Listing to Port

1. Stephen King’s ‘It’ was originally published under a different name. However, an early edition of the book was invited to a book party at which various volumes were playing a game of 'it’ and/or 'tag’. 'It’ was tagged and, as a rather large and ponderous volume, was not able to bounce fast enough to tag any other books in turn. Although 'It’ has attended many book parties since in an attempt to get its original title back, it has not yet been able to do so. But keep an eye out: maybe, someday soon, some other book on your shelves will be called 'It’.
2. Every twenty-seventh copy of 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ on sale is actually a small box containing a compressed house elf and a spell to make readers believe that they have finished the book. This scheme, part of a wider effort to disperse house elves more widely among the non-wizarding world, has been in place for some fifteen years. The spell is rather imperfect in its effect, so you can sometimes tell if you have one of these copies by how well you remember the plot of the book.
3. It is nearly impossible to keep the Complete Works of Shakespeare on a shelf together without one of them eventually stabbing another one. Savvy librarians often use stab-proof inserts between copies to prevent book damage. Titus Andronicus is particularly notorious for its scrappy nature, and has been known to spring off the shelves in an attempt to grapple with the works of Kit Marlowe from above.  
4. If you leave a copy of the Lord of the Rings in an area thick with marijuana smoke for a few hours and then give it a good shake, you can sometimes get a sleeping hobbit to fall out. If this happens, you should make sure to carefully insert the hobbit back where they fell out from, or the story may be irreparably changed. For example, copies from which Frodo has been ejected sometimes mutate into biographies of a heroic band of orcs, perhaps demonstrating that histories are usually written by the victors.

The googolplex, the number of ants, the number of appendices, the largest known Mersenne Prime, the second ‘O’ in the 'HOLLYWOOD’ sign which is in fact a giant squashed number 0, the sexdecillard, the greatest depth to which a footnote may be nested by a million monkeys spending a million years on a million typewriters, the maximum capacity of a chocolate teapot assuming the Universe’s entire resources were all focussed on its design and manufacture in space out of space chocolate, those inflatable birthday balloons that are shaped like numbers, Skewes’ Numbers, the historical sum of mathematician-pencil-hours, 'Glitter and be Gay’ from Candide, five but in really big units, Graham’s number, TREE(3), the glitter capacity of a single unicorn, the biggest number you can think of, that number plus one, the previous number with bigger shoes on and a large bushy beard.

1. The Boredom Isles, Central Pacific. Although nominally claimed by the United Kingdom, the Boredom Isles have struggled to be occupied by all but the world’s most rapacious colonists. The Boredom Isles are so dull that a lighthouse constructed there in 1826 fell asleep, ejecting its entire crew into the sea where they voluntarily stayed for three days, struck by the relative interestingness of the local marine life. Based on a 1956 census of flags on the shore, the isles are believed to have been discovered but then forgotten about at least twelve times.
2. Saint Genesius, Southern Ocean. Of fifteen people who have stood on the inhospitable shores of Saint Genesius, fully twelve have been injured by flying elephant seals. It appears that the island’s unexplored rocky interior contains a number of large, tilted slabs on which the seals like to sun themselves but which, under the right circumstances, become uncomfortably slippery. The right circumstances appear to include when the seals are alarmed or curious at the entrance of humans into the island’s only narrow bay. A series of unfortunate geological features ensures that slipping seals are funnelled directly towards any incomers.
3. Incitatus and Bucephalus, Southern Atlantic Ocean. These obscure twin islands, several thousand kilometres south of the Azores, were discovered by Henry the Navigator in 1437 and claimed for Portugal. Twenty years later, the mutinous crew of the Cruzado, a private mercantile exploration vessel, were put ashore there and abandoned. The advent of a human population spurred the islands’ resident population of crabs, who did not think of themselves as particularly Portuguese, to mutate into a vast interlocking multi-crab intelligence. Little is known of the fate of the Cruzado’s crew. The lest known expedition to the islands, in 1465, noted the presence of a half-built raft, some cooking artifacts, and a fifty metre tall crab monster with hundreds of oddly human eyes. Since then, even satellites have tended to look in the other direction.
4. Warlock Shoals, North Pacific. Warlock shoals has only existed as an island since 1955, when an earthquake raised the seamount on which it stands by a few metres. Initially it was claimed by the United States of America, who subsequently obliterated the island by carrying out a nuclear test on it. A further earthquake raised the remains of the island above sea level again for six months in 1958. During this time, the island was claimed as a new territory by the Soviet Union, who carried out a further nuclear test which once again obliterated it. In 2014, yet another earthquake raised the shoals above sea level. Although as yet unclaimed, they are believed to have been visited by a delegation from the North Korean army. Warlock Shoals is possibly the world’s most pissed-off island.
5. Frigate Mount, Southern Indian Ocean. Frigate Mount from a distance is one of the ocean’s more unusual sights. This smooth, white island is shaped exactly like an enormous egg, standing on one end on the surface of the sea. A rocky base is sometimes visible in rough seas. The main body of the island is believed to be the result of thousands of years of guano deposits from pelagic seabirds. It is difficult to see how its unusual shape could have come about other than by a deliberate attempt at sculpture by the resident bird population. The island’s inhabitants do seem to be unusually solemn and devotional as seabirds go, leading some to speculate that it is some kind of avian religious site. Another theory runs that the island is in reality a giant egg and its guano covering functions mainly as insulation and disguise.  
6. La Baleine Island, France. Unusually for an isolated island, La Baleine is situated slightly South of Central Paris. It is perhaps the only entirely landlocked island in the world, without a single sea border. As such, most visitors to La Baleine are completely unaware that they have stepped foot on one of the world’s least-known islands. Interestingly, La Baleine’s unusual nature means it has been independently discovered at least fifty times. It has been claimed by at least fourteen countries, including an ill-fated period as an independent republic which ended when French special forces were smuggled over the border in a tree on wheels.

1. Did you know there is a scientific reason why all women wear lipstick? Like many of humanity’s odder characteristics, it dates back to our time in the caves. Natural selection ensured that only cavemen who found mates able to provide meat for their offspring would be able to perpetuate their seed. So it is no surprise that the human chap has evolved to find a lady who looks like she has just ripped the throat from an impala with her bare teeth an irresistibly sexy prospect. Interestingly, the corresponding gene in cavewomen was eliminated in a freak radiation accident in the year 956.
2. Just 5% of the population have a gene enabling then to extend their ears. Do you know any ear-extenders? People with this skill are typically reticent to demonstrate, as uninformed members of the public often react with horror to ear extension. So you might be surrounded by them and never know.
3. 97.12% of the human genome is also present in the three-toed sloth. This explains why, if brought up in the right environment, the three-toed sloth is not only able to play chess but is also able to invent the game of chess from scratch without reference to existing games. Sadly the sloth is too slow to play in major chess tournaments, or we would undoubtedly hear more about its amazing abilities. Conversely, if brought up in the right environment, the human body is able to express genes for having a lot of sleep.
4. Your legs have enough palladium in them to make a tiny Eiffel Tower that is made of leg palladium. After the world has reached peak palladium, this unusual leg fact means you may be forced to choose between having legs or consumer electronic devices.
5. You can lose 80% of your liver down the back of the sofa. Do not do this. It is the third highest cause of sofa-related death annually.

1123 Memories
 -1123.1 Those that induce an odd sense of wistfulness
    –1123.11 Those that are knotted together with other, almost unrelated memories
       —1123.111 Memories of remembering things in a different place
       —1123.112 Memories of listening to music
       —1123.113 Memories that have developed interrupting cats, unicorns or dairy products
    –1123.12 Memories of quotidian things
       —1123.121 Those that remain because in hindsight they were the last time for something
       —1123.122 Those that remain because in hindsight they were the start of something
       —1123.123 Those that have no particular reason for hanging around, which somehow only makes them pop up more often
    –1123.13 Those that you can take out and happily mull over during idle moments
       —1123.131 Those of small, gentle, happy things
       —1123.132 Those of places, realisations or the turn of seasons
 -1123.2 Those that grow over time into stories
    –1123.21 In which the stories no longer quite match with other people’s stories of the same event
    –1123.22 In which the narrative urge to tie everything up neatly has not yet quite overridden reality
 -1123.3 Those arising out of smells, sounds or turns of the light
    –1123.31 Memories of places far, far away
    –1123.32 Those of places or things that no longer exist
 -1123.4 Those that are needed to pass examinations
    –1123.41 Those that would be more useful in passing examinations if they were complete, but which unfortunately appear to have developed a hole somewhere
    –1123.42 Those that were very useful in passing examinations a few years ago but have now become a kind of patchwork quilt of vague equation-shapes and partial theories
    –1123.43 Memory buildings
       —1123.431 Palaces
       —1123.432 Houses
       —1123.433 Outbuildings or latrines
 -1123.5 Those that belonged to someone else first
    –1123.51 Memories of memories told to you by people now dead
       —1123.511 Those containing stories of memories further back
       —1123.512 Those that contain the last remaining trace of someone long gone
    –1123.52 Memories of things that you have forgotten actually happened to someone else
 -1123.6 Memories smaller than 30mm across
 -1123.7 Those that are kept in locked boxes
    –1123.71 Those that come out of their own accord, knotting themselves through other memories and generally being a nuisance
 -1123.8 Those that are accidentally from the future

Bigsaurus, Stompy McRoarface, Looks-like-a-chicken-saurus, Plasticeratops, Really-humongously-big-saurus, We-only-found-one-bone-so-we-have-no-idea-what-it-looks-like-saurus, Lives-up-a-volcano-saurus, Tiny Hands Johnson, Toe nibbler, Flappy, Amusing-misconstruction-saurus, Bigger-than-the-last-big-saurus, Nanoseptemceratops, Don’t-know-saurus, Colossomegadentimimus, Monopodosaurus, Small-spiky-bastard-underfoot-toy-saurus, Embarrassingly-got-fossilised-whilst-taking-a-shit-saurus, Big teeth face, That one with the tail that goes half way across the museum, Dinkyraptor, Bum-brains, Deinodermodactyl, Fossil Fred, Squelch.

1. The platonic ideal of a cup of coffee, stolen from the realm of ideas and brought to your door by an unusually astute guardian angel
2. Five sparkly elephants who have come to invite you to operate the glitterball at their elephant disco
3. World peace, love and understanding in a box with a bow on it, and you get to open the box and let it all out
4. That character and that other character from that story where you kind of hoped they’d kiss and look, they’re totally doing it, no idea why they thought your doorstep was a good place to do it though, actually now that you’ve opened the door it’s all a bit awkward but in a good way
5. For a day the roads are all rivers and the Knight of the Secret Streams has poled up to your door in a gondola to take whoever would like to come on a tour of all those buildings you don’t normally see because the rivers are not there, also she has a lot of chocolate she’d like to get rid of
6. A compellingly familiar ghost who really needs you to know where the treasure is, what do you mean you don’t know about the treasure, look you’ve got a lot of catching up to do, how about we go for toast and margaritas and discuss this, but make sure you bring your phone because you’re going to need to do a lot of googling and we have to have maps
7. All of the best people, who have come to make you breakfast because they like you

The cape of Good Hope, the cape of Superman, the dramatic cape of es, the Capes of Geoff, Cape Bojador, Cape Canveral, Cape Batman, the +3 cape of fashion forwardness, Cape Fear, Cape Wrath, Cape Grumpiness, Cape Foulwind, Cape Seasickness, the woolly cape of slight itchiness, Cape Farewell, Cape Horn, the Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-earnings Ratio, the cape of Robin, Cape Finisterre, the caffeic acid phenethyl ester, the Netscape, the cape of dramatic Victorian evil, Cape Cod.

1. By burying them in a big jar under a major city for the recipient to find and analyse in several thousand years’ time
2. By hiding your message 75% of the way through a licensing agreement
3. By tracing the letters of your message on the intended recipient’s genitals with your tongue during a seemingly anonymous sexual encounter
4. By teaching your message to the parrots of a region that you know the recipient will walk through, but in a language that no other local walkers speak
5. By dropping a drop of water from your window onto the head of the passing recipient each day; the information being encoded in the ratios of different isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the water (the oxygen being in the water molecules themselves, the carbon in carbon dioxide dissolved in the water)
6. By feeding your message to a large, gormless and tasty fish that you then release into a pool that the recipient is about to go fishing in
7. By writing the message on the internet, sandwiched between two or three of your favourite conspiracy theories and/or racist memes
8. By hiding your message in a relatively anonymous post on tumblr