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

Google AdSense

So much for "Ungulate". I just checked the Google AdSense ads this morning and none of them had anything to do with mammals that mostly use the tips of their hoofs (hooves?) to support themselves when moving. In fact, I still found the usual trashy ones like "Pics of Beautiful Women", "Hill Country Tattoo", and "Looking for Tech Blogs". Those filthy scummy tech blogs.

Maybe I didn't understand how these things operate. Or maybe the Hill Country Tattoo parlor offers the rare tattoos, like a free-swimming dolphin school, a bowl of oatmeal, or a rough topographical sketch of the Republic of Prekmurje.

Anyway, enough griping about Google AdSense. Actually, that might even be against their Terms of Service. Don't tell on me, ok?

I realized that the picture I posted of Dave Barry yesterday is probably not the best one. It doesn't exactly make him out to be the kind of person who's getting ready to retire sometime over the next few years. If you look closely enough you'll see that his hair is quite long in the back and therefore he looks more like a has-been rock star from the late 70's.

Hmm, probably also not a good idea to rag on the guy who I'm hoping will offer me his job when he buys a ticket for the retirement train. It might even be against his Terms of Service.

All the same, here's a more realistic picture that puts the "age" back in "image", just so you can understand that he's closer to retirement than a comeback tour.

Finally, to throw caution to the wind, I'll do a brief "Today In History" blurb, even though Piggy might be deeply offended. If you don't know who Piggy is, you'll have to read my previous post. Apparently on June 1, 1813, James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake cried out, "Don't give up the ship!" On the page I was looking at, Wikipedia doesn't go into any more details, which is fun because now I can make up my own:

James Lawrence and his first mate (isn't that an official navy occupation?) were playing poker with four scurvy landleggers. I realize that scurvy is actually 71.8 times more likely to affect somebody in the navy than a "landlegger", but seeing as I also invented the term "landlegger", I feel it is ok to let it slide. So this poker game went into some pretty hefty stakes. The USS Chesapeake ended up on the table even though James Lawrence didn't technically have the pink slip for it. He was bluffing. The scurvy landleggers called him on it, and he shot himself fatally in shame. He then called out to his first mate not to give up the ship. He didn't really have to worry too much, because his first mate had a full house, queens over jacks. Oh well. James lived through the ordeal because he was rushed to a doctor almost immediately after the game. Unfortunately, he was hanged three days later for violating the navy's Terms of Service.

Just in case I'm risking any sort of violation myself, I'm going to start adding the links to the websites from which I steal all these pictures. By "steal" I mean "respectfully use after having obtained their permission"...

Yesterday's Dave Barry
Today's Dave Barry
Poker full house
USS Chesapeake

The Dawn of a New Day

So I decided a while ago that my dream job would be taking over where Dave Barry leaves off, whenever he retires. It's a gap that will need to be filled, and I understand that his shoes are much larger than mine right now. Nonetheless, herein is my goal.

This blog will be updated at least weekly, but I'll ultimately shoot for daily. Just a short little nugget of awesomeness to brighten your day. This will not be your conventional blog where I tell you what section of the house I'm sitting in and why that is neat. This will be a comedic expression of amazing...yeah, you know what I mean. I didn't really want to come up with a good grammatical ending to that sentence anyway.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get quite a following. I'll be spreading the word and I'd love for you to do the same. I officially offer $50 to the person who can get me a lunch interview with Dave Barry (see picture on right). I just want to chat with him about his retirement plans. I would assume that if he accepts to meet me for lunch (on my dime of course), he will have already perused this site and be familiar with my work. If he likes it, we could discuss my apprenticeship and I would thereafter begin to walk the great path of wonderful...yup, there's another sentence I won't bother finishing.

My original thought for this website was to name it "Today In History" and each daily posting would point out actual events that happened on that particular day. Of course, it would be funny because I would make fun of things. Unfortunately, it looks like that site has already been claimed. If you go to that link, you'll see that one "Piggy" has taken it upon herself to create an entire blog in which she copies down each day's historical events from Wikipedia and posts them. No comments. No funnies.

And it doesn't look like she's posted anything there since November 11, 2006. And get out your Vietnamese-English dictionary, because Piggy posts first in her native tongue.

I considered trying to buy her out, but I wasn't sure if she had some sort of bizarre cult following that would be angry if I replaced her. So if she ever decides to post again, at least I'm not stepping on anybody's toes (or hooves).

One final note: I have decided to throw in some Google advertisements. They're supposed to be smart and only relate to whatever I write about. So as long as I don't write about ______ or _____, they should all be clean. I'm sorry if they bother you but they might earn me a total of 3 or 4 cents over the next 12 years. A penny earned is a penny...well...earned. Out of pure curiosity, as a little test, I'm going to write several bizarre and unrelated words in a moment, just to see if the Google ads come up with anything that's related.

Republic of Prekmurje

Ungulate

Monotreme echidnas

Oatmeal

Camshaft

Free-swimming dolphin schools

Kudos to anybody who can correctly use all of those in a sentence. More kudos to anybody who can correctly use all of those in the same sentence. Actually, I rescind those further kudos. If you can correctly use all of those in the same sentence, you should find a better use of your time. Trust me, I'm an authority in the area of "should find a better use of my time".