Sideswipe: September 29: Another fringe political party...

Spotted in Matakana by Geoff Foote.

Blubbery bedroom cure

In the Bible, Jonah was swallowed up by a big fish because he tried to avoid God's command to go to Nineveh. He was ejected alive three days later. In 1910, a similar story appeared in Australian newspapers. "One of the employees at the Bega whaleries (reports the Sydney Sun) is recovering from a mixed attack of fright, hysterics and fainting. He was engaged cutting up a whale a day or two ago, and when he had cleaved away the flesh from one side of the stomach he saw what appeared to be the fully dressed body of a young lady lying inside. At first he thought she was dead, and he was considering the advisability of going off to report to the police when the young lady rubbed her eyes and sat up. The whaler fell off the whale. But the young lady was not even a ghost. It appears that she suffers very much from rheumatism. Somebody had told her that to get inside and stay inside the body of a whale for a while would cure her…
– The Bendigo Independent, November 18, 1910

Misunderstandings

1. "I thought the phrase prima donna was pre-Madonna. As if she was such a pioneer and megastar that she redefined what it meant to be a demanding idol with super-diva personality."
2. "My colleague (she's 25) thought the name Geoff was pronounced GEE-OFF and had been calling a contractor that for 2 years."
3. "I remember, as a kid, thinking the weather presenter on TV got to decide what the weather would be like and never understood why they'd pick clouds and rain…"
4. "I thought Ringo Starr was famous for narrating Thomas the Tank engine."

The real walk of shame…

Tiger Kenji (@Kurokenji_)

Speed up your decomposition

It can take up to a decade for a human body to decompose from within a conventional coffin, but the "Living Cocoon" can compost a corpse in just two to three years. Designers in the Netherlands have come up with an eco-friendly solution to burying the deceased: these so-called "Living Cocoons," a biodegradable coffin that's made out of moss and fungi. The mycelium fungus is grown in the shape of the coffin then naturally dried out, allowing it to keep the cocoon's shape. But once the coffin comes into contact with groundwater, it begins the process of composting. The concept of these Living Cocoons is to facilitate the natural decay of the human body in a way that will benefit the surrounding environment, unlike conventional burials which can often result in polluting the surrounding environment. Caskets that are made of plastics or varnished wood may take years to degrade and could release toxic materials into the ground.