Toxic Byte

Two Blonde students are in the cafeteria and see a newspaper with this headline: “12 Brazilian Soldiers Killed.”

One student shakes her head at the sad news, turns to her friend and asks, “How many is a Brazilian?”

Anyway to give the film a twist and some “oomph” he decides to cast the parts to the great action heroes of today. He calls Stallone, Arnie, Bruce Willis and Seagal into his office to hear who they would like to play.

“Well,” started Stallone, “I’ve always admired Mozart. I would love to play him.”

“Chopin has always been my favourite, and my image would improve if people saw me playing the piano” said Willis. “I’ll play him.”

“I’ve always been partial to Strauss and his waltzes,” said Segal. “I’d like to play him.”

Spielberg was very pleased with these choices. “Sounds splendid.”

Then, looking at Schwarzenegger, he asked, “Who do you want to be, Arnold?”

So Arnold simply says… “I’ll be Bach.”

Emails like these come round all the time, and I think you can disprove most of these or put them down to bad research. There are pages on About.com to do just that. The one that made me chuckle though was the “England is old and small” as a reason to stop burying people. I mean, it gets smaller each year due to it being so damn old - shrivveling up, isn’t it?

Bring Home the Bacon to Chew the Fat

In the 1500’s, sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man “could really bring home the bacon”. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat”.

Dirt-poor and Thresholds

In the 1500’s, the floor of houses was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying “dirt poor”. The wealthy had slate floors, which would get slippery in the winter when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they kept adding more thresh until, when they opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entryway, hence a “thresh hold”.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water

In the 1500’s baths were a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying.

Graveyard Shift - Saved by the Bell, or a Dead Ringer

England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized that they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the “graveyard shift”, they would know that someone was “saved by the bell” or he was a “dead ringer”.

Holding a Wake

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. This combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of “holding a wake”.

It’s raining cats and dogs

Houses used to have thatched roofs - thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets - dogs, cats and other small animals like mice, rats, bugs lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.

Peas and Porridge

In the 1500’s, they cooked in the kitchen in a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn’t get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for a month. Hence the rhyme: “peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old”.

Tomatoes

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes… for 400 years.

Trench Mouth

In the 1500’s most people didn’t have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get “trench mouth”. Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust”.

Why do we have 4 poster beds with canopies?

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. So, they found if they made beds with big posts and hung a sheet over the top, it addressed that problem. Hence those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies.

Whoever said exams were getting easier year on year eh? Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS , and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS -1895
Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no
modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts
of “lie,”"play,” and “run.”
5. Define case; Illustrate each case.
6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of
punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that
you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft wide. How many
bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at
50cts/bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary
levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have
$104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7
percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at
$20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance
of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell , Lincoln,
Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800,
1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography,
etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph,
subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u.’

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two
exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word:
bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and
name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir,
odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight,
fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate
pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver,
Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall
and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same
latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to
the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the
earth.

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete. Gives the saying “he only had an 8th grade education” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?!

The following quotes were taken off of actual police car videos around the country. Starting with # 15

#15 “Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they’re new. They’ll stretch out after you wear them awhile.”

#14 “Take your hands off the car, or I’ll make your birth certificate a worthless document.”

#13 “If you run, you’ll only go to jail tired.”

#12 “Can you run faster than 1,200 feet per second? In case you didn’t know, that is the average speed of a 9mm bullet fired from my gun.”

#11 “So you don’t know how fast you were going. I guess that means I can write anything I want on the ticket, huh?”

#10 “Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don’t think it will help. Oh .. did I mention that I am the shift supervisor?”

#9 “Warning? You want a warning? O.K., I’m warning you not to do that again or I’ll give you ! another ticket.”

#8 “The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?”

#7 “Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy, and step in monkey $#*!.”

#6 “Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven.”

#5 “In God we trust, all others we run through NCIC.”

#4 “Just how BIG were those two beers?”

#3 “No sir, we don’t have quotas anymore. We used to have quotas but now we’re allowed to write as many tickets as we want.”

#2 “I’m glad to hear the Chief of Police is a good personal friend of yours. At least you know someone who can post your bail.”

And the best one . . . .
#! 1 “You didn’t think we give pretty women tickets? … You’re right, we don’t. …. Sign here.”