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 » After You

Thursday 28 March 19:41:25 UTC 2024

The Soviet Union established the first regular paratrooper units in the world, forming its first airborne forces in the mid-1930s. Rather than jumping from the cabin, early troopers slid from the wings of the plane. In this newsreel footage from 1938, troops drop from a Tupolev TB-3. [Link]

Weird Universe » Dance of the Simpleton

Thursday 28 March 13:01:18 UTC 2024

Since the silent dance video has no soundtrack, but is ostensibly meant to be accompanied by a Chopin Waltz, I suggest playing "The Minute Waltz" simultaneously! If you click the dance video, then the music video, they sync up nicely, just like THE DARK SIDE OF THE RAINBOW.

[Link]

Weird Universe » Miss British Reinforced Concrete

Thursday 28 March 8:42:26 UTC 2024

The title was supposed to be bestowed on an employee of British Reinforced Concrete, but it was given to non-employee Nanette Keay by mistake:

"Just as the contest was starting some of the men pushed me into the line for a joke.
"They wouldn't let me leave and so I had to walk past the judges. I was absolutely astonished … [Link]

Futility Closet » Riposte

Thursday 28 March 7:38:34 UTC 2024

The poem known as Catullus 16, by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, is so explicit sexually that a full English translation was not published until the late 20th century: I will sodomize you and face-fuck you,
bottom Aurelius and catamite Furius,
you who think, because my poems
are sensitive, that I have no shame.
For it’s proper for a … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons