WHEN IN ROME:
The Romans during the BCs and ADs were quite the people for exploring every facet of life to its fullest, from warfare, to culinary delights, to pleasures of the flesh, and many, many, ways to advance civilization into what it is today. Take for instance: Three square meals a day is what a human being is supposed to eat to be healthy, where the term square came from, was that the ancient Romans used square plates instead of round ones for their meals, plates which in an emergency could be used as a shield if a fight broke out in a tavern, or wherever eating establishments served their wares. Romans were big eaters, along with the three square meals a day, whenever they had parties, the themes, and layout of the parties were almost always in threes. Three huge couches to hold three people apiece in a room that upscale houses of the time had called the ‘Triclinium’. Each couch in the Triclinium had three servants attending the party goers, and each couch had a three cornered movable table that was piled high with all kinds of Roman manna, and the servants would move these tables from time to time so that each couch was visited by a three cornered table every three minutes.
A typical meal at a Roman party might include a list like this:
Appetizers:
Jellyfish with eggs
Sow’s udders stuffed with sea urchins
Patina of brains cooked with milk and eggs
Boiled tree moss with peppered fat from grub worms
Lamb’s eyes in hot sauce
Main course:
Roast parrot
Turtle dove boiled in its feathers
Ham boiled with figs and bay leaves rubbed with honey and baked into a pastry crust
Fallow deer roasted with onion sauce
Boiled Ostrich with sweet sauce
Bulls head sautéed in olive oil and red cabbage
Flamingo boiled with dates
Stuffed Elephant trunk
Roast steer ribs with truffles
All the time plenty of wine was served during the meal.
For Dessert:
Hot African sweet cakes served with bat tongues
Stoned dates stuffed with nut and pine kernels
Fricassee of roses in pastry
Honey coated deep fried grub worms
Candied crab on a bed of seaweed
Sometimes Roman parties would last for days on end, then continuing over at the next mansion for another week. The ancient Romans had a society not much unlike ours is today, perhaps a bit cruder in some ways, but more advanced in others. To go in depth into it, and all its intricacies and oddities would take days, but since this is FFUI, You get a ‘Taste’ of some of it. Now, onto the next quirky quip.
CONTROVERSIAL CANNABIS:
Marijuana, pot, hemp, cannabis, ganja, dope, smoke, weed, and its many other names are all reference points to that sometimes legal, sometimes not, plant, that produces pleasure, medicine, rope making material, cloth, paper, skin disorder salves, birdseed, fertilizer, and many more uses and products that humans have been using for centuries. Depending on the time, laws, and people’s need for its variety of uses is how it is integrated into society.
Cannabis was first cultivated around 4000 B.C. in China, and used mainly for the same things then, that it is used for today.
Much of the Royalty of England and Spain during the Victorian age used cannabis, for a wide variety of medicinal applications. Doctors of that time prescribed it to cure whooping cough, to relieve period pains, as a nerve tonic, hemp baths for skin disorders, and many other applications. They also used it to calm down patients in asylums, and sanitariums.
From 1842 to 1900, nearly half the medicine sold in America contained marijuana or one of its derivatives.
Growing hemp was big business for hundreds of years before the advent of steam and diesel to power sea going vessels, and made many people on all continents rich. Hemp during those times, being used mainly for rope on sailing ships, but of course, all parts of society used rope, the maritime community was hemp’s biggest consumer during those times.
Several U.S. Presidents grew hemp on their lands to increase their income during the 1770s through the middle to late 1800s, and employed hundreds of workers to harvest it, thus boosting the local economy of that time.
Now of course, Cannabis has many legal no-nos and is strictly controlled by law. There are states that have a medicinal marijuana program for those undergoing chemotherapy, and other forms of medical treatment which have very harmful side effects, and is helping those people maintain some dignity of life without the pain.
Another aspect of hemp, is that it can make a great substitute for gasoline, easier, and cheaper to manufacture (grow, and produce fuel), than gasoline is, and is really low on the pollutant scale when burned.
As with anything on this Earth, and beyond, they all have their uses, and misuses, hopefully our science will allow us to find the right uses and keep them.
MARS, THE MONEYMAKING RED PLANET
It is hypothesized that the planet Mars, here on Earth, makes upwards of three billion dollars a year. That is of course from movies, documentaries, books, models, toys, games, and a whole plethora of related items.
But, are there, or were there really Martians inhabiting the planet at anytime during the past million years or so? Considerable material is out there for the consumer to peruse, and perhaps decide for themselves.
The famous face on Mars, for example, and the city with pyramids close by in an area designated as Sedona, could be just chance rock formations .. Except, that there are many right angles within these supposed structures, and right angles rarely occur in nature; Nature of which has a more fractal flowing makeup and basis.
Why is Mars just a desert like planet now? What happened to its oceans and environment?
Several scientists in the past have by study, come up with a theory that a planet of immense size used to exist between Jupiter, and Mars, and something caused that planet to break apart. That area is now an asteroid belt, with many chunks designated as planetoids that orbit in a circle around the sun, in a ‘Belt’. Part of the theory is that when this theoretical planet broke up, parts of it collided with Mars and destroyed its atmosphere mostly, and threw its oceans into space, or covered them with soil. Recent diggings by the Mars explorers have found ice just under the surface of Mars. There is an area called the “Tharsis Bulge’ on one side of Mars, that suggests something huge slammed into the planet causing it to become misshapen. Mars has two moons, Deimos, and Phobos, which are thought to be two of the asteroids from that broken up planet that were trapped by Mars’ gravity. One of those moons, Phobos, is for practical purposes orbiting in what seems to be a controlled manner, it adjusts its orbit every so often, so that it stays the same distance away from Mars at all times. Laser imaging of Phobos suggests that it is hollow, another mystery for our modern day scientists to solve.
Have you ever looked at the stars, just looked at them, and wonder how many beings were looking back?
QUICK BYTES:
The Red Baron of Germany, Ace combatant of the air in World War One, who shot down many enemy planes, was not shot down and killed by another plane, or planes, but was flying low over a concealed machine gun nest, and was hit numerous times by soldiers with rifles and machine guns from the ground.
The Shootout at the O.K. corral actually happened in a vacant lot a couple blocks away from the corral itself, but the reporter of the time who wrote for the papers added a little more sensationalism by moving it to the O.K. corral.
Triboluminescence is a term given to the orange glow crystals produce when they are heated up, or ground upon by polishers and grinders. One example of Triboluminescence is if you crunch a Lifesavers candy, or Certs candy in your mouth in the dark, it produces sparks. And your teeth will never forgive you.
A cat’s brain is almost identical to a human being’s brain, and the electrical impulses that go through both brains on an electroencephalogram almost perfectly match. The cat’s brain, however, seems to have one extra impulse that humans do not have, and this could be a clue on how they get us to feed and house them for free. Cue Twilight Zone theme …
A good amount of the fish we eat now contains some mercury. One theory is that because of all of the wars with their toxic bombs, diesel fuel spills, and metals and wastes that were poured into the oceans then, and continue to be added, have affected them in this way. I personally say “DUH.”
Blue jays are worm farmers. A blue jay, (and no doubt other birds), will take a piece of vegetable matter, and bury it, usually under a tree, wait for a few hours, then come back and dig it up. The piece of vegetable matter will have dozens of tiny worms in it, thus the blue jay gets its protein that way.
A Tarantula is a very clean arachnid, if you keep one in a terrarium, watch it closely, it will spread out a web on the floor of the terrarium, and periodically rake in the web cleaning off all of the dead bugs, and things that collect on its ‘Floor web’, then splay it back out to trap more food.
If you want to train a vine, say from one of your house plants, to grow a certain way, get a small LED grow light, and put it at the very end of your plant / vine for 24 hours. The vine will grow towards the LED, then depending on where you want the vine to go, back the LED up in that direction a few inches, and the vine will grow towards it. Repeat this process until your vine is where you want to be.
BITCH PLEASE (Oh bitch please my ass).
What would the world be without complaints, we would get nothing done or accomplished, and just be happy with our mundane lives.
Need is the mother of invention, so the saying goes, in the past, when someone needed something to accomplish something, they usually had to invent it. Now, with all of the better mousetraps that abound, we can usually go to the local hardware and buy what we need to solve the bitch that we came across. And, if they don’t have it, bitch some more until someone invents another mousetrap with computer interface.
There is so much suppressed technology unreleased, that could advance our standard of living tenfold, but is kept from us because of human greed. People need to bitch enough before any of it is released into the public’s hands. Another reason, and this is the big one why it is suppressed, the people who would release the suppressed technology want to make sure that no one can make any money off of it, or take over things from them.
Slavery isn’t dead, just disguised.
THAR’S STILLS IN THEM THAR MOUNTAINS.
Moonshine is part of American legend and lore, but was invented in Scotland hundreds of years ago.
Moonshine, the making of, came to America during the Revolutionary war. Many a Scot fought in the battles of that war, and with them brought the rudimentary methods of taking malted liquor and brewing it into a finer alcohol that was much more potent. Then over the years, the people in the deep south further refined its qualities, and some mighty fine ‘shine came abouts.
Moonshine wasn’t called moonshine until around the 1920s, when it was made illicitly out in the woods at night by a stream that the moon reflected off of, so that the Revenoor’s who weren’t getting any taxes from its making, couldn’t bust in and confiscate the liquor, and destroy the still.
When I was a kid, back in the 1960s, my grandfather made moonshine, he had a Model A Ford, that he ran the car off of the moonshine he made. He added a little Naphtha (Lighter fluid) to the moonshine to lubricate the cylinders so they wouldn’t get too hot and freeze up the engine. Of course, some of the moonshine according to him was for cough medicine too, also.
If you see little plumes of smoke coming out of the hills in the mountains, you don’t see them, otherwise you could get a visit from someone whose I.Q. is below room temperature, and makes one syllable words into two or three syllable words. Then again, Revenoor’s still exist.
THE BIG THREE:
Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, Three of the biggest holidays of the year, and the most profitable.
Halloween makes over three billion nationwide in profits from candies to costumes, and related venues of sales. Halloween was outlawed in many states for several years in the early 1900s, until marketers began to feel the yearly pinch from the loss of profits.
The original Thanksgiving dinner did not include a Turkey, but a Wild boar, venison, and roots from the ground, and dried fruit, and dried corn. Tradition has it now, of course, the Biggest, Bestest Tom Turkey should be on the table ready to Gobble. Thanksgiving is estimated to rake in around 5-7 billion a year nationwide, and all of the other countries that now celebrate this holiday.
Christmas, is probably the largest money making holiday of all time, one estimate holds the profit margin at 100 billion per year worldwide. I think this is a low estimate, but, I’m just passing on what I read.
And, that Concludes FFUI #11.
As always, I make this disclaimer, that I am not the originator, conjuror, purveyor, liar, or person who brought these stories about. I am only passing them on for pure entertainment, and perhaps a little enlightenment. Be that it may should anyone have any complaints of the above vignettes, you are instructed to go to the nearest corner and set yourself on fire.
Have Fun and stay tuned for FFUI #12 The End.
KIP
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