Hey, back at ya

There's only 23* days to go until:

Yet another thing that we Yanks know about the Land Down Under is boomerangs.

You all know what a boomerang is:  It’s a curved stick that, when thrown through the air, returns to the person throwing it unless it’s me.

It’s the ancient relative of the Frisbee, which is a disk that floats through the air into the hands of your smiling friend, or onto the neighbors roof it was thrown by me.

Being the ever responsible journalist, I wanted to make sure I was factually accurate about boomerangs, so I did what any good researcher does these days. I looked it up on Wikipedia. There was a length article that said the most amazing thing:

Historical evidence also points to the use of non-returning boomerangs by the ancient Egyptians, Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of southern India for killing birds and rabbits. Indeed, some boomerangs were not thrown at all, but were used in hand to hand combat by Indigenous Australians.

So let me get this straight:

• Boomerangs are not always designed to come back, and
• sometimes they were made for  "not throwing"?

Yea, right. I believe I have just found proof that people just make stuff up on Wikipedia.


I suppose if I look up Paula Abdul in Wikipedia, it's going to say that her Straight Up wasn't all that great. I suppose it will say that Stefano DeMira**, the evil villain of the soap opera Days of Our Lives, is totally dead this time and is not coming back - like the 12th time he was killed was the charm that finally did him in for good, that evil dastard. But I digress...

Maybe this is where my friends Merriam and Webster come to my aid:

• Merriam says boomerang is a noun that is "a bent or angular throwing club typically flat on one side and rounded on the other so that it soars or curves in flight; especially : one designed to return near the thrower."
• Webster, who I frequently feel I owe a beer to, says that boomerang is intransitive verb that is "an act or utterance that backfires on its originator."

Neither Merriam or Webster are fluent in Dharuk (Australian aboriginal language of the Port Jackson area), though they do know the word was bumarinʸ. (Webster does seem to be speaking in Dharuk after a few Fosters, though he doesn't think so.)

Does this settle the whole throwing and returning thing?

Good.

What we 50-year-old Yanks really needed was the Youtube, where you can watch any one of a dozen or so really good videos on how to throw a boomerang.  Please, watch this video many times before you actually try to throw a boomerang, especially if you're going to do it indoors.  It still looks like a pretty iffy thing.

As far as how the non-returning, non-thrown boomerangs work, I don't think a video is needed.

***

* 23 is a prime number. As we count down, there's a lot more prime number opportunities coming. I wouldn't be surprised if I got commendations from some prime number societies for how I'm breathing new life into prime numbers.  It really was about time, but I have to say the honor has been all mine.

***

**I actually saw the first time Stefano died in 1985. It showed good could prevail over evil. I'm not sure coming back to live 10 or 11 times is as positive a message.  He did have a cool accent, and when he would say "Rrrrroman Brady" and rolled the R really hard, it sounded really cool.

Not that I miss watching daytime soaps; I'm just more partial to minty soaps these days.

***

For those of you who have an a boomerang and have never thrown it, it's probably safer to sleep with it under your pillow and make friends with it, just in case it really does come back to you when you do throw it. A boomerang looks like it could leave a lump on your noggin if it was wanting to.

I'm not saying it should be your BFF; that should be someone special - but you should have at least a positive relationship.

Centennial Celebration

Pffft! Pffft!

This is the 100th post to Budding Ventriloquist. 

What's happened over the course of 100 posts?

• Ten individuals and one group (the cast of Glee) were honored with the designation "face that belongs on a ventriloquist dummy" (the V Face List).
• "Several" individuals were determined NOT to belong on the V Face List. (The generalization "several" is used to spare those people embarrassment. It's not personal, folks. Either you were born with it or not.  Like bowed legs.)
• My proposed Ventriloquist in Space Program (VISP) is gaining quiet interest at NASA. Very, very quiet interest.
• I am in possession of a small Charlie McCarthy dummy and a great monkey puppet. Both still need some repair. Apparently, ventriloquist dummies and puppets are like motorcycles. They always need some work.
• The hit counter on the BV page clicked over 920 hits. To my estimation, more than half are NOT me. Wow.
• I referenced Paula Abdul only once. This doesn't seen right to me. Not right at all.
• My number of regular readers doubled  from one to two, causing me to refer to regular readers in plural. Goes to show big change is possible.
• The ads that the Google/Blogger folks run on my page have fetched me the handsome sum of 20 cents on account.  $9.80 to go and I get a real check for $10.  How cool is that?
• In the last 50 posts, pictures have become a regular thang for my blog. My favorites are the Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds peeps. And Julia Roberts vis-a-vis Lady Penelope, of course.
• There was a  fantasy spat with Julia Roberts I actually believed happened. Don't worry, it was only for a minute. Or ten.

The next big milestone - 200 posts - seems so far away. But considering I've written 100 things about ventriloquism and have hardly started actually learning how to do the Art of Kings, the 200 post mark is just around the corner.

***

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me,

Three Good Springs,

Two Moving Eyebrows,

And a full-sized ventriloquist dummy.

The time/space ventinuum

Dear NASA and President Obama:

I am excited to hear of today's highly successful launch of the new Ares1-X rocket.  Onward to the moon.  So what if it's boldly going to where we already have been. I think it's cool.

When you do gear up for what is truly the next great challenge - going to Mars - I want to volunteer for the first mission.  The good news is that with my trusty ventriloquist characters along, I will always have company on the long journey.  If there needs to be more people on the crew, I'm sure they will learn to enjoy either my dummy or my monkey puppet. Both can be quite charming.

I realize this adventure is many years away.  I will drop you a line every so often as I hone my craft and work towards being the first ventiloquist in space.  As my very regular (and hey, I was just being friendly) notes to Paula Abdul resulted in an utterly ridiculous restraining order, please let me know how often is permissible.

My email is bushmandaniel@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Dan Bushman
Budding Ventriloquist
Budding Astronaut
American