KC November 29 2014Suresh Ramasubramanian

All questions are infinite pounce +10 / -5 unless otherwise indicated

Answers that I want are in bold, underlined text.

Hints, if any, are italicized

music

1. Displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art - who doing what does this depict?

Filmmaker Jim Mendiola and media artist Ruben Ortiz-Torres created a tableau depicting an infamous February 19, 1982 incident in Mendiola's native San Antonio.The tableau consisted of a life size wax statue with a long reddish blond wig of human hair. Built into the statue were copper tubing, an electric pump and a motion sensor that would start the pump whenever someone passed the statue.

Ozzy Osbourne pissing on the Alamo... and pissing off Beliebers, like below

"We wouldn’t have stopped at eggs in my day. I heard he pissed in a bucket in some restaurant. So what? I pissed on the Alamo, which is a national shrine. In a woman’s dress. At 7am, with a bottle of Courvoisier in one hand, and my dick in the other."

2. X died on Sep 24, 1991. Another man Z died on Sep 28, 1991. FITB in this cartoon about X meeting him in heaven, from the Chronicle Herald of Halifax, Nova Scotia. X puns on Z’s attire, and on the jive word for a ‘cool’ African-American, to come up with Y, which is one of his most famous creations. Give me X, Y and Z.

X - Dr Seuss, Z - Miles DavisY – The Cat in the Hat

3. Identify this instrument – named for its creator and designed to be played while being carried while moving

SousaphoneJohn Philip Sousa’s military marches

4. A 2002 album by the group Drive By Truckers – ‘Southern Rock Opera’– has a song ‘A and B’. A died in a plane crash in October 1977, so hisband never did get around to recording [Song 3] below.

And out in California,

a rock star from Canada writes a couple of great songs

about the bad shit that went down.

[Song 1 by B] and [Song 2 by A’s band] certainly told some truth

But there were a lot of good folks down here

and B wasn’t around.

Now A and B became good friends

Their feud was just in song

[A’s band] was a bunch of B fans

and B he loved that song.

So he wrote [Song 3] for [A’s band] to record

But A ended up singing [Song 2 by A’s band] to the Lord.

A – Ronnie van Zant, B – Neil Young [shown wearing each others’ tshirts]Sweet Home Alabama in response to Southern ManNeil Young sent Skynyrd ‘Powderfinger’ just before van Zant’s death

5. For centuries, French villagers in the Loire valley and the Pyrenees have used a form of housing that is cheap and easily available in the region.Today, one of the last surviving examples of this is to be found in the village of Rochemenier, which is entirely composed of such dwellings.

While the village is mostly a tourist attraction today, such dwellings were in use till well into the 1930s, and after that, they were extremely popular among the local people during World War II for a rather obvious reason. They’re coming back into use as regular housing these days, due to their being easily and cheaply available even in the middle of a recession

Rochemenier advertises itself as the _____ village – named for one who lives in such houses as are found here. What is Rochemenier known as?

If you need a hint, this British band on the next slide (one of whose hits was parodied by Bill Nighy in ‘Love Actually’) might give you one.

the hint

Cave Dwellings (which are said to have inspired Tolkien’s Hobbit holes)Rochemenier is known as the “Troglodyte Village”

6. Give me the voice. Also you’ll hear two distinct parts to this song – X and Y. Identify.

Pete Seeger, from his 1966 album Dangerous Songs!?1. Full fathom five – Ariel’s song in The Tempest

2. Perchance to win – Hamlet’s Soliloquy

7. ‘The Lion’s Mouth Opens’ is an award winning 15 minute documentary that premiered at the 2014 Sundance Festival

The film, about a young woman suffering from Huntingdon’s Chorea, takes its title from a poem “Last thoughts on Y” that is based on X’s memories of, as a young 19 year old, visiting Y, who was dying from Huntingdon’s Chorea, and bedridden at the Brooklyn State Hospital.

X recited this poem only once, when he returned to the stage at the end of a performance on April 12, 1963 at the New York Town Hall. As X said in his introduction to the poem, “There’s this book coming out, and they asked me to write something about Y, sort of like what does Y mean to you in 25 words, and I couldn’t do it, I wrote out five pages”.

Some extracts from the poem on the next slide. Name X and Y.

Last thoughts on Yby X

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numbWhen you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumbWhen yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer paceIn a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race[…]

And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teethAnd his jaws start closin with you underneath

[…]

You can either go to the church of your choiceOr you can go to Brooklyn State HospitalYou'll find God in the church of your choiceYou'll find Y in Brooklyn State Hospital

X – Bob DylanY – Woody Guthrie

8. Identify the voice, reciting / singing this song

JRR Tolkien[poem recited by Sam Gamgee in LoTR]

9. On 12 May 1971, Mick and Bianca Jagger got married

That night, X tried to give the happy couple some belated best wishes. So X broke into their bedroom through a window and was nearly shot by Mick as a burglar.

If this had happened, X could not have gone on to play a cameo role as a nun in Y’s film “200 Motels”. Clip below. Who was X? Identify Y.

X - Keith Moon, of The WhoY – Frank Zappa

10. Identify the guitarist, (who you’d know from his creating a famous 1973 movie theme). Also what is this traditional dance tune, commonly identified with a particular profession, called?

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (The Exorcist)The Sailor’s Hornpipe

11. Identify the burning building from this 1971 photograph

Montreux Casino‘they burned down the gambling house ..’

12. Name the guitarist and his daughterTo whom was the song’s style a dedication to?Describing an event in late 1973, this guitarist said –

“My instrumentals try to create some of the basic feelings of human interaction, like anger and joy and love. With ‘X’, I knew what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t quite find it. Then my little daughter, ‘X’, crawled into the room, and I just started playing to her, trying to capture the feeling of her crawling and smiling. That’s why I named it after her”.

“I came up with that melody using just two fingers as a sort of tribute to Y. That the song turned out so well is very satisfying”.

Dickey Betts, JessicaThe playing style was a dedication to Django Reinhardt, who had only

two fingers on his left hand due to a fire accident.

movies / tv / radio ..

13. In 1973, MIT Sloan graduate X was driving an MG coupe when he almost got hit by a truck

Delivering the 1999 commencement lecture at MIT, he told the students that he lived by the maxim “non impediti ratione cogitatonis” – “unencumbered by the thought process”.If he had thought it out, he said, he’d have bought a bigger car and continued to drive to his job. Instead, he quit and “became a bum, spent two years in Harvard Square drinking coffee”. In 1973, he then invented the concept of the DIY ______, opening a store called “Hacker’s Haven” that would rent space and equipment to people who wanted to hack on _____ – to either fix them, or boost their performance, without hiring a professional to do so.In January 1987, Susan Stamberg, who hosted the “Weekend Edition” radio show, invited X and his brother to do a regular segment on her show. By October, X and his brother were given a show of their own, Y. Just name X and give me Y.

Tom Magliozzi, NPR Car Talk

14. Identify this “victim of Saudi censorship” movie

Thelma & Louise

15. Identify the person Benedict Cumberbatch is soon to play, from his skeleton. What nursery rhyme is based on his death?

Richard IIIFor want of a nail, a horse was lost

16. In August 2012, Sarah Elizabeth saw a 1987 movie in which Frank Langella played a cartoon villain X opposite a hero played by Dolph Lundgren

In her own words, “He just seemed so profoundly mopey. I found myself musing ‘what if someone had given X more hugs, more encouragement, more love?’

She created a meme based on this character and posted it on the FB wall of her sister, who was a mental health professional working with sufferers from depression.

The meme went viral, with text like “Today I am grateful for my support group” and “I am free to map out my own destiny” appropriately paired with cartoon scenes featuring Y, who is actually plotting the defeat of a planet protected by X.

What is this meme called (10) / Identify X (for 5 points).

Skeletor is Love

17. The Suka Saptati is a collection of 70 stories, told by a parrot to stop his master’s wife from taking a lover

Several of these stories are from the Hitopadesha, Jatakas and Puranas. Variants of others can be found in, for example, Boccaccio’s Decameron.

One such tale is that of an unfaithful wife whose honesty is tested by making her walk between the legs of a statue of a yaksha. If she lies, the yaksha’slegs will close together and crush her. She escapes by having her lover dress himself as a madman and grab her in public. She then swears to the Yakshathat no man except her husband and “that lunatic” has ever touched her.

The European version of this tale has the wife swearing to the truth before a famous artefact now found in the portico of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin. This artefact can be seen in a scene from a famous 1953 movie.

Name the artefact and the movie. [or ok, just describe the movie scene]

Bocca della Verita [The Mouth of Truth]Roman Holiday – Gregory Peck “gets bitten”

18. This is a famous movie that was never made – but a copy of the sketches used for its storyboard is usually to be found in every famous director’s libraryThe director – who you have to name – went to great lengths to find the right actor for each role, and the right artist or group to provide leitmotivs for each actor.

For one such role – a fat, evil man who could only move himself using gravity jets –he picked a grossly overweight and retired Orson Welles, who was, then (1973), spending all his time overeating in gourmet Parisian restaurants. He got Welles to agree by promising that he would hire Welles’ favorite chef to cater for the film.

He then approached Pink Floyd – who were eating MacDonalds burgers after a gig and initially ignored him. He went off into an epic rant where he said he was giving them a once in a lifetime chance and they were eating burgers. The impressed band immediately signed on the dotted line.

Others he roped in – Salvador Dali, David Carradine, Mick Jagger, HR Giger for set design, Dan O’Bannon for the script .. You name it, pure genius. Sadly, ran out of funding and the project was shelved till Dino de Laurentiis brought the rights and made a flop movie out of a cult classic book. Name the book, and the director.

Alejandro JodorowskyJodorowsky’s Dune

19. When asked if he would star in a particular movie, John Wayne told its director X

“I can’t be in this picture. It is too dirty.

But I will be the first in line to see it”

Identify the movie and its director.

Blazing SaddlesMel Brooks

20. Carroll Baker plays a sexy young woman in this 1956 EliaKazan movie based on the Tennessee Williams play ‘27 Wagons Full of Cotton’. Name the movie based on a clue in the picture.

Baby Dollwhich is how ‘baby doll nighties’ became popular

21. Connect these actors to a single role – image #1[Sgt. Tibs in Mackennas Gold]

Connect – images #2 and #3Mycroft Holmes in the Granada TV Sherlock HolmesDr.Sam Loomis in the Halloween movies [the most memorable]

Ernest Stavro BlofeldTelly Savalas (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), Charles Grey

(Diamonds are Forever) and Donald Pleasance (You Only Live Twice)

22. 1957 film ‘High Flight’ about cadets training for the RAF. Here, a cadet loses control of a radio controlled UFO that he built and it crashes into a tea party at an elderly bishop’s house. All this is watched by the cadets’ flight sergeant. Just identify the actors playing the flight sergeant, and the bishop.

Flt Sgt – Bernard Lee (M)Bishop – Ian Fleming

[the film was co-produced by albert broccoli]

23. The hat shaped mountain in the town of Radiator Springs from the Cars movie is based on a mountain just outside a small New Mexico town of the same name. Name the town, which you might recognize from a famous 1965 movie in which someone is told that his train does not stop at that town, but gets down after pulling the emergency cord

TucumcariLee van Cleef’s opening scene in For A Few Dollars More

24. Movies SVCpic #1 +20 -15

Movies SVC pic #2+15 / -10

Movies SVC pic #3+10 / -7

Movies SVC pic #4+5 / -2.5

Movies SVC pic #5+2.5 / 0

They are all McGuffins

Words With Friends

25. In England, racehorses were often fed two items as part of a high carbohydrate, high protein diet

Once they ate the high protein item (X), they were regularly exercised to work their energy off, as otherwise they would grow restless and hyperactive, or, as English metaphor #1 goes, ____ __ _____.

A horse, after running a race, would be listless and drained of energy. After eating the high carbohydrate item (Y), it would regain its energyand become active once more. As the English metaphor #2 goes, such horses were said to be _______ _____ ____.

The foods X and Y are part of the respective metaphors above, which you have to give me.

Full of BeansFeeling their Oats

26. It is an Arabic religious title for an expert in Islamic studies and jurisprudence, that translates to ‘The Sign of God’

This title gets its name from Passage 51:20-21 in the Holy Quran:

“On the earth are signs for those of assured faith

As also in your own selves: Will ye not then see?”

However, some might wrongly assume that this religious title is an Islamic first name, for example that of Time Magazine’s 1979 man of the year.

Name the title and its most famous (to the western world) holder.

Ayotollah, Khomeini

27. Fishy collective nouns X and Y – identify.

• Some fish, such as Minnows, swim and forage for food independently, but like to do so in close company with other fish of the same type. So they adjust their behavior (such as swimming speed / direction) to remain close to similar fish. Such a loose group of fish is called a X

• Some other fish, such as Herrings, tightly synchronize their swimming so that groups of fish swim at exactly the same speed and in the same direction. Such a tight knit group of fish is called a Y

• In ordinary English, the two terms above are used interchangeably, with any random group of fish being referred to as a X in British English while American English speakers prefer to say Y instead.

A shoal of minnows A school of herrings

28. The Arabic word for something is “Luti” or “Liwat”

This word takes its name from a legendary individual X, who once lived in the city of Y, but had to leave it in a hurry before it was destroyed.

An English word meaning the same thing is derived from the name of the city, Y.

Just give me the English word.

SodomyLut is Arabic for ‘Lot’

29. The Avestan / Ancient Persian words for “around”and “wall” give rise to words in Aramaic, Hebrew andAncient Greek for “a walled garden”The Avestan word denoted a royal palace’s garden. The Hebrew word too was used to describe a beautiful garden. Xenophon brought the word into Ancient Greek in his Anabasis, describing the royal gardens he saw in Persia.

To the common people who did not have access to royal gardens but only knew of them by reputation, the words implied the pleasure derived from staying in a beautiful and well kept garden reserved for the exclusive use of the king and queen. Such a pleasure was, however, unattainable in a common man’s lifetime so that the happiness of being in such a garden remained an aspirational goal.

It is in this sense that the English word derived from Persian -> Ancient Greek has received its modern meaning. What’s the good word? [KCircle people will find it a word very near and dear to their hearts, if that helps any]

Pairi (Around) Daeza (Wall)Paradise

30. Elijah _____ was a son of former black slaves, settled in Ypsilanti, MichiganHe left home for Scotland in 1859, when he was just 15 years old. Returning to Michigan, he could only find unskilled work as a fireman and oiler on the Michigan Central Railroad.

In his spare time, he set up a machine shop at home and invented a series of lubricating mechanisms for trains, getting fifty patents in this area till his death in 1929. The first patent, granted in 1872, was for an “oil drip cup” that would ensure a steady flow of lube to a locomotive or steamer engine.

Lacking the money to mass produce his lubricating systems, he licensed his technology to several people, who began to produce copies. However, these were supposedly of inferior quality than the ones he would make in his machine shop, so that knowledgeable locomotive drivers looking to fit a spare part would generally ask for one that was actually made by Elijah, or, as they would put it, they would ask for a ____ ____. Fill in the blanks.

[this is the most plausible of several theories about this phrase]

Elijah McCoy – so “The Real McCoy”

31. Jewish boys attaining puberty undergo a ‘Bar Mitzvah’ ceremony. What is the equivalent ceremony for Jewish girls?

Bat Mitzvah[not to be confused with this one]

32. In Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (and later in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida)

X is the uncle of Cressida, and he facilitates the affair between her and Troilus, acting as a go-between.

While X is merely gay and witty in the Chaucerian version, Shakespeare makes X a lecherous degenerate, who aids in their affair in much the same spirit as a pimp procures a prostitute to gratify his customer’s most debased tastes.

As a result, X’s name has become an eponym for the act of indulging someone’s baser (or is it basic) instincts.

Identify X (or just give me the word).

Pandarus – Hence Pandering

33. Stage magic (and godman’s magic) involves the dexterous use of sleight of hand to perform a variety of tricks

For sleight of hand, your hands have to move in a light and quick manner that makes your movements invisible to your audience when you pull a rabbit out of a hat, or produce vibhuti from your sleeves.

The French term for this, from the words for “lightness of the hands”, is a commonly used English word that has come to mean “magic”. What’s the good word?

Legerdemain

34. The Arabic word for something is شيء (shay)

When a book containing this word was translated into Spanish, which doesn’t have any letter or syllable with a ‘sh’ sound, the translator rendered the word ‘shay’ into the Latin script, using an equivalent Spanish letter that is pronounced like ‘sh’. Over the next six centuries or more, ‘shay’ came to be abbreviated using just the Spanish ‘sh’ equivalent sound.

What is this abbreviation? Also, identify the book

The algebraic variable xThe book is Hisab al-jabr wa’l muqabalah

شيء (Shay) becomes Xay, further abbreviated to X

35. Goats tend to skip around a lot

They skip out of sheer joy / happiness – hence the English word X

They skip in a random, sudden and uncontrollable manner – hence the English word Y

They skip up and land in the same place, without going forward – and kick their hind legs at the height of the leap – which has inspired a leap called Zthat is widely used in high level (Haute-ecole) equine dressage events. [video on the next slide]

All these words derive from the Latin word for a goat. Name them (half points for getting both X and Y, half points for Z)

If it helps, here’s a Lipizzaner stallion performing this leap movement Z

Caper, Capricious and Caprioleall from the Latin word for Goat

36. SVC – one word connect these 4 imagesimage #1 +20 / -15

SVC – image #2 +15 / -10

SVC image #3+10 / -5

SVT image #4 +5 / 0

Morningstar

Lucifer, Luthien Tinuviel, Venus, Morningstar

biological name gamethe names are small and simple

37. This Late Jurassic pterosaur (flying dinosaur) had an elongated forehead and beak 326 mm longWhen D.M Martill and S. Etches discovered this monofenestratanpterosaur in the Kimmeridge Clay formation in Dorset, England, they named it for a famous cartoonist.

This was based on a cartoon he drew caricaturing a famous conservative party leader as obsolete and ferocious, with a long beaky nose, fangs dripping blood and bat wings.

The long noses – beaky or not – are characteristic of this cartoonist, who you have to name for 5 points. For the bonus 5, what did he name this conservative politician dinosaur?

Cuspicephalus scarfiGerald Scarfe, Torydactyl

38. Lin28a is a gene in mice that aids growth in the womb

George Daley of Harvard Medical School, in 2013, used to clip off the ears of baby mice in different patterns, to render them unique and recognizable for his experiments involving mice that had been genetically engineered to let Lin28a remain active after birth.

He accidentally discovered that, after a few days, he couldn’t tell one mouse apart from the other because of an unexpected side effect of the Lin28a gene remaining active after birth.

This phenomenon has led to the nicknaming of Lin28a after a fictional character who shares this trait with the baby mice in question. What is this gene’s nickname / who is the fictional character?

The Wolverine Gene

39. Aleiodus _______ is a parasitic wasp

It injects caterpillars and causes them to mummify themselves so that it doesn’t have to trouble itself with catching them again whenever it wants to feed. [Visual of a mummified caterpillar here]

The venom it injects into the caterpillars causes agonizing pain, so that the injected caterpillar twists and jerks its abdomen rapidly, reminding the discoverers of an artiste famous for similar abdominal wiggling.

Name the artiste.

Aleiodus shakirae

40. Two rare South American tropical weevils

Theognete _____, found in Oak, Pine and Cloud Forests in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was named for an Australian director who directed a 2003 movie based on a book by Patrick O’Brian, that featured a joke about “the lesser of two weevils” in a ship’s biscuit.

A similar weevil, Theognete _______ was named for Stephen _______, a character played by Paul Bettany in the movie, a ship’s surgeon and intelligence agent who was also an avid entomologist and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Name the director, and the surgeon, after whom these weevil species were named, after a donation from the book’s fan club (that calls itself ‘The Gunroom’) to the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Discovery Fund.

Peter Weir and Stephen Maturin

41. ‘Carbon Creek’ is S2E2 of Star Trek – Enterprise

In this episode, the Vulcan T’Mir and two of her crewmates Mestral and Stron are orbiting Earth in 1957 just in time to see the launch of Sputnik. At this time, their spaceship malfunctions, so that they eject into Earth’s atmosphere and land in the town of Carbon Creek PA.Posing as regular human beings, they get local jobs, and just before they are rescued from Earth, T’Mir takes an invention allegedly only known to mankind in the 22nd century, and sells it to an industrialist to raise funds for a local boy named Jake, to go to college.In actual life, this ‘22nd century marvel’ was actually invented in 1948 by a Swiss engineer named Georges de Mestral, after he walked his dog past a plant of the genus Arctium, family Asteraceae, so that the dog unwittingly became a vehicle for the plant to disperse its seeds. What was this invention, which several of you might quite likely have available in your home?

Velcro

42. This fungus moth Erechthias ______ is known for a ‘false head’ pattern, thus confusing predators who are fooled into thinking it has two heads. FITB

BeeblebroxiiQuestion #42 after all

43. This is a velvet worm of the genus Eoperipatus, discovered in Vietnam in 2007. What is its specific name, in homage to a famous 1988 film which features a very similar looking vehicle?

TotoroThe catbus in ‘My Neighbor Totoro’

44. The common X toad is so named because the male toad wraps strings of eggs around his back and legs, and takes care of them till the tadpoles are born.

X is what an experienced though unqualified person who helps in birth and childcare would be called in a more rural environment.

In anywhere with a hospital, birth is supervised by someone with a degree in Y – which is how the toad gets its Linnean name Alytes Y

Just get me X and Y

Here’s a visual of the toad

Midwife ToadAlytes obstetricans

45. The Thai cockroach wasp has a unique approach to hunting its prey - cockroachesIt injects them with a toxin that destroys all sentience (well, specific neural behavior) in the cockroach, however leaving all muscle function intact. The cockroach is now a mindless zombie, the prisoner and prey of the wasp. Which fictional characters, known for controlling people thus, are these wasps named after? [No points for “thai grab”]

Ampulex dementor

46. Neal Evenhuis is an American entomologist known for assigning punny Linnean names to species that he discovers

He discovered a new genus of flies of the family Bombiliidae, of which only three distinct species exist [here’s one].

Punning on the Latin word for a fly, and the fact that this is a trio of fly species, he named this genus _______, evoking a famous fictional trio. What did he name this genus?

Muscatheres

47. This fungus from the family Boletaceaewas discovered in Malaysia in 2011The body of the fungus resembles a common personal hygiene product. The color of the fungus is also a distinctive bright yellow.

Putting these two facts together, its discoverers Dennis Desjardin, KabirPeay and Thomas Bruns, named it after a fictional character that shares both characteristics. Which character?

Spongiforma squarepantsii

48. The cotton top tamarin monkey is known as Saguinus _____ _____ (both blanks the same)

While the original name was given arbitrarily, possibly because of the bulging and swollen appearing feet of this primate, a paper presented by A.J Gunther and C.T Snowdon at the American Society of Primatologists in 2004 described a conflict the authors observed during their study of these primates for several years.

This was caused by the fact that there can be only one dominant female in the pack that is capable of mating. Some males may attempt to mate with this dominant female, but she rejects them for a particular reason. This behavior is reminiscent of a certain fictional character, who too had swollen feet. What is this monkey known as?

Saguinus oedipus oedipus

odds and ends

49. In July 2014, Finnish PM Alexander Stubb blamed a single company for ruining his country’s job market

Interviewed by the Swedish newspaper ‘Dagens Industri’, Stubbpointed out that the largest employers in Finland were

a. ___________ (a single company)

b. ___________ (an entire industry)

He went on to say

“Nalle Wahlroos, (president of Nordea Bank), described it quite well when he said that the X knocked out (the company) and Y knocked out (the industry)”.

Name X and Y – and the company and industry that they knocked out.

iPhone killed NokiaiPad killed the paper / forestry industry

50. Part of the family Brassicaceae (which includes mustard, cabbage, turnips ..)It is closely related to the Turnip, so that it derives its common name, and its Linnean name Brassica _____ from the Latin word for a Turnip.

However much sense it makes for a botanist to name the plant this way, marketers for the ______ association of Canada found it difficult to sell its byproduct to their customers, who were horrified by the plant’s name. The marketers therefore decided to rebrand it to state that it was

a. Canadian

b. [removed as it’d make it too obvious]

c. According to several sources, a further reason for the new name was that this product had low levels of erucic acid.

What is the plant called, and what new name did they came up with?

Can[adian]O[il] Canola – sounds far less creepy Low Acid

51. Who is the t-shirt this lady is wearing a dedication to?

Peter Norton

52. Famous personality X has apparently retained what has been described as a crack team of lawyers

The lawyers are exploring the feasibility of copyrighting Y, which instantly recognizable as belonging to X, and which X has self published in various forms over the past years.

The reason for this is that a woman named Jen Selter is allegedly persisting in self publishing, and monetizing, something very similar online, with her own distinctive and personalized version of Y.

This has attracted the attention of more than one legal journal. Sadly for X, the overwhelming consensus of various eminent legal authorities is is that Y, while distinctive, is something that cannot be copyrighted.

Who is X and what is Y?

Kim Kardashian’s ButtShe wants to stop Jen Selter from posting her belfies on instagram

53. The cubo-futurist poet X and painter Y never met in real life

However, in 1925, X did meet Y’s future husband Z, a muralist painter who was then bedridden after a traffic accident.

In 2012, photographer Robert Toren posted a photoshopped picture on his website angrylambie.com, which went viral. This sepia tinted ‘photo’ depicted Y wearing a thick necklace and a loose sleeved robe left open to partially show her breasts, and clutching a pistol, standing beside X, who is dressed in peasant attire and has a cigarette dangling from his fingertips.

While no such photograph of an armed Y exists in real life, Z’s mural “In the Arsenal” (seen in the next slide) does depict her distributing an ammunition belt to revolutionaries shown ransacking an arsenal.

In the Arsenal

X - Vladimir Mayakovsky Y – Frida Kahlo Z – Diego RiveraTwo of Toren’s photoshopped Kahlo pics below

54. ID the visitor, the visitor’s point of entry and the person who sent the visitor over.

John Hunter & Sons’ shoe factory in Chalmers Street, Sydney, had a surprise ‘visitor’ to their 2nd floor in January 1903.

The spot at which this ‘visitor’ entered was preserved as a memorial to the ‘visitor’ till the factory was demolished in the 1960s.

The person who sent the ‘visitor’ to the factory got what the press called a ‘famous fiver’ for his trouble.

Victor Trumper’s five – part of his 335 playing for Paddington vs Redfern, Jan 1903, Redfern Oval

55. The oldest narrative (circa 10th century) folktale in a particular language is “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”

In this story, a girl from the moon is found as a baby inside a bamboo shoot. The baby grows into a beautiful princess and noblemen from around the land seek to marry her, but she sets them all impossible tasks to find different artefacts, such as a gem from a dragon’s neck. They all bring her back fakes, or die trying.

The handsome and brave emperor of the land then approaches her for her hand. She refuses to marry him, leaves him a letter stating her true origin, along with a gift of the elixir of immortality, and returns to the moon. The emperor refuses to live forever without her. He therefore climbs to the top of the tallest mountain in his empire, in the province of Suruga, and burns the elixir along with a reply to her letter, so that its smoke ascends to the moon.

The tale goes on to say that the mountain is renamed for the local word meaning “Immortality”. Its occasional volcanic activity (it is an active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1707) is explained by the fumes from the forever burning letter and elixir of immortality on the mountain peak. Name the mountain.

Mount Fuji不死 - Immortal

56. In 2013, this picture of Xi Jinping and Obama went viral on Chinese social mediaIt depicted a tubby, smiling Xi swinging his arms and walking just in front of a taller, skinnier and also smiling Obama.

Chinese social media immediately lit up with comparisons of Xi and Obama to two anthropomorphic creatures X and Y, who are the best of friends, and are often depicted in the attitude shown in this picture.

The Chinese censors’ immediate reaction was to ban all pictures and mentions of X and Y on the Internet and in Chinese bookstores, doubtless causing bitter tears to X and Y’s numerous young fans.

Who are X and Y? The Xi and Obama picture is on the next slide.

Xi and Obama

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger

57. Similarly, to which inanimate anthromorphic pair is this Time magazine picture of Joko Widodo and his predecessor Susilo Yudhoyono being compared on social media?

C3PO and R2D2“a new hope ..”

58. This clip is from a 1980s He Man episode ‘The Rainbow Warrior’. By what name would a fighter pilot on Earth know the maneuverperformed by the white spaceship to shoot the brown one down?

The Immelman Turnnamed for German WW1 fighter ace Max Immelman

59. In 1336, decades before X became the 12th

Shankaracharya of the Sringeri Math (1380-86)

X met two men Y and Z, formerly soldiers owing allegiance to the Chief of Kampili – which was subjugated by the Tughlaqs, and, before that, to King Pratapa Rudra of Warangal, the last king of the Kakatiya Dynasty who was also defeated by the Tughlaq army and died in captivity.

Without a king or chief to serve under, Y and Z had to hunt wild animals for their food, and used hunting dogs to do so. On one such occasion, the prey their dogs were chasing behaved in a quite strange manner.

X was able to satisfactorily explain this behavior to Y and Z, so that they became his disciples. Identify the three of them. Also - What was the result of this hunt followed by the meeting of X, Y and Z?

X – VidyaranyaY and Z – Harihara (Hakka) Raya and Bukka Raya

Hampi became the capital of the Vijayanagara empire

60. Once you reach the final level of a very long game indeed, you have to slay a dragon. Once you slay it and exit the level, you will see a long ‘poem’ scroll past for over seven minutes, followed by the game’s credits, after which this Mark Twain quote appears. What is the level called, and which game?

The End LevelMinecraft