Happiness is...

Laughing at nothing.
Cake.
Gnomes.
Tea.
Realizing you can hum the entire score of three of your childhood movies.
Tea.

Dear Jerry Nelson.

Dear Jerry Nelson,

I hope you know the difference you made to generations of people all over the world. Your voice, your humour and talent brought comfort, laughter and hope. The world will miss that.

But don’t worry, although right now we are all really sad, in a few weeks when we start re-watching old episodes of Sesame Street, a smile will cross our lips, a chuckle form in out throat and we will all start sing “I Love To Count complete with Transylvanian laughter. And that is all you.

You are not gone. You never will be, and although few people knew your face we all knew your voice and they joy you brought to millions as Rowlf’s right hand, Snuffy, Lew Zealand and Floyd among others. Without you, The Muppets wouldn’t have been The Muppets, Sesame Street would be sadly lacking and millions of children would have lost interest in numbers.

Thankyou.

Now as you see the likes of Jim Henson and Richard Hunt again, say thankyou to them for us. We wouldn’t be the same without you.

Happy Birthday... sort of.

Today is a good friend of mine’s birthday. So I thought, other than sending her a gif from The Emperor’s New Groove what can I do to make her birthday nice… because rather clearly, I have not got her a present yet. Sorry dude.

So what I have decided is I am going to write a post about some of the weird and wonderful and terrible things that have happened through the ages on this, the 23^rd of August.

Pierre-Jacques Volaire [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 In the year 79 Mount Vesuvius started to make it known that he had a pretty bad belly ache. The next day he would erupt; destroying Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and Oplontis. Somewhere around 3000 people died and the human race learned an important lesson about living in close proximity to volcanoes. 

 

 In 1305 Braveheart was executed using methods that only the civilized English could possible come up with. William Wallace was dragged through London behind a horse, hung (but released while still alive), eviscerated (then they burned his guts in front of him), castrated, beheaded (his head was then preserved in tar and displayed on a spike on London Bridge), his body was cut into four pieces and spread across England with his limbs being displayed in Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth.

In 1989 something like 2million people made a human chain that stretched across three Baltic states  (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in a peaceful political demonstration for Independence. 

 In 2007 we finally found the missing Romanovs. The remains of the rest of the family were found and partially identified in 1991, but two children Alexei and one of the younger girls (always assumed to be Anastasia were missing). The skeletal remains of the children were found a ways away from where the others had been found, and interestingly there in no way of telling which girls was missing. The physiology of the girl’s remain place her more squarely in no-mans land when it comes to identification. DNA proved she is a Romanov but she could be Anastasia of Maria.

Today is also Vulcanalia so go and set something on fire (safely). Vulcan is the Roman god of Fire. Vulcan doesn’t do human sacrifice (which I personally find strange), instead people would trow live fish or other small animals onto bonfires as a sacrifice. After the great fire of Rome in AD 64, people stared sacrificing a bull and a boar as well (probably thinking that Vulcan set the city on fire as punishment for too much fish and not enough red meat).

I was trying to find nice things that happened but it seems that the 23^rd of August was always a pretty bad day in terms of noteworthy things happening.

Anyways.

Happy Birthday.

The day Old Mona went on holiday.

On this day in 1911, a few people in Paris had that horrible sick feeling you get when something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

The Mona Lisa was not on the wall. Not was she with the photographers that were supposed to have her. She was gone and no one knew how or who took her.

You all know the painting. If you don't I suggest you use Google now before all of the gods strike you down. The mysterious portrait of someone who might possibly have been a Noble Woman, possibly a Normal Woman or possibly a Whore painted by one Leonardo Da Vinci somewhere around 1503- 1506. We will never actually know who the subject was and why the heck she's smiling like that (seriously, that smile worries me), but that's not really important. What's important is just how ridiculously simple she was to steal.

In 1911 there was security and The Louvre had plenty of it. But somehow Mona went walkabout under everybody's noses. One might she was there and the next morning she wasn't. Picasso was implicated by Apollinaire in the theft along with half the cat-burgling population of Paris. Alas, no-cigar. Mona rained in the wind for two years before the real culprit was discovered.

It turns out that an Italian employee of The Louvre was one of those folks who thought that everything had its rightful place in the world and he believed that Mona's rightful place was in Italy, not France. So one day he decoded to hide in a broom cupboard until the museum closed, shove the surprisingly petit Mona under his jacket and leave after closing. Genius. Unfortunately, due to the painting's fame he never would have got away with it, but he did manage to hide her in his apartment for two years before getting impatient and trying to sell her to museum in Florence. Vincenzo Peruggia served a whopping six months for the theft and Mona returned to her home on the wall of The Louvre in 1913 ready and waiting for Nat King Cole to sing about.

Photo for a Monday.

Imagine for a moment that inside your house is somewhat like a cave. Dark. Cold. Just slightly damp. Welcome to my house.

Outside the sun is shining, the air is almost unbearably dry and it's so bright even the birds have decided to hide for a bit. Walk inside and everything is blue thanks to window tinting, the tiles are cold and the walls radiate coolness. Not the hipster kind of cool, the "oh my god, it's freezing" kind of cool.

Father and I sat outside for a bit today to escape the bone chilling chill. We have a gnome. I had forgotten about him.

Ge gets to be warm all day. Basted.

We've come a long way... or have we?

"We made the dirt just radio-active enough to register on a Geiger counter."

At some point in history is was appropriate to prove how good cold creme was at removing dirt but making the dirt on some poor girl's face radio-active and then proving that she now has a radio-active face. You will note that in the advertisement, we never see her not having a radio-active face so we honestly don't know if she used her cold creme and was no longer radio active or if she mutated into a super villain worthy of her very own comic book.

Photo of the day.

Imagine if you will, the wrong end of a Cathedral.

Through the west door we come, through the west door we go. We don't look at it and think "hey, that's a really nice wall".

But it is a nice wall. It hasn't been there long, it's stones are still all shiny and too clean to really be worthy of the pomp and circumstance of Cathedrals. But in time, it will hold the memories of millions of faces, voices, thoughts and words. It will remember in silence as only stone can and look down with its cold and sullen strength at the east end, the place where all the eyes turn, and it will think "you know, before I was here, this acoustic sucked".

Photo of the Day

5 Reasons I don’t watch the Summer Olympics.

Here are just five reasons I don't like watching the Summer Olympics.

1) The coverage sucks.

Even if I wanted to watch an event, chances are it would be one of the ones that the guys in charge of he Australian coverage would say “nah, no on wants to watch that”.

2) I find sport boring.

Unless my friends are playing, then I can scream random things at them like:

“Noodle Banana! That’s not how you play… this game…”

“Go opposing team!”

“You run like a fish!”

“LAMA!”

“Rubarb rubarb, buffalo, rubarb!”

3) I hate competitive people.

When I come across a competitive person, I want to punch them in their over-enthusiastic face. I was raised by my Mum, who is one of the least competitive people on the planet and I love her for it. Before doing anything I was always told “just do your best” and you know what? I came second at every eisteddfod I ever played in and I was damn happy… actually, I couldn’t have cared less. I went out on stage and performed, I liked that bit.  I didn’t even mind being told I wasn’t as good at playing classical music than the other girl, because even at the age of 9, I was completely aware that classical, romantic and modern were not my forte.

I remember singing at an eisteddfod where our school choir didn’t come first. I was the first time in something like 5 years that the choir hadn’t received first prize. A lot of the kids were angry and upset, I wasn’t. I was eating a biscuit and had way to much hairspray in my hair. I was quite happy to be there, singing Part 2 of Once Upon A December.

I even noticed competitiveness at Uni. I was there in the Orange Room (if you don’t know what I’m talking about visit the SJC at UQ) typing up an assignment. It was a research project about research methods… we had to research which method of research was best. My opinion was that you need both qualitative and quantitative research methods to be able to seethe whole story and I wrote as much. The girl beside me had decided that you only need qualitative. We were talking about this for some time, then she started to argue with me. I remember her telling me “I’ll be surprised if you pass”. She was right and I was wrong and she was going to win.  The week we got our marks back she asked me what I’d gotten, I didn’t know yet because I hadn’t picked it up but she was outraged that she had only gotten a 4. “My GPA is screwed” she said. I couldn’t care less about my GPA. So I went and picked up my assignment I got a high 6, missing out on a 7 by 3%, I was unbelievably happy.  I decided not to tell her, what good would it do to tell her that she had lost at the competition I wasn’t competing in?

4) I hate the media coverage.

The newspapers today have all been covering the Olympics like we should be ashamed of our athletes for not winning enough gold. Now, I don’t know about you, but these people have made it to the biggest event in the world and they should be damn proud of themselves for that. A lot of them have worked incredibly hard to win gold and when they don’t, there is a while before they can accept that they still did amazingly well. The Australian media is not helping them get through that period of disappointment.

What the Australian media are doing is pointing out how crap they did, how they are not good enough to be there, how worthless they are. I’m sure that’s really good for self esteem, both for the athletes and for the Australian public who actually care.

No matter what happens, athletes are always going to be disappointed with themselves for a while. Even when they win, they find things to work on so that next time they can be better. Not winning means that they didn’t achieve their goal, that there are lots of things to fix for next time. They already know that, we already know that and shoving a microphone in their faces just after they have finished, when that disappointment is at its peak means that all the media are going to get are a bunch of quotes hat show that disappointment. Wait a few days and they will have the perspective to see how well they really did.

5) The Winter Olympics are just plain better.

Snow!

Ice!

Figureskating! (mmmm Plushenko)

Ice-Dancing (seriously, who doesn’t love the fact that Ice-Dancing is an Olympic Sport)

Bobsled!

Australia... well, lets face it. We almost never win anything so its less competitive.

The list goes on.  

Today would be a good day to remember a girl named Anne.

Today’s day in history is not a birthday, or an anniversaryof death. It is not the day that something that we take for granted wasinvented or discovered. It is simply a day that something nasty happened tosome not-at-all nasty people. And although once you get to the part of thispost you will all say “oooohhhh, yeah we know her”, right now you are probablyjust raising an eyebrow wondering what on earth it could be.

Today is the 68th anniversary of the day that the Nazi’sfound three jewish families hiding in the Achterhuis of some offices inAmsterdam. The informant who gave them away has never been identified.

We all know the story of Anne Frank, or at least, we should.She is a symbol. A symbol of life, hope, and teenage girls. She held onto somuch hope, even through all of the horror, terror and knowing what was coming.She was a 15 year old girl who after almost 70 years, makes us all feel likemonsters. And that is important. She is the symbol of what the world would liketo accept as humanity.

Her diary is a wonderful thing. She started writing in it inJune of 1942. In those early entries she writes of the restrictions that wereplaced on the Jewish people, on the 20^th of June she made a list ofall of those things that Jews were forbidden from doing.

On the 6^th of July, the Frank family went intohiding, and it is from here that Anne’s words become important to the world.Her diary gives us a glimpse of what it was like for the persecuted children,forced from the lives they knew and shut up into a box. After the liberationsof the work camps and the end of the Holocaust, Anne’s Father returned toAmsterdam and found Anne’s diary and papers. Reading them was a revelation tohim. He had no idea about the depth of her thinking during her short life. Herdiary told him more about his daughter then he had ever known.

Ever since the publication of her diary under the title Het Achterhuis in 1947, the world hasbeen fascinated with the girl who was Anne Frank.  Her words were tuned into a play to give Anneand her family life again.

To someone who has never seen the horrors of war, the ideaof the Holocaust is hard to comprehend. The idea that people… humans can commitsuch atrocities against their own kind, with all the morals an ideologies andreligions that we claim make us more than just animals. Over 6 million peoplewere murdered n cold blood because they were not the same as the ones doing thekilling.

Unfortunately, humanity is not Anne Frank. Anne Frank wasthe beautiful exception.

A Watch, a Mouse and a Cannon.

On this day in 1933, one of the most famous watches was born. It is probably one of those ones that you look at in shop windows and thing "I want that".

At Century of Progress in 1933, the Ingersoll Watch Company launched the Mickey Mouse watch and alarm clock series. The watches back then retailed for a whopping $3.75. Amazing. Today, they retail for $50... sometimes more... and they are still just about the coolest thing in the world.

Damn it, now I want one.

Also on the cards today in the anniversary of a death that made Horrible Histories' section about Stupid Deaths. You know the song. "Stupid deaths, stupid deaths, they're funny cos' they're true", now its going to be in your head for the rest of the day. You're welcome.


James II of Scotland was a Middle Ages gun nut. He loved his artillery and the new inventions that were coming to light.

On the 3rd of August 1460, King James decided to kick the English out of Roxburgh Castle and to do this, he decided to use cannons. Lots of Cannons.
Unfortunately, at this period in history, cannons were prone to the odd explosion and the one King James was standing next to did just that.

According to the reports from the battlefield, the cannon, known as The Lion, exploded and a piece of the shrapnel hit James in the leg. He was "stricken to the ground and died hastily", presumably of blood loss and shock. He was 29 years old and had 7 living children.