Monday Miscellany: Odds, Ends and Personals

No personals this week so instead, some restaurant names sent to me by Graham E:

I didn't understand this one, tried pronouncing it all sorts of ways but still didn't see anything special in it.  I then looked up the net and came up with the following:

"fo shizzle ma nizzle" is a bastardization of "fo' sheezy mah neezy" which is a bastardization of "for sure mah nigga" which is a bastdardization of "I concur with you whole heartedly my African american brother"

Bonus Name:

Not a restaurant name but too good to not include . . .

Quote for the Day: Clement Atlee

Few thought he was even a starter.

There were many in life who were smarter.

But he finished PM,

CH and OM,

An Earl and a Knight of the Garter. 

- Clement Atlee (1883-1967), writing about himself.

Atlee was Britain’s first post war Prime Minister (1945-1951), winning a landslide for Labour, helping to usher in a new era of British Politics. Attlee’s Labour Government introduced sweeping reforms such as nationalisation of major industries, creation of the modern welfare state and the introduction of the National Health Service.

Top 100 Movie Quotes: Numbers 70-67

Continuing the countdown of the American Film Institute’s top 100 movie lines (2005).

The next 4 in the countdown:

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70. "Is it safe?"

Spoken by Laurence Olivier as Dr Christian Szell in Marathon Man, (1976)

What Alfred Hitchcock did for showers with Psycho, Laurence Olivier did for dentists in Marathon Man. As the Nazi war criminal Christian Szell – Der weisse Engel, The White Angel - a dentist who tortured Jews at Auschwitz for the gold in their teeth and later promised safety in return for diamonds, he is one of the most frightening characters in cinema. Using a dental probe on Babe’s (Dustin Hoffman’s) tooth to find out whether it is safe to retrieve his diamonds, he keeps asking “Is it safe?” Babe has no knowledge of what he is talking about. Preparing to torture Babe again after a pause, he tells Babe “That nerve's already dying. A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive. So I'll just drill into a healthy tooth until I reach the pulp. Unless, of course, you can tell me that it's safe.” Eventually he accepts that Babe knows nothing. Whenever I’ve gone to the dentist since I have expected the words “Is it safe?” to be spoken.

Trivia:

1. Laurence Olivier was suffering from cancer at the time and was uninsurable. Producer Robert Evans had the House of Lords pressure the insurer, Lloyds of London, to cover Olivier. Lloyds did so, Olivier received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor, his cancer went into remission and he lived for another 13 years.

2. The torture scene was shortened after preview audiences were taken sick.

3. Laurence Olivier plays the character Dr. Christian Szell, based on Dr. Josef Mengele. Two years later, Laurence Olivier acted in The Boys from Brazil (1978), a story about Dr. Mengele (played by Gregory Peck). In that film he plays Ezra Lieberman, a Jewish Nazi hunter (based on the real life Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal), who fights Mengele in a nasty physical confrontation.

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69. “They’re here!”

Spoken by Heather O’Rourke as Carol-Anne Freeling in Poltergeist, 1982

I’m not a fan of horror, even less of haunted house flicks, and have never watched this film so I know very little about it.

Trivia:

1. Steven Spielberg’s premise for Poltergeist was based on the history of Cheeseman Park in Denver, Colorado. The park was originally a cemetery, which was converted into a park during city beautification efforts in the early 20th century. The man hired to move the bodies scammed the city of Denver into overpaying him, and the city quickly ran out of funds to pay for moving the dead. With no money left in the coffers, the city decided to simply leave the remaining 'residents' buried in unmarked graves underneath the sod. The park was completed as scheduled, but supernatural occurrences have been reported ever since.

2. Poltergeist (1982) was filmed on the same street as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) because Steven Spielberg made the two films concurrently.

3. Heather O'Rourke, who played the little girl Carol-Anne, and Dominique Dunne, who played the teenage daughter, are buried in the same cemetery: Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Dunne was strangled into brain-death by her boyfriend in 1982, the year of the film's release. Six years later, O'Rourke died of intestinal stenosis.

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68. “Here’s Johnny!”

Spoken by Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining, 1980

As I said for the previous item, I am not a fan of horror but I am a fan of Jack Nicholson. The film is okay, the character of the possessed Jack Torrance – “Here’s Johnny!” – is wonderfully evil and totally memorable.

Trivia:

1. Stanley Kubrick considered both Robert De Niro and Robin Williams for the role of Jack Torrance but decided against both of them. Kubrick did not think De Niro would suit the role after watching his performance in Taxi Driver (1976), as he deemed De Niro not psychotic enough for the role. He did not think Williams would suit the role after watching his performance on Mork & Mindy (1978), as he deemed him too psychotic for the role.

2. According to Stephen King, the author of the book The Shining which is the basis of the film, the title is inspired by the refrain in the Plastic Ono Band's song, "Instant Karma" (by John Lennon), which features the chorus: "We all shine on".

3. When Jack uses an axe to break through the bathroom door, he shouts "Here's Johnny". This is probably a reference to the catchphrase of chat-show host Johnny Carson. However an alternative explanation is that it is a reference to an incident that occurred in the 1960s when Johnny Cash used a fire axe to break a connecting "doorway" between two motel rooms that he and his band members were using while on tour, and then broke through one of the doors from the corridor to make it look as if a thief had broken in and trashed the rooms.

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67. "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." 

Spoken by Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca, 1942 

A classic that gets better with age and one I never tire of seeing, even though I vuirtually know the script by heart. 

Trivia: 

1. In the famous scene where the "Marseillaise" is sung over the German song "Watch on the Rhine", many of the extras had real tears in their eyes; a large number of them were actual refugees from Nazi persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and were overcome by the emotions the scene brought out. 

2. Director Michael Curtiz’s Hungarian accent often caused confusion on the set. He asked a prop man for a "poodle" to appear in one scene. The prop man searched high and low for a poodle while the entire crew waited. He found one and presented it to Curtiz, who screamed "A poodle! A poodle of water!" 

3. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt returned from a wartime conference in Casablanca with Winston Churchill, he asked for a screening of the film at the White House. In Spanish, "casa blanca" means "White House."

Quote for the Day: Lyndon Baines Johnson

"Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chickenshit can turn to chicken salad."

- Lyndon Baines Johnson, 

asked by a reporter to comment on Johnson's embrace of Vice President Richard Nixon upon Nixon's return to the US after a politically successful visit to Venezuela. The reporter had previously heard Johnson refer to Nixon as "chicken shit". 

The online Free Dictionary:

"Chickenshit":

noun:

1. A coward.

2. Contemptibly petty, insignificant nonsense.

adjective:

1. Cowardly; afraid.

2. Contemptibly unimportant; petty.

Australian Vintage, Part 1

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The following items are from an email sent to me by Graham E.  

The photos and captions are part of an item headed Australian Vintage: A tour back through Australia’s forgotten history and the source is:

http://pickle.ninemsn.com.au/2015/04/02/14/49/beryl-mills-first-miss-australia

The captions are also part of the original item, I found the snippets of history especially interesting.

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Beryl Mills, the first Miss Australia Quest winner

The first woman to be named Miss Australia was “21 year old Melbourne lass” Alice Buckridge, who won a one-off contest in 1908. The long-running Miss Australia Quest pageant didn't kick off till 1926, when it aroused “unprecedented enthusiasm”. Its first winner was 19-year-old Western Australian Beryl Mills, who spurned make-up and possessed a “smile revealing a bright nature and goodwill towards all mankind”. She's pictured here in Sydney in 1927 after returning from the United States, which she visited, to tour Australia. (A pervy letter in the San Francisco Examiner gushed that "Beryl Mills has the goods, she has them good and plenty".) Later in life Mills married an American and moved to the States, where she died in 1977. (State Library of New South Wales/Flickr)

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Novelist Miles Franklin and her monkey

Australian novelist Miles Franklin is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, which was published in 1901 when she was only in her early twenties. The exact date of this photo, drawn from a collection taken throughout Franklin's life, isn't known — and neither is the reason she's holding a monkey. However, in 1933 Franklin published a book called Bring the Monkey, a spoof of English murder-mystery novels that revolved around a heroine asked to take her pet monkey Percy along to a weekend at the posh Tattingwood Hall. This monkey may have inspired the book, which was a critical and commercial flop. (State Library of New South Wales).

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Cool dog behind the wheel

"Francis Birtles" doesn't sound like the name of a bad-arse, but Francis Birtles was a total bad-arse: an adventurer, motorist and daredevil. In 1926 he completed the fastest cross-continet journey from Darwin to Melbourne (in eight-and-a-half days), and in 1928 he became the first person to drive from London to Melbourne (in nine months). Naturally, a bad-arse man had a bad-arse man's best friend. This photograph, snapped circa 1924, depicts Birtles' blue cattle dog Dinkum doing a fair imitation of his owner behind the wheel of a car, probably a Hudson. (National Library of Australia/Flickr)

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Surf sirens on Manly Beach

Before 1902, it was illegal to swim at Australian beaches during the day. After that, it was just unpleasant — especially for women. Prudish laws forced ladies to wear cumbersome bathing attire like "a full-skirted, knee-length dress, long bloomers, and stockings". By 1907, we were fed up: "The famous Australian girl swimmer” Annette Kellerman was supposedly charged with indecency in Boston for donning a more practical men's bathing suit; while back in Sydney, Waverley and Manly Councils sparked outcry when they proposed men wear skirted costumes to hide their shame. In the 1920s swimwear entered its glamourous “haute couture” phase, and by the late 1930s, these beach babes were confident enough to flaunt their stuff at Manly — though this style was still scandalous enough to be deemed “shocking” " by a stuffy local alderman. (National Library of Australia/Flickr)

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Mascot puppy brings good luck

Animals have joined military men and women on the front line for centuries, working to carry men and supplies, deliver messages and even track enemies. This cattle dog pup, while not on active duty, served as the mascot of a cookhouse at the 9th Australian Division in World War II. Thought to bring good luck, mascots offered companionship and boosted morale on the campaign. The puppy, drying off after a bath in 1943, is preparing for a visit by General Douglas Macarthur, Commander In Chief, Allied Land Forces, South West Pacific Area. As suited to being a mascot as the pup appears, it was not a role reserved for dogs — World War II also saw Time the Turtle serve as mascot of the 2/2nd Battalion. (Australian War Memorial/Flickr)

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Sydney’s lost Garden Palace

Sydney's magnificent Garden Palace, which stood on what is now the Botanical Gardens, was erected in just eight months to hold the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879. Under its glorious 64m-high dome were restaurants, tea rooms, an oyster bar and other grand sights. But one tragic 1882 morning, the Palace was totally destroyed by fire in less than an hour. Per the Sydney Morning Herald, "flames [rushed] up in long tongues to the dome … the stained glass of the skylight dropped in a molten rain", and then "with a crash like thunder the mighty dome fell in". The blaze's origins are a mystery, but here's the most intriguing theory: Sydney's leading families burned the Palace down to destroy census records stored inside, which "apparently exposed embarrassing secrets about [their] convict and squatter origins". (State Records NSW/Flikr)

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Antarctic scientist’s ice-encrusted mask

This frosty fellow is Cecil Thomas Madigan, a meteorologist on the Australasian Antractic Expedition organised by famed explorer Douglas Mawson, it charted new corners of the icy continent from 1911 to '14. One of Madigan's many adventures was the "East Coast Sledge Journey”, a spectacular 870km round trip from Cape Denison in 1912 that took in many "wonderful" panoramas. His duties included measuring Antarctica's record cold temperatures and fierce winds, which grew so powerful one night they tore apart his tent. The ice-encrusted helmet in this photograph was made by luxury brand Burberry — initially known for its hardy outdoor wear. (State Library of New South Wales/Flickr)

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More to come in future Bytes

Quote for the Day: Buddha

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

- Buddha

Funny Friday

A few weeks ago there was a Funny Friday on the them of God and Heaven.

It seems only fair that equal time be given to the Devil and Hell . . .

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"Where am I?" asked Hitler, when he finally regained consciousness.

"Hell, Hitler." answered The Devil.

"Heil Hitler! Where am I?" asked Hitler.

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The following is an actual question given on a University of Liverpool chemistry final exam.

The answer by one student was so “profound” that the professor shared it with colleagues via the Internet, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law that gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that, if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.

Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell. Because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay constant, the volume of Hell must expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Sandra during my freshman year, that “it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,” and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is endothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is extinct…leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being - which explains why, last night, Sandra kept shouting “Oh God please somebody help me!”

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY “A”.

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Heaven is where:

The police are British, 

The cooks are French, 

The mechanics are German, 

The lovers are Italian 

And it's all organised by the Swiss. 

Hell is where:

The chefs are British, 

The mechanics are French, 

The lovers are Swiss, 

The police are German 

And it's all organised by the Italians.

* * * * * * * * * *

Alternate version:

Heaven is having:

An American salary,

A Chinese cook,

An English house,

And a Japanese wife. 

Hell is having:

A Chinese salary,

An English cook,

A Japanese house

And an American wife

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* * * * * * * * * *

A man dies.

God asks an angel, 'Was he married?' 

The angel says 'Yes'. 

God says ‘Take him to Heaven, he's already been through Hell!

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This guy dies and is sent to Hell. Satan meets him and shows him the doors to three rooms and says he must choose one of the rooms in which to spend eternity. So Satan opens the first door. In the room there are people standing in the desert, with hot sand, no shade and merciless sun. The guy says "No, please show me the next room". Satan shows him the next room and this has people in an icy, polar landscape. The freezing wind is blowing and there is ice everywhere. And so he says no again. Finally, Satan shows him the third and final room. This time there are people in there with cow manure up to their chests drinking cups of tea and eating cakes. So the guy says, "I'll choose this room". Satan says O.K, enters and wades his way to a little unoccupied area. The guy is standing in there eating his cake and drinking his tea thinking, "Well, it could be worse", when the door opens. Satan pops his head around, blows a whistle and yells “TEA BREAK’S OVER, BACK ON YOUR HEADS!” 

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Corn Corner:

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on the computer.

They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.

Finally fed up, God said, "THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.

They moused.

They faxed.

They e-mailed.

They e-mailed with attachments.

They downloaded.

They did spreadsheets!

They wrote reports.

They created labels and cards.

They created charts and graphs.

They did some genealogy reports.

They did every job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell.

Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off...

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.

Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers.

Satan started searching frantically, screaming:

"It's gone! It's all GONE! I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work...

Satan observed this and became irate.

"Wait!" he screamed.

"That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?"

God just shrugged his shoulders and said, JESUS SAVES...

Quote for the Day: A A Milne

“Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.” 

- A A Milne (1882-1956), Winnie-the-Pooh