Tuesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

                                        Dalai Lama

We don't really know what is going on in Baltimore because all we see is what the media wants us to see and bad news sells. What I saw was about 75 young people rioting by destroying shit and looting a CVS and a liquor store. I would like to see a show of hands that believe this is the majority of the black people in Baltimore...that's what I thought, me neither. I am very suspicious of what happened to the man that was arrested while trying to run away and then ended up dead with a major back injury but stealing drugs and a half gallon of Jack Daniels ain't the solution.

Yesterday I mentioned Medusa and Perseus from Greek mythology...here is the rest of the story.

Through a series of unfortunate events Perseus and his mother ended up very poor in a small island kingdom. The king held a banquet and demanded a gift from all his subjects preferably a horse. Perseus said that he did not have a horse but was there anything else he would accept. The king said that he wanted the head of Medusa. As with most Homeric tales Perseus went through a series of thrilling adventures before he reached the dwelling of Medusa. As I said previously Medusa lived in a cave on a remote island. Perseus reached this island and saw a cave with a menagerie of warriors made of stone in the mouth of said cave and he knew that this must be the place. Perseus had received advice from another Greek Goddess who told him to polish the inside of his shield to a mirror finish. Perseus entered the cave with a helmet, shield and sword. He hid behind a wall when he heard someone/something coming. He turned his shield to where he could see the reflection of what was coming...it was Medusa. He did not look at her face but watched her feet until he knew she was within range and blindly swung his sword and in one stroke beheaded Medusa. He put the head in a cloth sack and went back home and saved his mother and himself. Perseus' adventures before arriving at the island kingdom and the trip to finding Medusa are worth your while to read. The word “nymphomania” came from an adventure during Perseus's trip to find Medusa.

                   This Date in History   April 28

1789 Earlier the Government of England has tasked ship Captain William Bligh to sail into the South Pacific with a ship load of breadfruit saplings. The idea was to plant the breadfruit sapling and see if the fruit grew in sufficient quantity to feed the slaves that were gong to be used in the area later on. The ship he was commanding was the HMS Bounty. The ship arrived in Tahiti in October of 1788 and remained five months doing research. But the Captain and his botanist was not the only people aboard doing research and planting. The ships crew had fallen for the warm weather, laid-back life style not to mention the beautiful and receptive Polynesian women. To make it worse, Captain Bligh was a notorious hard-ass and was unmerciful in the dispensing of his form of discipline, many unfair floggings included. Anyway, after leaving Tahiti the ship went to Tonga to plant some more saplings. It was during this trip that the shit hit the fan. The majority of the crew persuaded the second in command, Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, to take over the ship and stop this brutal treatment by Captain Bligh. On this date, the majority of the crew led by Fletcher Christian did indeed mutiny and took control of the ship. Christian chose to put Bligh and 18 of his loyal crew men adrift in a 25 foot sailboat and sailed away. In a superb show of seamanship, Bligh was able to navigate the boat using the stars alone to Timor Island, a distance of 3,600 mile and he made it there on June 24, 1789. After a brief stop at Tubuai Island looking for a place to settle, the crew of the Bounty set sail for the ever loving arms of Tahiti. After arriving at Tahiti Christian had second thoughts knowing the British Navy would be there soon looking for the Bounty because that was on Bligh’s pre-sailing log. So he gave his crew the choice of going with him to find another settlement or to stay here in Tahiti and risk the wrath on the British Navy. 16 of the crew chose to stay in Tahiti, the British Navy be damned. Fletcher Christian sailed off with eight of the crewmen, six Tahitian men and 12 Tahitian women looking for a remote island to settle. They chose Pitcairn Island about 1,000 miles north of Tahiti. After stripping the Bounty, Christian ordered it burned. The British navy never looked for them there but they were discovered in 1806 by a whaling vessel that saw smoke from a cooking fire. In 1825 a British ship finally arrived at tiny Pitcairn and those remaining crewmembers were granted amnesty and were taken to Tahiti. After a few year they decided that they had rather be at Pitcairn and went back home. To this day there are about 40 people on Pitcairn all of which can trace their ancestry to the British crewman of the Bounty. By the way, this was not the only mutiny Bligh had to endure, this one was the third.

1955 On this date little Stephanie Bryan disappeared from her neighborhood in Berkeley, California. The police were about to write this one off when something peculiar happened. The wife of one Burton Abbot found a strange pocketbook in the garage. After looking inside she found Stephanie’s student identification card and knowing the cops were looking for her gave them a call. The cops swarmed the garage and found a bra that same size and type of that worn by Stephanie. They interviewed Burton extensively but he denied everything and said that his garage had been used as a polling place in the past and that is where the evidence came from. The police were about to buy Abbot’s story then a radio news reporter hired a detective and a bloodhound and went to the Abbot’s mountain cabin and found the corpse of little Stephanie. Abbot was tried and convicted of murder and was sentenced to death. Abbot appealed his death penalty unsuccessfully several time but he was one too short when he was sitting in a chair when some pellets were dropped into a pan of acid under his seat and he was dead in four minutes. Two minutes later the Governor called and tried to issue a stop execution order. Too bad.

1950 US comic Jay Leno. He said “You can say want you want but when Dan Quayle was in the National Guard, not one Viet Cong got past Muncie, Indiana.”

              Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow