Guest Book

and maybe last but certainly not least, as far as you know... Happy Birthday LARRIDER.... hope you celebrated with a ball-bustin ride in the wind out on LI... ...and speaking of balls... Does anyone know any History on the Organ of Balls... i mean origin... excuse me... no? well ok... easy crowd... and besides my ears are shut today... all the women are back in my house... SO... Did you know, in the mighty British Nanny .. I mean.. Navy.. at the time of Empire building, every sailing ship had cannon (the plural of cannon, antonym for metiajorn) for protection. (now we have real protection for personal cannons - sheep skin)..ena-ways.. Cannon of the times required round iron cannonballs. A ship's master wanted to store the cannonballs such that they could be available for instant use when needed, but in a manner that would not let them roll around the gun deck.(this sounds familiar) The solution devised was to stack them up in a square-based pyramid (not called Today & Tomorrow in case you Switter's fans were jumping the gun) next to the cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next level down had three, the next had nine, the next had sixteen, and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of 30 cannonballs. The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from under the weight of the higher levels. (oily balls..) To do this, they devised a small brass plate referred to as a "brass monkey," with one rounded indentation for each cannonball in the bottom layer. Brass was used because the cannonballs wouldn't rust on the brass monkey, but would rust on an iron one. When temperature falls, brass contracts faster than iron. As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass monkey would get smaller than the iron cannonballs they were holding. (we know how cold can make things shrink, right?) If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer of cannonballs would pop out of the indentations, spilling the entire pyramid over the deck. (causing premature spillage...) Thus it was, quite literally, "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." And so, another familiar phrase became part of the language. Now, aren't you glad you took the time to read this historical piece..? And you thought this was going to be a "dirty" balls story....! where's Paul Harvey when you really need him?