The Right-Hand Whack Rule

If you hold your right hand up in front of you, palm facing downwards, then the thumb represents current flow, the fingers represent magnetic field lines, and the palm represents the ideal surface for whacking your neighbour with.

If you walk up a hill which is under the influence of vectors, you will gradually expand until you are at least three or four times your original size. Additionally, the bacteria on your body will expand at a rate that is hugely faster than that of your own body - having the effect that once you have reached the summit of the hill you are covered in three or four enormous, platter-sized bacteria.

If you drop a cheese wheel (or similarly shaped dairy product) from an aeroplane moving through the air at 20m/s, you will find that the pressure placed on the cheese as it accelerates is so great that when the cheese hits the ground it will continue to accelerate through the ground and eventually fire out through the other side of the planet and go into orbit. This is also, we understand, the process referred to in the dairy product ' processed cheese'.

Eyeballs are made so that if a person is travelling at a great velocity and is stopped suddenly, they will spring out of the headand float about weightless in an amusing way until someone comes along to put them back in.

Sometimes the reason you cannot push the little lever on your toaster down is because there is a family of mice living in there.

'Immortal Beloved' - An in-depth glance

Considering Beethoven's fascinating life, both in his professional and personal experiences as one of the greatest masters of music, it is hardly surprising 'Immortal Beloved', a biographical film describing his life, was premiered last Tuesday at the "Mad About Money" Theatre in the new film complex. Unfortunately, due the unique seating arrangements and rather unlikely-looking sound system at the cinema, I had a fair amount of trouble actually understanding and subsequently remembering what exactly was meant to be going on. Add this to my pitifully small general knowledge of the era, and various distracting comments from the audience ("He's the one who cuts his arm off, isn't he?"), I feel I received a somewhat confused version of the actual film.

Excuses aside, I enjoyed watching 'Immortal Beloved', my only regret being I did not do a bit of research into Beethoven's life before viewing, a process which would have no doubt enhanced my viewing and comprehension greatly. While other viewers (obviously more sensitive to the storyline than myself) were weeping over the apparent death of some seemingly irrelevant character (later found out to be Beethoven's friend's cousin or similar), I was bemusedly trying to understand any of the scene's relevance to anything else in the rest of the movie, who the deceased character actually was, and how any of this related to anything.

However, I did not do my research and was forced to watch the story unfold under the hazy glow of ignorance. Here is the general story line, as understood by me: Beethoven is dead and his friend and narrator of the movie makes an appearance - 'Schindler' is apparently looking for clues to find out the identity of an 'Immortal Beloved' mentioned in a letter from Beethoven which, thanks to a tea-lady with a Difference, was never received. A number of extremely subtle flashbacks occur, in which Beethoven is introduced as a composer and performer who does not want to play the same way as everybody else - his music is violent and emotional and (apparently) causes the loss of hair. It is about this time a female character who is probably vital to the plot of the film whom I cannot remember anything about says something and then drinks some tea. After this little escapade, she attends a concert of sorts in which a case of mistaken identity proves immemorable for all concerned. Still more flashbacks occur, one in which we see a young Beethoven cunningly escape the evil clutches of his drunkard father by ejecting himself out a window, running rampant through a picturesquely snowy forest and ending up in a frozen lake. At some time between then and the final credits, Beethoven manages to go deaf, adopt, for some obscure reason, his own nephew, cause the attempted suicide of the same nephew, miss his very own 'Immortal Beloved' at the hotel by about .3 of a second, and die. A busy man indeed.

One certain complaint I have about this movie is the lack of 'freaky' flash-back effects. There is many a scene where a good old-fashioned 'wavery-water with appropriate sound-effects' mix would be appreciated, if only to separate the present from the past. I myself would suggest a neat little transition in the form of an enormous spinning music note - a semi-quaver for example - accompanied with a couple of bars some really, really inappropriate theme music (such as the theme from 'Flashdance'), something akin to the scene-swapping device on Batman: The Original Series. Another complaint I could make of the general production techniques of the movie was the variation and lack of decent Viennese accents among the cast, a complaint, however, as my regular readers will confirm, I make about almost every movie reviewed regardless of actual setting, nationality or language the film is in, and can probably be disregarded, as can, admittedly, most of the above.

Colonel Blood was an Englishman. He was also a thief. He stole many things. But the thing he became infamous for was the attempted theft of the crown jewels.

After months of planning all was arranged. He, and evil accomplice Mr Bloggs, sneaked into the jewel chamber with the use of Mr Bloggs' cunning invisible clothing. When guards approached them, Blood lopped their heads off with his infamous Samarai Sword.

Then he broke into the jewel case. At the sound of more nearing guards, he panicked and concealed the Crown jewels in his pantaloons. Then he dashed off.

Sadly, Blood was soon discovered by the guards and sentenced to death by execution. I admire him because he is my great-great-great uncle.