some students in Vietnam are wearing wigs as a means of cheating exams. Said wigs are reported to be stuffed with electronic hardware so associates can forward correct answers to examinees. Teachers became suspicious when students wearing 18th Century North European headgear began arriving for an important matriculation. Unfortunately heavy horsehair and South East Asian temperatures mix not and a number of sweating students short circuited and therefore, in more ways than one, failed. Some were mortified to discover they could only receive the BBC's South Asia Service and one became linked to a passing NSA satellite that insisted his name was Dominique. Missiles were prepared on the US Indian Ocean fleet until someone established that phrases such as,
"Well it was on page bloody 23 last night,"
and,
"The answer's pi r squared dammit. Bollocks, your doing literature? I thought it was physics!" Who is this? Get off the line."
were not Al Qaeda attack codes.
Expect arrests and renditions soon.
On a separate wig issue, the true story of their demise has a connection to those modern student japes reported above. As the 17th Century drew to a close wigs developed an ostentation not previously seen. With the expansion of cities and particularly London land prices put the promise of a country home beyond the reach of those previously considered wealthy. For a short period during the 1750's a number of wigs were marketed with smallholdings knitted into the thatch. The idea was stunning in it's brilliance and would have worked but for a series of highly publicised deaths by conflagration. The foppish rich (and isn't it always them) seeking to make savings through reduced staff numbers were unaware that at night fire requires careful husbandry, or at the very least to be put out. At nightfall throughout London sightings were reported of a phenomenon initially thought to be huge horizontal matches with brightly burning heads. Only on closer examination was it discovered they were in fact rich people with brightly burning heads. Many of these heads were stolen by urchins to the East End where a spattering skull properly maintained could provide heat to a poor family for months.
Smallholding and country house wigs soon fell from fashion though one concomitant fact did not escape rationalists of the time. The 10 years during which these rich fools fought to establish this ridiculous fashion and during which many fell foul of their own foolishness was also the only decade in that century when syphilis showed a decline.
There's something poetic about that, dontchathink?
13 comments:
not sure about poetic, but it does seem to lead to a maze of questions from which there is no escape....
Hayden,
I like that. Something that leads to a maze of questions from which there is no escape.
Now that is poetry.
x
it's the wigs, Dan. Fashion is always attractive to the fashionable, be they nose piercers or wig-wearers or shit-stirrers.
so what IS it in this instance that led to a lowered population growth? everyone too busy tidying up a stray, escaped hair to indulge in hedonistic pleasure? It makes no sense, there is no logic to catch hold of.
I'm wandering in a thicket of questions, Dan, and am indeed lost. I appreciate your appreciation, but at a deep, fundamental level, all I can say is "HUH? Waaa...?"
Now that is clearly less than poetry, but it's enmeshed/entrapped me all of the same.
I await your insight that will release me from this sinking ooze....(help me, I'm drowning....)
Hayden, Hayden, Hayden, fashion and logic in the same sentence? I think not. And therein lies the rub as Old Bill Spokeshave used to have it. Fashion is a fickle, and at times brutal business, especially so when the rich are vying for influence. Too much money, not enough sense, it's an old story. Suffice to describe in this case how the East End poor benefited thrice from those foolhardy fops. On the one hand each noggin demonstrated an incandescence that kept hearths warm on bitter London nights, on the other hand once burned away it could become a decorative ashtray, on the third hand the possibility also presented for it to be a topic of conversation for visiting friends.
Impressive recycling methinks.
*diving intrepidly into the murky depths*
ok. a decline in syphilis with a comcommitant (but ASSUMED) decline in population is inferred.
but given that head wigs provide no barrier to the 'give and take' of syphilis, (yes yes yes, head being that thing on your shouldars, yes, and not the appendage to which the local vixins mouth is aptly laid,)well then - given that head wigs provide no proof against syphilus - except, perhaps against the desire to interpenetrate - (which I struggled to deal with in my earlier comment)
can we assume here that head wigs (of this type) are an active discouragement of activities that might- possibly - involve the transmission of syphillus? Indeed, is it even thought that I can SPELL Syphillus?
If so, the inquiring mind wants to know: is it because the wig is unattractive? because the wig in some way physically interferes with the usual interpenetration of orifices?
why DID syphillus infections ebb?
I'm lost in the desert.... and it's bloody hot...
Hayden,
Maybe I've been a touch too clever re the syphillis. It's a sly dig at the indolent rich, the syphillitic rich. The joke being that these fops are so lazy they can't even put out fires, therefore any who subsequently die also reduce the number of syphillitics in the general poplulation and therefore syphillis declines.
The only truth in the post is the vietnam students cheating and the 17th Century rich were generally selfish and indolent. The rest is made up. However I still think it has an internal consistency, ie it makes a sort of sense as an extended joke which is what it's meant to be.
For a while I thought you were making that up about the wigs and cheating, Dan. Why didn't they just put their energy into studying instead of coming up with weird ways to cheat?
The wigs here are hair-raising. Red wigs. Gold-plated looking wigs. Stiff wigs. Wigs that look as tough as car tyres...
They're expensive...and not worn by the wealthy.
: )
Jessica,
Your kind words are much appreciated, thanks. I'll take a look at the link you suggested.
G,
Re the Viet school kids cheating, who knows why they do it? To pass with the least effort they can muster I suppose. But that's teenagers for you. Shouldn't be suprised really. I'd give them top marks for their cheek and imaginative flair.
Alex,
Thanks for the smiley!
This should SOOO be a five part mini series.
I think you should direct it.
I'm with buffy on this. you could easily stretch the convolutions and intertwinings into 5 episodes, maybe 10.
but my head would be spinning as I tried in vain to keep track.
Buffy and Hayden,
Hmmmmmmmmm. 5 episodes, 10 episodes. On 17th Century wigs, syphillis and cheating via electronic hardware hidden in hairpeices. And you want me to squeeze that into only 10 episodes?
A challenge, maybe?
Pardon my conclusion, but that decline in syphilis was probably not real... I mean, the number of accounted cases may have dropped, eventually. But my guess is the rich were most of the accounted cases if not all. Who would account for the sickness or even death of a poor bloke in 18th century London?
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