What did people use before toilet paper was invented?

*Newsprint, paper catalog pages in early US
*Hayballs, Scraper/gompf stick kept in container by the privy in the Middle Ages
*Discarded sheep’s wool in the Viking Age, England
*Frayed end of an old anchor cable was used by sailing crews from Spain and Portugal
*Medieval Europe- Straw, hay, grass, gompf stick
*Corn cobs, Sears Roebuck catalog, mussel shell, newspaper, leaves, sand- United States
*Water and your left hand, India
*Pages from a book, British Lords
*Coconut shells in early Hawaii
*Lace was used by French Royalty
*Public Restrooms in Ancient Rome- A sponge soaked in salt water, on the end of a stick
*The Wealthy in Ancient Rome-Wool and Rosewater
*French Royalty-lace, hemp
*Hemp & wool were used by the elite citizens of the world
*Defecating in the river was very common internationally
*Bidet, France
*Snow and Tundra Moss were used by early Eskimos

When and where was toilet paper first invented?

China…AD 1391 – The Bureau of Imperial Supplies began producing 720,000 sheets of toilet paper a year, each sheet measuring two feet by three feet. For use by the Emperors.

I’m really beginning to dislike ICQ.

Is anyone else having communications problems?

It’s a sad day when AOL IM is more reliable than good ol’ ICQ, even if they are both owned by time warner… that, and my Y!IM is being ornery too.

Will Zeppelins get to make a comeback?
=======================================
Hydrogen is abundant and it burns clean.
So why hasn’t it replaced gas as a fuel for our cars? Well, it does have a side-effect.
It has a tendency to explode. Now a New Jersey company thinks they have a solution. Soap.

Legality Bites
=======================================
Winona Ryder gets picked up for shoplifting in Beverly Hills.

My coworker was unwrapping a piece of trident gum, and for the briefest flash of a moment, I thought it was a tiny-tiny menstrual pad.

what does that mean?

Haven’t had a nice Newtie-pic in a while,so I figured a lovely shot of him lounging on my laundry pile was worth posting… 🙂

In the background, you can see my planet of the apes boxed set that he knocked aside to get onto the chair, and the laundry hamper I was sorting on, when little orange boy decided he wanted to curl up on my hawaiian shirts, plaids, and tie dyes.

[update 11:41 – he’s going to work with me today…. too sweet not to.]

Main Entry: pum ·per ·nick ·el
Pronunciation: ‘p&m-p&r-“ni-k&l
Function: noun
Etymology: German, from pumpern to break wind + Nickel goblin; from its
reputed
indigestibility
Date: 1756
: a dark coarse sourdough bread made of unbolted rye flour

The true origin of “pumpernickel” – “Pumpern”
was a
New High German word similar in meaning to the English “fart” (so chosen because, like the
word “achoo,” it imitated the sound it described), and “Nickel” was a form of the name Nicholas,
an appellation commonly associated with a goblin or devil (e.g., “Old Nick” is a familiar name for
Satan). Hence, pumpernickel is the “devil’s fart,” allegedly a reference to the bread’s indigestible
qualities and hence the effect it produced on those who consumed it. (www.snopes2.com/language/stories/pumper.htm) 

I dunno… I like it just fine. 🙂

Happy Birthday !

I hope you have a fantastic day!

Ah, back to normal.

Well, what passes for normal in this neck of the woods.

Tomorrow. Such a blessing tomorrow will be. Friday, Payday, the opening to the weekend, and best of all, good gab opportunites.

Client gave us incredibly dumb things to do with their program, resulting in 3 hours of useless programming time. Someday we’ll get a nice go-between for programmer / client relations, but as it stands, it’ll be a while before that kicks in. Upside of Dale’s vacation, a lot of process streamlining has been implemented by lazy me, saving him probably about an hour a day in processing. Dale’s a great guy, but his lack of complaint is a double edged sword… he’s been doing some IT stuff for about a year that was comfortably automated in about 15 minutes of thought. Something like this happens every time he comes back.

calling all the offices, and redoing the reports for all the goofed up data ate a big part of my day today…I’m so glad our Island Boy will be returning on Monday.

silly joke heard today –

Two penguins are sitting in the bathtub.
One penguin turns to the other and says, “Hey, hand me that soap.”
The other penguin says, “Holy Crap! A talking penguin!”

Oh! also on my walk today, I saw about 5 people walking the beach with metal detectors…the first I’ve seen in a a very long time. Are they getting trendy again? I know tourist season is back, maybe the odds of finding valuables in the sand has just gone up. I wonder what the more exotic sort of things they’ve found… a gold tooth? a brass monkey?

Flesh eating robots…. Really.

remunerate (rih-MYOO-nuh-rate), transitive verb:
1. To pay an equivalent to for any service, loss, or expense; to recompense.
2. To compensate for; to make payment for.

Remunerate comes from Latin remunerari, “to reward,” from re-, “back, again” + munerari, “to give, to present,” from munus, “a gift.”

capitonym (KAP-i-toh-NIM) noun

A word that changes pronunciation and meaning when it is capitalized.

As in the following poems:

Job’s Job
In August, an august patriarch
Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.
Long-suffering Job secured a job
To polish piles of polish brass.

Herb’s Herbs
An herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.

remunerate (rih-MYOO-nuh-rate), transitive verb:
1. To pay an equivalent to for any service, loss, or expense; to recompense.
2. To compensate for; to make payment for.

Remunerate comes from Latin remunerari, “to reward,” from re-, “back, again” + munerari, “to give, to present,” from munus, “a gift.”

capitonym (KAP-i-toh-NIM) noun

A word that changes pronunciation and meaning when it is capitalized.

As in the following poems:

Job’s Job
In August, an august patriarch
Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.
Long-suffering Job secured a job
To polish piles of polish brass.

Herb’s Herbs
An herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.