Category Archives: amusements

Ten Things #22

In a couple of days time my mother should have been celebrating her 100th birthday, but sadly she died earlier this year. So for this month’s Ten Things I thought we should do something to reflect on the momentous events my mother saw in her lifetime.
Ten Historical Events from My Mother’s Lifetime before She was 21 (in October 1936)

  1. Russian Revolution (1917)
  2. End of the Great War (1918)
  3. Spanish Flu Epidemic (1918-19)
  4. Creation of Irish Free State (1922)
  5. General Strike (1926)
  6. Universal suffrage for everyone over 21 in UK (1928)
  7. First talking films (1928)
  8. Wall Street Crash (1929)
  9. Hitler comes to power in Germany (1933)
  10. Accession of Edward VIII (1936) (but not the Abdication as that didn’t happen until December 1936)

And that is just the tip of the iceberg!

Oddity of the Week: Password Security

Soheil Rezayazdi has suggested the following Nihilistic Password Security Questions:

  • What is the name of your least favourite child?
  • In what year did you abandon your dreams?
  • What is the maiden name of your father’s mistress?
  • At what age did your childhood pet run away?
  • What was the name of your favourite unpaid internship?
  • In what city did you first experience ennui?
  • What is your ex-wife’s newest last name?
  • What sports team do you fetishise to avoid meaningful discussion with others?
  • What is the name of your favourite cancelled TV show?
  • What was the middle name of your first rebound?
  • On what street did you lose your childlike sense of wonder?
  • When did you stop trying?

Lots stupidity in this vein over at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Oddity of the Week

Pope Francis is currently visiting Cuba and the USA. The followning was reported at the end of August by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and summarised by the Weird Universe blog:

Muslim clerics complain of the commercialization of the holy city of Mecca during the annual Hajj pilgrimages, but for Pope Francis’s visits to New York, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia in mid-September, shameless street vendors and entrepreneurs already appear to be eclipsing Mecca’s experience. Merchants said they’d be selling, among other tacky items, mozzarella cheese statuettes of the Pope ($20), a Pope Toaster to burnish Francis’s image on bread, a Philly-themed bobblehead associating the Pope with the boxer “Rocky”, local beers Papal Pleasure and YOPO (You Only Pope Once), and T-shirts (“Yo Pontiff!” and “The Pope Is My Homeboy”). The Wall Street Journal quoted a Philadelphia archdiocese spokesman admitting that “you kind of have to take it in stride”.