Whittle It a Little, It’ll Fit

Odds and sods I look at regularly, just because they amuse me. I hope they do the same for you. Incidentally, I found this page’s title on Greg Ross’s Futility Closet (it’s somewhere on this page) in a mini-article which also includes the delightful sentence in Icelandic: Barbara Ara bar Ara araba bara rabbabara. Ross points out that this, “besides being fun to say, is spelled with only three letters. It means “Barbara, daughter of Ari, brought only rhubarb to Ari the Arab.”

Futility Closet » Lament

Thursday 29 February 19:56:00 UTC 2024

Marjory Fleming (1803-1811) composed this uniquely terrible poem at age 8: Three Turkeys fair their last have breathed,
And now this world for ever leaved,
Their Father and their Mother too,
Will sign and weep as well as you,
Mourning for their offspring fair,
Whom they did nurse with tender care.
Indeed the rats their bones have crunch’d,
To eternity … [Link]

Weird Universe » Leap Year Lawsuit

Thursday 29 February 12:11:00 UTC 2024

In 1997 John Melo was sentenced to "ten years to ten years and one day" for home invasion. Seven years later he filed a motion in the Massachusetts Superior Court complaining that the Department of Correction "had miscalculated the length of his sentence because it had failed to credit one day for each February 29 ('leap year' day) he had … [Link]

Weird Universe » The Complacent Americans

Thursday 29 February 10:09:00 UTC 2024

One such gem is a Civil Defense "scare" album called THE COMPLACENT AMERICANS that simply must be heard to be believed. This LP – with its bright orange mushroom cloud cover and its hyperbolic advisories to sensitive listeners – could well have been produced by that genius of exploitation William Castle. But actually it was recorded under the stately auspices … [Link]

Futility Closet » Chronological Order

Thursday 29 February 7:23:01 UTC 2024

By Lee Sallows: If the letters BJFGSDNRMLATPHOCIYVEU are assigned to the integers -10 to 10, then: J+A+N+U+A+R+Y = -9+0-4+10+0-3+7 = 1 F+E+B+R+U+A+R+Y = -8+9-10-3+10+0-3+7 = 2 M+A+R+C+H = -2+0-3+5+3 = 3 A+P+R+I+L = 0+2-3+6-1 = 4 M+A+Y = -2+0+7 = 5 J+U+N+E = -9+10-4+9 = 6 J+U+L+Y = -9+10-1+7 = 7 A+U+G+U+S+T = 0+10-7+10-6+1 = 8 S+E+P+T+E+M+B+E+R = -6+9+2+1+9-2-10+9-3 = … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons