Encyclopedic Titanic
Based on a True Story
Monopoly: (n) mo·nop·o·ly/məˈnäpəlē/, A board game in which a player attempts to gain a monopoly of real estate by advancing around the board and purchasing property, acquiring capital by collecting rent from other players whose pieces land on that property.
The game Monopoly is based off entities which exclusively control the supply of a service or item and accumulate wealth without competition. So it’s somewhat strange that the game actually has more than one opposing player that can accumulate wealth. Only 3 of every 1,000 Monopoly games is played to completion as set forth in the instructions. Half of the games end due to time constraints, and most of the other half end when everyone is bored. Games of Monopoly, if the players are evenly matched and the dice rolls or card draws are nearly equally favorable for all parties, can last for days, making Monopoly one of the few games where even if you are the winner, you are still a loser (see also: Scrabble, live-action Quidditch). The small metal player pieces come in a variety of shapes. Among these are the car, the wheelbarrow, the iron, the dog, the hat, and the boot. Rejected ideas for player pieces were the sausage grinder and the IRS agent.
Music: (n) mu·sic /ˈmyo͞ozik/, an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.
The first music was made by the big bang, whose loud percussive noises were meant to convey to nothingness that it should “hit the road”. Such an arrangement of tones was impressive seeing as hitting, roads, and definite articles had yet to exist.
When life forms developed auditory processing capabilities, they all came to the same conclusion: life sounded boring as shit.
Mars: (n) /märz/, The planet fourth in order from the sun, having a diameter of 4222 miles, a mean distance to the sun of 141.6 million miles, a period of revolution of 686.95 days, and two moons.
Named for the Roman god of war, Mars is often considered the twin planet of Earth because if its close location, like composition, and similar size. Rovers on the planet’s surface have yet to determine if the face of Mars has a goatee or not, so it is not known if Mars is an evil twin. The planet gets its red color from large amounts of anger in the soil. It is one of the few planets that can be easily view from Earth with the naked eye, though, in areas with strict indecency laws, it could probably just as easily be viewed with a clothed one. Mars is home to the highest mountain and largest valley in the solar system. Along with such highs and lows, Mars is frigid and has two moons whose names are derived from the Greek words for “panic” and “terror”. With these things taken into consideration, Mars has earned its reputation for being the moodiest planet in the solar system. The previous statement has been shown to offend approximately 99.9% of the people who buy into the “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” bullshit (for further evidence, see: Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Pluto, terrible books of the 20th century, giant piles of dog poo). The previous statement will offend 100% of the same group.
Vase: (n) /vās/, A vessel of glass, porcelain, earthenware, or metal, usually higher than it is wide, used chiefly to hold cut flowers or for decoration.
It is widely believed that the first vases were used in ancient Egypt to hold reeds for fanning while they were not in use. It has also been argued that the first vases were holes in the ground. Ancient civilizations began to paint mythological scenes and extravagant patterns on large vessels soon after they discovered that the vessel’s conventional size was far too large to hold any of the decorative plants that naturally grew in their geographical area and that they should probably look nice even if they serve no functional purpose (see also: paintings, Kardashians). During draughts and heat waves, when there were no plants to place in vases, the vessels were repurposed into urns and receptacles for waste. Those with black thumbs, no sentimentality, or no decorating sense often say that the vases in their homes are still used as receptacles for waste (or urns, depending on the plant’s stage of decomposition and how much the care-giver cared about the plant).
Table: (n) ta·ble /ˈtābəl/, a piece of furniture with a flat top and one or more legs, providing a level surface on which objects may be placed.
It has long been pondered which came first: the table or the chair. It was the chair. Once early humans had the capacity to understand that sitting was more comfortable than standing for long periods of time, they fashioned the first chairs from stones. Actually, they were just a single stone. The sitting arrangements were limited by the availability and location of stones large enough to seat people. A family was sometimes forced to be very distant from one another during mealtimes, a tradition still carried on today if only figuratively. Soon after, humans began to build their fires close to the stones, unintentionally inventing “laziness.” It was this budding innovation that sparked the idea to create a surface above the ground on which things could be placed in order for one to bring objects closer to oneself without having to reach too far or get up from the stone. This also marks the first appearance of hemorrhoids. The first tables were made from stone tablets, wood, and slaves, in various combinations. In fact, table legs are named as such because of their resemblance to the limbs of kneeling people. This is also where we get the term “head of the table.”Curiously there is no “butt of the table,” though this may be because slaves were starved too thin to have ample hindquarters. Tables can have anywhere from one to an infinite number of legs. A table with one-hundred legs is called a “centable,” but has also been called a “hundresser” and “utterly ludicrous.” The most common tables have four legs of equal length (or three legs of equal length and one leg which is inexplicably shorter and eventually causes the table to double as a rather large paperweight).
Telephone: (n) tel·e·phone /ˈteləˌfōn/, An apparatus, system, or process for transmission of sound or speech to a distant point, especially by an electronic device.
Alexander Graham Bell is credited with having created the telephone in 1875. To be more precise, he is credited with creating the first working model of a telephone. The telephone was actually first imagined by a grandmother in New Jersey who was pondering more ways in which her children and grandchildren might fail to keep up correspondence with her and allow her to passive-aggressively guilt them. Early examples of the telephone were made with a small speaker attached the base of the phone by a long cord. The user would hold the speaker to their ear in one hand whille they spoke into the base. This type of telephone soon died out after depictions of phone use in films made people realized that these kinds of phones made them look like complete tools. The creation of a handset which included both a speaker and microphone closely followed the creation of the term “teenager.” Teenagers are still the group which spends the most time speaking on the telephone due to lack of independence, an abundance of free time, and an unwarranted sense of self-importance. Studies have shown that for every hour a teenager spends on the phone, an average of 1.5 adults yells at them to hang up. The invention of the cellular phone has eased family tensions slightly by allowing phones to have unique numbers, be easily portable, and provide a large database of hilariously misspelled text messages. Scientists predict that, in the future, each person will have a phone built into their hand, a la Ispector Gadget, which might again make people look like tools, but still looks better than people who use blue tooth headsets.
Blanket: (n) blan·ket/ˈblaNGkit/, A large piece of woolen or similar material used as a bed covering or other covering for warmth.
The first blankets were made from bears, albeit unintentionally and fatally. Early humans created blankets soon after discovering how to clothe themselves in animal skins, yet it still took them centuries to discover how to combine the two to produce the slanket. The world “blanket” comes from the French word for “white” (blanc), which is strange considering that most of the time you spend using one is when everything is black. The average bed has 1.3 blankets, but it is not known if this includes the number of blankets which are kicked off the bed during the course of sleep. Some famous people who use a blanket include Queen Elizabeth (this list formerly included the Pope before it was discovered that he slept naked, covered only in the adoration of millions of gullible people to keep him warm at night). Blankets are also a favorite security object of young children, second only to parents and 9mm semi-automatics.
