Comments please

Until yesterday I apparently had the feature allowing you to comment disengaged. I have righted things error and you may now feel free to post whatever comments you so desire. Of course, I'll try to keep track of them. I am always severely disappointed when I read through a series of comments that eventually lose all application to the original thing open to comment. For example:

After a real article entitled "Thousands rally for, against Iranian government", put online not even an hour ago, there have been roughly 70 comments made so far. The best examples of digressing from the topic at hand include definitions of the term "neo-con-nazi" and phrases such as "Same smack all of you leftist commi's always come up with." I kid you not, that was a direct quote. Funny story behind this picture. I did a Google Image search for "neo-con-nazi" and this is where I ended up. Funny, I don't think my sisters did projects like this in their Girl Scout groups.

So why is it that comments tend to deviate from the original subject matter in every online instance? Allow me to suggest a few possible reasons:

It's been said that everybody is a critic. I suppose the Internet has given ease of access to all these critics. Consider how easy it is to post a comment on something online versus writing a letter to the editor, for instance. A letter to the editor, even if it's in E-mail format, requires a whole separate program being used on the computer and frankly a lot of people are too lazy for that. Actual letters to the editor using actual paper (paper can still be found in many museums and was even featured on the Antiques Roadshow seven or eight times) take a tremendous amount of time in comparison to an online post. So the vast majority of people who have no problem writing about neo-con-nazis (and believe me, their numbers are vast) would feel that an actual letter to an editor would take far too much work.

Now take a look at the amount of people who write letters to the editor on real paper anyway! Their numbers are still quite strong! To my knowledge, almost every publication has to actually refuse certain letters to the editor because too many are submitted! Now, I understand those who truly feel like they would like to make a point that has not been previously addressed or look at something from a different angle. They want to make sure the public is informed and feel it is their civic duty to so do. The Founding Fathers would be proud of them.

But so many letters to the editor are simply soap boxes for adult tantrums. Better still are the letters that don't even complain! They say thanks to the publication for this article or that picture. That's like writing a letter to your local gas station, thanking them for having gas.

Dear Sinclair Station,

I wanted to thank you for the gas you have provided to my vehicle on countless occasions. While I do not love the smell of refined petroleum, I have always felt that your station gets enough wind gusts from the nearby street to waft the unpleasant odor away. Your placement in that regard is phenomenal.

I have also noticed that you never seem to run out of gas. I think that is neat!

Finally, I would like to mention that I appreciate your dinosaur logo. It always reminds me of where this natural resource comes from. Doing so helps me appreciate Mother Earth and dinosaurs a little more with each visit I make to your station. I'm so glad that the dinosaurs and many other organisms died millions of years ago just so I could drive to work each morning. That was very considerate of them.

Sincerely,
(Leftist Commi's name here)

Pictures:
Kids writing on missiles
Paper and pen
Black gold

Apologies and Nicknames

I most humbly and profusely apologize to anybody who was incredibly disappointed that there was no posting yesterday. I was busy playing Werewolf with friends and family. Well, we played my upgraded version of Werewolf, which is not too different from the original game, but I've added a few nice perks.

Anyway, it was Sunday regardless, so quit yer yappin.

On June 15, 923 AD: King Robert I of France is killed. Also, King Charles the Simple is arrested by the supporters of Duke Randolph of Burgundy. Now I realize you may not care much about any of this. But I think we should seriously analyze (or rather, comically analyze) noble names. Let's face it--a lot of them are a bit ridiculous.

King Charles the Simple? These nicknames came about after these people died, right? Or were people calling him that to his face? If so, did he mind it? Was there a King Charles the Complex and Full of Emotional Baggage?

It's just not very intimidating. But then again, neither are the following real British monarch names:

Eadwig (Edwy) All-fair
Ethelred the Unready
Harold Harefoot
Richard III Crookback (he was always ringing the palace bells and shouting "Sanctuary")

I mean, some of them really had a knack for intimidation. Alfred the Great, Edmund Ironside, Richard the Lionheart (probably the best one), shoot, even Richard Cromwell is half-decent. His little-known ancestral line was incredibly good at the art of cromming.

Then there's Edwy All-fair.

On this day in 1184, King Magnus V of Norway (that one's alright; I especially approve of the 5 being a V, it's more hardcore) dies in battle. I'm not surprised that he died in battle. He was probably surrounded by a heap of enemy body parts right before he died. In fact, that's probably how he died. He suffocated under the heap.

It's really too bad that this guy bit the dust. If he'd just stuck around for a little less than a millennium, I bet he could have swept through the World's Strongest Man competitions.

And finally on June 15, 1752, Benjamin Franklin proves that lightening is electricity. Coincidentally, this was the same day as Benjamin Franklin's first recorded hospitalization.

You know, come to think of it, I don't know that Ben was all that smart. If you had a hypothesis that lightening was electricity, would you tempt fate by holding something metallic up in a thunderstorm? That's like testing your hypothesis that bullet-proof vests don't work by putting one on and having somebody shoot you.

King Magnus the Bulletproof. That's just amazing.

Although not quite as cool as Staff Sergeant Max Fightmaster, voted manliest name in the world by www.Cracked.com. It's a real guy, too. Don't believe me? Check this out: CBS News Article. Unfortunately, he's not as hardcore as you would imagine. He's a computer technician. But I bet he could still break every bone in my body by looking at me in a particular way. And then, in a gesture of mercy, he would fix my laptop.

By the way, this is not an actual image of Max Fightmaster, but I bet he could do this.

Pictures:
Werewolf
Emotional Baggage
World's Strongest Man Competition
Piledriver on a Shark

A break from the norm

Today is going to be a little different. I was going to write about Mehmet Ali Agca because his story is REALLY weird. And on this day in 2000, he was officially pardoned in Italy at the Pope's request. Anyway, just read up about the guy, it's interesting. After all, how many stories do you know of that start with "While waiting to assassinate the Pope, he wrote postcards to pass the time,"?

But I thought it would be more interesting to get into a movie idea I've had because I think this would be a GREAT flick to see:

Thundercats

This would just be awesome to see live actors in. I haven't cast the whole group, but I've come up with the main ones at least. As you'll recall, the Thundercats were cat-like humanoid creatures from the planet Thundera. The plot is way too complex to try to explain here. In fact, I don't think I ever really understood the plot when I was a kid and watched the show. Yeah, I definitely didn't. But it was a sweet show.

Come to think of it, after reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia just now, I still don't feel I understand it.

Ok, so the plot of the movie would have to be dumbed-down a lot to make more sense and to capture a larger audience. Something like, "Oh no, we cat-humanoid aliens have to flee our planet from the evil bad guys! We escaped to another planet but they're still after the special sword! Let's make friends with some of the creatures on this planet and run from others!" I think that would be sufficient. Except they'd need to end up on Earth somehow because we like to see heroes on Earth.

Lion-O: Ok, follow me on this one. Rupert Grint. That's right. He's known as Ron Weasley to the world, but I think he could pull off Lion-O. This picture clearly shows he's beefed up a little bit and with the right trainer (Sylvester Stallone), I think he could really rack in the muscle tone. He'd have to lose the accent though. In fact, we might need a voice-over all together.

Tygra: Again, this might stretch your imagination, but Kelsey Grammar. He was a phenomenal Beast in X-Men III. And Tygra's the scientist who provides wisdom and counsel. He's just a perfect fit. And I think he could pull off the voice.



Panthro: This one's obvious. Ving Rhames. The dude's name is Ving for crying out loud. How sweet is that?




Cheetara: Ok, this one was tough. I could probably name a dozen actresses that could fit the role, but I needed one who was skinny yet fit, blonde yet tough. I concluded that Kirsten Dunst would be a good match.



WilyKit and WilyKat: I wish the Olsen twins were younger. I think they could have pulled this off nicely. Even though WilyKat is technically male. So ultimately I decided on Dakota Fanning for WilyKit and Freddie Highmore for WilyKat.

Whew, that was tough work, putting all those pictures together!

Ok, so today's post wasn't incredibly funny, but hey, you're now vividly picturing the greatest film of all time, in the pre-production stage.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, Snarf would probably be played by Danny DeVito.

Pictures:
Thundercats
Lion-O
Tygra
Panthro
Cheetara
WilyKit and WilyKat
Snarf
Rupert Grint
Kelsey Grammar
Ving Rhames
Kirsten Dunst
Freddie Highmore
Dakota Fanning
Danny DeVito

Twister!

I want you to picture the Olympics, any event. After a great and courageous struggle, there is a victor. After that, there is a second- and third-place winner as well of course. And so on. Technically everybody is ranked. But there are only three that get to take the stand and have their flags displayed. Can you name the 8th-place winner of any event, ever in the Olympics?

Yet according to Wikipedia, on this day in 1899, the 8th-deadliest tornado in U.S. history struck in New Richmond.

Ok, so I don't have the faintest clue where New Richmond is and therefore this tornado means very little to me. But beyond that, why is this even mentioned? This tornado's flag wouldn't even be displayed if "Tornado Kills" were an Olympic event. 8th-deadliest? Sure, there are technical ranks beyond 1-3, but who really cares about them? I tried to find a good tornado picture to go with this, but they all looked far scarier than the 8th-deadliest. They looked like contenders for first or second place.

Also on this day in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that all state laws which prohibit interracial marriage are unconstitutional. The case? Loving vs. Virginia. I guess Virginia really IS for lovers.

Now on to today's sad news. I just checked my birthday on Wikipedia. Guess what? My name has been removed from the list of people born on June 10. And the annals of Wikipedia shall never be the same again. So much for Ambassador of Awesome. I almost want to play a game with Wikipedia now, except I probably won't because it would be a serious waste of time. The game would be that I would go around to various articles at random and insert a sentence that talks about Waldo. I could find a way to work it in.

So then the challenge would be to find Waldo! It could even be somewhat discreet because I could link to the Wikipedia page on Waldo. See, I'm convinced that's what gave me away on the June 10 page. My name stood out in red because I didn't have my own Wikipedia page. Then again...what does it take to create your own Wikipedia page...?

Ok, so I looked into this Waldo thing a little more. Did you know that there was an animated television series of Waldo? Apparently they even had "Waldo's minutes" during the show, in which the screen froze for a full minute to give the viewer a chance to find Waldo, just like in the books. And you know what? It was nominated for the 1992 "Annual Young Artist Award" in the category of "Outstanding New Animation Series", but it lost to the Back to the Future animated television series. Another thing I didn't know existed but now have a serious hankering to watch.

Ok, the craziest part of all this? I know the guy whose dad did the Narrator's voice for the Waldo television show. That blows my mind.

So here is the intro for the Where's Waldo tv series. Surprisingly, it only ran one season. Actually, after listening to the theme song, it's not that surprising:

Where's Waldo TV Show Intro

And here is the intro for the Back to the Future tv series.

Back to the Future TV Show Intro

I must admit, the theme song is a LOT catchier. The show clearly deserved to beat out Waldo for that award. But I'm still very curious as to which show ended up in 8th place...

Pictures:
Olympic Symbol
Waldo

Greek Mathematicians and Sentence Structure

We all know of Wikipedia's greatness and grandeur. I have even thought it would be great to print out every Wikipedia article, make a gigantic set of volumes, and go door-to-door selling them. Hey, it worked for Encyclopedia Britannica, why not for Wikipedia?

We also all know of Wikipedia's flaws. Like, not having true things a lot of the time. And also not having the best sentence structure. Most sentences are flawless. But however there is an occasional bad one that could really need some better diction and, punctuation and grammar and if you look at it from a different, angle it could might mean something entirely not the same and its very disappointing to find those run-on sentences that; don't seem "to" do anything write.

Oh man, that hurts my eyes to look at that.

So today in history puts Wikipedia to the test. The first entry is as follows:
1184 BC - Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes.

I truly hope that Eratosthenes' calculations were about the exact day of Troy being sacked and burned. Because if he was just calculating whether or not it had indeed been sacked and burned, I lose a lot of respect for those Greek mathematicians. I can just picture this guy in a toga, walking around the only standing column in the whole city for an entire day. He's looking at it, muttering things under his breath, and looking around occasionally at the dying flames and ruins in ashes.

Finally, he turns to a group of other toga-clad people who have been anxiously waiting and he says, "I have come to the conclusion that the city was sacked and burned." The other people blink their eyes a few times, trying to determine if they missed something incredibly profound in that statement. Then they start to look at each other, making sure they're not crazy themselves for thinking, "Man, this Eratosthenes is a complete ninny." Finally one of them spits out sarcastically, "Uh, no duh Sherlock."

So in light of the fact that Wikipedia's sentences cannot be entirely trusted to only have one meaning, and the fact that Wikipedia's articles cannot even be entirely trusted to publish the truth, I have decided to conduct an experiment.

I shall hereby be known as the Ambassador of Awesome.

Don't believe me? Look it up yourself.

Really! Do it! Look up June 10, 1982 in Wikipedia. That was the day I was born. Under the "Births" section, you'll see me listed there as the Ambassador of Awesome.

This test is to see how long this will stay on Wikipedia, not only for all the world to see, but for all the world to believe, because who's going to challenge a Wikipedia article?

This is David M Blackmer, Ambassador of Awesome, signing off.

P.S. I can't believe I actually found a picture of the Ambassador of Awesome's official seal!

Pictures:
Troy
Ambassador of Awesome Seal

Silver Lining

Some might look at today in history and see only the unfortunate events at face value. They would leave that Wikipedia page glumly, feeling a desire to find something happy and kick it.

I, on the other hand, choose to look for the silver lining in each cloud. I figure the stormy clouds have the most silver in their linings because silver's a conductor, right? So lightening and silver would kind of...go together well...or something...right?

June 10, 1962: As mentioned previously, Bridget Bishop is hanged for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries". And thus the Salem Witch trials begin.
Silver lining: Claes Oldenburg was never hanged despite making some incredibly "Detestable Arts". See example on right of "Soft Toilet".

June 10, 1770: Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef.
Silver lining: Wikipedia disagrees with itself as to the actual date of this occurrence, so it might not have even happened on this day in history!

June 10, 1793: The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. Oh great, another museum, just what Paris needs, right?
Silver lining: It became the first public zoo after a year. Funny, I didn't know they had DMV offices back them.

June 10, 1925: The first service of the United Church of Canada is held. This Church is a union of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist Churches.
Silver lining: Now you can make up words like "Presby-Method-Ationalist" and "Metho-Byter-Gation". I suppose you could even do "Congreg-Etho-Terian". What's the Cognregationalist Church anyway? Don't you congregate in all Churches? Well, I guess not in the Separate and Lonely faith.

June 10, 1935: Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink of liquor and founds Alcoholics Anonymous. So, as many have suspected for years, AA was conceived in a drunken stupor.
Silver lining: Come on! It's AA! It's helped a whole bunch of people to get over their addiction! I'm still waiting for a World of Warcraft Anonymous though. It actually wouldn't even have to be anonymous. They could just say, "My name is Hrandor, Prince of the Northern Kingdoms, and I am a Warcra-holic, not to be mispronounced or confused with Workaholic." Other possible names include: Thalen'k the Cave Warrior, Jibjib the Winged Wonder, Garfnox the Elf Slayer, and Jack the Nimble and Quick (he wasn't as inventive as the other guys).

June 10, 1944: Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds steps up to the plate to pitch for his first time in the Major Leagues. Unfortunately, he couldn't finish off the inning, yielding five walks, two hits, one wild pitch, and five runs before being relieved. And they were already trailing, 13-0, when he started.
Silver lining: He was freaking 15 years old! And he didn't even have some funky injury heal in a special way to give him superhuman pitching powers!

So as you can see, there is clearly a silver lining to every cloud. The cup is always half full. Except if you're in AA...

Pictures:
Soft Toilet
DMV
World of Warcraft
Rookie of the Year

Rough Day for Rome

I kid you not, these are the first 3 Wikipedia entries for today’s date in history:

53 AD: Roman Emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia.
62 AD: Claudia Octavia commits suicide.
68 AD: Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide.

Bummer. Nine years of marriage and then Claudia Octavia ruins it all by doing herself in. Happy anniversary. I’m guessing Nero sort of got over this though, seeing as he waited another six years before kicking his own bucket.

But wait, this story isn’t over yet. It’s too awesome to pass up all the details. And yes, it is incredibly morbid of me to refer to this as “awesome”.

Nero had done some things that didn’t bode well with the Senate. Back in those days, that didn’t just mean that Senators grumbled about you behind your back. It meant that they declared him a public enemy and decided to beat him to death. This could have meant a meager stoning, but either way he wasn’t going to have a very honorable farewell address.

So he decided he would have to die. He first tried to get somebody “skilled” with a sword to come and do the job, but nobody showed up. So then he almost threw himself into the Tiber river. But he chickened out. So he fled to a villa 4 miles outside the city. He arrived with 4 servants and he promptly ordered them to dig a grave for him.

He tried to commit suicide but lost his nerve. So get this, he asked one of his servants to lead the way by example! Can you imagine what Nero would have been like if Band-Aids had been around back then? Just rip it off already!

He finally offed himself at the sound of approaching horsemen. Of course, he couldn’t do it alone. He asked his secretary to help him out. I bet that didn’t look too shiny on her résumé. Not only does she have to put down “Terminated employment due to the fact that I kind of killed my boss” but she doesn’t even have any references now!

The ironic thing is that the horsemen were coming to tell him that it had all just been a silly joke the Senators had decided to pull. They had forgiven all his little “whoopsies” (official Roman terminology) like all the people he had killed and made it look like an accident (“He had an epileptic seizure.” “She was in a ship wreck.” “I was juggling with my sword and it must have slipped and skewered him in the heart.”).

Now, I realize this whole episode has been fairly macabre, but I think history provides some good lessons here. The most important is obvious: Don’t cheese off a group of senators.

Can’t you picture a bunch of modern-day senators, in suits, riding Harley Davidson motorcycles and tattooing themselves with rusty Bic pens? The tattoos would say stuff like, “Lobby This, Sucka,” “Abstain From This, Sucka,” and “Nominate Me Or Face My Wrath.” Unfortunately, none of the tattoos would be very intimidating because they would be done by fellow Senators and have you ever seen a Senator that can draw even half decently?

Yeah, that’s a group you don’t want to mess with. Especially if they’re juggling Roman swords. One might accidentally “slip”, you know.

Actually, when I said don’t cheese off a group of senators, I really meant the Ottawa Senators, the professional ice hockey team. Even without juggling a single Roman sword, they are quite a formidable bunch. We’re talking about guys who don’t even have a full set of teeth between all 25 of them.

Pictures:
Nero
Tiber
Band-Aid
Kid’s Drawing
Ottawa Senators

An international holiday

Today is a special day. People are taking off work all over the Earth to celebrate World Brain Tumor Day. So plan to spend the evening munching popcorn and watching John Travolta in Phenomenon.

Unless of course you plan instead to celebrate World Oceans Day, which is also today. You know, we don't have a lot of worldwide holidays, do we? Couldn't we at least give separate days to the holidays we DO have? If I were the oceans, I'd feel a little ripped off having to share a world day with brain tumors. Especially since John Travolta never made a movie about developing superhuman powers from the ocean depths.

And on this day in 1959, the USS Barbero (a name that's completely in between macho/intimidating and Italian opera) attempted Missile Mail. Yes folks, air mail should not be the fastest way to get your letters to your loved ones. It should be E-mail.

But second to E-mail only, is the speed of Missile Mail!

Unfortunately, in past attempts to get rocket mail going strong, half of the mail ended up in flaming shreds when the missiles exploded (not very surprising after seeing this picture on the left). Then somebody came up with the good idea of NOT having the rockets blow up.

More ticks against using rocket mail include the fact that it costs $8000/ounce and that it really doesn't speed anything up because it still has to get sorted/delivered/lost/destroyed by the post office at the destination.

So sadly Rocket Mail is pretty much dead and gone, having left a mark on history that's hardly visible anymore. Or is it?

RocketMail was the name of one of the first major, free webmail services and fought against Hotmail for the number 1 spot for a while. RocketMail was bought out by Yahoo! in 1997. So for all those of you who use Yahoo! to send E-mails, you're essentially using RocketMail's old system. Which means you should be paying $8000/ounce for each E-mail you send out.

Pictures:
Phenomenon
Missile Mail

Macaulay Culkin and Tetris

On this day in 1833, President Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. President to ride a train. Later, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to ride a plane (though not on this day in history). I predict that much later, Macaulay Culkin will be the first U.S. president to ride in a jet-car. I don't have a projection as to on what day that will take place, but I guarantee that the days of Macaulay Culkin's presidency will be sad ones indeed. However, I bet the burglary rate will go down across the nation.

Oh, and this is good too, especially for the devout followers of my blog: on this day in 1919 the Republic of Prekmurje ends. Short-lived, huh? They had what, like a week? I'll have to study that out more later.

And on June 6, 1933, the first drive-in theater opened in Camden, New Jersey. It must have been really decked out too. Wouldn't they need a piano at every parking spot so you could hear the movie?

I'm going to jump ahead now to the best thing June 6 is famous for. No, not D-Day, although that is a close second. Tetris was released on June 6, 1984. Today marks the 25th anniversary of that release. That's even cooler than Kara, the valkyrie from Norse mythology.

Now we're all familiar with Tetris. But do you know how many studies have been conducted involving it? Prepare yourself. Of course there was a scientific study examining the possibility of playing forever. It was deemed impossible due to the S- and Z-shaped pieces. Better yet, there was a study done by an Oxford University research group that blows my mind and is 100 times cooler than the Norse valkryie Kara. They proved that playing Tetris soon after viewing traumatic material in the laboratory reduced the number of flashbacks to that material over the following week.

How awesome is that? Not only can Tetris cure victims of traumatic events, but Oxford University dreamed it could and conducted the necessary research to prove it!!!

Of course, to be fair, the individuals that played Tetris after viewing traumatic material just had the Tetris theme song going through their heads for the next week, so they could hardly think of anything else. Speaking of that theme song, I highly recommend getting it in some version on iTunes. Everybody could use a little reminder of Tetris' greatness in their lives. My personal favorite is T-E-T-R-I-S, from the artist Gamboyzzz. It's phenomenal.

Unfortunately, no matter how much I searched, I couldn't find the truly greatest Tetris-related song on iTunes. You see, Andrew Lloyd Webber himself contributed to the 1992 Eurodance single that featured music from this video game. While I couldn't find it on iTunes, I did find it on YouTube. It's probably best to get the full effect by watching the YouTube video anyway:

The Greatest Tetris Dance Song Ever (not that there was much competition)

Surprisingly enough, despite the obvious connection to Andrew Lloyd Webber and their very clear dancing and singing abilities, nobody in this group ever made it to Broadway. Such a shame?

I can picture the Tetris musical of the future, with all these singers/dancers, and President Macaulay Culkin himself as the lead. It might be about the forbidden love between an S-shaped piece and a Z-shaped piece, forever opposite, destined to always be apart. There might even be a side story between the square piece and the straight line, both desiring to be different. Eventually, all pieces would come to realize one of the several morals of the story:

You should be satisfied with what you are.
There are consequences for rushing into things.
No matter your background, love will find a way.
Everybody needs to work together to accomplish a greater good.

That last one would be the final note of the musical, ending in that funky noise you get when four lines are suddenly finished at the same time, at which point all the pieces would flash, then disappear, and a new set of pieces would start to fall from the catwalk above the stage, showing the rebirth of the game and the lessons to be learned all over again.

That would definitely be cooler than Kara the valkyrie.

Pictures:
Andrew Jackson
Valkyrie
Tetris

Doctor Jargon

I don’t think doctors should be allowed to say the word “sting”. It’s so vague. In the old days, they would just lie to you and say it’s not going to hurt a bit. Then they’d give you a lollipop afterwards so you couldn’t warn everybody in the waiting room that the doctor’s a rotten liar. Somehow we wised up to them and our lollipop bribes were no longer sufficient. Desperate to maintain their clientele, doctors invented the word “sting”.

Sting is very vague when it comes to denoting a quantity of pain. So being told that something is going to “sting” a little doesn’t really help me at all. In fact, it makes matters worse. Now I know it could be mildly irritating OR hurt so badly that it feels like somebody just grabbed my left nostril and pulled it up over my head so they could start plucking out my nosehairs one at a time. The anticipation heightens the blow.

Then the doctor takes approximately FOREVER in getting whatever it is ready before initiating the “stinging” process. It’s like he wants you to keep vividly picturing the endless similes for this amount of pain. Finally, he’s ready to do whatever it is that “stings” and by now you’re covered in sweat and ready to vomit and/or pass out.

I would love to see a customer survey of how much pain was felt on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being minimal and 10 being, “Holy Sweet Goat’s Milk I Was Not Anticipating This Much Pain And If I Had Only Known You Can Bet I Would Have Been At Least Seventeen Countries Away By Now In A Desperate Attempt To Get Away From This Sadistic Doctor!”

The only problem with that method of letting a patient know what they’re really about to face is that there are patients like me. I would be overcome with a macho zeal to rank it lower than the average. So I’d see a 7, for instance, as the average. And I’d pretend to be all calm and tough. And during the procedure my toenails would be curling but I wouldn’t budge, trying to convince the doctor that I am an excellent candidate to be captured and tortured by an enemy because I would never reveal anything.

Once on my feet again, they would give me the survey and I would say, “Boy, I thought this was supposed to be a 7. I’d say it was more of a…” And then I would face a moment of truth and the doctor, nurse, and receptionist would all be giving me their undivided attention, eager to find out how manly I am.

“2.”

Back at my car, after having received a standing ovation for my manliness, I would vomit and then pass out.

As an add-on to yesterday's post, I discovered something wonderful and amazing in doing a tiny bit of research for a "Today In History" segment. Guess what happened on June 5, 1829. One of the Royal Navy's ships captured an armored slave ship off the coast of Cuba. The name of the Royal Navy vessel? HMS Pickle. And guess what else? This was the 3rd ship in the Royal Navy that was named the HMS Pickle. And there were FIVE more after it!!!

Pictures:
Doctor with Medium-Sized Needle
Running Away
Aircraft Carrier
Pickle

Surprise

As my faithful few will recall, the main purpose of this blog is to catch Dave Barry’s attention and ultimately take his place when he retires. He’s still writing but I was stunned to find out yesterday that he’s pretty much ALREADY retired!!

Guess I should’ve done a bit more research on that one, huh?

So there’s already a void that needs to be filled! What joyous news!

Ok, well, I should restate the offer I made in my first posting. $50 to the person who can arrange a lunch meeting for me with Dave Barry. And the offer is of course limited to the humor columnist legend Dave Barry, not some Dave Barry in northern Iowa whose primary life achievement was creating a corn maze to roughly mimic the shape of a duck-billed platypus.

Keep spreading the word if you enjoy reading these posts!

Now, on to funnier things.

I also stopped by a local Redbox yesterday and noticed something a bit surprising. Did you know that you can pay Redbox $1.04 (if I recall correctly from the last time I rented there) to rent an EMPTY DVD CASE?

I’ve seen it there every time I go and wondered if there were some catch. Is this a special prize that only the really gutsy people get? You know, they go ahead and rent the Empty Case and it comes out full of money or with coupons for free gerbils or something. Or perhaps this is the Redbox version of gambling. By choosing “Empty Case” you receive a DVD at random, like the least-rented one, or the one with the most vowels in the title.

Or maybe Redbox is so popular that some people just rent the Empty Case as a status thing. You know, they don’t have the time to sit down and watch a movie, but they know that the cool thing to do is rent something from Redbox after waiting behind four people for half an hour because none of those four people had the first clue what they wanted to watch, if anything.

Apparently it’s none of the above. “Empty Case” is an option because some people lose their DVD cases and they need to buy one from Redbox directly. Fine, www dot redbox dot com slash Help slash FAQ dot aspx, give a viable answer. I still want my free gerbils.

And to return briefly to “Today In History”, in 1862 American Confederate troops evacuated their fort along the Mississippi River which paved the way for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee. You may think that’s a fairly mundane thing to bring up in a “Today In History” post. However, if you do think so, you clearly don’t know the name of the abandoned fort…Fort Pillow.

Who names a military base Fort Pillow? In everything I read, there was no mention anywhere of why it was named Fort Pillow. It’s not a common last name. I can only imagine that it was named after some nearby city, although why a city was named Pillow is also beyond me.

Sure, we all built pillow forts as kids, but to grow up and name a REAL fort after pillows sends the message that "We're just playing war until our Moms tell us to come in for supper."

Ok, so it was a terrible name. Or was it? Why not add a little humor into war? We have all these scary war names like Python missile and Black Hawk helicopter. We even have some things that just sound butch, even if they’re not particularly intimidating, like Fort Knox and Longbow helicopter.

But what if we started naming missiles, forts, aircraft, etc. after goofy, soft, plush things? What if we had an aircraft carrier that was named the USS Teletubby? Or a Camp Pendleton? Or a Tacit Rainbow missile? Wouldn’t that just make war a little more…plush?

Well, yuck it up now, Buttercup, because two of those three suggestions I just made are true. I guess Pendleton has a certain ring to it. But so does the USS Teletubby, although that is clearly not an existing aircraft carrier (to the best of my knowledge). Which is really too bad in my opinion. War could use a better reputation. It’s always so harsh and full of dead people. Sure would be nice to soften it up a bit.

Pictures:
Corn Maze
Baby Gerbils
Aircraft Carrier
Teletubby

History's lame in a lot of ways

I was perusing the listing of events that happened on this day in history and I came to the sudden realization that I needed more envelopes. I also suddenly realized that history is full of sad events. Deaths here and there of famous people. Wars being fought, won, lost, or tied (a rare event, but I'm sure it happened at least twice). It's like when you read a newspaper--just a bunch of attacks, unsolved murders, ice cream trucks being stolen, and editorial commentaries. Yuck.

They say that history is written by the victors and presumably they like to brag about the battles they just won, explaining the morbidity of the textbooks. I say history is written by those scary high school theater guys that dress in all black, have full beards or goatees at age 12, and say things like, "Huzzah!". Wouldn't that be a better explanation of the dark outlook of history? Let's examine the two options:

History written by the victors:
Half the time the victors couldn't even read, much less write. In fact, I bet writing wasn't even invented before half of history's so-called "battles". Think of all those wars in Europe that you learn about in school. These were fought by people that didn't even have super-basic things like good haircuts, GPS systems, or large-screen televisions. You expect them to be writing? Not gonna happen.

And look at the books they enjoyed back in that period. It was the drawings they cared about! You look at the most praised books from that day and they had all these fancy little borders and silly pictures that had no concept of depth perception whatsoever. You think they read a lot of words? I doubt it.

Now consider history written by the scary high school theater guys in trench coats:
Um, they already have the lingo. They say stuff like, "Methinks" and "Forsooth" all the time. So they'd be really good at writing the history books. Not to mention that these are the same guys that formed the following clubs at your high school: Fencing club, Jousting club, Monk Staff Fighting club, Thwarting an Enemy with a Large Axe club, and the Lightsaber club. So they definitely know a lot about historical fighting and could narrate a battle blow by blow perfectly.

They could also name every Jedi that ever lived and list them chronologically, ordered by the date they became a Padawan. That's just as essential in being able to write history, because we all know that history is full of curve balls and a knowledge of Star Wars means they understand and appreciate the greatest cinematic curve ball EVER thrown. No, it was not Darth Vader being Luke's father. No, it was not Luke and Leia being siblings. No, it was not even making films 4-6 first and then, years later, making films 1-3. Star Wars' great curve ball was the fact that (I'm not making this up) George Lucas got the idea for Chewbacca one morning while watching his wife Marcia drive off in her car. I'll let you do the research to figure that one out. Is it really surprising that they got divorced?

So it seems pretty clear to me that history was written by the same guys that stared down jocks who wanted desperately to stuff them into lockers. Many presume the jocks were just afraid that all those fencing club meetings would pay off and they didn't want to end up getting skewered by a wooden sword. But most people don't know the real reason the jocks never attacked those scary theater guys--they were being controlled by Jedi mind tricks. Huzzah!

Pictures:
Scary Theater Guy
Medieval Book
Marcia Lucas
Chewbacca

What an awesome day

As promised, I will not go into minute details of my personal life in this blog. I will not even go into some of the bigger details. But this post will reveal a little piece of information about me. I'm sure you're quivering with anticipation.

I really like the idea of focusing on "Today In History". So I think I'll keep that up. Of course, I won't make these too long in order to leave ample material for future years. Today in history was not a pretty one.

455 AD, the Vandals entered Rome and plundered the city for two weeks. They also left some very rude graffiti all over the place ("Vandals rule!" "Valentinian III sucks!" "Petronius Maximus sucks!" "Avitus sucks!" "Anybody who has a name that ends in -us sucks!"). There were 3 separate emperors in 455 AD, so it is understandable that the Vandals didn't like any of them.

1692, Bridget Bishop is the first person to stand trial in Salem...yes, the infamous witch trials begin. She is found guilty and hanged on June 10. 290 years later, I was born on the same day she was hanged. What a lovely thing to remember.

How did it take them 8 days to hang her? I thought angry witch-burning mobs acted a little faster. Or perhaps the trial lasted that long?

Possible trial transcript:
Prosecution: She's a witch! Burn her!
Defense: Your honor, I motion for a recess. My client has some business to attend to.
Judge: Recess granted until tomorrow.

The next day...
New prosecution attorney: Your honor, seeing as the last attorney in my position was mysteriously turned into a toad, I would like to scrap the motion to burn the witch.
Defense: We concur with said motion.
Judge: Very well, what would the prosecution like to do with the witch instead?
New prosecution (looking nervously at Bridget who is making toad noises and brandishing a wand): Um, well, maybe...hang her?

Needless to say the prosecution kept losing attorneys until the first one got better and was able to do more on the witness stand than declare, "Ribbit". She was found guilty and sentenced to be burned. However, her defense attorney was incredibly good and managed to get her off with a mere hanging.

Either way, my birthday is now tainted forever. Once upon a time I did some research to see if anybody famous shared my birthday. Yeah, there's a bunch of names, but only one or two that I actually recognize. So now instead of getting to write cool blogs about how my birthday is the same day as George Clooney's, I'm stuck with the dread of writing about the beginning of the Salem Witch trials.

Oh well. Stay tuned and in a little over a week you'll get to see my positive spin on the events history offered for the 10th of June.

Pictures:
Roman graffiti
Bridget Bishop