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.”

Weird Universe » Drunken Hog Pile

Saturday 16 March 19:01:03 UTC 2024

Intoxicated animals is a favorite WU theme, going back, I think, to entries in Chuck Shepherd's NOTW.

[Link]

Weird Universe » Snail Dough Maker

Saturday 16 March 11:15:00 UTC 2024

Thankfully it's for making dough to wrap snails in, rather than making dough out of snails.

source: Catalog of the Unusual (1973), by Harold H. Hart [Link]

Futility Closet » The Augsburg Book of Miracles

Saturday 16 March 6:53:18 UTC 2024

What is this? A mysterious illuminated manuscript seems to have appeared in Augsburg, Germany, around 1550, but no one knows who created it or for whom. The name of Augsburg printmaker Hans Burgkmair appears on one page, so he’s thought to be a contributor, but the manuscript contains no introduction, title page, table of contents, or dedication; instead it launches … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons