Thursday, December 20, 2007

inner dork: it's literature, my dear.

Yay! It's inner dork Thursday. Or, how to make book-learning fun.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first manuscript to be sent to the publisher already type-written.

The typewriter was invented in 1876.

The first names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were Henry and Edward.

Dr. Frankenstein's first name was Victor.

Mick Jagger turned down an advance of 3.5 million pounds for his memoirs, because he couldn't remember enough significant information about his own life.
(Does that make it a good life or a bad life??)

In 1900, Americans voted their favorite book, after the Bible, was the Sears Roebuck Catalogue.

There are twenty different kisses described in the Kama Sutra.

J.R.R. Tolkien's name stand for John Ronald Reuel.

In the Batman Stories, Riddler's real name was Edward Nigma or E. Nigma.

According to Ernest Hemingway there are four achievements to become a real man: plant a tree, fight a bull, write a book, and have a son.
(Hmmm, so apparently, he was a real man.)
(A son, not a daughter. There will be no substitutions.)

One edition of a current Sunday New York Times has more information in it than a typical adult was exposed to in an entire lifetime a hundred years ago.

Gosh, I sure have missed Inner Dorkings.

6 comments:

Bob said...

Sunday NY Times or PG Inner Dork?
Sunday NY Times or PG Inner Dork?
Sunday NY Times or PG Inner Dork?

PG Inner Dork!!! More entertaining and more environmentally friendly!!!

limpy99 said...

Well, according to Hemingway I'm a man twice over thanks to that apple tree I planted, but then, I'd think tiwce about taking advice on manhood from a guy who swallowed a shotgun.

Appletini said...

It's probably called a drugged up life. :)

Anonymous said...

I was trying to come up with something interesting for "Jay's Soon-To-Be-Famous Outer Dork" when I came upon a little tidbit of dorkness in my email. I occasionally use my Yahoo email as a notepad when I find neat stuff on the Intertubes. I write or cut and paste the info into an email and save it as a draft. I've been doing this for years. I've been cleaning out my email box for the last day or so. I have thousands of emails I need to delete. What I'm about to post is, what I believe to be, my very first Outer Dork. It's dated March 16, 2006.

"Many people today believe that harems are an invention of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad had 12 wives in his lifetime, though he was married to his first wife, Khadijah, for 25 years and didn't marry the other 11 women until after her death in 620. Often these marriages were to build alliances. Some were widows marrying in order to be protected and provided for. In the Quran, Muhammad says that, ideally, a man should have no more than four wives and that he should treat all 4 of them equally.

The sterotype of the harem as we know it came from the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. The reasons for harem existence can be seen from Ottoman cultural history. Ottoman tradition relied on slave concubines along with legal marriage for reproduction. Slave concubines was the taking of slave women for sexual reproduction. It served to emphasize the patriarchal nature of power (power being "hereditary" through sons only). Slave concubines, unlike wives, had no recognized lineage. Wives were feared to have vested interests in their own family's affairs, which would interfere with their loyalty to their husband, hence, concubines were preferred, if one could afford them. This led to the evolution of slave concubines as an equal form of reproduction that did not carry the risks of marriage, mainly that of the potential betrayal of a wife."

An "Outer Dork" redux!

Neat, huh?

Party Girl said...

Bob: I like that. I'm environmentally friendly, I think that makes me a keeper. Oh, and of course, endlessly entertaining!

Limpy: Excellent point. I've never been a fan of his. Now, have you fought or run with any bulls? Family not included.

Apple: No, I think that's Keith Richards!

Jay: Fascinating as always. I had no idea AND it makes me want to learn more. I feel a research project coming up.

No Way Dave said...

Isn't the Sear's Catalogue still on the top seller list ;-)