I used to think I was mad. I used to think I was shameless. Until I stumbled upon MJ and her Infomaniac blog. While her blog may tickle some people's fancy, you should be warned, some of the images will make your butter curdle and your wives turn into pillars of salt.
Now, MJ is a very private woman but I recently found this photo of her (above). I think the picture speaks for itself. She is very much the kind of lass and who could club a bison to death and bring it home to the cave. If only we were all as talented with a club (sigh). Anyway, she recently put a list of Life Skills 101 up on her blog, the kind of stuff you needed to know if you were to survive in ye olden days. She has seventeen of these skills and I think I have five.
1. Use a bow and arrow
2. Load and fire a musket
3. Duel with pistol
4. Joust
5. Throw a battleax
6. Forge a sword
7. Fight with a rapier and dagger
8. Besiege a castle
9. Defend a castle
10. Make and smoke a peace pipe
11. Make a flint cutting tool
12. Brew mead
13. Make bread
14. Roast chestnuts on an open fire
15. Make hard cheese
16. Make butter
17. Make ice cream
18. Keep bees and harvest honey
19. Tap and make maple syrup
20. Find berries in the wild
21. Can food
22. Archery fish
23. Gut and clean fish
24. Keep chickens
25. Pluck a chicken
26. Roast a wild boar
27. Cook on a range
28. Dig and use a pit oven
29. Make a fire without matches
30. Track animals
31. Forecast the weather
32. Tease, card, & spin wool
33. Make natural dye from plants
34. Weave a chair seat
35. Weave a basket
36. Make soap
37. Make a broom
38. Sweep a chimney
39. Chop down a tree with an ax
40. Carve a totem pole
41. Carve a canoe
42. Make a barrel
43. Thatch a roof
44. Build a wall with wattle and daub
45. Build a dry stone wall
46. Dig a well
47. Plow a field
48. Build a log bridge
49. Build a log cabin
50. Build a pyramid
51. Embalm a body
52. Treat a battle wound
53. Set broken bones
54. Groom a horse
55. Shoe a horse
56. Mount and dismount a horse
57. Make and throw a lasso
58. Milk a cow
59. Hunt deer safely in woodlands
60. Mount a stag’s head
61. Shear a sheep
62. Care for rope
63. Tie a hangman’s noose
64. Read Roman numerals
65. Use an abacus
66. Operate a telegraph machine
67. Send smoke signals
68. Cure people with leeches and maggots
69. Read palms
70. Behave at a medieval banquet
71. Read a coat of arms
72. Address royalty
73. Grow herbs
74. Use herbs in your personal grooming
75. Care for leather boots
76. Wear opera gloves
77. Wear a Roman toga
78. Wash clothes by hand
79. Care for your period wig
80. Play hopscotch
81. Play jacks
82. Use a hoola hoop
83. Play marbles
84. Play real tennis
85. Play stickball
86. Make a pair of shoes
87. Make a hammock
88. Make a quill pen
89. Make papyrus
90. Write a sonnet
91. Write calligraphy
92. Understand opera
93. Make a corn husk doll
94. Make and play a didgeridoo
95. Ride a penny-farthing
96. Make a cave painting
97. Make a Roman mosaic
98. Pan for gold
99. Clean and polish silver
100. Blow glass
101. Make a stained-glass window.
My argument with the divine MJ was that while I can bake bread or even chocolate croissants I'm not sure this list is that useful these days. I mean how many people thatch roofs? Two in the Cotswolds, I should guess. I would say you only need three skills as a lady after, say, a nuclear war:
1. a strong stomach to be able to kill other people and eat them.
2. sexual skills to stimulate the gentlemen so they will do all the stick rubbing and wattling and daubing.
3. The ability to make sexy shoes out of animal carcasses.
Rat Shoe
Tarantula Shoe
I have all three skills so I am sorted. But what about you? What skills from the Life Skills 101 List do you have, and what other skills do you have?
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19 comments:
I believe I can roast chestnuts. And I can definitely wear a toga. As for the rest, eh!
Skills I have now...let's see...
I can talk my way out of a ticket 97% of the time. And I can juggle.
That list has the skills required of both a Viking's wife and a Roman centurion's wife. MJ obviously likes to cover all the bases. Let's face it, Emma, in that sort of world you'd be sold to the highest bidder as a concubine. I'd love to see your face when Senator Dirty Old Fatbelly outbid Pretty Boy Hercules.
I was going to make a coarse joke about making soft cheese but have held back. I can do very little on the list alas - the archery thing and write a sonnet. I guess I could kill wild deer and then compose a poem about how sad I am about their death but grateful for the full belly they've given me. Not sure if that'll get any woman eager for my stick rubbing skills (for all I may be eager for hers)... ;-)
I think I can do the cooking, cooking prep, and livestock maintenance ones. Oh, and bow and arrow. And reading tech stuff and operating them. So that's about 30 stuff on the list. And definitely smoking and playing games. Ok, that's like 40 things.
Besides that, I can charm/seduce people to get my way for most things.
Nope. Zilch.
That sort of stuff is best left to the working class and illegal immigrants.
Making hard cheese is pretty simple, Emma.
Take a hunk of soft cheese and just leave it unwrapped in the rear of the fridge for two months.
I discovered a piece last weekend that was so hard you could smash fleas with it...
That's an old photo of me.
I've had my hair cut since then.
I would just like to add that I could crush Garfer's skull between my thighs.
I can play real tennis and surprisingly I can also cure people with leeches and maggots. It's a long story on how that particular skill came about involving Mr. Clean products and cockroaches. Turns out you absolutely cannot cure anyone with cockroaches.
goodness.
MJ's thighs do look quite strong, don't they? she probably takes spin class.
i can do quite a few things on that list. but what i'd like to do most, is sit around all day smoking (a peace pipe will do).
if it's after the nuclear war, i figure my time is going to be short, so i might as well take smoking back up.
i've got smoking and sex covered.
Hi!
I just want to leave a quick note. Were we separated at birth? I So get you. You and that Gorilla Bananas are a hoot! I am forwarding your site to my friend Ana. I know she will just find you as fabulous as I did.
BTW- that list looked a lot like camping, which I do NOT do. Bon Bons and martinis for this girl.
i have had a man peel grapes for me just from a look...i think i will fair well...
it's not always what YOU can do, but what you can get OTHERS to do for you ;)
You're so gifted, Emma. I did laugh at that.
What special skills do I have ?
I can sleep absolutely anywhere. I find that a warm cab with the diesel engine running full throttle is best.
E-K
xx
(The train driver)
Oh I can do pretty much everything on that list. But really who'd be interested? Now, if Peaches Geldof or Nicole Ritchie were to give those things a go...then we're talking.
Winkity wink..
I counted 26 then lost the will to live (so not me, but grew up in wilds of Devon). However roasting some nuts in a toga while duelling has a certain attraction.
I could have been a court jester, head chopper-offer..executioner, that's it, or even a sycophantic diplomat. Hmm, I could gain access to state secrets, which I would then sell to the scheming underling Barons to cover my ass, or leaders of the great unwashed who are preparing to storm the bastille.
Actually I would have HATED living in the past..and the further back in time, the worse it would have been. Cue Eva Gabor to sing the Green Acres song.
All the 'lousy' LICE in those drafty castles, my word! I would have deplored wearing those poncy powdered wigs and having one of those little King Charles Spaniels attached to my lap to attract the creepy crawlies..eew!
How about Cro-Magnon days? Decaying meals and indoor outhouses scattered about. No deoderant and all those wonky unibrows portruding on those thick shelf-like brow ridges...
all shuffling around expelling sulphuric emissions that combine with the smoke from the roaring fire that kept the giant cave bears from dragging you off in the middle of the night.
It's beyond me how anyone ever survived.
I can bake the cookies.
GorillaBananas ...absolutelyI am a concubine to MJ's roman centurian wife!! I would have made a damned good concubine I am sure of it. I would have had a heaving cleavage and very high wig.
donn coppens...I think in ye olden days everyone ponged to high heaven so no one noticed. As for the pee and excrement running through the street, I can hardly bare to think of it. It may have been okay being a lady with lots of ladies maids to pick out your lice and hang pompadours about your person to disguise the fact that you reeked of seven day old cheese.
misssy m.....I am booking us for a flight for a cheapo plastic surgery in Brazil, you will have the Posh body makeover and I will have the Jade Goody body enlargment! And then...fame will beckon!
Mistress MJ wishes to know what you would conceal, if anything, in your "very high wig".
MJ.....just the usual: a selection of ebony dildos, ye olde french tickler made of donkey hide as well as a vial of cat's pee to rinse out my bits after congress.
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