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Shakespeare's Thighs

exercise machine based on a manual typewriter
  (+17, -3)(+17, -3)
(+17, -3)
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Shakespeare's Thighs is the name given to the latest piece of gym equipment, guaranteed to improve the thighs, general fitness, and acquire a repertory of memorable quotes.

Only the biggest of gyms will be able to have one of these machines, due to it's size, because Shakespeare's Thighs takes the form of a very large manual typewriter. So large that you have to climb all over its keyboard and depress the keys with your feet, whilst clinging on to the adjacent ones.

On entering the gym, you are presented with one of Shakespeare's passages, which you must then type in on the machine (sonnets are popular for a good workout). This means leaping and scrambling about over the keyboard, and at various stages manhandling the carriage return to start the next line.

Texts are graded according to a program which works out the diversity and range of movements, and the final results are of course printed out in the form of giant posters featuring lines of text, composed of large smudgy letters.

xenzag, Jan 11 2009

Gold's Underwood http://www.typewrit...s/underwood3-01.jpg
coming to a gym near you [xenzag, Jan 11 2009]

You load fourteen tons, what do ya get? An other type bolder and deeper in set. http://blog.modernm...ant_type_writer.jpg
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 11 2009]

Archie & Mehitabel http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/
[mouseposture, May 12 2010]

[link]






       (+) This thing would weigh like, what? Fourteen tons.   

       At least!
xenzag, Jan 11 2009
  

       Nope. Exactly, give'r take a few ounces. [link]   

       Well found ! though a little bit smaller than what I had in mind.
xenzag, Jan 11 2009
  

       The new exercise fad....Bardism +
100 percent, Jan 11 2009
  

       Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are our gardeners.
tatterdemalion, Jan 11 2009
  

       Would you wear doublet and hose to do it? How many chimpanzees are included? Do they wear doublet and hose too?
nineteenthly, Jan 11 2009
  

       + 4 the title
po, Jan 11 2009
  

       //to the which // ??
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 11 2009
  

       Othello, Shakespeare.
Rod: "What should I do? I confesse it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my vertue to amend it."
Iago: "Vertue? A figge, 'tis in our selues that we are thus, or thus. Our Bodies are our Gardens, to the which, our Wills are Gardiners. So that if we will plant Nettels, or sowe Lettice: Set Hisope, and weede vp Time : Supplie it with one gender of Hearbes, or distract it with many: either to hause it sterrill with idlenesse, or manured with Industry, why the power, and Corrigeable authoritie of this lies in our Wills." [etc.]
jutta, Jan 12 2009
  

       + my thighs could use this!!
xandram, Jan 12 2009
  

       You know, if looked at a little differently this might be more attainable than you think. What if instead of a giant manual typewriter you repurposed one of those "dance dance" mats, only instead of dancing to the music you had a texting keyboard simulated on the thing? Anybody who uses a cellphone to text knows how to get around the 3x3 grid to get their point across. You'd end up with something more in the cardio realm, but it'd still be a workout, you could still check for speed and accuracy and give them a report at the end. But now you'd have something that people could play at home in front of their TV, too.
ShakespeareGeek, May 12 2010
  

       Would everything be lower-case? <link>
mouseposture, May 12 2010
  

       How very different many of the Bard's works would be if cellphones, texting and emails were re-written into the plots...   

       "(2B) || (!(2B)) ... that is the SQL query...."   

       "ROMEO WR R U ?"   

       "Hamlet, Hamlet, I am thy Father's voicemail ...."   

       "Dunsinaine Command, Scout two. Birnham Wood bearing two-six-zero, course zero-four-five, speed zero-four"
8th of 7, May 12 2010
  

       [Belatedly spots 2 fries' Tennessee Ernie Ford reference]
DrBob, May 14 2010
  
      
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