Category Archives: amusements

amusements

2017 Amusements

Traditionally we have a round-up of the amusements we’ve encountered during the year, but 2017 has been noted for it’s total lack of amusement due to multitudinous stupidities – mostly of the UK and US governments. However there were a few bright spots amongst the gloom.

Product of the Year
The three top contenders for this year’s accolade are:
Unwaxed & Unflavored Dental Floss For Use As Yoni Egg Retrieval String
Mummy Prawns (below left) which Noreen encountered in the flesh, but which Iceland have sadly renamed since Halloween!


Aroma Home Fuzzy Friends Slippers; they come in “unicorn” (above right) and “white rabbit”.

Outstanding News Headlines
I cannot reduce the field beyond these four beauties:
Donald Trump: a man so obnoxious that karma may see him reincarnated as himself
Shaquille O’Neal Thinks Earth Is Flat Because It Doesn’t Go Up And Down When He Drives
Alice Cooper finds Warhol artwork after decades rolled up in storage
[Man] jailed for threatening lamp-posts and bollards with a knife in Bristol

Crass Media Statements
We just can’t beat this one from Chiltern Railways on Twitter in May …

We do apologise that there are a few delays this evening.
This is due to congestion caused by earlier delays.

The medal for Plonker of the Year has to go to the Lancashire man poisoned after eating cherry seeds.

Best Music Track Title
Not a new track, but one I hadn’t encountered before: John Willis Ferret by the Oldham Tinkers

Best Place Name
Marsh Gibbon. It’s a small village in Buckinghamshire near Bicester.

Best Animal
Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever

Recipe of the Year
There is no winner here this year, although we thought you should be warned that someone taught a computer to write cookbooks and its recipe ideas are hilariously weird.
We can’t wait to try Salmon Beef Style Chicken Bottom.

Best Neologisms
We spotted two brilliant neologisms this year …
Landscape homeopathy – whatever the fuck that is!
Vaginal wedge – which contributed to its perpetrator winning a Bad Sex Award.

Best Piece of Trivia
We have to thank Barnaby Page on Facebook for this:
One of my favourite bits of trivia is that there is exactly one ATM in the entire continent of Antarctica (it’s an excellent quiz question). But tonight I have discovered something even more wonderful – there is an ATM in Vatican City with instructions in Latin!

Best Photographs
Three contenders for the title here …



And now we come to the final section …

Do What?
Somewhere during the year we came across these felting instructions:


And finally this, from an advert, courtesy of Steve Olle on Facebook:
To part time editor: I hope you could think our work as possible forever work or hobbies at your later future.

By no means a bumper year, so with luck 2018 will do better.

amusements, pleasures

To Keep You Amused …

Just in case anyone is at al loose end for the remainder of today and tomorrow, the Guardian printed the King William’s College 2017 GKP, as it has every year since 1951. This is the general knowledge paper 2017-18, the 113th issue, sat by the pupils of King William’s College, Isle of Man.
According to Wikipedia: Since 1904, the College has set an annual general knowledge test, known as the General Knowledge Paper (GKP). The pupils sit the test twice: once unseen on the day before the Christmas holidays, and again when they return to school in the New Year, after spending the holiday researching the answers. It is well known to be highly difficult, a common score being just two correct answers from the list of several hundred. The best scores are 40 to 50 for the unseen test and about 270 out of 360 for the second sitting.
The quiz is always introduced with the Latin motto Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est, “To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition.”
You can find this year’s GKP at https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2017/dec/21/king-williams-college-quiz-2017.
I shall not be getting 100% as tonight’s bedtime reading.

amusements

Ten Things

For this month’s Ten Things we have our annual “best of” round-up from our Auction Amusements posts.
Ten Odd Things I’ve seen Auctioned this Year

  1. A vintage hand held fire extinguisher
  2. Over 600 used golf balls
  3. A pair of vintage dog nut crackers
  4. A pair of musket shot recovered from the ‘Invincible’ (1744-1758), with certificate of authenticity
  5. A Christmas tree made from pipe cleaners

  6. A stuffed and mounted pike in glazed wooden case
  7. A WW2 USN portable bomb hoist MkVII
  8. A fuel gauge housing from a DH4 Liberty bi-plane, silver-plated as a photograph frame
  9. Ten vintage leather baseball gloves dating from the 1930’s onwards
  10. A large solid block of beeswax
amusements, ramblings

Auction Amusement

Out local auction house’s final sale of the year has come up with a few nice gems amongst the lots. Odd things, and strange combinations, but sadly no stuffed ferrets.
A charming early 19th century boot snuff box with pique decoration inlaid with bone and dated to the sole 1848 [below]


A charming 19th century treen nutmeg grater styled as a post box indicating the inland letter rate with a small picture panel behind
A collection of old lighters, a farriers pen knife, a propelling pencil, safety razors and a Chinese knife in a shagreen scabbard etc.
A plain silver photograph frame, London 1913, containing a period photograph of a young Royal Artillery officer, together with a late Victorian silver-topped glass jar and a match-holder made from the wood of HMS Victory
A collection of approximately 250 china and pottery thimbles
A collection of blue glass wares including a liqueur set, a hardwood temple bell, two horn purses, a turbo tiger vacuum cleaner, a metal shoe last, a large 19th century family bible, model soldiers, further glass ware including sugar bowls etc.
A 19th century Willcox and Gibbs sewing machine in original wooden case
Two 19th century irons, two vintage watering cans and two boxes containing vintage padlocks and keys and screws

Five model ships in glass bottles, a glass model sailing boat, lustre sugar bowl and silver plated figure of a swan [above]
An Amplon gramophone arm, a The Little Kracka fishing reel and a cased timepiece
A varied lot including a copper bed pan on turned wood handle, two brass fireside companion sets, a Burago model Porsche 356B, old planes and chisels, two Whitefriars glass vases, a small quantity of flat ware, a silver plated toast rack and dish, a vintage beaded bag, unused perfumes including Chanel No.5., vintage boxed dominoes, a small quantity of china etc.
Two shelves of interesting vintage wood and metal wares including hip flasks, binoculars, steins, dominoes, buttons, 19th century papier mache box, leather case containing old keys, ceramic and silver plated oval tray, wooden architectural fitments etc.

A vintage wooden cased NHS prescription dispenser [above]
No, I don’t know either!
A fine Japanese carved bone sword of impressive size, decorated overall with warriors and formal ornament, Meiji period
A vintage Tate & Lyle pine packing case for Afternoon Tea Cube Sugar
A stuffed leather figure of a rhinoceros
A large metal walking staff surmounted by a crow [right and below]

amusements, personal

Five Questions, Series 10 #5

A big fanfare! Because we have reached the last question in Series 10 of Five Questions.

★★★★★

Question 5: How would you describe yourself in three words?
Totally fucked up.
★★★★★

OK, so that’s the end of this series of Five Questions. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, maybe learnt something (if only about my craziness) and possibly even had a think yourself.
As in the past, if I can find enough good – or crazy – questions I may do another series, sometime next year. So if you have a good question, or something you want to ask, then do please get in touch – or leave a note in the Comments. And yes you can ask literally anything you like!
Meanwhile, it’s the season to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a fabulous New Year!

amusements, personal, science

Five Questions, Series 10 #4

2 Comments

And so on to question four and we’re getting towards the end of this tenth series of Five Questions.

★★★★☆

Question 4: Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?
Because they’re 10% nylon?
But seriously … The real answer is almost certainly to do with the cross-linking of the long-chain protein polymers that make up each hair and the mechanical interlinking between the individual hairs. The more random cross-linking there is, the more the proteins will fold together and the curlier (thus shorter) the hairs. Similarly the more random the mechanical interlinking, the more likely the fibres are to be shorter. Wool has to be processed to remove this interlinking and cross-linking and create straight fibres, which we call unshrunk. Heat, water and mechanical action go to create the randomisation of the linking and thus cause the fibres to shrink in the wash. Now sheep are a natural product; they aren’t processed. Hence their wool is pretty random and effectively pre-shrunk, so they aren’t going to shrink more in the rain.

amusements, personal

Five Questions, Series 10 #3

Here we are at the halfway point, at question three in this series of Five Questions.

★★★☆☆

Question 3: Do illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?

Can illiterate people even know what alphabet soup is?

Clearly if you’re totally illiterate you can’t get the full effect because you don’t even know what letters are let alone identify them.
Although, who knows, there may be a deeper hidden truth.