Humbug

A humbug is a person or object that behaves in a deceptive or dishonest way, often as a hoax or in jest. The term was first described in 1751 as student slang, and recorded in 1840 as a "nautical phrase". It is now also often used as an exclamation to mean nonsense or gibberish.

When referring to a person, a humbug means a fraud or impostor, implying an element of unjustified publicity and spectacle. In modern usage, the word is most associated with Ebenezer Scrooge, a character created by Charles Dickens. His famous reference to Christmas, "Bah! Humbug!", declaring Christmas to be a fraud, is commonly used in stage and television versions of A Christmas Carol and also appeared frequently in the original book. The word is also prominently used in The Wizard of Oz, where the wizard describes himself as "just a humbug."

Another use of the word was by John Collins Warren, a Harvard Medical School professor who worked at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Warren performed the first public operation with the use of ether anesthesia, administered by William Thomas Green Morton, a dentist. To the stunned audience at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Warren declared, "Gentlemen, this is no humbug."

My Singing Monsters

My Singing Monsters is a video game franchise created by Canadian computer game developer Big Blue Bubble. The first game of the series was released in September 2012 for Apple iOS. Ports of the game for other touchscreen smartphone operating systems were later released, including versions for Android, Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, and Barnes & Noble Nook. The success of the title prompted Big Blue Bubble to create various spin-off apps including My Mammott and My PomPom featuring popular characters from the My Singing Monsters mythos.

In September 2015, the company released the second official game of the series, My Singing Monsters: Dawn of Fire on iOS and Android.

My Singing Monsters

In My Singing Monsters, players collect and breed many different types of monsters, each of which has a unique musical line that is either sung, or played on an instrument. The gameplay environment consists of nine islands, each of which has its own distinct theme. Monsters, even if any of them are muted, generate coins, which can in turn be used to acquire many decorations, remove obstacles, build structures, and buy food for the monsters to level up and make more money. There are also achievements and goals to direct gameplay, with in-game currency as rewards. Diamonds are used to speed up processing products, upgrade certain structures, and for buying uncommon and rare monsters, though common monsters can be bought with coins. Many in-game actions earn experience points, which unlock new monsters, structures, upgrades and achievements.

Arctic Monkeys

Arctic Monkeys are an English rock band formed in 2002 in High Green, a suburb of Sheffield. The band consists of Alex Turner (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, lead guitar), Matt Helders (drums, backing vocals), Jamie Cook (lead guitar, rhythm guitar) and Nick O'Malley (bass, backing vocals). Former band member Andy Nicholson (bass guitar, backing vocals) left the band in 2006 shortly after their debut album was released.

They have released five studio albums: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006), Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007), Humbug (2009), Suck It and See (2011) and AM (2013), as well as one live album, At the Apollo (2008). Their debut album is the fastest-selling debut album by a band in British chart history, and in 2013, Rolling Stone ranked it the 30th-greatest debut album of all time.

The band have won seven Brit Awards—winning both Best British Group and Best British Album three times, and have been nominated for three Grammy Awards. They also won the Mercury Prize in 2006 for their debut album, in addition to receiving nominations in 2007 and 2013. The band have headlined at the Glastonbury Festival twice, in 2007 and again in 2013.