News You Can Bruise for 2003 September 30

The catapult watch costs $60, but it's got a tiny catapult on top. "When they look around to see who's been pelting them with spitballs, you'll just be casually checking the time." Yeah, on your damn catapult watch! You think they won't know?

Backyard Artillery also has other weapons of varying degrees of lethality, including suction cup crossbows, childhood favorite burp guns[0], and labor-saving hand-held bubble machines.

If you're into the heavier stuff you can build or buy ancient siege machinery and revive the gentlemanly art of laying siege. (Siege defenses, hunger, privation, reduction to last extremity, traitor crushed by shields all sold separately.) Provided history of siege machinery includes amusing yet frustrating detail:

Unfortuantely, we now know that most of [Ralph Payne Gallwey 's] sources are fiction. He even invented fake reference numbers for them at the Bibliothec National in Paris, France.

All these links derived from cl links.

[0] Susanna, I'm sorry I shot at you with the burp gun at our grandmother's house when you had no way to defend yourself.