Here's a place you can don your shorts, put up your dukes and fight a cage. Choose your cage, give it the old one-two, or another pair of sequential numbers. Anything physical that is designed for containment can be fought here -- supermarket trolleys, tea strainers, battery hen cages, filigree aviaries, fragile Japanese cicada boxes, detached radiators arranged in a fort, bras, toasters, cycle helmets, biscuit tins....

The rules are these: there are no rules other than fair play, common decency and compulsory jazz hands.

I think it's not fair that we can't have fowl play. After all, we are talking cages, aren't we? And just look at what goes on in other threads...

Hello Isobel,you're right. I've started this topic because of the 'energetic' responses on previous threads. Obviously the sookbine is in flower and the sap is rising and some people need a place they can get pithy, frothy and thrashy. Inanimate-object pounding may be the ideal way to offload the rampant excess of emotion triggered by a seasonal hormonal flux. Cages -- huh -- we all hate them, although some are benign, such as the cage shielding human limbs/hair from the working parts of a machine. But here we have a designated area where men and women can do battle with what physically restrains them. Of course, battle with metaphorical and metaphysical restraints may also be fought here. But remember the jazz hands.

P.S. If you're going to use this facility, do clear up afterwards. Always leave this topic in the state you'd like to find it on your next visit.

This inhuman practice of pitting poor cages one against the other is barbaric and must be stopped immediately!

In it's natural state the cage is a peaceful and non-violent creature and, indeed, can often defuse an explosive situation by taking a potential combatant and containing it's violence in a special way.

So join me in banning this medieval, cruel sport that debases the spectator as well as causing irreparable damage to the cages themselves.

Freedom for cages - now!

If, for the purposes of this thread, a bra is to be deemed a cage, then I second Paul's e-motion to ban cage fighting - though without cages at all this thread would be threadbare.
Biscuit tins. Now you're talking.
Cx

By banning or burning strapless and peep-hole cages would we be doing the thread a favour by removing more offensive threadbare articles? Or would we be encouraging the proliferation of rolling stones that gathered too much moss, rendering potential adversaries speechless and thereby hampering healthy debate?

Bras are quasi cages, technically, depending on extent of underwiring. Their fights share a lot of the techniques employed in autumnal conker dobbing spats. Held by a strap extended to its full length, they are swung at each other in turn until there is significant denting or structural damage. Cages fight cages in their natural environment. You have only to visit a supermarket and observe the behaviour of trolleys (bantam cages) when they are being removed from their territory, and returned hence after a tour of the aisles. They are naturally combative.

I need to add that freedom is an irrelevant and redundant term where cages are concerned. They are only peaceful when violence has exhausted them. Shark cages are especially prone to following their prey for hundreds of kilometres and then incapacitating them by snagging a sleeve or a trouser leg.

Ezra Pound is probably the most famous poet cage fighter.

I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry - John Cage

Right, well, in for an Ezra, in for a pounding.
First off, let’s be clear please: it is not the cage per se that is offensive but it’s bars or, as some would have it, its bras. In the revolution of the 1970s such bars were burned to signify freedom for those previously enslaved within them. This revolt is now little celebrated, being more noteworthy for the slump that, inevitably, followed.
Cage fighting is but one genre in this cultural phenomenon. Bra beating is a form of domestic abuse in certain parts of Yorkshire. To ‘brabeat’ is to cajole, the latter term obviously deriving from the word ‘cage’.
Some of you may recall Rick’s famous line in the film, Casablanca: of all the bras in all the world, you had to choose this one - an obvious reference to his sense of entrapment in the cage that was Casablanca at that time. A line that was removed from the film by the censor was: that’s the trouble with you Norwegians, Ilsa - underwired and over here.
Notes from my upcoming online resource, Thickypedia.

I take exception to your bra-ist attitude, Julian! I'm guessing that such bra-vado (or whither goest thou with that bra?) may be hiding the fact that you've possibly never really got to grips with one. Try one on - you'll find they're particularly necessary when going for a little run down the Soutien gorge.
Cx

I fear your bra tending skills are being underwired here Julien. Set the record straight and tell us - do you grapple with one hand or two?
I just googled bra tending out of curiosity. Job description includes: keeping the bra clean, preventing bra patrons from drinking too much, ejecting obnoxious customers from bra, supervising the activities of more junior bra tenders, responding to orders of more senior bra members, shaking and staring, keeping an eye on the glace cherries, uncorking when required.

Oh ok -I made a few up - but this is Wonderland!

It is worth noting - and this IS true - that, in Casablanca, when Rick shoots Major Strasser, he and Renault decide to join the Free French in the African city of - wait for it - Brazzaville.
As for soutien-gorge, how on earth can you call a bra a "throat-support"? it's for serving drinks on, everyone knows that.
And I’d never try one on. You can’t keep a man like me behind bras.
There is no such thing as a ‘little run down the Soutien Gorge’. It is a journey not to be undertaken lightly. Many an expedition has set off in that direction and failed to reach the bottom. Why, Rider Haggard himself wrote of one such in search of Sheba’s twin peaks. It’s a curse, a curse I tell you!

Gasp! At it’s firm dependable support!
Purrrrr… at the elasticated leg straps
Stand back in awe at this miracle of stylishness…

It’s the diamond encrusted truss...
as worn by ALL successful male poets everywhere

Wear with pride... it tells the world that you've made it at last.

Complete with integrated rhyming dictionary though pouch for notepad and pen is an optional extra

Note: Diamonds must be worn on the outside.

“There's a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.” Nicolas Cage

Yeah .... like he'd know!
Cx

Bird cages are homes for domesticated birds. Birds require a house in which they can fly and have some freedom but still ensures they do not fly away. Bird cages are constructed to be large enough to accommodate the motion and daily activities of domesticated birds. Cages are generally constructed of wire mesh. Some manufacturers flatten the mesh and others leave the wire round just as it is obtained from the manufacturer. Cages must be constructed with mesh carefully welded in a grid that will not permit a bird to put his or her head through the mesh and strangle. The mesh is generally 1.5 × I in (3.8 × 2.5 cm) in grid. Even larger birds such as parrots are rarely put into cages with mesh larger than 1 × 1 in (2.5 × 2.5 cm).

The design of bird cages is varied. Some cages hold one or two small domesticated birds and are rectangular or square. Polygonal cages are popular and can be quite decorative. Some cages have a plastic or metal tray that fits underneath a mesh cage without a bottom so that cleaning the cage only entails detaching the tray. Others have seed catching trays that are far wider than the cage so that the tray catches all stray seeds dropped by the bird. Still other cages are made specifically to breed birds and are of a very different configuration. These bird-breeding cages are quite wide with a divider in the middle that is removed when the birds in each half of the cage have gotten used to the presence of the other. Then breeding begins. Bird-breeding cages are often made to the specifications of breeders and are designed after observation and feedback from the breeders.

Surely if the birds were 'domesticated' they wouldn't need cages.

Interesting that cages breed birds - how do they do that?

There are many kinds of cages - most not of our own making, though they can be... These cages are not fashioned in metal or mesh but hem and clamp and tether nonetheless. We should all be born with an axe in one hand - then we wouldn't waste too much time in them.

Tell you what, given all that, I have no idea why the caged bird sings.

It could be singing a lament. It could be singing out of boredom. It could be singing for its supper. The larynx might be the only part of its body that it can effectively exercise... Animals and humans should simply never be caged. Freedom does result in a rather shitty back garden - but a happy one.

cha cha cha taa taa taa rah rah rah rah shuboom chatadaaaaaa

i managed the compulsory jazz hands :)

i have to say ejecting 'unwanted customers from bra' is a constant struggle. where i live the binge drinking violence problems have been curtailed with the introduction of caged bras/bars. all drinkers must submit themselves to the cage for 24 hrs to allow sober up time before they are ejected via a backdoor sluice. My own bar is doing ok. i just have to unlock cage doors at regular intervals and check on the carnage. girls check out earlier to avoid mandatory pervage and the men content themselves with a fight or occasional homosexual affair. its lovely. I just havent thought of a decent name yet...can your section help?

Sounds like a job for Mr Tourette!