What happens in "The Bell Jar"?

Search: bell jar

Why: In Ryan O'Connell's essay "How to See a Shrink" on Thought Catalog:

Experience a kind of depression you’ve never felt before. Live in the bell jar, cry during commercials in the middle of the afternoon when the sun is still shining and people are outside living their lives. Or just have lots of money and like to talk about yourself. Decide to call a therapist.

I never read that book, and I don't think I want to.

Answer: Oh, it has much more narrative than I suspected. Here is a summary of the summary:

Esther Greenwood, a girl from Boston, gets a summer internship at a magazine in NYC. She is not as excited as she feels like she's supposed to be, just kind of meh about the whole thing. She has a bitchy friend Doreen, and knows a baby-machine idiot named Dodo, but she respects Betsy from Kansas who is always good and nice.

Esther goes to her job and things happen. She has a beau back home who she expects to marry. She thinks a lot about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, those communists who are scheduled for execution. She applies for a writing course by a famous author, but when she goes home, her seaward of a mom tells her she was rejected. She wants to write a novel, but she doesn't think she knows anything. After school, she doesn't want to pop out babies like Dodo or be a stenographer like all the other women of America, and the idea of not being able to do anything else bums her out.

Esther's depression makes her unable to asleep. Her mother sends her to a hot psychiatrist who Ester does not trust. He hastily diagnoses her and has her put in a hospital, where she receives electroconvulsive therapy that's is improperly administered. When she tells her mom she doesn't want to go back, her mom is all, "I knew you'd decide to be all right."



Esther gets more and more blue. She feels like she's trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. She half-asses some suicide attempts, and after a particularly elaborate one, she is sent to a different hospital. She is given a lady therapy, Dr. Nolan, who gives her psychotherapy and ECT done the right way.

Esther confides in Dr. Nolan that she envies the freedom men have, and that she worries about getting pregnant. Dr. Nolan hooks her up with a diaphragm, which makes Esther feel less scared about sex and having to marry the wrong man. She improves a lot, and the novel ends with her entering the room for an interview that will decide whether she can leave the hospital.

Esther.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: The real reason I am posting this is because I just read a ton about Sylvia Plath (b. 1932) who kilt herself at age 30. Points of interest:

• Almost all of the major plot points in The Bell Jar really happened to her.
• She married English poet Ted Hughes on 6/16/56.

• They had 2 kids, Frieda (b. 1960) and Nicholas (b. 1962).
• In Aug. 1961, she finished The Bell Jar.
• In July 1962, she discovered her husband having an affair with Assia Wevill, who was renting their flat in London with her [third] husband David. The couple separated.
  
• In Oct. 1962, Plath wrote most of the poems in Ariel (published posthumously).
  
• In Dec. 1962, she rented a flat in William Butler Yeats's old house with her two kids. It was cold and miserable; the kids were sick all the time, and she didn't have a phone.
• In Jan. 1963, The Bell Jar came out, published under the pen name Victoria Lucas, and was met with critical indifference.
• Plath's friend Dr. Horder saw that she was not doing well, and he prescribed her anti-depressants and arranged for her to have a live-in nurse.
• On Feb. 11, 1963, Plath put wet towels under the doors of her children's rooms and stuck her head in the oven. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
• At the time of Plath's suicide, Assia Wevill was pregnant with Hughes's child, but she terminated the pregnancy soon after. She helped Hughes care for Plath's children.
• In March 1965, Wevill gave birth to a daughter nicknamed Shura while still married to David Wevill. Though Hughes never publicly claimed Shura was his daughter, he believed she was his.

• On March 23, 1969, Wevill gassed herself and 4 year-old Shura in their London home using a gas stove. The two were found lying on a mattress.
• In Oct. 1998, Ted Hughes died of a heart attack.
• On March 16, 2009, Nicholas Hughes hanged himself at age 47.

#dark

Plath in photos: Cape Cod 1952, in Paris

What's the origin of the name "Skid Row"?

Search: skid row

Why: In Ryan O'Connell's "Living and Working in a Very Modern Family" on Thought Catalog, which I've been reading nonstop for the last 2 weeks:

My brother’s success surprised us all. After he barely graduated high school, my parents cut him off in a tough love attempt to foster motivation, and he moved into an apartment in Skid Row with his meager savings and no job prospects. When his money quickly depleted, he decided to start a website that would feature the grossest and most disturbing porn videos. In the first month, he made $2000 by cutting deals with advertisers, and everyone in my family was just like, “What?”

Answer: From the term "skid road"! In the 19th century, loggers in the Pacific Northwest made skid roads of old railroad ties or heavy wooden planks to get felled trees down to the mill. These are tied to the corduroy road:

A type of road made by placing sand-covered logs perpendicular to the direction of the road over a low or swampy area

Anyway, "skid roads" eventually became associated with the areas where loggers hung out, and everyone knows that lumberjacks are burly men's men who only like booze and hookers. Stay away from Skid Road, ladies.

Source: Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia

The More You Know: Speaking of things that I have been obsessed with in my lifetime, according to my brother, I watched this movie every day when I was a little child. Here's a relevant song!

Recognize those gals? You saw two of them every Tuesday night on "Martin." They're named after popular doo-wop girl groups of the '60s.

How did Andy Warhol die?

Search: andy warhol

Why: On Thought Catalog, "5 Celebrities Who Would've Been Perfect for the Internet" by my new favorite writer* Ryan O'Connell:

Andy would’ve ruled supreme on the web. He would’ve beat Kim Kardashian in Twitter followers, and a tweet as simple as “i like oranges” would’ve gotten, like, a thousand retweets. He would love Twitpics. There’d be photos of Viva slumped over in the corner of the Factory in a heroin daze with the caption: “viva goes zzzzz.” His Facebook fan page would have so many “like”s but the comments would be terrible. “Andy is the worst. I wish he would just die!” or “he’s sO UGlY N siCk ewwww. whatAfAG!” When he was shot by Valerie Solanas though, there would’ve been an outpour of digital love. Fans would write, “Hang in there, Andy!” and “Say hi to Edie in heaven for me…” And like the freak that he is, he would’ve tweeted from his hospital bed something like, “someone shot me today and it was brilliant….” Ugh, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe Andy would’ve just had the most annoying internet presence in the world.

*4srs, I've read like 30 of his essays in the last 48 hours.

Answer: From complications after a gall bladder surgery!

Late in his life, Warhol suffered chronic gall bladder problems. His pain intensified in January 1987 during a trip to Italy. On February 20, 1987 he was admitted to New York Hospital. The next morning his gall bladder was successfully removed and Warhol seemed to be recovering well—watching television and talking on the telephone. During that night, however, complications arose which resulted in sudden cardiac arrest. Warhol was pronounced dead at 6:31 am on Sunday, February 22, 1987. He was 58 years old.

That Solanas / shooting thing was just a blip. She was a super radical feminist in the 60s:

In 1966, she wrote a play titled Up Your Ass about a man-hating prostitute and a panhandler. In 1967, she encountered Andy Warhol outside his studio, The Factory, and asked him to produce her play. Intrigued by the title, he accepted the script for review. According to Factory lore, Warhol, whose films were often shut down by the police for obscenity, thought the script was so pornographic that it must be a police trap. He never returned it to Solanas. The script was then lost, not to be found until after Warhol's death, in the bottom of one of his lighting trunks.

Later that year, Solanas began to telephone Warhol, demanding he return the script of Up Your Ass. When Warhol admitted he had lost it, she began demanding money as payment. Warhol ignored these demands but offered her a role in I, a Man. In his book Popism: The Warhol Sixties, Warhol wrote that before she shot him, he thought Solanas was an interesting and funny person, but that her constant demands for attention made her difficult to deal with and ultimately drove him away.

Warhol did give Solanas a role in a scene in his film I, a Man (1968–1969).

On June 3, 1968, she arrived at The Factory and waited for Warhol in the lobby area. When he arrived with friends, she produced a handgun and shot at Warhol 3 times, hitting him once in the chest. She then shot art critic Mario Amaya and also tried to shoot Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes, but her gun jammed as the elevator arrived. Hughes suggested she take it and she did, leaving the Factory. Warhol barely survived; he never fully recovered and for the rest of his life wore a corset to prevent his injuries from worsening.

Later that same day, Solanas turned herself in to a NYPD officer passing by her on the street where she produced the gun and told him about the shooting. She made statements to the arresting officer and at the arraignment hearing that Warhol had "too much control" over her and that Warhol was planning to steal her work. Pleading guilty, she received a three-year sentence in a psychiatric hospital. Warhol refused to testify against her. For the rest of his life, Warhol lived in fear that Solanas would attack him again.

Source: Warhol.org

The More You Know: Andy Warhol's weird white hair was a wig, y'all.

In the mid-1950s Warhol began wearing a hairpiece, which matched his natural dark brown hair color.

In the mid-1960s he supposedly spray-painted his wig silver. Later that decade he adopted the wig that became his permanent look; it was brown in back with shades of blonde on the front and sides.

I want to see some Wacky Packages

Search: wacky packages

Why: I have been listening to a book of essays by Michael Chabon called Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son. I don't think I'm exactly the target demographic, but whatever. In one of them, he describes these things he collected - Wacky Packages - that I've never heard of. I don't have the text in front of me, but I guess they are like real packages made to be gross. A picture is worth 1,000 words.

Answer: Here are some. Wacky Packages have been produced by the Topps Company as sticker trading cards since 1967. You can still buy them here!

Source: WackyPackages.org

The More You Know: Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids were both created by Art Spiegelman. You know:

What is onanism?

Search: onanism

Why: In this story "Man Accused of Masturbating on Flight Faces $5,000 Flight, 90 Days in Jail" on Gothamist (which I went to because Brian's post on The Gate):

Airborne onanism is costly these days! Alleged wanker Kyle Pearce, a 25-year-old Floridian (Go Gators!), was arrested on May 19th after witnesses saw him remove his penis and masturbate "to the point of ejaculation" during a United Airlines flight to Denver. An 18-year-old woman sitting across the aisle from Pearce told police, "I heard a noise and looked over and saw his penis. He was wearing jeans tucked into cowboy boots... He told me his name was Kyle. He ejaculated & got some on the seat." Wow, that Kyle sure knows how to break the ice!

Answer: It's masturbating! Jerking off! J-ing O! And it's Biblical!

• after Onan, son of Judah (Gen. 38:9)
  

But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother.

Yuck!

Here's the rest, y'all. It's one of the passages lunatics quote when talking about the Lord's distaste for contraception. Onan's brother was dead, ftr, and Onan only wanted to bang his widow Tamar, not raise her kids:

8 Then Judah said to Onan, 'Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother.' 9 But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to see his brother's wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. 10 What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.

Apparently, the thing that made God mad was that Onan was doing something fun without any consequences. Unacceptable!

Source: Dictionary.com, Matt1618

The More You Know:

What did Thomas Edison due to an elephant?

Search: edison elephant

Why: When Rachel said someone spoiled The Usual Suspects for her, Jeff said:

I hope it wasn't me.

I recently spoiled Edison's Electrocuting an Elephant for the wife.



1903.

Don't tell him, but he just spoiled it for me, too.

Answer: He electrocuted it to death! Oh god...

BUT it turns out this was a very mean elephant who had already trampled to death 3 handlers (one of whom was trying to feed her a lit cigarette) and was scheduled to be euthanized. So it's OK then.

He did it as a demonstration about the dangers of alternating current, which Westinghouse and Tesla were touting. Edison had established direct current at the standard for electricity distribution and was living large off the patent royalties when these guys showed up.

Edison's aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting "Westinghoused"). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.

So he found this elephant. A news report:

Topsy, the ill-tempered Coney Island elephant, was put to death in Luna Park, Coney Island, yesterday afternoon. The execution was witnessed by 1,500 or more curious persons, who went down to the island to see the end of the huge beast, to whom they had fed peanuts and cakes in summers that are gone. In order to make Topsy's execution quick and sure 460 grams of cyanide of potassium were fed to her in carrots. Then a hawser was put around her neck and one end attached to a donkey engine and the other to a post. Next wooden sandals lined with copper were attached to her feet. These electrodes were connected by copper wire with the Edison electric light plant and a current of 6,600 volts was sent through her body. The big beast died without a trumpet or a groan.

Yuck!

Is it weird that we have pictures of these guys? Or is it weirder that I don't think I had any idea what Thomas Edison looked like until right now?

Source: Wired.com, Railway Bridge

The More You Know: I was thinking the other day about how funny it is that my cat and dog just walk on and over me as though I'm not even there. I wish we had some giant animals to just walk and climb on all the time without being afraid they would bite me. Baby elephants climb like puppies.

What kind of tea is sweet tea usually made of?

Search: sweet tea

Why: We are making sweet tea vodka. I have a lot of tea - mostly green, a little black, some not really "tea" at all. Did you know that black, oolong, green, and white teas are all made from the same Camellia sinensis plant? It's true! The leaves and buds are just grown, harvested, or processed differently.

Answer: Black tea! True facts:

• The oldest known recipe for sweet iced tea - published in an 1879 community cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia by Texan Marion Cabell Tyree - called for green tea.
• Most early sweet tea was made of green tea.
• During WWII, the U.S. was cut off from the major sources of green tea (Asian places), so we only had the tea that came from British-controlled India, which was all black.
• Since WWII, Americans have been drinking mostly black tea as iced tea.
  

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: The custom of drinking tea and having that whole snack/mealtime in the British Empire originated when Catherine of Bragança married Charles II in 1661. She brought the practice of drinking tea in the afternoon with her from Portugal.

Anyway, we ended up just using some Irish Breakfast to make our sweet tea vodka. I mean, Irish breakfast indeed!

What's the origin of the word "jumbo"?

Search: jumbo etymology

Why: A newsanchor teased a story about a "jumbo jet," which I sometimes can't believe is a real name for anything. Jumbo is a name for elephants. Or strip clubs.

Answer: It might have come from the Kikongo word nzamba, which actually meant "elephant"! In 1823, jumbo was a slang term that meant "clumsy, unwieldy fellow," and then the London Zoo had a huge elephant named Jumbo that they sold to P.T. Barnum in Feb. 1882.

He was captured by traders in Abyssinia in 1861, and he died in St. Thomas, ON, in 1885 after stepping in front of a train to save the life of another baby elephant. Well, maybe. The Railway City Brewing Company in St. Thomas brews that classy Dead Elephant Ale up there.

Source: EtymOnline

The More You Know: Barnum, a trustee of Tufts College, donated Jumbo's taxidermied carcass to the school in 1889. He is the school mascot, and I guess they are called the Tufts Jumbos (and by "they" I mean whatever sports teams they have, if they even have any; I've never heard of them). Jumbo's corpse was housed in the campus's Barnum Hall with a bunch of other animal specimens.

He was a big hit with the college's athletes, who adopted him as their mascot, while their coaches invoked his strength and bravery in pre-game pep talks.

For 86 years, Jumbo was a veritable mecca for students, their parents and other campus visitors. Students would pop pennies in his trunk or give a tug on his tail to bring luck for an upcoming exam or athletics competition.

In 1975, an electrical fire wiped out the whole collection, including everything but Jumbo's tail. His ashes are now kept in a Peter Pan Peanut Butter jar on the desk of the Tufts athletics director.

What's the origin of the word "chauvinist"?

Search: chauvinist etymology

Why: I can't remember exactly, but Jessica Fletcher used that word last night, but not in a mean way. That makes me think it has a more complicated definition than the way Jessie Spano always spat it out.

Answer: It comes from a guy named Nicolas Chauvin! He was a soldier in Napoleon's Grande Armée, legendary for his loyalty even after being wounded 17 times, maimed and disfigured. He was eventually ridiculed during the Restoration because people hated Napoleon. He also might not have really even existed.

Anyway, in the 1840s, the word "chauvinism" came to mean "a exaggerated, bellicose patriotism" or "a belief in national superiority and glory" - kind of like jingoism. It wasn't used in conjunction with "male" to mean "thinks boys are better than girls" until the 1960s, when wimmens were all in an uproar about how they were being treated.

Source: EtymOnline, Wikipedia

The More You Know: There are female chauvinist pigs, too, though. They are probably at cardio pole dancing class right now.

Why is the last little part of a joint called a roach?

Search: roach

Why: On "1001 rules for my unborn son":

16. You are what you do, not what you say.

"On matters of style, swim with the current. On matters of principle, stand like a rock."
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's Airplane

And then, of course, I went rooting around for the origin of the name Jefferson Airplane (because - according to my brother - my favorite song when I was 5 was "We Built This City" by Starship), and I saw this:

The origin of the group's name is often disputed. "Jefferson airplane" is slang for a used paper match split to hold a marijuana joint that has been smoked too short to hold without burning the fingers - an improvised roach clip.

Answer: It comes from Mexican slang! Tobacco adulterated with marijuana or a cigarette stub of marijuana is called cucaracha (cockroach).

In Spanish, tabaco de cucaracha refers to adulterated tobacco generally.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: So yes, there are a bunch of different versions of the song "La Cucaracha," but this is the one verse I learned when I took Spanish when I was, like, 10. I remember the first 3 lines, but not the 4th:

La cucaracha, la cucaracha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marihuana pa' fumar

The cockroach, the cockroach
Can't walk anymore
Because it doesn't have, because it's lacking
Marijuana to smoke

It's some sort of satire about the Mexican Revolution, and lyrics and stanzas have changed and developed over time to fit the mood of the country. In general, the cockroach represents President Victoriano Huerta, a notorious drunk who was considered a villain and traitor due to his part in the death of revolutionary President Francisco Madero in 1913.

Who is du Barry?

Search: du barry

Why: I was reading "1001 rules for my unborn son" - which you should also read if you have the rest of the day to kill - and I stumbled on "1001 Rules for my Unborn Daughter," which is not quite as insightful and pithy and has a bit too much Hepburn (both) and Austen for my tastes, but hey, what do you want? Rule 115 says:

115. No matter what, du Barry was a lady.

Answer: Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry (1743-93) was the last maîtresse-en-titre (chief mistress) of King Louis XV! She was the illegitimate daughter of a seamstress who was kind of a slut. A "remarkably attractive blonde woman" -

?

- Jeanne Bécu was "entertaining" in brothels by the age of 20. Her beauty brought her to the attention of Jean-Baptiste du Barry, a high-class pimp who helped establish her career as a courtesan in Parisian high society. He also arranged for her to marry his brother comte Guillaume du Barry and forged her a false birth certificate to make her of nobler descent so she could qualify as an official royal mistress.

Eventually, she became involved in a lot of complicated international politics, and she and Marie Antoinette were bitchy to each other. (In that movie, she was played by Asia Argento, who has very black hair.)

After Louis XV's death - in the wake of the French Revolution - du Barry was imprisoned and beheaded for treason.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: And I guess the actual rule comes from the title of the 1943 musical Du Barry Was a Lady, which starred Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, and Red Skelton.

What does an oubliette look like?

Search: oubliette

Why: I just finished Silence of the Lambs on audiobook. If you are a fan of that awesome movie - which was the first DVD I ever owned, btw, when I was 16 - you should totally read it (or listen to it - it's only 3 hours long!) (and read by Kathy Bates!). It's super creepy, even when you're listening to it in the middle of the day while driving. Jame Gumb's dungeon is described thusly:

The top of the oubliette glowed green, the stones and mortar distinct, the grain of the wooden cover sharp in his vision. Hold the light and lean over. There they were. It was on its side like a giant shrimp. Perhaps asleep. Precious was curled up close against its body, surely sleeping, oh please not dead.

Or here's a whole passage, so you can see how fun this book is:

He had in the past hunted young women through the blacked-out basement using his infrared goggles and light, and it was wonderful to do, watching them feel their way around, seeing them try to scrunch into corners. He liked to hunt them with the pistol. He liked to use the pistol. He could stand in absolute darkness with his goggles on, wait until they took their hands down from their faces, and shoot them right in the head. Or in the legs first, below the knee, so they could still crawl.
That was childish and a waste. They were useless afterward and he had to quit doing it altogether.
In his current project, he had offered showers upstairs to the first three, before he booted them down the staircase with a noose around their necks - no problem. But the fourth had been a disaster. He'd had to use the pistol in the bathroom and it had taken an hour to clean up.

Mr. Gumb wanted very much to offer this one a shampoo because he wanted to watch it comb out the hair. He could learn much for his own grooming about how the hair lay on the head. But this one was tall and probably strong. This one was too rare to risk having to waste the whole thing with gunshot wounds.
No, he'd get his housing tackle from the bathroom, offer her a bath, and when she had put herself securely in the hoisting sling he'd bring her halfway up the shaft of the oubliette and shoot her several times low in the spine. When she lost consciousness he could do the rest with chloroform.

!!!

Answer: Well, it's kind of just the same as it is in the movie. You might describe that one as a "well," but an oubliette is just a "dungeon that opens only at the top." The name comes from the French word oublier, "to forget." Sad.

But it may not have been a real thing that anyone actually used:

The earliest use of oubliette in French dates back to 1374, but its earliest adoption in English is Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in 1819: 'The place was utterly dark—the oubliette, as I suppose, of their accursed convent.' There is no reason to suspect that this particular place of incarceration was more than a flight of romantic elaboration on existing unpleasant places of confinement described during the Gothic Revival period.

Source: Merriam-Webster, EtymOnline, Wikipedia

The More You Know: I hate to tell you this, but I didn't get to hear Kathy Bates say, "Owait, was she a great big fat person?"

She said something similar, but not that. You will have to listen for yourself to find out what and how!

What's the origin of the word "broker"?

Search: broker etymology

Why: Last night, Jessica Fletcher's niece was a real estate broker. The night before, her stockbroker was murdered! As far as I can tell (not very far), a broker is just a go-between or a middle man. In this economy, he's probably even broker than I am. Hey-o!

Answer: It has nothing to do with "break" or the past tense "broke"! Instead, it all started with the pointy tool Frenchmen of yore used to tap their wine kegs. Its history went like this:

• broche - Old French: "pointed tool"
• brochier - "to broach, tap, pierce (a keg)"
• abrokur - Anglo-French: "tapster, retailer of wine"
• "wine dealer"

• brocour - Anglo-Norman "small trader"
• "retailer, middleman, agent"

And in Middle English, of course, the word was contemptuously used to refer to peddlers and pimps. (Read about pimps here [and male mistresses here]).

Source: EtymOnline

The More You Know: "Go for broke" comes from a Hawaiian pidgen phrase for "shoot the works," used by gamblers risking all their money on a single roll of dice. During WWII, the 442th Infantry, a unit composed of mostly second-generation Japanese-Americans, used the phrase in their fight song (1:15):

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team is the most highly decorated unit in American military history for its size and length of service, with 7 major campaigns in Europe, 21 Medals of Honor, 52 Distinguished Silver Crosses, 560 Silver Stars, and 9,486 Purple Hearts. You can watch this 1951 movie about them online here.

What are the four humors and what do they do?

Search: the four bile

Why: Marcel said The Smiths are great because everyone needs a little melancholy in his life (even though I called them "pretty goddamn melodramatic," not melancholy).

That word comes from Greek melas, "black" + khole "bile."

Medieval physiology attributed depression to excess of "black bile," a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four "humors."

(Also, the name Chloe comes from the word for the greenish-yellow color of bile, too.)

Answer: First, they are outlined the Hippocratic Corpus as a way to balance bodily fluids.

They are!

1. Yellow bile! (gall bladder)
   
2. Black bile! (spleen)
   
3. Phlegm! (brain/lungs)
   
4. Blood! (liver)
   

Each is associated with a season and a quality:

• Yellow bile: Summer; hot & dry
• Black bile: Autumn; cold & dry
• Phlegm: Winter; cold & moist
• Blood: Spring; hot & moist
  

They are also associated with elements and hypochondriac diseases:

• Yellow bile: Fire; too much fire made a person choleric
• Black bile: Earth; too much earth made him melancholic
• Phlegm: Water; too much water, phlegmatic
• Blood: Air; too much air, sanguine

Each had a corresponding body type and complexion:

• Yellow bile: Red-haired, thin
• Black bile: Sallow, thin
• Phlegm: Corpulent
• Blood: Red-cheeked, corpulent
  

and a temperament or personality:

• Yellow bile: Ambitious, bad tempered, vengeful violent
• Black bile: Despondent, introspective, irritable, sentimental, sleepless
• Phlegm: Calm, cowardly, unemotional, pallid, sluggish
• Blood: Amorous, generous, happy, hopeful, responsible
  

and also:

Source: About.com/ancienthistory, Wikipedia,

The More You Know: They also have suggested modern equivalents, as well as Myers-Briggs types:

• Yellow bile: Idealist; NF (intuition-feeling)
• Black bile: Guardian; SJ (sensing-judgment)
• Phlegm: Rational; NT (intuition-thinking)
• Blood: Artisan; SP (sensing-perception)

Which one are you? (I am phlegm.)

What's the origin of the term "piping hot"?

Search: piping hot

Why: The heating instructions on the back of Nutrisystem dinner boxes say to "serve piping hot." It sounds terribly unprofessional. I hate it.

Answer: It comes from the whistling sound of steam! In 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer used the term in The Canterbury Tales in the 2nd story, "The Miller's Tale."

He sente hir pyment meeth and spiced ale
And wafres pipyng hoot out of the glede.

[He sent her sweetened wine and well-spiced ale
And waffles piping hot out of the fire]

Lol, pipyng hoot. A fesnyng of frendschip.

And in 1601, in Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History:

"Beanes... fried all whole as they be, and so cast piping hot into sharp vineger."

Source: Phrases.org.uk

The More You Know: Why pay the piper when there's free piping down the street? 6:30:

I want to see a picture of Kurt Cobain and RuPaul

Search: rupaul cobain

Why: Ever since my hairdresser told me that Logotv.com has full episodes online, I have been watching the everliving shit out of "RuPaul's Drag Race." Last night while watching Delta Work and Shangela act the fool on the runway, Chandler queried aloud whether RuPaul had penned the lyrics to her 1992 hit "Supermodel (You Better Work)" herself. (She did.)

But then we saw this:

Singer Kurt Cobain of Nirvana cited the song as one of his favorites of 1993 and the two were photographed together at the MTV Video Music Awards that year.

Answer: Oh lor, there are tons!

Source: Google Images

The More You Know: Speaking of Dave Grohl, he is apparently the most recent "rock star" to get all pissy because he doesn't want his songs to be on "Glee." Remember: the Kings of Leon people did that a few months ago, telling NME:

"We got an offer to appear on an episode of Ugly Betty. They wanted us to play ourselves. We were supposed to come in and help her out with some problem or other."

The band also confirmed they had rejected an offer from Glee, with Jared saying: "We could have sold out so much more. We turn stuff down constantly."

Here's the thing, though. I have it on pretty excellent authority that nobody ever asked Kings of Leon if "Glee" could use their songs in the first place. They were saying that to sound fancy, and since Ryan Murphy is an idiot, it caused a whole heap of drama. Anyway, I'm just saying. It makes me wonder about Dave Grohl, who otherwise hasn't been in the news much lately. Slash, too.

What videos did Sum 41 make before I was in college?

Search: sum 41 discography

Why: Daniel asked what everyone thinks of them. The only time I've ever had even one thought about Sum 41 was once when I looked up at the television and saw that a guy in one of their videos was wearing the exact same shirt that I'm wearing in this gem from 1998.

Answer: There are only a few, so this should be easy!

• "Makes No Difference" (2000)
• "Fat Lip" (2001)
• "Pain for Pleasure" (2001)
• "In Too Deep" (2001)
  

And the winner is "Pain for Pleasure," which is only 1 minute long. The video for that song is sometimes - but not always - tacked onto the end of the video for "Fat Lip," like it is below. You can see the shirt in action right at the 3:30 mark. It's got the Kanji and everything!

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: In case you were wondering, the band was originally called Kaspir, but then they changed the name. Sum 41 = the 41st day of summer, when the band got together.

I like that name, except when it's spelled Casper. Maybe I will name a kid that.

I want to watch a "Freedent's the one" commercial

Search: freedent's the one

Why: When I used to play Sonic the Hedgehog all the time way back in 1991 or 2, Jay always said the music in the Labyrinth Zone was the same as the "Freedent's the One" song.

Answer: Hahah omg it totally is. At :07 and :14:

Source: Youtube

The More You Know: and :54:

What is Brad Davis up to?

Search: midnight express

Why: Chandler made me watch his "favorite movie" Midnight Express last night. In sunglasses, that guy looks exactly like Brad Pitt.

Answer: Nothing! I mean really nothing - he died in 1991.

Davis was married to Susan Bluestein, who later became an Emmy Award-winning casting director. They had one child, Alexandra.

Death

Diagnosed with AIDS in 1985, Davis kept his condition secret until shortly before his death. Although the announcement said he died of AIDS in 1991 in Los Angeles, he actually died of an intentional drug overdose. Near death and in severe pain in a hospital, he opted to return home and end his life on his own terms. With his wife and a family friend present, he committed assisted suicide. Susan Bluestein Davis continues to campaign to combat AIDS.

Davis was referred to as "the first heterosexual actor to die of AIDS," although he reportedly was bisexual, a claim disputed by his wife in her book. When asked if he considered himself bisexual, he replied, "Didn't someone once say everyone's bisexual, deep down?"

What a bummer.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: The real Billy Hayes - the character Davis portrayed - is alive and well, writing and acting in such fan favorites as Shakespeare's Plan 12 from Outer Space and "Babylon 5: The Gathering." In real life, he didn't push the guard Hamid ("the bear") to his death by coat hook.

In fact, the prison guard was killed by a recently released prisoner, whose family Hamid insulted while beating the prisoner, years before Hayes' actual escape.

No word on whether or not he really said "no" to that handsome Swede who tenderly made out with him in the shower (Chandler's favorite scene, btw) - only that:

Billy Hayes never claimed to be raped by his Turkish wardens or that he ever suffered any sexual violence. He engaged in consensual sex, but the film depicts Hayes rejecting the advances of a prisoner, and the warden.

On June 30, 2010, the National Geographic channel aired "Locked Up Abroad: The Real Midnight Express."

What animal is on the side of the U-Haul truck from Illinois?

Search: illinois uhaul

Why: I drove past one this morning, but I didn't have time to read the blurb. It looked like a gummy worm Loch Ness monster.

Answer: The Tully Monster!

“llinois once lay near the equator on the supercontinent of Pangea and was home to unique creatures. How did the strip mining of Illinois’ coal deposits reveal the secret of the Tully Monster?”

And this website has kindly already done my work for me:

The Tully Monster, discovered in 1958 in the Mazon Creek Lagerstaaten and named Tullimonstrum gregarium in 1966, is the state fossil of Illinois. Many have been found, but so far the Tully Monster is unique to Illinois. It dates back about 300 million years. We do not know what phylum it fits into. Its shape recalls the Anomalocaris, but that disappeared 100 million years earlier. Of course, with fossilization of soft-bodied organisms being so rare, perhaps it is a descendant of Anomalocaris!

Source: Science Notes

The More You Know: The anomalocaris ("abnormal shrimp") was a unsettlingly gigantic sea-dwelling predator that I'm really glad isn't around anymore, although I bet it would have been delicious.