Up and Down with Burke and Hare

I guess relaxing stresses me out.
I always seem to be formulating lists of things to do. Most of the time it's quiet dull, cleaning house bits, cooking bits, things to keep the machine of life running. But occasionally I find lists like these
Books to Read
Traits to learn
Habits to form
Etc.

One of the best of these contained items such as. Learn lockpicking, teach the cat tricks, learn a useless language, build a marshmallow catapult.

Seriously? Yes. I have the next five days off. Lets see how well I can do on these...

I just finished reading a book about Burke and Hare. (5 points to anyone who knows who these people are without looking it up.) Here's where I tell you about them. They were two "body snatchers" essentially who murdered people and sold their cadavers (mostly still "fresh") to the local medical school. Ach. Pretty creepy. They were very obvious about it too and killed a total of 16 people. They murdered people by getting them very drunk, then "burking" them. Burking was laying on top of them and covering their nose and mouth until they suffocated. At the time these murders were committed the exact mechanism of death was undetectable. All evidence suggested the person drown in their own intoxicated vomit.

Hare was offered immunity when he turned on Burke at trial. Burke was hanged then publicly dissected. The Edinburgh Medical College Museum still has his skeleton.

I didn't know this however, it seems next month Simon Pegg (Shawn of the Dead) and Andy Serkis (Gollum) will be starring in the film Burke and Hare. Huh, good timing.

Don't you feel educated?

What I don't understand is Wikipedia is listing this upcoming movie as a British-Japanese-American Black Comedy.
What? These dudes were Irish. Where's the Japanese come in?

Up the close and down the stair
Up and Down with Burke and Hare
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief
Knox the man who buys the beef!

Kids really knew how to make good jump-rope songs back then.

Ring-around-the rosy
Pockets full of posy
ashes, ashes, we all fall down!

By this point I'm sure everyone knows that's about the plague.

Lizzie Borden took an axe
Gave her mother 40 wacks
When she saw what she had done
Gave her father 41!


Sheeshes.