Probably the best banana-eating, beer-drinking, nose-harmonica player in the world today:
This is actually pretty cool, don’t you think? Kudos to the gentleman for developing the act!
And I’m sure he got there — just as do all the skilled surgeons and rescue workers, nurses and firefighters who come second to Jesus when the thanks get given out — with a lot of mundane, absolutely non-mystical, very hard work.
Okay, pretty much anything with a dog on the label is going to make me think “Not food.” You don’t really have to go any farther with lots of descriptive verbiage on the label.
But this …
No.
No, no, no.
.
.
.
That’s the last time I send the roommate shopping.
I tinker up these things occasionally, just for fun.
This 2013 thing hasn’t worked out all that well for me. I’m considering saying Screw It and moving to 2014. Still thinking. Maybe in a month or so, if things don’t improve.
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Wahoo, Christmas season! Inflatable Santa and Frosty! Inflatable Rudolph and Snoopy! Inflatable Penguin and Husky, Scooby and Teddy and Charlie Brown! And most of all, Inflatable Snow Globe with Real Floating Snowflakes Action!
Bring ‘em on! I’m READY!!
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Just this morning, I decided the Flying Spaghetti Monster could be called Skettymon in informal usage. I hope he doesn’t take offense and strike me down, but “The Flying Spaghetti Monster” in some uses is just too much of a – ha! – mouthful.
Holy Skettymon!
Skettymon bless you!
For the love of Skettymon!
See? Skettymon, Skettymon, Skettymon. Much easier on the tongue.
Plus, the final syllable graces the Pasta with Rasta, giving it a cool Jamaican sound.
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I know we liberal-progressives are supposed to never wish anyone ill. But does that mean we have to stand by and pretend to be sad when bad stuff DOES happen to certain people?
Because, really, there are people who SUBTRACT from the goodness of the world. Wealthy, influential, famous people who make the world a worse place, just by being themselves, doing the things they do. Sure, it would be wrong to gather up in well-armed bands to pursue them and gut them like fish … but don’t we have the right to a quiet chuckle when life itself pays them their due?
Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Fox News execs — some of you vicious bastards, I don’t think even the Virgin Mary would shed a tear over your demise. Assuming I outlive you, I expect to someday enjoy a hearty guffaw in honor of your wasted, ugly lives.
__________
When Dick Cheney dies, I’m hoping technology will allow us to raise flags to one and a half times the height of the flagpole.
__________
I was thinking yesterday about how we view surgery. We say someone went in for a triple bypass and it was “completely successful” and that the patient will now be able to resume normal life. We have a sort of blithe picture of the seriousness of the thing, confident that surgical patients will somehow be “back on their feet again in no time, better than ever!”
But my own, relatively minor surgery – gallbladder removal – was accompanied by some noticeable side effects. I vomited for 8 hours after I got home, I passed out in the bathroom and bashed the hell out of my head while falling, and I experienced an episode of erratic heartbeat a day or so after that lasted only about half a minute but scared the hell out of me. There were (are) some long-term adjustments too; they’ve seemed minor, but they’re definitely there.
The truth is, I doubt that ANY invasive surgery is something you just sail through. Even the anesthesiologist at the hospital told me the anesthetic wasn’t good for you. (I suspect that short bout of erratic heartbeat was an after-effect of the anesthetic.)
In my own case, it was a fair trade. I had pain that was constant, long-term and debilitating. But it WAS a trade, not a free gift.
Never doubt it: Surgery is serious shit. Not something you want to just waltz into with perfect confidence and no questions.
__________
I’m pretty sure gay marriage destroyed Comet ISON.
__________
Every time you post a free picture of a kitten online, you throw a poor, starving cat photographer out of work. Every single one of them end up working in the Wal-Mart Family Portrait Studio.
You bastards.
__________
A reminder on merchant-specific gift cards: If you give people CASH …
1) it costs less.
2) which means, they get more benefit.
3) besides which, it can be spent anywhere.
4) meaning, they’re not locked into Dunkin Donuts coffee, when what they really want is Starbucks.
5) also besides which, CASH is the one gift that never gets returned, unused or regifted.
To heck with the colorful $10 gift card. Tuck a colorful $10 BILL in there instead.
__________
Ah, Friday, you bewitching wench. At last you arrive, with your spicy see-through Only 8 More Hours gown, sultry hints of Saturday and Sunday shining seductively through.
__________
Don’t you ever think there aren’t REAL conspiracies against environmentalists and progressives. This shit happens every damned day, at every level. They put immense amounts of money into derailing activists.
__________
Heh. I was just thinking: My mom taught me there’s a way to say “I love you” that sends the other person fleeing across three states. It’s cloying, grabby, demanding, guilt-projecting, and nerve-shredding.
Whew. Bad old days. One of the reasons I never did family. It’s also why I don’t often say “I love you.” —But when I do say it, I damned sure know how to mean just that, and not that other thing.
(And no, you don’t have permission to feel sorry for me. Nobody gets through life without slogging through a swamp or two.)
__________
I’m generally in favor of the freedom to own guns. But I’m also WAY in favor of regulation.
One definitive law I’d like to see: If you or any gun you own are involved in an accidental shooting, you lose all ownership rights, and are never allowed to own or hunt again.
__________
Overheard groaner: Yo mama’s so ugly that when she was a little girl she had to trick or treat by phone.
__________
If you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, go easy on commenting on what it’s all about. Most of what I hear about it, both from its detractors (my side of the political-philosophical aisle) and its idiot fans (that other side) are obviously from people who haven’t read it, and don’t have any idea what’s in it (except what they’ve heard from others – jibes and praise from people who also probably haven’t read it).
Yeah, you might hate Ayn Rand with a passion, and that’s fine with me. But if you’re going to critique the BOOK, I suggest you read it.
And if your response to this suggestion is something along the lines of “I read the first chapter and just couldn’t go on,” to me that says something about YOUR attention span rather than the quality of Rand’s writing. I had no trouble at all reading it, several times, and actually thinking about it over a period of several years.
As to the philosophy detailed in it being about nothing but selfishness – no, it’s not. It’s a complex and brilliant work in which Rand got some things profoundly wrong, other things very right.
And by the way, from what I know of her from her writing, Rand would have vomited to learn that she’d become some sort of saint to the teabaggers. She would have violently despised both them and their congressional counterparts.
__________
Decisions, decisions. I’ve brushed my teeth already. But there’s pumpkin pie and whipped cream.
__________
Every morning I wake up energized, thinking “I’m going to be different and better today!” And every evening I go to bed knowing I spent the whole day still being me.
Shoot.
__________
If we lived in the world where Clark Kent could never be recognized as Superman, every kid with new glasses coming back to school after winter break would instantly be challenged by his schoolmates:
Who are you and why are you sitting at Billy’s desk? What have you done with him? Talk, you bastard!
__________
I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this, but …
It’s funny that they named him Dexter, when he’s so Sinister.
__________
One of the things on my list of Life Goals is to hug a lion before I die.
Probably I should leave that one for the very last.
__________
If I was an acupuncturist, every day on the way to work I’d walk through crowds poking random people with pins.
Hey, it’s for their own good. Like vitamins added to bread, really.
__________
It’s interesting to me, in a distant way, that people care about their ancestry. Other than a family legend on my mom’s side that we’re all descended from a “full-blooded Indian chief” (a fantasy, I suspect) I don’t know much about my forbears. I actually met only ONE of my grandparents – my grandmother on my mother’s side – and have no idea what became of the others.
I attribute my good health to “mutt vigor,” and joke that I’m descended from a long line of trailer trash. “My people lived next to the train tracks and had chariots up on blocks in the driveway as far back as Ancient Egypt.” But other than the fact that some large percentage of my RECENT ancestors were Caucasian, I don’t know the least thing about them.
Would it make me feel better to know that I’m descended from Ben Franklin – or Sally Hemings! – or have royalty in my line? I don’t THINK so, but … who knows? I might find myself bragging about it, as if it somehow made ME a better person. When really, considering the remoteness of such links even if known, I might just as well brag about being a Homo sapiens, or a mammal.
Existing without preconceptions about who and what I follow, living as a genetic island, I focus on discovering and being the best ME I can be. That’s challenge enough.
__________
A cop friend once told me he really believed a lot of people got into crime because they were literally too stupid to do anything else.
__________
Seems to me it would be pretty easy to have a permanent setting on the shower that would be the EXACT temperature you want. I mean, as an engineering problem, *I* already figured an easy way to accomplish this.
__________
I hope those book-delivering Amazon drones also take out terrorists. There are a couple of people in my neighborhood that seem a little iffy.
__________
Within the broad complexities of human society, I think there’s a Man Tribe and a Woman Tribe. Neither totally understands the other, but both also have things they keep to themselves deliberately.
One of the current problems with online socializing is that the Woman Tribe doesn’t appreciate the Man Tribe’s sense of humor, and the Man Tribe forgets this fact in the midst of open discussion.
__________
When I was younger, I thought the toilet paper roll end should go on the inside, next to the wall, so it looked neater. Now I know the roll end should go on the outside, so it’s easier to find.
Never tell me you can’t grow smarter as you get older.
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Open-mindedness is rarer than diamonds. With any novel idea, most people approach it like bad critics go to see movies. They WORK to find something wrong with it, something bad about it. Any discussion that follows is nothing more than an argument about why they have to be right, and you wrong. Everything you might say in attempting to get them to take a broader or more progressive view of the thing, they can find some reason not to do that.
__________
Now I’m wondering if commercial airline pilots spend a lot of time texting.
__________
Hey, Hollywood! Where’s my movie of The Stars My Destination? I’m still waiting here, guys.
__________
As a culture, we’re too optimistic, both in our own lives and in a larger sense of the way things are going in the world. If we were a bit more pessimistic, I think we’d have a clearer view of how much is going wrong, and take a more serious look at how to fix it.
On the other hand, that clearer view of our own lives would probably bring a sharp uptick in the number of suicides in Wal-Mart parking lots.
__________
I think all childhood vaccinations should be given on Christmas Day. It would get the kids through the ordeal on an otherwise happy day, but it would also cut down on the little tykes demanding extra presents.
“Oh, look what Bobby got! Bobby, it’s another syringe! Let’s see what this one’s for!”
__________
I guess I should just go ahead and confess this. I know I seem like a science fan and all, but …
I have never once in my life held an Erlenmeyer Flask up to the light and peered intently at a mysterious blue liquid.
In my defense, I only went to college two years. Probably Blue-Liquid-Filled Erlenmeyer Flasks were covered in the third year.
__________
Can I just call you Hovawits? Jehovah’s Witnesses is just so looooong. And I’m not holding this door open forever, guys.
__________
No f*cking way I’m going shopping on THANKSGIVING DAY to join in that silly Black Friday madness. Count me out, corporate America.
__________
Someone brought a BABY to the freethinker’s group breakfast. I guess nobody told her there would be hungry atheists there.
__________
A few days ago, I watched a guy walk within 3 feet of a public trash can and casually throw a big greasy sandwich wrapper on the sidewalk. I wanted to kick his legs out from under him and pound his face into the concrete.
If there’s ever an anarchist movement that wears Mr. Clean masks, I’m in.
__________
“In God We Trust” was adopted by Congress in 1956. I was born in 1952! I’m older than God! (The one it talks about on our money, anyway.)
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“If you buy a $1,000 TV for $600, you haven’t ‘saved’ $400. You’ve spent $600.”
Exactly. They set the original price, which was higher than you’d pay for the thing. Then they set the “sale” price, which persuades you that you’re getting this great deal, so you part with the money.
First they set the high price and capture all the people who have money enough to spend on the thing. When sales taper off, they bump the price downward, so they capture the slightly lower socioeconomic group willing to part with THAT amount of money. Repeat as necessary.
Because those poorer people? Most of them aren’t going to buy some lesser TV. They’re not going to buy any TV at all.
But when they see that fantastic “sale” price and discover they can actually SAVE $400, they’re suddenly certain they can’t pass up this limited-time deal. They’re going to get a fantastic TV and save hundreds of dollars.
Result: The TV manufacturer offloads onto you a thing you DIDN’T ORIGINALLY WANT. It probably wasn’t on your list of future purchases, or built into any sort of budget. The made you want it.
I repeat: THEY MADE YOU WANT IT.
They trick you into buying, and you, with nobody to tell you there’s this other way to look at all these sales and special offers and coupons, fall for it.
The richer people get shanked too, though. After all, THEY bought the thing at its original inflated price. If you buy the TV for $1,000, and a day later the store drops the price to $600 … where did YOUR $400 savings go? Right: Nowhere. Into the pockets of the manipulative, lying merchandiser.
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I’m starting a new international group, Cartographers Without Borders.
We’re not quite sure what our eventual goals are, but we’re certain it involves something other than drawing lines on maps.
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Thanksgiving: On Alternate Earth, everybody ate moa. (Their ovens must be a LOT bigger!)
The cool thing about Thanksgiving on Alternate Earth is that moa drumsticks are the only known food which can also double as a lethal weapon. Even in the bad part of town, nobody messes with you on Thanksgiving.
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You non-horsey people probably can’t imagine falling asleep while riding a horse, but on a long ride in the wilderness, it’s definitely possible.
One a side note, one of the really cool things about a trail-wise horse is that he always knows the way home. If you get lost, drop the reins and relax. He’ll get you there.
__________
My motto is: NEVER GIVE A LIVING THING AS A SURPRISE GIFT.
Do I have to explain that? Hope not.
__________
One of the many great things about Canadians is that you can poke fun at them without provoking a scream of “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD, WHY DO YOU HAAAAATE CANADIANS? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOOOOUUU???”
They just go “That’s funny, eh? Hey, how about those Maple Leafs?”
I put it down to a really solid sense of national self esteem.
__________
I’ve never known a teacher who did an 8-hour-a-day job. They ALL did homework.
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Haircut today! Yay!
Yes, when you get older, your life really is this boring. (I do plan to go out and hunt velociraptors later. Okay, I’m not saying I’ll catch any, but I’ll sure be looking.)
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For weeks, someone was sending me vegetables in the mail – celery, rhubarb, swiss chard and asparagus.
Finally I realized I was being stalked.
__________
Realized something today:
On a social platform known as FACEbook, I interact daily with hundreds of people …
… whose faces I have never actually seen.
__________
Just now trying to figure out why my mouse isn’t working, I finally realize I’m rubbing my cellphone around on the desktop.
__________
Cat food flavors conspicuous by their absence:
Mouse
Chipmunk
Songbird
Innocent Little Spider on the Wall
Cream
Unidentified Bug
Cat Ass
Human Hand
Baby Rabbit
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I keep on saying this: Atheist Groups should NEVER put up a billboard, display or monument without first putting up a number of hidden cameras around the thing, so the proud vandals can get their needed public exposure.
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Thoughts on Daylight Savings Time:
Wait, Obama’s now forcing us to SET OUR CLOCKS BACK ONE HOUR?? Hey, I voted for a president, not a dictator!
Next think you know, it’ll be that communist-inspired metric system.
You can have my pounds and inches when you pry them from my cold, dead waist!
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“If you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” always translates in my mind to “If I’m not doing anything wrong, why should I be treated like the people who are?”
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When I saw Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, I was actually disappointed when the big beautiful Beast changed into that wimpy prince. I was thinking “Hey, if she fell in love with the Beast, what makes anybody think she’s going to feel the same about Prince Blandington Sissyknickers?”
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Someday I want to hear a drug advertisement on TV where that fast-talking voice at the end says “Side effects may include good hair days, rock-hard buns, unaccountable social poise, and sustained periods of motivation and energy. Consult your doctor if you have the sudden desire to go on a hike lasting four hours or more.”
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If someone you know uses the words “irregardless,” or “supposably,” it’s okay to put duct tape over his mouth and slap him repeatedly.
I think it’s an actual rule.
__________
When I die and the universe ends, it’s going to be really rough on the rest of you. I’d like to be immortal and all, so you could go on with your lives and stuff, but being the center of everything can only take you so far.
__________
I still say professional golf would be a lot more edgy and exciting if one ball in every hundred was filled with a powerful explosive.
But maybe that’s just me.
__________
Couldn’t get on Facebook for a couple of hours. I was sure it was the Rapture, and all the Christians in tech support had gone off to Heaven.
__________
If YOU call ME, don’t be carrying on a conversation with someone else when I answer, and then make me wait until you’re done.
Hey, I was busy when you called. I stopped doing what I was doing so I could see what you wanted. I figured it was important, that you needed to talk to me right NOW, or you wouldn’t have called. But if you’re too busy to respect my time like I just respected yours, I’m hanging up on you instantly.
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As an atheist, my only plan for the afterlife is to have a surprised mortician say “Holy shit! This man has no tattoos!”
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When I got my German shepherd Ranger the Valiant Warrior many years ago, I had lots of people tell me “Never give a puppy a shoe to chew on. They can’t tell the difference between the shoe you give them and your other shoes, and they’ll chew up your good shoes.”
I have to believe the people who said that had some really stupid dogs. Ranger recognized his shoe, the Puppy Shoe, and never once gnawed on my others. But then again, the Puppy Shoe was FUN. I’d put it on the end of a string and swing it around. He got to chase and catch it, and I got to tell him how wonderful and smart and fast he was for catching that wily thing.
Glory Days.
__________
I’ve gotten an extremely unusual – for me, anyway – surge of energy and spent all day yesterday and today cleaning and organizing my room and computer files. I’m far from done, but I’m able to WALK AROUND in here, and I now know where ALL my photos, ALL my voice notes are on my hard drive. Usually I have to slither through the room, dodging this pile and that, and I’ve spent as much as three days searching for a single file on my computer.
I’m betting it’s some sort of rare brain tumor causing it all. I’ll probably get fully organized for the first time in my life, and then my head will just explode.
Later, weeping admirers will tour the site of my genius, and will say “Oh, he was so ORGANIZED and tidy! Would you look at it – every paper in its place! He’s even folded and matched the socks in his sock drawer. Organization … that must be how he accomplished it all.”
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I live in a place where the main downtown library is a 10 minute walk from my apartment.
Great, huh? But my subconscious has recalibrated so that NOW I want the library to be open all night and to have a coffee house inside.
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Back during the government shutdown, it occurred to me that the shutdown was not some unintended side-effect, but the actual goal of the Teapublicans. They INTENDED to destroy the U.S. government. Everything else is fluff.
That’s treason, that is.
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My “Glass is Half Full” haiku to closed National Parks:
Clear stream sings to self,
Mountain soars, alone, unseen.
Bear wanders in peace.
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Replying to a couple of people I deFriended over negative Richard Dawkins comments:
The problem for me is that there’s this large part of the atheist movement fixating on Dawkins, actively working to tear him down. And that pisses me off. It’s shortsighted and malignant.
I thought Hitchens was a complete idiot on Iraq. He never apologized for it, either, near as I can tell. And in that business, lots and lots of people died. But I still have immense respect and admiration for Hitchens. I still feel VASTLY grateful for what he’s done for atheism and atheists.
I feel the same way about Dawkins. But to some people, Dawkins is a target now. They’re LOOKING for reasons to hate him, to publicly denigrate him.
I don’t like that. I never will. I won’t be friends with people who do it.
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Hope you’re having a good day with friends and family, or finding something equally nice to do on this cold wintery day here in the Northern Hemisphere. (To those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, why haven’t you invited me down and sent me a plane ticket, you stingy bastards!?)
Weird Family Memories sparked by Thanksgiving:
I had an Aunt Esther on my mother’s side who had an entire room of her house in which children were not permitted. It had a big velvet rope across the arched entryway, like a museum or something. In her normal living room, she had a bowl of candy on the coffee table that was inedible. Real hard candy, but weird tasting, and deliberately chosen so that us kids wouldn’t eat it. It was just there to look at. She DUSTED it. And her middle name was Vendetta. Really.
Another aunt, on my father’s side, just oozed greed. When my father died, I learned he’d transferred the property of our home to his sister, dear Aunt Winona, in order not to lose it when my parents divorced. We three brothers, who would otherwise have been his heirs, met her at the old house to tie up some details. My older brother said “We’re going to honor Daddy’s wishes and not contest this,” and Aunt “Winnie” snapped “Well, if you did, the lawyers would just get it all.” You could practically see her ugly claws digging in. To this day, I remember her as being a dead ringer for Cruella de Vil.
I had a cousin who messed his pants until he was about 13. We’d be playing with him and suddenly smell it. “Tommy, do you need to go to the bathroom?” “No.” His own mother fondly referred to him as “Tommy Shit-In-The-Britch.”
In a reference to the oversized ears which I would later grow into, my Aunt Merle conceived the notion that I loved being called “Mickey Mouse.” I didn’t, but I heard it anyway, until the day she died.
My mother’s brother lived with us off and on for a few years. He had multiple sclerosis and diabetes and walked with two canes. At night he was unable to make it to the bathroom for his frequent urination and so every night 
filled up a gallon jar next to his bed. It was called Uncle Joe’s Piss Jar. I was in charge of emptying it every morning, and had a horror of accidentally spilling it. He had a room full of boxes of books, and on rainy days I’d be in there looking at that fantastic collection, digging out things to read, esoteric books on science and philosophy, classic novels, all sorts of wonderfully arcane stuff that nobody else in the family could appreciate. Uncle Joe was very probably an atheist — but that was something that could get you thrown out of someone’s house in the Texas of the 1960s (and probably still today), so he never said it — and was the only person in my young life that I could talk to about ideas. He also bought me my first typewriter, a Royal “Safari” portable. (Wish I knew what happened to that thing. I loved it.)
Years later when Uncle Joe died and I was living in another state, my Wicked Stepfather went to Joe’s cabin and pulled out all those books, hundreds of them, and threw them into a big steel burn-barrel. It was an unquestioned fact in his head that nobody would want those books because they were useless trash, and the best thing to do was just burn them. Which he did.
Whew. Family.
I love this quote from the Daily Kos story:
Rep. Michele Bachmann is a member of Congress. She’s one of the people currently celebrating the shutdown of the American government as being a fine thing. She is on—and I am not making this up—the House Intelligence Committee.
This is a person who gained so much respect in her home district, where people KNOW her, that she has been repeatedly elected to public office — first the Minnesota state senate, later the U.S. House of Representatives — since 2000.
Which makes her voice more resonant than the guy standing on a corner mumbling about Jesus:
Now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s End Times history.
Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand. When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.
I’m out of the loop on whatever sect this phrase comes from — Maranatha Come Lord Jesus — but isn’t that a magical-sounding thing? Makes you want to throw it into your own conversations.
I took the dog for a walk today, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, and the fall colors were wonderful.
No, I did my homework, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, but my little brother tore it up.
Maybe we could start abbreviating it and it could replace LOL as a frequent interjection in online conversations:
You were drunk as hell at the party and took off your top in front of everyone, MCLJ!
The boss bent over at the water cooler yesterday, MCLJ, and it was like looking at the Grand Canyon, only with pimples and hair.
I also love this bit from Wikipedia:
Bachmann is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, the Federal Election Commission, the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee, the Urbandale Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation because of alleged campaign finance violations in her 2012 campaign for President.
And I especially like this:
On May 29, 2013, Bachmann announced that she would not seek re-election to her Congressional seat in 2014.
A little more than a year before the Bachmann Crazy Show goes off the air.
You’re gonna love this. Just relax and let it … enter your mind.
Yes, this is what foxes really sound like.
We DO want to fully engage society with the beautiful possibilities of atheism, right?
I just don’t see how we can do that without our own nationwide motorcycle club.
And if you DO do this, I demand to be a charter member!
Also, I’ll need a motorcycle.
Seriously, I think this would be a pretty cool thing to do. It could also get some serious publicity.
(BTW, this back-patch design is a rough approximation. There’s also a little something wonky in how the E in Riders came across when I converted my original to a jpeg. No idea why. Argh.)
I’ve been meme-ifying over on Facebook lately. Just little nothings I tinkered up in Photoshop, and most of them no great shakes in the graphic design department — or even in basic message.
Apparently you have to click on an image, and then click on it again, in order to see any one of these full-size.
The top three are the coolest. If you have time for nothing else, take a look at those.
Didn’t like history in school. Did. Not. It was just this droning recitation of dates and wars and such, people I didn’t give a hoot about doing obscure things to each other while wearing weird clothes and armor and stuff.
I don’t know why it never got across to me that it was all real — real people doing real things. Probably it was all the fault of my teachers. Yeah, that must be it! Anyway, I dutifully memorized the dates and the events, and fired them back on tests, and did pretty good, despite having no feeling for the material.
It was only in about 1986 or so that I first understood the realness, that there had been actual people back there in the past, living whole lives and doing interesting, history-making things. People like me, and unlike me, but people. People you could walk right up to and talk to, if you lived back then.
Now I’m interested in it, but don’t really have time to study it. Probably why I found this little Wikipedia feature interesting: Every calendar date has its own unique history, and the Gods of Wiki have gathered them on their characteristic pages.
For instance, on today, May 26, I think it’s obscurely cool that in the year …
47 BC – Julius Caesar visits Tarsus on his way to Pontus, where he meets enthusiastic support, but where, according to Cicero, Cassius is planning to kill him at this point.
I think I recall some sort of play about this. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it didn’t turn out well for Caesar.
1328 – William of Ockham, Franciscan Minister-General Michael of Cesena and two other Franciscan leaders secretly leave Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII.
While shaving the next day, William was heard to shout “Honey, have you seen my razor? I believe it to have been stolen by Gypsies, or possibly spirited away by elves! Maybe even rendered invisible by witches!” to which his wife replied, “It’s wherever you left it! Really, William, select the hypotheses with the fewest assumptions!”
1830 – The Indian Removal Act is passed by the U.S. Congress; it is signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later.
Proof that our modern Congress has no monopoly on a-holishness, nor has the White House.
1897 – Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is published.
To think we have a guy from the 1800s to thank for the Twilight series! Wow!
1908 – At Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
Hey, whatever happened to Persia, anyway? Someone said those damned Iranians moved in and took it over. Probably wanted to get control of our oil.
1938 – In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session.
They really saved us from those Un-Americans! And finally, striking a blow for cartographic justice, in
1998 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.
Additionally, these people where born on this day in history:
1264 – Prince Koreyasu, Japanese shogun (d. 1326)
1478 – Pope Clement VII (d. 1534)
1886 – Al Jolson, American singer, comedian, and actor (d. 1950)
1907 – John Wayne, American actor (d. 1979)
1912 – Jay Silverheels, Canadian actor (d. 1980)
1913 – Peter Cushing, English actor (d. 1994)
1920 – Peggy Lee, American singer-songwriter and actress (d. 2002)
1922 – Troy Smith, American businessman, founded Sonic Drive-In (d. 2009)
1923 – James Arness, American actor (d. 2011)
1926 – Miles Davis, American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer (Miles Davis Quintet) (d. 1991)
1928 – Jack Kevorkian, American pathologist (d. 2011)
1941 – Reg Bundy, English drag queen performer, dancer, and actor (d. 2003)
1945 – Garry Peterson, Canadian drummer (The Guess Who and Bachman–Turner Overdrive)
1948 – Stevie Nicks, American singer-songwriter and musician (Fleetwood Mac)
1949 – Ward Cunningham, American computer programmer, developed the first wiki
1949 – Pam Grier, American actress
1949 – Hank Williams Jr., American singer-songwriter and musician
1951 – Sally Ride, American astronaut (d. 2012)
1954 – Danny Rolling, American serial killer (d. 2006)
1962 – Bobcat Goldthwait, American actor
1964 – Lenny Kravitz, American singer-songwriter, musician, producer, and actor
1966 – Helena Bonham Carter, English actress
1972 – Kylie Ireland, American porn actress, director, producer, publicist, and radio host
And these people died:
604 – Augustine of Canterbury, Benedictine monk, 1st Archbishop of Canterbury
735 – Bede, English historian and theologian (b. 673)
1647 – Alse Young, American woman executed for witchcraft (b. 1600)
1651 – Jeane Gardiner, English woman executed for witchcraft
1703 – Samuel Pepys, English naval administrator and civil servant (b. 1633)
1904 – Georges Gilles de la Tourette, French neurologist (b. 1857)
1933 – Jimmie Rodgers, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1897)
1943 – Edsel Ford, American businessman (b. 1893)
1976 – Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (b. 1889)
2005 – Eddie Albert, American actor (b. 1906)
2008 – Sydney Pollack, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1934)
2010 – Art Linkletter, Canadian-American radio and television host (b. 1912)
2012 – Rudy Eugene, American criminal and cannibal (b. 1981)
Browsing elsewhere on the calendar, I’ve discovered I share a birthday, Sept. 6, with:
1766 – John Dalton, English chemist and physicist (d. 1844)
1860 – Jane Addams, American social worker, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1935)
1879 – Max Schreck, German actor (d. 1936)
1937 – Sergio Aragonés, Spanish illustrator and writer
1937 – Jo Anne Worley, American actress
1947 – Jane Curtin, American actress
1958 – Buster Bloodvessel, English singer-songwriter (Bad Manners)
1958 – Jeff Foxworthy, American comedian, actor, and author
1963 – Mark Chesnutt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1967 – Macy Gray, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
1974 – Justin Whalin, American actor
2006 – Prince Hisahito of Akishino
And yes, I leaned heavily on my meager, U.S.-centric knowledge of historical figures and geography. Go to the page, or check the link-map at the bottom to find all those famous figures and events from your tiny native nation such as Tunisia, Tierra del Fuego, Australia, Brazil, or some of those other obscure, minor countries.
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