The appropriate word here is “Bleeaagh.” In 897, Pope Stephen VI dug up the decomposing body of his predecessor and put it on trial for violating church law. Formosus, who had been dead for nine months, was found guilty and buried again. Rome turned against Stephen, who was eventually strangled in prison. It’s known as the cadaver synod or, in Latin, the “synodus horrenda.”
epalpebrate
adj. lacking eyebrows
Contents of Stanley’s Snake Oil, produced by “Rattlesnake King” Clark Stanley in 1917, as determined by the federal government:
I.e., no actual snake oil. But it’s pretty close to modern-day capsaicin-based liniments, so it may still have worked pretty well as intended.
Make your own wanted poster at glassgiant.com.
“The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is out-grossing my films.” — Paul Newman
Sound effects created by MAD cartoonist Don Martin:
PITTWEEN SPLATCH THORK BLOOF THLIK GLITCH GLUTCH PITTWOON PLAF PLOOF SPLITCH THUK THAP PLOOP is the sound of a bullet ricocheting off a ceiling, through six heads, off a wall, then through six more heads.
“Nothing.” — Louis XVI
(Diary entry for July 14, 1789, the day of the storming of the Bastille.)
Actual names of politicians in the state of Meghalaya, India:
Hitler Marak told the Hindustan Times: “Maybe my parents liked the name and hence christened me Hitler. … I am happy with my name, although I don’t have any dictatorial tendencies.”
Vaucanson’s Shitting Duck was one of the more unsavory products of the French Enlightenment.
When it was unveiled by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739, thousands watched the “canard digérateur” stretch its neck to eat grain from a hand. The food then dissolved, “the matter digested in the stomach being conducted by tubes, as in an animal by its bowels, into the anus, where there is a sphincter which permits it to be released.” These inner workings were all proudly displayed, “though some ladies preferred to see them decently covered.”
Why make fake duck shit when the world is so well supplied with the real thing? It was part of the Enlightenment’s transition from a naturalistic to a mechanical worldview. Suddenly a duck was not a God-given miracle but a machine made of meat, and complex automatons carried the promise of mechanized labor, stirring a cultural revolution.
Goethe mentioned Vaucanson’s automata in his diary, and Sir David Brewster called the duck “perhaps the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever made.” Sadly, the whole thing was a fake: The droppings were prefabricated and hidden in a separate compartment. Back to the drawing board.
Werner Heisenberg gets pulled over for speeding.
The cop says, “Do you know how fast you were going?”
Heisenberg says, “No, but I know where I am.”