Foley Heck!

And Once More We Venture Into The Annals Of Stupid

Although, with extremely bad taste, that might be amended to "Anals" of stupid, because - well, you'll see.  Conrad has to warn you that the original needs a bit of filtering to be rendered SFW, so we'll be using euphemisms, to spare your blushes and mine.  

     Okay, let me recap the Darwin Awards criteria: these are people who remove themselves from the gene pool thanks to their own terminal stupidity - alcohol frequently plays a part.  Then you have the people who narrowly avoid winning the award, who (possibly) go on to lead long fulfilling lives once they get the stupid out of their system.  Art!

Probably not this chap

     This tale began when a man presented at a South Canadian 'Emergency Room' which the rest of the civilised world knows as 'Accident and Emergency'.  He was complaining of severe rectal pain, so x-rays were taken, revealing that his rectum was filled with what the medics blandly described as 'radiopaque material', which he explained was -

    

     Concrete.

     In an attempt to retrieve a ping-pong ball (I'm not making this up!) that had already been lodged so far up the rectum that it would not come out, this man and his male partner had decided not to wait for nature to take it's course.  Personally Conrad would recommend a bowl of All Bran and half a wholemeal loaf, but no, our venturesome duo decided that a concrete enema, administered via a cardboard funnel whilst the target rectum was vertical, was the way to go.  Art!

Concrete.  Possibly the least likely 'intimate aid' ever.

     Concrete, being concrete, sets hard, whether outside in the open air or if constricted within a person's bowels, which is exactly what this concrete did.  One has to ask what our two adventurers thought it would do - stay fluid out of embarrassment?  Be moved along by peristaltic action?  Magically leave the body when their magic red shoes were clicked together?

     Well, no.  It required general anaesthetic and a couple of Foley catheters, inserted alongside the obstruction, which were used to ensure that there was no vacuum at the inner end of the obstruction whilst it was being removed.  Art!

     I won't go into any more detail, your imaginations can supply the rest.  There is a photograph of the <ahem> obstruction once removed and given a thorough wash, one hopes, which, if Art will put down his plate of coal -

You can't excrete - concrete

     They chipped it open at the far end and discovered the errant ping-pong ball.  

     There is a happy ending in that the patient suffered no ill-effects and was released the next day*.  They do not seem to crop up in any medical records after this event, so we can assume they learned their lesson.  The hard way.

     Motley!  Shall we see if porridge made with cement is edible, and what it does to your insides?  You first!

Things Have Gone Badly Right

You ought to know by now that Conrad enjoys being merely a minor success on the blogging scene, for to come to greater attention would risk slander, libel, defamation, copyright infringement and conspiracy charges**.  So - take a gander at this.  Art!

     In fact it only stopped at 210, which is a trifle worrying.  The only reason I can think of is that there was 'Father's Day' in the posts on Facebook and Twitter.  Your Humble Scribe is uneasy.  Although that might be the remaindered ham which should have been eaten by 04/06/2021, having a dance in my stomach.

More Medieval Mummery!

Yes, we are back to making sense of language that became obsolete centuries ago, but which diligent researcher Sir Arthur Conan Doyle unearthed and included in his medieval romance 'Sir Nigel', 

The King of Sark loses his head, thanks to Black Simon

and which has periodically baffled Conrad upon reading.  Look, I've read the book, so you don't have to, and I'm doing this background digging so you don't need to, either <pauses for applause, gets none, sulks>.

"FRANKLIN": NO!  Nothing to do with F. Delano Roosevelt.  Get your centuries right!  A 'Franklin' was a free man, who was not a serf and thus owed no feudal loyalties or responsibilities to a nobleman.

Er - quite.

     From what I've noticed on a quick bit of Google-fu, there's a Franklin in "The Canterbury Tales", which I had to study for English Lit. and loathed, so that anecdote ends there.

"MESSUAGE": Nope, nothing to do with either communicating or throwing the contents of your room out of the window into a gigantic pile on the lawn.  A 'messuage' was a domestic dwelling place with associated land and other buildings present.

"CURTILAGE": NO!  Nothing to do with a shark's skeletal structure.  This term refers to the piece of land upon which a dwelling directly sits, and excludes any acreage not actually in direct contact with the building.

This stuff is boring.  Have a picture of an atomic recoilless rifle instead.

      I wouldn't say boring, exactly, rather than you'd need to have a combined interest in accountancy - because a lot of these terms cover taxation and monies owed - and medieval languages.  Admittedly rather a niche field.

Finally -

Your Modest Artisan is now over two hours into "Ben Hur", which you might call a first pass, just getting the plot and characters down pat.  There is also a narration by Charlton Heston, across the whole film, which would mean another two-hours plus devoted to it, and there's a "Making Of" documentary as well, which clocks in at a more reasonable one hour.  I may have a nosy at that one when finished with the film, as it may - fingers crossed! - have details of matte shots.  I'm pretty sure I've seen one so far; the studio seem to have gone in for lots of practical effects rather than mattes, including the sea battle, which is PATENTLY done with miniatures.  Though they do get the oars moving nicely.

     And with that, ending on a quote 'and there were giants in the sea' we are ever so done.  Done!

*  They refused the recommended psychiatric evaluation.  Well, how would you like to relive this for an hour?

**  I bet those nosey parkers from Spectrum and UNIT would find a few extra ones to egg the pudding: 'Masquerading as a member of Hom. Sap.' and similar.