for bestiary & herbal: mandrakes—male and female roots that shriek when pulled from the ground. vital mandrake information: the male mandrake is white, has a beetlike stem, is hairy and terminates in a single root. the female mandrake is black, has a lettucelike stem, is fleshy and terminates in two forking roots.  the flowers fruit into small orange berries with a strong, apple-like scent. these are called satan’s apples. the roots are much valued as medicine though it is said that anyone that hears the mandrake’s shrieking dies or goes mad on the spot. it was therefore a custom to tie a hungry dog to the plant by a cord and place a piece of meat beyond its reach. to get at the meat the dog tugged at the cord and dragged up the plant, while its master remained safe. if the mandrake sees an unclean man coming to it, it will run away. the mandrake can cure six ailments: headaches, earaches, gout, epileptic fits, muscle cramps, and unwanted viruses. it is said that the plant springs from the seed or urine drippings of a man hanged on a gallows. in germany the plant bears the popular name of galgemannlein or the little gallows man in 1908, a man digging in a neglected garden, cut a large root of mandrake with his spade and ceased to work at once, saying it was ‘awful bad luck’. before the week was out, he fell down some steps and broke his neck. __ sources: [1] [2]

for bestiary & herbal: mandrakes—male and female roots that shriek when pulled from the ground.

vital mandrake information:

  • the male mandrake is white, has a beetlike stem, is hairy and terminates in a single root. the female mandrake is black, has a lettucelike stem, is fleshy and terminates in two forking roots. 
  • the flowers fruit into small orange berries with a strong, apple-like scent. these are called satan’s apples.
  • the roots are much valued as medicine though it is said that anyone that hears the mandrake’s shrieking dies or goes mad on the spot.
  • it was therefore a custom to tie a hungry dog to the plant by a cord and place a piece of meat beyond its reach. to get at the meat the dog tugged at the cord and dragged up the plant, while its master remained safe.
  • if the mandrake sees an unclean man coming to it, it will run away.
  • the mandrake can cure six ailments: headaches, earaches, gout, epileptic fits, muscle cramps, and unwanted viruses.
  • it is said that the plant springs from the seed or urine drippings of a man hanged on a gallows. in germany the plant bears the popular name of galgemannlein or the little gallows man
  • in 1908, a man digging in a neglected garden, cut a large root of mandrake with his spade and ceased to work at once, saying it was ‘awful bad luck’. before the week was out, he fell down some steps and broke his neck.

__

sources: [1] [2]

May 3, 2012
∞ 19 notes
tags
animals bestiary herbal illustration tiigl bomb
every time i turn around: there’s zeljko ivanek again as many of you know, i’ve had to pay an “expert” to photoshop my headshot because i just found out that casting agents are not that into herpes mouth sores. while i put my unsuccessful acting career on hiatus, i thought i’d take a look at a few of the most successful actors around. collectively, these recognizable but unnameable actors have appeared in 110% of all visual media. __ source: u.s. census

every time i turn around: there’s zeljko ivanek again

as many of you know, i’ve had to pay an “expert” to photoshop my headshot because i just found out that casting agents are not that into herpes mouth sores.

while i put my unsuccessful acting career on hiatus, i thought i’d take a look at a few of the most successful actors around. collectively, these recognizable but unnameable actors have appeared in 110% of all visual media.

__

source: u.s. census

September 29, 2011
∞ 19 notes
tags
data viz television bomb
what’s in a name “things” are getting pretty wild in my lighthouse pretty fast. the other day i flew a kite (that i made from a soiled dish towel) and just this morning i won two straight games of solitaire (without much cheating). because of my solitude, an army friend promised to send me some playboy pin-up posters to keep me company. the rascal failed to mention that the posters would be these, jason salavon’s graphical averages of playmates by decade. without the satisfaction i was looking for, i decided to create my own and thought it might be a larf to average other playmate statistics. i came up with the above name chart though my methodology was sketchy. i determined through “algorithms” that both the playmates’ first and last names had an average of six letters. i then pieced together the most common first two letters + the most common middle two letters + the most common final letters to generate names. technically what i did was not averaging so much as moding, but that is splitting hairs and in the world of playboy playmates, there are not always a lot of hairs to split. things to observe when looking at pictures of playmates’ [names] watch how their first names change from ending in e to ending in a over time. gawk at how their last names either end exclusively in er or on. ponder why the relatively underused english letters j and k are oddly predominant. fantasize about what the averaged playmate name for all playmates from 1955 to 2010 could be. hint: it’s the very unsexy “maarne collon.” anywhosies, i’m off to meet my voluptuous invented girlfriend candra callon for some shrimp cocktails and couples foot massages, cheers.

what’s in a name

“things” are getting pretty wild in my lighthouse pretty fast. the other day i flew a kite (that i made from a soiled dish towel) and just this morning i won two straight games of solitaire (without much cheating). because of my solitude, an army friend promised to send me some playboy pin-up posters to keep me company. the rascal failed to mention that the posters would be these, jason salavon’s graphical averages of playmates by decade. without the satisfaction i was looking for, i decided to create my own and thought it might be a larf to average other playmate statistics.

i came up with the above name chart though my methodology was sketchy. i determined through “algorithms” that both the playmates’ first and last names had an average of six letters. i then pieced together the most common first two letters + the most common middle two letters + the most common final letters to generate names. technically what i did was not averaging so much as moding, but that is splitting hairs and in the world of playboy playmates, there are not always a lot of hairs to split.

things to observe when looking at pictures of playmates’ [names]

  • watch how their first names change from ending in e to ending in a over time.
  • gawk at how their last names either end exclusively in er or on.
  • ponder why the relatively underused english letters j and k are oddly predominant.
  • fantasize about what the averaged playmate name for all playmates from 1955 to 2010 could be. hint: it’s the very unsexy “maarne collon.”

anywhosies, i’m off to meet my voluptuous invented girlfriend candra callon for some shrimp cocktails and couples foot massages, cheers.

August 3, 2011
∞ 31 notes
tags
data viz sex things to look at bomb

words wholly unrelated

mystic & mystic, (connecticut)

i’ve been at submarine school for the last week in mystic, connecticut. while i can’t disclose the confidential information that i’ve been learning, i did happen upon a rather unexpected bit of disinformation: the town of mystic has nothing to do with mysticism.

as towns go, the per capita mysteriousness of mystic lies somewhere between its rival new england seaport towns: newport, rhode island (not mysterious) and amity, massachusetts (somewhat mysterious). so why the misleading name? was it to attract tourists? was it to help launch a pizza empire and subsequently invite julia roberts to its town hall? was it to discourage soviet submarine spies? was it (like providence, rhode island) to lure the faithful?

the answer is none of the above. in this case, mystic comes from the pequot word “missi-tuk”, meaning “a large river whose waters are driven into waves by tides or wind.” early settlers stole it from the native americans? sounds a lot like the rest of american history.

June 3, 2011
∞ 23 notes
tags
etymology history words bomb

relative durability of various kinds of wood

A square piece of each variety, 1½ inches square and two feet in length, was driven into the ground to within one-half inch of its entire length. At the end of five years, these pieces were taken up and examined, and their condition was found to be, respectively, as follows:

Ash, elm, fir, oak, soft mahogany and every variety of soft pine were found to be entirely decayed.

Hard pine, larch and teal-wood, were sound at the core but rotten on the outside. Cedar of Lebanon and hard mahogany were in fairly good condition, decay being slight.

Virginia cedar and locust were found unaffected, being as sound, in all respects, as when driven into the ground.

__

faithfully excerpted from a published source in the public domain—without context; devoid of gloss; lacking commentary; and stripped of title, author, and publication date.

May 6, 2011
∞ 11 notes
tags
contextless bomb
week 8: syt before you get all all hot and bothered over the fact that i picked sythe over the hilarious-looking assything, you should know that it isn’t actually pronounced assy-thing (it’s assyth + ing). sythe on the other hand, has not one but two great definitions. besides the one that i went with, there is also, “fortune on a journey.” assything · the giving of satisfaction for an offencebusyty · fussinessepassyterotically · one after anothersythyche · an oath meaning “may i prosper!” if you still think that i made the wrong choice, i will thumb wrestle you all epassyterotically. sythyche! __ this is a post in the ragbag word summer series. for this series, i search for words in the oh ee dee that contain a randomly generated string of 3 letters and report my findings. it is a thrill ride. previous entries have been: acyrological (incorrect in use of words), lobcock (a blundering fool), crwth (an ancient celtic violin), pfuiteufel (an exclamation of contempt or disgust), tenebrio (one who lurks in the dark), agathokakological (composed of good and evil), and ville lumière (an exciting modern city).

week 8: syt

before you get all all hot and bothered over the fact that i picked sythe over the hilarious-looking assything, you should know that it isn’t actually pronounced assy-thing (it’s assyth + ing). sythe on the other hand, has not one but two great definitions. besides the one that i went with, there is also, “fortune on a journey.”

assything · the giving of satisfaction for an offence
busyty · fussiness
epassyterotically · one after another
sythyche · an oath meaning “may i prosper!”

if you still think that i made the wrong choice, i will thumb wrestle you all epassyterotically. sythyche!

__

this is a post in the ragbag word summer series. for this series, i search for words in the oh ee dee that contain a randomly generated string of 3 letters and report my findings. it is a thrill ride.

previous entries have been: acyrological (incorrect in use of words), lobcock (a blundering fool), crwth (an ancient celtic violin), pfuiteufel (an exclamation of contempt or disgust), tenebrio (one who lurks in the dark), agathokakological (composed of good and evil), and ville lumière (an exciting modern city).

June 18, 2010
∞ 3 notes
tags
wss bomb

hanno the navigator and the wild people of the southern horn

way the heck back in five hundred bee cee (or thereabouts) hanno the navigator, a carthaginian explorer set sail for the african coast to see what there was to be seen. mostly it was boring trees and ugly beaches. occasionally, he would come across some dismal marshes. but then things began to get juicy. here is his account from two point five thousand years before you were born:

Following the rivers of fire for three further days, we reached a gulf named Southern Horn. In the gulf lay an island like the previous one, with a lake, and in it another island. The second island was full of wild people. By far the greater number were women with hairy bodies…We gave chase to the men, but could not catch any, for they all scampered up steep rocks and pelted us with stones. We secured three women, who bit and scratched and resisted us.

it is now generally regarded that hanno’s “wild people” were actually chimpanzees.

__

translation of hanno’s periplus: cary and warmington (1929).
source: “knowledge of the ape in antiquity,” by ashley montagu, isis (1940).

June 17, 2010
∞ 3 notes
tags
ancient history bomb

how to play “badger in the bag”

Pwyll turned up the sides of the bag, so that Gwawl was over his head in it…and as they came in, every one of Pwyll’s knights struck a blow upon the bag, and asked, “What is here?” “A Badger,” said they. And in this manner they played, each of them striking the bag, either with his foot or with a staff. And thus played they with the bag. Every one as he came in asked, “What game are you playing at thus?” “The game of Badger in the Bag,” said they. And then was the game of Badger in the Bag first played. “Lord,” said the man in the bag, “if thou wouldest but hear me, I merit not to be slain in a bag.” Said Heveydd Hen, “Lord, he speaks truth. It were fitting that thou listen to him, for he deserves not this.” “Verily,” said Pwyll, ” I will do thy counsel concerning him.”

if you ever find yourself inside a burlap sack and being whacked at by several cavalier cavaliers, the key phrase to putting an end to your lamentable situation is, “lord, i merit not to be slain in a bag.”

__

source: the mabinogion, a twelfth-century collection of welsh folktales

May 13, 2010
∞ 20 notes
tags
howto mediæval bomb

falkentheorie

while the literary f-words that i posted earlier this morning were delightful in many respects, their definitions did little to highlight the wit and droll tone of j.a. cuddon’s radiant dictionary. to accomplish that task, let us consult a much beefier definition for the following f-word.

Falkentheorie: a theory of the novella worked out by the German writer Paul Heyse (1830-1914). This theory is based on the ninth tale of the fifth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron (c. 1349-51). It is the story of Federigo who wasted his substance in the fruitless wooing of a rich mistress; wasted it to such an extent that he had only his favourite falcon left. This, too, he scarificed—and his mistress was so moved by the act that she surrendered. The falcon is thus symbolic and denotes the strongly marked silhouette—as Heyse puts it—which, according to him, distinguishes one novella from another and gives it a unique quality. An interesting but elaborate theory, which is only another way of saying that each story is different from the others.

what a punchline! amirite?!?

January 22, 2010
∞ 4 notes
tags
1800s bomb f-words literature mediæval words tiigl
stand with me, my brothers, in solidgoldarity while i am on the subject of academic æsthetical honours… it just so happens that yesterday, the aglets on my armani snow-jogging shoes blew out and i went to the internet in search of replacements. one click led to another and i wound up at goldenlaces.com (like goldenpalace.com, but without a p and a, and with an extra s). it seems that the alchemists at this site learned how to aurify laces—much to my glee. pictured above are the sweet summa cum laude gold laces that are currently ups-ing their way to my handsomely pedicured hoofs. BUT WAIT: it has just occurred to me that this retailer is engaging in a nasty price fixing scheme. notice that: 100% of the jock-related laces are priced at $4.50 and all but one of the scholar-related laces (spelling bee champion, honor roll, etc.) are priced at $7.50. this is just another example in a long (shoe)string of academic biases that i have been combating throughout my life. as much as i am eager to golden lace my alligatorskin armanis, i think i must, on principle, return my new 24 carat strings to sender until such time as academics are afforded the same low low cost of golden novelty shoelaces as their meatheaded colleagues.

stand with me, my brothers, in solidgoldarity

while i am on the subject of academic æsthetical honours… it just so happens that yesterday, the aglets on my armani snow-jogging shoes blew out and i went to the internet in search of replacements. one click led to another and i wound up at goldenlaces.com (like goldenpalace.com, but without a p and a, and with an extra s). it seems that the alchemists at this site learned how to aurify laces—much to my glee. pictured above are the sweet summa cum laude gold laces that are currently ups-ing their way to my handsomely pedicured hoofs.

BUT WAIT: it has just occurred to me that this retailer is engaging in a nasty price fixing scheme. notice that: 100% of the jock-related laces are priced at $4.50 and all but one of the scholar-related laces (spelling bee champion, honor roll, etc.) are priced at $7.50. this is just another example in a long (shoe)string of academic biases that i have been combating throughout my life. as much as i am eager to golden lace my alligatorskin armanis, i think i must, on principle, return my new 24 carat strings to sender until such time as academics are afforded the same low low cost of golden novelty shoelaces as their meatheaded colleagues.

January 12, 2010
∞ 16 notes
tags
bomb observations rad products fashion
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

audiobooks out of context #5

this is the fifth post in the audio books out of context series. posts in this series publish themselves every (π²√5)² hours. the next post is scheduled for release on january 18th, 2010 at 22:30. by that time, i will have had my mandibular and maxillary third molars surgically removed. they are expected to fetch a blackmarket price of $50 each or $175 for the whole shebang.

__

the previous post in this series was excerpted from douglas adams’ the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy (1979) and was read by the author. the person behind the elena is my name blog was the first to spell it out in the comments section.

December 29, 2009
∞ 4 notes
tags
abooc audio bomb

and are puzzles posted on the ragbag?

answer: from time to time they are. here is a good one that recently crossed my footpath (i rewrote it to prevent resourceful readers from gooooogling the answer).

a good one: gertrude “gerty” corpuscle is on a blind date with manfred “bogman” burns. gerty learns that bogman has three children and asks their ages.

says bogman, “the product of their ages is 36.” gerty ponders this and then asks for more information. “the sum of their ages is the same as our bar bill,” says bogman pointing to the tab. gertie ponders this and asks for more information. says bogman, “perhaps it may interest you to learn that my oldest child has irritable bowel syndrome (i.b.s.) and has soiled many of our finest linens.”

says gertie, “that interests me greatly.” then gertie tells him the correct ages of his children.

question: how old are bogman’s kids?

epilogue: gertie and bogman settle their bar bill and wind up making out for a little (at gertie’s place, thank goodness). they have a few more dates after this but soon realise that their relationship was based entirely on math and solving math problems. they break up and go their separate ways.

epilogue to the epilogue: many years later, gertie and bogman bump into eachother again, and it is revealed that they are actually half-siblings.

December 16, 2009
∞ 11 notes
tags
math puzzles bomb
emigre has finally released a mr eaves typeface and thus a new character is introduced in the exciting adventures of john baskerville & mrs eaves series. also, this has allowed me to finally make use of the new sex position that i discovered a year ago. previously.

emigre has finally released a mr eaves typeface and thus a new character is introduced in the exciting adventures of john baskerville & mrs eaves series.

also, this has allowed me to finally make use of the new sex position that i discovered a year ago.

previously.

November 16, 2009
∞ 20 notes
tags
cc humor sex things to look at typography bomb
i made this for a project in woodshop class and got a d+. major bummer!!!! i ran home and hid under a pile of blankets until it was time for dinner.

i made this for a project in woodshop class and got a d+. major bummer!!!! i ran home and hid under a pile of blankets until it was time for dinner.

October 29, 2009
∞ 16 notes
tags
anecdotes cc design things to look at typography bomb
gif party! i have taken a few i.q. tests in my time and none have involved pinning a fake tail (a terkin?) onto the sexy undulating derriere of a donkey. so when i saw this FREE i.q. test (it is a banner ad on thesaurus.com) i thought why not, carpe diem! sadly the results are in and it turns out that yours truly has an intelligence quotient in the 80-99 range which apparently is the metaphorical equivalent of a donkey’s perineum. fiddlesticks!

gif party!

i have taken a few i.q. tests in my time and none have involved pinning a fake tail (a terkin?) onto the sexy undulating derriere of a donkey. so when i saw this FREE i.q. test (it is a banner ad on thesaurus.com) i thought why not, carpe diem!

sadly the results are in and it turns out that yours truly has an intelligence quotient in the 80-99 range which apparently is the metaphorical equivalent of a donkey’s perineum. fiddlesticks!

October 21, 2009
∞ 13 notes
tags
being raynor bomb the brain things to look at gifparty
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