Back Yard of the Universe

1. The Big Dipper;
2. Stevenson’s Rocket;
3. Rotary-blade bush strimmer;
4. Plug-and-play hot-swappable dongle;
5. Wankel rotary engine.

List taken from my still-forthcoming Book of Utter Pointlessness.

Hello fact-fans! It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here due to my schedule as a fictitious person being a bit full. To make up for it, here are some nuggets of trivia from my Book of Super Amazo-Facts, available soon in a bookstore near you (or within 500 miles).

• In an unaired episode of The Flintstones, Fred suffered a psychotic episode and savagely beat his boss, Mr. Slate, to death with a diplodocus leg-bone. This was later re-written as the 1993 Michael Douglas film Falling Down, though thankfully all scenes featuring The Great Gazoo were completely removed.
• A trained stingray in Los Angeles by the name of Stanley can mime the words to T’Ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It) by Fun Boy Three featuring Bananarama (that’s the song that features them, by the way, not the stingray).
• Contrary to popular belief, it is not possible to open a tin of cat food by staring at it really hard (unless you happen to be Superman).
• American Charlie Briefcase has been stuck in a revolving door for the past seventeen years. Charlie, only son of a Detroit twig-maker, entered the door at Old Joe Joeson’s Old Time Department Store on 6th Avenue, Milwaukee, three days after his fifteenth birthday. Thanks to a combination of inbreeding and perseverance, Charlie has been spinning around the door ever since, either unable or unwilling to leave. Every Christmas and birthday his parents have thrown presents at him as he revolves by, and he is fed by a complex series of pipes and pulleys specially designed by Sir Clive Sinclair.
• Sherlock Holmes never used the phrase ‘elementary, my dear Watson’ in any of the original Conan Doyle stories. However, in an unpublished manuscript uncovered in the mid-1980s after a sizable dose of bad opium he does accuse Watson of ‘teabagging’ Moriarty.

More soon!

Please note the following changes to Oxbury area Tortoise Bus services over the festive period:

• A special Christmas Shopper bus will run on 23rd-24th December every ten minutes from Naysboar to Oxbury City Centre.The smallest, smelliest, oldest, dirtiest bus we can find will be used. Don’t complain: it’s your fault for leaving your Christmas shopping until the last minute.
• The 14 service to Fulton will not run on Christmas Day (25th December) or Boxing Day (26th-26th December). It will operate on 27th December (27th December), but no passengers will be picked up and the driver will ‘cock-a-snoop’ to any person who dares flag him down. You have been warned.
• The 128762147 service from Fisherman Park to Stickles Bridge will operate a reduced service from 23rd-29th December. Buses on this route will be 1/8th actual size.
• The 33 service to Oxbury Infirmary will be replaced on Christmas Day by the 33A. The 33A will make an extra stop in Runcorne Avenue to cover the 33B which will not run. The 33A will be replaced on Boxing Day by the 33C, which will not stop in Runcorne Avenue., the 33B being covered by the 33D. The 33D will also cover the 33B on 27th December, as the 33A will not be running and will be replaced by the 33E. The 33C will be covered by the 33F, which will not be running. On 28th December, the 33F will cover the 33, which will be re-routed to cover the 33D and the 33C, which will cover the 33E (which will be covering the 33B). The 33G will not be affected by these changes, except on Boxing Day when it will be replaced by the 33H (no relation).
• Bus drivers on all routes from Naysboar Depot will be wearing fancy dress on December 23rd. Keith Borrall on the 742 service will be dressed as Father Christmas, Stephanie Lomax on the 289412 route will be wearing a Comic Relief red nose she found down the back of the sofa and pretending to be Rudolph, whilst Cecil Harhouse will be reprising his celebrated role from last year as twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords-a-leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids-a-milking, seven swans-a-swimming, six geese-a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens and two turtle doves. Due to contractual obligations, the partridge in a pear tree will be unable to attend. Last year Tortoise Buses raised a whopping £74 which was mostly donated to some charity to do with kids or something. Since the event is for charity, all passengers will find it amusing and endearing.

Finally, please note that passengers are advised not to travel on any buses on New Year’s Day, as all the drivers will be hung over and we know what happened last year, don’t we?

Erm… apologies for the complete lack of any updates for the last few (well, many) weeks. The old usual reasons of too much work, too little energy and that kind of thing have prevented me from typing a web address into my browser and writing some rubbish to go on here. Anyway, I’m back now and that’s the important thing. More stuff will be coming here soon, and I hope you enjoy it.

Oh, by the way, I’d just like to thank all those lovely Russian people who’ve been leaving some nice comments on the site during my absence; I never knew I was so popular over there! Of course, I haven’t got the faintest idea what any of you are on about, but a quick Babel Fish translation suggests that you’re trying to suggest some fantastic products that I could purchase over the Internet on sites that have absolutely-nothing-to-do-with-the-mafia-whatsoever. Thank you very much and I shall certainly take you up on your most generous offers, just as soon as I have my brain removed and replaced with a lemon drizzle cake.

The ancient Spartans believed that eating their own feces would make them immortal. It didn’t, of course, and probably had a bit of a negative impact on their chances of breeding.

Tokyo, Japan is home to the world’s most advanced bus shelter. Complete with super-high-speed Internet access and real-time readouts of approaching buses, the so-called UltroShelto is a true marvel of the information age. The shelter is also able to provide its inhabitants with customised advertising based upon what it perceives to be their age and gender, calculated using a series of sophisticated techniques including facial recognition, height and weight analysis and painless blood sampling.

Britain’s most advanced bus shelter has two seats.

Some dolphins possess a high enough level of intelligence to play chess, though they much prefer Ker-Plunk.

Doctors are warning of an outbreak of Pralineism, where patients suffer from the delusion that they are John Cleese. The illness starts off subtly with victims spontaneously asking what the Romans ever did for us, but this soon progresses to silly walking and an obsession with cheese. As the syndrome takes hold, patients will find themselves unable to pass cars without the compulsion to attack them with branches, and will hallucinate pieces of game pie stuck up in the corners of rooms.

There is currently no known cure for the illness, though after the stage where the sufferer believes themselves to be a barrister having an affair with Jamie Lee Curtis, it stops being funny.

The earliest forms of double-glazing used to block specific radio frequencies. This had the bizarre effect that all homes with the thicker windows were unable to receive any radio programme hosted by bearded DJ Dave Lee Travis. Threatened legal action by the BBC led to the addition of tiny metallic filaments into the glass which negated the issue.

Early drafts of Shakespeare’s Macbeth discovered in Anne Hathaway’s garderobe show that originally the eponymous Scot was meant to be plagued by visions not of the ghost of Banquo, but by a giant rabbit called Harvey. The 1944 Mary Chase play and later film adaptation starring Jimmy Stewart are entirely unrelated and their existence is due solely to a great cosmic coincidence.