The History of "Fuck"

The real history of the word?

http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.asp

The History Of Body Hair Removal

We traditionally think of a cavemen as the "Hairy Ape" and we’ve been conditioned to associate excessive body hair with primitive people and tribal behavior. The timeline for hair removal stretches from prehistory to the hi-tech present and Homo Sapien’s reasons for being shorn, razored, waxed, tweezed, electrolysized, lasered, and in any manner depilated are as varied and unique as we are. The reasons for hair removal have ranged from the practical to the vainglorious and over the years an entire industry with many related businesses has grown out of our seemingly innocuous desire to be relatively smooth-skinned and on many parts of our bodies hair-free. Hair is a renewable resource, at least in our younger years, and left unattended will give us the opportunity to emulate Howard Hughes in all his hirsute glory, though not with the financial wherewithall that gave Mr, Hughes the latitude to remain totally unshaven to the bitter end. So follow along the follicle-strewn path of sartorial evolution and see the unique and interesting twists and turns in our journey of tonsorial discovery.

First The Practical…..
Perhaps it was a Neanderthal tired of Mammoth scraps getting caught in his beard. It’s believed that this was one of the first motivations for early shaving-if you call scraping the coarse matted hair off with a semi-sharp stone and most likely taking some of the skin beneath it "shaving." Eluding the clutches of the aforementioned Mammoth or his Saber Toothed nemesis, as well as other warring clansmen, was no doubt easier without having long, ropelike hair and/or a dangling beard to offer a handhold or clawhold, as the case might be. And although the grooming practice of picking out the lice and other vermin, remaining as a holdover from our simian ancestors, offered some bonding pleasure, most likely someone discovered that the irritating pests didn’t plague the less hairy inhabitants of the cave as much. Finally, it was certainly noticed that the more hairy tribesmen, being elder, died sooner. Thus an association of death with excess hair was formed in brains that were still evolving. This could also explain today’s young stylista’s fascination with the totally shaven head as a fashion statement; apparently this is no longer strictly the territory of military and correctional facility grooming.

he idea of singeing facial hair came into vogue early on; twigs and branches were used for this purpose, although a significant stubble would remain, unless the recipient was simultaneously being branded. Crude tweezer-like implements have been found in archeological digs of early man sites; this technique proved unpopular even in those difficult times. Our aversion to pain for appearance’s sake was apparent even then. The functionality and regimental visual conformity achieved by shaving or trimming facial hair was important to early Egyptians, Greeks, and other emerging cultures as they grew by massing armies and conquering their neighbors. Certainly, as the Emperor or King did, so the populace would follow, and rulers then and after have been noticeably clean-shaven.

Then the Fashionable…..
The development of metallurgy which led to a quality blade fostered men shaving with some degree of comfort and safety; in fact the 1800’s, with that period’s Victorian emphasis on gentlemanly grooming, is considered the "Golden Age" of shaving. It was the thin and practical disposable razor, invented by the young King Camp Gillette, that brought men’s shaving into the Industrial Age and many of these "Safety Razors" went off to war with the troops, thus ensuring the timeless smooth-shaven warrior. The Gillette razor’s popularity after the war introduced relatively risk-free cosmetic shaving to the soldier’s sweethearts and wives as well. Also came the advent of the electric razor, which was to herald the dawn of technological hair removal, at least on a temporary basis. Although plucking and tweezing had offered more lasting depilation, it would be science that would create the possibility of permanent hair removal.

In the latter part of the smooth-shaven (at least for men) 1800’s, an enterprising ophthalmologist discovered he could stop the growth of ingrown eyebrows by introducing electricity into the follicle before removing the hair. This was the birth of electrolysis and this method of introducing a fine probe to the hair follicle to abate its ability to regrow using electricity of different types remains a popular depilatory method to this day. There are electrologists operating in nearly every city of any size and this industry continues to flourish.
Not to be outdone, 20th century technology spawned a similar grooming aid when a laser scientist accidentally exposed his arm to a laser beam and, after determining he was uninjured, noted that the hair didn’t grow back in the area the light had affected. Laser research and refinements have enabled this technology to be used for many medical procedures in addition to cosmetic hair removal and medical science is continually finding new uses for laser technology.

While depilatory creams and lotions abound, these mechanical and technological methods are still used the most often. As mankind advances into further into space, it’ll be interesting to see how galactic travelers will handle hair removal; perhaps their whiskers will just seem to "float away."

By John Brooks
Published: 10/2/2007

Be Here Now

Well, I knew I watched 27 Dresses on www.surfthechannel.com for a reason. I liked Ray Lamontagne before I heard this song, but this is a new one for me and I liked it enough to share it with you. Here's the vid, and the words. :)



"Be Here Now"

Don't let your mind get weary and confused
Your will be still, don't try
Don't let your heart get heavy child
Inside you there's a strength that lies

Don't let your soul get lonely child
It's only time, it will go by
Don't look for love in faces, places
It's in you, that's where you'll find kindness

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now

Don't lose your faith in me
And I will try not to lose faith in you
Don't put your trust in walls
Cause walls will only crush you when they fall

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now

Order Has Been Restored...

Well. So much traversing through my mind. But what presents itself as "relevant" is that Order Has Been Restored. Yes, all capital letters. In a nutshhell, I believe in everything and nothing. At the moment, I believe in the positions in the planets having an effect on my energy. Yes, my mind has been jumbled this weekend, to say the least. However, clarity has been gained and what other way to do it than to spend a warm (my heat is out) Sunday watching Six Feet Under with the wife and her wily ponytail ways, on a day filled with void of course.....ok enough of my mind filled blabber. Well, not really. A lot happened in the time span of about five hours. I'm inclined to draw the connections. Just maybe you'll get some real entertainment out of me today, but maybe not.

Let's see, Easter was cool. I had separation anxiety from Brody, Karlo, Nicole and Karl after being with them for an entire week. I miss being close to them. Certainly missing people you care about contributes to your general state of being at a given point in time. So these things combined with my general distaste for my job, (the actual work, not my boss or my environment) rather having to work like a slave every day of my life is weighing heavily on my mind. Among other randomness like when and where am I going to go to grad school and for what, how I'm going to come up with money to take care of some issues I need to resolve....etc...etc...etc...Mind you, nothing is really WRONG or BAD or anything serious or life threatening. I'm well aware I lead a pampered life compared to most of the rest of the world. I have my health and a roof over my head with food in my refrigerator. So put into perspective, none of these things contributing to my general mood are anything to necessarily fret too much about.

Moo and I resumed our Six Feet Under marathon, which I've also had separation anxiety from since Chicago postal service sucks my ass! I have to say, yesterday's episode was incredible. It's cool to watch this series again and well, I think it's a series I have to continue to revisit because it keeps things present. Maybe I can find some clips. yea yea yea.....so I'm addicted to Six Feet Under. Whaddya gonna do about it? Call me all the names you like. nah! ;)

We laughed really hard about the conversation I had with my 8 year old nephew about farting. Spending a week with him.....he farts a LOT. And he lets them rip. In his sleep, at the table, at the beach....wherever. So we were playing ping pong in Puerto Rico and of course he rips one. I ask him "What do you do when you're in school and you fart that loud" His response, "I don't fart in school" and I'm like "C'mon, you have to! Do you just make them silent and deadly? What about the people around you?" and he said, "I just blame it on someone else. I let someone else say they smelled it first and then I blame it on someone else" HIGH-larious.

History Of The Peace Sign

Today I learned that the Peace Sign started as the emblem of the British anti-nuclear movement but became an international symbol for peace. It was on the BBC's website. Here's the story:



Story from BBC's website:

It had its first public outing 50 years ago on a chilly Good Friday as thousands of British anti-nuclear campaigners set off from London's Trafalgar Square on a 50-mile march to the weapons factory at Aldermaston.

The demonstration had been organised by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) joined in.


I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad
Gerald Holtom
Gerald Holtom, a designer and former World War II conscientious objector from West London, persuaded DAC that their aims would have greater impact if they were conveyed in a visual image. The "Ban the Bomb" symbol was born.

He considered using a Christian cross motif but, instead, settled on using letters from the semaphore - or flag-signalling - alphabet, super-imposing N (uclear) on D (isarmament) and placing them within a circle symbolising Earth.

The sign was quickly adopted by CND.

Holtom later explained that the design was "to mean a human being in despair" with arms outstretched downwards.

Ready To Go.....

Unfortunately I'm not so up for posting a long blog or rant about anything insightful or even comical. Whew. I'm exhausted. Of course because I don't feel like getting into a blog doesn't mean I'm without things to say. *smirk* I just don't have the energy to create it.

Moo gave me a bunch of music for my ipod and I'm a happy girl. I think I've packed well (I'm really good at packing. I'm the one that has everything one could neeed.)

Blah blah blah. I'm tired. Going to bed. I'll try to post in Puerto Rico. he he.

Kittens, Puppies, Bioluminescent Bay!

I wasn't kidding when I said I was going to share with you kittens and puppies after that mildly heavy posting. Sorry no rainbows, they're not as CUTE as the following video clip.



Next up, what is on my mind. PUERTO RICO! Check out this Bioluminescent Bay! Out of this world! Hopefully I'll get to go here in Puerto Rico. Beyond words.





On a moonless night in Vieques take a ride into one of the most magical places in the world. Look behind the boat and watch the shimmering glow of the wake. When it stops and the guide stomps a foot on the deck, hundreds of luminescent streaks appear in the path of scattering fish. Imagine taking a dip and finding yourself enveloped in a blue-green glow, lifting your hand from the water and watching the glowing water drip off into the phosphorescent pool beneath.

Waving your arms in the water makes angel wings appear. The stronger the movement, the brighter the glow. Enter the world that time forgot, the last of its kind to still maintain such a high level of luminescence. Because even though this phenomena occurs elsewhere in the world, nowhere is it nearly as bright as in one of the bioluminescent bays in Vieques, known as Caño Hondo or Puerto Mosquito.

The light is produced by trillions of micro-organisms that become luminescent when disturbed. The concentration here is an astounding 720,000 per gallon. Vieques is one of the few places in the world where pollution has not decimated the population. It is fortunate indeed that Vieques has escaped mainstream tourism.

INCREDIBLE!

The other thing I'm looking forward to is El Yunque Forest. This is merely one clip I found in my haste to finish this blog because I have LOADS of things to do before 5:00. I think Sunday will be a blog dedicated to Pre-Puerto Rico. Ha ha. Can't imagine what post Puerto Rico is gonna be like.



Now for some cute pictures of my cats. Kitty wants to play chess and DJ looks like.......I don't know. Fill in the blank. DJ looks like........By the way, I can't figure out how to post the entire photo. I'm bummed, Kitty is perfectly in the middle of the two sides of my chess set. They're both cut off on the right and I don't know why. Still learning how to use this blogspot, but I figure better to have a post than none at all eh? Enjoy! I'll try to fix it sometime. (later update...I fixed it!)




Last but not least, remember the bruise from last post? Well here it is about a week and a half later. Look closely....what does it look like to you? There are two imaginings.....I wonder if anyone sees what I see. Thoughts? It's kinda like playing shapes with clouds except this was a massive bruise from two retards playing high card punch in Michigan this past fall. Brilliant. But fun.

Dreams.....There is a Place Language Cannot Penetrate

ok and I promise I'll get off the heavy shit tomorrow. For real. On to like puppies and kittens and rainbows. Or hipsters crying stars.

As it may be, the subject heading of this blog is two separate subjects, but I guess one could say language is difficult to also penetrate dreams. But dreams first, I had my first dream last night where I was uttering a Russian phrase. Ya paneemayoo, which means "I understand". Which is funny, because later in the day I used the phrase again, this time in Spanish. yo entiendo. You could say that a prevalent theme throughout the day was that I understand. I get it. Dreams are significant for me. I don't think anyone should ever stop dreaming. I could expound, but I have a lot to say tonight and I must press on. Anyway, I watched part of this video at work. It's a guy who is dying's last lecture, he's a professor. I won't say anymore, except that you should watch it. I'll just post the video or the link, whichever I can figure out in my quasi-technical deficiency, but in my defense, I do know how to spell. Either copy and paste the link below or click on it, not sure if it's going to post as a link.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8577255250907450469&pr=goog-sl

Wow, so yea. It just keeps coming. Speaking again of simultaneous thoughts, I hate to bog you down with all of this deep thought but it's pretty heavy on my mind at the moment and this is my blog. ha. No I'll meander off to more whimsical places, in due time. So my simultaneous thoughts are having difficulty being sequentially ordered at the moment, fancy that. I will start with synchronicity, of which I am speaking when I say there is a place language cannot penetrate. That's me dorking out in my Foucoult linguistic mode which is a whole other schlep into the epistemological abyss. (Reading The Order of Things presently). Needless to say it followed me around today and yesterday. I'm not even going to attempt to present the web that's been weaved except with single phrases, because each of them is overlapping and definitely taking me somewhere. Maybe I'll discover the meaning of life. No, just kidding, I already know that. ha ha. Ok, so topics that have been presenting themself in multiplicity and overlapping in a vertical style rather than horizontal (thank you again Foucoult). Language and it's relevance to science, the study of knowledge and thought, Kant, The Master and The Margarita, death, patience, The Universe in a Single Atom, Jung, quantum physics, Jesus, peacocks, crazy people, Buddhism, rehab, recurrent power structures and last but not least, cuckoo clocks. Yes, coockoo clocks. Yep, that's what'sa goin around. Catch it if you can.

And now for the history of cuckoo clocks. I want one. I forget where this topic sprung into my head but I think a cuckoo clock would just look great on my wall.












Origins in the Black Forest

A short history of the origin of cuckoo clocks in Germany in the 17th century.

Germany in the 17th century was a hard place. Europe was going through a mini-ice age, and it was so cold during the winters that milk sometimes froze in the pail between the barn and the house.

In the Black Forest area of Germany, opinion has it that around the year 1630 a glass peddler who had traveled to Czechoslovakia brought back a crude, wooden clock called a “wood-beam clock” which used wooden gears and common stones as weights. There was no pendulum; it used instead a piece of wood called a “Waag” which moved back and forth above the clock dial. Crude or not, the clock was a definite improvement over the hourglasses and sundials that were the norm in those days.

The Black Forest

The original clock was greatly improved upon over the years by the volk of the Black Forest, and clock peddlers ( “Ührschleppers” in German) began taking the clocks all over Europe. The people would work at clock making during the Winter and the Ührschleppers would take them off for re-sale in the Spring.

In 1712, Friedrich Dilger from the village of Urach went to France for a year to study advances in clocks and clockmaking tools, and brought better technology back with him.

The clock caught on, and people began to make clocks in their homes during the long, harsh winters. These clocks soon became an important source of income; particularly among the so-called “Häuslers”. The custom of inheritance by primogeniture (i.e. the 1st born son inherits) was in effect and other, younger sons usually received only a small plot of land for a hut and had to work for others in order to survive. Very shortly, clock making was a roaring cabin industry.

But these clocks were still not cuckoo clocks. There were “artist clocks” in some European cities which had moving figures; the Astronomical Clock, which is in Prague and was built in 1410, is replete with animated, allegorical figures. Among others, there is a skeleton representing Death who turns over an hourglass while his bones rattle, and a rooster that crows each hour as the climax to the elaborate show put on by the clock. There were also small, domestic clocks that had, for example, a dancing couple turning this way and that, or a butcher striking a cow with an ax, but no cuckoo clocks.

An Ührschlepper

Triberg

Death and Greed—Prague

The very first cuckoo clock is attributed to Anton Ketterer of the village of Schönwald who added the famous cuckoo to his clocks in 1738. It is possible that the rooster clocks were Ketterer’s inspiration. It was certainly easier to make a clock go “coo-coo” than making it crow, but it still must have been difficult to develop the mechanism to do this. Ketterer’s answer was the same gadget that is used today; twin bellows that send air through small pipes like a pipe organ.

By this time, clockmaking had become widespread in the Black Forest, and folks began to specialize. Some cut gears, others carved the decorations or made the cases, and still others did the painting. Many cuckoo clocks in the 18th and 19th centuries were painted with elaborate scenes on the front of the case. According to one source, in 1808 in the town of Triberg, 790 of the towns 9,013 residents were involved in clockmaking. In 1850, the Duke of Baden founded a school for clockmaking in Furtwangen which taught students drawing and mathematics in addition to movement and case-making.

The decorations on the cases of cuckoo clocks have developed into different styles or themes. There are, as an example, the “Hunter’s Clocks” which have guns, powder horns, ammunition pouches and game animals decorating the clock. The animals can be represented as alive or dead. Many people prefer live animals on their clocks.

Then, there are the “Bahnhäusle” style of clocks that are usually festooned with grapevines. When a railroad was built in the Black Forest in the 1860s, a number of tunnels had to be built. Skilled tunnel-builders were brought in from Italy who, naturally, brought their life-styles and architecture with them. They built small lookout buildings along the railway which showed the Italian influence and which were often adorned with wild grapevines. These picturesque structures were the inspiration for the Bahnhäusle cuckoo clocks.


See cuckoo clocks below. After the jump, some fun I pulled from the vault. Sorry Michaela. But in all fairness I am showing the world how tough you are. The pictures speak for themself and Michaela packs a harder punch than I do, obviously. :) I got lots more to inform you on. Like how to make goat cheese, Tikkum Olam, the history of body hair removal, and other deep thoughts or random frivolties of the mind. Life is good. And I'm going to Puerto Rico, where I'm going to zone out and let the ocean breeze carry my imagination to grandiose places like living in a foreign land. lol. You see why I like cuckoo clocks? Cuz I'm cuckoo. har har.