christopher Robin was born in 1919 and would provide the inspiration for the boy character in his most famous work: Winnie the Poo.
Originally he toyed with the idea of calling the story Winnie the Shit.



James Abram Garfield was born in a log cabin in Orange Township, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, November 19th, 1831.
He would later become president and move into a lovely white house instead.

On the morning of July 2nd 1881, Garfield entered the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Washington DC.
When he reached the waiting room, his assassin Guiteau stepped forward, fired two pistol shots, and shouted, "I am a Stalwart! Arthur is president now."
One bullet grazed Garfield's arm, the other struck him in the back near the spine.
He later died and was replaced as President by Odie the dog.



The letter 'F' is a descendant of the letter V. Relatives of F are U, W, and Y.
It is not on speaking terms with it's elder brother 'E', who stole some money from it's handbag in the late 1980's and used it to buy several boxes of Corn Flakes.


Johannesburg extends over 200 square miles and includes more than 500 suburbs and townships.
Johannesburg is also known by its Zulu name, 'eGoli', meaning 'city of gold', becasue it was founded after gold was discovered on the site in 1886. The city once provided more than 40 percent of the world's annual gold production.
Nowadays the place just smells like shite.



TO BE CONTINUED....

Winnie the Poo was named after a bear cub purchased from a hunter for $20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Ontario, Canada, while en route to England during the First World War. He named the bear "Winnie" after his hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba. "Winnie" was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner who brazenly listed her as a passenger in first class with him which was somewhat scandalous as travelling by unmarried couples of mixed species was frowned upon at that time.

Thespis walked around Athens pulling a handcart, setting up a kind of one man plays, where he showed the bad behaviour of man. The word for actor " thespian" comes from his name. His contemporary Solon resented him, with the explanation that what he showed on stage soon would be acted out in reality as well. The phrase and anagram "taking the piss" is derived from his name.

The great pyramid of Giza owes it's durability throughout the ages to the invention and use of pharoah cement even though no reinforcing steel was used in the process.

Wonderful thread.

From the occasionally acerbic quill of the double-deity.

Pray continue good sir.

Skoob

The hippocampus is quite small. Fortunateley most hippos seldom graduate to post secondary education, preferring to instead to wallow in their own excrement in ponds of water.

The high cost of university education may be a possible reason for this behavour.

Marconi was the first to send a wireless message across the Atlantic. Until then it had to be sent neatly written on a folded up piece of paper.

He later wrote the history of spaghetti which he entitled "Pasta and Present".

To make an Artesisian well a complete and thorough diagnosis is recommended.

Thomas Edison did not actually invent anything, it was his little none assistant Spud, from France, who not only invented most of Tom's stuff, but who later invented the American French fry.

Benjamin Franklin, in 1766 invented the fore-runner to the condom, by wrapping his mistress in thin rubber, thus being able to penetrate anywhere he went, safely of course. Unfortunately his mistress, a one Sadora Rumsfeld, suffocated.

Benjamin Franklin invented the first life vest from wine bottle corks, the empty wine bottles would have worked just as well.

He also discovered the Gulf Stream by speaking with sailors who knew about it before he did but did not have ready access to a printing press.

Edison did not invent the light bulb. It was invented by Henry Swann, a Scottish chemist. Swann was so annoyed, he invented putting sandpaper on matchboxes instead. Swann wrote a balad about the whole affair, which was his Swann song.

In deference to the theft of the lightbulb patent, Edison did name the Swannee river after the Scot, but then later changed his mind, and claimed that he'd named it thus because he had never seen a swan on it.

The past perfect tense of To Swim is swan, which is how the large white bird got it's name: "Did you see that swan past?" "Yes, it was all white." "Yes it was, pefect even."

Swann is the first number in the Uruhulu counting system, followed by Swoo, Swee, Swore and Swiff. They cannot count higher than this, due to having their left hand removed at birth in an attempt to make everybody right handed.

Iain

Famous Scottish Inventors

William Murdoch (1754-1839)
Invented steam tricycle, steam cannon, steamed vegetables and waterproof paint.

Charles MacIntosh (1766-1843)
Invented the raincoat
Glasgow-born chemist developed technique of sandwiching a layer of rubber between two layers of cloth, making it waterproof. Oddly it was first used for an 1824 Arctic expedition where there was no rain but plenty of snow, perhaps they should have brought umbrellas as well.

Kirkpatrick MacMillan (1812-187
Invented Bicycle
Born near Dumfries, he developed first rear-wheel-drive bicycle in 1842. Villagers thought him mad for dreaming up the first velocipede, as it was then called. Known locally as 'Daft Pate', his invention is still used by billions.

That happy face was entirely unintentional by the way.

Hooray to those who have added their fascinating fascination to THE FASCINATING THREAD!

I like tea.
Am I fascinated by tea?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But the thought of a nice cup of tea - and the process of making a lovely cup of said tea - was enough to make me collect these fascinating kettle related facts.

At the south-eastern tip of the Korean peninsula is the largest port and the second largest city of South Korea. 'Pusan' is situated on a deep, well-sheltered bay at the mouth of the Naktong River on the Korea Strait.
During the Koryo period, from the 10th to the 14th century, the city was called Pusanpo, from the Korean words 'pu', meaning "kettle" , 'san', meaning "mountain," and 'po', meaning "bay" or "harbour."


'Black Kettle' was a Cheyenne Indian chief, born near Black Hills, South Dakota in 1803. In 1868 General Custer attacked the peaceful camp of Black Kettle, killing him and 100 others. The man obviously didn't like a nice cup of tea.


The semi-boiled process is a method used by small factories when making soap.
The ingredients are stirred and heated in a kettle but not boiled.
The mixture saponifies (to convert (as fat) into soap; to hydrolyse (a fat) with alkali to form a soap and glycerol) in the kettle and is poured into frames to solidify.


Teddy Roosevelt was acclaimed a hero when he led the daring charge on Kettle Hill (wrongly called the charge on San Juan Hill) during the Spanish-American War.


The rise of Edo to greatness during the 268 years of Tokugawa rule thus laid the foundations of modern Tokyo.
Around the castle complex the modern central business area and even the peripheral centres became sub-districts of the sprawling city long before modern times.
There even developed zoning, whereby users of fire-temples and shrines, blacksmiths, key and kettle-makers-were moved to places where there was little or no wind.
These in time became the kernels of more modern industrial districts.


A beaver skin was "coin of the realm" until as late as 1820.
For one beaver skin the trapper could buy a half pound of beads, a kettle, 1 pound of shot, 5 pounds of sugar, 1 pound of tobacco, two awls, 12 buttons, or 20 fish-hooks. For six skins he could get a blanket.
For 12 skins he received a gun, and for four skins a pistol.


TO BE CONTINUED...

JB, I just love your crooked mind, Davy Crookett or not?

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Quote: Jesus Budda

Hooray to those who have added their fascinating fascination to THE FASCINATING THREAD!

I like tea.
Am I fascinated by tea?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But the thought of a nice cup of tea - and the process of making a lovely cup of said tea - was enough to make me collect these fascinating kettle related facts.

At the south-eastern tip of the Korean peninsula is the largest port and the second largest city of South Korea. 'Pusan' is situated on a deep, well-sheltered bay at the mouth of the Naktong River on the Korea Strait.
During the Koryo period, from the 10th to the 14th century, the city was called Pusanpo, from the Korean words 'pu', meaning "kettle" , 'san', meaning "mountain," and 'po', meaning "bay" or "harbour."


'Black Kettle' was a Cheyenne Indian chief, born near Black Hills, South Dakota in 1803. In 1868 General Custer attacked the peaceful camp of Black Kettle, killing him and 100 others. The man obviously didn't like a nice cup of tea.


The semi-boiled process is a method used by small factories when making soap.
The ingredients are stirred and heated in a kettle but not boiled.
The mixture saponifies (to convert (as fat) into soap; to hydrolyse (a fat) with alkali to form a soap and glycerol) in the kettle and is poured into frames to solidify.


Teddy Roosevelt was acclaimed a hero when he led the daring charge on Kettle Hill (wrongly called the charge on San Juan Hill) during the Spanish-American War.


The rise of Edo to greatness during the 268 years of Tokugawa rule thus laid the foundations of modern Tokyo.
Around the castle complex the modern central business area and even the peripheral centres became sub-districts of the sprawling city long before modern times.
There even developed zoning, whereby users of fire-temples and shrines, blacksmiths, key and kettle-makers-were moved to places where there was little or no wind.
These in time became the kernels of more modern industrial districts.


A beaver skin was "coin of the realm" until as late as 1820.
For one beaver skin the trapper could buy a half pound of beads, a kettle, 1 pound of shot, 5 pounds of sugar, 1 pound of tobacco, two awls, 12 buttons, or 20 fish-hooks. For six skins he could get a blanket.
For 12 skins he received a gun, and for four skins a pistol.


TO BE CONTINUED...

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Do you like doors?
Really?
Does your house have a door?
Lucky you.

I have collected a random selection of door-related fascination.


Folding-door spiders are large, with stocky brown bodies, thick legs, and huge fangs.
The name folding-door is derived from their habit of shutting the entrance to their silk-lined burrows by pulling in the rim.
They are sometimes referred to as folding trapdoor spiders.


In 1899 John Hay, United States secretary of state, wrote to the governments of Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, and Italy.
He proposed that they give assurances that every nation, large or small, would be allowed equal commercial opportunity in the markets of China.
With some reservations, the proposal was accepted.
Hay officially announced the agreement in March 1900.
It came to be known as the open-door policy.


The ancient Greeks developed several refinements of bar-and-bolt locks that permitted a door to be unbarred from the outside as well as from the inside.
One improvement consisted of a rope attached to a pivoted bar and passed through a hole in the door. A tug on the rope lifted the bar froom its cleats.

An air-lock is a device that permits safe passage between two levels of air pressure.
First patented in 1830 by Thomas Cochrane the device normally consists of cylinder of steel plate with an airtight door at each end.
Pressure within lock, between doors, must be equalized with that on the opposite side.


TO BE CONTINUED...

Tea was invented by an oriental potentate who sat down outdoors to enjoy a cup of hot water when a tea bag accidently fell into his cup, it may have been Tetley's.

Rather than discarding the fouled cup of hot water he removed the tea bag, added a spoon of sugar with a bit of milk and enjoyed it with a biscuit.

Barbers.
The mere mention of the name makes my skin crawl. Barbers and hairdressers are evil.
They are one of the few groups of individuals on Earth who actively seek -through advertisements - people so that they can stare at the top of their heads and make shink-shink sounds with a deadly, razor-sharp scissors.

Nonetheless they are are a fascinating group and deserving of inclusion in THE FASCINATING THREAD.
Here are some barber/hairdresser/hair related FASCINATING FACTS.



One of the characteristics by which mammals are distinguished from other members of the animal kingdom is the presence of hair.
Plant hairs called trichomes occur on roots, stems, and leaves.
In mammals a coat of hair is called a pelage. A fine, soft, and dense coat is usually referred to as fur. The woolly coat of sheep is called fleece. In hogs the hairs are stiff bristles; in the porcupine and hedgehog they are enlarged and toughened to form a protective coat of quills. Sensory hairs on the antennae, palps, and legs of insects inform the insects of their surroundings and their body position.
A fat man normally has a hairy arse.

The Egyptian court of gods had a barber god, and wealthy people had personal barbers who came to their homes daily or were their personal attendants. A travelling barber set a stool under a tree to perform his services for poorer people.


In Rome, prosperous citizens offered guests the services of their household barbers. Uninvited guests were given shitty haircuts as punishment.


The Barber of Seville (in Italian, Il barbiere diSiviglia) is an opera buffa (comic opera) by Gioacchino Rossini that debuted in Rome on February 20th, 1816.
At the age of 24, Rossini was already being hailed as a budding musical genius when he began work on 'Il barbiere'.


Hawaii's more than 1,000 manufacturing plants are located chiefly on Oahu. Many of the Oahu factories have been built in industrial parks and special areas on the southern part of the island. The industrial region forms a 20-mile (32-kilometer) arc around Pearl Harbor between Barbers Point and central Honolulu.
These manufacturing plants produce several thousand tonnes of garish shirts and shorts each year to the fat American market, as well as beach bums.


Wigs were rarely worn in the 19th century, and men once again wore facial hair in a wide range of styles-from mutton-chop sideburns to the walrus-style moustache.
Treatments and cures for baldness were concocted of substances as varied as bear's grease, beef marrow, onion juice, butter, and flower water. They were sometimes such toxic substances as sulphur or mercury.
The most widely used hair preparations of the century were Macassar oil and brilliantine, whose functions were to give hair shine….and also make it easier for gentlemen to grease the poles at lap dancing clubs where they sought future wives.



'Sif', in Norse mythology, is the wife of the thunder god Thor.
Sif was a giantess, goddess of grain and fertility, and one of the Asynjur.
She was the mother of Ull, god of archery, skiing, and single combat.
Sif was Thor's second wife, and Ull was his stepson.
Sif's golden hair, which symbolized her connection to the fertility of the land and the harvest of grain, was often praised.
She apparently hated having her bum pinched.



Sigmund Gottfried Spaeth was born on April 10th 1885 in Philadelphia. Through books, newspapers, radio, television, and lectures, he made music appreciation enjoyable to a wide audience.
From the 1920's through the 1940's Spaeth helped popularise the genre of barbershop music. He published several collections of songs in the genre, including Barber Shop Ballads (1925) and Words and Music (1926).



TO BE CONTINUED...

Re: Jesus Budda..

I say Jesus Budda is a fraud.

For failing to live up to his avatar description.

Two Sheets To The Wind...

Or Pissed as a Fart

Budda doesn't sound pissed to me. He sounds cogent. Almost logical. Barking mad yes.. Piss artiste no.

I suggest a change of Avatar description.

Jesus Budda Three Halfpence Short Of A Shilling

Which is so 'fascinatingly' olde London it doesn't even make Google..

The barber who shaves all and only those who don't shave themselves cannot exist.

A Roman joke:

Three men were travelling together: a barber, a bald man and an Albanian. They camped for the night. Each took his turn to keep watch. The barber got bored during his watch and shaved the head of the Albanian.

When he was woken to take his turn at the watch, the Albanian, rubbing his head, thought, "that stupid barber, he's woken up the bald man."

Oh yes, they certainly liked a laugh in the Roman Empire.

I've heard that as an Albanian joke.

You've got to make the most of your material, seize the marketing opportunities, and so on and so forth.

Button.
A small word but a proud word.
Without buttons we would all have to make do with zips…and pissing gentlemen are well aware of the danger of such devices.

Here are some FASCINATING Button facts.


Buttons have been used since ancient times.
In the tombs of Egypt and of Mycenae in Greece ornamental buttons of gold, glass, and earthenware from 2,500 to 4,000 years old have been found. Prehistoric peoples held their garments in place with thorns and with cords made from animal sinews. Later, loose flowing robes were fastened with a girdle or a pin.

In the 15th or 16th century someone discovered that a loop slipped over a button, or a button pushed through a slit in the cloth, made a better fastener for the close-fitting garments that were coming into style.
For some time, however, the chief use continued to be ornamental.

King Francis I of France had 13,600 gold buttons on a single coat. By the time he got into it he realised that it actually was a lovely sunny day outside and he could just wear his jeans and t-shirt instead.


The buttons on men's coat sleeves were originally used to fasten the cuffs back over the long lace frills of the shirt sleeves.
Those at the back of the frock coat were used to fasten up the long skirts of the coat when the man was riding horseback.
Belly buttons are used to tuck in your flab.

Since the Middle-Ages the buttons on a man's garments have been sewed on the right side. Thus he could quickly unbutton the coat with his left hand and at the same time pull out his sword or other weapon with his right hand.
The fastenings on women's clothing are sewed on the left side. . .which sadly doesn't help when men try to remove said garments in a passionate rush.

An accordion consists of a bellows fastened between two wooden (or plastic) casings containing rows of metal reeds.
Each casing has a set of finger buttons or piano-like keys on the end.
As the bellows is moved, air intake and outflow pass over the reeds to create the various pitches of sound.
No matter how it is played, the accordion is noteworthy for sounding like an arse exhaling a badgers penis.


Velcro is the trademark name for nylon pile fabric that fastens to itself. Tiny loops on strip of woolly fabric snag onto tiny hooks of an opposing strip of the same material. It is often used in place of buttons.
Velcro was invented in 1948 by Swiss engineer George deMaestral, who - after he noticed that cockleburs stuck to his socks and coat of his dog while they walked in woods - developed the new type of fastener. It was patented in 1955 by 'Velcro Corp'.



The popular French theatrical character 'Pierrot' is based on Pedrolino, a stock character of the Italian commedia dell'arte.
His costume consisted of a white jacket with a neck ruff and large buttons down the front, loose trousers, and a hat with a wide, floppy brim.
Unlike most of the other stock characters, he played without a mask, his face whitened with powder . . . he was also shite.



Charles Martin Hall discovered the electrolytic method of aluminium production and brought the metal into wide commercial use, becoming the foundation of aluminium production as we know it today.
On February 23rd 1886, for two hours, the then 22-year old Charles Martin Hall watched as the contents of one of the crucibles grew hotter and hotter.
Finally, he turned off the powerful current and poured out the molten mass. Little silver-coloured drops had separated and hardened into shining buttons of aluminium metal.
It is unknown if he had a rusty aluminium shed in his back yard that housed several cats, a hedgehog and something old smelly and grey in an overcoat.


TO BE CONTINUED. . .

Balls.
Who doesn't like having balls shoved in their face?

Here are some FASCINATING ball facts:


In lawn croquet, a 'rover' is one who has driven his ball through all the wickets but has not yet touched the home stake.
He continues play on his ball to assist his partner and to drive back the opponents' balls before aiming for the home stake himself.
Association croquet is played between two sides of one or two players each, using wooden mallets and two wooden balls per side. There are only six wickets and but one stake, placed in the centre. Each side has 26 points to score, 13 with each ball.
A game is won by the number of points the loser has yet to score when the winner has hit the stake with both balls.
It is one of the few occasions in a male's life when getting hit in the balls is seen as enjoyable.


'Boccie' is an Italian form of lawn bowling, played on a sand or dirt alley about 75 ft by 8 ft (23 m by 2 m), enclosed with boarded ends and sides.
Players roll or throw wooden balls to a smaller wooden ball called the jack. Rebounds from sidewalls are allowed.
Rolling around on the ground in pretend agony is a common tactic used by players to get competitors sent off.


'Curved Space Time' is a concept put forward by Einstein.
He accurately predicted that light waves would bend while nearing a large gravitational field. The concept can be depicted as a rubber sheet stretched by the weight of a heavy ball - a smaller ball propelled across the sheet will curve toward the depression.


In toilets, when the flush valve is opened, the water from the tank rushes through an opening in the tank into the toilet bowl, forcing the water and waste in the bowl through a passageway into the waste piping below.
The passageway siphons, or draws off, nearly all of the water from the bowl. As the tank empties, air is drawn into the bowl, breaking the siphon action.
At this time, the stopper, or flush ball, on the flush valve settles back down on the tank opening and the tank begins to refill.
When you have had a particularly large meal this process is often complicated by the size of your shite.

In the mining industry, crushed and washed ore is then ground to a finer grain in places such as ball mills.
In these particular mills, the crushed ore is fed into a rotating cylinder containing hundreds or thousands of steel balls, which do the grinding, by impact.
People who work in these types of mills often get funny looks when they explain to friends that they are 'ball crushers'.

Amongst American Indians, they often had inter-tribal meets.
Shinny was a woman's game. Plains women used a small buckskin-covered ball of buffalo hair.
Women of the South-west played a kind of football. They kicked a small ball around a long course. In early times, the game was thought to have magical powers, such as protecting the fields against sandstorms.
Male spectators seemed impressed with watching the women play with the balls, with many coming(ooer!) to watch.


TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Badgers.
You are a big, fat, motherfucking badger.

Here are some FASCINATING badger-related facts.


American poet Clark Badger(1883 -1957) is remembered for his ballads of life in the American West. In 1937 he was named the first poet laureate of South Dakota.
Many of his friends told him to become something other than a poet, but Badger was set in his ways.

The Honey Badger (Mellivora capensis) will attack and eat both large and small animals and is known to tear into bee hives in order to eat the honey as well as the bees themselves. Its thick skin makes it almost invulnerable to the bees' stings.
The honey badger and the honey guide, a bird that finds beehives, exhibit an unusual symbiosis.
The honey guide utters a call to indicate that it has located a hive, and the honey badger then follows it through the forest. Once the hive is reached, the mammal tears it apart, and both animals feed on the hive's contents.


A step in certain kinds of fur processing is that of 'pointing'.
This technique involves the gluing of badger hairs into the pelts of other animals that are either sparse in spots or perhaps damaged.
Highly skilled pointers can salvage many expensive furs. They can even simulate different types of furs with man-made materials.
To avoid misrepresentation in the United States, however, the Fur Products Labelling Act passed in 1952 requires that furs be described by name of animal and country of origin.
Punishments for breaking this law are meted out by a ruthlessly trained Honey Badger torturer.

Joseph E. Badger Jr, wrote of the California outlaw Joaquín Murietta in several Western-themed novels. Sadly, no cowboy Badgers featured in these books.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .