Quote
“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
Narcotics Anonymous
Joke
Parallel lines have so much in common. It’s a shame they’ll never meet.
Fun Fact
Our European ancestors were cannibals.
In 16th and 17th century Europe, cannibalism was actually a fairly common practice, and it was all for medical purposes. The practice seems to have started because Egyptian mummies were thought to have magical curative properties—so they were ground up and put in many remedies.
As the idea evolved, human bone, blood, and fat were all used in medical concoctions. Got a headache? Crush a skull and make it into tea! While medical cannibalism has fallen out of favor, modern medicine still sometimes uses one human body to heal another in the form of blood donations, organ transplants, and skin grafts.
History Fact
Horrifying Forgery
The Iron Maiden, a medieval torture device consisting of a sarcophagus filled with metal spikes or nails, likely never actually existed for that purpose. Supposedly used during the Middle Ages, it was only after German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees wrote about them in the 1700s that the devices began turning up in museums as morbid curiosities. The most famous of these, the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg, was only built in the year 1800.
Movie/TV Trivia
Melancholia
During the Cannes Film Festival press conference for the film, Lars von Trier responded to a question about the use of Wagner's music, by calling himself a Nazi, and saying that he sympathized with Hitler. Despite apologizing for his remarks, he was banned from the remainder of the festival, and declared a persona non grata by festival organizers, a first in the history of the festival.
Movie/TV Quote
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!" Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1964
When Stanley Kubrick sat down with Peter George to adapt George’s novel Red Alert, the director struggled with treating the material as a straight drama, as he initially intended. "My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay," Kubrick said after the film’s release. "I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question."
Conversation Starter
Do you like spicy food? Why or why not? What is the spiciest thing you have ever eaten?
Writing Prompt