October 29, 2006

Slow news-day filter This showed up as a headline on Yahoo! News.

Change ringing is, however, centuries old. If you'd like hear/play with the bells, try this.

  • The bells — ranging in weight from a few hundred pounds to more than a ton — were cast by pouring a molten bronze alloy into molds that were hand-crafted using a mixture of sand, water, chopped hay and horse manure. I listened... I hear the sounds of thousands of horse manures joyfully pealing in plops.
  • church bells are an abomination unto my mattress.
  • I have a mattress, you know, & I'm not afraid to fucking use it.
  • ... molds that were hand-crafted ... Ask not whose dainty hands were those that shaped the molds where the wet bronze flows ...
  • *peals joyfully into path's thread* I never knew "ringing in the change" or "ringing in the year" was a literal thing!
  • The bells swing 360 degrees from their frames as they're rung using 30-foot ropes, producing the shimmering sounds whose patterns change hour after hour. The more bells are involved, the longer they can be rung without repeating a pattern. For instance, six bells have 720 permutations, while 12 can go through 479,001,600. You always gotta work the math, don'tcha.