Rik Mayall (off topic entry of the passing of Rik Mayall)

With the passing of Rik Mayall, I have to say that my life has been altered in some way. I didn't know him personally but feel a connection with him because he came into my bedroom so frequently. The "Young Ones" always made me laugh to the point of having to have a respirator to gain air into my lung from laughing disgustingly hard that I would cough up phloem. He shaped my view on life not only as a human but also my humor. The stuffs that people do not find to terribly funny I find ridiculously funny. 

From the "Young Ones" he went on to write and preform in other BBC series suck as the "Blackhadder" and joining forces with his long time writing partner. He made his way into movies, staring as the imaginary friend in "Drop Dead Fred", which still is one of my all time favorite movies. His presence on screen grabbed your attention and never wanted to look away because his train wreck punkish antics that encouraged you to make faces in the mirror while getting ready for school. Rik Mayall had a serious bike accident that left him with a head injury in 1998. Since then he has been braising everyday with life in life. All I know is, the world has lost a very sincere and articulate comic who believed in laughter until you cried. He added catch phrases to a whole disenfranchised youth, The GenX majority and those generations that followed. 

I know I am going to miss Rick the Poet political activist, and Fred, the one that made me do it. I suppose my evening will be made of The Young Ones if anything just to laugh! 

91: Knives, spoons, and forks

Ever wondered where cutlery came from? Or how it came to be? 

Once made of rock, and wood, now can be made of one plastic combination; Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you one of the most under appreciated inventions of all times: the knife, the spoon, and the fork (and I believe that this is the only entry on the list that contains 3 items that are related).

Knives are the oldest utensils in the cutlery arsenal. The knife is known to have been around since cavemen and women. The Knife was used for killing and made an easy transition for cutting meat and tough veggies sitting around the cave, the hearth, or the royal dinning table. It was fashioned out of stone and tied to sticks. Then during the iron age they were made of metal, much into the shape that it is today; a long pointed piece of metal with a rise in the edge. The Knife to royalty was being used much like the fork. The point of the knife was used to left meat to the mouth. The abundance of knives on the royal table were not out of place. During King Louis the XIV the knife was removed by Cardinal Richelieu. He told King Louis that he felt nervous with all the knives laying around. And then the fork was introduced even further through royalty of Western Europe.

The Fork

The fork has been around for at least a 1000 years. the Egyptians are the first to have any record of using the utensil. Actually, it was the Egyptians that appreciated flatware! Buried in the tombs of the wealthy, scientist have found flatware made of gold and decorated. However, the fork did not gain any popularity until the courts of royalty of Europe began to using them. Catherine da Medici was recorded to use the fork at her wedding reception which fell flat on her guest. It was not until Cardinal Richelieu that the fork finally took its place on the dinning room table. The fork cured a few problems: it replaced the knife (which makes paranoid monarchies even more suspicious of their guest), it also picked up other foods. the fork has not lost its shape as well. It has long prongs sharp enough to be stuck in meat. The prongs are not long making it ideal not to be used in assassination attempts at the dinning room table or stab an unruly family member. It was the spoon, however, added versatility in the kitchen as well at the dinning room table.

The Spoon

The spoon is the best out of the three because it really did solve a simple problem: how to eat hot liquid foods. It did not take long before the first man and woman to figure out that humans cannot hold hot liquids with their hands to eat it. The first spoons were contrived from shells. they had the perfect shape for dipping. They were tied to a stick and then used as well. The shell was perfect but what if there were no shells? Man and woman figured out how to fashion spoons from rock and wood. The rock and wood would be carved into bowls  and much like shells, then tied to sticks. When the Bronze Age came around, just like knives, spoons were being pressed from metals. The spoon has not lost its shape and it is much like the same as the shell on a stick. 

Why is flatware important? It helped civilize the world. Like any style or fashion it begins at the top and then filters down to the masses. Just like any other other invention,it took years and years for the knife, fork, and spoon to make it to most tables. Because most people were poor, they would eat with their hands until flatware was inexpensive to afford. During the renaissance an increase of flatware was being bought and sold. 

92: Beer

This was a complete accident. Some say it was the mother of inventions or it was Devine intervention! Others have made the argument that it has saved the world. Number 92, Beer, makes my list.

Back in the cave man days, when men and women were out gathering grains and placing them in an earthen vessel, they would leave these containers outside. After a rain and gathered in these vessels, it made a mash or a mead, which they eventually eat or drank. I am sure they were more concerned about not having much grain left but they had a drink. When man finally had more time on his or her hands, they began to experiment with the combinations and timing of the ingredients to make what will become known as the modern beer. Barley, wheat, hops, and yeast were the final grains used yielding a drink that the whole family enjoyed. In the beginning, the beer was not as alcoholic as the beers of today. 

Beer has been given the credit of saving the world from utter collapse, not as drink to celebrate the signing of a treaty. It was used as an economic source, bringing people together for trade, and as solvent to disputes as well. Beer spread from the fertile crescent to was is now eastern and Western Europe. It even spread throughout Asia. Even the colonists brought it with them to the Americas. Only later to be replaced by whiskey and then being banned constitutionally, which we all know how that worked out. 

Beer became a favorite for monks in Western Europe. One reason being that they had the means to grow the ingredients and had the temperatures in cellars to keep it from season to season. They also saw the profit for their efforts as well. In most European countries, breweries, which began in some cloisters, are still in business today (not all cloisters made beer and not all cloisters that did, are still brewing today). There is nothing in this world than to drink a beer which is still brewed in the same manor since 1100 BCE, 1200 BCE, or 1300 BCE. Beer was a favorite for our ancestors because it was cleaner than water and unknown to them, it killed germs. It was a healthy drink of the day. Nearly every household had beer. Even little Johnny drank beer. Beer also has nutritional value as well and was even used to during the Bubonic Plague as a cure, though not successfully. 

Beer has been hated and loved for many centuries and I am sure it will be for centuries to come. I do find it a bit strange and awesome at the same time that beer was brewed by a religious sect that later would condemn the act as sinful. But what's new, huh? 

Today beer is just beer and comes in many forms, tastes, and catchy names. Beer saved the world and yes, in this posters mind, it really did come from the Devine to save the world! 

Beer Links:

How to make beer -http://youtu.be/oobHoJYRezw

 

How Beer saved the world - http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/how-beer-saved-the-world/