KIPPAGE: Fun Facts and Useless Information #18: The Jazz Goes On

First, I wish to Thank My Lovely Wife Amorosa for the unlimited help she contributed into making this year's FFUI possible. Without her help and guidance, I would probably be still working on FFUI #3, or thereabouts. 

A Super Thank you to Jazz for his untiring efforts at not only keeping HCC alive, but improving it too for our capping taste buds.

So, onto this year's not everyday run of the mill mundane-ness, (is that a word?), but a bit of fun, madness, and total BS to lighten the load for a few minutes.

MY OH MYCOLOGY.

Mushrooms are our fungi / fun-guy friends of the damp underworld. Many different kinds exist, some good for us, others, well, we'll let you decide.

Chanterelle mushrooms. Cantharellus Cibarius.
A yellow / orange mushroom that grows in the fall is delicious. Many people go out and pick these beauties in the fall, and sell them to mushroom buyers. Picking is kind of a misnomer, what you should do is take a sharp knife with you, and cut them off at the ground, leaving the root in the ground. If you do this, and conditions are good, a little rain, some cool weather, a week later, another Chanterelle will have grown back in it's place. Take a small piece of foam rubber with you to slightly clean the mushroom, but do not wash them. There is a giant fungi deep underground which grows from upper California, up into British Columbia, that puts up runners by the millions to the surface, and the Chanterelle grows from those runners. If you pull the mushroom up root and all, it will kill the runner, and tell the giant fungi deep underground not to send any more runners up into that area. It is intelligent, and will know if you like it by cutting the mushrooms off instead of pulling them. Pay attention Sonny, Them Backwoods Folk's knew the lore of the land, and how to live with it, and let it live, it'll feed ya if'n ye show it ya mean no harm.

White Button Mushrooms. Agaricus Bisporus.
A common mushroom that you buy in the supermarkets all the time, they are the immature Portobello mushroom according to some cultivators of them, and can be used in many different food preparations, and cooking in general. Many health benefits are derived from consuming these edible funguses, improved immune system, reduces the chance of heart disease, has great food energy, and are a good source of B vitamins, niacin, riboflavin, and pantothenic acid. They just taste really good in so many dishes.

Portobello Mushrooms. The mature Agaricus Bisporus.
A worldwide popular mushroom cultivated just about everywhere, and like above, can be used in many different dishes. Some will say that a Portobello is not related to the button mushroom, but that discussion has gone on for centuries. Anyhow, it is a very tasty compliment to roasts, soups, and salads.

Witches Butter Mushrooms. Tremella mesenterica.
Just about all of us have seen that orange flowery growth on dead tree limbs and branches on the ground in the fall, it comes in a variety of names : Yellow Brain, Golden Jelly Fungus, Yellow Trembler, and of course, Witches Butter. Some scientists say that it is inedible, and other state that it is edible, but has no flavor, and in some countries, it is used as a thickening for soups. There is a similar mushroom that looks a lot like this called the "Jack O Lantern" which grows in the same places that the Witches butter does, but is considered poisonous.

Black Truffle Mushroom. Tuber Melanosporum.
A round dark mushroom, usually found under the ground around the roots of trees, and when cooked, roasted, or made into a soup / stew, tastes similar to roast beef. To find these, usually a trained hog is taken out into the woods to hunt for them. The truffles have an odor that the hog can detect, and will dig up the truffle to eat it. The one problem with this is getting the truffle away from the hog, which even from a trained hog is a difficult job, and the hog might take offense and beat up it's trainers for the truffle, not all the time, but it does happen. The truffles should be stored at room temperature, not too warm, for a few days to allow the odor that it exudes, that the hog detected to expel, so that the truffle will take on the roast beef flavor, kind of like hanging a deer for a few days after it's prepared. When you cut the truffle open, they kind of resemble a piece of cold roast beef with white veins running in all directions through it like marbling or fat. They are harvested from November to March in every country that they are found in.

Lobster Mushroom. Hypomyces Lactifluorum.
A unique looking mushroom that for a moment, while walking through the woods, at first glance, will fool you into thinking it is a lobster claw jutting out of the ground. It messes with your pareidolia a bit.  It is actually not a true mushroom, but a parasitic fungus that attacks different mushrooms, and turning them a reddish orange color that resembles the outer shell of a cooked lobster. They are enjoyed worldwide, and are marketed in many supermarkets around the globe. They reportedly have a seafood-like taste about them if eaten separately. However, according to some cooking manuals, like tofu, they will take on the flavor of what you cook them with. I've seen them out in the woods while hunting mushrooms, but have never tried one.

The One You've all Been Waiting For: Psilocybin Mushroom. 
Psilocybin mushrooms, 'Shrooms, Magic Mushrooms, etc. are thought to have been used since prehistoric times. They are possibly depicted in many ancient cave drawings, and stone carvings in Europe, and Africa, and have a history of use in pre-Colombian times, and other parts of the Americas in the distant past. Some cultures use these hallucinogenic mushrooms for religious ceremonies, and others have used them as a mind control drug on their subjects. One account tells of a certain religious leader of the ancient past, who had constructed an intricate temple that had all sorts of creatures, and demigods carved into it, which he stood upon while speaking to his brethren. He would, before the ceremonies, offer his followers a "Drink of the Gods", which was a brewed mixture of these mushrooms, and no telling what else, and then after the drug took effect into the people's bodies and minds, he would go into a spiel of what they should believe because his temple was their god and he was the oracle of it. What is figured that happened, is that the subjects listening to the religious leader became intoxicated and / or stoned, and the intricately carved temple began to move and writhe in their eyes because of the hallucinogenic properties of the mushrooms, and they believed that the temple was alive and the professed demigod that he spoke of. Thus, he had control of their minds, not only with the mushrooms, but the rhetoric of his speeches that were subliminal suggestions implanted into their minds with the help of the Psilocybin "Demi-God" drink. I wonder if this still happens in some places to this day, only in a more modern sense?

Both Good, and Bad Mushrooms.
All mushrooms, as legend goes, have a bit of toxicity to them, some the human body can consume, other's mean a nasty ending, or if you live, health problems from then on. Slang names for these, both poisonous, and non-letal fungus foods, can be "Deaths Head, Red Top,  Magic 'Shrooms, Angel wings, Baby's breath, Pipeweed, Blue dots, Angel hair, Glow worms, and many more depending on the area you are from. If only one thing comes out of this for you, is, if you decide to go mushroom hunting, read up on it first, get a picture book, and study it thoroughly. Just getting out into the woods in the fall for a walk is great for clearing the chatter of the mind, finding some delicious mushrooms is a bonus.


SWORDS AND SORCERY

Swords have been in use for thousands of years, if not longer, the longer the sword, the more cutting edge you have. If you're looking for cutting edge knowledge here, it will seem dull, but here goes : Some swords are almost, if not all the way mythical, while others were made for doing the Benihana thing on your fellow human being. Some are of great beauty, and some are just plain ugly, but practical, I mean, would you cut an opponent with a gold inlaid pearl handled mirror blade, or just run over them with your Chariot? The tales that follow have a keen edge, and are to the point, if you are interested in more of the facts, and legends, do look into the different kinds of blades that abound now, and in history for more slices of knowledge.

This story of the Katana of the ancient Samurai is a vignette based on legends, and the actual making of a Katana may differ. Plus, the entire making of a Katana mythical, or otherwise, would fill pages, so, here is a super short version:

Legend has it that the Katana, or Samurai sword could cut through a gun barrel. The Katana is a super tempered forged blade, made from Iron sand, carbon, and special clays, forged by a swordsmith, and his apprentices, and overseen usually by a Shinto priest. The blade is heated up to very high temperatures, and pounded out, and folded into it's shape over one thousand times, the swordsmith, and his apprentices have different sized bronze hammers to pound out the shape of the blade, all the while the priest is chanting mantras at the blade, and the hammers are rising and falling in a controlled "Ting Tong Tung, Ting Tong Tung etc. pattern" putting a harmonic into the blade which legend says that doing so will make the blade unbreakable. If the blade is being made for someone, such as a Samurai, or someone of high status, that person sometimes submits their hair, fingernail clippings, a few drops of blood, and spittle into the forging process to install their "Soul" into the blade. When finished, the Katana is a superb, and deadly weapon, razor sharp, and if kept lightly oiled with clove oil, will last practically forever. Depending on the swordsmith, and the request of the "Samurai" it has been made for, along the cutting edge, many different patterns can be etched into the blade, wave, wind, seagull, and numerous other patterns are made onto the blade with special clays during the forging, and polishing processes. As I stated before, this vignette is based on legends. This is one of the many tales of the sword making legends.

The Claymore sword.
When a lot of us hear the word "Claymore", it usually means one of two things, the big double handed sword that the Scot's used from the 15th, to the 17th centuries, or that nasty anti-personnel weapon that goes bang. Since this chapter is about swords, you guessed correctly.There were many different versions of the Claymore swords apart from that which the Highlanders of Scotland used during those times, we'll focus on a couple of them.

Claidheamh-mor, means "Great Sword".  The average sizes of Claymores were three to four feet long, with some lengths varying depending on the size of the bearer and what he could handle, and also what the sword would be used for. Land / foot soldiers usually had a three to three and a half foot long blade which weighed around five to six pounds, while special longer swords for dismounting horsemen were up to five feet in length, and weighed eight to nine pounds. 

Probably the most famous one, the two handed Claymore. was used by many of the Highland clans for their border disputes, and fighting against the English. It is rumored to be an offshoot of a medieval longsword, a broad, double edged blade with a deep bloodlet going down the center, and forward angled guards, with a heavy metal pommel on the end for balance, and as a bludgeon. So finely balanced with the pommel, a skilled swordsman could make the blade swish through the air with little effort, but have devastating effect on several adversaries at the same time.

Another one, known as the Soldier's sword, or, The "Basket Hilted Sword", it was a "Strongblade", weighed around six to seven pounds, and around 4 feet in length, it was not only was used as a sword, but also, the blades with the upward curved basket hilts that could be interlocked with other blades across from each other, would allow several soldiers to hurriedly make an improvised gurney to haul wounded soldiers, or carry loads of explosives, or weapons, or whatever was needed, and then unlocked very fast to use in battle. Other weapons of that time, both made from iron and bronze were made to function in this manner.

Bronze age swords, and weapons.
Bronze age swords, and other sharp cutlery of the same metal, and were thought to have appeared somewhere around the late 31st century BC, during the Bronze age .... Wait for it. ... Bronze was made by alloying copper at 12%, and by adding different percentages of tin, aluminum, manganese, nickel, and / or zinc. Different types of softer bronze were used for drinking and eating vessels so that they would not shatter too easily when dropped on the ground, or bashed off of someone's head in a fit of anger, while the more tempered, and harder alloys were used for weapon making. Flint was first used as a cutting tool, dagger, but within a few short years, bronze appeared, and daggers were made from it, leading to the advent of the longer blade, or sword to keep your enemy at bay. Bronze is thought by some archeologists to have appeared around the 4th millennium BC in several Eastern countries, and it gradually spread to other countries as trade routes opened up between them. Bronze swords were the hardest, sharpest, and probably a most brittle metal, but were easy to make, a lot of sword-smiths of the time used sand casting molds to make a blade within a few hours, and this was a must for any army that needed weapons that could be made, and discarded when broken. usually pieces of broken swords were retrieved, and re-smelted to make new blades after a battle.

The Iron age swords.
Swords made from iron eventually replaced the bronze blades altogether around the 12th century, as swordsmiths began to experiment with alloys of different metals in many countries during that time. They learned that during smelting, by adding carbon to the mixture of their metals, they could get a stronger alloy that was not only harder than bronze, but somewhat flexible, and not as brittle as the bronze blades, which in turn was the beginning of the first type of stainless steel. The Romans had swordsmiths that had gone to different countries, and studied metallurgy from the sword-smiths there, and came back, and experimented until they were able to make en masse, strong, somewhat flexible, steel / iron blades. In battles, the Roman soldiers’ blades against the Celts’, and Gauls’ swords, and metal weapons, were superior in a lot of cases until those cultures began using the metallurgic techniques taught to them by captured swordsmiths. After that, the Celts, Gauls, and tribal people used the new iron weapons with surprising effect.

Modern Sword making.
You can still get personally made swords from any number of sword-smiths who still practice the art. A good amount of swords now are essentially factory line made, with all kinds of decorations on the blade, and scabbard, and hilt, and come in a variety of strengths, and metals. There are also the kind that are just for wall hangings, they are pretty, and handsome, but wouldn't last a minute in a real sword contest, or battle. So if you ever wanted to be a Samurai, or some kind of Conan the Barbarian, do some research about the blade you are interested in, you'll find what you need whether for costume purposes, or for the real thing.




BOOGERS, HAINTS AND HOBGOBLINS.

It has been said that the supernatural is a part of our science, and universe we barely understand, and hey, we have barely explored our own solar system, no telling what awaits us out there. Back down to Earth, we have things like ghosts, monsters, boogeymen, revenants, banshees, voices out of nowhere, and many incarnations of things that go "Bump in the Night". They are not just limited to one area of the Earth, but every country, and civilization all have their ghost stories, some are terrifying, while others are Meh. Just about everyone has had some sort of supernatural experience in their lifetimes, some quite memorable, while others hardly noticed, or even ignored as a hallucination. I am going to share a personal one, and include a few others that people have told me about.

One day, my dad and I decided to take a trip through a mountain pass road. The road was basically an old logging road that was maintained by the state for fire fighting purposes, but also was, and is a public thoroughfare for recreation. While we were coming up to a part of the road that followed the side of a hill, the road began to have curves in it that turned deep into the mountain to where you couldn't see the inside of the curve, and there were turnouts you could pull over into to let an oncoming car pass, due to in some places, the road was only one lane width. This part of the road had several of those mountain following curves in it, and in the distance after several curves, about a half a mile away, the road straightened out again. Just as we started to go into a curve we saw the sun reflect off of a red car's windshield headed our way on the straight stretch, so I pulled over into a turnout to wait for them. We saw the car go into the first deep curve, and go out of sight, we waited for about a minute, and no car came back into sight, so, I figured they saw us and pulled over into a turnout. I pulled back out onto the road and drove through the curves watching for them until we got to the curve where they had gone into. ... No car was waiting there, and we would have seen them turn around and head back out onto the straight stretch. The first thought I had is that they had gone over the bank and wrecked. I parked the truck, and went walking up and down the road to see if there was any indication of a car going off into the brush, nothing. The woods can swallow vehicles whole without leaving a trace sometimes, so I went over the bank into thick woods and searched and hollered and searched and searched for probably 2 square miles, more than enough of an area to find a wrecked car, there were many big trees that would have stopped a car from going too far. I searched some more, and came up with nothing, no indication that anything had come over the bank, no tire skid marks on the road, no smoke in the air, completely void of any kind of catastrophe.  So, we didn't know what to do, didn't want to turn in a false alarm, so we waited to see if anything came up in the news about missing persons, or a car. Nothing was ever on the news, or papers or other media about it. So, my conclusion is that we saw some sort of ghost car. Another saying is that if more than one person witnesses the same phenomena, and agree on the circumstances, chances are that it really did happen.

Ghost Boxer.
Many years ago, an acquaintance of mine and his wife, had been hearing things like someone had stood outside of their house, and started pounding on the walls with their fists, and when investigated, no one was there. Then the same noise started in a room on the other side of their house, they had just gone to sleep, and jumped out of bed, and ran for the room to see what it was. Just as they got to the room, the noise came from their bathroom, they ran to the bathroom, then in was in their bedroom, they got to the bedroom, and it was outside on the wall pounding away. They went outside, and they heard it pounding on the house next to them, and then the noise continued on down their street pounding on people's houses and garages until it vanished in the distance. A few of the neighbors apparently had heard this noise too, and had discussed it with them, but no conclusion was ever determined as to what it could have been.

Revenant Slap.
A revenant is the spirit, or remains of someone come back to life to take revenge, or bring a message, or even cause havoc, similar to a poltergeist, but not quite. A revenant can take physical form to even attack people. I was discussing ghost stories one day with some people I had met in a park, and they told me about being attacked by a revenant while they were sleeping. They had been hearing strange noises in their house for some time, and they had a wood cookstove that they would lay a fire for morning so that they could start it when they got up. The stove had gone out at night after they were done cooking their meals, (food tastes better on a wood stove), and then they would have the makings for a fire the next morning all laid and ready to go. They had to stop doing that because once the noises started happening, the fire in the stove would ignite all by itself. Furniture would be moved around  the next morning, and sometimes their refrigerator door would be wide open. They made sure their doors were double locked, and took all precautions to make sure no one could get in. They even went so far as to set a few traps with fishline, and cans with pebbles in them hanging at foot level making a trip wire, so that someone might trip and cause the pebbles in the cans to clatter, and wake them up. This continued for some time, and they started to ignore the different phenomena, they even put two straps around their fridge and freezer so the doors couldn't be opened without a struggle. One night, they were sleeping really well, and all of a sudden, they hear this growling, and the man was getting slapped in the face by something, he rolled over,  the room was lit by a bluish glow, and he said that this hairy, toothy thing standing on two legs was hitting him. His wife screamed, and he punched the thing in it's torso area and knocked it back into a chest of drawers. The bluish glow went out, and the room was totally dark, he switched on the bed lamp thinking he was going to have to do battle, however nothing was in their bedroom.  After that incident, nothing more happened to them, as far as I know, I never saw the people again.

Man with no face.
A woman I met while living in another state told me of a house she had lived in that was reportedly haunted. She had rented it out for the year while going to college, it was an older home near the college, and the rent was reasonable, (Sounds like the beginning of a classic ghost story, huh?). The house was built in the 1950's, single story, and had basically a 50's interior scheme, big double porcelain sinks in the kitchen, a combo woodstove / electric burner stove, large living room with high ceilings, the whole house had high ceilings according to her. She moved in, and went about her daily routines, going to school, working a part time job to help support herself and pay rent, having an occasional day off, etc.  She was coming home one night from being the cashier for movie tickets at the local theater, and noticed that the lights were on in the house. She said she knew she had turned off all of the lights when she left, and wondered if the owner / landlord had come and done something and forgot to turn off the lights, or left them on for her, as the owner every so often did things to maintain the house. She went inside and searched the home, and found nothing, and decided to call the owner, and see if they had been there. The owner said no, had not been there that day, so, nothing was missing, and she thought that she probably had forgotten the lights herself. Nothing happened after that for awhile, and things continued on as normal, until one night she came home, and the lights were on again. She didn't want to call the police because she thought it would be silly to do so if she had just left the lights on, and the neighborhood at that time was a very safe place, with somewhat nosy neighbors she said, who do not miss a thing. So, she said that she carried mace with her, and got that out and went inside, nothing was disturbed, no windows or locks broken, just the lights on. She went from room to room turning them off, and had come back out into the living room, and a man in dark suit, with no face, just a white shape of a human head was standing in front of her, she said it seemed to be looking at her, and then slowly vanished. She had forgotten the mace in her hand, she was shaken, but somehow did not feel threatened, and sat down to think about it. Asking around in the neighborhood a day or so later if any of the neighbors had seen, or heard strange things about the house, is when she found out that a man who had worked in a funeral home had bought the home in the 1960's and lived there. Whether he had been a undertaker, or funeral director, no one was for sure, and that several tenants who had rented there before her had reported strange goings on. One day, the man who had bought the house, and had lived there, was not there one day, and had left all of his belongings, and no one knew what happened with him. So, this is how the story was related to me, and am passing it along.

No doubt there are as many ghost stories as there are people. Popular thought by many, is that ghosts  are the figment of overworked imaginations, or, something you ate that didn't disagree with you, or "What the Hell have you been smoking, Man?" We do not hear a good amount of them due to the person who experienced them wishes to keep on being accepted into whichever group they are affiliated with. Then there are those few brave souls however, who will relate their experiences and hope for the best, maybe even find someone to trade stories with, and in the rarest of occurrences, meet someone who has had a similar experience. Did I just hear someone upstairs?


ATLANTIS.

So the legend goes "A day and a night and Atlantis sank into the sea".  Was Atlantis an island nation that had superior technology long before the Roman empire was ever dreamed of, or perhaps something more? Many tales of that long gone but not forgotten civilization exist, how many are fiction, and how many are fact, and do the two intertwine?

According to some scientists, and archeologists, there have been several super civilizations on this Earth over the billions of years of it's existence. Civilizations that had technology similar to ours, and greater, rose, and fell within a thousand years of each other, and further on. Evidence has been found of fossilized, and petrified machinery that were once metal, and scholars haven't a clue for what purpose they were used for, computer models have been made of a few of them, one that has been identified, and it's use is the "Antikythera mechanism", an ancient greek analog computer. It was used to predict astronomical, and eclipses for a calendar, and astrological purposes, and probably other events that have not yet been determined.

Going back in time well before the greeks, other super civilizations that had technologies far advanced from perhaps their counterpart civilizations on Earth, flourished, and disappeared leaving only clues to their existence. Here is where history kind of takes a left turn out into the area of speculation, and not what is taught in contemporary historical prose. 

Atlantis, or whatever the populace of that fantastic civilization called it, was not just an island nation that had superior technology over the Earth, it was, instead, a civilization that spanned the whole world. Evidence of layers upon layers of ancient technology have been discovered in many places, and in some cases, the technology is of the same kind, or very close to it. Antarctica is rumored to have Atlantean ruins, and more, but little has been released of that area, then there is evidence of similar ruins way up in the Yukon, as well as all through North America, and the other continents of the Earth. 

One theory about Atlantis is that not only was it a dominant force on Earth, but on the planet Mars too. There are many pictures, and videos of Mars, and some of the pictures depict buildings, pyramids, oceans, animals, and vegetation. Most of Mars looks like a terrible catastrophe had befallen the planet, and it is just starting to recover. The asteroid belt between Mars, and Jupiter is thought by some to have been a planet at one time, and it broke up, chunks of it hit Mars, and practically destroyed the civilization that was there almost totally, threw off most of it's atmosphere, and water, leaving little to be recognized as a habitable planet. The two moons of Mars are thought to be chunks of that planet that settled into orbit around it. The Earth was hit by some of the chunks of that planet and caused almost the same damage, but luckily for us, was not decimated the way Mars was. Before that happened, commerce was thought to have taken place between the two planets ..What's this??? .. Ah, look to some of the "Toys" that have been found in tombs, and diggings, and you'll see spaceships, and jet planes, along with what appears to be "Toy" flying saucers, and other not supposed to be there items. So, if there was commerce between Mars, and the Earth, then space travel is nothing new, and the super civilizations that existed in the past, in some cases were much more advanced than we are now. All it would take to bring us back down to the level of cavemen would be some catastrophe of Earth shattering proportions. 

So many stories have been written about Atlantis, that to remove fantasy, from fact would take many, many years, and maybe not even then would we know the whole truth about it and the other super civilizations.

We are now the current "Atlantis", and are discovering new ways to both elevate, and destroy ourselves, hopefully, we will make the right choice, and avoid the mistakes that other civilizations may have made in the distant past.


ODDS BODKINS.

We come across usually mundane things in our lives, however every so often, a little twist of the strange dial happens, sometimes the explanation surfaces and sometimes not, and we are left wondering about what happened, and why.

Man eating fish : A man's body was found inside a sealed wooden barrel in the 1860's floating out in the Atlantic ocean. An autopsy was done on his body and his stomach was full of half digested Piranha fish, no clue as to what was the cause of this.

If you were to take off the back of a TV set made in the 1950's through the 1970's that had the tubes, and transformers, and especially the big picture tube, and put your finger into just the air inside of it, you would have received a 30,000 volt shock due to the radiation that was leaking from those sets. That is why you see the inside lined with a silver foil like substance to contain most of the radiation, or even some kind of coating that resembled paint that had the same function.

Some people's metabolisms are so high in their electro-chemical functions, that they cannot wear watches, be near computers or any sort of electronic device that cannot withstand magnetic pulses. The units when said persons come into contact with them simply shut down and refuse to function, or die altogether. One theory is that people who eat a lot of carbohydrates, or consume more than a moderate amount of alcohol can cause these malfunctions because of the chemicals in sugar and booze releasing extra amount of metals from their systems which become polarized to either North or South magnetism, and produces a field that contacts the electronic circuits and in turn magnetizes them.

It is thought that a tree root will search out the nearest metal if it can, and grow around, along, and up through that metal due to the metal holding a weak positive, or negative charge. There has been many cases of trees growing up through old, and newer vehicles that have sat in one place for a few years. There are many pictures out there of cars and trucks from the 20's having a tree growing right up through them. So, be sure to move your car every few days.

An interesting theory that I read about one hundred years ago had to do with evolution. Where did the Neanderthals come from, and how did they develop their tribal society? This theory suggests that before they became the Neanderthal we are aware of today, they were apelike cave dwellers, who had rudimentary intelligence, and the caves held the secret to their advancement to a more human like creature. During that time, one to two million years ago, they were in caves which were high in uranium, and other radioactive substances, that altered their bodies and minds, they lost body hair over several thousands of years, developed a more frontal lobed brain, and skulls suggest that the back of the cranial bones shrunk in size close to what modern Homo-Sapiens (us) have now. One other theory suggests that because in the beginning of their tenure on Earth, their brain was larger in the back of the cranium, and they were more psychic, and could actually communicate with their minds, or offer a few grunts, along with their mindspeak and relate whole volumes of information to each other. I've known a few people who basically grunt to communicate, but never got any mental pictures from them. My Bad.

Hot water freezes faster than cold water, try it and see. It is due to that the molecules are moving faster in hot water, and the heat dissipates faster than in cold water.



AND NOW, THE MUSICAL FINISH: ... OH WAIT, WRONG ONE ...  "HA HA .. HA .. METALLIC TRIBBLES, BONES, WHERE DID  ..YOU GET THEM?" ... "Dammit Jim, some of my radioactive specimens escaped, I'm glad you found them!" .. " I ..WasJust .."



Instead of a Christmas story this year, I thought it would be fun to suggest some hilarious, demented Christmas tunes, a lot of which you can find on You Tube, and which go right along with our hilarious, demented, Genre'. (Probably a lot of you are already familiar with these selections).

Bob Rivers twisted Christmas songs / CD, and also on You Tube. White Trash Christmas, Chipmunks roasting on an open fire, I am Santa Claus.

Twisted Sister : A Twisted Christmas.

Barenaked Ladies : Barenaked for the Holidays.

Christmas with Colonel Sanders : Various Artists.

Funny Cats Christmas songs : Funny Cats.

Psychobilly Christmas : Various Artists.

I'm Dreaming of a Weird Christmas : Feliz Avant Garde.

William Hung : Hung for the Holidays.

It's a Waffle House Christmas : Various Artists.

Monster Christmas Mash : Various Artists.

Christmas songs that tickle your funny bone : The Golden Orchestra.

And who could forget two of the most favorites : A Charlie Brown Christmas, and A Muppet Family Christmas.



YOU BETTER WATCH OUT, YOU BETTER NOT SHOUT, YOU BETTER NOT CRY I'M TELLING YOU WHY .. SENSEI CLAUS WILL SHATCHOP THE S#*! OUT OF YOU, THAT'S WHY!!!

This winds up FFUI #18 for this year.

As I always do, I put in a disclaimer that all of the tales, lies, bat shit crazy stories, legends, and fairytales you've read up above are for entertainment purposes only. No monies, checks, gold latinum, monkeys, alligator lizards, cash, trash, favors, trades of any sort, or alcohol have been exchanged in any way shape or form to present these vignettes. Apologies go out to anyone who has a conniption over any of them.

Here is wishing all of you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Be safe, Be well, and Cap a lot!

KIP & AMOROSA.