Naval Signal Flags

Over at Achenblog, the posts are known as the Kit, the comments are known as the Boodle, and the commenters are known as Boodlers. The boodlers often take over the blog, with their occasionally serious but mostly silly conversations winding away from the orginal topic of the Kit and even spilling over across the Boodles of many Kits. They have a grand old time making obscure references and mass producing puns and occassionally (ever so occassionally) having a deep conversation about, let's say, global warming or the nature of coincidences.

So, anyway, one of the Boodlers, Curmudgeon, has gotten his very own Kit to himself (Joel has previously posted Kits with the highlights of some of the comments, most likely to avoid producing a full Kit that day). Curmudgeon (who claims to have been around forever) has been promising for weeks to tell the origin of naval signal flags, and he has delivered. I will warn you, if you are allergic to puns, you may want to stear clear. There's a particularly potent one about half-way through that momentarily blinded my coworker with pain. Also, if you are tired of jokes at Bush's expense, you may want to skip the part on the Crusades and scroll down to the part where he says "You may call me Ishmael", though you will be missing out on most of the good bad puns if you do so. And, most important, if you are looking for an actual history lesson... don't bother. It's all in good fun. Congratulations, 'Mudge. The Boodlers may steal the blog from Joel yet.