Dan's Tedious Link

Each morning Dan has to link from one song to the next through a series of inter-linking stories.

The Real Slim Shady - Eminem

The Real Slim Shady is a reference to the moniker that Eminem uses, "Slim Shady". Slim is an antonym for fat and Ash Bradnam is fat. Bradnam's a mispelt version of the name Bradman, the famous Australian cricketer with a test batting average of 99.94.

9994 Grotius is a main belt asteroid that orbits the sun every 4.15 years, whereas Neptune orbits the sun every 165 years. Neptune is the Roman God of the sea and C is the chemical symbol for carbon. Carbon 14 is used for radioactive dating and decays with a half-life of 5,730 years.

Half-Life is a video game produced by Valve for total nerds that I spent the majority of the adolescence playing. Adolescents is a song by the band Incubus, but not the one we're playing today and certainly not one you'd hear at a disco, unless the DJ was either really bad or some form of lower primate like an ape or monkey.

Now if that simian DJ happened to take his disco and mount it on the back of a truck to spread his poorly-chosen playlist far and wide it could then feasibly be described as a Simian Mobile Disco, which cleverly links us to the song Audacity of Huge by Simian Mobile Disco.

Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity of Huge

A Simian Mobile Disco would no doubt be an entertaining evening but probably not nearly as entertaining as one of the Blue Light Discos I attended between the years of 1994 and 1997 at the Nambour PCYC. In grade 6 I kissed Danielle Hollins on the dance floor at one such disco while the song Let's Groove Tonight by Earth, Wind and Fire was playing.

Fire, also known as the chemical process combustion, is the rapid oxidation of a material like wood, cardboard or a potentially an unfortunate marmoset, an animal which is native to Bolivia. People from Bolivia are known as Bolivians whereas people from Chad are known as Chadians, although someone whose name is Chad is simply known as Chad and someone whose name is Ash Bradnam is known to be fat.

Ash is also the name of the lead character in the Pokemon cartoon series who travels with his trusty sidekick Pikachu. Pikachu can't talk but if could and he happened to tell Ash he desired him, in a strictly platonic and masculine way, Ash would be socially compelled to reply in kind and tell Pikachu, "I desire you too" which cleverly links us to today's old school song Desire, U2.

U2 - Desire

U2 is 569 less than U571, a World War 2 film about an American submarine crew stranded aboard a German U-Boat in 1942. The film stars Matthew McConaughey who has a particular penchant for removing his shirt in films and showing off his glistening rig, something Ash Bradnam would no doubt do more often were it not for the fact he is fat.

The word rig in this colloquial sense has a very different meaning to rig in the context of an industrial oil drilling operation, like the ones in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico is partially landlocked unlike Liechtenstein which is not only landlocked but surrounded entirely by countries that are also landlocked, one of only two places on Earth which exists in that state, the other of which I will randomly say as the very last word of this diatribe.

"Diatribe" is essentially an unnecessary and indulgent way of saying "long, boring speech", much like the ones that a political party that is a constituent member of an electoral bloc might make.

Such a group is known as a Bloc Party, and if this collective happened to find itself beset by an unusually aggressive convocation of eagles, then it is feasible that a bystander sympathetic to their cause would attempt to alert them with the phrase, "Bloc Party! Talons!" which clever links us to today's old school song "Talons", by Bloc Party.

Bloc Party - Talons

A talon is the claw of a bird of prey, such as a hawk, falcon or eagle. Eagle was also the callsign given to Apollo 11's Lunar Module which was the first craft in history to transport humans to another celestial body, in this case the moon. All in all twelve men have set foot on the moon, whereas the moon has never set foot on anything because it doesn't have feet, much like a snake.

Ash Bradnam is terrified of snakes, not because he is fat but because some species, such as the taipan, can kill a fully grown human (or overgrown in Ash's case) in less than 30 minutes. 30 minutes of arc is exactly half a degree, which was the temperature in centigrade in Perth on the 18th of July 1997 during the cold-snap which affect that city for 16 consecutive days.

16 consecutive days is a long period to work for, and is usually only expected of doctors, nurses, dentists or technicians who are "on call" which cleverly links us to Kings of Leon's 2007 song On Call.

Kings of Leon - On Call

The Kings of Leon are not named after the Kingdom of Leon which disbanded in 1833 and is now known as the autonomous community of Castile and León in Spain. Madrid is the captial of Spain and also the largest city, but not the largest in Europe. That title belongs to London, which was also the most populous city in the world until 1925. Between 1348 and 1350 London lost a third of its population to the Black Death, which killed approximately a fifth of the people on the planet at that time. A fifth is also the square root of 0.04, 5 to the power of -1, the cosine of 78.46 degrees, an amendment to the United States Constitution, a unit of volume for distilled beverages, a musical interval and the percentage of Ash Bradnam's body that is comprised of fat. It's also a symphony by Beethoven who annoyingly went completely deaf in 1802, meaning that, had he not already been dead for 149 years, he wouldn't have been able to hear the sample of that very symphony in Walter Murphy's disco hit "A Fifth of Beethoven", which also features a horn section. electric piano, wurlitzer organ and four-to-the-floor disco beat which cleverly links us to today's old school song Four to the Floor by Starsailor.

Starsailor - Four to the Floor

Starsailor is the literal translation of the word 'astronaut' from Ancient Greek, the language of the philosopher Homer who wrote the Odyssey. Odyssey Number 5 is not the fourth sequel to this historically significant work but an album released by Powderfinger some 2800 years after Homer's death. Cogsy from Powderfinger's dad, Graham, was my physics teacher at Nambour State High School. Nambour, despite Ash Bradnam's overweight yet underwhelming protests, is actually the greatest place on Earth, the third planet from the Sun. The forecast for the center of the sun today is fine with a top of approximately 15.7 million degrees, whereas the moon will be headed for -200 degrees. Jim Lovell and Fred Haise wouldn't know what the temperature on the moon is like because stupidly they blew up their spacecraft Apollo 13 on the way there in 1970. Embarrassingly they survived and their story was made into a movie directed by Ron Howard in 1995. Some eight years later Howard went on to become the narrator and executive producer of the critically acclaimed Fox TV series Arrested Development which cleverly links us to today's old school song Mr. Wendal by Arrested Development.

Arrested Development - Mr. Wendal

The subject of Mr. Wendal is almost certainly not Wendell Sailor, not only because Wendell is his first name and it makes to sense to call him Mr. Wendal, but also as his name is spelt differently. Two words that sound identical but are spelt differently are called "homophonic heterographs". The Greek prefix homo means "the same", whereas the Latin prefix homo means "man or human being". For example it would be grammatically legitimate to say "Ash Bradnam is a homo" using the Latin definition, or "Ash Bradnam is homo as a homo" using the Greek then Latin definitions respectively. Homo has other meanings, for example it is an acronym for "Highest Occupied Molecular Orbit", and is also a slang word used to refer to homogenised milk in Canadian English. The study of the origin and history of words, such as "homo", it known as etymology, which is an entirely different field to that of entomology, the study of insects such as moths, crickets, weevils, spiders that have hidden two of their legs and butterflies which clever links us to today's old school song Butterfly by Crazy Town.

Crazy Town - Butterfly

Tetracycline suggest by Matt on twitter.

Crazy Town are a classic example of one hit wonder, their song Butterfly was number one in 15 countries but since then they have only managed to muster a 23 on the UK singles chart for "Revolving Door". "Revolving door" doesn't sound as nice as "cellar door", a phrase Edgar Allen Poe considered to be his favourite in the English language. Poe was born an ugly bastard in 1809 and wrote "The Raven" 36 years later, four years before his death from either alcohol abuse, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide or tuberculosis. Either way he could have done with some tetracycline or at the very least a bag of grapes and a nice lie down. Lying down has only killed one person in history: the Elephant Man in 1890, the same year US Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act to erode Standard Oil's market monopoly. Standard Oil was founded by John D. Rockerfeller, the richest human who has ever lived, and with cash like that surely at least one chick would be crawling all over you, which sort of clever links us to today's old school song The Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim.

Fatboy Slim - The Rockafeller Skank

Shane on Twitter suggested I use "paraphernalia"

Oysters Rockerfeller are served with a green herb (like parsley), a butter sauce and bread crumbs on the half-shell, unlike the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who serve Shredder and the foot soldiers green punishment from within the confines of a half-shell. I always fill up half at the Shell because I'm too tight to pay for a full tank of petrol and plus my car does about 100km per 11L which isn't bad considering it was built in 1987, the same year Ke$ha was born. Ke$ha spells her name with a dollar sign, presumably an American dollar sign, which is unfortunate because the Australian dollar is currently trading above the US which means you can buy more umbrellas, cotton buds, bathroom fixtures and general paraphernalia with it. If you wanted to buy an umbrella in the 5th century BC you would have struggled, not because it's wasn't invented (it's been around for about 4000 years) but because you would most likely have to trade for one in spices like cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, salt and pepper which cleverly links us to today's old school song Salt n Pepa - Push it.

Salt n Pepa - Push it

We all know you shouldn't push it on the toilet otherwise you may suffer a rectal prolapse, a complication which can also occur during pregnancy or childbirth unless you get a caesarian section. It is believed by some that Julius Caesar was born by caesarian section in Ancient Rome, which is clearly ridiculous because his mother lived for many yeas after his birth. I do however personally believe that Julius Caesar invent the caesar salad despite it never being referenced in any document until 1946, or MCMXLVI as Caesar would have called it. He would have been 2047 years old when he first read about his salad in a Los Angeles restaurant menu and consumed about 750,000 of his own salads. If you took that same number of salads and fed them to all the inhabitants of Mogok, Burma at a rate of three salads a day, you'd be able to feed them for... 2 days, but if (and only if) they all skipped breakfast on the second day and had nutella on toast instead. The Mogokians need all the nutella they can get to keep their energy up while they mine for the gemstones that their land is famous for like sapphires, peridots, moonstones, garnets and rubies which cleverly links us to today's old school song Ruby by the Kaiser Chiefs.

Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby

The Kaizer Chiefs are a South African football club from Johannesburg whose team colours are black and gold which cleverly links us to Sam Sparro's 2008 song "Black and Gold". Unfortunately for all of you that isn't the song we're playing today though, now Sam Sparro is a former child actor, his first role being in a McDonald's commercial. Ash Bradnam's favourite McDonald's item is "everything", although more specifically it is a Big Mac, which was first introduced in Pennsylvania 44 years ago when Ash was only 16. The highest point in Pennsylvania is Mt. Davis, no relation to Ben Davis the Australian sports journalist who, counterintuitively, has never won the Davis Cup. Serbia are the current Davis Cup champions, which seems ridiculous as it only officially became a country again in 2006. Serbia's flag is white, red and blue... which anticlimactically links us to Eiffel 65's 1999 musical turd Blue.

Eiffel 65 - Blue

Eiffel 65 got their name by using a computer to randomly generate the word "Eiffel" and then getting the number 65 accidentally written on one of their demos, whereas British band "Does it Offend You, Yeah?" were named after two members turned on a television and used the first sentence they heard. The quote came from Ricky Gervais' character David Brent in the Office during the very first episode. In 2004 the Office won the Golden Globe for "Best Television Series: Musical Comedy", the only British TV series to have done so ever, the same year Lance Armstrong because the only person ever to win six consecutive Tour de Frances. He also won in 2005 making it 7-in-a-row, a much more impressive feat than flipping seven straight heads on a coin, the odds of which are 1 in 128. The odds of walking on the moon are approximately 3 in 1.75 billion, unless you are female in which case they seem to be zero. This merely suggest that NASA was extremely sexist in the late 60s and early 70s, not that there is anything disadvantageous about a girl... which clever links us to Nirvana's "About a Girl".

Nirvana - About a Girl

Nirvana is the highest state of mind one practicing Buddhism can achieve, an entirely different high to that of the Rastafari movement, members of which consider a previous Ethiopian Emperor to be the reincarnation of Jesus. Jesus was actually born somewhere between 7 and 2 BCE and is expected by some Christians to be cruising back down to Earth to chill for a minute with his homies and judge the living and dead. It is said to "Judge not, lest ye be judged" making it extremely difficult to do your job if you are indeed a judge, or just awarding the prizes at the Queensland Dark Rich Fruit Cake Competition which was won by Loretta Hether-ing-ton of Burnett last year. Sir Arthur Hethe-ring-ton was the first Chairman of the British Gas Corporation, who were the monopoly supplier of natural gas to the United Kingdom until 1997. The world's leading natural gas exporter is Russia, which also exports the most oil, although the largest reserves of oil are found in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is sometimes referred to as "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" which are located in Mecca and Medina. When the oil supplies in the Middle East inevitable run out and it has to become less hot and stuffy and more appealing to tourists, I like to think it will be referred to as funky and cold. This means its two holiest places will be rebranded Funky Cold Mecca and Funky Cold Medina which cleverly links us to today's old school song Funky Cold Medina by Tone Loc.

Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina

Medina is a village in Tolna County, Hungary, it has a population of 856 at last census and the postcode is 7-0-5-7. 7057 is the 907th prime, and 907 is the 155th prime but 155 is obviously not prime as it is divisible by 5 leaving 31. Conveniently 31 miles per hour is the approximate top speed of a cassowary through dense forest. Only one documented human death has been attributed to a cassowary and it was in 1926, the same year Turkey switch to the Gregorian calendar, however no humans deaths have ever been attributed to a turkey. Conversely multiple turkey deaths have been attributed to humans, especially in the USA around the 20th of November each year. Unfortunately these crimes do go unpunished as turkeys have not yet evolved the mental faculties to form an adequate legal system, unlike turkey vultures which have evolved an olfactory lobe that allows them to detect specific smells up to 20 kilometers away. Better still is the olfactory ability of certain types of salmon, allowing them to travel thousands of kilometers to return to their birthplace to spawn offspring. Salmon stupidly then decide to almost immediately die after performing such a feat, not even bothering to take the time to celebrate with a quick salmon party, at which they could get sam-intoxicated, contract salmonella or just salmon dance which clever links us to today's old school song Salmon Dance by the Chemical Brothers.

The Chemical Brothers - The Salmon Dance

Salmon are anadromous meaning they spend the majority of their lives at sea but migrate to fresh water to breed. Breed rhymes with Creed who are a Nickelback cover band from the early 2000s, and Nickelback rhymes with stickleback which is a family of fish consisting of 16 member species. The square root of 16 is 4 and the square root of 4 is 2 meaning that 2 to the power of 4 is 16 and Jennifer Rush's the Power of Love sounds like this *GRAB*. That song was released in 1985 and the album version goes for 6 minutes and 4 seconds which, if you ask me, is a little bit indulgent, although people don't often ask me as they are frightened off by my disproportionately large head. The medical term for someone with an abnormally large cranium is macrocephaly from the Greek words macro, meaning long, and cephaly, meaning head. The Greek word "pod" means feet, therefore the word Cephalopods, encompassing octopuses and squid, is translated as "heat-feets" in Greek. Cephalopods can change colour to camouflage themselves but despite this nearly all are colourblind, which ridiculously means they can't detect blues, reds and yellows which cleverly links us to today's old school song Yellow by Coldplay.

Coldplay - Yellow

Coldplay were formed in 1996 by Chris Martin, but not the same Chris Martin who is currently a right-arm fast-medium bowler in the New Zealand cricket team. He took 4/89 over both innings against Australia at the Gabba last week, including Hughes in Australia's second innings who was caught flashing outside off. Flashing, otherwise known as "wilful exposure", is illegal in Queensland and the offender can receive a 12 month penalty even if no offense is actually taken. 12 months is 31 million, 557 thousand, 600 seconds, and a second is the duration of 9 billion 192 million 631 thousand 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. I have no idea what that means as I literally just plagiarised it from Wikipedia last night, an online encyclopedia which could make millions of dollars for its founders if it charged for it's information instead of choosing to give it away, which clever links us to today's old school song Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give it Away.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give it Away

Everyone thinks the word "Chili" in "Red Hot Chili Peppers" is spelt with two ls, when in actuality it is only one. Rarely do English words contain three letters in a row, although frill-less, goddess-ship and wall-less are all examples of this. Hirschsprung's contains seven consecutive consonants and the words Beijing and Fiji have three dotted letters straight. The distance between Beijing and Fiji is 8 thousand and 523 kilometers making them one and one third the radius of the Earth away from each other. If you were to purchase a rickshaw in Beijing and attempt to run it to Fiji over the 243 days necessary you would encounter numerous problems, such as heatstroke, shin splints and the Pacific Ocean. It is for these reasons a rickshaw has never completed a circumnavigation of the globe, unlike the German-built LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin which, in 1929, became the first aircraft to travel around the world which clever links us to today's old school song Daft Punk - Around the World.

Daft Punk - Around the World

"Around the World in Eighty Days" was written by Jules Verne and published in 1873. It is the story of Phileas Fogg's attempt to circumnavigate the Earth to win the sum of 20,000 pounds. 20,000 pounds doesn't seem like much, but it's actually 9 thousand and 91 kilograms, much heavier than the largest elephant ever weighed which came in at 7 thousand 5 hundred kilograms. Elephants never forget, except for Dumbo, who forgot how to fly until was told his magic feather wasn't actually magic at all and he could fly without it. Magic Feather is a song by an obscure Texas band called Shiva's Headband who were active during the 60s and 70s, and are still together to this day despite no-one knowing who they are. Presumably they're named for the Hindu God Shiva, an extremely chilled out dude who has power over death, immortality and rebirth, "rebirth" as in the process of being born again, not the seventh studio album from Lil Wayne featuring Kevin Rudolf, Nicki Minaj and Eminem but was recorded Without Me which cleverly links us twice to today's old school song Eminem - Without Me.

Eminem - Without Me

M&Ms are a candy shelled chocolate confectionary produced by Mars, Incorporated since 1941. The Ms stand for the surnames of the inventors: Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey's Chocolate president William F. R. Murrie; and Forrest Mars Senior, the founder of Mars, Incorporated. The company Mars was founded in 1911 whereas the planet Mars was founded at least four billion years ago. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and home to the volcano Olympus Mons which, at 22km high, is one of the tallest mountains in the Solar System and three times larger than Everest. The asteroid Vesta has a mountain 23 kilometres high which is ridiculous seeing as it only has a diameter of 530 kilometres. That's analogous to having a pimple 1 centimetre high on your forehead, unless you were a pony in which case it would be much bigger, as your head would be genuine-ly larger which cleverly links us twice to today's old school song Pony by Ginuwine.

Ginuwine - Pony

The Wikipedia entry on "pony" is over 2,000 words long which seems unnecessary seeing as they are essentially just small horses, although different from foals. Foals are a rock band from Oxford in England signed to Transgressive Records, which differs to transgressive phenotypes in that the former is a music production label and the latter a phenotype more extreme than the phenotypes displayed by either of parents of an individual organism. Organism rhymes with schism, the name of a song released by Tool in 2001, the year Stanley Kubrick set his Space Odyssey. Kubrick is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time, although his only Oscar win, from 13 nominations, was for special effects on the aforementioned epic. Kevin O'Connell is worse off still, with 20 nominations for sound mixing and not a single win. In 1989 his film Black Rain was nominated alongside Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third film in the series which follows Indiana Jones Junior and Senior's attempt to accomplish amazing feats such as discovering the Holy Grail, which cleverly links us to today's old school song Junior Senior's Move Your Feet.

Junior Senior - Move Your Feet

Junior Senior is also the name of a 2002 film from India, the capital of which is New Delhi, although people often mistakenly believe it is Mumbai which is its most populous city. The current population of India is 1.2 billion, and is set to pass China's 1.3 billion by 2030. 2030 should be a big year, as it's predicted that the European Space Agency will land humans on Mars, Japan will construct a lunar base and there will be more robots than humans in developed countries. By 2030 I also plan to be turning 46 years old, which is one year per human chromosome per cell. Cell is a 2006 book by Stephen King about a mysterious mobile phone signal that turns the majority of the human race into zombies, which is unrealistic because no-one actually answers their phones nowadays. Barrack Obama never answers a phone, his personal assistant Reggie Love is lumped with that task as he is the President of the United States of America which cleverly double links us to today's old school song Lump by the Presidents of the United States of America.

Presidents of the United States of America - Lump

George Washington was the first President of the United States of America, serving from 1789 until 1797. William Henry Harrison, the ninth President, was the first to die in office and only served for 32 days, the shortest tenure in history. He was succeeded by John Tyler who, despite being born in 1790, still has two living grandsons. Their names are Lyon Tyler Junior, born in 1924, and Harrison Tyler, born in 1928. They were born when their father, Lyon Tyler, was 71 and 75 respectively, and he was born when John Tyler was 63. The world's oldest father is Indian man Ramjeet Raghav who, at the age of 94, has just welcomed his first son into the world. This feat is more astonishing when you consider that over 50% of the Indian population is younger than 25. China, the world's most populous country, has an average age of 39. It has been said that the Earth would be thrown off it's orbit if everyone in China were to jump around, which is not only untrue and ridiculous but also the name of our old school track for today by House of Pain.

House of Pain - Jump Around

House of Pain reformed in 2010 after breaking up in the 1996 when Everlast started his solo career and DJ Lethal joined Limp Bizkit. Limp Bizkit is fronted by Fred Durst, although earlier in his life he was a tattoo artist and also mowed lawns for a living. Grass grows between 5 and 15 centimeters per week depending on ambient conditions, whereas the slowest growing tree ever discovered is a white cedar in Canada that, after 155 years, was only 10.2 centimeters high. Contrary to popular belief trees, apart from a few trace minerals, grow out of air not soil. The carbon that trees are majority composed of is derived from carbon dioxide in the air, a colourless, odourless compound that exacerbates global warming. Volcanoes, both terrestrial and aquatic, produce approximately 200 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, the same amount expelled due to human activity every 4 days. Owing to this global temperatures have risen almost 1 degree Celsius in the last 100 years, although the hottest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded was in 1922 in Libya, being 57.8 degrees. The Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, rated at 564 times hotter than Tabasco sauce, is the hottest naturally occurring chili pepper, potentially describable as red hot, which links us to today's old school song, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Under the Bridge.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the Bridge