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This is straight-up something out of Game of Thrones. How big...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 14:38:38 -0700

This is straight-up something out of Game of Thrones.

How big are these pies we’re talking about? Enough to contain twenty-four live birds, or a small human being? Is this a “the monarch needs to demonstrate excess as a metaphor for wealth” type situation?

Anyway, I’m glad this tradition has lived on, albeit only in the form of the stripper cake.

I’m glad to see that the editor who printed this piece of...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 11:17:24 -0700

I’m glad to see that the editor who printed this piece of correspondence is as confused as the rest of us.

Would this be cocoa with only 1/1000th of a molecule of cocoa...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 15:56:16 -0700

Would this be cocoa with only 1/1000th of a molecule of cocoa powder in it?

MMMM DELICIOUS

WHAT

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:18:32 -0700

WHAT

This is my favorite part about cryogenic fantasies:...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 03:34:27 -0700

This is my favorite part about cryogenic fantasies: “People disgusted with the present times might have themselves kept for a more enlightened age.” This provokes so many unanswered questions! Who will freeze you? Who will thaw you? Who makes the decision when the age is “enlightened” enough to hit the defrost switch on your Popsicle-body? And why would the future want your old ass around anyway?

Now I really want to write a character called “Disappointed Victorian Cryonaut”:

###

EXT. CITY STREET - DAY

The Cryonaut looks around at traffic, his eyes wide.

CRYONAUT: Ah! The future! Surely this is a more enlightened age!

TAXI DRIVER: Get out of the road, you nutcase!

The taxi HONKS and speeds past. The Cryonaut’s face falls as a single tear runs down his face.

CRYONAUT: Bah! This age is as vulgar as the last!

He KICKS a piece of trash, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

CRYONAUT: I’m never gonna get to an enlightened age

Sets of false teeth used to be made from pachyderm ivory or...

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 14:00:02 -0700

Sets of false teeth used to be made from pachyderm ivory or actual human teeth, and it was common for teeth to be recycled through more than one set of dentures. Just picture a warehouse somewhere, with tiny little drawers filled with hundreds of teeth carefully sorted by size, color, and amount of wear, a hunched-over man in a headlamp and leather apron picking through them with long, silver tweezers. “Ah, this one,” he says, rooting through the pile to find an incisor from some long-dead peasant’s corpse, ripped from his skull by grave robbers looking for rum money. “This one will go in your mouth.”

retrogasm: Little girls wear corsets? “Listen here. We...

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:00:53 -0700

retrogasm:

Little girls wear corsets?

“Listen here. We gotta make this corset ‘superior to all others.’ So I want it to be the boniest. The stiffest. The most constricting and shapely corset a child has ever worn. We want them to be unable to take this thing off. And if they do, their organs sag out like a bag of rotten milk. You know how to sell corsets, boys? Nail ’em when they’re young.”

retrogasm: Dead Triplets… Before cellophane (sorry,...

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:07:58 -0700

retrogasm:

Dead Triplets…

Before cellophane (sorry, Cellophane®) was popular, was “seeing the things you buy” a real guessing game? “I’m sorry, Leopold, I’d love to feed you something, but what that’ll be is going to be a mystery to us both — I’ll just grab this from the icebox, drop it into a pot, stir it with my eyes closed, and we’ll eat it without breaking eye contact with each other.”

I guess when the alternative is unwrapping something from wax paper or butcher paper? How did people store food before 2005, I can’t remember

I love how Lascelles’ Pills are just an afterthought here....

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:26:00 -0700

I love how Lascelles’ Pills are just an afterthought here. “Chillie Paste not do the trick? Knock a few of these back too, what the heck. It’s all just opium anyway.”

“The Queen is a horse ; buy HOVIS bread. See!”

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 01:04:00 -0700

“The Queen is a horse ; buy HOVIS bread. See!”

Reader Fred T. sent in this picture! RADIUM: For your...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 12:24:14 -0700

Reader Fred T. sent in this picture!

RADIUM: For your health!

I suppose this article’s doomsaying proved correct. Who...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 08:37:29 -0700

I suppose this article’s doomsaying proved correct. Who puddles anymore? NOBODY, that’s who.

Puddling was an Industrial Revolution means of making iron and steel. In the original puddling technique, molten iron in a reverberatory furnace was stirred with rods, which were consumed in the process. It was one of the first processes for making bar iron without charcoal in Europe, although much earlier coal-based process had existed in China.

Later, it was also used to produce a good-quality carbon steel; this was a highly skilled art, but both high-carbon and low-carbon steels were successfully produced on a small scale, particularly for swords, knives and other weapons.

This feels like a sly ad: “Have you examined the offers in...

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:05:24 -0700

This feels like a sly ad: “Have you examined the offers in this issue? HAVE YOU LOOKED CLOSELY? Closely enough to find this HORSE/COW HYBRID???”

YES YES TELL ME MORE TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 12:29:26 -0700

YES YES TELL ME MORE TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW

And a hundred Scottish folk tales suddenly became a little less...

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 08:38:56 -0700

And a hundred Scottish folk tales suddenly became a little less magical.

WHAT

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:06:06 -0700

WHAT

5feet12inches: My Double Company - 1949 “It dreams the...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:55:00 -0700

5feet12inches:

My Double Company - 1949

“It dreams the same as you do, but cannot take any action, being stuck in whatever position you place it. When you feel sad, it cries; when you are angry, it trembles. The dresses you make on it are its only temporarily, and then they become yours; this is a condition it cannot change.

“This, you see, is its punishment, for a crime incomprehensible to humans, but dire indeed. These are interdimensional prisoners that we have, under a Murderer Exchange Program, repackaged as products, and their penance is to serve, ever-watching, ever-silent, ever-deprived but ever-longing. Do not feel pity for it. Do not apologize to it. Do not, under any circumstances, touch its eyes with your fingertips during a lightning storm.”

“Note: also do not leave alone with children, animals, the elderly, or fire.”

The Wright brothers kept their discoveries secret until around...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:29:39 -0700

The Wright brothers kept their discoveries secret until around 1908; they were trying to sell their device to the French government in the interim. In 1908 they sued to defend their invention publicly in a patent case — rival aeronaut Glenn Curtiss claimed to have independently come up with a flight control mechanism that the Wrights had patented but not publicized. The case dragged on until the Wrights’ patent expired in 1917.

OH SNAP. What must his enemies think he looks like? UPDATE:...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:32:11 -0700

OH SNAP. What must his enemies think he looks like?

UPDATE: Found a picture of him. His friends may have a point

I love this masthead!

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:14:04 -0700

I love this masthead!