Hooooooooooly fucking shit. Alright, you’re gonna want to sit down for this…
…Oh, right. Well, fuck you smartass, stand up then. Wait! No, go to your car. Seriously, go to your car and look at the fuel gauge. You see that little triangle next to the gas icon? Today I learned that that little icon is always pointing in the direction of your gas cap. So if you’re ever borrowing or renting a car, and you don’t know what side to fill up on, just look at the triangle on your dashboard.
Yeah, how’s your mind? Kinda blown, right? Yeah!
Cool.
Yeah.
Alright, well if you need me, I’m gonna be in my room crying, so…

-diggy

Today I learned that if you peel a banana from the base to the stem (the opposite of how everyone does it), you don’t get any of the weird stringy parts that are usually left behind.  Apparently, this is how monkeys do it.  Monkeys are smarter than people.

-andy

Following up on my post about the MTA, today I learned that my new favorite thing about the subway system in New York is that the G will never ever run ever again, Mole Men are totally real, they actually detail the secret history of the Mushroom Kingdom. Details as they come…

-diggy

Tonight I learned that I am going to spend the weekend trying to figure out that last post.

Oh, also: black garlic is delicious.

-andy

My, that those British are a grim lot. So today I learned about this fantastic series of propaganda posters the UK printed up in WWII. The notion was to promote wellness and mental health while being bombed to pieces during the Blitz. The first read “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory”, white letters on a plain red backdrop with the symbol of the crown at the the top. The notion was to have this design interpreted to be the official letterhead of the positively Orwellian ‘Ministry of Information”; to imbue the oi polloi with the notion that the government still had a plan and that “the people” were part of it. Eight-hundred thousand of these posters were printed and distributed about the country.

The second wave of posters read simply “Freedom is in Peril”, bearing the same white on red motif. I had an odd thought reading about this, that recalled the time I spent as a teenager in Cuba. Aside:

When I was 19 I spent, along with about 3 dozen other students and teachers from my highschool, a week in Cuba in lieu of having the standard “Senior Trip”. It was gorgeous. Stunning, really. The one thing in my life I wish I could reverse time and try again (there was this girl, see? She’s dead now, but also I threw out my back, and I wasn’t smart enough yet. God, I want that week back [and not that weak back {*rimshot*}]). They’ve got billboards dotted around the island, just like here, but instead of promoting commercial goods they’re inscribed with inspirational message to the people of Cuba, installed during the struggle for liberation.

Personal politics aside, there were some that read like daily affirmations of faith (while the billboard on the left is positively Draconian, the one on the right translates as “Your examples live, and your ideas last”). I can absolutely see the appeal of propaganda that doesn’t appeal to the dominion of an empire , but rather in the notion of a gentle hand resting on your shoulder and telling you to work hard, be your best, care for your people. Big Brother isn’t watching you, he’s watching over you. Ah well, me and the Cuban people can write tomes about lost opportunity another day….ANYWAY!

Getting back the British M.o.I. posters, there was one last banner that never quite made it out to the public until just recently. They printed 2.5 million copies of it, to post up during what was assumed to be the inevitable invasion and occupation of England by the Germans. In incredibly proper manners, it stated:

Yeah, Saxons. Be sure to keep a firm upper lip while being ground out by the tread of the Nazi War Machine. That kinda attitude is why the Sun eventually set on the Albion Empire.

Me? I’ve got a different homeland, and it’s a different kind of empire. We even have our own motto:

Ever onward and upward, baby.

-diggy

Uh, well, thanks to a little clicking from the below post, I just learned that “Mac Tonight,” popular McDonald’s advertising figure, is based on “Mack the Knife.”  How did I not know this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owhA_sKoKbE

-andy

Whoa. Cool.

Today I learned about the Threepenny Opera, a jazz-inspired German opera from 1928, which itself is based on the old British Beggar’s Opera. It’s super popular, and has been performed in various languages and locales for 80+ years. Hidden throughout the play is a lot of lampooning of the upper class and aristocracy, some incredibly dark comedy and the coolest fucking pirate story of all time.

It’s called “Pirate Jenny”, and it’s a song about epic fucking revenge. The eponymous Jenny is working at some miserable hotel where she’s treated horribly by all the patrons. At a certain point, she gets sick of scrubbing floors so she calls upon a Black Freighter (!) filled with blood thirsty pirates (!!) to come and methodically and efficiently murder everyone within 8 city blocks (for the win). It was the inspiration for a chunk of Alan Moore’s Watchmen comic series (specifically the part where pirates on a black freighter show up and murder everyone), and more importantly, it has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REST OF THE OPERA. It’s just a story, thrown in because no one had invented heavy metal yet.

But the most interesting part of the Threepenny Opera is it’s main character, a proper rogue by the name of MacHeath. He’s central to the entire story (basically, his salacious escapades throughout the lower-class and criminal element of London have caused him to be loved and/or hated by everyone, who then went to marry, fornicate or hang him). At the time of it’s premier in Berlin, an actor named Harald Paulsen was cast in this role and upon inspection of his giant testicles decided he was going to pull out entirely if his character didn’t get his own properly-done intro song. The creative team behind the play, in a moment of inspired emergency, banged out what now serves as the play’s opening and closing lament.

To this day, “The Ballad of Mack the Knife” has been recorded by Bobby Darrin, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, improvised (famously) by Ella Fitzgerald, crooned by Frank Sinatra, parodied by Steve Martin, ruined by Michael Buble, vindicated by Nick Cave and declared by Simon Cowell to be the greatest pop song of all time.

So yeah, sometimes the squeeky wheel gets the grease. And sometimes it gets the million dollar barrel of crude oil.

-diggy

Wow. I had forgotten how insane and exciting and bitterly disappointing elections can be. And thinking of the long-term political impact of the Special Senate Race up in Massachusetts can be downright frightening. It’s colored my day to think that a mismanaged campaign could lead to the end of Health Care reform and what kind of impact that might have on the Presidential election in 2012. That and looking up funny animated .GIFs. That has also colored my day.

In a pleasant bit of cosmic coincidence, I was reading up on the actress Jery Ryan of Star Trek: Voyager fame (not because of her being on Star Trek, but because she showed up on an old Conan O’Brien skit and I had to look her up. Even I didn’t watch Voyager). There was an interesting bit at the end of her Wikipedia bio about a controversy earlier on in her life, when she was married to a Republican Senatorial candidate by the name of Jack Ryan. They had filed for a divorce and reached a custody agreement regarding their son, the files for which were sealed due to contents that might be damaging to the child if they were ever made public. You might see where I’m going with this…

Eventually some journalists (evil, evil journalists) convinced a judge to unseal the paperwork, and it turns out Jack Ryan was a bit…sexually adventurous, and had tried to make his then wife engage in some fetishistic behavior. And good for him, I say. Marriage is a sacred bond between two people, and physical intimacy is a huge part of any relationship. If you can’t trust the one you’re with enough to at least dip your toe into the reality of a personal sexual kink, then your relationship is fucked. But I digress.

Ya see, as much as I think we should live in a world of open discussions about sexuality, the Republican Party as a whole has a slightly more guarded view about what should constitute the moral fiber of a candidate representing the GOP. With these allegations brought to the public, Jack Ryan was eventually forced to withdraw from the race for the open Senatorial seat. His handpicked replacement was the completely and utterly bat-shit crazy Alan Keyes, who no intelligent person has or ever will vote for, leading to a fairly easy victory for his opponent, a young politician in his first major political race.

So yeah, today might end up being a bitter pill to swallow in terms of long term effects, but I learned that the prudishness of ‘Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One’ may have inadvertently helped us elect our first black President. And don’t that just beat all.

-diego

Today I learned that the guy who used to yell “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” in TV commercials died.

On a Sunday.

-andy