All Hallows Even

It's Halloween!

Halloween has its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain loosely referred to as the pagan new years, however, the name comes from the Christian holiday All Saint’s Day that was placed on the same day.  Samhain is Gaelic for “summer’s end, the end of the “lighter half” of the year and the beginning of the “darker half.”

In Old English All Hallows in Old English means “the feast of the saints.”  In the 16th century, the Scottish variant "All Hallows Even" started to be commonly used and later the word was abbreviated to “Hallowe’en”. The current variation was adopted in the early 20th century.

Here's Stephen Lynch with his Halloween song. 

Zombie Alert Meter

This groundbreaking Zombie Alert Meter from OMFGzombies is designed to give you accurate information about current worldwide zombie infection levels.

Stay alert with the OMFGZOMBIES Zombie Alert Meter (ZAM). Currently it updates every 1/2 an hour, ensuring you can take appropriate precautions when leaving the safety of your home.

Lacking the sensual enthral of the vampire or the animal sex-appeal of the werewolf, zombies are very much the unwanted aged pensioners of the supernatural world.  The true zombie tradition originated in the Congo and was brought to Haiti by slaves.

Creating a zombie follows a process where a voodoo houngan creates a special powdery toxin that contains large amounts of tetrodotoxin from puffer fish.  The toxin in this powder is absorbed through touch contact.  After the victim is declared dead and buried, the houngan unearths the victim a few days later in ritual involving a second powder of hallucinogens. Between the brain damage from the first drug, being buried alive, then ritualistically dragged from the grave and the effects of the second drug, the victim was more or less stripped of their intellect and self-will.  Doomed to more or less behave like an undesirable aged pensioner.

The first ever zombie movie was White Zombie in 1932 staring Bela Lugosi and was a film interpretation of a stage play.  But it was George Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead that spawned the zombie film genre.  A genre which has lead to such great titles as: Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town, Nudist Colony of the Dead, Space Zombie Bingo, Zombie Ninja Gangbangers, Zombie vs. Mardi Gras, Psycho Zombie Love Butcher and not forgetting The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

A complete list of every zombie movie ever made (and some upcoming ones) is at The Zombie Reporting Centre.

Harpo Marx Cornflake

A few years ago I found a cornflake that looked exactly like Harpo Marx of The Marx Brothers fame. Recently while clearing up some things I found a small jar containing the flake still intact!

I'm quite pleases I still have the Harpo-flake, I'm hoping it will make me very rich some day.

Nude Croquet

Continuing with theme a few weeks ago on books I haven’t read.  Here’s another book I haven’t read, Nude Croquet by Leslie A. Fiedler.

All you have to do is look around and you’ll agree that there is no doubt about the statement everything is more fun when done naked and croquet is no exception.

All you have to do is look around, or try for yourself, and you’ll agree that there is no doubt about the old saying "Everything is more fun when done naked". 

Sky diving, running through cricket matches, pilates, ironing, using power tools and showering are all more fun naked, croquet is no exception.

When you think about it, it’s the only way to play.

In other book news, I’m glad to see that Brian Lumley has a new book out for his Necroscope series.  Necroscope: The Plague Bearer is the most recent addition to the now fifteen novels and two short story collections. 

The books present release is only as a special edition leather-bound hardback (very old school like the author).  I’m hanging out for the Australian paperback release next year some time.

Shark Brains

As I discovered on a blog about sharks, there is a remarkable similarity between a sharks brain and a female human uterus.  These similarities obviously transcend the coincidental and go a long way towards explaining a few things.

With a sharks brain for a uterus there should be no surprise that when the biological clock is ticking at it’s fullest, women often turn into savage man-hunters whose eyes role back into their head whey they engulf their prey.  But I didn't need to tell you that. 

Having a womb for a brain it's no wonder sharks are periodically moody and prefer to see a gynaecologist rather than a psychologist for their emotional upset.

The uterus like brains of sharks have allowed them to figure out parthenogenetic reproduction. This type of reproduction occurs when an egg cell is triggered to develop as an embryo without the addition of any genetic material from a male sperm cell.  Read more about that here: Captive shark virgin birth, BBC News.

The Domestic Uses of Urine

In addition to marking your territory, the uses of urine are far to many to cover in just one post. So I'm going to split the topic into domestic and medical.

On a domestic level the highly alkaline properties of urine give it chemically similar properties to detergent, soap and bleach. In the first century, the Roman's valued the use of urine that they imposed a tax upon it. This tax, if nothing else, was a good way to piss off the populous.

One of the most well known uses of urine is in the leather tanning process. Once soaked in urine, the flesh and fatty tissues semi-dissolve and can be scraped off much more easily. In a later phase of the tanning process, urine is rubbed onto the outside of the skin to remove any unwanted hair.

Being so effective at removing rotting meat and fat, urine was often used to clean cooking and eating cutlery. In places where water is scarce this is still sometimes practiced. In East Africa where clean water is almost non existent, people are realised from birth having their cooking pots and drinking cups washed in cow urine. Some have developed a taste for the flavour of cow urine, and members of some tribes will add cow pee to their milk. Keep that in mind the next time you into a glass of banana milk.

Blacksmiths often used urine in the final stage of the smithing process, many believing that urine created a higher grade metal over simple water when used to temper swords and gave it a nice wee sheen.

But where would the fabric dying industry be without the miracle golden stream? As a cleansing agent before dyeing it removes oils and dirt. As a colour extracting agent, certain plants soaked in urine will yield a rich useable pigmentation. A bucket of wee is also an effective dying medium and fixative to set colours. It's said in the old days fabric makers would leave a large tub at the local pub for donors to freely contribute. Behaving like a reverse milkman, the dangerous bit was lifting it up overhead onto the collecting cart.

High in ammonia urine has been used as a bleaching agent for thousands of years. While modern advertising of cleaning products frequently refer to the ability to remove urine a little wee can actually help remove suborn stains. Next time you need to go while doing the laundry, just a tinkle into the washer and you can whiten those whites.

Although not a common practice, the addition of urine in the cheese-making process is known to make a richer, stronger tasting cheese. For some reason this is highly sought after by those who've tasted it. One wonders what flavour would be printed on the supermarket label?

If you take a heavily urine soaked lump of dirt, place it in a bucket wire mesh in the bottom, and then repeatedly run hot water through it, you'll get little crystals of potassium nitrate. Mix these crystals with sulphur and powdered charcoal and you'll have gunpowder. See I wasn’t lying about the explosive power in my (damp) underpants.

In ye old times a little wee was used to dissolve away ink from parchment. It was like a personal delete button for scribes and friars, and a god reason to get out of the habit of licking your fingertips to turn book pages.

A medieval concoction that allegedly repaired cracks in gold objects called chrysocollon, had a traditional recipe as such: An innocent young boy must urinate into a mortar of red copper, while a pestle (also made of red copper) is in motion. Next, the mortar of urine must be exposed in the sun until it has become as thick as honey. Perfect for mending that favourite drinking goblet you broke.

 Strangely, hanging coral in the urea rich fumes of an outhouse causes it to regain it's vivid colour. More strange is that hanging musk, among the fumes will revive its potency. Check the ingredients in most perfumes you’ll find urea, I always said the French label read as toilet water.

As a shampoo the alkaline properties of urine can cut through greasy build-up and leave your hair softer and more manageable. Look at the ingredients of your store purchased bottle and you may find out what you're rubbing into your head. However, don't expect showering under the source to have the same fragrance as your favourite brand.

Similarly as a face and body wash, a little pee will easily clean away dirt and oils from your skin. Many believe it gives their skin a softer, more radiant appearance. Feel free to use your imagination as to how this was discovered. Today distilled urea from urine is in almost every beauty product you can think of. One wonders where the beauty industry sources it's urine from. Is there some elaborate mechanism to collect the urine of animals? Or do the third world factory workers get payed a bonus for donating?

So throw out all your detergents, washing powders, soaps, face creams, shampoo and perfumes and switch to the bedpan for all your domestic needs. For there's a lady who knows, all that glitters is gold… and in a couple of weeks I’ll post part two: The medical uses of urine.

Nimble Fingers

After the book review of a book I haven't read last week, I thought I might post a LP cover of a record I haven't listened to.

The Nimble Fingers of Jean Pierre Jumez.
 

 
It's classical guitar and he's not wearing any pants.

Hurra Torpedo

I remember watching this many years ago and just re-discovered it on youtube. This live performance of Total Eclipse of the Heart is probably my favorite of all the Hurra Torpedos performances I've seen.  They do a good rendition of All the Thing’s She Said too.