Day 541: When Heads Explode

originally published June 24, 2013 I just discovered that I suffer from the most awesome disease in the world. It’s not really a disease so much as an ‘ailment of unknown etiology’. I chanced upon this little corner of Wikipedian knowledge when I was researching last week’s article on Dancing Mania; I felt there must […]

Day 540: Be A Hip Cat, Be A Ship’s Cat, Somewhere, Anywhere

originally published June 23, 2013 I try not to pay close attention to how many sets of eyes look at my site every day. Sure, WordPress keeps track of that, and sometimes it’s interesting when a particular article causes a spike of interest, but for the most part I choose my topics based on what […]

Day 539: The Flaming Pies Of Band Names

originally published June 22, 2013 How did the Beatles come to be called the Beatles? Well, the official story is this: “It came in a vision. A man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, ‘From this day forward you are Beatles with an A.’ Thank you Mister Man, they said, thanking him.” […]

Day 538: The Principality Of Sealand – All Sea, No Land, All Independent

originally published June 21, 2013 Happy summer everyone! Yes, it’s time to welcome those lazy, slow-moving months of late evening sun, hammock-worthy afternoons and frozen drinks with suspiciously large amounts of alcohol bubbling between tiny little ice crystals. This is the day when some unredeemable schmuck will remind you that the days only get shorter […]

Day 537: In Praise Of The IKEA Effect

originally published June 20, 2013 In my unending quest to figure out why the human mind dances the steps it does, I occasionally like to dip my curiosity into a warm bowl of psychology, just to see what color it turns. Often it transforms into the murky grey of incomprehension, but sometimes it emerges cloaked […]

Day 536: Gracia Mendes Nasi – The Heroine Of Antwerp

originally published June 19, 2013 After having poured so many ugly words into yesterday’s article – words like ‘vivisection’, ‘starvation’ and ‘plague-fleas’ – it’s a good day to spin that gloom around and turn it into the antithesis of gloom… moolg. No wait, ‘moolg’ is apparently an Asian bathroom voyeur website. I really need to […]

Day 535: How Low We’ll Sink… The Story Of Unit 731

originally published June 18, 2013 I enjoy a good creepy story, the kind that makes you want to crawl out of your skin and find something less goose-bumpy to slip into. Every so often I find one that’ll make you want to burn that skin you just wriggled free from, because the guts of the […]

Day 534: Dancing ‘Til You Drop Dead

originally published June 17, 2013 Boogie Fever. Rockin’ Pneumonia. The Boogie-Woogie Flu. So many dances, so many accompanying ailments. But that’s all the stuff of fiction, right? Silly little catchphrases developed in order to make a new dance (and its accompanying record) sound so appealing it’s downright infectious. We all know this is just a […]

Day 533: Lies! History Is Teeming With Lies!

originally published June 16, 2013 It should come as no surprise that much of the trivial minutiae with which people pepper their conversations is either completely false or so deeply steeped in bullshit, the smell will linger for weeks. Sometimes the misconception becomes so widely proliferated it evolves into the understood truth. But truth is […]

Day 532: Some People Call Me The Space Comrade

originally published June 15, 2013 Yesterday I penned a touching tribute to those plucky little furry heroes, the unsung monkeys who ventured into space at the hands of American scientists, who were hungry for a forward step in their ever-mounting space race with the Soviet Union. Well, back then the Russians were doing a lot […]