Mastered B. Goggles 1949-2006

Born and raised in Alice Springs, Australia, Mastered B. Goggles fell in love with all things water based. Primarily he loved to be in it swimming. Unfortunately the Todd river that runs through Alice Springs is dry most of the year round which used to frustrate Mastered no end. It was to this end that he developed the prototype swimming goggles, initially known as “Aquaxperience Spectacles” as their purpose was not to protect the eyes from water but to give the impression that you were immersed. It is believed that the inventor of the 3D specs, Billy Dimensions, based his glasses on the technology developed by Mastered.
Early attempts were full of enthusiasm, but low on ability and technical know how. The first go consisted of Mastered just painting fishes on the inside of his father’s old welding mask, which was cumbersome and not the slightest bit realistic. What it lacked visually it lacked even more in feeling, as Mastered sat there bone dry. Eventually the specs were refined with a coloured tint and a vibratory effect in the headband that gave you the impression of being submerged. For the movement he found an old table top which he attached skateboard wheels to so he could propel himself along.
It fell to Mastered’s uncle to notice his potential. Walking back from the shops one day he noticed the young fella zooming along the riverbed at breakneck speed. Thus it came to be that he flew Mastered to Brisbane in his small airplane to undertake swimming trials with the national coach.
The rest as they say is history. Mastered B. Goggles leaves behind a family, 3 Olympic gold medals and a generation of much happier natives of Alice Springs.

Fossilize B. Buffalos 1896 - 2006

Fossilize shot to prominence as the inventor of Buffalo Wings. People always ask why they’re called Buffalo Wings when buffalos don’t have wings and the answer is they are actually named after Fossilize himself. In some quarters among historians they say that they originated in Buffalo the place, but that is all part of a more sinister cover up due to Fossilize’s notorious lifestyle not being conducive to good history.
Fossilize had a rough upbringing, domestic violence and child labour being all too prevalent back then. He drifted into petty crime, stealing handkerchiefs off the washing lines of dandies, pilfering breadbaskets and thieving heather from travelling gypsies.
As he grew out of his teenage years the crime became more serious. His first gainful employment was in an automobile factory where he managed to steal a whole vehicle. This was only possible because he took it once piece at a time in his lunchbox. It didn’t cost him a dime until he was caught driving his new automobile around town. He gave himself away as he’d left the stock tags on. And so began Fossilize’s run of stupidity that left him recognised as America’s most inept criminal.
His end came at the ripe old age of 110, when almost a fossil himself. In an attempt to steal the bones of a T Rex from the Natural History museum in Manhattan he took a wrong turn on one block and ended up at the Hard Rock café. In an ironic twist of fate he found himself staring at one of Marc Bolan’s guitars on the wall and wondered if he could lift that instead. However when put it over his head he did he slipped and fell headfirst into a display of memorabilia from Daevid Allen’s band knocking him unconscious and causing a blackout from which he never recovered. Still at least he died a rock n roll death; “Get it on, bang a Gong”. What a way to go…

Sled I. Secretively 1933 – 2006

High up in the Snowy Mountains of Australia is where the Secretively family have lived for generations. It’s an ideal place for bringing up children away from the stresses of everyday life. The community is self sufficient to the point of all the children being given training in various areas beneficial to the community. And thus Stephen, as his parents knew him, became Sled due to his excellent skills in the bob sleigh.
Due to the snow and ice it had become apparent that the clan would need a safe and speedy descent down the mountain. Thus plans were made to build a run to the bottom of the mountain and as their name suggests things had to be done surreptitiously. This was due to their long running feud with the Brazen clan who lived atop the next mountain. The Brazen bunch strutted around like they owned the place, which incidentally they did. And of course the Secretivelys who assumed, probably correctly, that any inventions they had would be claimed by the Brazens as their own, hated this. So the run was built at night, Sled himself overseeing everything. The crowning glory was the sled itself, a contraption made of old baking trays and wardrobe rails, with a go faster stripe from an old Ford Capri on the side for good measure. The runners were greased with a new solution. Although Sled took the formula to his grave, it is believed to be made up of vanilla ice cream, motor oil and fake sun tan lotion. The new run was a major advantage to the Secretively clan, as it meant they could get to the shop in the valley quicker and get all the supplies in first. It was especially pleasing for model train enthusiast Hornby OO Secretively who was guaranteed the only copy of Model Train Enthusiast.
Such a major contribution to the Secretively history meant a blue plaque was placed at the top of the run by family elders. This was later followed by one commemorating his life when the formula was mixed in the wrong combination one day and Sled went far too fast, shot off the end of the run and missed an oncoming train by inches. As he came to rest on the main road he was run over by a HGV.

Manitoba M. Parsnip 1953 - 2006

Manitoba came to fame in the great Canadian vegetable wars of the early seventies. Such was his dominance in the root vegetable section he won the right to change his surname to Parsnip in 1972. This was a great source of family pride as his grandfather had been King Carrot in the twenties. Being the seventies they were also pleased to move into another vegetable surname, with Jasper Carrot finding fame in the UK.
The vegetable wars started when people began enhancing their crops with banned chemicals to simply grow them as big as possible. Manitoba and his pals saw this as sacrilege and waged war on the freak show fairs, wrecking any veg that were just too big for their own good. On they went, wanging watermelon, chucking carrots and throwing turnips around with gay abandon. The GM growers fought back and boy were they strong. The chemicals have gotten in their blood streams and they had super human strength. One of them had three arms, but that may well have been because he was from Alabama. These fights happened on a regular basis over the intervening years, the stalemate apparent to everyone bar the two fighting sides.
Manitoba lost his way in 1999 after a particularly bad crop and hit the bottle. It started with beer, beer became whisky, whisky became toilet duck, before he eventually hit the hard stuff and overdosed on industrial strength fertiliser.

Woodcutting O. Rackets 1962 – 2006

Woodcutting came from a family of tennis equipment makers in the highlands of Scotland. Obviously these were the days when the players’ tools were made from wood rather than metal, a technological advancement that hit the family hard and from which they never properly recovered.
They tried other avenues of wood production. An attempt to become an Ikea supplier failed despite the family rechristening themselves as Bergstrom and buying a Volvo in a misguided attempt to win the compatriot vote.
They then won the contract to manufacture the extra leg for Rolf Harris’ character Jake the Peg. This was cut short unfortunately due to a severe case of woodworm in one leg. The leg collapsed during a Royal Variety performance and Harris tumbled head first into Princess Anne’s lap.
Following this they retreated even further north in Scotland and built their own log cabin with their remaining stock. As it is with the Rackets family luck, the cabin collapsed when Woodcutting was home alone one day, killing him instantly.

Deadbeat F. Busybody 1984 - 2006

Details of Deadbeat F. Busybody are scant but this we do know. He was a schizophrenic fellow and was forever chastising himself for his apparent hopelessness. And when he wasn’t doing that he was forever sticking his nose in his own business. By that, I don’t mean he was truffling through his own stools, rather that he used to invade his own privacy rather too often for his own liking.
All this makes more sense when you appreciate the fact that he was conjoined twins and spent his life, as sadly many with his disability have to, in a travelling sideshow. Deadbeat was also a big hairy chap, whose hair went a shocking white early on in life. This is when his condition was diagnosed as bi-polar bear disorder.
Sadly he never stood much chance of a happy, ordinary, long life. One day he got into a huge argument with himself over who took the last Fox’s glacier mint. He proceeded to offer himself outside for a fight, which didn’t stop until its fatal conclusion.

Burbled H. Teeniest 1964 – 2006

The smallest man on earth until his timely death, Burbled H. Teeniest measured a mere 9 inches tall. His unusual first name came from having a mother with a terrible speech impediment. When entering his name into the Births Register, the registrar had such difficult understanding her he gave up and made something up. And as she was burbling that’s exactly what came to mind. And it stuck, if for no other reason than his mother could say it.
Burbled’s first love was comedy. Nothing gave him more pleasure than to amuse his family with songs he’d written with hilarious lyrics. Just as he was about to embark on a career doing this Richard Digance came along and Burbled realised he could never match the perfection of ‘The Digit’ as he was known in comedy circles (we think that was his nickname, records show that sign being made an awful lot when Digance was in the building). It was however after seeing Ronnie Corbett live that Burbled realised there was no place for short arses with silly names on the comedy circuit.
This marked the turning point in his life. He started to drift, unsure of what to do next. He tried the usual avenues for persons of his stature. Initially he got the gigs as a Willie Mays wobbly-head baseball toy until an over eager kid threw him a curve ball and almost took his wobbly head off. A gnome-adic existence followed, selling his body as a garden ornament in DIY stores. He should have known the end was near when he graduated to the red hat and sure enough so it proved. Safely ensconced at his new abode, fishing rod in hand and gazing over the pond, he was more than a little surprised to when a dim-witted koi went for the non-existent bait on his rod, dragging him into and across the pond until he hit an ornamental fountain head first which knocked him unconscious. In a nice piece of symmetry his last words were also burbled as he went under.