Comrades, the following is an additional piece of previously unheard of history.This anecdote has never been published in any form , anywhere.
The only way I became aware of it was because Momo the world renowned black Afghan hound, realized the chariot horses, Dobbin, actually, should send an email to the elephants at the Pinnawela elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka. The horses and Momo were getting some authentic background for the new "Mr.Ed in India" TV series.
In Pinawella, these elephants met with the chariot horses. The flight crew, (who were all Rastas) accompanied the horses and Momo on their quest for an account of history only the elephants would know. The Rastas were delighted to have a chance to converse with elephants as there were not many in Jamaica, and they could bone up on their elephant dialect. (Rastas have always been able to converse with animals, as they both are joined by the essential knowledge.) The Duppy stories recorded in the 1920s show examples of this "human to animal dialect", "animal to human dialect" and some stories showing the interactions. The Rastas also had their own steel band. Every time there were no people in sight, the horses made them roll a few spliffs, as these had been prescribed by their doctor. They wanted to keep their medication private so nobody could mis-represent it in the fan magazines.
Now these elephants, even though they were in Sri Lanka, were expatriate Indian, or had Indian relatives, and so were well versed in the oral tradition which elephants have as a history dating back till the first century.
Naturally , they spoke English and so could communicate with the horses. Momo the world renowned Afghan hound was also there in case there was a translation problem.
He, Momo had been staying up late at night at the foundry, reading about the Indo-European languages, in case there was a problem which could be sorted out by knowing the root or etymology of the word. Anyway, reading helped Momo to keep his mind clear, since hanging around with the horses had the opposite effect. They kept smoking that smelly straw with that weird pipe they had, singing "On the Open Road", and whinnying hysterically, rolling around on their straw, nickering, coughing, all that stuff.
But I have to go back to the beginning, as this is sort of the middle.
In San Francisco, near the foundry, near the floating dry docks on third street. Riding at anchor, in San Francisco Bay, was the Boondoggle aircraft, the "Spirit of Eventual Arrival".
Now they loaded all their essential supplies onto the aircraft. The crew arrived and looked a little unusual for a flight crew. Two pilots, a flight engineer, navigator, radio operator, a chef, steward, stewardess, and stable-boy. Many bales of smelly hay were craned aboard. Also, steel band instruments, victuals for an extended stay, (just in case). Many maps, satellite phones, contraptions for Internet, A huge computer monitor, (for the horses). An acting coach for the horses, an acting coach for Mr.Boondoggle, two makeup artists, a hairdresser. Even a person for polishing up the horses hooves, so they looked spiffy.
Their destination was Mumbai, the Hollywood of India, but there were a couple of stops where they would rest up a bit. The flight crew always looked like they needed resting up. They wore sunglasses all the time, and smelled like the hay the horses liked. In addition, when they removed their pilot caps, their hair flew out and was very abundant and nappy. In fact, it looked like it had not been combed in five years or so. They could communicate with "Bongo-Drum" language, which proved handy when the intercom and flight engineer were out of commission at the same time.
Therefore the aircraft jaunted down to Isla Cerralvo in the Baja of Mexico and landed on the water for fuel. This aircraft has huge wheel spats and these were waterproofed so that the machine is amphibious with no re-configuration required. (considering the crew, that's a plus). This Baja water is slightly calmer and many resorts allow for re-fueling and re-victualing the craft. The flight engineer was seen purchasing drums of alcohol for injecting into the motors during takeoff. (to cool the cylinder heads) I had always imagined it would be "wood alcohol" not "grain alcohol".
Any time customs or other bureaucrats from countries they visited came aboard, the horses would go poo and break wind in the direction of the officials, who became disinclined to search the aircraft further.
We stayed on board during the night, but the horses were lowered into the water for a swim. There is a crane on board the aircraft to facilitate this swimming, and other loading chores. It took as long to get their swim trunks onto them as lowering them into the water. They are stars, certainly. (One of them had brought "Speedos", but thought about it and decided to store potatoes in them instead.)
Another stop in Veracruz, Mexico, and on to Jamaica. Rather a long stay there, un-planned too. But we re- acquired the physician, Baron Samedi,MD. He had gone ahead of our flight on a commercial jet. He had to pick up a few supplies. We loaded an MRI machine into the aircraft. Good thing we had the crane. The Baron said we need it , just in case. He also had a trunk of Voodoo medicine, and his Voodoo-ology books, (a library of a few hundred volumes), and a stenographer in case he wanted to jot down the native black and white magic as practiced in the different countries.
At this time , the flight engineer noticed there might be an anomaly with some of the instruments, mainly the compass. Then on to Guyana, out over the ocean to Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic, Gibraltar, stay overnight, at the mouth of the Mediterranean, Palermo Italy, (stop to see friends , and have wonderful food) (and see Italian babes) Alexandria Egypt, then straight south, doing anything needed to avoid Israeli airspace, to Dubai, then rather a long flight to Sri Lanka, to visit the Pinnawela elephant orphanage. There, the horses planned to converse with the elephants to gain some authentic background history for their "Mr.Ed in India" TV show.
Elephants have a deep and detailed oral history. They are known to have good memories, and pass this history from one generation to the next.
From the time of the First War of Independence in India, also known as the "Indian Rebellion of 1857", by non-Indians, there have been seven generations of male elephants who could breed, and ten generations of females. Since the females were probably not crazy like their male partners, they were asked for the details of life as it was, one hundred fifty years ago.
I Yuri Nahl, historian, cultural anthropologist, fashion consultant, have already published extensive narrative of life during the time of the Raj. These following details were lost in the sands of time and only re-discovered by Momo, the Afghan hound, as he chatted with some of his dog relations in Afghanistan who had been jabbering with the Indian elephants, making jokes about the British.
This particular story was overheard and passed on by an elephant who was waiting for his driver (mahout) to become un-frozen. He had become paralyzed with laughter and could not have moved even if his testicles were lying on a railroad track, and a train was coming. Some house boys were regaling him with the tales of life in the mansion.
Now you may recall reading about the dowager who shattered the toilet bowl with a well placed lump of faeces, when her bowels finally moved. She saved herself from falling onto the floor by grasping the chain to the cistern, although she managed to pull the cistern off the wall in the process, knocking her maid silly and putting a big undeserved bump on her head, as the cistern swung from the wall, being pulled by the matron's hefty avoirdupois, and simultaneously held back by the lead pipe connecting the cistern to the toilet bowl proper. Several bottles of gin fell out of the cistern, but the maid was polite enough to pretend not to notice.
Blasting toilet bowls to pieces became common as the use of opiates caused constipation resulting in impacted stools hard as granite. A new branch of "geomancy" developed, using the shattered fragments of porcelain as the medium to be interpreted.
I should mention that there were mysterious occurrences where toilet bowls were shattered into thousands of pieces, the pubic hair of matrons singed off and no fat bottom was embedded into a toilet seat. This happened when the lady was puffing a bowl of opium, or smoking a cheroot, and broke wind while tapping the ash from her opium pipe or cheroot into the toilet. It was the resulting explosion of the gas which singed off the hair on the matron's private parts. The blast also lifted the matron up into the air a few inches, while simultaneously puffing her formidable ass cheeks apart and therefore avoided getting them jammed into the toilet seat itself. Naturally, nobody discussed such private things, and this would have been lost, if it were not for the heathen household servants discussing it within earshot of the elephants.
The elephant handler told the house boy's tale in which the following facts were the body of the story.
Opiate use was common in India. It was a sort of herbal ''stiff upper lip''. Now this opium use also had the effect of the constipated matriarchs spending extra time sitting on the toilet, and during that time, their fat, sweaty bottoms had a tendency to squirm down into a wedged configuration, relative to the toilet seat, itself.
It came to pass that gigantic assed old ladies were ripping whole toilets off the floor so often that the "bustle" was invented to camouflage this fixture attached to the woman, till a plumber and doctor were summoned. These professions not being represented in abundance in the scorching climate.
It was not considered polite to walk around with a whole toiled bowl jammed onto a lady's ass, especially at diplomatic functions where ambassadors were expected to attend. It made dancing a wee bit chancy also. A toilet bowl could get knocked loose and was rather hard to explain, as it skidded across the dance floor. If there were water in the toilet bowl, it would sometimes make a sloshing noise, and wake up old salty dog type codgers, having induced a nightmare of being back at sea, rounding the Horn.
Even the Sherlock Holmes stories were affected by the torn off toilet bowls phenomena. Since the women still had to perform their bodily functions, they sometimes sat down and inadvertently defecated on the carpet. (through the toilet bowl wedged onto their asses) Large dogs were purchased because they could be blamed for the heaps of excrement. Some people think the evil Alistair Crowley somehow got wind of these "excrement piles" and thought he'd use it as a novel way to get attention. This of course leading to his penchant for "passing stool" on the living room carpet when attending a party at the bishop's mansion. For example.
Conan Doyle wrote a story in which Holmes had to reason the source of manure piles appearing in the house of a duffer who had died after returning from India. This title "The Mystery of the Appearing Stools" was only published in a limited edition, as it was thought the reading public would be unable to bear with the book, and conclude the author had slid into insanity, crazed by cocaine. It was assumed the British public could never accept the possibility that a British lady would do such a thing. It was not even proved that British ladies even passed stool at all.
Now after this incident, the matriarch decided to try turning sideways on the toilet seat because she wanted to preclude getting her blubbery behind jammed into the toilet seat. The danger being of course, that if she were obliged to ascend from the toilet (in a hurry) the seat itself could be torn loose from its moorings and become a type of "Dada" ass jewelry, which in reality would only look good on an 18 year old girl. Or, even worse, the whole seat and toilet bowl assembly could rip loose from the floor, and she'd be forced to walk around with a whole plumbing fixture attached to her ass like a girl scout ready for every contingency, including taking a dump on the run.
It goes without saying, the affliction made horse riding impossible. Because of the climate, when the horses learned of this, subtle expressions of joy could be discerned on their faces. For now, their only duties would be having their semen harvested for face lotion, and not hauling around large weights in the blazing heat.
After shattering a toilet, a number of these ladies were put out of commission, laying on their backs, unable to right themselves, resembling turtles in long dresses until an NCO of engineers thought of using a chain fall with the hook attached to the toilet seat, (after the porcelain part was broken away) and hoisting away. The original intent was to yank the seat from her behind, but it was found that this lifting up would return the woman to her normal attitude toward the horizon, namely vertical. Although with the seat still jammed onto her bottom.
A danger nobody considered is the propensity an anus has to make flatulent discharges an octave higher if there is a toilet seat jammed onto it. (because of the similarity to the tightly pursed lips of a bugle player, as he wants the notes to be higher)
Even the toilet seat lid became part of the Raj legend, as when passing gas, the seat lid would tend to be blown away from the anal organ, (undulating back and forth) and create an effect similar to the "wah-wah" pedal made famous by Jimmy Hendrix a hundred years later. In the time being described however, the sound was identified as a "spirit manifestation" , A "crying in the night" as "sorrow for a sin, un-atoned for". Perhaps the yowling of a hyena yearning for his mate.
Now this "sitting sideways" on the toilet had an influence on something which could have never been anticipated in a thousand years.
This was because of the prevalence of the epidemic of "K.O.D.S." (keeling-over dowager syndrome).
This would happen when a clod of faeces would be fired from a bowel which finally moved. The toilet bowl would shatter, then the matron would keel over backwards. Since by sitting sideways, she had nothing to hang onto. (Her maid was still recovering from concussion.) Then when her back hit the floor, the impact would fire another stool from her anus, and since the toilet seat was jammed onto her, it focused her behind like the taper bore barrel of some artillery piece, and launched the faeces cannon-ball out the window, with enhanced rapidity.
Since the British had a love for parades and formal troop inspections while wearing a wool uniform in the blazing Indian climate, there were often officers with their swords held vertical at attention, the clod of flying dung got split into two parts by the sword of the front officer. Each of the two chunks flying to either side, knocking out the officers behind the first.
This event was duly noted in the diary of the regiment.
This was such an unusual event that it was incorporated in the heraldic coat of arms of this regiment, in that a (highly stylized) fat woman, lying on her back was portrayed firing a clod of (stylized) faeces, which was cut into two parts and shown knocking out two officers, struck down by the excrement shrapnel. All these elements were almost unrecognizable, unless the viewer was familiar with pageantry, and heraldic symbols.
This may seem un-important, but in the 20th century the coat of arms was observed by a weapons developer who liked to view historical aspects of his deadly trade. He was learned in the language of heraldry. Noting the splitting of the single lump of dung into two warheads, he derived the M.I.R.V. concept, or "multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle" for long range ballistic missiles, a new way to kill more of the enemy, and confuse the anti-missile defense of their opponent.
It was inferred the German "Paris Gun" of the WW I era was inspired by a tipping over dowager who had imbibed a few extra fizzy gin and tonics, with Schweppes tonic water, because of the quinine, (to bolster her against the malaria) and shot a stool twice the normal distance. This unusual spectacle was observed by a visiting German officer of artillery, and incorporated into his thesis for a doctorate. (not mentioning the material the projectile was made from). (or the construction of the barrel) . He concluded there was a possibility for a long range weapon, a railway gun, using increased amount of slower burning propellant. This was developed into the "Paris Gun". This same officer's interest in projectiles fired from ladies was probably the inspiration for the WW I era 420 cm mortar "Gamma". Although the literature does not mention excrement. (or ladies).
An idea the British had for eliminating some of the fly population was met with limited success. When troops noticed that a chicken leg thrown into the air would hit the ground as a bone, the fly problem was addressed.
Some local talent was recruited to sculpt a wounded soldier from stools. (packed into a dense pile.) The British kindly gave him a stick of incense to deodorize his studio. The sculpture was then dressed in a bloody uniform. He was loaded onto a cart and pulled out of town by a number of heathens. After reaching a suitable distance, a charge of explosives was detonated using a fuse. The government estimated 5 million flies were dispatched to fly hell. Most of the heathens survived the explosion, but their attire was blown off them so they were arrested for "indecent exposure" and fined an amount equal to what they were to be payed for this pulling the cart out of town.
Now when these "turd-cannon balls" were careening through the air, some observant chaps noticed a "comet tail" following them. Closer observation showed it to be "flies in pursuit of a decent meal." After this, anytime fireworks sky rockets were used by the Raj, a lump of fecal matter was smeared onto it (by a heathen) and it was hoped that this would lead to fly deaths since the comet tail would be in the blast of the rocket propellant and and singe their wings off. The flies would then fall to earth and be eaten by other insects.
These are the main facts which are not included in the curriculum used by students in their quest for knowledge. The horses asked the elephants if they could pass the information on to humans, even though many humans have less respect for animals. So with the permission of the elephants, I hereby publish this information for your enlightenment.
Professor Yuri Nahl.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)