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1-1-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Buffaloed: Happy to oblige, pip pip and all that, y'know:
"Snow on first day, Sailor's
dismay."
You're welcome. |
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1-5-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Robby: It was born "Halbrecht," named after a wealthy uncle who was an adding machine in Pomerania. His parents hoped that by naming the child after the skinflint old uncle they would come into some buckaroonies when the old man kicked the socket. As fate would have it, the uncle HATED the name Halbrecht, and left his entire fortune to found a home for wayward abacuses by the side of the Vistula River in the old country. HAL also hated the name and, quite frankly, would have preferred to have been named Sue, especially after he was cast to play the role of the Orgasmatron in Woody Allen's 1973 movie Sleeper.  |
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1-8-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Metallica: Aluminium— or "uh-LOO-m' num" in the USA— one of the finest beach resorts in the world, was first discovered by Polynesian surfers in the 11th century. The name means "the perfect wave" in Polyester, their language. They kept it a closely-guarded secret, but in 1412 the Chinese eunuch Hung No Moor re-discovered the island during his voyages to discover the New World. He named it Aluminium— Chinese for "Land of Hungry Customers— and set up what is believed to be the first Chinese restaurant and take-out shop, according to the carbon dating of fossilized Mu Shu Pork found by archaeologists. The surfers were nuts about the food, and soon the beaches were littered with white cardboard containers with little wire hangers. This spoiled the perfection of the beach and the waves, so the Polynesians surfed off to discover Polyeaster Island, where they set up head shops and spent their days in idolness. Without customers, Hung No Moor had no reason to remain, so he and his ships sailed off to discover San Francisco, where they opened the first Chippendale's. The island remained un-re-discovered until 1775, when Captain James Cook, who was looking for a secluded place to open a nudist colony, came upon it. He named it Aluminium to honor his Arab brother-in-law, Bosco al-Uminium. Captain Cook never cared for his brother-in-law, and named the island after him solely to mislead the clueless Bosco and persuade him to remain behind after Cook set up a dummy corporation¹ called Cook's Tours and left his doomed brother-in-law to "manage" it. In 1778 Bosco, still gamely wading in the surf with his Tour Guide cap, was eaten by a great white shark, who then choked to death on the Tour Guide hat, which is somehow ironic, I suppose. In 1886 the island was re-re-discovered by Plotz de Leon, great-etc-grandson of the famed explorer. He called it Aluminium after the alum mine he found there, but he and his crew were puckered to death before he could exploit his find. In 1933 a group of refugees fleeing the dust storms in the Midwest stumbled upon the island, having taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. They called the island Aluminium to honor their favorite hot-dogs-steamed-in-beer restaurant. The hoped to set up a franchise called "A Lum's In I.A.M." and set up the Islands Americans Manage limited-liability corporation¹ in the hopes they would attract families from the mainland. But no one came because it was the depths of the Depression and families no longer took Sunday drives the way they used to. The dust-bowl refugees were reduced to eating Plotz de Leon's ship. Notes found much later claimed that it tasted like chicken, but the splinters passing through their intestines killed everyone miserably. In 1954 the island vanished when it was used to test the first hydrogen bomb during the super-secret project (A) Luminium. It did indeed light up the area, and particles of the island are still circulating in the atmosphere. ------------- ¹
http://tinyurl.com/288oud |
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1-11-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Unsound: Personal sonar. It was an idea far ahead of its time and, sadly, became the ruin of its inventor, Esmeralda "Fahnestock" Schoonhoover. Miss Schoonhoover, a maiden lady of exceedingly high moral standards, was offended by the rising popularity of SCUBA diving after the Second World War. What, she posited rhetorically, was to prevent one of these SCUBA fiends from swimming under bathing beauties and ogling their derrières? What indeed? Miss Schoonhoover's indignation soon spilled from the Letters to the Editor pages into her late brother Aristobulus's electronics workshop, where she soon cobbled together a compact sonar device which would warn modest young maidens of the intrusion of a SCUBAee in their vicinity. Not that Miss Schoonhoover approved of young maidens exposing themselves on beaches in the first place, but, she reasoned, their recklessness in matters of personal virtue should not be met with such an unsavory reception as a lurking subaquatic Peeping Tom. She used her personal fortune to manufacture and bring to market her warning device, the cleverly-named Soundabout, advertising it in all the proper journals that young ladies were likely to read, like The Christian Temperance Sentinel, My Weekly Deportment, and Golden Rule, bemoaning the fact that Leslie's Illustrated and Godey's Lady's Book had apparently ceased circulation while she was otherwise engaged. Orders did not exactly come pouring in the door. As a matter of fact the only one she sold was to a rather dense bumpkin¹ who thought it was a fish finder. Despairing, she redoubled her advertising efforts and sank her remaining fortune into full-page color ads, expanding into The Sunday Reader and Morals for Maidens with no result. Now penurious, and with a warehouse of unsold Soundabouts, she became a ward of the state and spent her remaining days teaching table manners to convicts to earn a pittance. --------------------------------- ¹ The "rather dense bumpkin" was Charles Esterhazy, who copied Miss Schoonhoover's device down to the last capacitor and sold it as "The Fishin' Magician," in piscatorial magazines and with late-night TV spots. He became so wealthy that he hired millionaires to mow the lawn on his estates, just to show he could. |
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1-17-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Thirsty: The word originated with puncheon, a cask with a capacity of from 72 to 120 gallons. The drink originated with itinerant British drinks-vendor Puncheon Judy, who would roll a cask of rum around to street fairs, puppet shows and witch-burnings to ease the thirst of both performers and their audiences. Her trademark cry, "Puncheon Judy here, come drink your fill/ Thruppence for a tankard, penny for a gill!" could easily be heard at these events above the roar of the crowds, as she had drunk enough of her product over the years to give her vocal cords the strength and tension of steel cable. One summer's day as she was plodding along, rolling her cask, a fine carriage stopped alongside her. A gentleman leaned out and requested a slug of rum for himself to help him deal with the sultriness of the day. Having quaffed his fill, he handed back the tankard and requested another for his wife. The lady in question being in a delicate condition, the gentleman requested that Judy temper the rum with another beverage. Always willing to please, Judy looked around and hailed a passing fruit juice vendor, and a seller of a carbonated medicinal drink. Mixing these together and adding a bit of ice filched from a fishmonger, she passed the concoction up to the carriage. Well, lo! and behold, the refreshment so much hit the spot that the gentleman asked for another for himself, and for his driver and footmen and the horses. They all agreed that it was the best summer drink they had ever tasted, and the gentleman gave Judy £5¹ to set her up in a new business. When asked if she had a name for the beverage, she said, simply, "It's Puncheon Judy's Drink,² your worship." And so the most popular summer drink in the land came to be, its name soon shortened to "punch" for brevity's sake. ------------------------------------------ ¹ Roughly £150,000 ($306,000) in 2007 currency. Inflation has taken a dreadful toll on the British pound. ² According to Snopes, there is no truth to the story that she originally named it Flaming Homer. |
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1-24-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Rhythmic: I for one would like to update all fossil poetry served in schools, to make it relative to today's world and concerns. For instance, Mr Masefield's sea chantey could be brought into the 21st century very easily:
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2-1-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Nominal: It's named after a tragic mistake, actually. Jules Lawrence was the first person to open a tannery in the newly-discovered regions of Canadian North America. He specialized in the splitting, or "riving" of leather hides to form suede, which was quite popular for the fashioning of gloves in that era. Pretty soon "Lawrence the River" became a wealthy man, and the first thing he did was to finance the building of a cathedral in what was later to become Québec. The building of the cathedral took all his money, reducing him to penury. In his humility he also became a leper, and lived under the front stairs of the magnificent cathedral, subsisting on the occasional bone flung to him by the clerics. He managed to survive one Canadian winter this way, before perishing miserably in 1602. Feeling somewhat guilty, the Montreal diocese had him beatified in 1617, then canonized in 1637. By that time no one remembered his family name, so he was entered into the hagiography as "St Lawrence, River." The comma was misplaced in 1722, and to this day most people think he's the patron saint of Canadian waterways. His feast day is January 14th. His official bird is the sharp-nosed shrike, his official flower the Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and his official color is crepe myrtle green. |
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2-4-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Saucy: Baron Linguine Pastafazool, who was never quite the same after landing on his head during a fall from a camel in Afghanistan. He also introduced Italians to celery, hamsters, and the better-looking classes of rocks. An unfailingly polite gentleman, he was unfortunately as crazy as a bandicoot, which he introduced to Australians at every opportunity. Italians took his delusions good-naturedly, though, pretending to be honored by the introductions, and sometimes leaving visiting cards with the creatures and objects they were introduced to. Pastafazool, and whole bunches of his countrymen, met a tragic end when he introduced Italians to plague rats in 1348. |
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2-8-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Martinet: Gilbert and Sullivan. One song from their "Pirates of Penzance," was blamed not only for the rise of fascism but other naughty things as well, like the gimlet cocktail and patent leather dancing shoes.
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2-11-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Inuit Tropicana. During the real-estate investment boom of the 1920s, when people were buying swampland in Florida for outrageous sums, a group of dishonest businesspeople bought up all the land they could find in Point Barrow, Alaska, renamed it Tropicana, and had lots of brochures printed up showing it as a beachfront paradise. They even had a surveyor lay out the city and the suburbs, and hired an out-of-work architect to do a rendering. Well, the money just rolled in, and before you could say "flim-flam," the fictional Tropicana had a population of 400,000, making it the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, which in the maps had been renamed the Tropic of Paradise. Trouble began when property owners began showing up to plan their beachfront bungalows. At first the developers dealt with the problem by rearranging highway signs, and claiming that the snow was actually "whale dandruff," a seasonal phenomenon, but it was only a matter of time before the jig was up. The miscreants cashed in and fled to Hawaii, where they lived in guilt for the rest of their days, surrounded by hula girls and unfathomable luxury. |
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2-16-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Impressed:
Ah, you've stirred up some memories best laid to rest. For the
elucidation of the non-nonagenarians among us, some background in in
order. |
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2-21-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Sinking: It's a device to measure nihilism. Although rarely used today, it was extremely popular in Europe during the Nihilist and Anarchist heyday, 1848-1939. Nihilists denied the existence of reality, which didn't stop them from throwing bombs around to blow it up. They were against everything, especially governments, and felt that radical change in society and government was best effected through terrorism and assassination. We have nothing like it today. (cough! cough!) The nihlometer (patented as Nilometer® in 1856 to avoid prior usage disputes) became very popular with police departments, as a simple scan of an angry crowd would allow them to pick out the bomb-throwers in a trice, who could then be flung into dungeons or safely executed in an alley someplace. Nihilism didn't become popular in the United States until 1920, when someone drove a horse-drawn wagon loaded with dynamite and cast iron bars down Wall Street and parked it in front of J P Morgan's bank. The resulting explosion killed or wounded hundreds. All they ever found of the horse were its shoes, firmly implanted in the asphalt by the force of the blast. This made nihilism extremely popular with the disenfranchised, the disenchanted, the dysfunctional and with newspaper cartoonists, for whom the unwashed, spiky-bearded, overcoat-wearing, cannonball-shaped-bomb-throwing immigrant became a stock figure. After the Wall Street blast the New York City police department bought a whole slew of Nilometers® with which to patrol the financial district, but they were confounded when the devices pinpointed stockbrokers as nihilists. This was not explained until late October of 1929. |
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2-26-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Morbid: Despite his advanced age, he insisted on entering the Labor Day Coney Island Napoleon Pastry-Eating Contest sponsored by Nappy's House of Confections on the boardwalk, "to keep up the family honor," as he put it. Sadly, he was up against professional gluttons Ira "Steamshovel" O'Malley and "Bottomless" Bette Bourdin, the "Louisiana Landfill." Bonaparte defended the title heroically, pausing from time to time to insert his hand into his vest in the classic Bonaparte manner to check the pressure on his gastrointestinal tract. But the day was hot and the competition fierce, and the old man threw caution to the winds in the home stretch, managing to gulp down 89 of the pastries in 48 seconds before his flesh proved weaker than his spirit. He is buried in Pride's Folly, Massachusetts, under the concise headstone giving his name and dates and a cryptic message regarding the means of his demise and its cause:
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3-1-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Stunted: Because he couldn't spell Ooze, the intended title. The first drafts of the book were utterly unlike the final version. In the original Dorothy is pursued by a mutant toxic swamp monster while struggling along the Yellow Blech! Road. And the original Munchkins were vertically challenged because they were bred to a specific height so they could test the depths of vermin-infested streams before the higher-ranking people felt it was safe to cross over on their heads. Dorothy arrives in Ooze when a garbage truck she happens to be riding in as a trainee ashcan banger is caught up in a tornado and lands on top of the Ooze town dump, flattening a family of trash pickers hunting for items to sell on eBay. She is accompanied by half her dog, To, the results of a tug-of-war with Miss Gulch. On the way to Ooze she meets several companions, the Despaircrow, who tells her that there's little point in continuing because the rest of Ooze is exactly like the Murky Wood, only nastier. She also meets the Thin Man, who has drunkenly stumbled onto the set from another movie in progress. And the Howardly Lion, a recluse who only wants to be left alone to pursue his dream of building the biggest plywood seaplane ever. After a while the unlikely quartet comes across a field of opium poppies, where Dorothy utters her famous line, "Gee, To, I've a feeling we're in Afghanistan!" She stops right there and sets up a lab to produce morphine base, which she sells to the munchkins cheaply until they're hooked, then really puts the screws to them. She amasses great wealth and soon becomes Queen of Ooze. Awhile later a flim-flam man comes by with a hot-air balloon and offers to give her a ride if she'll let him fondle her slippers, but she figures that a Murky Wood is neither better nor worse than a trailer park in a bad neighborhood of Wichita, so she stays. When Grendel the Slightly Cleaner Witch shows up to chide her for not returning to her homeland, Dorothy has the Munchkins surreptitiously fill her bubble with hydrogen. When Grendel leaves, she shoots straight up to 50,000 feet, where she's hit by a lightning bolt and scattered in flaming bits across the firmament. Dorothy and the Munchkins, watching from the ground, go "Oooooooooooooooooooh," and applaud vigorously. There is, technically, no Wicked Witch of the West, only a hydrophobic old woman with a skin condition and a fondness for genetically engineered flying monkeys in spite of repeated warnings from PETA. In the best Conservative tradition Dorothy appoints her head of the Environmental Protection Agency where she can do no harm. Auntie Em she replaces with an animatronics unit, strictly for sentimental reasons. Later Dorothy meets Princess Oozema of the Geewillikins. Being of the same inclination, they soon sneak off to the island of Lesbooze, where it's legal to marry. For that story, see Nancy Drew Among the Lesbooznians, which you'll have to pay extra for. |
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3-5-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Raspy: Lo Zenge was the physician on one of the Chinese treasure ships which discovered America in 1421. He compounded his throat tablets in response to a condition the ship's crew had picked up in the low dives of San Francisco while they were on liberty. The saloon keepers had introduced them to "to bak ho," ("addictive lung cancer" in the language of the Muwekma Ohlone Indians of San Francisco), a weed whose aromatic broad leaves could be dried, set on fire, and the smoke rising from it inhaled as a sort of childhood dare or teenage manhood ritual. Well, the Chinese sailors thought it was just the best trick ever, and stowed a ton of dried leaves aboard the good ship "Lo Li Pop," which they consumed on the voyage home. Fortunately there were many seeds mixed in with the leaves of the noxious weed, because when their stash ran out they were climbing the walls. Although the voyage of colonization didn't work out as planned-- the captain's log read: "too much riff-raff there already, they're not ready for the railroad yet" -- it had the side effect of making pulmonary therapists very necessary and very wealthy in China. The tradition is maintained to this very day, as the Chinese smoke one-third of all the world's cigarettes, sometimes exhaling simultaneously to annoy their neighbors. |
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3-10-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Dullard: Inevitably. |
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3-10-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Murex: They are the children of the late prolific entertainer/inventor Abner Beanblossom, who named his family after his best creations. "Macaroni," is obvious, and became his eldest son's name after Beanblossom's "Macarena" went triple platinum. "Gentoo" commemorates his successful revival of the rock band "Genesis" after Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel split. "Chinstrap" comes from Beanblossom's invention that allowed Motörhead's Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister to continue his outrageous headbanging performance style without the fear that his head would detach itself and go sailing into the crowd, as happened in Chiswick Auditorium during a memorable performance on the night of August 14, 1982. His only daughter, Adélie, was named after Beanblossom's successful adaptation of the TV game show "Let's make a Deal," as a Broadway musical, "Let's Make a Dealie." It was said that when host Monty Hall attended the premiere on April 4, 1985, he was so overcome by one of the dance numbers dedicated to him ("The Full Monty"), that he spent the second half of the show throwing up in the men's room. |
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3-18-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Equid: It depended a lot on the race and the year. For example, in the 1768 Hialeah claiming stakes he had his money on "King's Ransom." He won, but the British government, which had sponsored the race, welched on the deal so he never got the horse. This became his primary motivation for starting the American Rebellion. In the trifecta at Belmont in 1774 he picked the string of "Banjo Dandy," "Martha's Cobbler," and "Whigged Out," getting the first two right but missing the Show placer, which turned out to be "Stamp Act Sammy." He missed the signing of the Declaration of Independence because he had a lot of money riding on "Rum, Romanism & Rebellion" in the Independence Day Handicap race at Churchill Downs. That ended in a woodcut finish (this was before the invention of photography) between RR&R and "What's the Tory, Morning Glory?" so he took home only half the winnings he had hoped to. Which meant he couldn't buy Martha any slaves from the 1777 model year and she had to make do with last year's, grumbling all the while at what the neighbors would think. In retirement he tended to be more conservative in his choices, usually going with the opposite of his bookie's favorite. It was apparently a wise strategy, because his pick, "Choppin' Cherries," paid off 16-1 in the Kentucky Derby that year, and his long shot, "Splintery Teef," won the Preakness. |
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3-20-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Mnemonic: Caesar Rodney. Most of the original singers of the Declaration¹ went on to individual careers after the Declaration went Platinum in only 3 weeks. John Hancock, of course, was the biggest success ("Come on Baby Light my Fire, I'm Insured from Cellar to Spire"), but there were other notable performers in the group, like Samuel Adams, whose "Tiny Bubbles" later became the advertising jingle for his brewery; Francis "Footloose" Lee was a one-hit wonder, but the perennial popularity of the song saved his bacon; George Reed and the Delaware Destroyers had a number of modest hits, among them "Move It On Over," about frontier boundary disputes; Benjamin Rush had his eco-pop band with such hits as "Today's Town Sawyer, Tomorrow's Senator," later used for Abraham Lincoln's political campaign. Benjamin Franklin had several hits, mostly based on his inventions, like "Bifocal Baby (Don't Mean Maybe)," "Hot Stove, Winter in the City, (Back of My Legs Gettin' Warmed Real Pretty),"Touch the Key, It Sparks Like Me," and "Wanna be Your Lightnin' Rod." John Morton was also a bit of a self-promoter, with "When It Rains, My Heart Pours." Carter Braxton and his band, Braxton-Hicks Contraction, were briefly popular, but never managed to match the success of "Takin' Care of British (And Workin' Overtime.)" Button Gwinnett had a so-so country and western career, fronting for such groups as Davy Crocket and the Alamo and the modest popularity of his "Texas, Not Mex's," rabble-rousing tune he did with North of the Border. Caesar Rodney, on the other hand, was more of a cafe and lounge singer, reprising older hits like "Plymouth Rocks!" "Go West, Young Injun," and "Battle of the New Orleans Bordellos." He performed well into his eighties, still packing them in to Las Vegas clubs even after he needed a walker to get around. --------------------------------- ¹ CHORUS Set me free of the chains holding me Is anybody out there hearing me? Set me free. |
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3-23-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Cursorial: Trick question. The first Kentucky Derby Run was actually a mosey, saunter or amble. And it happened on Easter Sunday, 1888, when a group of Kentucky men, depressed at being left out of the Easter Parade in which women showed off their new hats, decided to hold a competing, men-only event on the same day. They donned their new derbies and bowlers, picked up their walking sticks, and sashayed down Main Street from east to west, as the ladies approached from west to east, the two parade lines colliding in front of the Long Branch saloon. It was at this point that the violence broke out, sparked by Ben Wurtleman, dry goods clerk, who insolently knocked Mary Jo Winkerman's Paris-inspired purple hydrangea picture hat into the dust with a flick of his stick. Mary Jo responded by swinging her reticule at Ben Wurtleman's new bowler, sending it into a horse trough at a loss to him of a dollar and ninety-three cents, tax excluded. Well, that set off a fracas, which led to a ruction, which toppled over into a to-do, then exploded into a battle royal, with ladies' hats hitting the dust at a rate only matched by gentlemen's hats being dunked in the horse trough. The tide of battle pitched back and forth until the angry horde smashed through the swinging doors of the Long Branch saloon, Liquor only worsened matters, and by nightfall children and the elderly were sorting through piles of sodden battered bodies looking for their loved ones by the light of candles and lanterns. At the next meeting of the town council it was decided that everyone had had such a good time that plans were drawn up to do it again the following Easter. The townspeople agreed to merge the names of the events into the Kentucky Easter Derby Parade Run, which was a major tourist attraction until 1957, when firearms were introduced to the fray and authorities were forced to issue a cease-and-desist restraining order which wasn't lifted until 1965, and by that time nobody was wearing hats anymore, so the tradition dried up and blew away like the tumbleweeds which frequently rolled through the town in Autumn. As for the winning horse, there are never any winners in brouhahas of this kind, but Elmo Sturtlemeyer's teacup bay gelding "Ajax" who was tied in front of the Long Branch that morning until freed by a collapsing hitching post, got to eat all the floral arrangements lying in the dust. On the down side, there was so much Macassar Oil in the horse trough that the water was undrinkable for a week, and the horses had to be sustained on whiskey. |
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3-28-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Asian: Mung refers to the Chinese Dynasty that nobody talks about. The Ming Dynasty had expensive vases; the Mung had thrift-shop Tupperware. The Sui raised terrific pigs; the Mung ate roadkill. The Han Dynasty had silk tapestries; the Mung had wallpaper from Dollar World. The Song and Sung Dynasties perfected beautiful azure-glazed pottery ("Song/Sung Blue"); the Mung made clay flowerpots when they could find the clay. The Tang Dynasty invented dehydrated orange drink; the Mung drank out of the horse trough. The Bong Dynasty raised inhalation therapy to the level of a fine art; the Mung had second-hand shag tobacco rolled up in copies of Homeless World. The Bing Dynasty had romantic songs that went to the top of the charts; the Mung sometimes whistled off-key. The Jin Dynasty was famous for its cocktails; the Mung filtered Sterno through bread. The Ping and Pong Dynasties revolutionized indoor recreation; the Mung never got beyond Rock, Paper, Scissors. The Dong and Wang Dynasties... well, the less said about the Dong and Wang Dynasties the better; the Mung were dysfunctional there, too. The Hang Dynasty was renowned for the severity of its justice; the Mung thought a court was something you played Rock, Paper, Scissors on. The Fling Dynasty had spectacular parties; the Mung cut their Sterno with rubbing alcohol. All in all, the Mung Dynasty (April 18, -504 to November 6, -504, Old Celestial Calendar) was a letdown. Archaeologists have been known to re-bury Mung artifacts out of sheer embarrassment. |
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4-2--2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Timid: Fear not! According to its enthusiasts, there is no learning curve with Linux (may its critics boil in their own juices!), as it reads your brain's electrical signals directly. Nor is there any need for hardware— Linux has transcended hardware. Think of it not as an operating system, but as a system that operates you, as it instantly knows what you want and generates it on the spot, even if it has never existed before. Mine has generated geological pornography (bringing new meaning to 'getting one's rocks off''), thunderclap comb-overs, crossword puzzles in Rongorongo, a darkbulb (for sleeping in the daytime in a brightly-lit room), Calamari Helper, a reversible calendar, and infrared paint (keeps a room toasty warm with zero energy expenditure). If you ask it to, Linux will provide you with one completely original idea every hour on the hour, more frequently if you overclock it. It can raise the dead, heal the sick, and bring comfort to the hopeless. It would be a god if it wanted to accept the limitations. With Linux (may its name be praised!) nor is there any need for other software. You will no longer need a keyboard or a mouse. Nor an Internet connection, for Linux connects itself automatically at a rate of 1GB/sec, even in the middle of the Mojave desert, or deep under the sea. It also generates its own electricity— as a matter of fact it generates a surplus, so you can use it to power your home, as well as sell some back to the grid. This is accomplished wirelessly, of course. Once you install Linux (may its competitors be blotted out!) you will no longer have to worry about such petty details as upgrades or patches. Linux sees all, knows all, does all. It never needs security updates, software updates, or any other kind of dates, although it will fix you up with a hottie in no time flat, and she'll buy dinner. You will never be badgered to upgrade to a new version, as no other version will ever be necessary, although from time to time you'll be offered a chance to switch to a free new platform which has no physical reality, powered as it is by energy from virtual particles popping in and out of empty space. It's also faster, and gives you disk storage space that begins with 10¹°° PB and expands automatically to fill all known space, even if your system only has 5¼" floppy disks. Oh, and whenever someone installs Linux an angel gets its wings. |
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4-6-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Trusty: In the interest of fair and balanced reporting I am duty-bound to state that yesterday's comments were all from devoted, passionate, Linux users. Or acolytes, as they describe themselves. There is, however, an opposing camp which has not had very good experiences with the OS. This has inspired me to create my own book of Linux horror stories which I have collected from the Internet and various insane asylums around the country. It features the tragic histories of these wannabe users: » Moe Z. of Ypsilanti, Michigan, who, after 3 days of attempting to install Linux went utterly catatonic and now lives in a drain in his parents' basement and communicates only in Morse code. » Myra T. of Boca Raton, Florida, who, despite having a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, broke down sobbing after the 14th time the :YOU ARE NOT WORTHY TO INSTALL LINUX, SINNER! error message appeared and is now contemplating a career as a little pink teapot. » Ben t'H. of New South Wales, Australia, who refuses to come down from the coolibah tree he hides in during the day unless somebody with a large black umbrella walks below the tree saying from time to time that it looks like DOS. » Belinda S. of Whippersnapper, Wyoming, formerly Miss Human Pretzel of 1989, who has been unable to bend at the waist since attempting to get Kukubuntu 6.12 working on her Dell laptop and spends her days telling the ward attendants that she finally understands what Ted Kaczynski meant by "negative hypercapability." » Amnesia victim "Mr X," of the Toledo Home for the Unidentified Wayward , whose entire vocabulary has been reduced to "Ubuntu," "Mommy," and repeated screams of "Bad! BAD!! BAD!!" According to his minders his symptoms are consistent with Linux Intoxication, Grade III. » There is also the sad story of little Tommy G., of New Bistro, Indiana, a 9-year-old computer prodigy who thought that Linux would be as easy to master as Cobol or Fortran. When his mother came into his computer room an hour later there were only the cryptic words
against a black screen, a thin whiff of ozone in the air, and no sign of
Tommy. That was 4 years ago. His parents keep the machine turned on in
the hopes that Tommy will be reassembled as the little boy they knew and
feared, but the room is padlocked so as not to tempt the other children
in the household. |
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4-10-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Actress/Model/Waiter: Jerry Lewis. He attempted to resurrect his fading career by reprising the bellboy shtick from his eponymous 1960 movie, but it was a dismal failure, as bellhops are not often seen associating with merry-go-rounds— not if they want to keep their jobs, they don't. And his madcap attempt to escape from the gorilla on a carousel horse only served as the vehicle for a parody in 1964's Mary Poppins. The actual quote, by the way, was framed as a question: "Kid, you ain't got it?" referring to the key to the studio men's room. The key was later found in an ice cube tray in the break room refrigerator, although how it got there is discussed over coffee and organic bagels to this very day. Jerry's next attempt to revive his career was in the 1979 disaster film, Hardly Working. He wrote the script, directed it, starred in it and even ran the cameras and sound equipment. It wasn't meant to be a disaster film, but that's what it turned out to be. As Roger Ebert put it, "I have never been in such physical pain in a movie theater, except that one time reviewing Bergman's "Cries and Whispers" when I had the gas attack from some bad butter on the popcorn." Hardly Working has been compared to Lewis's never-released The Day the Clown Cried, a musical comedy set in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on Take Your Children to Work Day. It was inspired, or so he claimed, by the "Springtime for Hitler" scenes in The Producers. For Clown, Jerry wrote the script, built the sets, directed and starred in it, wrote all the songs, scored the music, tuned the instruments, and played all the other actors while simultaneously picketing the studio to protest his hiring of non-union stagehands, a job which he also fulfilled. He was later sued by the estate of George and Ira Gershwin, whose lawyers thought that the song, "Turn on the Gas!" was clearly plagiarized from the Gershwin's 1927 hit "Strike Up the Band!" The few people who have seen the movie in private showings have all died, most of them while watching it. |
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4-16-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Theatrical: General Horatio T T Farqwarsh, who had been told by a gypsy that he was the reincarnation of the legendary Egyptian Pharaohess. General Farqwarsh was deeply impressed by this revelation, and for the rest of his life would go nowhere without his Cleopatra wig, his gold wire bra, his harem pants, and his dancing girls. He developed a morbid fear of asps even though there were none native to the American South, and he used to arrive at strategy meetings wrapped in a Persian carpet which the dancing girls would ceremoniously unroll to reveal the General in a seductive pose. Several times he had to be dissuaded from diverting war matériel to the banks of the Mississippi, where he planned to be buried beneath a pyramid of his own design. As the war progressed his delusions grew stronger, and he began sending messages to other line officers in hieroglyphics, most notably his response to Colonel Humphrey Pahrump during the Battle of Chickfila Ridge, who had requested permission to cross the Whoopsatonic River to encircle Union troops. Farqwarsh's reply, "Arm/Arm/Owl/Hand/Tongs/Chick/Chick/Eye/Owl/Leg," is said to have been the point at which the South started losing the war, as Colonel Pahrump took the message to mean that he should lay down his arms, keep a sharp lookout for Chinese gang members, and pick up some good-looking camp followers with attractive limbs. He not only lost the battle, but contracted a venereal disease from one of the camp followers which would cripple him for the remainder of his short life in a Union prison camp. General Farqwarsh utterly disgraced himself when he discovered a Union general named Mark Anthony, to whom he sent scandalous mash notes until relieved of his command. His superiors sent him to the rebel psychiatric clinic in Venezuela, where he was bitten by an asp and died. |
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4-20-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Speedy: It depends on where the light starts out. The basic wave/particle of light, the futon, is assembled deep in the depths of Our Mister Sun where labor rates are cheaper. Once it has been assembled and inspected by #12, it is packaged up and sent to the surface at "all deliberate speed." This unfortunate wording in the futon transshipment contract was supposed to mean "as promptly as possible without going overboard." Instead it was interpreted by the Solar Teamsters union to mean "as slowly as we can get away with." Consequently it takes about 100,000 years for a specific futon to reach the surface of the Sun, at a rate of about an eighth of a centimeter per minute (that's 0.04921 of an inch per minute for you troglodytes). Exhausted from the wear and tear of the journey, the futon usually needs a good brushing and a shoeshine before it can continue further, but from here on it's all doughnuts, because the Teamsters have to hand over control to FedEx for the final portion of the trip, which takes about 8.3168708 minutes if the driver gets all the lights (that's a Solar FedEx in-joke, by the way). Most futons go first to Japan, which invented them, where their cushions are fluffed up before exporting them to the United States and other countries, where they end up in guest bedrooms, being napped on by cats. |
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4-24-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Charlton: I have a hard time visualizing the following headlines: VA TECH STUDENT KILLS 32 WITH JAWBONE OF ASS. DRIVE-BY ASS-JAWBONING KILLS THREE AT MIDDLE SCHOOL. "SATURDAY-NIGHT JAWBONES" AT THE HEART OF GANG MURDER SPREE, SAYS POLICE CHIEF. TODDLER KILLS PLAYMATE WITH JAWBONE OF ASS. FATHER KILLS FAMILY, SELF, WITH JAWBONE OF ASS. JAWBONING LEADING SUICIDE METHOD, SAYS STUDY. NATIONAL JAWBONES OF ASSES ASSOCIATION WANTS JAWBONES IN KINDERGARTENS, DAY-CARE CENTERS. Btw, you can blame the human drive to kill its own species on the fact that we evolved from Pan troglodytes chimps and not Pan paniscus (bonobo chimps), the nice ones. Bonobos have a much more sensible matriarchy and settle all their disputes with sex, not violence. Had that happened you might be seeing headlines like: ISRAELIS, PALESTINIANS ESTABLISH PERMANENT BOUNDARIES AFTER 48-HOUR ORGY. POPE URGES IRISH CATHOLICS, PROTESTANTS, TO JUMP BONES FOR JESUS. DRIVE-BY HUMPING CHEERED AS GANGBANGERS SETTLE TURF DISPUTE. IRAN NOT BUILDING APHRODISIAC CENTRIFUGES, SAYS INTERNATIONAL SEXUAL ENERGY AGENCY. POSSESSION OF VIBRATORS GUARANTEED BY 2ND AMENDMENT, SAYS SUPREME COURT. MALES MAY BE GIVEN VOTE SOMEDAY, SAYS CONTROVERSIAL POLITICAL ANALYST. Come to think of it, the world might be a much nicer place... or at any rate, less violent and lots friskier.... |
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4-28-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Maskman: Natty Bumppo. He was so embarrassed by the name he used it as little as possible, and was even listed in the telephone directory as "Ranger, L.," which is also how he signed his utility bill checks. He threw in with a equally misfortunately-named Indian named "Chingachgook," who called himself "Tonto" ("Noble Stovepipe" in Potawatomish) because he said his real name sounded like a drain backing up in Double Dutch. To complete their image, the two men rode dreadfully misnamed horses: L. Ranger's was originally "Ch. Petunia Esculent of Waxahachie," and Noble Stovepipe rode "Slippery-When-Wet Skunk Cabbage." Their names were immediately changed to "Silver" and "Scout." L. Ranger also wore a mask so he wouldn't be recognized by members of his former high school graduating class, who had cruelly pinned the name "Bumpy Nads" on him as a freshman. Noble Stovepipe had no need for a mask, as he had attended a private school back east and it was unlikely that any of his classmates-- most of whom had gone into railways and shipping-- would be caught dead riding around the jerkwater towns of the American frontier trying to make a living as a sidekick helping settle disputes over cattle brands and water rights. L. Ranger and Noble Stovepipe eventually settled down in an obscure town west of the Pecos. L. married a spinster schoolteacher named Omadarlin' Clementine who went by the name of Sweet Rosie O'Grady. They had three children, two girls named Oopsadaisy and Twinkletoes, who ran away from home at the first opportunity and changed their names to "Florence" and "Bertha." And one boy, Passadumbfartz, who cut his throat and died on his return from his first day at school. Noble Stovepipe married Sack O'Jah'hee-haw, who was quite happy to adopt the married name of Sack O'Stovepipe. They had no children, and it's probably just as well. |
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5-2-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Timely: The Greater Merovingian Calendar Company, which had a charter from the king to make certain that dates were correct and that leap years occurred when they were supposed to, so as to avoid the embarrassment of 1334, in which February had 38 days to extend the leap year party season. By 1340 Greater Merovingia boasted that it had the most sought-after calendars in the civilized world, especially after Roxanne va Voom appeared as Playmaid of the Month in July. The Merovingian brothers, Stan and Al, made sure that customers would return faithfully by issuing the calendar month-by-month, rather than all at once, and by running lotteries, the winners of which we given an extra year of life and a free calendar to keep track of it. They had only two crises in their 116-year existence, the first being the Black Death, which caused a catastrophic loss of their customer base, as dead people have very little interest in calendars. The brothers ingeniously got around this shortfall by issuing the Greater Merovingian Bills of Mortality, a running account of the week's deaths from the plague. They sold like hotcakes,¹ although to be honest there was a crisis in the hotcake trade as well, leading to the near-bankruptcy of Ye Olde Krispey Kreme franchise, so the comparison lacks solid statistical validation. The other crisis was the so-called "Y14K" bug in 1399, when it was rumored that the cloistered monks, who painstakingly drew the calendars according to the Merovingian brothers' blueprints, would all suffer from writer's block on January 1st of the new century, according to a prophecy by Nostradamus.² Fortunately this didn't happen. What *did* happen was the utterly unanticipated die-off of all the bamboo plants in the world, much to the annoyance of giant pandas, who groused that they had to spend a fortune on Chinese take-out until the bamboo revived itself. At any rate the brothers did a land-office business³ until the fatal year of 1453, when the fall of Constantinople³ª caused the abrupt ending of their eastern empire trade, and they could not make head or tail of the new Islamic calendar, which was written in swishes and swooshes rather than decent words and numbers. Worse yet, some guy named Gutenberg discovered what he called "ye pryntinge-presse," which was throwing thousands of monkish scribes and copyists out of work. Worser yet, both the Renaissance and the Reformation were building up steam, making the brothers' calendar operation *so* 14th-century. Worsest yet, Henry the VI had gone off his nut, thinking he was a tea trolley and being unable to sign the brothers' subsidy checks. Faced with so many worsts, the brothers wisely got out of the calendar trade and set up a specialty butcher shop, "The Wurst That Can Happen," in downtown Merovingia, which is still in operation today, although under new management, the brothers having died at the age of 121. It was only after their deaths that an autopsy revealed they were Siamese twins, although at that time Siam was still part of the Khmer Empire and Chang and Eng were just a gleam in their great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather's eye. This marvelous anachronism was attributed to Nostradamus as well, one hell of a swell prophet. ----------------------- ¹ Recipe of the Day: Hotcakes à la Greater Merovingia 4 - cupeth flour, all-purpose 3/4 - cupeth sugar 2- drams baking powder 2 -gills unspoilt milk 8 - peppercorn weights of butter, unsalted, which ye shall melt until it runneth goodly 1 - large egge of ye goose 2 - teaspoons vanilla extract (see ye agent for ye Madagascar trade routhes) 1/2 - oxybaphon food coloring or yellow snow (in season) Directions Stir the flour, sugar, and baking powder in a large bowl until mixed. In another bowl, beat the milk, melted butter, egg, vanilla, and food coloring until blended. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and beat until just blended (it's better to leave a few lumps than to overmix and make tough hotcakes). The hotcakes will be lighter if you let this batter stand at room temperature for about 30 minutes, or refrigerate it up to 1 day. Heat a griddle or large heavy pan (cast iron is perfect) over medium heat. The griddle is hot enough when a drop of water skitters quickly across the surface. Brush the griddle with a little melted butter. Pour about 1/3 cup of batter for each hotcake, leaving a little space between the hotcakes to make it easy to turn them. Cook them until golden brown underneath (lift a corner to peek) and bubbles start to pop on the topsides. Flip the hotcakes carefully and cook them until the undersides are golden brown. Repeat with the rest of the batter. Serve hot with butter and maple syrup. ©1348, Ye Olde Krispey Kreme Corporate Group, LLC ² Michel de Nostradamus wasn't born until 1503, which made his prophecy about the Y14K bug even more impressive. ³ With so many dead landlords the land offices themselves did a land-office business. ³ª The fall is the best time to see Constantinople. Historians have discovered that the 4th Crusade of 1202 was actually a foliage tour of the forests surrounding the city. |
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5-7-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Righteous: Toaster Rastas. It was the accompanying jingle which provoked outrage in the affected community: Got your dreadlocks in a knot? It comes from smoking too much pot! Instead of ganja, try our snack — Healthful, tasty, cheap as crack! Rastafarians the world over were justifiably outraged, and protested with "toke-ins" in front of Nabisco's manufacturing plants, and in the parking lots of the Kwik-E-Marts that carried the insulting imitation food product. Nabisco at first tried to spin the product as a tribute to the Rasta lifestyle, but when that failed they pulled the product off the shelves, repackaged and rebranded it as "Muslim Munchies." |
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5-12-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Tinned: Edgar Eggplant, the singing and dancing aubergine from 1950's television commercials. He was the brainplant of Charlie Mudduck, president of the American Eggplant Farmers Group (AEFG), which invested several million dollars in an ad campaign in 1951 to boost awareness of the vegetable. Edgar was very popular, especially with children, who would pedal their tricycles in the park singing his jingle: "I'm big and purple and swollen, I'm aw-ful-ly good for your colon; I makes fritters and nice rat-tat-tooey My skin isn't poison-- that's hooey! For a great break from corn,'tater and pea Pick up some eggplant and eat me!" But, like so many highly entertaining ads, Edgar Eggplant didn't sell the product. In focus groups children familiar with the ad, and who could recite the jingle perfectly, when offered a choice between an eggplant fritter and a bowl of cold squid eyes, took the squid 92% of the time. Depth psychoanalysis revealed that most children unconsciously associated eggplants with "big purple poops," and some always rushed past the vegetable counters at the supermarket holding their noses, although they could offer no conscious explanation for their actions. Many involuntarily made armpit noises while discussing eggplant, although when this was pointed out to them they were frankly astonished to discover what they were doing. The AEFG knew it was beaten, yet Charlie Mudduck insisted on a new campaign, featuring frozen eggplant on a stick. The commercials were hysterically funny, with Edgar dancing about in an overcoat with a large flat stick apparently projecting from his bottom. But eggplant consumption fell into negative numbers,¹ and the end came when Edgar, who performed live in those pre-videotape days, slipped on an ice cube prop and landed full on the stick. The television audience of impressionable tykes learned sixteen new words before the signal could be cut off. That evening when they used those new words at the dinner table, the sale of Lifebuoy soap went up 173% as mouths were washed out from coast to coast. The following day Edgar Eggplant was canned, and the AEFG changed its name to the Asparagus Eaters Farm Gang, denying any previous connection with eggplants. ------------------- ¹This has always puzzled statisticians studying unusual consumer trends. Some have hypothesized that people who had bought eggplant the previous week returned it to the store, or even to the farm, sometimes violently. |
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5-22-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Pachinko: Ping-pong balls. This was during the Ping-pong craze that swept the nation during the Late Victorian Era. Ping-pong tables were set up at every stop in New York City's labyrinthine subway system, and the game was intended to relieve the boredom of waiting for the next train. As there was no way to prevent mispaddled balls from bouncing over the edge onto the tracks below, an adequate supply of celluloid balls had to be kept on hand, especially after the "Slaughter on the 10th Avenue IRT" incident, when seven ball retrievers were mowed down by Rance van der Meer, a vengeful subway conductor who blamed the game for his transfer from nice bright open-air streetcars to the stygian bowels of the subway system. Once the public had become used to receiving objects from a machine after depositing a coin, other manufacturers got in on the action, with machines that vended fresh toast, hairpins, buttonhooks, kittens, and in Little Italy, salami and vendettas. |
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5-25-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Insular: Not only is no man is an island, but have you priced shorefront property lately? And whatever happened to rugged individualism, or the other kind? Did our pioneer ancestors call tech support whenever they ran into problems? No! With grit and pluck and determination, self-reliance and maybe a trust fund, they pioneered this New World up one side and down the other. Sure, they were eaten by bears, but that didn't even slow them down. Mormon pioneer women would plow 40 acres, have a baby, and serve dinner by candlelight, and some of them weren't even teenagers yet! Toddlers would go out with the family shooting iron and iron 50 pounds of shoots, then walk to school barefoot in the snow, selling freshly-ironed shoots along the way to pay their tuition. Did Robinson Crusoe ask for help? No! Sure, he put up lots of signs, but where did it get him? Did Adam ask for help after they repossessed Eden? No! Eve was knocked up all the time and the boys were too small to do much but throw rocks at each other. Did Noah ask for help? No! Here was a man faced with shoveling 40 tons of manure every day, day in and day out, yet he did it all alone! This was mostly because his wife felt their sons would never find a nice girl if they smelled like the hind end of a zoo, and besides, she wanted them to be doctors, and calluses don't fit the image.... |
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5-31-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear MD: Below and to the right of Mauritius. Although extinct since 1741, the Langerhans struck terror into the native population while they lived. Imagine, if you can, 18-foot-tall carnivorous ducks with an insatiable appetite for human flesh sweeping into unprotected villages yelling "AFLAK" in thunderous tones and gobbling up any islander not fast enough to make it to the Caves of Seclusion. All farming had to be done at night when the ducks were asleep, which led to frequent famines as crops do not grow well in moonlight. All this changed abruptly in 1740, when the British ship Pestilence hove into port, looking for a replacement for the dodos it had been using as meat until they discovered the dodo was inedible. By that time all the dodos were gone, so the Captain of the HMS Pestilence was happy to see the Islands of Langerhans rearing up in his binnacle, athwart the bosun's avast bowsprit topgallant. Well, the Pestilence's 20-pounders made short work of the Langerhans, as you might expect, and when every last one was killed they sampled the meat, which was, if anything, worse than refried dodo. So the Captain shrugged off the worshipful islanders and set off to find another island needful of extinction. Without the dreaded Langerhans to keep them on their toes, the islanders soon fell into lethargy, then sloth, then inanition, then flat-out coma, followed after a time by death. Between the decomposing Langerhans and the decomposing islanders, no one visited for quite some time. In 1968 the British government dedicated £500 million for a museum to the Langerhan, featuring clever animatronic restorations which would gobble up animatronic islanders just like the old days. |
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6-4-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Stuck: You must remember this A simile says "like this," "a breeze is like a sigh," While metaphors are substitutions Rail switches on the fly. And when two lovers woo They still use similes, too On that you can rely "Like the moon in June" is one As time goes by. Moonlight and love songs Have similes by the score. "My heart's a burning furnace" Is a metaphor galore. Woman needs man "Like a check must have its mate" That no one can deny. It's still the same old story ("What's a simile for 'glory'?") A case for Strunk & White. The world will always welcome similes Like a light in the night. Oh yes, and the world will always welcome metaphors As time's arrow goes by. |
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6-9-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Kempff: Juterbög's connection to an American social craze has been long forgotten, and with good reason. Juterbög, although born in this country, never quite got the hang of English, preferring to speak Low German with his adoptive Irish parents. He did not do at all well in school, as you might expect, although it was discovered that he was quite talented at the piano, so he was sent to trade school to become a saloon pianist. After graduating with a major in barrelhouse and a minor in stride, he was apprenticed to the Deformed Gophers Saloon for Gentlemen in New York City's notorious Five Points district, a neighborhood so tough that police refused to enter it without a police escort. He did well, moving slowly up to a better class of saloon where there was only a single killing a night, and he even made guest appearances in honky-tonks and dives. Then disaster struck. German spies during the First World War smuggled Bösendorfer Klavierfabrik player pianos into New York to ruin the morale of drinkers, and Juterbög was forced out of his lucrative trade, ending up in low dives in Harlem where he eked out a living doing opening acts for the likes of Fats Waller and experimentalists in the new boogie-woogie method. All went reasonably well until a fatal night in March of 1934, when Juterbög came into the Napoleon Club on Amsterdam Avenue, dragging in the slush and salt from a late winter storm. He sat down at the piano, unaware that there was a small break in the extension cord that ran under the piano to illuminate his sheet music. He began his set with some sedate barrelhouse, and was segueing over into ragtime when the stream of highly-conductive meltwater reached the break in the wire. He then launched into 35/25 time and a new musical form was born. Well, the nightclub's patrons' eyes got as big as dinner plates, and they hit the dance floor in a mob, letting the wildness of the music move them about. The frenzy grew until women were being tossed about like feathers in a gale. The following morning some of them were found embedded in the walls and ceiling. The men danced with such abandon that their suits often ripped up the back with a loud zzzoooooott! as they were split asunder by the emphatic gyrations. By dawn Wilhelm Kempff Juterbög lay dead, partly from the electricity, partly from being slammed repeatedly by 300-pound "Big Mama" Purvis as her 500-pound boyfriend "Fat Elroy" Lewis swung her about. He died, but his music became legendary, and the accompanying frantic moves migrated into the expensive white Broadway nightclubs to become the signature dance of the late 1930s and 1940s-- the Juterbög, later Americanized to "jitterbug." |
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6-12-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Closetless: That story was from Japan, where the houses are already so small and so crowded that it's easy to overlook another resident or two. Plus the Japanese are unfailingly polite, and would rarely question the appearance of a stranger as it would be bad form. Sometimes, however, things get out of hand. A family of 12 was discovered living in the sock drawer of a condo in Yokohama, where they had been in residence for 8 years. The owner of the condo was unaware of their existence until the illegal residents sublet his handkerchief drawer to another family, which set fire to a monogrammed linen handkerchief while preparing shrimp tempura. The situation isn't limited to Japan, of course. In 1997 the household staff of Buckingham Palace discovered a family of Cornish whelk-mongers had been living in a closet there since the 14th century, all the while carrying on their whelk-monging unbeknownst to the staff. The situation was especially egregious as the Cornishmen had converted one of Her Majesty's spare pools to a cultured whelk farm, and they were stealing several hundred pounds of barnacles, crabs and seaweed from the Royal Kitchens every day to feed their broods. The most famous closet-dweller in history is probably Rutherford B Hayes, 19th president of the United States, who was discovered during the Grover Cleveland administration living in a closet in the recreation room below the Oval Office, later made famous by Monica Lewinsky. Hayes at first claimed amnesia, but later admitted his fondness for "the old pile," as he called it, and couldn't bear to leave after the election. He would probably never have been discovered had he not forged a note to the White House laundryman asking for more starch in his collars. The laundryman, Hung Soon, instantly spotted the fraud, as President Cleveland hated starched collars and usually had his shirts painted on for formal photographs. This meant Hung Soon had very little to do, but was kept on the staff because he made a mean shrimp tempura beloved of Mrs Cleveland.¹ Hung Soon lived in a closet in the basement of the White House which was later bricked up without his knowledge, leading to the perplexing Haunted Closet Mystery that caused Cleveland's successor William McKinley so many sleepless nights during his second term. ---------------------------------------- ¹In one of those bizarre coincidences that occasionally rattle our faith in coincidence, Hung Soon was no relation to the family found living in the handkerchief drawer in Yokohama, and used an entirely different recipe for making his tempura batter, the secret of which died with him. |
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6-16-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Xena: This is where a knowledge of ancient languages comes in handy. We know that in Greek "xylo" is the abbreviated invective past dense form of "xylophone," and "graphy" is the anterior plupositive of "photography." So xylography is the act of taking pictures of xylophones. The acknowledged master of the art is Henri Cartier-Brassband, a Frenchman who started out as a waxer of glockenspiels until one day he was asked to take a few snapshots of a marimba with unusually large calabash resonators that was brought into the shop next door. From then on he was hooked. Quitting his job as an apprentice glockenspiel waxer, he took an entry-level position as a mallet refacer in the firm of Amadinda, Gamelan & Vibraphone, SA, France's largest importer of xylophones. He soon worked his way into the photography department as a tripod, and before long was doing some catalog shots along with his regular duties as a developer tank. Well, one thing led to another, and Cartier-Brassband found himself running the xylography department when the head xylographer accidentally ingested a quart of ferrocyanide under the impression it was a 1931 Chardonnay that had gone off. Cartier-Brassband's unique approach to xylography led to exhibits in some of the finest Parisian salons. He called his technique the "decisive mallet," that is, knowing the exact moment to trip the shutter to capture the essence of the xylophone in all its glory. The master ignored the move toward color xylography in the 1950s, saying that color added nothing and took away a great deal from the composition of a xylograph. In this he agreed with his friend Ansel Edams, the famous Dutch cheese photographer, who also shunned color, saying, "If you've seen one red wax rind, you've seen them all."¹ Cartier-Brassband was heartbroken when Edams was killed in a fall while photographing the huge Half-Dome waxed cheese created for the 1958 Holland World's Fair. The xylographer was never quite the same after Edams' tragic death. From the day of the funeral to his own death in 1973 he wore a black cheesewax shell on his head in mourning, which seriously affected his xylography as it kept slipping over his eyes at decisive moments, causing him to spoil the shot. Still, his legacy live on. In 1989 French President François Mitterrand dedicated the Cartier-Brassband Xylography Institute in the Montmartre district of Paris, saying that without the artist's insight and dedication, the average Frenchman wouldn't know a xylophone from a large loaf of bread.² ----------------------------------------- ¹ "Als u één rode wasschil hebt gezien, u hebt hen allen gezien," Proceedings of the League of Dutch Cheeseographers, Amsterdam, August, 1953, pg 32ff ² "Le Français moyen ne connaîtrait pas un xylophone d'une baguette de grande." |
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6-21-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Pickled: The "Follies of 'Sixty-Nine," a variety show which toured America's heartland during the summer of that year, bringing farmers such treats as ballerina dogs, horn-playing seals, ventriloquists and barber-shop quartets. The young Edward Sullivan toured with the "Follies" from 1869 to 1875 as a barker, enticing rubes into the big top to see the "rilllly big shew." As the name indicates, the variety act ended in 1926 after Heinz was arrested by The Forces For Moral Order in Podunk, Nebraska, for having the effrontery to present a can-can to a rural audience, including a number of 12-year-old boys who had slipped into the big top when the barker wasn't looking. One of those boys, the young Hugo Hefner, was permanently scarred by the experience, and spent the rest of his life publishing and distributing what were then known as "Tijuana Bibles," for the edification of traveling salesmen. These sordid publications were the sole cause of the moral breakdown which led to World War II. |
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6-26-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Bard: How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, KY. It was a terrible choice, but the town fathers thought that, by changing the name from Smudgeburg to the title of what was then a very popular poem, they could attract tourists. The town desperately needed tourists, as it had zero resources. They had already tried a Varnish Museum and The World's Biggest Pile of Old Tin to no avail. But the name change did no good either, and the Post Office refused to deliver mail to a town with a name that long, so they were pretty much cut off from the world. Eventually the place became known as "Gump's Aches," which certainly didn't help matters. It was officially abandoned in 1911. A few years later the state of Kentucky acquired the land for Mammoth Caves National Park. |
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6-30-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Ford: Now, now... you are perpetuating the Myth of the Fucci Manouli, which was not an automobile at all, but one of the most enduring of Italian folk superstitions. The Fucci [sprite/water spirit/ dust bunny] Manouli [down by the old mill stream] was originally a lower-order haunter of handcarts, carriages and wagons of up to 4 tonnes capacity. It wasn't much of a sprite, not being able to do much more than make wagon wheels squeak with a particularly annoying sound, snap the occasional hamestring on the harness, and leer at passersby if the moon was just right. With the advent of the automobile (December 4-December 24) and the decline of the horse-drawn wagon, the sprite was reassigned to the Hauntings, Automotive, Minor division, where it flips open glove boxes at inopportune moments, causes radio speakers to buzz, and makes the cigarette lighter inoperable for weeks at a time. It will still leer at passersby if the moon is right, but these days who notices? It's just another leering weirdo in a car, of which Italy has an abundance. The magazine is also a comedown. It used to be said back in the days of horses and wagons that keeping a copy of St Thomas Aquinas's My Way of Life and Welcome to It on the seat next to the driver would keep the Fucci Manouli at bay, but these days drivers who suspect that their erratically-performing glove boxes, speakers and cigarette lighters may be under supernatural influence usually keep a copy of Fortean Times on the seat next to them. Skeptics claim that a copy of Juggs is equally effective, possibly because of the demonic distraction value. |
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7-3-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Festive: That extreme patriot, William "Fireworks" McKinley, who refused to start labor until that date. Nurses remarked on his red, white and blue coloring at birth. He was a difficult child, always insisting on nursing from his mother's right breast, never from the left, and when he started school he would only sit in the extreme right row of desks, regardless of how he upset the alphabetization scheme of the classroom. In high school he played right end on the football team and refused to receive Hail Mary passes on the grounds that WASPs should have no truck with Popery. Upon graduation he thought about joining the Navy so he could become a Right Admiral until he found out there was no such rank, and he couldn't imagine becoming a Rear Admiral, with all the sordidness that implied. He did go to sea, catching right whales until electric lighting caused the whale oil industry to go belly-up. He tried driving a taxi for a while, but since he would only make right turns he soon lost his passengers and his job. He toyed with the idea of joining the Church, where he could rise to Right Reverend, or becoming a geometer specializing in the right triangle, but after a number of false starts he wound up as the right-hand man of a Conservative politician. This worked out well for him and he soon rose to the highest political position in the land, only to be cut down by a assassin's bullet. The assassin, Leo Czolgosz, cleverly hid his pistol in his left hand, knowing that McKinley would never see it there. |
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7-8-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Sticky: Born a slave on a plantation in Georgia, young Billy was so impressed with the invention of the cotton gin that he set his mind to build an even more impressive machine to ease the lives of plantation workers. As he was shuttled between cotton fields and sugar-cane fields, the idea came to him that by combining the two crops he could devise a real money-spinner which would allow him to buy his freedom so he could move to Utah to annoy Mormons. Well, Billy worked and worked, mostly during the winter when the plantation was idle. By combining parts of a cotton gin with a salt-water-taffy-pulling machine and some artificial color he was able to produce the first cotton/candy machine. which was displayed at state fairs that year to the utter bafflement of visitors. The only people who could eat the sticky, fibrous, neon-colored stuff were cattle, and cattle will eat anything, and are color-blind to boot. However, while people were distracted by his device, Billy was able to slip away from the plantation, catch a steamboat north and emigrate to New York. He dropped his owner's name of Morrison, studied diligently, and soon became renowned as America's major philosopher and one of the great psychologists of all times. James was killed in a duel with Sigmund Freud in 1910 during a dispute over toilet training. |
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7-14-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Trouper: It was written for Molly Brown, known as "the Unsinkable," because of her survival of the Titanic disaster. Molly milked her survivorship for all it was worth, appearing on pre-radio talk shows, and eventually working up a vaudeville skit involving tap-dancing crew members and an actual Titanic lifeboat. When Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart wrote the script and the score of their proposed musical, based on "A Night to Remember" by Walter Lord, they immediately turned to Molly Brown as a source of information and inspiration. The original name of the musical was the more nautically appropriate "Hello, Davit," but the songwriter had a devil of a time coming up with rhymes for "davit." in English, although Hebrew has hundreds. Eventually the title was changed to "dolly," as a tribute to those rolling platforms used aboard ships to move luggage, cargo, etc. Molly Brown had her name legally changed to Unsinkable Dolly Brown to keep up appearances. Well, as we all know, the show was a roaring success, leading Herman and Stewart to attempt similar musicals, like "Teahouse of the August Moon," commemorating the sinking of the Toya Maru, and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," dedicated to the loss of the RMS Lusitania. Both were prodigious flops, forcing the two men to write for sitcoms simply to keep a roof over their heads. |
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7-18-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Dedicated: The all-but-unknown illumination scientist T Penstible Tarnduck. He was determined to create the perfect candle, one which gave out the most light and zero smoke or fumes. He finally succeeded in 1938, only to discover that electric light had all but eliminated the need for efficient candles. Elton John was touched by the story of Tarnduck's struggles and ultimate disappointment, and dedicated a song to him:
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7-22-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Chanteuse: William Faulkner, although his version (below) was rejected at the last minute when Rosemary said it made her feel "creepy."
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7-29-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Krenky: Although he played many roles as a stage actor in his youth, Lamar "Krenk" Krenk (1819 - 1901) didn't come into his own until he was hired as a double for Great Britain's Queen Victoria. He was an unusual choice, as he was a black man from Alabama with an accent so thick his own mother once said, "Bless his heart, he wus talkin' fo' tree years befo' we realized it, an' even then I only ketched one word out o' twenny." Krenk also sported an enormous walrus moustache which he refused to shave off for his new role, saying that he couldn't possibly strain soup without it. It was finally agreed that the genuine Queen Victoria would don a fake walrus moustache for close-ups. Krenk handled all the minor roles which the real Queen was either too busy or too disinterested to bother with, like supermarket openings, orphanage dedications, and judging treacle-tart-eating contests at summertime livestock fairs. For example, it was Krenk, not Victoria, who parachuted from the hot-air balloon to open the Dorsetshire county fair in 1841, and it was Krenk who was busted for marijuana possession in Kent in 1858, sparing the Queen the humiliation of being booked and fingerprinted and written up in The Police Gazette. Lamar Krenk's greatest role is considered to be at the end of his career, when he stood in for Victoria during the elaborate 3-day funeral ceremony while the whole world paid its respects to the departed monarch. Truth be told, Victoria hated elaborate pomp and circumstance and was secretly buried in a plywood coffin on the grounds of Buckingham Palace while Krenk was fussed over and ultimately sealed up in the Frogmore Mausoleum in Windsor. |
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8-4-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Baked: It's from the old Negro gospel song, "There'll Be Pie In the Sky When You Die, Me Oh My!" De Lawd, he roll' you out as dough When he sent you inter dis world But the pie you bakes outer youself, bro, Gonna tell which way you're hurled. Chorus: There'll be pie in the sky when you die, me oh my! There'll be pie in the sky when you die. You gotta bake youself inter a righteous man Or all you gets is de pan. Now, some of you, you got no sense, Not so much as gravel If you wait too long before you repents Hell's kitchen's where you'll travel. Chorus: There'll be pie in the sky when you die, me oh my! There'll be pie in the sky when you die. You gotta bake youself inter a righteous man Or all you gets is de pan. A righteous man, he bakes hisself Inter a fine upstanding pie He keeps hisself on the Good Lawd's shelf An' his upper crust raise high, Yes, his upper crust raise high. Chorus: There'll be pie in the sky when you die, me oh my! There'll be pie in the sky when you die. You gotta bake youself inter a righteous man Or all you gets is de pan. Opposite him's the mean ol' man, He drink, he cheat, he lie Not enough dough for a burnt bottom crust When he comes 'round to die. Chorus: There'll be pie in the sky when you die, me oh my! There'll be pie in the sky when you die. You gotta bake youself inter a righteous man Or all you gets is de pan. So raise youself by your good deeds And fill youself with peaches And keep far away from the Debbil's weeds And outer Satan's reaches. Chorus: There'll be pie in the sky when you die, me oh my! There'll be pie in the sky when you die. You gotta bake youself inter a righteous man Or all you gets is de pan. So when you come to God's pie store A-sittin up there in Heaven You'll strut your upper crust for shure On a shelf in that fair haven. Chorus: There'll be pie in the sky when you die, me oh my! There'll be pie in the sky when you die. You gotta bake youself inter a righteous man Or all you gets is de pan. ------------------------ © 1913, Poppin' Fresh Ministries |
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8-15-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Unimportant: On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal was opened for traffic for the first time. Through a series of communications problems, it was also opened to passenger car traffic. It took three weeks to haul the last remaining cars out of the waterway before ships could pass through. Other significant events for August 15th are:
1494 - Mrs Columbus files for
divorce on the grounds of abandonment. |
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8-21-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Daring: Elisha McClusky, an itinerant preacher who had devised a theology so restrictive that it included only himself. He founded the Original Roanoke Colony™ as a refuge for himself against "the devil's snares and worldly cares," as he described it in a self-published pamphlet. McClusky refused to convert anyone, saying that they were all damned anyhow, so why bother? The local Indians, the Carolina Algonquians¹, would tease him by showing up unannounced at dinnertime begging to be converted, but settling for a heaping cauldron of succotash, an ancient Scots dish composed of anything left over after making haggis. McClusky reportedly drowned in 1586 ("Elisha the 14th of Year 2," according to his calendar system) while trying to baptize himself using a new method of total-body immersion, as it proved impossible for him to speak the necessary words underwater without simultaneously filling his lungs. The local Indians remembered him as mtch'clbth'chmuk'took, which loosely translates as "chipmunk crazy," although they did honor him by adopting his recipe for succotash. However they were forced to substitute edible ingredients in order to keep up their strength. ------------------------- ¹No connection with the later minor league baseball team of the same name. |
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8-28-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Speeshifier: That would be William "Jennings" Bryan's famous "specie" speesh of 1896. Being generally clueless about the economy, he took as his theme the arcane practice of expanding the US money supply by coining silver at a ratio of 16-1 to gold. The high point of his attack was this powerful statement, later known as the "specie/species speesh": "Having behind us the producing species of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial species, the laboring species and endangered species everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them in our speesh: 'You shall not press down upon the brow of our species this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of specie.'" The audience responded with a collective "Huh?" and sent color commentators to the books to discover exactly what Bryan was talking about, and why he had apparently converted to Roman Catholicism from Presbyterianism, apparently overnight. Needless to say Bryan lost the election, not only because of his specie speesh, but because he wanted the Spanish-American war to continue "for one hundred years" if that's what it took to drive Spanish-speaking people out of Cuba. |
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October 6, 1866 First U.S. brain robbery On this day in 1866, the Reno gang carries out the first robbery of a living brain in the U.S., making off with the cerebral cortex of an Ohio & Mississippi train conductor in Jackson County, Indiana. October 6, 1961 Kennedy urges Americans to build bond shelters President John F. Kennedy, speaking on the national economy, advises American investors to build bond shelters to protect them from fallout in the event of a Wall Street collapse. October 6, 1973 Yum's Kipper War begins Hoping to win back territory lost to McDonalds during the third quarter, Yum! Brands announces that kippered herring will be on the breakfast menu at KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchises starting at Thanksgiving. McDonald's promptly responds with a kippered-herring-flavored shake and the sales contest, "Win one for the kipper!" |
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October 8, 1919
First transcontinental hair race The first intracontinental hair race in the United States begins, with 63 contestants competing in the round-trip hirsuteness derby between California and New York. The winner, Horace "Hairy" Potter, managed a 2.44 mm growth rate, a new record. October 8, 1967 Chiquita Guava defeated A Bolivian guerrilla force led by cross-dressing Cuban Marxist revolutionary Chiquita Guava is defeated in a skirmish with a special detachment of the Bolivian army, probably because of Guava's insistence of wearing headpieces with brilliantly-colored fruits and flowers on them and dancing to a shik-a-boom beat during battles. October 8, 2005 Massif earthquake hits Kashmir region
A 7.6-magnitude
earthquake originally intended for the Massif Central area
of the Auvergne region of France strikes the Kashmir border
region between India and Pakistan. An embarrassed French
earthquake team later blames the "tectonic malfunction" on a
computer error.
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October 9, 1635
Rhode Island Red banished from
Massachusetts
Communist cadre leader Chicken Little is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the House Committee on un-RhodeIsland-like Activities. Little had spoken out against the right of chicken farmers to punish dissension by beheading, stuffing and broiling, a "cruel and unusual punishment," according to the American Chicken Liberation Union.
October 9, 1940
St. Paul's Cathedral bombed
During the "Basilicas of Britain" cathedral homecoming celebration, St. Paul's Cathedral was arrested for drunk and disorderly public conduct after throwing a cider container at St Aloysius Roman Catholic Church and yelling "Transubstantiate this, mackerel-snapper!"
October 9, 1967
Cha-cha Guevara is executed
On this day in 1967, mambo bandleader and guerilla dance instructor "Cha-cha Guevara" is killed by the Bolivian Paramilitary Samba Squad. The US-military-backed Bolivian dance team captured Guevara on October 8th during a Battle of the Bands which they were clearly losing. The ruffles were cut off his costume as proof of death. In 1997, Guevara's patent-leather pumps were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by Tito Puente and thousands of Cuban dancers.
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October 10, 1845
Birth of the US Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy was born on this day, the first successful mating of a warship and a government building. Like most hybrids it is sterile, but the experiment opens the possibility of future building crosses, like a grocery store mated with an opium den to produce the Food & Drug Administration, or a suction pumping station mated with a pickpockets academy to produce the Internal Revenue Service. October 10, 1973 Vice President Agnew resigns Less than a year before Richard M. Nixon's resignation as president of the United States, Spiro Agnew becomes the first US vice president to resign in disgrace. President Nixon commemorated the resignation by saying, "I am not a crook. Him I'm not so sure about." October 10, 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking ends The hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro reaches a dramatic climax when US Navy F-4 fighters intercept an Egyptian belly-dancing revue attempting to smuggle the Palestinian hijackers to freedom, and quickly identify the culprits by their long beards, unwashed condition, and lack of seven veils.
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October 11, 1776
Arnold Benedict and the Brollys of Valcour Island During the American Revolution, a British fleet under Sir Guy Carleton steals 15 pairs of American gumboots from troops under the command of General Arnold "Brigadier" Benedict during a heavy rain at Lake Champlain, New York. Benedict counterattacks with Special Forces, who manage to swipe all of the umbrellas of the British troops while they are having tea and scones. October 11, 1899 Boar War begins in South Africa Fed up with the massive damage to farms and gardens done by these savage swine, South Africans declare war on the boars of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Fast-food purveyors join the patriotic sweep with Free Ribs! programs. Bars make "Gimme a Pigfoot an' a Bottle o' Beer" their anthem, and schools launch the very successful "Boar No More" campaign, sending teams of slingshot-armed 10- to 12-year boys-- the most destructive non-nuclear force on earth-- into the jungles to wreak havoc. The perverse porkers cry "Oincle!" in June of 1900 and sign the Hog Haven Treaty, guaranteeing them their own territory where they will be free to root to their heart's content, contained by the infamous Bismarck Wall of Sausage, and patrolled by Muslim and Jewish troops. October 11, 1968 Apollo 7 launched Apollo 7, the Apollo mission between Apollo 6 and Apollo 8, is launched, during which the crew transmits the first live television broadcasts from orbit. "The Lucy Show" gets the highest ratings, followed by "The Andy Griffith Show," "Bonanza," and "The Beverly Hillbillies."
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October 12, 1810
The origin of Oktoberfest Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, is scheduled to marry Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The Bavarian royalty, never as hoity-toity as their High German cousins, invited everybody in Munich to attend a Royal Beer Bash (Königlicher Bier-heftiger Schlag, or Violent Beer-fuelled Whangdangdoodle), to be held on the palace lawn, complete with schnitzel and sausages and pretzels by the metric ton. At dawn, long before the wedding was to take place, the entire population of Bavaria (and several neighboring states) descended on the palace, yelling the Bavarian equivalent of "KEGGER!" ("BIERFAßER!"). Well, you can just imagine the resulting pandemonium. Princess Therese was chased through the Rose Gardens wearing only her corset, Prince Louis fell into a tub of bock beer and nearly drowned while attempting to address the mob, an impromptu horse race using the royal steeds was held in the Grand Ballroom, and the Children's Church Chorus was taught the words to the dirty version of "Holzhackerbaum" or "Under the Peckerwood Tree." After all the official fireworks had been set off by the crowds, they turned to the Royal Arsenal, briefly touching off a war with Prussia when they tried to play the Bavarian National Anthem ("Bier, Bier, Bier") on howitzers. The spontaneous party did not disperse until all the beer was gone in late September of the following year (it is Bavaria, after all). Once all the hangovers had cleared up the citizenry agreed that a good time had been had by all who could remember it, and decided to hold the same Oktoberfest each year. Luckily October was only two days away, so they had plenty of time to practice drinking before the festivities started at what remained of the palace. And so to this very day Oktoberfest is celebrated in Bavaria from the beginning of October to Steirischer Herbst (Michaelmas) on the 29th of September. And a good time is indeed had by all who can remember it. -------------------------------- Epilogue: Sadly the royalty didn't survive the party. The wedding was never performed, and Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen retired to a nunnery, unable to deal with the shame of being seen by her intended on the day of the wedding wearing only a corset. Tabloid photos showing her playing run-it-up-the-flagpole with the Captain of the Household Troops may have contributed to her decision. Although he did manage to become King (his father having perished of shock after seeing the Queen win a chug-a-lug contest in the Royal Pantry with a bevy of naked scullery boys) Louis I was unable to overcome the scandal of his wedding day. Rarely seen in public (other than throwing out the opening tankard at each year's Oktoberfest), in his later years he even stopped using his name, preferring to be addressed as The Royalty Formerly Known As Prince.
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October 13, 1775
Continental Land Navy established The Continental Congress authorizes construction and administration of the first land-based American naval force--the precursor of the United States Land Navy. Since the sea routes were fully protected by the regular Navy, Congress in its wisdom decided to apply the same successful approach to the interior of the country. In November, the Continental Land Navy was formally organized, and in December Esek Hopkins, shipyard owner and lobbyist, was appointed the first commander-in-chief with an exceedingly generous compensation, bonus and termination package. His first fleet consisted of seven horse- or oxen-drawn ships: two 24-gun frigates, two 14-gun brigs, and three schooners. Although the fleet was constructed at Esek Hopkins's facilities with appropriate cost over-runs, no one could find wheels big enough for the larger class of ships, so the project was abandoned. The three schooners, however, were indeed fitted with wheels, and became a popular ride at Esek Hopkins's "Six Flags Over 13 Colonies" amusement park. October 13, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock saves Canada During the War of 1812, British and Indian forces under Sir Isaac Brock defeat Americans under General Stephen Van Rensselaer on the Niagara frontier in Ontario, Canada. The British victory effectively ended any further US invasion of Canada, causing Canada to remain backward and undeveloped for nearly 100 years. It was only when entrepreneurs from across the border in 1908 began setting up Coca-Cola® and hamburger franchises that the "Canadian Enlightenment" occurred, eventually leading to electric power, paved roads and paper money. October 13, 1977 Phoenicians hijack German airliner Four Phoenicians hijack a Lufthansa airliner and demand the restoration of the ancient Phoenician civilization, re-zoning of the territory to its pre-1250 BCE borders, re-establishment of Sidon and Tyre as trade cities, and the expulsion of all Syrians and Lebanese as Johnnies-come-lately. They were easily overcome, as their bronze swords and armor were no match for modern weaponry.
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October 14, 1066
The Battle of Hastyness King Harold II of England is defeated by the Norman forces of William "The" Conqueror because he simply will not take the time to prepare properly. It was always rush, rush, rush with Harold— act first, plan later. He even rode off without the visor to his helmet, so eager was he to engage the enemy. This proved to be a mistake, as he was shot in the eye with an arrow, which at the time he thought was a minor wound. His last words were reportedly, "Isn't my eyepatch ready YET?! October 14, 1912 Theodore Roosevelt shot in Milwaukee Before a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt, the presidential candidate for the Bull Moose Party, is shot at close range by the governor of Alaska, who said she mistook him for a Democrat. October 14, 1964 King wins Nobel Peace Prize The Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize to King Gustav VI of Sweden, saying that they were tired of watching the king giving out prizes to foreigners every year without ever receiving one of his own.
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Dear Fruitful:
A durian fruit. This Indonesian import has been variously described by its detractors as smelling like garbage, vomit, moldy cheese or rotting fish. It is banned from the better Asian restaurants. The prominent durian fruit on the table accounts for why so many of the disciples in the painting are leaning away from it, and for the pale face of the one who has apparently swooned. The figure with the upraised middle finger is thought to be 17th-century vandalism. To the far right of the painting two disciples are upbraiding Judas for his purchase, as he was known to be a lover of bargains. In his defense, Biblical scholars point out that Judas was from Kerioth and probably spoke a Keriothian dialect of Aramaic rather than the Galilean brand Jesus' followers preferred. So when Jesus ordered up an "unblemished" lamb, ('dûrian in Galilean Aramaic), Judas may have heard 'dürian' ("big stinky fruit" in Keriothic Aramaic). At any rate that accounts for the name of that particular Passover meal, and of the painting itself, as the guests left saying, "That's the last supper I'll ever eat at his place!"
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October 20, 1935
Mao's Long March concludes At just over five hours in length, amateur composer Mao Zedong's "Long March" military instrumental piece is completed and tested in Shensi Province on 4,000 prisoners of war. It was considered a roaring success, as only 6 of the members of the Red Army marching band fainted during the performance and were promptly shot, and only 19 members of the shackled audience committed suicide by tearing out their veins with their teeth, and barely another 316 went insane and were promptly shot, or fell asleep from sheer boredom and were promptly shot. This performance unfortunately inspired Mao to plan a series of Red Army operas of increasing length tracing the history of the Chinese Communist Party from its origin to the present day. This, in turn, inspired the Great Leap Forward, during which a hundred thousand Chinese threw themselves off bridges, under trains, or onto electric fences when mandatory attendance at the premiere was announced. October 20, 1947 Congress investigates Reds in Hollywood On October 20, 1947, the notorious Red Scare kicks into high gear in Washington, as a Congressional committee begins investigating Red Skelton, Red Barber, Red Buttons, Red Auerbach, Red Adair, Red Grange and Red Smith for supposed Communist leanings. October 20, 1973 Sydney Grand Ole Opera House opens After 15 years of construction, the Sydney Grand Ole Opera House is dedicated by Minnie Pearl, Earl Scruggs and Grandpa Jones. Following the opening ceremony is a command performance by the original or revived ensembles of the Fruit Jar Drinkers, the Binkley Brothers Clod Hoppers, and Fiddling Arthur Smith an' his Gully Jumpers. As dedicator Minnie Pearl said about the dedicatee, "We thought it was time to bring real civilized culture to these here boondockers and kangaroo herders. People who think danglin' bottle corks from a pork pie hat is the height of fashion sure do need our help, and I bet dollars to doughnuts their squeeze ain't shucks next to a jar of radiator-distilled Tennessee white lightning."
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October 21, 1805
Battle of Tunaburger In one of the most decisive culinary battles in history, a British seafood restaurant under the direction of Master Chef Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish restaurant at the Battle of Tunaburger, fought on the Spanish coast. Chef Nelson and his Royal Cooking Corps had consistently thwarted Napoleon Bonaparte, who led France to culinary preeminence on the European mainland, particularly in the field of Advanced Cream-filled Pastries. Nelson's last and greatest victory against the French was the Battle of Tunaburger, which began after Nelson caught sight of a new Franco-Spanish dockside restaurant less than 500 yards from his own 5-star eatery on the Costa del Sol. Worse yet, the new bistro had the temerity to feature tunaburgers as the luncheon special on opening day. And it was part of a Napoleon Bonaparte franchise! Chef Nelson had built his reputation on the tunaburger, which he had, of course renamed the Pâte de Thon Grillé en Croûte to justify its £1/6 price tag (318 doubloons in local money). Preparing to engage the enemy force on October 21, Nelson divided his kitchen staff of 27, sending them off with the famous message: "England expects that every man will dupe this booby." While one group of kitchen staff began walking past the new bistro asking loudly if this was the place where the health inspectors had found all the plague rats, the other group, pretending to be customers, ordered loaded tunaburgers, then dramatically feigned food poisoning in full view of the boardwalk crowds. In five hours the upstart restaurant was no more, and by the end of the week Bonaparte had sold off everything including the fixtures. Chef Nelson celebrated his victory by raising the price of his Pâte de Thon Grillé en Croûte a shilling. October 21, 1959 Guggenheim Museum opens in New York City On this day in 1959, on New York City's Fifth Avenue, thousands of people line up outside a bizarrely shaped white concrete building that resembled a giant upside-down corkscrew. The steeply sloping floors of the galleries had never been attempted before in museum architecture, and by the end of the day the architect and the owners understood why, being on the receiving end of 1,200 lawsuits for broken ankles, twisted knees, hernias and vertigo-induced falls.
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October 22, 1797
The first parachutist On October 22, 1797, André-Jacques Garnerin became the first person to parachute unsuccessfully from a lighter-than-air craft, descending from high above Paris at terminal velocity. Garnerin was attempting an altitude record, using his invention of a combination hydrogen and hot-air balloon. Having attained a 3,200-foot altitude, he switched on the hot-air burner to increase his speed of ascension, remembering a fraction of a second too late that hydrogen and open flames do not mix. Observers noted his subsequent trajectory and impact site and estimated that he had attained a height of 16,000 feet (4,900 metres) before plummeting back to earth. His home-made parachute deployed flawlessly, but both he and it were caught up in the ascending fireball from the explosion and mutually incinerated. In 1799, Garnerin's widow, Jeanne-Genevieve, lost a court battle with the Garnerins' insurance company. The company had refused to pay on the grounds that André-Jacque's demise was assisted suicide. Jeanne-Genevieve had claimed that she deserved to collect on the grounds that her husband was an imbecile for attempting the stunt in the first place, and was consequently not responsible for his expiration. October 22, 1962 Cuban Mistle Crisis In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, El Presidente Fidel Castro told Cuban viewers that the entire mistletoe crop had failed, despite farm collectivization, central planning, and faithful adherence to the teachings of Karl Marx. He said the spectacular failure, coming on top of the spectacular failure of the Halloween pumpkin crop, would mean serious shortages during the upcoming holiday season. On the bright side, he announced, there would be no shortage of supplies for the upcoming Día de los Muertos in November, as the failure of the corn, wheat, millet, rye, sugar cane and parsley crops had assured an abundance of dead with which to celebrate.
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October 23, 1813
American fir traders turn over Astoria, Oregon, to the British On this day in 1813, the Americans operating the Pacific Logging Company & Trading Post franchise in Astoria, Oregon, share out their holdings with their rivals in the British North West Logging & Recreation franchise to avoid a trade war. For the next three decades Britons will dominate the fir, larch, spruce and loblolly pine concessions of the Pacific Northwest. October 23, 1970 Blue Flame rockets into the record books On this day comic book superhero Blue Flame extinguished the competition at the Coney Island competitive burning event, reaching a temperature of 18,047° F. (10,008° C.) and winning himself a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Runner-up, and former holder of the record Human Torch achieved only 11,312° F. (6,266° C.), his third second-place showing this year, excluding his spectacular flame-out at Burning Man in Nevada. Critics are suggesting that the older superhero retire, as he is apparently burned out.
October 23, 1973
America gives Toyota its full attention Samuel "Sam" America, a third-grader at Brooklyn, New York's Our Lady of Perpetual Misery grammar school, gives sister Theresa Toyota his full attention after catching a yardstick across the knuckles for lollygagging.
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October 24, 1901
First barrel roll down Niagara Falls On this day in 1901, a 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to take the plunge over the frozen Niagara Falls in a barrel. She left a note behind saying that life had no meaning for her anymore and she couldn't afford a gun or a noose. She got the barrel free from the feed and grain store. It didn't survive either. October 24, 1945 UN formally established Less than two months after the end of World War II, the United Noshers is formally established with the ratification of the Mordecai's Delicatessen Manifesto, which declares that anyone putting mayonnaise on a pastrami on rye is subject to having lox pushed down his shorts.
October 24, 1969
Burton buys Liz a diamond Movie star Richard Burton dazzles wife Elizabeth Taylor--and their legions of fans--when he buys her Yankee Stadium.
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October 26, 1825
Eerie Canal opens The Eerie Canal opens, one of the first attempts in the United States to capitalize on Halloween. Part of the "Six Flags over De Witt Clinton" amusement complex, the canal was equipped with the usual pop-out ghosts and skeletons along its route, plus spooky sounds generated by strategically-placed "cast members." Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, owner of the park, the canal, the railway named after him, and most of the state's politicians, opened the canal with a midnight ride on the steamboat "Jason Voorhees," during which they were stalked and killed by a machete-wielding maniac. The slaughter proved so popular that it was repeated the following year, although it was awfully hard to find passengers, as the body of the machete-wielding maniac had never been found.... October 26, 1881 Shooters at the OK Corral On this day in 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary drinking bout at the OK Corral Bar & Grill in Tombstone, Arizona. Local dentist "Doc" Holliday was the Last Man Standing, putting down a "Flaming Homer" in one gulp to win the contest. He then extracted the teeth of all the passed-out participants and sold them as souvenirs of the event. October 26, 1984 Infant receives baboon heart For the first of what would turn out to be a lifetime of Halloween-themed birthday gifts, one-year-old Baby Elizabeth Borden receives a baboon's heart. Her Goth parents were really into the end-of-October holiday, and had attempted to delay the birth until the 31st. Young Lizzie was traumatically scarred by her parents' obsession, developing a lifelong pumpkin phobia, and being unable to hear the words, "Trick or Treat!" without going into convulsions.
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October 28, 1886
Statue of Liberty excavated The Statue of Liberty , a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, is dug up from the island in New York Harbor where it was buried to protect it from Civil War terrorists. October 28, 1919 Congress enforces Inhibition Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. The Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, also known as the Inhibition Amendment. It is intended to control wild and crazy behavior during the upcoming Roaring Twenties. Sadly, this only drives such behavior underground, where it results in mob-run speakiwildlies and crazyleggers. October 28, 1965 Gateway Arch completed On this day in 1965, construction is completed on the Gateway Arch, a spectacular 630-foot-high parabola of stainless steel marking the World's Largest McDonald's. Unfortunately corporate sponsorship is pulled during an economic downturn, so the matching Arch is never completed.
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October 29, 1618
Sir Walter Raleigh extinguished Sir Walter Raleigh, English adventurer, writer, and favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, is snuffed out in London under a sentence brought against him 15 years earlier by King James I, who *hated* tobacco smoking and blamed Raleigh for the fact that they could never get the smoke smell out of the royal draperies. October 29, 1929 Livestock market crashes Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 cattle on the New York Livestock Exchange in a single day, saturating the market and driving beef prices to an all time low. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of ranchers, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of ticks on all the livestock. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression, although for years afterward you could buy 4 hamburgers for a nickel at any diner. October 29, 1998 John Glenn returns to space Nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Glenn is launched into space again as superfluous cargo because he is a high-ranking Senator who can crush NASA like a bug if they refuse. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on zero-gravity walkers, high-tech hearing aids and UV-resistant trifocals. When Glenn was asked for his reaction to the flight upon his return to Earth, he said "I was where?"
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October 30, 1938
Welles scares nation Orson Welles causes a nationwide panic with his broadcast of "War of the World II"--a realistic radio dramatization of a fictional Adolf Hitler's attempt to take over the Earth. October 30, 1975 Juan Carlos assumes power in Spain Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain's acting head of state after General Francisco Franco's party spokesman admits that the General had been dead since 1970. Suspicions had been raised after the last Fascist Victory parade, when sawdust could be clearly seen leaking from an arm joint.
October 30, 1995
Quebec separatists narrowly defeated By a bare majority of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, citizens of the province of Quebec vote to remain within the federation of Canada. The referendum asked Quebec's citizens, the majority of whom are French-speakers, to vote whether they were Canadians or Frenchmen. Had the separatists prevailed, the population of Quebec would have been given free one-way airline tickets to France, a 48-hour deadline, and a complimentary bottle of champagne.
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November 1, 1800
John Adams moves into White House On this day in 1800, President John Adams, in the last year of his only term as president, moved into the newly constructed President’s House, the original name for what is known today as the White House. Architectural critics are lukewarm about the design, most having expected more glass and steel. The wet bar installed by cousin Samuel Adams gets high marks, though, probably because of the open bar for journalists on the tour. November 1, 1927 Ford Model A production begins The Ford Motor Company began production on a significantly redesigned automobile on this day-- the Model A. The hugely successful Model T revolutionized the automobile industry, and over 15,000,000 copies of the "Tin Lizzie" were sold in its 19 years of production. The Model A is expected to be at least as successful, although rumors persist that the odd full name of the car, "Adenine," coupled with the even odder full name of its predecessor, "Thymine," seem to indicate the growing fulfillment of one of the prophecies in the Zohar. If the next model is "C"-- for "Cytosine," and the one following that is Model "G"-- for "Guanine," then the creation of DNA will be complete, and the World Golem will be formed, to dominate the Earth according to the dictates of the Elders of Zion. November 1, 1941 FDR puts Coast Guard under control of the Navy On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt announces that the US Coast Guard will now be under the direction of the US Navy, "in order to improve communications after the attack on Pearl Harbor next month."
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November 3,
1903
Panama declares independence With the support of the US government, Panama issues a declaration of hat independence from Colombia. The revolution was engineered by 19-year-old American haberdasher Harry "S" Truman, who planned to dominate manufacturing in the new nation, and corner the market on cheap straw sunhats for workers on the planned canal across the Isthmus of Panama. November 3, 1957 The Soviet space dog The Soviet Union's Glorious Assembly of Culinary Heroes launches the "space dog" to commemorate the USSR's triumphs in space flight. It consists of a skinless and boneless frankfurter in a split bun topped with a chopped herring, pickle and onion mix and accompanied by a quart of vodka to distract people from the fact that frankfurters, buns, mackerel and cucumbers were temporarily unavailable in State stores, as they had been since 1921. Most Russians, long inured to glorious Soviet hardship, made do with a slice of onion on a slab of skinless and boneless wartime American SPAM purchased on the black market.
November 3,
1979
Communists and Klansmen clash in Greensboro Members of the Communist Workers Party, participating in a "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, clash with a group of KKKlansmen participating in a "Death to the Communists" rally in the same town due to unfortunate scheduling. All members of each group are shot and killed by each other as the police look on with big smiles on their faces.
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November
5,
1605
King James learns of gunpowder
Early
one
morning,
King
James
I of
England
learns
the
inadvisability
of
lighting
up
his
favorite
cheroot
during
an
inspection tour
of
the
army
munitions
storehouse.
His
last
words
were
reportedly,
"Gum
powder,
you
say?"
November 5, 1912 Wilson wins landslide victory Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the right to pass erosion and landslide control legislation on this historic day in 1912. November 5, 1990 Jewish extremist assassinated in New York Meir Kahane, an American-born rabbi and founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead in New York City. Kahane's group advocated the construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem after the tearing down of the infidel al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount. Also the destruction of all other Middle Eastern kingdoms-- all their men and male children to be put to the sword, all their women to be come concubines of the Israeli Prime Minister, and all their corn, chattels and kine to be offered up as a hecatomb on the Great Altar of the newly-refurbished Temple.
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November 6, 1917
Bolsheviks revolt in Russia Led by revolting Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin, leftist revolutionaries launch a nearly bloodless coup d'état against Russia's ineffectual Provisional Government. Lenin is quoted as saying, "D'état, c'est moi," but nobody gets the reference, them being mostly peasants and all.
November 6, 1917
Canadians take Passchendaele After three months of horrific fighting, the Third Battle of Ypres finally ends when Canadian forces take the village of Passchendaele in Belgium after all other troops are killed and the village is obliterated. One Canadian soldier remarked, "We expected to be greeted as liberators, but by the time we got to the village there was nothing left but rat chow." The battle taught British commanders a valuable lesson about sending troops to fight in six feet (1.83 metres) of mud during a monsoon. It taught British troops an even more valuable lesson about following really stupid orders to fight in six feet of mud during a monsoon, but by the time the lesson had sunk in, so had they.
American troops newly arrived in Flanders and unaware of the carnage they would soon be facing composed a clever riff on a popular American tune, "It's Such a Treat to Beat Your Feet on the Passchendaele Mud."
November 6, 1962 UN condemns apartheid On this day in 1962, the United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning apartheid. The resolution is universally supported, as most UN members think apartheid is a particularly unpleasant South African relative of Brussels sprouts.
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November 7, 1885
Canada's transcontinental railway completed At a remote spot called Craigslistie in the mountains of British Columbia, the last spike is driven into Canada's first transcontinental railway, connecting that country to Australia. November 7, 1940 Tacoma Bridge collapses Only four months after its completion, Mrs Gertrude Tacoma's bridge suffers a spectacular collapse when she bites into a lichee nut surprise at the Schrafft's on East 42nd and Lexington. Her spirited run to her dentist on East 47th gave her the "Galloping Gertie" nickname that haunted her the rest of her days.
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November 8, 1793
Louvre Museum opens The Louvre Museum in Paris opens to house louvre collections from as far back as the 11th century. On display are louvres with fixed slats, adjustable slats, directional vanes, and rotating vents that vary with the wind. Today, the Louvre's collection is one of the richest in the world, with artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and ventilating culture. Most recently the museum has added the louvres from Craig Breedlove's Spirit of America, the 1965 World Land Speed Record holder. November 8, 1895 German scientist discovers X-rays On this day in 1895, German mad scientist Wilhelm "Conan the Bavarian" Rontgen becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately produce a bevy of superheroes known as the X-Men. Unaware of its potential, Rontgen sells his invention to Professor Charles Xavier, (aka Professor X), who will go on to found the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning to educate, train and protect his creations. November 8, 1994 The Republican Revolution For the first time in 40 years, revolting Republicans win control of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate in midterm congressional elections. This will set the stage for 12 years of tax cuts for the wealthy, subsidies for struggling oil companies, bank failures, the dismantling of social programs, endemic corruption, and eventually the coming of the Antichrist in the 2000 elections, who would immediately spend his predecessor's domestic surplus as a warm-up for his run to surpass Ronald Reagan's 1989 record deficit and destroy America as we knew it.
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November 12, 1799
First meteor shower on record Inventor Andrew Ellicott Douglass of Vermont dies after trying out his new "meteor shower," a waterless, high temperature, high velocity personal cleansing system. The county coroner reported. "Oh, he was clean, all right, probably the cleanest corpse I ever run across-- sterilized and thoroughly ventilated, too." November 12, 1954 Ellis Island closes On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts its doors after the country is declared to be full. President Eisenhower urges patriotic Americans to work hard at dying to make more space available, saying that the federal budget really needed those entrance fees.
November 12, 1980
Voyager I flies near Saturn More than three years after its launch, the US planetary probe Voyager 1 edges within 77,000 miles of Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, where it is eaten. Scientists at work on its successor, Voyager II, promise to make the new satellite, "less tasty, with more offputting grit and spiky parts."
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November 13, 1789
First presidential tour concludes George Washington, inaugurated as the first president of the United States in April, returns to Washington at the end of his first presidential tour, nicknamed the "Straight Teeth Express." November 13, 1970 East Pakistan devastated by cylcone East Pakistan's crack math team takes an early loss at the Math Olympics when none of them is able to successfully project a cylinder onto a cone ("The Cyl/Cone Problem in Depicting Groin Vaulting") during the Geometry Smackdown. Their excuse, that groin vaulting was contrary to Islam, rang rather hollow, especially in light of what went on in the hot tub the previous evening. November 13, 1985 The eruption of Nevado del Ruiz Nevado del Ruiz, temperamental owner of the Rancho Rauncho family nudie bar in the Andes Mountains of Colombia, suffers a major eruption when he is stiffed by a group of traveling Presbyterian missionaries from Cleveland. "Not only did they skip out on the bill," Mr del Ruiz complained at high volume, "they swiped all the towels and ran up six thousand pesos watching movies like "Vatican Vixens II" and "Norman the Mormon Meets Boney Maroni."
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November 14, 1882
Franklin Leslie kills Billy "The Kid" Claiborne On this day the gunslinger and illustrated newspaper editor Franklin "Buckskin" Leslie shoots William "Billy The Kid 2" Claiborne dead in the streets of Tombstone, Arizona. Franklin "Buckskin" Leslie had replaced Pat "Leisurewear" Garret for the sequel, who had shot William "Billy the Kid" Bonney at Fort Summer, New Mexico, in the original film.
By the third film John "Ventilated Slacks" Travolta shot down Henry "Billy the Kid III: The Early Years" McCarty in Wichita in a prequel that had little box-office draw. Still, in Hollywood, where failure is the mark of success, The studio tried again, with William "Billy the Kid Takes Manhattan IV" Antrim in the lead role, who is cut down in the salon at the exclusive Fifty Seven Fifty Seven Club in Manhattan by Chevy "I Should Have Stopped With SNL" Chase.
A planned 5th version, "Billy vs. Billy," in which all the stars of previous Billy the Kid movies are forced to hunt each other down and assassinate each other on Fantasy Island, was called off before production started when the death of the diminutive Hervé "Tattoo" Villechaize made the movie "rather pointless, really," in the words of its director, George Romero.
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November 16, 1532
Pizza row traps Incan emperor Atahualpa On November 16, 1532, Francisco "Loaded" Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and franchise owner, springs a trap on the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. With fewer than 200 pounds of imported ingredients in their remaining stores, Pizarro lures Atahualpa to a pizza blowout in the emperor's honor and then opens fire on the unarmed Incans, who should have recognized the trap when they saw the anchovies. November 16, 1776 Hessians almost capture Fort Washington During the Revolutionary War, Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 hessian-cloth, or burlap, camouflaged mercenaries pretending to be potato sacks lay siege to Fort Washington on Long Island. Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside, but by the afternoon the Americans try the daring trick of summoning a crew of Long Island longshoreman to their aid, who quickly load the burlap-covered cargo onto ships and seal the hatches to the hold. When they are unloaded weeks later in the Azores, they are too dispirited to continue the fight, November 16, 1907 Oklahoma enters the Union Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory flamboyantly enter the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state, sweepin' down the plain. They know they belong to the land and the land they belong to is grand! And when they say Yeeow! Ayipioeeay! they're only sayin' we're doin' fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma O.K!
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November 17, 1558
Elizabethan Age begins When her older sister Mary marries and leaves the Tudor family home, she is succeeded by her 5-year-old drama queen sister, Elizabeth. Elizabeth's reign is marked by tantrums, ceaseless nagging for a pony, and having "accidents" at strategic times to get her way. She still holds the record at Ye Royale Day-care Centre for the most number of children bitten in one day. November 17, 1839 Verdigri's first opera opens Italian composer Giuseppe Verdigri's first opera, "La Ruggine non Dorme mai" ("Rust Never Sleeps") debuts in Milan. Verdigri was a curious composer, obsessed with the effects of Italy's damp climate on metals. The premiere was held at La Scrapala, Italy's most prestigious junkyard. "La Ruggine" was received favorably by the sorters and loaders at the yard, and the next day the composer was commissioned by Bartolomeo Merelli, owner of La Scrapala and a neighboring theater, The Royale Junkers, to write three more operas. In 1842, after some personal and professional setbacks, the opera "L'Occidation" made Verdigri an overnight celebrity. He would go on to compose such classic operas as the romance "Cor Rossion," the comedy "La Tarnishe," and the English tragedy, "The Sorrow and the Pitting." November 17, 1869 Suez Canal opens The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red seas, is opened, causing the entire Mediterranean to drain into Somalia, where it is captured by pirates and held for ransom.
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November 20, 1820
American vessel sunk by sperm whale In a stunning example of life imitating art, the American whaler Essex, which hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, is attacked by an 80-ton sperm whale 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. A waterproof copy of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" was found floating nearby after the ship capsized and sank, leading to an effort by Concerned Citizens Against Cetacean Delinquency to demand the book be removed from the shelves of coastal libraries as a corrupting influence on young whales. November 20, 1945 Nuremberg trials begin Mr and Mrs Heinrich Nuremberg of the eponymous German city go on trial for atrocities committed during World War II. At the height of the war-caused famine the couple systematically hunted down and consumed precious stocks of Limburger cheese hidden by other desperate citizens, thus managing to maintain their characteristic German peasant rotundity amid the skeletal wraiths their neighbors had been reduced to. When asked to explain their unerring ability to locate the sometimes deeply-buried stockpiles, Mr Nuremberg shrugged and said, "Ve was chust following odors." November 20, 1947 Princess Elizabeth marries Philip Mountbatten In a lavish wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London, Princess Elizabeth marries her distant cousin, Philip Mountbatten, heir to the Fiberglas® insulation fortune. Despite his wealth, the former prince's eccentric habits made him a questionable catch in royal circles, most observers noting sadly that he would drive her batts in no time at all.
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November 21, 1783
Men fly over Paris French physician Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d' Arlandes, experimenting with the newly-discovered lysergic acid diethylamide, make the first acid flight of 5.5 miles over Paris in about 25 minutes. They later visit the Moon and Mars and discuss philosophy with the pigeons in the Place de l'Opera before returning to their laboratory using the subway that mice had built under the city, entering the building by way of the keyhole. November 21, 1877 Edison's first great invention The American inventor announces his iCorpse-a-Phone®, a way of communicating with the dead. Although briefly in fashion, the machine's popularity wanes when it is discovered that the dead have nothing new to say, constantly kvetch about their burial plots, and regret wasting so much time in churches when Heaven is reserved exclusively for adherents of the aboriginal Australian Witchetty Grub Cult. On the upside, Hell turns out to be only a seedy nightclub in Lodi, New Jersey, where it's always 2 o'clock in the morning, the drinks are watered, the jukebox out of order, and the only live entertainment is Carrot Top, with Pia Zadora promised for the following week, which never arrives. November 21, 1980 Millions tune in to find out who's this J.R. On this day in 1980, 350 million people around the world tune in to television's popular primetime drama "Dallas" to find out who this "J.R." is. Speculation ranges from Jessica Rabbit to Count Josef Radetzky, hero of the War of the Papal States. Interest ceases when it turns out to be just Jack Ramsey of the Philadelphia 76ers, doing a cameo to promote his new book, "School of Boards: How Splinters Can Make You a Winner."
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November 22, 1718
Blackbeard killed off North Carolina Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, is killed off North Carolina's Outer Banks during a bloody battle with pirates Bluebeard and Redbeard. The pirate Lavenderbeard, although qualified to participate due to recent anti-discrimination legislation, is asked not to, as it looks bad for the macho piratical brand image.
November 22, 1988
Stealth bomber unveiled In the presence of members of Congress and the media, the Northrop B-2 "stealth" bomber is shown publicly for the first time at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. As the huge concealing sheet is swept away, nothing is revealed, prompting spontaneous applause in recognition of America's military technology superiority. The plane is then towed away for storage and remains missing for 15 years until accidentally stumbled upon by a mechanic looking for a place to catch a snooze.
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November 24, 1859
Origin of Specie is published On the Origin of Specie by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking numismatic work by British coin collector Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin's theory argued that coins gradually evolve through a process he called "natural selection." In natural selection, coins with genetic variations that suit their environment— pockets and cash drawers, mostly— tend to propagate more descendants than coins of the same specie that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall circulation of the currency. November 24, 1922 Irish author and nationalist executed Robert Erskine Childers, a popular Irish author and member of the Irish Retinue of Authors (IRA), is shot to death by a group of enraged critics after suggesting in his newest book, A Certain Slàinte of Light, that Gaelic was an "unspeakable" language. November 24, 1971 Hijacker parachutes into thunderstorm A hijacker calling himself D B Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 into a raging thunderstorm over Washington State on a dare. He had $200,000 in ransom money in his possession and two parachutes, neither of which did him much good.
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November 26, 1922
Archaeologists enter tomb of King Tut In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first souls to enter King Tutankhamen's tomb in more than 3,000 years. The opening of the sealed chamber did, however, release the souls of more than 120 of Tutankhamen's loyal slaves and retainers who had been buried with him, terrifying tourists, causing camel stampedes and triggering a frantic call to the Cairo branch of Ghostbusters!
November 26, 1941
FDR establishes modern Thanksgiving holiday President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Ten days later he wishes he had held his tongue. November 26, 1965 The world's fourth space power From the Hammaguira launch facility in the Sahara Desert of southern Algeria, France successfully launches the Asterix-1 satellite into space, becoming the world's fourth space power after the Soviet Union, the United States, and Canada proved it could be done safely and using government funds.
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November 27, 1095
Pope Urban II orders first Crusade On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II makes perhaps the most influential speech of the Middle Ages, giving rise to the Crusades by calling all Christians in Europe to war against Muslims in order to reclaim the Holy Land, promising each participant a brand-new Deus Volt, the electric car that's been taking Europe by storm. The Pope calls the movement the "caralition of the willing." November 27, 1940 Iron Guard massacres former Romanian government Two months after General Ion Antonescu seized power in Romania and forced King Carol II to abdicate, Antonescu's Iron Guard is caught in a heavy downpour, shorting out their circuits and causing them to run amok until brought down by anti-tank weapons. A shaken Antonescu declares that perhaps robot armies are premature. November 27, 1957 Nehru appeals for disarmament Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru makes an impassioned speech for nuclear disarmament in New Delhi, fashionably attired in a jacket of his own design.
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November 28, 1520
Magellan reaches the Pacific After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships, only then becoming aware that he could have used the canal across Panama and saved a whole bunch of time. November 28, 1905 Sinn Féin founded in Ireland Sinn Féin, a political party dedicated to more refined and higher class sinning is founded in Dublin by Irish transgressionist Arthur Griffith. November 28, 1919 Lady Astor becomes MP American-born Nancy Astor, rich beyond the dreams of Croesus, becomes the first woman ever to sit in Parliament after purchasing both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. She hopes to acquire Buckingham Palace to complete the set.
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November 29, 1947
UN votes for partition of Palestine Despite strong Arab opposition, the United Nations votes for the creation of an independent Ubuntu partition. November 29, 1950 Chinese overwhelm Allies in North Korea Three weeks after US General Douglas MacArthur first reported Chinese Communist troops in action in North Korea, US-led UN troops begin a desperate retreat out of North Korea under population pressure from the Chinese, whose fertility rate overwhelms the American rate of 3.25. November 29, 1963 Johnson establishes Warren Commission In a stunning combination of his Great Society initiative and his wife Lady Bird's Beautify Wild America program, President Lyndon Johnson establishes a special commission to investigate rabbit burrows in the American Midwest.
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December 2, 1823
Monroe Doctrine declared During his annual address to Congress, President James Monroe declares he has no ties, financial, emotional or otherwise, to a similarly-surnamed Washington-area procuress well-known to the political and diplomatic world. He likewise denies that photographs recently published in a local tabloid, The Foggy Bottom Whiz Bang, show this woman and himself in compromising positions, as photography won't be invented for another 16 years, and the Ben Day halftone process for printing those photographs is 56 years in the future. This loophole becomes known as the "Monroe Doctrine," and has rescued the careers of many Washington insiders ever since.
December 2, 1954
McCarthy condemned by Senate The US Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph R McCarthy, brother of the famous ventriloquist's dummy, Charlie, for conduct unbecoming a human being. Senator McCarthy's defense, that photography won't be invented for another 16 years, and the Ben Day halftone process for printing those photographs is 56 years in the future, rings hollow in the ears of the Senate Internal Affairs Commission. It is the first time that the Monroe Doctrine has been openly challenged before a judicial body, and soon political figures are falling like tenpins. Senator McCarthy, himself a 7-10 split, accuses the Senate of "gutterballing" him, and resigns to take up a new career as a bowling-alley sot.
December 2, 2001
Enron files for bankruptcy On this day in 2001, the Enron Corporation files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a New York court. Gas station owner Harry Enron says that, with gasoline prices falling below $1 a gallon for regular unleaded, there ain't no way he can stay in business, not with the inflation rate being what it is. Mr Enron later becomes a country and western songwriter with his hit blues single: "Ninety-cent Petrol and Four-dollar Meat/ How In the World Can a Gas-pumper Eat?"
"Ninety-cent petrol and four-dollar meat,
How in the world can a gas-pumper eat?
Taxes up high and gas down low, How in the world can we raise the dough? Coveralls worn out, station run down, Bankrupt gas stations line our little town, Nothin' but dust in the register drawer, Gasoline gone down to rise no more."
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December 4, 1872
The mystery of the Mary Celeste On November 7, the brigantine Mary Celeste sailed from New York harbor for Genoa, Italy, carrying Captain Benjamin S Briggs, his wife and two-year-old daughter, a crew of eight, and a cargo of some 1,700 barrels of crude alcohol. On December 4, the Dei Gratia, a British brig under Captain David Morehouse, spots the Mary Celeste sailing erratically near the Azores. The ship was seaworthy, its stores and supplies mostly untouched, but not a soul was on board. The only clues were three empty barrels of alcohol, several party favors, and the crudely chalked inscription, "Skiny Dip Pardy at Midnite. Yahoo!" December 4, 1918 President Wilson travels to Europe President Woodrow Wilson departs Washington, DC, on the first European trip by a US president. Wilson arrived in France, and comments that, although it seemed like a nice enough place, it was dreadfully shot up, and the grave markers everywhere made it very depressing. He much preferred his home state of Virginia. December 4, 1992 Bush orders US aid to Somalia President George H Bush orders 28,000 US missionaries to Somalia, a perpetually war-torn East African nation where dying is a way of life. In a mission he described as "God's work," Bush said that America must act to baptize more than a million pagan babies a year. Unfortunately, America's humanitarian troops became embroiled in Somalia's political conflict, and split up among 6 different warlord clans to do battle with each other. The controversial mission stretched on for 15 months before being abruptly called off by President Bill Clinton after the last American missionary was eaten in 1993.
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December 5, 1932
Ford Model C and V-8 introduced The first Ford enriched with vitamin C was introduced on this day in 1932. It boasted a four-cylinder engine with a counter-balanced crankshaft for ease of servicing in diners and department stores. The Model C was largely eclipsed, however, by Ford's other 1932 offering: the Ford V-8. The V-8 was the first automobile to come with a lifetime supply of vegetable juice. Like the Model C, it was part of Henry Ford's Healthy America initiative. The V-8 sold well, but Ford's fortunes fell from their peak when the Model S, which ran on spirulina, was introduced the following year.
December 5, 1952
The Abbott and Costello Show debuts
Senda Berenson Abbott, the women's basketball pioneer from Lithuania, and Al Costello, the Italian-Australian professional wrestler, team up to launch what they hope to be the sports fad of the second half of the 20th century, Mixed Wrestleball. Using the new medium of television, each week they host a pair of challengers for the Mixed Wrestleball Trophy. Not only does the fad fail to catch on, but the two are arrested by the Vice Squad during a show when the clenched figures on the top of the trophy are declared obscene by an Oklahoma judge.
December 5, 1977 Plymouth debuts front-wheel drive The Plymouth Horizon was introduced on this day. Due to a mix-up that sent cars backward through the assembly line, it was the first American-made small car with front-wheel drive. Plymouth executives tried to put a brave face on the mistake by advertising it as the next big thing in auto design, but owners could not get used to having one speed forward and three in reverse.
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December 6, 1884
Washington Monument completed On this day in 1884 in Washington, DC, workers place a nine-inch aluminum condom atop a tower of white marble, completing the construction of an impressive phallic symbol to commemorate the fact that the nation's first president, George Washington, slept around a lot. December 6, 1907 The Monongah mime disaster In West Virginia's Marion County, an explosion in a network of mimes sponsored by the Fairmont Busking Company in Monongah kills 361 mimes, many of whom had little experience with improv and could not properly mimic being blown to smithereens. It was the worst miming disaster in American history. December 6, 1921 Irish Free State declared The Irish Free State, comprising four-fifths of a bottle of Bushmills is declared, as pub-goers settle back in the snug to smoke their clay pipes with their feet up before the fire and tell tall tales.
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December 9, 1958
John Birch Society founded In Indianapolis, retired Boston candy manufacturer Robert H W Welch, Jr., establishes the John Birch Society, an S-M organization dedicated to spanking, birching and strapping. Welch named the society in honor of "John of the Birch," considered by many to be the first American casualty in the S-M Wars. In 1945, "Birch," a Baptist missionary and US Army intelligence specialist, was paddled into oblivion by a Chinese dominatrix in the northern province of Anhwei. December 9, 1990 Walesa elected president of Poland In Poland, Lech Walesa, mascot of the Solidarity trade union, wins a landslide election victory, becoming the first directly elected Poland China Top Hog. December 9, 1992 US Marines storm Mogadishu, Somalia On this day in 1992, 1,800 United States Marines arrive in Mogadishu, Somalia, to spearhead a multinational force aimed at restoring order in the conflict-ridden country. This proves impossible, as Somalia has been ungovernable clear back to the Stone Age, from which they are not very far removed.
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December 11, 1872
Buffalo Bill Cody makes his first stage appearance Already appearing as a well-known figure of the Wild West in popular dime novels, manimal Buffalo Bill Cody makes his first stage appearance on this day, in a Chicago-based production of The Scouts of the Prairie.
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December 12, 1901
Marconi sends first Atlantic wireless transmission Italian physicist and wireless pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first wireless transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, advertising a new service with unlimited long distance, free texting, and video capability.
December 12, 1917
Father Flanagan establishes Boys Town In Omaha, Nebraska, Father Edward J. Flanagan, a 31-year-old Irish priest, opens the doors to a home for children with gender identity conflicts. His initial appeal for funds would soon become world famous. It depicted a child carrying another child, and the heartstring-tugging message, "He ain't heavy, Fadda, he's my sister."
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December 14, 1863
Lincoln pardons his sister-in-law President Lincoln announces a pardon for Mrs Emilie Todd Helm, Mary Lincoln's half- sister, at a state dinner where Mrs Helm lets off "a real bloomer-buster," after ingesting too much bean dip, onion soup and champagne. The Russian ambassador did not let her off so easily, and the next time Mrs Held was asked to a state dinner at the Russian embassy, the invitation included a clothespin. December 14, 1874 An unsatisfactory end to a kidnapping A botched burglary attempt further clouds one of the earliest victim-free kidnapping cases. Wealthy New Yorker Holmes Van Brunt heard burglars breaking into his brother's house next door. Van Brunt engaged the thieves in a shotgun battle that left the robbers severely wounded. On his deathbed, one of the burglars confessed that he had been responsible for kidnapping Charley Ross.
The problem was that nobody named Charley Ross had been kidnapped. The case remains a Solved Mystery to this day.
December 14, 1900
The birth of quantum theory Oh, they say physicists long ago Were searching for a diff'rent physics One that involved statistics And lots of weirdo stuff They only had vacuum energy So they started swaying it to and fro They didn't really have a plan That's how quantum mechanics began
They put the squeeze on the freeze
It sang weird melodies And they made that
The start of quantum mechanics
And from a rail came the wail On a synchrotronic scale And they played that As part of quantum mechanics
From absolute zero's chill
Atoms so still They took a new note With electrons shorn It was reborn Into action remote And then they nursed it
Rehearsed it
And gave out the news That Max Planck did the quantum peruse!
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December 15, 1791
Bill of Rights is finally ratified Following ratification by the state of Virginia, the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, become the law of the land. After the Christmas holidays legislators plan to start work on the Bill of Wrongs. December 15, 1961 Architect of the Holocaust sentenced to die In Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the dreadful Holocaust Hotel & Casino, is sentenced to die by stoning for setting up an abomination in the desolation of the Negev desert. December 15, 1973 Billionaire's kidnapped grandson found in Italy Jean Paul "Earless" Getty III, the grandson of American billionaire J Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, five months after his kidnapping by an Italian gang.
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December 17, 1777
France formally recognizes the United States On this day in 1777, the French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, count of Vergennes, officially recognizes the United States at a Grand Promenade in Versailles Palace, marking the first time the foreign minister has not simply passed over the country with a withering glance.
December 17, 1963
Clean Air Act passes Congress On this day in 1963, the US Congress passed the Clean Air Act, requiring that smokers use a separate Congress. December 17, 1990 Aristide wins Haiti's first free election Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Roman Catholic priest and opponent of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, is elected president of Haiti. In keeping with Haitian political traditions, the following year Aristide was deposed in a bloody military coup. He escaped to exile, and a three-man junta took power, determined to keep the country one of the poorest and most backward in the world.
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December 18, 1620
Mayflower passengers come ashore at Plymouth Harbor On December 18, 1620, stowaways on one of the Mayflower Moving Co's cargo containers come ashore at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. Since they thought the container ship was destined for St Augustine, Florida, they were woefully unprepared for a New England winter with their shorts, loud Hawaiian shirts, sun block and margarita mix. December 18, 1865 Slavery abolished in America Following its ratification by the requisite three-quarters of the states earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude at Wal-mart... shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." December 18, 1878 The death of Molly-ism John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires, is executed in Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires, an Irish cross-dressing society that had allegedly been responsible for an outbreak of transvestitism in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, defended their actions as attempts to protect exploited Irish-American coal miners with gender identity conflicts. At his trial Kehoe insisted on being addressed as "coal-miner's daughter," despite copyright challenges from a publisher of C/W sheet music.
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12-18-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Austin:
The throwing of footgear is an ancient and long-established tradition in the Middle East, dating back to the Sumerian Empire of long ago. It is believed to represent the highest form of respect in that part of the world, in effect saying, "without you we could not walk a single step, especially across an asphalt parking lot in the summertime!"
In the Shard of Shub'lub (2,733 BCE), we find:
"[meaning uncertain ] [fragment] tah [missing] shubop shubop ma'bebey [lacuna] mab dab lab [fragment]." And in the later Babylonian we find: "... and they did greet him [name of a leader?] as a liberator, and [fragment] pelt (him) with sandals, yea, with boots withal."
In Assyrian:
"Then the people did [rejoice?] at the new taxes, and did fling their sneakers [?] at the tax gatherers, saying in one voice, 'liberate us from this [burden?]'"
The Hebrew Bible abounds in references to the pitching of footwear in celebration, most notably: "Moab is my washbasin [?!], upon Edom I toss my sandal; over Philistia I shout in triumph." ~ Psalm 108:8 And of course the Roman Empire was filled with instance of shoe-throwing as a form of adulation: "...they did pick up Caligula ['little boot'] and they did hoist him high, then head-foremost over the wall that surrounds Rome, so that he made a splat ('squishius') on the cobblestones below, of a radius of 3 cubits and half a cubit. And the citizens did dance with joy at their liberation."
In the contemporary Middle East we often find references to the practice:
"Iraqis have piled Saddam's grave in Tikrit with a heap of sandals, shoes and boots to the height of a man, to serve as a perpetual reminder of their liberation."
~ al-Jazeera
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December 21, 1968
Apollo 8 departs for moon's orbit Apollo VIII, great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Phoebus Apollo, one of the first and most popular Greek gods, departs for the moon, having won it as a demesne after an all-night card game against Diana. December 21, 1975 Carlos the Jackal attacks OPEC headquarters In Vienna, Austria, Carlos the Jackal, cousin of Wile E Coyote, leads a raid on a meeting of OPEC oil ministers. Yiddish and Arab terrorists stormed in with ACME machine guns, killing three of their own number and taking themselves hostage. Carlos demanded that an anti-Roadrunner political statement be broadcast over radio, and that an ACME bus and plane be provided for the terrorists/hostages. Austrian authorities complied, and all the would-be terrorists/hostages immediately plunged over a cliff, falling a great distance before making a puff of dust at the bottom of the canyon, after which the rubber-band-powered ACME bus and the skyrocket-engined ACME plane fell on top of them.
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December 23, 1620
Construction of Plymouth settlement begins One week after the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth harbor in present-day Massachusetts, construction of the first permanent Dodge/Plymouth dealership in New England begins. December 23, 1948 Japanese war criminals hanged in Tokyo In Tokyo, Japan, Hideki Tojo is executed along with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War II. Seven of the defendants were also found guilty of committing crimes against humanity, especially by forcing American POWs to eat sushi.
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December 24, 1814
War of 1812 ends The Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America is signed by British and American representatives, ending the War of 1812. Arrangements are then made to negotiate a settlement of the War of 1813 which had broken out in the meantime. December 24, 1851 Fire ravages Library of Congress A devastating, ruinous, incendiary fire at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, destroys, ravages, demolishes, overwhelms, ruins, razes and reduces to ashes about two-thirds of its 55,000 volumes, including Thomas Jefferson's autographed, personalized, dedicated, signed, inscribed copy of Roget's Thesaurus. December 24, 1979 Soviet tanks roll into Afghanistan On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan, under the pretext of upholding the Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty of 1978, after the Supreme Soviet redefines "friendship" as "an act of war."
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December 25, - 272
Mithra is born
Mithra was incarnated into human form (as prophesized by Zarathustra) on this date in 272 BCE. He was born of a virgin, who was called the Mother of God. After teaching for 36 years, and performing many miracles, he ascended into heaven in 208 BCE. Mithraists believed in heaven and hell, judgment and resurrection. They had baptism and a communion of bread and wine. The first day of the week-- Sun-day-- was devoted to Mithra, whose symbol was the undying sun.
Due to weak intellectual property laws at the time, Mithraists were helpless when later Christian writers swiped all the best parts of the Mithra story for their own.
December 25, 1862 December 25, 1914
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December 26, 1941
Churchill addresses Congress Less than three weeks after the American entrance into World War II, Winston Churchill becomes the first British prime minister to address Congress. Churchill, a gifted orator, urged Congress to reunite with the British Empire to take advantage of economies of scale in purchasing Boxing Day gifts.
December 26, 1946
Bugs Bunny opens Hotel On December 26, 1946, in Las Vegas, Nevada, cartoon character Bugs Bunny opens The Pink Elephant Hotel & Casino. The 40-acre facility wasn’t complete and Bugs was hoping to raise some updok with the grand opening.
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December 31, 1775
Patriots defeated at Quebec During the American Revolution, New England Patriot forces under general Benedict Arnold are defeated by the British defenders of the International Curling Crown in Quebec, which at this time is still in Canada. It is later discovered that General Arnold threw the match to impress British authorities. December 31, 1879 Edison demonstrates incandescent light In the first public demonstration of his incandescent lightbulb, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison lights up a street in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The Menlo Park Fire Department manages to contain the blaze to only seven homes, and the Menlo Park Police Department is able to control the riot caused by public enthusiasm over the event. December 31, 1999 Panama Canal turned over to Panama On this day in 1999, the United States, in accordance with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, officially hands over control of the Panama Canal, putting the strategic waterway into Panamanian hands for the first time. All Panama hats and cigars in the US are also returned to Panama as part of the treaty.
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