The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

1) It makes beer smell skunky.

2) The future national leader was George Washington. The sovereigns were French and British.

1. No

2. No, no, no.

To sum up: no.

1. It makes papermills smell like dirty hotdogs

2. The Scotch Tape Entanglement

2. The War of Jenkins Ear

Boer War? Assuming that Boers are an ethnic group. This would then be South Africa....and um the Crown, as we like to say. But I don't recall that the Boer War was especially brief...

1. Unless we're talking about acorns and the lingering odor they leave on squirrels, the smell of the Union Camp Bag Corporation paper mill on the James would seem fragrant with possibility. Perhaps this is the acid in paper which leads to it falling apart?

2. Wounded Knee

US vs Spanish in the Southeast? Indian tribes caught in the middle. Are the *dependednt civilians* black slaves? The commander would be Andrew Jackson. Creek War/Redstick War?

That would be at least 3 sovereign powers, Mr. Brown.

I'm sorry to have been so derelict in my duties here. Shananan has it pretty much right, although the conflict I'm referring to is called variously the Florida War or the First Seminole War -- but the Creek were, as she notes, "caught in the middle" along with the "Seminoles", a group that included both native peoples and escaped slaves. And Jackson is the American commander in both cases. Indeed, the First Seminole War and the American conduct in it followed on pretty much straightforwardly from the Creek/Red Stick War. I almost certainly wasn't using "sovereign" correctly -- I was trying to indicate the two "Western" powers. Sloppy and generally ethnocentric to boot! Bad wombat!

The civilians in question weren't, as a matter of fact, slaves, or at least, it appears, exclusively so.

Well done, Shananan, and sorry for the long delay in getting you your laurels.

And what about that lingering odor?

Whoops -- sorry. The odor is the smell of "corked" wine.

OK, if there's no quiz today, here's a question (maybe I've asked it before, can't remember):

What's the only album in history to go platinum in the U.S. without ever having cracked the Billboard Top 100?

But was it ever bubbling under?

I guess we can rule out Dark Side of the Moon which is probably still in Billboard's Top 100.

Since they are all over the web right now, how about Led Zeppelin's fourth LP (the one with Stairway to Heaven)?

Never Mind the Bollocks?

No to both of those.

I thought my Sex Pistols guess was a good one, so I checked to see why it didn't qualify, thinking maybe the album scraped into the charts at #97 or some such.

But according to Wikipedia, it peaked at #106, and went platinum in 1992. So apparently there's more than one answer to boxjam's question.

(Led Zeppelin IV peaked at #2, where it resided for four weeks, kept from the top by Sly and the Family Stone and Carole King.)

shit. tapestry was my next best guess.

It wasn't Tapestry that kept Zeppelin IV from the top, it was King's followup album, Music.

The answer Boxjam is looking for is either the result of some accounting weirdness (say, a religious record sold outside of usual retail channels that racked up a million sold) or an album that sold slowly and steadily for many many years. Maybe a Christmas record?

Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas?

I stand before you a broken man.

I have a personal hatred of trivia questions that haven't been well-vetted, and yet, here I guess I've put one up for you to consume.

Dang.

Given the pretty good evidence Gavin uncovered about "Never Mind the Trollops," it's clear my sources are faulty, and it's become a game of "what album is Boxjam thinking of?"

Well, the album was the "Violent Femmes" - their eponymous debut. Tat tidbit *used* to be on the Violent Femmes' site, and is on some other sites. I guess they took it down because it's WRONG.

Well, then. For all I know Vince Guaraldi is correct, too. I like the guess, anyway.

I leave you now to commit seppuku.

Ugh, I hate when that happens.

I've been there, Boxjam; my sympathies.

(I remembered that circa 86/87, when Rolling Stone did a greatest albums of all time list, the Sex Pistols placed at #2 and hadn't gone gold in the United States! Which blew my mind. They've plugged away steadily since then.)

I like Scraps' Guaraldi guess too, and I think he might be correct. The record seems to have gone triple-platinum, and it doesn't seem to have hit the top 40, but I can't find references to its chart peak, so I don't know if it made it somewhere between 41 and 100.

You guys are amazing -- I'm sorry I've been awol. Will post something further when I have the chance.

BTW, Boxjam is merely, of course, following in the footsteps of many a blown-by-the-real-facts Wombat quiz.

Man, Robitussin can make ANYthing twinkle!