Gunge as it is known in the British Isles, or slime as it is known in America and most English-speaking areas of the world, is a thick, gooey, yet runny substance with a consistency somewhere between that of paint and custard. It has been a feature on many children's programmes for many years around the world and has made appearances in game shows as well as other programming. While gunge mostly appears on television, it can also be used as a fundraising tool for charities, youth and religious groups. Gunge tanks have appeared at nightclubs and Fun Days. The British charities Comic Relief and Children in Need, supported by the BBC, have used gunge for fundraising in the past. In America, slime is sometimes associated with Nickelodeon, even having several game shows revolving around it, such as Slime Time Live. In most countries, being gunged is seen as a forfeit with the aim to cause embarrassment. In contrast, being slimed in America can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. Overall the main point of being gunged or slimed is to cause mess.
The Slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest role-playing video game franchise. Originally inspired by the game Wizardry to be a weak and common monster for the video game Dragon Quest, Slime has appeared in almost every Dragon Quest game since. The character's popularity led to the appearance of many varieties of slimes, including boss characters, and even emerging as the protagonist of the Rocket Slime video game series.
The Slime has been placed on a multitude of different kinds of merchandise. The Slime's friendliness, limited power, and appealing form have caused the Slime to become a popular character and symbol of the Dragon Quest series.
The inspiration for the Slime came to Yuji Horii, the creator of Dragon Quest, from a role-playing game called Wizardry. "I was really hooked on 'Wizardy,' the PC game, ... There's...slime-looking characters ..., so I got the inspiration from it. I was doodling the slime-looking character and I took it to Mr. Toriyama, who did the character design, and he made it the Slime we see today." Horii said that when it was originally conceived, the Slime was "a pile of goo", but Toriyama's design came back as a tear-drop which they considered "perfect".
Bells may refer to:
"Bells" is the first episode of the BBC sitcom Blackadder II, the second series of Blackadder, which was set in Elizabethan England from 1558 to 1603. Although "Bells" was the first to be broadcast on BBC1, it was originally destined to be the second episode. It was the only episode of the series to feature location filming, at Wilton House in Wiltshire.
The episode also marks the first appearance of the Bob/Kate and Flashheart archetypes that appear again in Blackadder Goes Forth. Rik Mayall, who played Lord Flashheart, allegedly designed the character's costume himself.John Lloyd has said that Mayall virtually rewrote his part to feature "loads of jokes", which annoyed the writers, Curtis and Elton.
The plot of the episode, of a young woman disguising herself as a man to go into service and falling in love with her employer, is particularly based on a significant plot thread of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
Kate, an attractive young woman, is attempting to comfort her father upon her mother's death – even though her mother is alive and has run off with Kate's uncle, leaving them destitute. He suggests that Kate become a prostitute to solve their money troubles. Kate refuses indignantly and decides to go to London to seek her fortune, over her father's objections ("Why walk all the way to London when you can make a fortune lying on your back?!")
A ship's bell is used to indicate the time aboard a ship and hence to regulate the sailors' duty watches. The bell itself is usually made of brass or bronze and normally has the ship's name engraved or cast on it.
Unlike civil clock bells, the strikes of the bell do not accord to the number of the hour. Instead, there are eight bells, one for each half-hour of a four-hour watch. In the age of sailing, watches were timed with a 30-minute hourglass. Bells would be struck every time the glass was turned, and in a pattern of pairs for easier counting, with any odd bells at the end of the sequence.
The classical system was:
At midnight on New Year's Eve sixteen bells would be struck – eight bells for the old year and eight bells for the new.
Most of the crew of a ship would be divided up into between two and four groups called watches. Each watch would take its turn with the essential activities of manning the helm, navigating, trimming sails, and keeping a lookout.