Surprisingly, the city of Riga, Latvia’s capital, is also noted in the Lonely Planet guidebook (1999 edition) for its dismal Latvian sheepherding park scene. Riga resident Inga Berzins was quoted in the guidebook as responding “Kadas, kazas?” when asked her opinion about Riga’s lack of sheepherding parks.
Blanoxians, infuriated at the theft of Archie’s grave monument, awaited a moonless night and, bent on revenge, sneaked into Boston dressed as Indians. After wandering in circles for several hours looking for Boston Harbor, they finally settled on the Boston Town Puddle, and threw in several casks of orange Kool-Aid which they had brought along for the purpose.
The orange Kool-Aid was rescued from the Boston town puddle by a group of hippies, who drank it without adding sugar and not knowing it had been contaminated by a fish with very strange mind-blowing properties, and then decided to see who could survive climbing onto the stage of an AC/DC concert and joining in on a guitar. This tale is told in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."
The Boston Town Puddle is three inches deep, twenty inches long and nine inches wide. While draining and patching it has been proposed several times over the years, it has been maintained as a city historic site since it has long been thought that Paul Revere’s horse splashed through it on the way out of town before the historic April 1775 ride.
“Town Puddle” was going to be the title of Boston’s next album, but they settled on, “Crap Music,” instead.
Boston’s three little-known, unreleased albums are Better Than Crap Music, Much Better Than Crap Music, Actually Pretty Good Music, If We Do Say So Ourselves and Blawnox, O Blawnox.
Blawnox, O Blawnox is actually a Christmas record, notable (in part) for being nothing but 16 tracks of various versions of The Twelve Days of Christmas.
All but one of the sixteen tracks of the various versions of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” on Boston’s Blawnox, O Blawnox were performed on unaccompanied bagpipes, but at different tempos and recorded in different places throughout the Bay State, including in the chamber of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. The other track is on kazoo.
Boston’s recording of The Twelve Days of Christmas, version VII was the one recorded inside the Massachusetts House of Repesentatives chamber. Lead singer Brad Delp was running for a seat in the House at the time, and his campaign advisers thought that the recording session would provide him with some good publicity. However, the stunt backfired when one of the band’s set of bagpipes exploded due to a manufacturer’s defect, covering most of the Legislators in foul-smelling saliva. The smell lingered inside the chamber until the 86th Annual Massachusetts House of Representatives Chowder Cook-Off in 1997.
Since the fateful day the bagpipes exploded, the Downtown Boston Sheep-Breeders’ Association Inc. has been hard at work (in more ways than one) on a sheep whose hide won’t explode under the pressure of the standard B-flat drone.
It’s unfortunate that the illustrious former members of the Association neglected to record (perhaps due to their being self-evident) two pieces of information that are vital to the project: 1. The sheep is not supposed to be alive when you build your bagpipes. 2. Sheep can do it with each other; human intervention is not strictly necessary.
Furthermore, the sheep (named Derek) is getting tired and disillusioned.
Derek the Sheep was named the Official Domesticated Woolly Ungulate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on June 3, 1977. The vote in the Senate was unanimous; the vote in the House of Representatives was 99-1. The sole dissenting vote was cast by Rep. Clancy Seamus O’Reilly O’Herlihy O’Kennedy “Dutch” Muldoon, because, he said, “Mom always hated sheep.”
Derek the sheep, depressed and alone, caught a freighter to New Zealand to start life over. Two years later, he was selected as Miss New Zealand and nearly won the Miss Universe title, losing only to Miss United Arab Emirates, who closely resembled a camel. Derek’s only comment was “Bah, it’s all rigged.”
New Zealand is governed by a council comprised of the Prime Minister, a cocktail waitress chosen by lot from among the membership of the New Zealand Cocktail Waitress Association, the most-recently-retired Maori boxer with the best career record and a penguin designated by the Prince of Wales.
New Zealand’s council penguin is named Fancy. The Prince of Wales was doing his undergraduate studies at Blawnox, PA’s second highest-ranked university, the Blawnox College of Penguine Studies. The Prince of Wales became acquainted with Fancy during one of his penguin research courses. The Prince saw Fancy locked up in a cage in the research lab and looking sullen. The Prince of Wales immediately sold Cynghanedd Castle outside Cardiff and used the procedes to purchase Fancy. He had Fancy shipped to his winter chateau in New Zealand where he lived a life of luxury and comfort until the day of his appointment to the New Zealand Council.
New Zealand has been repeatedly sued for slander and defamation by the group ZZ Top, whose lawsuit reads in part: “Furthermore, New Zealand and its people must agree to stop calling us Zed Zed Top. We don’t know what that means, as it’s apparently some sort of Hobbit-speak or some such shitpassthedoobieplease.”
New Zealand was named by Emmett Carter, famed American cartographer (and later horseographer as well, but Carter was always eager to point out that the cart preceded the horse - “My name’s not Horser, obviously”). In 1415, the people of what was then called (for the period of two years) Brand-New Zealand, attempted to sue Carter for breach of consonantal harmoniousness, claiming that “New Zedland” should prevail, but the American pronunciation of the country’s name was forever entrenched in the minds of people around the world when Brand-New Zealand’s brand-new luge team narrowly lost the world championship to Wales. Well, not exactly when that happened, but very soon after, when Emmett Carter (not that Emmett Carter, the other Emmett Carter who was captain of the Brand-New Zealand luge team) triumphantly said in a TV interview “We in Brand-New Zealand are henceforth a nation of lugers!”. Unfortunately, his slight and very rare speech impediment made it sound as if his intention was quite different.
After Brand-New Zealand narrowly lost the luge world championship to Wales under their captain Emmett Carter, Brand-New Zealand’s Prime Minister Cecil Humphrey Reginald Blitherington was quoted in the Wellington Times as saying “Harumph, blurg humph”. Brand-New Zealanders would never luge again, much to Emmett Carter’s chagrin.
In recent news, the Netherlands province of Zeeland joined a coalition of countries, provinces and cities including Mexico, York, Jersey, Hampshire, and Orleans that are fighting attempts to force them to officially add the prefix “Old” to their names.
The two halves of the Bible were originally called GOD & GOD–The Son, The Sequel. It was only on the re-release that the titles were change to The Old Testament And The New Testament.
Judy Blume’s famous novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was originally going to be about the title character praying to her favorite canine. A slight mix up at the editor’s desk resulted in the title change and the rest, as they say, is history.