Music Boxers, Band Retrospectives

In the annals of music, there are a few bands that make a lasting impression. Emo-Metal legends Particle Decelerators have spent three decades leaving a mark like an armor-piercing bullet through a ham sandwich. Their first album, "Crushed Vervet" (1983), showcased their driving beats, screeching guitars, and morose lyrics, which noted Rock Beets critic James Snoofleburger described as sounding like "The Smiths on a Red Bull colada."

The band is fronted by the dynamically mopey Cruze Cahntral. Cahntral's eccentric vocals are backed by Elmer Elmerson's trademark untuned guitars, Vinnie Greengrocer's bass, and Gargantula's drums. Gargantula has one of the only home-made drum sets in professional music, and the uniqueness of the sound is evident in many of their tracks, especially when the supporting frames give way during a recording session.

Following on the heels of Vervet were "Colonoscopation" (1984) and "Budgerigargoyle" (1984), which featured the pugilistic quiet energy which launched them to superstardom. Their first world tour, from April 1985 to March 2007, was the group's first foray from their native Barstow. They returned briefly in 2011 to pick up a change of socks.

After a brief post-tour hiatus, Particle Decelerators released their fourth album, "Deflation", in 2013. While it lacked the high-adrenaline feel of their earlier work, the single "The Big Zip" rocketed up the adult contemporary charts, where it spoke to fans' arthritis and the attendant difficulty of closing pants over incontinence garments.

Enraged by the album's reception, Particle Decelerators disbanded, though there's already talk of thirtieth anniversary reunion tour.

Bullshit Update

I'm still happy to take requests for long-form bullshitting here, but I'm also bullshitting on Google+ in smaller, bite-sized pieces.

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On Pigeon Populations in European Cities

In the mid-1400's, the waning Hundred Years' War and the brutal Wars of the Roses left much of Europe, and England in particular, with greatly reduced populations. With nations eager to boost their numbers, various folklore traditions emerged regarding fertility. One popular myth linking pigeon consumption and fecundity emerged in London, from which it spread through most major European cities.

So great was the demand for pigeons that it drove quite a few technological and culinary advancements. The two most enduring developments from the 15th-century pigeon mania were the invention of crampons and gravy.

While the wealthier individuals could maintain private coops, for most people the typical pigeon on the plate was a wild bird. Pigeon wranglers had to locate and reach the wild pigeon rookeries, which necessitated new wall-climbing technologies. Eye-bolts were installed in many walls, and notches, called "pigeon toe-holds" (the origin of a common expression), were cut into many outside corners. The crampon (invented in Prague in the year 1483) allowed pigeon hunters to quickly attach to and release from installed eye bolts, without the need to repeatedly tie and untie knots. Hunters with this technology could collect many more birds than their competition, bringing in more profit.

We owe the existence of gravy to the foul taste of pigeon, especially the wild variety. Cooks would experiment widely with different ways to mask the taste of wild pigeon, preferably with something with superior flavor. Early gravies, being experimental, were largely pastiches of whatever was at hand.

The word "pastiche," in fact, derives from these culinary experiments. One early (and not particularly successful) gravy used orzo as a thickening agent, and crushed cherries as the flavoring. The resulting concoction was called "pasta and cherries," which was shortened to the portmanteau "pastiche."

The end of widespread pigeon consumption is credited to King Henry VIII of England. Concerned with his legacy, he consumed at least three pigeons in gravy with every meal (breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, and supper). In spite of this, he produced only three children, largely discrediting the pigeon consumption-fecundity link. Further, his death was the result of choking on a pigeon bone while enjoying a midnight snack. This was widely publicized at the time, though the official histories covered this up with a less embarrassing cause of death, namely syphilis.

Because of the taste and proven lack of efficacy, pigeon consumption dropped precipitously. With a century of cultivating the wild birds, most cities possessed sufficiently large breeding populations that pigeon eradication became impossible. One early attempt involved introducing hawks to Paris, but this was quickly ended when the hawks began preying on poodles. Since then, pigeons have become an endemic part not only of European cities, but (due to long-distance shipping) major cities throughout the world.

When a Fish is not a Grape

There is a common etymological misconception that the phrase "puppy dog eyes" traces its origins to 1957 at Wilmington, Delaware's Camp Wanahakalugee, a summer camp frequented primarily by the children of employees of the Dupont Corporation. The story was that a particularly bad growing season resulted in a crop of white grapes that were somewhat lacking in firmness. This unfortunate texture, when combined with the natural tendencies of the pre-teen mind, was supposed to have led campers to begin referring to these grapes, often included with the camp's lunch or as an appetizer before afteroon tea, as the aforementioned immature canine ocular organs.

The prevalence of this explanation is such that a recent random sampling of linguists found that an astonishing 97% of them believe this to be the correct origin of the expression. It is, nevertheless, incorrect, as the true origin comes not from the monied solsticial juvenile boarding institutions of the Eastern Seaboard, but rather from the arboreal recesses of Appalachia.

A young lad, along with his faithful hound, was fishing one day in an eastern-Tennessee creek. The dog, as well as the boy's fishing gear, were piled into the go-cart with which the boy had recently won the Sevier County Non-Motorized Downhill Race and First-Aid Training Course, his Radio Flyer wagon being in the shop at the time for a transmission rebuild. As luck would have it, the only fish biting that day were mud puppies, but their size was made up for by their number, and as evening approached the go-cart was nearly full.

The boy loaded the rest of his gear and the hound into the go-cart, and began pulling it towards home. While rounding a bend in the road, he glanced back and saw that his dog had been gorging on the mud puppies. Intending to scold the animal, the boy turned, at the same time letting go of the cart. Owing to the slight downward slope of the road, and the quality with which the go-cart was constructed, the cart immediately began to roll under gravity's influence, quickly reaching speeds well beyond the boy's capacity to keep pace.

Eventually, of course, the go-cart rolled to a stop, coincidentally not far from the center of town. The hound, both frightened from its ordeal and queasy from the mud puppies sitting uneasily in its stomach, began to exhibit signs of digestive discomfort. Much to the consternation of the gathered townsfolk, the hound began vomitting up the fish it had eaten.

Oddly, the most distinguishable feature of the mud puppies in mid-digestion were their eyes. The sight of the distressed hound and the fish eyes was by far the saddest thing any of the onlookers had ever seen, resulting in the expression "as sad as mud puppy eyes" gaining currency in the local vernacular. Over time, the most common usage was to refer to something pitiable by comparison with "mud puppy eyes". The expression spread to neighboring areas, and as it was employed increasingly be people having little or no familiarity with the origin, it was further shortened to "puppy eyes". The transformation to the phrase as currently known (with the earliest recorded instance being in a 1963 op-ed piece in the New York Times) derives from a misunderstanding of its origin.

The veracity of this origin for the phrase "puppy dog eyes" is established by the fortunate coincidence that a now-anonymous local was, at the time, recording local footage with his recently purchased Sears Roebuck home video camera. The audio, while somewhat faint, clearly establishes a prototypical form of the original expression. The video, for its part, while grainy, still conveys enough detail that you would likely not want to watch it on a big-screen TV.

The hound, for its part, was ultimately none the worse for wear for its ordeal. Local lore has it that it was extremely repentant of its actions, and subsequently refused to eat seafood.

My Dinner with Danger

I was sitting at the bar at Johnny Spatula's, getting stewed on scotch with bourbon chasers. The door opened, basting the place in dusty daylight, which was odd, since I didn't expect anyone but me to be drinking at eight in the morning. I blanched as a meaty hand landed on my shoulder, spinning me around on my barstool like a rotisserie chicken. My worst fears gelatinized when I found myself staring at the ugly mug of Rocco Gelato.

"I shoulda known I'd find you here, Sam," he growled, "spending the money you owe me on the sauce." Rocco was a tough egg. He was real hard-boiled, over-boiled, and he looked almost boiled over. But I knew he was just steamed about the clams. I knew I'd have to feed him some half-baked excuse, I just had to hope he'd swallow it.

"Simmer down, Rocco. I'm working on a big case, a real tought nut, but it'll be a couple days before it's cracked." It was all a lie, of course; I didn't even have anything on the back burner, but it was enough to extract a grunt from Rocco, who left after one or two muddled threats.

I caught a cab that whisked me back to my office, where I could hone my anxiety over what that masher Rocco would do to me if I couldn't pay up. There was a wrap on the door, and in walked a leggy tomato in a lime-green blouse and a wine skirt that looked like it'd been reduced by half. She may have had bad taste, but at least she didn't have much of it. "My name is Bree Souffle, Mr. Trivet, and I'd like to employ your services."

"Have a seat, Ms. Souffle," I said, gesturing to an empty chair, "You look like you're about to collapse. Now, what's cooking?"

"It's my fiance, Ned Shanks. It turns out he was playing me for a fool all along, and the engagement was just a recipe for him to get his hands on my inheritance. I don't want the publicity I'd get by going to the police, so there's a thousand dollars in boullion for you if you can get my money back discreetly." A grand would square me with Rocco, with gravy in the mix, so I said I'd take the case.

If Shanks was on the lam with that kind of dough, I knew there was only one guy who could give me a lead. As I walked to where I figured I'd find him, my wool suit had me in a sweat in the 90 degree weather. I was braised like a ham hock, but at least I knew I'd be bringing home the bacon.

A couple of boring days of chasing down leads and getting my jaw broken, it looked like I was in the soup when I finally tracked Shanks down to the waterfront. "Give it up, Shanks," I said, "Return Bree's inheritance, and I'll let you cheese it."

"Why should I?" he replied, "You've got less on me than a kosher deli has ham."

"You forget, I've got this Magnum, and it's pointed right at that cabbage of yours," I reminded him.

"Baloney. You shoot that thing, and the cops will be crawling over this place like ants on a picnic basket." His tone was defiant, but I could see in his eye that he was waffling.

"Let them; Sam Trivet can handle the heat. Besides, I'll just tell them it was self-preserving."

"You're not getting the money, and this conversation is getting rather bland," he sneered, his self-assuredness steeling, so I peppered him with bullets. They say you've got to season to taste, and I've always been partial to hot lead. Now Bree's back rolling in dough, Rocco's got his bread, and there was enough left over for me to wet my whistle.

Clothing and Fascism — The Truth Can Finally be Told!

Much has been written of Mussolini's ruthless pursuit of efficiency as a means to a strong nationalist economy. For example, it is almost cliché to point to the fact that under his rule the trains always ran on time, to preserve the freshness of the marshmallow fluff that was the backbone of the pre-war Italian economy. (It is chilling for modern geo-politics to note that the role of crude oil in contemporary Venezuela is essentially identical to that of marshmallow fluff in 1930's Italy.)

Less has been written of Mussolini's ruthless pursuit of carousels. He was completely obsessed with them, and was known to travel for hours just to see a single carousel pony that had been painted in a particularly unique manner. It was one such carousel that dramatically changed the direction not only of Mussolini's avocation, but that of Italian Fascism and, indeed, world history.

The carousel in question was part of Federico Fellini's Carnival dell'Assurdità. Before his career as one of the great auteurs of cinema, Fellini was well known in the carnival community for his fascination with the bizarre. It was at this carousel that Mussolini spied a toddler riding in a giant fiberglass pair of pants. Immediately, a spark was ignited in Mussolini's mind; a spark that would become an obsession, a frustration, and ultimately a humiliation.

Mussolini's idea was to design a pair of Techno-Trousers that would give the wearer the ability to travel great distances at high speed without tiring (while developing exceptionally toned thighs). He immediately focused the bulk of Italian technological research towards the development of these Techno-Trousers, though he was unable to convince Adolf Hitler to assist in this, being met instead with ridicule from his ally (who chose to focus German war-time R&D on the Combat Skort).

Work on the Techno-Trousers greatly influenced Italian foreign, as well as domestic, policy. The 1936 invasion of Ethiopia, for instance, was planned predominantly to gain control of Ethiopia's vast cotton resources. Mussolini believed this was essential, so that the linings in the prototype trousers could be changed to cotton from wool, which caused considerable chafing of the wearer. Mussolini was also motivated by Ethiopia's coffee crop, as Italian scientists were working nearly around-the-clock on the Techno-Trousers project, and required vast quantities of caffè perfecto to remain awake.

Ultimately, the Techno-Trousers never got past the prototype stage. The only known deployment of a Techno-Trouser was a prototype worn by Il Duce himself to help keep him upright during his legendary marathon speeches. This was noted briefly by several Italian fashion reporters as "Mussolini's big pants," which was followed quickly by the reporters being shot and the articles being purged from the record. Other fashion reporters, who entered journalism for the hem lines, not the firing lines, quickly took the cue and omitted any subsequent mention of Mussolini's clothing. There were, however, one or two veiled references made to his "strong fashion sense."

By the time of Mussolini's capture and execution, the existence of the Techno-Trousers project was known to the leaders of the anti-Fascist opposition. As an act of symbolic defiance of the Fascist war machine, Mussolini was hanged pantsless at his execution. It is a testament to the continued power of Mussolini's spirit, even in death, that photos taken of his lifeless body were framed so as not to reveal this final indignity.

Today, Mobile Armored Lower-Limb Outer-Wear (as they are known officially) are banned by the Geneva Convention. Rumors that they have been used recently on suspected terrorists, forced to participate in involuntary and hours-long games of "Dance Dance Revolution," are most likely fabrications.

The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

The way Hillary Clinton is shooting off her mouth these days, attacking the President and blaming America, you'd think it was already 2008. Hillary's public antics are reminiscent of Michael Dukakis. The only good thing about Dukakis was the number of states he gave away to George H. W. Bush.

Dukakis is emblematic of the problem with Liberals in America, even down to his Greek heritage. I think we all know what kind of "family values" were practiced in Greece during it's so-called "Golden Age." Hillary's not shying away from the Homoliberal Agenda, either.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the Left is their constant drive to take the "God" out of the "governed." This agenda isn't always as obvious as efforts to repeal the Ten Commandments. Even our woodworking classes, which are as American as anything taught in our Liberal-controlled public schools, are being corrupted by the crypto-Darwinian message hidden in something so seemingly innocuous as "Gorilla Glue." As if "uncle Bobo" were in the shop at the next bench, using tools like the proto-human that atheists would have us believe he is.

It's no wonder that Liberals support abortion-on-demand. According to them, killing a cockroach with an X-Acto knife is no different than killing a fetus with a scalpel, since either one could turn into a human being at any moment. While the college-age Liberals seem to like living in their own filth and surrounded by vermin, we should never forget that the driving force behind the Liberal Agenda are the wealthy Californians and New Yorkers who want to assuage their feelings of guilt for living in immaculately maintained and pest-controlled mansions.

Liberal attacks on God are nothing new. Back in 1845, the Devil-worshipper Daniel Webster tried to block Texas' entry into the Union. He wanted to prevent a new bastion of Godliness that would stand up to his Satanic ambitions. Well let me ask you, Mr. Webster, would we have the transistor today if Texas weren't part of these United States? I'll let you guess the answer to that one. I can tell you for certain that your Rand-McNally road atlas would look a Hell of a lot different, without the economic drive provided by the natural resources of Texas. Instead of having to learn Spanish to give instructions to the Mexican who scrubs your toilet, you'd have to learn Spanish to understand the instructions of the Mexican whose toilet you scrub.

We have to remember that Liberals have a definite agenda. That agenda is to destroy America's moral foundation, and with it our entire Nation. This destruction is being done methodically, one moral precept at a time. One day, it's denying God's Creation. The next, it's defying holy proscriptions against sodomy. After that, who knows? Possibly attacking our divine right to own guns. (I believe that was Leviticus 12:8.) In November, remember to vote Godly. Our futures depend on it.

Wax Production in Medieval Germany

The German city of Homburg is perhaps best known today for its contributions to haberdashery. Homburg, like it's similarly named cousin, was the birthplace of a casing-less ground-meat product, a revolutionary idea in Germany. Unlike the other ground-meat product, the Homburg patty was not, in general, favorably received. A common remark by the citizens of Homburg was, "Better on the head than in the mouth." Fashion at the time being at least somewhat subject to practicality, the Homburg patty was modified over time both to sit more reliably on the head and to be made of a material that failed to begin smelling rank after only a few days of wear.

Back in the Eleventh Century, however, Homburg was a major center of dyed wax production. It was noted particularly for a variety of purple wax. The color was derived from the extract of a local herb, Salvia puniceus; the mixing of this dye into parafin by the standard techniques (that is, melt the parafin, add the dye, and allow the parafin to set) resulted in an extremely uneven distribution of the dye.

As a consequence, the city's monopoly on Homburg purple wax™ (or it would have been, had the concept of trademark existed at the time) owed at least as much to the proprietary nature of the blending technique for the dye as to the geographic uniqueness its source. So lucrative was the purple wax business, and hence so secretive the dye-blending technique, that it was protected both by Act of the city magistracy and a committee of municipal witch-hunters. In the year 1031 alone, over 20 witches were burned at the stake for attempting to learn the method of making Homburg purple wax to use in the furtherance of the Devil's unholy purposes.

Particularly popular were Homburg's purple wax drawing-sticks. (The word "crayon" would not appear for almost two more centuries, when they were popularized throughout Europe by the Duc de Rayon, who was later commemorated by the DuPont Corporation for his pioneering contributions to chemical engineering.) Children in every south-German hamlet or burg could be seen playfully defacing their homes' walls with colorful drawings of horses and inedible meat products.

Homburg purple wax fell out of favor in the year 1036. A travelling Greek organ grinder named Stavros arrived in town in early May, after having been chased out of Saarbrücken by the torch-wielding citizenry for reasons that have been lost to history. His monkey, named Gunther (after the organ grinder's grandmother), escaped one day while the organ grinder slept after a particularly valiant lunchtime attempt to consume the local cuisine. Gunther slipped into the home of the Chief Magistrate through an open window, where he came upon a few unattended purple drawing-sticks belonging the the Magistrate's 9-year-old daughter, Helga. Being a monkey, and hence not especially adept at discerning the edible from the inedible, Gunther ate the drawing-sticks.

Upon being discovered by the Chief Magistrate, the startled Gunther emitted a simian shriek, reported to sound like "Mwa! Ha ha! Ha!" In shrieking, Gunther displayed his bare teeth, which had been colored purple by the wax. So amusing was this sight, that the Magistrate related it regularly at cocktail parties to anyone who would remain in his vicinity long enough to hear. Soon, the story of Herr Purpurroteraffe (as the Chief Magistrate came to be known behind his back) spread throughout West-Central Europe.

News of the Purple-Mawed Monkey of Homburg eventually reached the court of Conrad II, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor, being of royal blood, took this story to indicate that a monkey in Homburg was attempting to usurp his throne. A military expedition was launched at once, with over one thousand troops assembled to march on Homburg. The military contingent marched to the gates of city, which they were about to sack when the magistracy requested a parley. The situation was explained to the Emperor with the assistance of some cleverly improvised hand-puppets, and the attack was called off. However, a condition for sparing the city was that they were to cease production of purple wax immediately and indefinitely. The citizens of Homburg eagerly agreed, secretly being grateful for the attendant decline in time spent scrubbing wax off of their walls.

The prohibition on purple wax continued for many centuries as a tradition among wax-workers, until 1908 when the Crayola Company introduced a purple crayon with its new "Condemned Colors" box of eight. Purple is now a widely accepted constituent of crayon assortments everywhere, only slightly diminishing the popularity of perennial favorites red and blue.

Riffing the Light Fantastic

I'd like to do something a little different. I'd like to take requests. Use the comments, and give me a couple of words (perhaps drawn randomly from /usr/share/dict/words or the equivalent) or a phrase. I'll try to come up with something for as many of the suggestions as possible. I won't promise anything deep or well-researched, but there's likely to be a fair amount of sarcasm. Posts will appear as I get around to them, which will depend on the quality of the suggestions and how entertaining I find the whole exercise.

And no, this is not a cheap ploy to figure out how many actual readers I have. I'm pretty sure that number is somewhere between two and five.