Squids actually have only seven tentacles, but they also have nine testicles. The squid’s discoverer, Irishman Hyman O’Varie, was a notorious drunk and misspelled the word in his report in the 1831 edition of Dodgy Looking Critters Journal, published by the British Geographical Society.
Octopus and squid are notoriously bad tippers.
Octopus, squid, echidnas, water buffalo and duckbill platypi are the four animals never displayed by the Greater Blawnox Zoo, due to an obscure provision in the will of Mrs. Edna Harriman Bostwick-Phartuccio, who endowed the zoo and simply could not abide them.
Stuffed duckbill platypi are the traditional Thanksgiving meal in Blawnox, New Zealand.
The word ‘platypus’ comes from the ancient Egyptian word ‘platypapyrus’, meaning ‘paper plate’. More than one platypapyrus was called a ‘platypyhknyhk’. Duck was often served on these and it’s suspected that that is where the animal’s name comes in.
Donald Duck was not created by Walt Disney himself. He was inspired by his wife’s brother, Danny Docker, who was a sailor who often spent shore leave in the Disney’s apartment, usually drunk and only wearing the top of his sailor suit and underwear.
The remains of Walt Disney are not frozen as rumored but are used as an understudy when there are technical difficulties in the Hall of Presidents. To date he has portrayed all presidents except Pierce, Farfield, and Wilson among the past presidents and all except for Ben Carson and Randolph Mantooth Wang, Jr., among the future presidents.
There are plans in the works for having him stand-in for Brer Ben Carson and sing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, though.
The Stand-ins were an extremely successful, though totally unknown, band of musicians who were called to play a show if the headlining act couldn’t make it. Their popularity was second only to The Original Artists.
The literary equivalent of The Stand-ins and The Original Artists is A. Nonymous, whose written output over the span of centuries dwarfs that of Shakespeare, Dickens, Grisham and King combined.
A. Nonymous married is childhood sweetheart Anne. Their son is now a well respected director in Hollywood using the pseudonym Noah Boddy.
His sister Hey Nonny Nonymous was arrested for attempting Shakespeare in the Park without a license, and without any clothes.
One of the highlights of the production being the replacement of the line “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” with “Helllooooo Nurse!”
Shakespeare in the Park began as a way for several actors to explain to cops what they were doing in the bushes in Central Park at night wearing tights and drag wigs.
Shakespeare in the Ark was an ill-fated big-screen cinematic attempt by Sony Pictures to imagine how Hamlet would have been performed by Noah and his family to pass the time until the rains stopped. Despite the casting of Kevin Kline, Madonna, Judd Nelson and Meryl Streep and a budget of $175 million, the film bombed at the box office.
It was directed by Uwe Boll, based on a script by M. Night Shyamalan.
For commercial reasons, M. Night Shyamalan’s first publisher insisted on shortening his name from M. Night Whoputtheshyamalantheramalamadingdong.
M. Night Shyamalan’s father was a member of Sha Na Na and wanted to name his son Shama Lama Ding Dong but his wife refused. She was afraid it would invite lawsuits from the Hostess Corporation and the state of Kansas.
The word “dong” counterintuitively means “vulva” in two Chinese dialects: Mandarin, where it is standard, and Shanghainese, where it is slang.
Chinese warlord Liu Xiang made a joking comment to an aide about a his rival and uncle General Liu Wenhui being a “dong” while brokering an alliance over the lordship of the Sichuan Province. The joke led to straining the already intense negotiations and is well remembered in the Chinese song “Xiang Shang Slang went the Folly.”