www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TL3oaHKCko

Happy birthday, Elizabeth B!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oloFLyel3Is

Hat tip to MGP.

Rolphing is an example of something which is fucking hilarious — or totally stupid and annoying, if for some reason your sense of humor is broken. It was pioneered by Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda of Blame Society Productions, aka the comic geniuses behind interweb sensation Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager.

In rolphing, one begins speaking with no idea what they’re saying, just making a random sound. It is then up to the rolphist to wrassle this formless speech into the first intelligible word or phrase that comes to mind. The results are unexpected, absurd and paaaatently carrrrnivorous.

A handy instructional:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7io1iAwTNI

and rolphing at work:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYhoFXvXAwc

Apologies to those who will be henceforth unable to stop doing this, and the people that love them. For those of you who need further explanation, here’s a handy video on why it’s funny, appropriately titled Rolphing: Why Is It Funny?

Crazy busy.

More later.

The short is called “The Grind,” and it’s a musical tour de force about how being a porn star is the worst job in the world. Well, almost.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0O3aT6FPqI

Good luck to Kelly and co. as they try to grab the 48 Hour prize (whatever it might be)!

To answer my original inquiry, the first fatal plane crash took place on the evening of September 17th, 1908, in Fort Meyer, Virginia. Five years after the Wright Brothers first successful journey to the sky, Orville Wright was demonstrating their plane for the US Army, and had given two successive military passengers their wings in the course of a week. On the third attempt, Wright took to the air with Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge. Depending on the source (both non-professional; give a librarian a break, will you? it’s my day off!) the plane had circled the airfield either three or four and a half times, when Wright heard unusual sounds coming from the rear of the plane. Shortly thereafter, a propeller fell off and Wright lost control. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull, and never regained consciousness; Wright broke a leg and four ribs, along with other injuries. Those of you so inclined can see pictures of the crash here.

The first mid-air collision of airliners occurred on April 7th, 1922, over Thieuloy-Saint-Antoine, France. A mail plane headed from Croydon Airport in England to Le Bourget airport in Paris collided with a passenger plane making the opposite trip. Seven people were killed.

Strangely, Croydon, a borough of London, was also the site of the first fatal accident involving a modern car. Bridgett Driscoll, a woman in her mid-forties, was killed on August 17th, 1896, when she was struck by a vehicle driven by Arthur James Edsall. Witnesses reported the car was moving at “a reckless pace;” a cabbie who inspected the car said its top speed would be about 4.5 miles per hour.

The first person to die in a motor vehicle accident was Mary Ward, an Irish scientist who was killed when she was thrown from a steam car driven by her cousin in August 1869. The earliest account I could locate of an accident in which the driver was killed took place in Surrey, England on February 2nd, 1898. 42-year-old Henry Lindfield made leave of this life when he lost control of the car while speeding down a hill and straight into a tree. (Want to guess where Lindfield was taken? That’s right, Croydon Hospital.) Assuming that account to be accurate, this plaque, claiming the first such occurrence to be in February 1899, would be incorrect. This morbid memorial commemorates the death of Edwin Sewell, here said to have taken place in July 1899.

This post would not be complete, however, without mention of the very first time that a modern car crashed. The man responsible for the wreck was James William Lambert. Lambert was driving “the first single-cylinder gasoline automobile” when he hit a tree root and ran into a hitching post. Lambert and his passenger, James Swoveland, suffered minor injuries.

Alright, that’s all. Back to work, everybody…

Which is just another way for me to complain about being too busy to blog. Kudos to our fine contributors for taking up so much of the slack.

I’d tell you what I’ve been up to, but I’d have to kill you. Or at least give you a purple nurple. Suffice it to say, it’s all very exciting. Or complicated. Or both. Or neither.

I tried to record a verbal diatribe on my commute to work, via iPhone. The plan was to transcribe the good parts later, for the benefit (or annoyance) of our readership. Unfortunately, my greasy fingers failed to activate the record button, so I spent a half-hour blathering out loud about politics with nothing to show for it. This is essentially what my wife deals with around the clock.

What else? Well, I’m in the art-and-extras production phase for my new record, Farewell Plutonia. It’s gonna be awesome. And I’ve got a few cool speaking engagements lined up, but that’s work again. Amazing how much of it is.

I promise I’ll get back on the horse soon. And I don’t mean heroin. You kids just stay away from that nasty business, you hear?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CVYOCMpJRY