AUGUST 27th

Good morning,


Quote for the day:

"Sex appeal is 50% what you have and 50% what people think you have." Sophia Loren.

As we all know Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts died. Ted Kennedy was the last of the sons sired by Joseph Kennedy. Joe Jr. was the oldest and was killed in combat during WWII. John F. was the next oldest and was a US Navy PT boat commander during WWII and President of the United States before being assassinated. Then RFK (Robert), who was assignated in Los Angeles, Then there was John F. Kennedy's son, was killed in a plane crash. Now Ted dies of a brain tumor. The Kennedy's have always seemed to have tragedy tugging at their elbow, not to mention Jackie. The Democratic supporters of the health care reform say that the loss of Edward Kennedy's vote and influence has dealt a serious blow to the passage of the bill.

Good news:

Over in Gilbert, Arizona Rita Van Loenen found out she had kidney failure and had to go through dialysis treatments on a regular basis. She took a cab to the treatment facility and called for the same driver every time. After several trips, the cab driver Thomas Chappell offered Rita one of his kidneys. Rita was stunned but jumped at the offer. Rita's doctors ran comparative tests and strangely enough, Thomas' and Rita's kidneys were a near perfect tissue match. The doctors said that it could not have been any better if they were brother and sister. Today Rita no longer takes dialysis, thanks to Thomas. It was a near miracle y'all. No, it was a miracle that a perfect stranger had a perfect tissue match. It smacks of divine intervention to me.

Greenpatch Grime:

One person has been arrested in connection with a series of burglaries. There has been a spate of home burglaries in several different communities here in Greenville. The burglars leave a gang symbol spray painted on the walls. This is mostly on the west side where the latino aliens, legitimate or otherwise, have settled. There is also evidence that "The Crips", a gang based in Los Angeles, has bought a house on the west side also. They are trying to take over the drug trade from the Latinos. Greenville used to be a small textile town, now id is large diversified community. Crime follows success.

A retired State of South Carolina employee hit the "Powerball" lottery for about $270 million last week. He said that this windfall would not change him at all. This was the largest lottery winning in the history of the South Carolina lottery. "Not change me at all"...He may not change until he realizes that he can get nearly anything his heart has ever desired, then another person will emerge, it always does.

Wednesday afternoon South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer made a public statement calling for Governor Mark Sanford to resign. Bauer cited a paragraph in the South Carolina Constitution that addresses the action that should be taken against a public official that is found guilty of "serious misconduct". Bauer said that it is almost a certainty that Sanford will be impeached and removed from office. He said the present situation is such a distraction that it is difficult for the state to move ahead. But the most amazing statement was that he would abandon his well known ambition to become governor if Sanford does indeed resign to belay any suspicion of impropriety. Governor Sanford replied with "Andre kiss my ass, I ain't leaving". It looks like the SC legislature is going through an impeachment procedure. This mean that the worst possible thing will happen. That entire group of rotten blood-suckers in the South Carolina congress will be inviting an inspection of their lives. I can hardly wait.

Tuesday night a security guard was closing a laundomat near Greenville when he discovered a man that had locked himself in the toilet. The security guard called the cops and a negotiator tried for as short while to talk him out. Then a gunshot was heard and the cops beat their way in and found that the man had shot himself in the head and was hustled to the hospital. The person's identity has not been released.

 

AUGUST 27TH

 

1883 On this date the most powerful volcano explosions in recorded history occurs in the Indonesian archipelago. The volcano was a small uninhabited island named Krakatoa. The volcano had sent out signals that it was restless because several cargo ships had reported a column of ash and dust several miles high over the island. The explosion was heard 3,000 miles away and produced a tsunami 120 feet high that took the lives of over 36,000 people on nearby islands. An additional 4,000 people were burned to death from the white hot ash that rained down from the ejecta that was blown up to 50,000 feet in the stratosphere and then came back down miles away on inhabited islands. Krakatoa is still active ya’ll, as is an additional 136 active volcanoes in Indonesia. Indonesia has the most active volcanoes in the world. There is evidence that an even larger volcanic eruption that occurred in the Mediterranean in about 1300 BC. The present day name for the caldera is Santorini. I am sure there were plenty of eyewitnesses but to our knowledge this event was not recorded.

1979 On this date the Irish Republican Army makes its first strike against British royalty when IRA member Thomas McMahon sneaks aboard Lord Louis Mountbatten’s fishing boat, Shadow V, and plants 50 pounds of TNT in the hold of the boat with a remote control detonator. Mountbatten and family come aboard and McMahon lights off the explosive killing Mountbatten and two others. The IRA and the British government have been squabbling since King James I formed the community of Ulster which is now Northern Ireland in about 1612. James got fed up with the irascible Irish Catholics being in almost constant rebellion. James was a devout Protestant and no love in his heart for the Catholics so he seized five shires (counties) in Ireland, kicked out the Irish and brought in some Protestant Scottish lords along with their tenant farmers. James believed that if he could dilute the Catholic population in Ireland they would be easier to control. They were....for a while. The problem in Ireland today is that when Ireland had a chance to become independent from England the overwhelming majority of the Catholics voted for independence but what was originally Ulster and almost entirely Protestant (Presbyterian) voted to stay under wing of England and that was the birth of Northern Ireland. So what it boils down to is that the majority of Ireland is Catholic and they want Northern Ireland to become part of Ireland proper but the Protestants won’t hear of it because they are afraid they will be discriminated against because they are the religious minority in Ireland. The English Army is present to prevent a violent takeover by the IRA. I don’t see an end to it. When it comes to religion, everybody thinks God is on their side.

1859 On this date Edwin Drake strikes oil at a depth of 69 feet neat Titusville, Pennsylvania. This discovery was a welcome replacement for whale oil used in lamps world wide. Whale oil was expensive and not always available. Petroleum was used for this purpose for a several decades until the invention of the automobile then every continent in the world began hunting for “black gold” not just for the fuel but for the asphalt to build roads. But by far the most lucrative find was the oil in the middle east known as “Arab light” which means that there is not as much undesirable additives in the oil that need to be refined out, especially sulphur, making it much cheaper to refine adding to the profits.

1964 On this date 15 year old Edmund Kemper decides to do something exciting and shoots and kills his grandparents. He isn’t done yet, he calls his mother and told her what he had done and said “I just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma.” Edmund was a troubled youth. He began by cutting the heads off his sister’s dolls and setting fire to the family cat. His parents knew he was crazy as a loon but rather than getting him help, they just sent him to stay with his grandparents. Edmund killed a few more people before he was caught and sent to prison. Apparently prison agreed with Edmund because he was finally paroled and he was 6’-9” and weighed over 300 pounds. Very soon after being paroled he paid a visit to his mother, beat her to death with a hammer, mutilated her body and raped the corpse. I am telling ya’ll, this cowboy was a lunatic. He called the police and told them what he had done but they blew it off as a scam and did not respond. Two more people lost their lives and heads to Edmund before the police decided to check out the strange call about a man killing his mother and found out that it was true. They started looking for Edmund in earnest. Edmund went to Colorado and called the Santa Cruz police and confessed to the latest two murders. The police picked him up and he was convicted of 8 murders and sentenced to life without parole. But Edmund himself said that he should have been sentenced to “death by torture,” I agree Edmund, let me select the torture.

Born today:

1871 US writer Theodore Dreiser. He said “In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.” Hey Ted, I can help you find the latter, it is everywhere.

1770 German philosopher William Hegel. He said “What experience and history has taught us is this...that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon the lessons they may have learned from it.” I second that.....

1908 US football coach Frank Leahy. He said “Egotism in the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.” Frank knew what he was talking about. He was a football coach at Army.

1910 Mother Teresa. She said “Loneliness is the most terrible part of poverty.” But it was Mahatma Gandhi that said “The bed of poverty is fertile.”

Died today:

1948 Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. He said “If there is muck to be raked, it must be raked, and the people must know of it, so justice can be given.” It was Justice Evans that also said “It is better to release 1,000 guilty than to jail one innocent.” I think we are on that path now, Judge.

1950 Italian writer Cesare Pavese. He said “Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is the anesthetic.” Not when using a condom, Cesare.

1964 US comedienne Gracie Allen and wife of George Burns. She said “They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went ahead and built it.” Wake up Gracie.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow...

AUGUST 24th

Good morning,


We have a new subscriber down in the land of Mark Sanford, that's right, she is from Columbia, SC. Her name is DaVida and she is good friends with my number 2 girl. Welcome aboard, DaVida.

Sometimes when I go out to eat (which is often) I use the amount of the check as a date in history and I see if I can place an event in history with that year. For Sunday lunch my tab was $12.84. That makes it the year 1284 and I could not remember anything that happened in that year so I came home and looked it up. In the year 1284 in Hamelin, Germany, the fabled Pied Piper came through and lured all the children away with tunes on his pipe (flute). He did this because 10 years earlier the town had been overrun with rats and the towns citizens had hired the Pied Piper to rid the town of these abominable creatures. He allegedly used his pipe to lure all the rats away from town and into a nearby river where they all drowned. When the Piper came back to collect his fee, the good citizens of Hamelin blew him off and did not pay. The Pied Piper warned the citizenry of the possible consequences but they just laughed it off. So 10 years later he shows up and begins dancing through town playing a merry tune and the children follow, never to be seen again. I sounds like a fairy tale with a moral to never Welsh on your debts. But three different sources say that this event with the children is authentic, the deal with the rats is not confirmed, however. Who really knows where the truth lies?

Good news:

A New Zealand ecologist from Hamilton was in a boat checking Wellington harbor for alien plant life when his wedding ring slipped from his finger and disappeared into the depths. He immediately threw an unattached anchor over the side to help him find the ring later. He promised his wife that he would find the ring. 6 months later he he was back in Wellington and went diving for the ring in 30 meters of water without success. Then another 6 months and again he went diving and again was unsuccessful. Finally 16 months after losing the ring he went diving again and was about out of air and prayed for divine intervention. Suddenly he saw the anchor and a few centimeters away was the ring. He now has the nickname "Lord of the Ring".

Greenpatch Grime:

A few days ago a woman went into the Hot Spot convenience store near Easley, SC. She walked up to the cashier and demanded money and suggested that she had a pistol in her purse. The clerk complied and the woman walked out, got into a white SUV (thought to be stolen) and left. This past Sunday she was arrested and jailed for armed robbery. It is no wonder that she was caught. She looked like someone somewhere between Dick Butkus and Hulk Hogan. She was eazy to spot.

In yesterday's lesson I mentioned where a 12 year old boy was found shot in the upper torso and eventually perished. At about the same time of this event, three blocks away a car was found that had collided with a telephone pole. The driver was seriously wounded including a gunshot wound. Sunday afternoon 19 year old Jonathon Gibson was arrested for shooting driver in the wrecked car. The police will not say if the two incidents are related but I don't see how they cannot be.

Yesterday a group of five were standing on a breakwater on the Maine coast watching hurricane Bill pass by. A rogue wave over twenty feet high came in and swept all of them into the raging sea. Two of them were rescued, the other three are still missing and presumed dead. Big storms are impersonal, they will take anyone.

There was not much more gore on this past weekend except for game the Carolina Panthers played. They looked like Larry, Curly and Moe out there.

There is no further news about Governor Sanford's visit from the Argentine diplomat. If some shows up I will advise.


THIS DATE IN HISTORY....AUGUST 24th

 79AD On this date the Roman elite in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples were just sitting down to lunch or a late breakfast. Most of the houses in these cities were vacation homes to the Roman rich. Then a stupendous explosion shakes the very ground on which they were sitting/standing. It was the eruption of the centuries old extinct volcano Mount Vesuvius. A cloud of white hot ash and rock shot 20,000 feet into the atmosphere and lava and mud slid down the side of the volcano in torrents. The people in the cities did not have a chance. The dust and rocks in the atmosphere began raining down burning people to death or mixed with the poison gasses that accompanied the mud and lava and asphyxiated them. The ash and rock mixed with the lava and mud forming a sort of concrete and buried thousands of them under 10 to 15 feet which cooled into a solidified mass. A Roman General name Pliny the Elder was in command of a Roman fleet that was on patrol in the Bay of Naples when this great event occurred. Pliny saw with disbelief swarms of people swimming out into the bay to escape the enormous heat but the raining ash was still hot enough to burn and people were screaming for death in their agony. Pliny ordered some of his ships to go and try to rescue them but they returned after a short while saying the ash was so hot that it was setting their ships on fire. Pliny just could not stand aside and watch so he ordered his boat into the maelstrom and went to the sides of the ash flow and tried to comfort those that had escaped. Pliny got a whiff of the toxic gasses and collapsed and died. His nephew Pliny the Younger, aged 17, was on the opposite side of the bay and chronicled what he saw and gave it to the Roman historian Tactius. The two cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were eventually forgotten until a farmer digging a grape vineyard and the ground collapsed into the courtyard of a buried mansion. From then on archaeologists and paleontologists descended on the area and nearly the entire towns have been excavated giving us a snapshot of what life was like in those ill-fated cities.

1572 The king of France was King Charles IX but the real control was in the hands of his mother Catherine de Medici. Catherine went down in history as one of the most manipulative and ruthless person who ever lived. She and he son Charles were supposed to be Catholic but she would persuade Charles to dance with whoever held sway at a given time be it the Pope or the French Huguenots which were protestant. In this particular point in time the leader of the Huguenots Admiral Garpard de Coligny held sway with King Charles and good old Catherine saw the Admiral as a threat and ordered his murder. On this day, Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the assassins found the Admiral and killed him. For some reason the Catholics got their bloodlust aroused and they began killing the Huguenots wholesale all across France in spite of King Charles ordering them to stop. They stopped alright, after killing over 70,000 of them. This event was known since and The Saint Bartholomew Day Massacre. Catherine may have felt more secure after this but France suffered because all the surviving Huguenots moved away taking their money with them.

1814 Earlier during the War of 1812. the British army under the command of General Robert Ross flanks and defeats the Patriot Militia at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland. This victory for the British left the road to Washington undefended. On this date the British army marches into Washington unopposed and begin burning everything in sight. The British were pissed off because the Patriot army had burned the British consulate in Canada for no apparent reason. During the Battle of Bladensburg president James Madison went to the battle site and took command of one of the artillery batteries. This is the only time that a sitting American president engaged in combat. Before he left he told his wife Dolly that she would have to evacuate soon and to take only those things that were important. She took the portrait of George Washington with which we are all familiar. I guess it was that important because later that night the British burned the White House to the ground. But the redcoats ran up against US General Andrew Jackson and company near Chalmette, Louisiana who sent them running away with their asses in hand. But the war was over before this fight but the communications were so slow that Jackson knew nothing about the British surrender.

Born today:

1884 US Writer James Earl Biggers. He said “When the jig is up, there no need for any further dancing.”

1894 Welsh writer Jean Rhys. She said “Reading make immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but most importantly, it finds homes for us everywhere.” It does that for me.

1898 US writer Malcolm Crowley. He said “They tell you that you’ll lose your mind when you get older. What they don’t tell you is that you won’t miss it much.” Did you say something, Malcolm?

1929 PLO leader Yasser Arafat. He said “Choose your friends carefully, your enemies will choose you.” Especially ex-wives and girl friends.

1957 English writer Stephan Fry. He said “Once you have seen an infant do a backward summersault you will realize what clothing is for.” What a thought.

Died today:

1953 US writer Kate Wiggin. She said “Every child born into this world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility.” That is except those monstrous brats that scream and yell running down the aisles of a library or a restaurant. They are the spawn of the loins of Beelzebub.

1957 English writer Ronald Knox. He said “It is a shame that modern civilization has chosen not to believe in the devil, when he is the only explanation for it all.” You notice that Ronald put the devil as masculine. See the next paragraph.

2004 Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Ross. She said “Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and believe that everything in life has a purpose.” Hey Elisabeth, what about my third ex-wife?

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow