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Musings from Moyieboy ... |
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Bigger is a better propaganda machine |
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November 25, 2017 |
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By Ken Carpenter
After spending 60-plus years shuffling around
the world knowing that I'll never be able to
reach anything on any top shelf, I've grown used
to the idea that midgets had nothing to do with
designing the world.
On the plus side, us short folk don't have to
worry about banging our noggins on the head jamb
of any door.
The world is infatuated with the big, bigger and
biggest of anything and everything.
Some group bakes a 12 foot, 2,020 pound pumpkin
pie and before you know it a 20 foot, 3,699
pound pumpkin pie thrashes the record. These are
true numbers, the latter made in Ohio in 2010.
India seems to be a place that is obsessed
with creating the largest, most useless objects
they can. It might be explained by the rumor
that men from India are renowned for being less
well endowed than most men from other countries.
People from India have records for the biggest,
functioning scissors, 7.7 feet long and 55
pounds. I don't know what they are good for, but
I wouldn't want my hair cut with them.
The most colossal suitcase of all, which took
eight Indians 105 hours to construct, measures
13.34 feet by 8.75 feet by 4.16 feet.
It might
almost be big enough for Donald Trump to pack
his ego around.
India has the longest sewing needle, too, over
eight
feet long, and the makers actually used it to
sew
15 stitches. Too bad those 15 stitches weren't
on Trump's lips.
A wall calendar record was set in India in 2009.
It measures 40 feet by 120 feet and weighs 253
pounds. It is located in a mall, and I'm quite
sure a lot of wives take their husbands by it
when their anniversary is drawing near. We men
need all the help we can get remembering things.
The biggest useable padlock was manufactured in
India for use in the Jagannath Temple. It is two
feet long and weighs 110 pounds. The same
manufacturer also made the smallest lock, of
silver, weighing just .05 ounce and its length
is .18 inch. I could barely see it, much less
use it.
The world's most enormous, functioning ball
point pen, also built in India, is 11 feet 11
inches long and weighs 19.8 pounds. I don't know
how much ink it holds, but one estimate thinks
it could even write down a whole month's worth
of ridiculous exaggerations for Sarah Palin
before the well went dry.
In 2002 a Canadian set a world record for the
tallest and heaviest stilts ever used. They were
50 feet, 9 inches long and weighed 137 pounds
combined, and he took 29 steps with them. When I
was a kid I used to get a rush from stilts that
put me four feet off the ground. Of course, my
legs were only about two feet long.
A French company celebrated its 100th
anniversary by making a chain 10.6 miles long.
It connected two villages, crossing a river and
two railway lines, and accomplished the
stupendous achievement of encircling three
Kardashian rumps. Amazing, truly amazing.
Another 100th anniversary saw Crayola create a
15-foot long, 1500 pound crayon capable of
coloring a line 10 miles long. It is said to be
on the Kardashian's Halloween makeup list, when
they will party as a railroad caboose.
Germany is the proud home of the world's most
humongous, commercially available jigsaw puzzle.
The puzzle has 32,256 pieces and when completed
it is 17.84 feet by 6.3 feet. There is no truth
to the rumor that the picture contains a
life-size portrait of the aforementioned
Kardashian rumps.
The most elongated thermometer ever is in Baker,
California, 134 feet tall in honor of the record
high U.S. temperature, 134 degrees in 1913.
There could be a picture of it on the Internet under
"World's biggest rectal thermometer," but don't
believe it.
The women out there may understand the
significance of what I'm about to say, but I
admit to knowing little about such things. The
most monumental cross-stitch ever was stitched
in Poland between December 2008 and August 2010.
It is 30.2 feet by 13.3 feet and contains 93
miles of thread in 220 different colors. It
sounds impressive, but cross-stitch is a
mysterious and kind of scary term to me. I'm
guessing it has little in common with sewing on
a button.
As I sit here in my short, yet fairly bloated,
skin, I am growing tired of talking about big
things. The only consolation is that most of
them are as worthless as they are gigantic.
I bet they could all grab a can of pickled fish
lips off of the top shelf of the grocery store
though, if they happened to have hands, so I'm
just a little bit jealous.
That doesn't change the fact that I am still
dubious of the old "bigger is better" theory. |
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