The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

It's another grab bag; time to gab and brag, to gag on the blab and garb yourself for grab-bag gassery. Check out these four mini-bags of brain-skag and get ready to wag your head and babble your answers:

1. When Stanley Kubrick told Arthur C. Clarke "Tell your friend I wasn't coming after him," Clarke didn't pass along the message, in part, he later said, because he wasn't sure how true Kubrick's statement was. To what acquaintance of Clarke was Kubrick referring, and what was the film which occasioned the supposed-to-be-reassuring remark?

2. Name the species of mammal that secrets a toxin on the inside of its elbows, which it then spreads upon the bodies of its young to give them a form of self-defense.

3. He suffered from Potts disease, he was exiled from his home city due to his religion, and once wrote: "A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labour of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity." Who was this bee-hater?

4. Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward (under a pen name) created the characters of Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, but the books in which they appear take their titles from their far more famous antagonist. What was the antagonist's name?

I won't be around until late in the day to blab back at you, but the first correct answer to each wins a bag of cabbage, a rack of fatback, and a sack of Tab-soaked crab. No Googling or asking Andy McNab. Or watching old Jennifer Saunders sitcoms, or going to Blarney Castle to get the Talent for Eloquence. Or referring to Barbara Streisand in a breezy, attenuated style. One guess on each part per comment, but you may comment as often as you lab.

Posted by BT at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (38)

Another apologetic Friday -- too much on the plate (and, more to the point, spattering messily in the plate's vicinity. Ow!) to offer up a quiz today. I'll make it up to you next week, I swear.

Meanwhile, use the comments for whatever nefarious purposes you like.

Posted by BT at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Onward and downward with our weekly attempt to distract you from that last-ditch attempt at salvaging some productivity from the week. We hate it when you do that. Give in! Give in! Here it is:

Name the first U.S. President for whom English was not his first language (that is, he grew up speaking a different language). Bonus: name the language.

Double bonus: Name the man who said to him (before he was elected President) "It is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!" Triple bonus: name the "it" the man was speaking of.

First correct answer wins a bottle of Brackish Springs mineral water ("A Little Salt Never Hurt Nobody"). Bonus answers win you an admiring glance and a warm feeling from head to toe. No Googling or doing anything else to get yourself feeling warm from head to toe. One answer to any part of the question per comment but comment as much as you think you can get away with. Although, to be fair, just running down the list of U.S. Presidents would be a boring way to win this one, and I'm the only one here who's allowed to be boring.

Posted by BT at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

In between a marathon of edits and a brief visit to the land of what Frank Zappa dubbed "unconcho," I give you this simple question.

What liberalizing movement -- whose name in English translation refers to a particular nation, but which was later picked up in subsequent use as a playful appelation for certain kinds of (typically change-oriented) sub-groups within larger organizations -- formally coalesced in Geneva in 1891, hundreds of miles from where the military students at its core were born?

First correct answer posted to comments wins an empty box of Maxalt-MLT 5 orally disintegrating tablets. Man, I could go for one of those about now. No Googling, or googling or GoOgLinG. One guess per comment but comment o comment o superman.

Posted by BT at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I've been making this.

Posted by BT at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)