Spanky Wasn’t Her Nickname

…it was her hobby

Boldly, I charge onward with more Doclopedia goodness!

The Doclopedia #319

By The Numbers: 79

…was the number of crew members and passengers on board the state of the art “tri-phibian” steamship Eudora Banks when it disappeared near the island of Sumba on or about March 14th, 1898. The disappearance made headlines across the world, mostly due to the fact that her inventor, Professor Hubert Manning was on board along with his fiancée, Miss Judith Warrington, her father Lord Warrington (at that time, the Minister for Science), the American inventor and financier Seth Parkhust and the noted photographer Marta Skollings. A search lasting 6 months was undertaken by both the British and United States government, but failed to turn up a trace of the ship or crew.

The last wireless message received from the ship had come at 10:34, local time on March 14th and stated “We are five minutes away from converting to submersible form in order to more closely observe an interesting underwater cave system.” The native crewed support boats reported that the Eudora Banks submerged successfully, but failed to come up two hours later, which would have been when the onboard air would be running out.

Search submersibles failed to find the cave entrance.

On July 19th, 1903, more than five years after she vanished, the Eudora Banks emerged from an undiscovered cave in northern Ontario. Traveling in “landship” mode, she made her way to the nearest river and then to the nearest town.

The scientific world was rocked to find out that the ship and her crew had been inside our hollow world, in a land known as Sengaia. Apparently, a few caves worldwide lead there, although only two or three are large enough for a ship or other large vehicle to pass through.

Despite many thrilling adventure (which made the crew and passengers wealthy from speaking engagements and books), they crew lost only three members and of the passengers, only Miss Skollings assistant, Lars, was lost.

For additional information on the five year journey and Sengaia, we suggest reading Judith Warrington’s three volume set Into The Inner World: Our Journey To And Across Sengaia, available online from nile.com.

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Bucky & Squint Meet The Munsters

…aired just once, in 1968

The Doclopedia #318

By The Numbers: 25

…was the age at which Benicia Gutierrez acquired her super powers. Little did she know when she and her dog Andy went hiking that she would end up falling face first into a radioactive pool of water that sat atop an illegal dump site. By that night, Benicia discovered that she could stretch her body like rubber, fly up to 200 miles an hour, read the minds of evil doers up to 5 miles away and heal any wound in seconds.

Three days later, after she had made a cool and sexy looking costume to wear, Justice Woman made her first public appearance. Within a few weeks, crime in the Dallas/Fort Worth area was down 10%. By the end of the year, it was down another 50%. In fact, crime dropped off in any city or town within 500 miles of Dallas.

After a couple of years, she started going into Mexico to fight drug dealers and corrupt politicians. She was not gentle about it. The Mexican people loved her.

Today, Justice Woman is still fighting crime at the age of 60. She might have some grey hairs and she might carry a bit of extra weight, but as she says “I’m still flexible enough to kick criminal ass”.

The Doclopedia #316

By The Numbers: 47

…is how many hours it takes to roast a whole Yurb. Mind you, that’s a young Yurb, weighing no more than 2,500 pounds and cooked in a Luzuku style oven. Here is the basic recipe, but you should feel free to use other vegetation or meats that are labeled optional.

Roast Yurb with Peeled Aaves and Widgib Gravy

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. It is best to use noomrah wood, but any good hardwood will do.

Have your slaves scrub all of the spiny hairs off of the Yurb, then have them oil the entire carcass up. Use sloo fat for this, as it will ensure a crunchy skin.

Stuff the Yurb with the following:

50 pounds of peeled aaves
20 pounds of dilki leaves
6 pounds each of chopped gimus, weej, ifulo root, huustok, gox berries and lelele flowers.
3 pounds each of olibix hearts (fresh, not pickled), zanzan livers (optional), qurfbeast sausages (optional), smoked viskfish, beeleen duck pate and giant clamjelly eyes (optional)
1 pound each of bixfruit (fresh or canned), samasodo melon (optional), nightfruit (dried is best), deshki apples (unpeeled, optional) and triff.
Half a pound each of green, red and yellow widgib leaves

Now, have your slaves place the Yurb into the oven and close the door. After you have performed the Ritual of Slow Cooking (which should take no more than 30 minutes), reduce the oven heat to 250 degrees and go away for 10 or 12 hours.

After 10-12 hours, the mix of Yurb fat drippings and widgib leaf oils will have run out into your eseem collector. You should have 30 to 40 gallons. Have your slaves place this in a cool spot until just before the Yurb is done.

When the Yurb is tender all the way trough, have your slaves make up the gravy and then perform the Ritual of The Great Feast. When they are done, exile them to the Great Foomisso Jungle for a week.

Serve the Yurb to your Honored Guests and then follow the feast up with Paffwine and the Ritual of Pleasant Digestion.

Beat The Meatles

…they never really found an audience

Here is the final entry in the Cool Shoes theme. Below it, you’ll find the first two posts of the new theme By The Numbers

The Doclopedia #315

Cool Shoes: The Badass Blue Suede Shoes

Simply put, these are the shoes that will let you kick ass and take names. You will be absolutely cool, calm and collected while you open up a can of whoop ass on evildoers and other uncool twits. In addition to that, your clothes will remain spotless and your hair will never get mussed up.

These shoes give you vastly improved strength, speed, toughness, agility and coolness. They also look great and are really comfortable. People will turn their heads to check you out.

These shoes are so cool and badass that you will know them as soon as you see them.

The Doclopedia #316

By The Numbers: 3

…is how many clones each agent of the Society of Deathbringers gets to use before he or she is retired. And by “retired”, we mostly mean killed, although a few agents have managed to fake their own deaths and retire in obscurity. As a result of knowing that they have four lives total, many deathbringers will perform at least one spectacular and very public assassination during their career. This often involves high explosives and a whole bunch of victims. The 2088 suicide bombing of the annual meeting of the Grand Leaders of the Church of the Planet Warming Christ was one such event.

The Doclopedia #317

By The Numbers: 8

…would be how many wives the Sultan of Ranisjistan had when he died at the age of 48. Considering that he fathered at least 5 children by each of his wives (9 by his first wife) and was known as a lusty and energetic fellow, it’s rather amazing that he lived as long as he did. The incredible grief shown by his widows, which included cries of “I shall never have sex that good again!” and “I may as well just become a nun!”, have elevated the late Sultan to legendary status in his own and several other countries.

Feeding Pie To Gorillas

…don’t run out of pie

The Doclopedia #313

Cool Shoes: The Brain Boosting Sensible Shoes

These shoes are not even a little bit cool, stylish or sexy, but once you put them on, your brain power will go through the roof. You’ll be doing math problems so complex that you’ll make idiot savants go “Holy Crap!” Figuring out complex chemical formulas? Piece of cake! Analyzing evidence at a crime scene? Sherlock Holmes would bow down to you! Raking in a big pile of moolah at the blackjack tables in Vegas? Go for it!

Figuring out the United States Tax Code? Ok, that one might take a few weeks.

The Brain Boosting Sensible Shoes look like a very comfy, but totally utilitarian pair of men’s or women’s shoes. Only the image of a brain on the insole at the heel will give you a clue about them.

The Doclopedia #314

Cool Shoes: The Sandals Of Strength

It’s rumored that these are the same sandals that Samson once wore, because they are old looking and confer enormous strength upon the wearer. Long hair is optional.

When you have these sandals on your feet, you can lift up to two tons of weight and toss a Smart Car about a mile. Of course, the average wimp on the street can toss a Smart Car fifty feet, but still…

Please be aware that the Sandals of Strength do NOT make you any tougher versus physical harm. Bullets will NOT bounce off of you and if you stub your toe, it’s still going to hurt like hell.

The Sandals of Strength are a pair of ancient looking sandals that have a small image of Samson tearing down the temple on the strap.

The 57 Things You Must NEVER Say To A Crying Woman

…#1: Did I do something wrong?

The Doclopedia #312

Cool Shoes: The Spike Heels Of Stealth

If you want to be wearing some drop dead sexy sexy shoes while you bust into an ultra high security facility, you want to slip these on. Once you’re wearing them, you become invisible, totally silent and absolutely undetectable by radar, sonar, thermal scans or any of that other high tech detecting shit. And did we mention sexy looking shoes?

The Spike Heels of Stealth are black, gorgeous and amazingly comfortable. You can tell you have them by smacking the soles together lightly. They will not make a sound.

The Adventure Of The Flatulent Friar

…as written by John H. Watson, M.D.

The Doclopedia #310

Cool Shoes: The Spirit Boots

Anyone wearing these well worn cowboy boots will gain all of the abilities of a ghostly spirit. They will be able to fade into or out of view, pass through solid objects, float slowly through the air and emit a terrifying moan. The terrifying moan only works on humans. Animals will just look at you as if to say “Huh?”.

The Spirit Boots are highly prized among people who want to fight crime and those folks who just enjoy scaring the shit out of others. Sometimes these two goals overlap.

The Spirit Boots look like old beat up cowboy boots that probably ought to be tossed out. Only the decoration of a ghost on the side of the boots identifies them for what they really are.

The Doclopedia #311

Cool Shoes: The Hot Sneakers

Are you less that a sex symbol, lookswise? Are you average looking or below on the appearance scale? Are you so ugly that you have to get yourself drunk just to masturbate? Well there’s good news for you! If you can locate and put on the Hot Sneakers, you can become a total hottie, irresistible to the opposite (and even many of the same) sex. By the time you finish lacing up these polka dot sneakers, you will have transformed into a hunka hunka burnin’ sexy.

But what about during the naked horny times, you ask? Must I wear the sneakers while I’m doing the horizontal tango? No, my friend, you don’t. The transformation will remain in effect for up to 6 hours after you remove the sneakers. After that, you’ll need to wear them for at least 4 hours before you can take them off.

These sneakers look just like yellow Converse high tops with big green polka dots. The green flames on the rubber toe of each shoe lets you know that these are the real deal. Please do be aware that these are by far the most sought after Cool Shoes and there are ugly people out there who will kill you for them.

Winter In The Hot Zone

…clothing and lasers are optional

Note To Readers: Yes, I really do plan on blogging about things other than the Doclopedia, but not until August 17th when my self imposed 365 entries in 365 days challenge has ended. At that point, the Doclopedia will only appear about three times a week.

If you have any suggestions of things you’d like me to blog about, please comment here or on Facebook.

And now, the start of a new Doclopedia theme…Cool Shoes

The Doclopedia #309

Cool Shoes: The Spider Slippers

As you might imagine, these ordinary looking slippers give the wearer the ability to crawl up walls or across ceilings, just like a certain webslinging superhero. It’s even possible to run that way, but be very careful one of the slippers doesn’t come off or you’ll be left half hanging. Leaping and other gymnastics will not come out the way you think, so don’t try it. The slippers seem to work for anybody, regardless of height, weight, sex or age.

The Spider Slippers are simple brown slippers that look pretty unisex. The only way to identify them is by the dime sized spider stamped on each heel.