On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

"If she moves her eyes and opens her mouth just a little, the world she's trying to refuse will rush into her instantly..." - Yukio Mishima (The Temple Of The Golden Pavilion, 1956) The first historical example of free speech was in 200,000,000 B.C. which was documented on a Sumerian cuniform tablet unearthed during a Huntsville, Alabama Easter Egg hunt in 1978 by a child who unfortunately damaged the document by trying to eat the relic thinking it was a peanut butter chocolate egg. [Citation needed, some critics claim that the petrified fragment was actually a boiled Easter egg that was left in the field from the previous egg hunt in 1977] The ancient excerpt, which an internet expert (who declines to identify himself) says is part of the first volume of the Lost Gospel of Murgatroyd, relates that the great King Nubilecanazzer McDougal the Glorious One, had just sentenced a peasant to several days of torture for unauthorized viewing of the Queen's royal buns (everyon...

"With an old and tried swordsman like myself, knowledge of the use of his weapon is everything; but with a young Hotspur of your temper, strength and energy go for much." - Arthur Conan Doyle (Micah Clarke) Internet experts state that in the early prehistoric days of mankind, when men were men, and women could have as many boyfriends as they felt like having, climate change created an extinction event that wiped out all of the man eating dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers, who in their hungry heyday made sure that no human being lived longer than, say, ten years. This removed one of the biggest reasons that cavemen and cavewomen didn’t last very long; leaving only disease, starvation, minor injuries, warfare, and marriage. The longer life spans created new social phenomena, such as villages, condos, Kings and Emperors, celebrities famous for being famous, organized warfare, government, poor people, and of course, reality shows.  However, the most pervasive sociological innovat...

"You may well ask me such things, that to some I shall answer truly, and to others I shall not." And she added, "If you were well informed about me, you would wish me to be out of your hands. I have done nothing except by revelation." - Jeanne D'Arc (The Trial of Jeanne D'Arc, trans. by W.P. Barrett) The historical origins of music aren't clear. However, the internet, which is never at a loss for words, provides a wealth of competing theories, which as a matter of fairness, will be listed without comment, though I'll omit the purported dates so we won't have to remember anything. The various wellsprings of song include: Lyre accompaniment to Greek poetry recitals, accompaniment to seasonal and fertility rites, celebrating a successful harvest, bird songs that inspired the Flintstones and Barney Rubble to explore their inner fem, tribal drummers playing long boring solos so people started adding vocals, aliens giving ancient Egyptians another nud...