MAGNIFIED IMAGES

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Tiny cracks in steel

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Head of a mosquito

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Butterfly eggs

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Cat’s tongue

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Razor Shaved versus Electric Trimmer

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Velcro

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Maggot

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Guitar string

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Active ingredient in caffeine

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Microchip

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Fly larva

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Woven steel

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Coca Cola sugar

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Gecko feet

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Microscopic sand

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Shark skin

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Ant

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Snowflake

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Banana skin

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Salt and pepper

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Moth’s wing

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Threading a needle

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Book pages

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Cigarette

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Longhorn beetle

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Yellow ant

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Wasp

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Black ant

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

DARK SIDES

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I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I was proposing a regular new Bytes category, Dark Sides, about the feet of clay of some of our heroes. I mentioned some names, without background, and had intended to work on that later. It inspired an email from Steve M, who commented on both my like of Arnie Schwarzenegger’s series FUBAR and upon the Dark Sides names mentioned:

Absolutely right Otto…Arnie who? Eyes are rolling as I type this!

Also this: feet of clay . . . John Lennon, Mother Teresa, Roald Dahl, Rolf Harris.

Rolf Harris yes, but the others? As Pauline would say….please explain….

Steve m

So let’s shine a light on the dark side of some of our heroes . . . 

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JOHN LENNON (1940 – 1980):

Andy Warhol's portraitof John Lennon

We all know John Lennon to be a man of great talent, a man of peace, gentleness and kindness. But his dark side is less pleasant:

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Violence:

In a 1980 interview with Playboy, Lennon said:

“All that ‘I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically - any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. 

That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace.

I am not violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster."

In his first wife Cynthia's book, she wrote that he once slapped her in the face in a moment of jealousy.

Lennon once physically attacked the Cavern Club's MC Bob Wooler, who was a close friend of the Beatles, when Wooler jokingly suggested Lennon had an intimate relationship with Brian Epstein. Lennon was drunk at the time and left Wooler hospitalised with broken ribs, apparently only stopping the beating because he realised he was "actually going to kill him". Lennon later summed it up by saying "He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in."

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Emotional abuse:

His son Julian, by his wife Cynthia, has stated that he was jealous of the love that Lennon showed towards Sean, his son with wife Yoko.

Julian said in an interview:

"Mum was more about love than Dad. He sang about it, he spoke about, but he never really gave it, at least not to me as his son."

Lennon described Julian as an unplanned child "born out of a bottle of whiskey" during a chat with Playboy magazine:

"I'm not going to lie to Julian. Ninety percent of the people on this planet, especially in the West, were born out of a bottle of whiskey on a Saturday night, and there was no intent to have children."

Julian has stated that Paul McCartney was more of a father to him than John Lennon.

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Mocking the disabled:

There is a 1960s video of Lennon on the footage of Lennon on the UK-based TV show It Was Alright in which he makes fun of disabled people. Here is that footage and some comments by the other Beatles and Sir George Martin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxOaADzsXr0

Cynthia Lennon in her memor John:

“John had always reacted badly to disability so for him, this was little short of a nightmare. In our student days, he’d mocked the disabled and drawn ghoulish cartoons of cripples. For some reason, disability terrified him, though he could never admit it. It made him feel inadequate and guilty.”

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'He could be a maneuvering swine, which no one ever realized. Now since the death he's become 'Martin Luther' Lennon.”

- Paul McCartney, 1985

"The Beatles have all sort of been whitewashed over time, with Lennon being whitewashed into this kind of slightly cheeky guy who loved peace. And he wasn’t like that at all. He’d had a fairly terrible childhood and a very confused life, he’d used drugs and alcohol quite freely and he was a pretty terrible parent and husband the first time round.

"But it’s these massive contradictions which make him interesting – not [the false idea] that he was a bland, peace-loving, bread-baking dad. He was a violent man but he was into peace. He was a rich man who told us to imagine no possessions. He was always portrayed as this working-class hero but he was brought up in this rather nice house and surroundings. And all those contradictions are what make him interesting to me, not the fact he was some cardboard character who never did anything wrong."

- David Quantick, from his book Revolution (2002)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

BIBLE EXPRESSIONS

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I was following the news about Australian VC winner Ben Roberts-Smith having lost his defamation lawsuit in respect of alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, and the thought came to mind at how many times our heroes are found to have had feet of clay . . . John Lennon, Mother Teresa, Roald Dahl, Rolf Harris.

This had me then wondering where that expression had originated. It turns out it was the Bible, which then led me to other expressions originating from that source. It has also begat (How’s that for a biblical expression?) this new occasional Bytes category.

It has also begatted (?) a further future new Bytes category – Dark Sides – about the clay footsies and negative sides of famous people.

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Feet of Clay:

Meaning:

An expression for a weakness or character flaw, especially in people of prominence and power. It can also be used to refer to larger groups, such as societies, businesses, and empires. An entity with feet of clay may appear powerful and unstoppable, but they cannot support their splendour and will easily be knocked over.

Origin:

The phrase originates from the Book of Daniel in the Bible. In it, Daniel interprets a dream of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. In that dream, a magnificent statue is seen with a head of gold, but weaker and less valuable metals beneath, until finally having feet of clay mixed with iron. 

Daniel predicts that the glorious statue shall be smashed by a stone into pieces, like chaff on the threshing floor, and blown to the winds.

The image of the expensive statue laid low has resonated as an analogy for seemingly powerful figures with substantial weaknesses.

From Danield 2:31-45:

Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

The Book of Daniel is generally agreed to be written around 165 BC. The generally accepted interpretation of the statue dream is that it predicts the history of the Middle East up until the time of writing, that is, the 'predictions' were written about events that had already taken place and were made to look like predictions for the future. 

The golden empire is the Babylonians (as is clear from the setting of Daniel); the second empire of silver is the Medes; the bronze empire is the Persian Empire; and the fourth iron empire is the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great. These were clearly not believed to be as strong as the Greek empire of Alexander's day, which was pure iron. The prediction that it will be smashed by a stone "not cut from human hands", means that it will be smashed by the work of God.

More fundamental Christian groups have alternative explanations, including that the feet of clay is the present day and that the smashing by a stone will be the second coming of Jesus:

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

ORIGINS

 

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Kate and I have started watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger series FUBAR, we like it, worth watching. Arnie has always been a favourite of mine (I can imagine friend Steve M rolling his eyes and groaning).

Here are the origin of some of the expressions used in the title and the first epsiodes.

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FUBAR

FUBAR stands for Fucked/Fouled Up Beyond All Repair/Recognition).

It dates from WW2 as military slang, the Oxford English Dictionary listing the earliest citation as being in Yank, the Army Weekly magazine on January 7, 1944: "The FUBAR squadron. ‥ FUBAR? It means 'Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition," referring to unpaid military personnel with erroneous paperwork.

Another version of FUBAR, said to have also originated in the military, gives its meaning as "Fucked Up By Assholes in the Rear". This version is based on a common belief among enlistees that most problems are created by the officers, especially those bearing the rank of general. 

The latter version is also most likely to have had its origin in the U.S. Army, where the senior officers command from the rear, as opposed to a navy, where it is not uncommon for admirals to command a fleet from one of the ships at sea, and therefore susceptible to attacks and death by the enemy. 

The same applies to air force generals, who do not fly and/or directly command airplanes or even squadrons or air wings.

FUBAR had a resurgence after the term was used in two popular movies: Tango and Cash (1989) and Saving Private Ryan (1998).

The FUBAR acronym - Fucked Up By Assholes in the Rear – became used by management consultants. Their use of the term might have come about as the result of their frequent conclusions that the cause of corporate problems (inefficiencies and ineffectiveness causing poor profitability or a negative bottom line) was due not to rank and file workers, but rested rather with executives, particularly senior executives.

One possible origin of the term comes from the German word "furchtbar" meaning frightful, negative, or bad. A skilled German speaker pronouncing the word would say something which to an anglo would sound like "Foitebar". Being unable to collectively pronounce the German "rcht" spelling inflection, but knowing the words pronunciation wasn't greatly modified by it, an anglo would naturally simplify it to "Fuubar/Fubar" in common usage. 

A similar scenario had occurred with French "m'aidez" ("help me") becoming "Mayday" in WWI; with contractions not being common in English verbs it was translated as a single word.

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Some similar acronyms:

FUBU

FUBU stands for Fucked/Fouled Up Beyond all Understanding and was also used during World War II.

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FRED

FRED, meaning Fucking Ridiculous Eating Device, is a slang term in the Australian Army used to refer to the Field Ration Eating Device attached to each ration pack.

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SNAFU

SNAFU is widely used to stand for the expression Situation Normal: All Fucked Up, another example of military acronym slang. However, the military acronym originally stood for "Status Nominal: All Fucked Up."

It means that the situation is bad, but that this is a normal state of affairs. It is typically used in a joking manner to describe something that is working as intended. 

The acronym is believed to have originated in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. Time magazine used the term in their June 16, 1942 issue: "Last week U.S. citizens knew that gasoline rationing and rubber requisitioning were snafu."

Private Snafu is the title character of a series of military instructional films, most of which were written by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, Philip D. Eastman, and Munro Leaf.

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SUSFU

SUSFU means Situation Unchanged: Still Fucked Up and is closely related to SNAFU.

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TARFU

TARFU - Totally And Royally Fucked Up or Things Are Really Fucked Up - was also used during World War II.

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Cuckold:

In the Arnie Netflix series, Arnie discovers that that his ex-wife’s new boyfriend is investing money in latest entrepreneurial scheme of his ex-wife and their son, which frustrates Arnie.

Arnie, to his CIA techie Barry: “This guy is dumber than I thought.”

Barry: “He’s not dumb, he’s scoring brownie points from Ms. B.

Arnie: “He’s trying to cuckold me! He’s trying to use my son to cuckold me.”

Barry: “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

Arnie: “It comes from the cuckoo bird. When one bird takes over another bird’s family.”

Barry: “There are a thousand online videos that would disagree with you.”

Was Arnie right or wrong?

A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife.

The word cuckold derives from the cuckoo bird, so called from the female cuckoo bird's alleged habit of changing mates, or her authentic habit of leaving eggs in another bird's nest, leaving it to the other birds to hatch the eggs and raise the chicks.

English usage first appears about 1250 in the medieval debate poem The Owl and the Nightingale. Shakespeare's writing often referred to cuckolds, with several of his characters suspecting they had become one.

The word often implies that the husband is deceived; that he is unaware of his wife's unfaithfulness and may not know until the arrival or growth of a child plainly not his (as with cuckoo birds).

In Western traditions, cuckolds have sometimes been described as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". This is an allusion to the mating habits of stags, who forfeit their mates when they are defeated by another male. The insult is often accompanied by the sign of the horns. A prank in various European and Latin American countries is to surreptitiously hold two fingers behind an unwitting victim's head, giving them cuckold horns.

During the Renaissance, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, Europe had a cultural obsession with cuckoldry. Back then, it was widely believed that women were more lustful than men, largely because they were subject to the whims of their "wandering womb". The womb, it was believed, could move independently around a woman's body, causing her to lose control. Thus, if a man were married, his wife was obviously cheating on him.

This infidelity would cause the poor husband to grow invisible horns, the ultimate symbol of cuckoldry, and the comic figure of the horned cuckold made its way into fictional songs, engravings, and theatre. It eventually became so ubiquitous as to give the impression of a "brotherhood of cuckoldry" wherein all wives were adulterous, and all husbands their hapless fools.

The mockery of cuckolds has also linked cuckolded men to the character of the fool. In the above 16th-century German woodcut, called On Adultery, a woman places a fools' cap (or Narrenkappe — literally, fool's hood, giving rise to the term "hoodwink") on her husband's ears and rubs his head with a foxtail, another symbol of foolishness.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was caught on camera making a variant of the Portuguese horn-gesture behind the Spanish Foreign Minister, Josep Pique, in an official EU photograph of 2002. Afterwards, he said he was "just kidding".

In modern times certain so-called men's rights activists have begun using the term "cuck", shortened from cuckold, for a man whose wife is cheating on him. The word has entered the mainstream, particularly after Donald Trump's presidential victory saw an alt-right backlash against the achievements of feminism.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

LAUGH

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Hello, Byters.

Something different in today’s LAUGH.

People may recall the Blues Brothers in the movie of that name playing behind chicken wire at Bob’s Country Bunker. Jake introduces the next song, after Rawhide, with the words “Now we’d like to do a favourite of the horns section, we hope it’s one of yours.” The band then begins playing ‘Stand By Your Man.’ See the clip by clicking on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psm96Dn9KII

An absolute sidesplitter about C & W fans. It typifies Bob Newhart’s comment - I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'. Similarly: What has 300 legs and seven teeth? The front row at a Willie Nelson concert.

That’s all by way of intro. Let me paraphrase Jake Blues about todays humour: “Now I’d like to do some favourites of mine, I hope they’re some of yours.”

I call this Funny Favourites.

Because they’re my favourites, they have been posted previously, some more than once, but hopefully they will raise some smiles.

A warning, there is some risque content ahead.

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A rope walked into a bar and the bartender yelled, "Hey! We don't serve ropes in here! Get out!" So the rope went outside, did a few contortions, pulled apart both his ends and sauntered back into the bar. "Hey!" sez the bartender, "Ain't you that rope I just threw out of here?" And the rope sez, "Nope, I'm a frayed knot."

That has become my standard response for when someone asks me whether I’m ready, done etc - "No, I'm a frayed knot."

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Paddy was about to go on a trip to England. The day before he left, he asked his next-door neighbour, Mrs. Dunne, if she wanted anything from England.

"Yes," she said. "Could you please find my son, Neely. He's been gone 10 years and has not written me, ever! I write to him but he never replies.”

“To be sure, I will,” says Paddy. “What’s his address?”

On the back of a handy envelope she scribbled:

London England WC1

The next day Paddy’s plane landed at Heathrow. After exiting Customs, he saw a sign on a door saying 'WC'. He entered and saw another line of doors, so he knocked on the first.

A voice said “Yes?”

Paddy replied: "Are you Neely Dunne?"

"Yes, but I’ve run out of paper," came the reply.

"Well, that's no excuse not to write your mother!"

Another one that’s become my response when someone asks whether I’m done or nearly done - "Yes but I've run out of paper."

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And still another that’s become a standard response, not just by me but also in the office and at home, when someone asks ‘Where’s your bin?”

The garbage men are making their weekly round and they notice that one house has not put the rubbish bin outside. One of the garbos rings the bell of the house, and hears, from inside, some hurried steps towards the door.

The door opens and a Japanese man steps out with a towel wrapped around his waist. The garbo asks politely: 'Sorry to bother you, mate, but where's ya bin?"

The Japanese gentlemen looks puzzled and responds: "I bin in bed.”

The garbo says "Maybe you don't understand, mate, I mean where's ya BIN?"

The Japanese man looks flustered and says: "I awreddy tell you! I bin in bed!!!!"

The garbo realises there is a mistake and says: "Nah, mate, I mean where's ya WHEELIE bin?"

The Japanese man looks down at his shoes and says in quiet voice: "OK, OK, I tell you truth. I bin in bed having sex with wife’s sister.”

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At about 3.00am I was drunk as a skunk. I came home just in time to hear the cuckoo clock cuckoo three times. Quickly coming up with a plan, I cuckooed nine more times, hoping my wife would think it was midnight. I was very proud of myself. 

The next day, my wife asked what time I got home, and I replied, "Midnight, just like I said."

She said that was good and, for some reason, she said we needed a new cuckoo clock. 

When I asked why, she answered, "Last night when it cuckooed midnight, it cuckooed three times, said 'Crap!,' cuckooed four more times, farted, cuckooed three times, cleared its throat, cuckooed two more times and then started giggling."

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Paddy had long heard the stories of an amazing family tradition...

It seems that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been able to walk on water on their 18th birthday.

On that special day, they'd each walked across the lake to the pub on the far side for their first legal drink.

So when Paddy's 18th birthday came 'round, he and his pal Mick, took a boat out to the middle of the lake, Paddy, stepped out of the boat ... and nearly drowned! Mick just barely managed to pull him to safety. Furious and confused, Paddy went to see his grandmother.

"Grandma," he asked, "It's my 18th birthday, so why can't I walk 'cross the lake like my father, his father, and his father before him?"

Granny looked deeply into Paddy's, troubled brown eyes and said, "Because you were born in August, but your father, your grandfather and your great grandfather were all born in December, when the lake is frozen, you fuckin' idiot."

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Favourite limerick:

Ethnologists up with the Sioux

Wired “Send two punts, one canoe.”

The answer next day

Said “Girls on the way,

But what the hell’s a panoe?”

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Let me know if you enjoy Funny Favourites, if so I will post more.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY