Heeeeeeere's Joey!
Hey sugar lips,
Have you missed me? I’ve bloody well missed you.
I didn’t actually mean to leave it so long; unfortunately my time has been short, my heart rate has been up, and my brain has been like coagulated porridge.
What have I been doing? Well, finishing my old job. Starting a new one. Staring into space a bit. Getting a haircut like Eddie from Stranger Things. I am so current.
To make up for my absence, I’ve got some meaty stuff for you to wonder at this week. Radioactive foxes? Check. Penis envy? Yep. Cemetery-flavoured drinking water? We got it. A plan to finally oust our PM? You’ll have to go to Mumsnet for that.
Viddy well, o my brother,
Let’s dabble!
Glow in the bark
During World War II, the US wartime ‘intelligence’ agency came up with a bizarre idea to scare the Japanese: covering foxes with glow-in-the-dark paint to mimic kitsune, fox-shaped portents of doom. They believed the Japanese were so superstitious that they would freak the living shit out of them. Surprisingly, it never went ahead; the plug was pulled by the guy who himself suggested sneaking female hormones into Hitler’s food so his moustache would fall off.
Feel free to go back and read all that again.
Steady, Mercury!
Having a bad day? a) Aren’t we all; b) haven’t we all since about February 2020; and c) maybe it’s that Mercury’s in retrograde. That’s certainly the line trotted out by everyone from Taylor Swift to my own dear sister when life goes awry - but why has it become such a thing, and is there any truth to it? Get on the Bloc Party song and marvel.
Grave jigger
The poor Brontë sisters. As if living in the wilds of Yorkshire with an alcoholic brother wasn’t trial enough, it turns out their drinking water was contaminated by decomposing material from the local graveyard - and likely the local privies too - making them more susceptible to disease. YUM. What would you call that…a trench martini?
Dinkies and the brain
Freud is so engrained in our culture that we may not always know what we know - you know? Here are his five of his most influential theories, from ‘free association’ to penis envy - the latter beautifully demonstrated by Joey Tribbiani in this tasteful performance…
Lingual flange
I love everyday words that sound like they mean something a bit naughty. You know, like ham shank. Well believe it or not, quincunx is “an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners and the fifth at its centre”, not, as you might think, an insult that you save for Very Special Occasions.
And finally…
Happy Platinum Jubilee weekend!