TEN FACTS ABOUT THE BRONZE AGE

Welcome assorted filth dibbers of the globe to this next installment in our nonpareil attempt at bringing you all closer to a past which is probably better forgotten. Read this posting and I personally guarantee that your archaeological IQ will  skyrocket off the top of your head and roll into a dark corner of your pantry - if you have a pantry that is - if not, you have my sympathies - and I should know because I'm a licensed archaeologist.

Fig.1

1. Suspicions are rife among the archaeological community that the 'Bronze Age' never really existed, recent research has revealed the possibility that the term was coined in 1972 by L. Ron Hubbard as part of a bet with the editor of 'Girlfriends' magazine. A recent article by Professor E. Bourke has claimed Hubbard was in a hot-tub at the time and had to roar his wager over the grinding noise of his Y-fronts being chewed up by the jacuzzi pump. His voice became increasingly falsetto as he babbled on until a ripping noise was heard and his voice dropped two octaves to it's original tone.
So a warm round of applause to jacuzzi pumps everywhere! Oh yes - and a Happy Birthday to Ed Bourke.

Fig.2 A bit of indiscriminate 'mad shit,' and why not?

2. The dawn of the Bronze Age was marked by the arrival of door to door salesmen selling bronze ingots to Neolithic farmers. As soon as the farmers got their mitts on the bronze they cast the stuff into swords and began chopping the bejeezuz out of each other. 'Well it sure beats farming!' They were heard to cheer through a mist of blood.


3. In the Middle Bronze Age Saint Pludmunter of Terenure ascended Mount Bangwidth and there he met the five foolish virgins who had become lost on their way to the wedding feast.
'Whyfore are ye lost?' he demanded of them.
'Because, oh great saint,' wept the foolish virgins, 'we went to the marriage with naught but a dribble of oil in our lamps and the darkness swallowed us and we dawdled askew.'
The saint chided them for their foolishness, directing them in the righteous amount of oil to fill their lamps with and afterwards, in the darkness, he apportioned oil from his own lamp among them.
Then he sent them forth.
And when they returned to the bosom of their families they were no longer foolish.

Or virgins.

Fig.3 This 'mad shit' certainly takes the biscuit.

4. It's well I remember the expression on my parents faces when I said: 'Mummy, Daddy. I want to be an archaeologist!' - It looked extraordinarily like THIS

5. In the early Bronze Age an unknown smith withdrew to a dark cave in the Dolomites and using a particular blend of tin and copper fashioned the very first brazen hussy for himself. When he finally reappeared ten years later he could only walk in a circle.

6. While I'm no expert - I believe the Bronze Age was around about the time when aliens came to earth and taught us how to build pyramids and wear a hats that look like space helmets. Bloody time-wasters.

7. You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.

8. Next time you are visiting your local museum be sure to check out the brass monkey section - a greatly undervalued artefact from the bronze age.

Fig. 4.

9. I remember it was a middling Sunday, maybe three thousand years ago when the old man lifted his eyes off the the Sunday World and whispered: 'Sure, I think we'll go on a bit of a jant . . .'
These words made my mother stare askance from her bacon fat soaked slippers and say - 'I'll make the sandwiches so . . .' and she drifted ineluctably, iceberg-like, towards the serrated knife to cut slabs of soda bread thick enough to swear an oath upon.
'Where are we going,' says I, (but I really didn't give a toss where we were headed so long as it was far away from that damp kitchen,) and the father raised his right hand - Moses style - and says: 'Put the bridles on the horses boy, we're headed West to spread the knowledge of bronze manufacture among those what need it.'
And that day we rode out from the foot of the Steppes with our portable bronze furnaces blazing, pouring a copper alloy blanket across the landscape, a blanket as red as Prince Harry's netherlocks (if recent photographic evidence is to be believed.)
And we ate the sandwiches in Wicklow.

(That last piece was written when I was very drunk - and there's no real difference between that and the sober stuff. . .)

10. Alrighty let's finish off with an oul' song to keep our peckers pecky and remind us that the recession is almost over and good times are just around the corner. And today our very special guest star is none other than Mr. Loudon Wainwright III, check out this happy little TUNE

Fig. 5 was due to be an illustration to a hilarious (trust me on that one) fact about Bill and Ben in their ceramic tank attacking an urnfield cemetery which turns out to be a minefield. Or something like that but I ran out of numbers so you'll have to make it up yourself.

STOP HOGGING THE DUVET. UNTIL NEXT TIME MEIN FRITTER BUNNIES.