Monday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“I never gave them hell, I just told the truth and they thought it was hell”

                                      Harry S. Truman

A couple of weeks ago a local sheriffs department received a call about an armed home invasion. When they arrived and went in they encountered a man with a handgun and ordered him to drop the weapon. The man did not drop the gun so the cops shot him. The man was not the intruder and was not killed. He said himself that he should have dropped the weapon. Your friends and mine at Associated Press made it a point to tell the world that the cop that did the shooting was white and the man that was shot was black. The press wants to promote racial strife, y'all...it gives them copy but make our lives very tense...they don't give a damn.

Over in Spartanburg, South Carolina the sheriff’s office was called about shots being fired. When the deputies arrived they found two men with gunshot wounds lying in the middle of the road. Both men had a pistol nearby. One of them was dead and the other was alive but in serious condition. Apparently there had been a “showdown” of sorts, a Gunfight at the OK Corral if you will.

I was just reading about the Revolutionary War and the account of an army of 8,000 redcoats led by General Burgoyne that headed south from Canada into upstate New York. They were guided by 400 American Indians that sided with England hoping they would be able to keep their hereditary lands. A band of 500 Patriot sharpshooters led by Daniel Morgan harassed this army every step of the way. They did not stand shoulder to shoulder and fire from an exposed position so they sniped at them. The first target was the guides and after a few hundred were killed, the rest disappeared and the redcoats had no one to get them through the endless forests. Morgan then ordered his men to take out the officers which left the army with no leadership. Burgoyne surrendered to Patriot General Horatio Gates and soon thereafter France declared war on England which meant that England had to fight a war on two continents. It was all downhill for England after that.

This Date in History May 18

1783 On this date the so-called United Loyalists land near Parrtown, Nova Scotia (now New Brunswick) to establish new residences. These jackasses were residents of the United States but chose to stay loyal to the England during the Revolutionary War and many of them fought with the British army and navy. Now that the Treaty of Paris had been signed meaning that Great Britain had granted independence to the United States and that put the Loyalists between a rock and a hard place because the Americans considered them to be traitors and treated them accordingly. So the Loyalists rightly decided it would be to their advantage and get the hell out of Dodge. England offered the Loyalist a small parcel of land in Canada if they immigrated. For several years their life was not an easy one because the land was occupied by a French speaking population who resented and anglophile squatters. England had given the Loyalists 200 acres each which was not really arable lands. But they made their bed, let them lay in it.

1926 On this date the Billy Graham of her day, evangelist Aimee Simple McPherson disappeared from her very popular Angelus Cathedral in Los Angeles. Almost from the time that she opened the church in 1923, she preached to overflow crowds. But now she was nowhere to be found. Hundreds of searchers scoured the countryside and the bays and rivers to no avail. About the same time a radio announcer named Kenneth Ormiston also disappeared. About two weeks later Aimee shows up in a small town in New Mexico saying that she had been kidnapped. But the truth finally came out that she and Kenneth Ormiston had spent the entire two weeks together contemplating the meaning of life. They finally figured out that the meaning of life was to experience all the pleasure life had to offer in the shortest period of time. Needless to say that Aimee’s evangelism and church went down the toilet. The religious zealots of then and now do not cut anybody any slack when it comes to worldly pleasures. An interesting bit of trivia is that it was Aimee that baptized Marilyn Monroe in spite of her over sized flotation devices.

1593 Two well know and talented playwrights named Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd were roommates in London. On occasion the church would inspect writer’s productions to see if they were writing anything adverse to church doctrine. This bullshit is also one of the main reasons that America came into being. Anyway, the church was not pleased with what they found and accused Thomas Kyd of heresy but Kyd told the churchmen that what they read was written by Christopher Marlowe. So they go find Marlowe and arrest him for heresy. The difference was that Marlowe was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and had probably spied for her on occasion. She ordered Marlowe to be released. That night Christopher went out to the local tavern to celebrate his release. I think he got half in the bag and decided to argue about his tab with the bartender. He got into a fight and the bartender inserted a knife into Marlowe’s liver and he was gone in a matter of minutes. Moral: Pay your freaking bar tab.

1943 On this date Adolph Hitler initiated Operation Alaric. This came about because Hitler had been watching with interest the ineptness of the Italian army even to defending their own country. Hitler knew that the Allies were coming to invade Sicily and eventually Italy and Hitler did not want to see Italy collapse without a fight or repulse of the Allies. Operation Alaric was to move a well-oiled German army under the command of General Alfred Kesselring into Italy and Sicily at the first sign of the Italian army getting their ass beat. He did not have to wait long. The Italian were smashed in North Africa by a British army half its size. After that Kesselring and his army moved into Italy and began building formidable defenses for which the Allies paid in blood to cross over, but they got the job done and the Germans were eventually kicked out of Italy.

Born today:

1882 Irish writer James Stephens. He said “If a man wishes to become a humorist then all the people around him needs to be as wise or he would not be understood.” Jim, have you ever heard of Mark Twain or Will Rogers?

Quotable quotes:

“If it weren’t for pickpockets I would have no sex at all.”

Rodney Dangerfield

“My girlfriend always laughs during sex, no matter what book she is reading.”

Steve Jobs

       Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow