Ich bin ein Berliner

Welcome to (Thursday, Veer-waar, Panjshanbeh, yawm-al-khamis, Istijlal, dydd Ian, Boomtime). This week seems to be moving at a snail's pace. But I guess it's almost over. And of this I am thankful. I have decided that much like Dark Helmet, I am surrounded by a-holes. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please see the movie "Spaceballs". I am of the firm belief that this is one of the funniest movies of all time. You can disagree with me, however, if you do you will suffer eternal damnation during which you will be forced to continually watch re-runs of "Full House." It has been determined that I am not really as cool as I think I am because of the level of excitement I feel at the announcement that someone is finally making a movie of one of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books. This is quite possibly on the same level of cool as Star Trek fanatics and Baptists.

In 1284, according to legend, the Pied Piper lured 130 children away from Hamelin, Germany. No one is really sure what this story is based upon, but it is generally assumed that there was an outbreak of the plague which killed a lot of children. For quite some time it was assumed that the Pied Piper was a characterization of an evil Jew who stole the children away from the good German town in order to sacrifice them and drink their blood. But this explanation is now deemed to be un-p.c. In 1409 in what is known to historians as the Western Schism and to the Vatican as The Great Clusterf*&k, a third Pope was elected in Pisa. So, that means there were three Popes at one time, Alexander V, Gregory XII, and Benedict XII. Talk about a marketing nightmare. No one knew what the hell was going on. In 1870 Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the US. In 1934 the first helicopter took flight. In 1959 the St. Lawrence Seaway opened up the Great Lakes to ocean-going vessels. In 1963 John F. Kennedy announced to the world that he was a jelly donut when he stated, "Ich bin ein Berliner." In 1974 the UPC, or barcode, was scanned for the first time. Many idiots believe this to be one of the signs of the Antichrist, or possibly a way for the government to track all major purchases. I have heard that eventually we'll all have barcodes on us so that we can be tracked too. Of course this was told to me by my Uncle Jimmy who burries his money in his yard so that the government won't find it. Of course he's getting old and in about two years he probably won't be able to find it either. In 1975 2 FBI agents were killed in a shootout with AIM members at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 1997 the US Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violates the 1st Amendment. And then in 2003 they ruled that gender based sodomy laws were unconstitutional opening up kinky sex to everyone, in the privacy of your own home of course.

Today is the International Day in Support of Torture Victims. So, if you know one, please support them in their recovery. I don't happen to know anyone who has been tortured, so I will be passing on this one.

It is also the International Day agaist Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. I do know some people who have abused drugs which are illegal and someone must have trafficked them which is inherently illicit. Bad, bad people.

In Madagascar it's Independence Day. In Thailand it's Sunthorn Phu Day in honor of their greatest poet who just happened to also be an alcoholic.

And it's also Saints John and Paul Day. This is followed by the less popular Saints George and Ringo Day.

Enjoy. I'm having trouble finding my baseball.

Money, Money, Money...

Alright, so it's Hump Day. And I would just like to say that I do not like money. I like having it and spending it, I guess... but honestly it causes far more problems than it's worth. Somehow it always seems to be an issue and it always seems to cause an argument in one way or another. And it's an obsession for Americans. If you were an alien and pulled up the MSN homepage to try and figure out what Americans were all about you'd probably decide that our lives are consumed by: 1) our money; (2) our appearance; (3) our entertainment; (4) and how having more money can improve how much money we have, how good we look, and the types of entertainment we can afford. Jesus Christ, Tom Cruise, and Oprah, it makes me feel like butt. And everytime you turn around, someone is coming up with a way to save money so you can have more money to spend on something else or to have later so you can spend it on the same stuff you would have spent it on now. But, what are you going to do? Nothing. You're just going to continue working so you can earn not enough of it so you can continue to stress out about it. But, it's (Wednesday, Bhud-waar, Chaharshanbeh, yawm-al-arba'a, Idal, dydd Mercher, Sweetmorn) and the only good thing about that is that we're at the half-way point and the end of the week is closer than it was yesterday.

In 524 the Franks, a people so called because all men were named Frank, defeated the Burgundians, who were so-called because they all wore burgundy, at the Battle of Vezeronce. In 1788 Virginia was admitted as a state, it is officially a Commonwealth. In 1876 at the Battle of Little Bighorn George Custer commanded one of the most embarrassing losses in US military history. Unfortunately Custer was raised in Monroe, MI. In 1947 the Diary of Anne Frank was published. Two years later the first movie starring Bugs Bunny premiered, "The Long Haired Hare". The following year the Korean War began following a showing of the Bugs Bunny movie. It is a common misconception that the Korean War was over control of the government and a civil war. The real issue was access to movie theaters which was more prevalent in the south. Northern Koreans were rushing into the south to watch Bugs Bunny and the South Koreans mistook this as an invasion. Communism is really about equal access to Bugs Bunny in case you didn't know. In 1976 Missouri governor Chris Bond rescinded the Extermination Order of all Mormons. Up to that point, it was totally legal to kill a Mormon in the state of MO. And twenty years later some terrorists bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia killing 19 US military personnel. Damn terrorists.

Today is Statehood Day in Slovenia and Croatia.

It is also Independence Day in the SE African nation of Mozambique. The capital of this nation which sits on the Indian Ocean is Maputo and everyone speaks Portuguese there. There are 22 million people in the country and 75% of them are involved in agriculture. The main cash crops are cashews, sugar, cotton, and tea. 24% are Catholics and 24% are non-religious.

It is also National Catfish Day. Here at this blog we hate catfish. Cats are evil creatures who are beloved pets of mad sea cows. A catfish is also not a cod. Therefore, I cannot support this holiday.

Happy Birthday: George Orwell, author of such great works as "1984" "Animal Farm" and "Down and Out In London and Paris"; Carly Simon, who looks like a horse; and Ricky Gervais, the English guy that created the original series "The Office" which was adapted by Americans into a much funnier and better version.

Enjoy your day and if it's possible to do so, please blow up a bank.

O Quebec

Welcome to (Tuesday, Mangal-waar, Seshanbeh, yawm-ath-thalatha, Fidal, dydd Mawrth, Setting Orange). It's rained- again. Tomorrow they're saying that it's going to be our first 90 degree day. I'm not looking forward to that. What I am looking forward to is having a day off which won't be until next week. But, it's something to look forward to. I've always been of the opinion that there's not too many places in North America that I'd like to visit. Maybe this sounds a little uppity. I don't know. But if I had to pick one place that I'd like to see, it'd have to be Montreal. I've heard nothing but good things about the city. And today, there and in all of Quebec it is the Fete nationale du Quebec. The picture is that of the sacre coeur flag which Quebecois are flying today. Note the adaption of the Quebec flag and the presence of the Fleur-de-lis, which are apparently representations of irises, which seems quite fitting these days.

In 972 at the Battle of Cedynia the Polish won their very first battle. Before this they were generally known as horrible fighters. In 1314 the Scottish won a decisive battle at Bannockburn in the War of Independence. In 1374 in Aachen, Germany a sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance caused people to hallucinate and break out in spontaneous jumps and twitches until they collapsed. My guess is that someone spiked the punch with some mushrooms. That sounds like it would be incredibly entertaining. In 1441 Eton College was founded. In 1497 John Cabot landed in Canada, the first European to land in North America since the Vikings. That same day the Cornish traitors Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamanck were executed in London. In 1535 the Anabaptists were finally conquered and surrendered their City of God, Munster, Germany. In 1664 the colony of New Jersey was established in order to provide the colony of New York with a place to dump its garbage. In 1717 the first Freemasonic lodge was founded in London. In 1794 Bowdoin College was founded. In 1918 the first Canadian airmail service was established between Montreal and Toronto. In 1947 the first widely reported UFO sighting occurred on Mt. Ranier in Washington. Ten years later, the US Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment. In 1975 an Eastern Airlines flight crashed in NYC killing 113. And six years ago a train crash in Tanzania killed 281.

Today is the boxer Jack Dempsey's birthday. He has a fish named after him. It is also the first day of the Baha'i month of Rahmat, or "Mercy".

Enjoy the day...I'll be here until five.

It's Monday Dog

Whoops, I just realized that if you hit after you type in the title, your post is published. That's interesting... I guess I'm still getting used to this deal. I'm sure there's all sorts of crazy things I could be doing on this blog, such as linking videos, etc. But I'm keeping things as simple as possible. The mere fact that this even exists is a miracle. To make my life unbearable, it's (Monday, Soom-waar, Doshanbeh, yawm-al-ithnayn, Kamal, Dyds Llwn, Prickle-Prickle). At least I'm not hung over like some people in the office. In fact, I haven't been hung over in over six months. That's a big change in my life.

So, in 1611 Henry Hudson's crew mutinied and set Henry, his son, and 7 others adrift in the Hudson Bay never to be found again. That would suck. In 1683 William Penn signed a friendship treaty with the Lenni Lenape Indians in PA. They exchanged BFF pendants and bracelets. In 1713 the British gave the Acadians a year to either swear allegiance to the crown or leave Canada. In 1686 Christopher Sholes patented the typewriter. Thank god we now have Microsoft Word, typewriters suck. In 1888 Frederick Douglass became the first African-American to be nominated for US President. Did you know Barack's middle name is Hussein? Seriously, that's a bad middle name to have. In 1926 the first SAT was administered. In 1958 the Dutch Reformed Church accepted women miniters. In 1959 a fire at a Norwegian hotel killed 34. In 1968 a stampede at a soccer game in Buenos Aires killed 74. In 1985 a bomb aboard an Air India flight exploded off the coast of Ireland killing 329. And in 1988, twenty years ago, James Hansen testified before the US Senate that he was 99% sure that global warming had started already. And today there's still some people who are surprised that the weather's really screwy lately.

Today is Victory Day in Estonia. Estonia's capital is Tallinn and there's about 1.4 million people who live in this little country on the Baltic Sea. Much of Estonia's culutral identity is derived from the Northern Crusades during which the Catholics killed a bunch of pagans using a military order known as the Livonian Brothers of the Sword.

It's Father's Day in Poland, Nicaragua, and Uganda. None of these countries have anything else in common. In Luxembourg today is the Official Birthday of the Grand Duke.

Happy Birthday as well to: Glenn Danzig; Randy Jackson, from American Idol fame; and Chico DeBarge.

Enjoy your day. Tomorrow it won't be Monday anymore....

Novus ordo seclorum

It's Friday (Chukar-waar, Jom'eh, yawm-al-jum'a, Istiqlal, Sweetmorn, dydd Gwener) and I feel like dancing. Not right now, maybe, because breaking out in spontaneous dance at work may give rise to the assumption that one is on drugs. And as Marilyn Manson put it, "I don't like the drugs, but the drugs like me." Or as Huey Lewis said, "I want a new drug." Or there's Nancy Reagan who said, "Just say no to drugs." Do what thou will, I don't care, just don't come and steal my appliances. So, anyway, heading into the weekend, we can look forward to not having to work for two days. We can also be comforted by the fact that it Summer begins tomorrow. I don't know about the rest of the world, but it's rained a lot here so far and it hasn't been brutally hot once. I'm keeping my fingers crossed about the heat thing.

In 451 Flavius Aetius and Theodoric I defeated Attila the Hun at the Battle of Chalons in NE France. In 1214 Oxford received its charter. In 1631 the Irish village of Baltimore was attacked by Algerian pirates. In 1782 the US Congress adopted the Great Seal of the US. In 1789 deputies of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath in which they vowed to break any ties in voting by playing tennis. In 1863 W. Virginia became a state. Known as the Mountain State, WV is one of two states in which it is legal to marry your first cousin. The state's motto is Montani semper liberi, which means "mountainmen are always free". They are always free to marry their cousins. The mascot of WV University is the Mountaineers and the state was very nearly named Westsylvania. I've been to WV on a white water rafting trip and I must say that it is a beautiful place. In 1877 Alexander Graham Bell installed the 1st commercial telephone system in Hamilton, Ontario. In 1893 Lizzie Borden was acquitted of murder. In 1919 150 people died in a theater fire in Puerto Rico. In 1956 a Venezuelan airliner crashed in NJ killing 74. In 1963 the "red telephone" line b/t the Kremlin and the White House was established. This became known as the Bat Phone. And in 1973 snipers fired into a crowd in Buenos Aires killing 13 and injuring over 300.

Today is World Refugee Day. There is a big refugee problem all over the world. These are people who have been pushed out of their homes for one reason or another, usually due to war or famine, or insect infestations. No one knows what to do with them and they're always creating a burden on wherever it is that they end up. My solution: send them all to Iraq and Afghanistan. I know it sounds strange, but seriously we'll just move them all to one or two places and repopulate those countries with all sorts of people from all sorts of places and create little mixing bowl countries of downtrodden people. In effect we'll be recreating what America once was. Maybe then they'll learn to live together and due to the competition for survival, the groups will eventually learn capitalism and consumerism and some day will be little Americas. Either that or they'll kill each other off and the problem would be solved anyway.

It is also Flag Day in Argentina. The Argentinian flag presents no problems for anyone and is thus better than refugees.

Happy Birthday: Errol Flynn; Olympia Dukakis; Danny Aiello; Anne Murray (Canadian); Lionel Richie; John Goodman, one of the greatest actors ever; and the beautiful Nicole Kidman, I don't know why you married Tom Cruise who is so much shorter than you.

I hope you have a good weekend and please remember to be nice to fat people.

Happy Juneteenth

Setting Orange, Confusion 24, 3174- Panjshanbeh, Khordad 30, 1387- yawm-al-khamis, Jumada t'Tania 14, 1429. (Veer-waar, Istijlal, Thursday, dydd Ian).

In any case, apparently it's some sort of holiday that only a certain segment of our great society observes. Yup, it's Juneteenth, commemorating the day when in 1865 the slaves in Galveston, TX were informed that they'd been legally free for two years. Whoops, somebody did not get the memo. Anyways, it's a day that's observed in 28 states and Washington, D.C., but it's observed in neither Kansas nor Missouri, and since I legally live in one and spatially reside in the other, I'm not celebrating anything.

More importantly it's Garfield the Cat day. I used to love Garfield when I was a kid. The movies sucked but I used to laugh my fool head off at that fat cat. Don't lie, you did too.

So in 1179 the Battle of Kalvskinnet was fought in Norway and Earl Erling Skakke was killed. I have no idea what the significance of this was for anyone other than Vikings. In 1269 King Louis IX of France ordered that all Jews caught in public without their yellow badges would be fined. In 1770 Emmanuel Swedenborg reported that the 2nd coming of Christ had been completed. I'm guessing he was wrong. In 1807 Russian Admiral Dmitry Senyavin destroyed the Ottoman fleet. Good work. In 1846 the first baseball game was played in Hoboken, NJ. In 1910 the first Fathers' Day was celebrated. In 1943 a race riot broke out in Beaumont, TX. In 1953 the Rosenbergs were executed in Sing Sing Prison in NY for being Russian spies. In 1982 God's banker, Roberto Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London. I guess he messed up God's checkbook. And in 1987 the Basque separatist group ETA set off a bomb in a Spanish grocery store killing 21.

Happy Birthday: King James I of England; Lou Gehrig, of the disease fame; Phylicia Rashad, aka, Mrs. Huxtable; and whack-job Paula Abdul.

I hope you all enjoy your day. I have spent much of mine on one toilet or another and hopefully will be back to game shape shortly.

Of Sea Hags and Monster Trucks

We have reached Hump Day. In light of this fact, I would like to point out that sometimes life can be comical. Sometimes it simply is, and other times, it needs to be in order to make it bearable. So, on this lovely (Wednesday, Bhud-waar, Chaharshanbeh, yawm-al-arba'a, Idal, dydd Mercher, Prickle-Prickle), I'd recommend finding something to laugh at or about. I've got plenty, and fortunately I know someone who makes me laugh regularly.

In 1429 Joan of Arc and the French beat the English at the Battle of Patay (pictured). This has nothing to do with pate, or meat spread. In some cities I guess they've outlawed some forms of pate based on animal cruelty which is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. In 1767 Samuel Wallis sighted Tahiti. In 1778 the British troops abandoned Philadelphia. In 1812 the US declared war on the United Kingdom. In 1873 Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for trying to vote, silly woman. In 1923 Checker Taxi put its first taxi on the road. In 1928 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. In 1981 the AIDS epidemic was formally recognized by doctors. In 1983 Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. She was an astronaut despite the fact that her name sounds like a porn star. And in 1996 Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was indicted on 10 criminal counts.

In the Seychelles it's National Day.

It is also Autistic Pride Day. This is one parade that I would like to attend. I'm not trying to be mean, but seriously, something of this nature could indeed be one of the most entertaining spectacles in history. I know that Gay Pride Parades are pretty entertaining, but the potential for pure chaos at the Autistic Pride Parade is off the charts.

Congratulations to the Boston Celtics and sincere well-wishes to those poor souls in Iowa. God may or may not hate you, I'm not sure yet.

Happy Birthday: Sir Paul McCartney; Roger Ebert; and Isabella Rossellini.