The Flatulence Test

TransCentury Hotel Toilet Instructions (Photo credit: Toby Simkin)

Did you spot yesterday’s word or was it all a big bleb of babble to you?

I gave you two words, because I couldn’t choose between them:

Ambisinister: clumsy, unskillful with both hands

Asseverate: to declare earnestly, solemnly

I declare earnestly and solemnly that there is only one new word in today’s post.

Tesco – Freshly kicked (Photo credit: net_efekt)

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I had a thought about the horse meat scandal: I think we’re safe in this house.  Think about it: when you buy cheap dog and cat food in tins, it’s usually made of horse meat.

Remember the smell that follows…?

We haven’t had any unusually bad smells, from dogs or people – above the ordinary, if you know what I mean.  

I think we’re safe.

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We had a toilet flood this morning, due to a blockage that may or may not have been caused by the over-enthusiastic use of toilet paper by a certain bunged-up (nose, people, nose!) theatrical type.

That’s twice in one year I’ve had to wash the bathroom floor.

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Fascinating False Facts?

Image via Wikipedia

Viewfromtheside offered fascinating as the weekend theme.  I thought you might like some fascinating facts.  Can you guess which, if any, are true?

• You can’t fold paper more than seven times.  You can, actually, if you are young and determined and rope in your family and a shopping mall.  From Wikipedia:
  

  In January 2002, while a junior in high school, [Britney] Gallivan demonstrated that a single piece of toilet paper, 4000 ft (1200 m) in length, can be folded in half twelve times…Gallivan succeeded in folding a very long sheet of toilet paper in half 12 times. She calculated that instead of folding in half every other direction, the least volume of paper to get 12 folds would be to fold in the same direction, using a very long sheet of paper. A special kind of $85-per-roll toilet paper met her length requirement. Not only did she provide the empirical proof, but she also derived an equation that yielded the width of paper or length of paper necessary to fold a piece of paper of thickness t any n number of times.

• So, proof, if it were needed, that you have to be rich to debunk myths – $85 for a roll of toilet paper!  I know where I wouldn’t be using it.
• Brad Pitt once had a summer job posting warning signs at coal mine entrances
• Milk causes mucus.  But you should still drink it, especially if you’re old and female: lack of calcium causes osteoporosis.
• Elephants are the only mammals who can’t jump.  Not true: rhinos and hippos can’t jump either.  Also sloths, but that’s more a case of disinclination than inability, I’m guessing.
• Anyone convicted of animal cruelty in Sedalia, Missouri, is sentenced to a month’s confinement in the county animal shelter. 
• Haggis was invented in Scotland.  No it wasn’t: we can blame the Scandinavians for that one. 
• Which puts paid to the myth that Vikings were mean – you can’t be mean on disgusting slop.
• No doubt now I’ll get a testy comment from Viv, putting me right on haggis.  You might as well save your fingers, Viv, because I’ll never be convinced.
• Penguins can smell toothpaste from several miles away.
• With the exception of a small 200-square-mile section of Antarctica, every single square kilometer of dry land on the planet has been walked on by at least one human being.  Probably looking for an open public toilet.
• This one is for that notorious plant killer, Sarsm: if you place a fresh Viagra tablet in a houseplant’s soil every six months, the plant will not wilt.
• If a cricket were the size of Mount Rushmore, it could jump to the moon.  But it won’t have to bother: if crickets ever get that big, I suspect we’ll all be living on the moon.
• Frank Sinatra didn’t want to record the song “My Way” but was forced to by his record label.  Don’t you just love the irony?

So tell me: which initial statement is false, and which true?

Four Things

Image via Wikipedia

Have you noticed the date?  8/9/10 

That’s all I have to say about that.

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Sad news for us: we lost our littlest fish: she who must not be named because I named her after a friend and I don’t want to say ‘X is dead.’  She was just a weak fish, we think; though she had a hearty appetite.  I gave her a worthy burial with the crisp packets and apple peelings.

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I was going to write that today marks the seventieth anniversary of the start of the Blitz but I got it confused with the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Saatchi & Saatchi; don’t ask me how.  The Blitz anniversary was actually Tuesday 7th September.  1000 German planes flew across the North Sea to see us off. And failed miserably.

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I’m still enjoying Vivinfrance’s war memoirs; they are fascinating.  She told a story about her Dad and some black market sugar, and it reminded me of my Dad and the toilet paper.  When we emigrated to South Africa in 1982, we had no money (one of the reasons for emigrating in the first place).  Dad was working for Sasol, a huge corporation that turned coal into petrol.  To help our grocery budget, my father the usually honest would come off shift with a toilet roll taken from the men’s loos.  One day, he heard from a colleague that the company was cracking down on staff pilfering – stationery, equipment, and so on – and he went home in a panic and he and Mum spent an entire night ripping up a hundred half-used toilet rolls and flushing them down the toilet.  What really made me laugh was that it was unmarked paper and the company couldn’t have come in to the house asking to see it.  The price of a guilty conscience, I guess: a huge water bill.

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