Good evening! I really wanted to write something tonight, but, darn it, I can't think of anything good, so I thought I'd try a random word night again to get the old creative juices flowing. So kick back, relax, and be amazed! By stuff! Enjoy!
BET
In 1960, a write by the name of Theodore Geisel and his publisher Bennett Cerf, one of the co-founders of Random House, got to talking. The result of their conversation was a wager that Cerf had made to Geisel. Geisel had just written a book using only 225 words, but Cerf made the wager that Geisel wouldn't be able to write a successful book using only 50 distinct words or less. Geisel took on the bet and after some difficulty the story was completed and within the fifty words. The 225 word book that Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, had written was The Cat in the Hat. The 50 word book was Green Eggs and Ham. They were indeed successful books. Cerf never did make good on the bet.
COMPOSITION
Dmitri Shostakovich has one of the coolest nicknames of any classical composer. It's also one that can be taken both literally and figuratively.
The Fireman of St. Petersburg! Neat, huh? The young composer had already accomplished much in his short career had become the darling of the Soviet machine, fallen out of favour, and then became the darling again. All before the age of 32! He was hard at work during the build up to war, but when it finally broke out, he attempted to enlist in the military, but due to his poor eyesight (see above picture for details) he was denied. Instead he enlisted as a volunteer firefighter. As war pushed into Russia it all became an inspiration to him and he completed his finest, and longest work, his Symphony #7. It's a great, powerful symphony that, officially, represents the struggle of the people of St. Petersburg's desperate defense against the invading German forces. At a time when his people were seeing their darkest days, Shostakovich was there writing the music that put out the fires of terror to give them hope that their enemy was not invincible and could be beaten. But then he was denounced again in 1948. There really was no pleasing the Soviet Union.
WIRE
This was before I was thought of, but there was a time, and not too terribly long ago, when even the newest, latest and greatest inventions were encased in giant teak boxes. Two pounds of consumer electronics for ever forty pounds of miniature, yet stylish, coffin. For example, the wire recorder. Originally invented in 1890 by Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen, the wire recorder was widely used as an audio recording device from the 1920's until 1954 when the magnetic cassette tape, an improvement on the wire recorder's basic design, became commercially viable for the masses. The wire recorder consisted of an audio receiver (either for dictation or recording phone conversations) that picked up sound waves which were transmitted to a magnetic head. A wire was drawn across the head and the sound waves were recorded on the wire via magnetic transcendence and it was reeled up again in a spool that resembled fishing line. Ingenious! The giant wooden box, however, was purely ornamental.
MONTH
What are each of the months named after? Good question!
January - The Roman God Janus, good of doorways, since every January you open the door of a new year.
February - The Roman purification festival Februa. It essentially amounts to spring cleaning.
March - Originally the first month of the year, it was named after Mars to signify the new military campaign season. Romans loved their wars.
April - Meh. No one really knows for sure, but a good guess is that it comes from
aperire, which means "to open", as in bud on flowers and trees.
May - The Greek goddess Maia. Her purview was fertility, hubba hubba!
June - There are a couple probable sources, but most likely Juno, Roman goddess of marriage, which makes sense following Maia.
July - Julius Caesar!
August - Augustus Caesar!
September - Septemus Caesar! ... Actually, no. It just means "Seven".
October - Eight.
November - Nine.
December - Ten. It really gets boring after August, unfortunately. A new renaming is fine by me!
AFTERNOON
Fredo and Michael Corleone (pictured above) work together to continue their father Vito's criminal empire as... Er... No wait. Hold on. Let me start over.
Sonny and his friend Sal (pictured above) work together to knock over the First Brooklyn Bank in the 1975 suspenseful crime drama
Dog Day Afternoon. The purpose of the heist is to pay for a sex change (male to female) operation Sonny's partner Leon, rather than, you know, any sort of financial security for his actual legal wife Angie. So given the plot, this is a
very interesting film for 1975. Sonny has no shortage of charisma and when the heist starts to go south and turns into a hostage standoff, he soon has the mob outside the bank on his side as he plays them to his advantage. The thing that I love most about it that while I can understand and appreciate Sonny's character, he does just the right amount of bad things to make himself unsympathetic. It's like eating a dish that has five things in it that you like and one thing that you don't and there's always just enough of that thing you don't in it to turn you off of it. Brilliant movie.
LEGEND
The legend of Prester John is a very interesting one. From the 12th through 17th centuries there was a legend in Europe of a great, wise, generous, yet fabulously wealthy Christian king named Prester John that ruled over a land that was somewhere deep inside pagan or Muslim lands far, far away. It was also said that he was a direct descendant of one of the Three Magi, or the wise men that came to visit Jesus at his birth, so there were many great reasons why European leaders wanted to seek out and find him. So confident were they that they started putting his kingdom on maps, though they only had a vague idea of where he was. He was always just somewhere over there. Somewhere deep behind enemy lines where reliable information is impossible to get for a Christian. At first his kingdom was in Persia where they had infrequent contact with the Nestorian church. Or maybe eastern Anatolia in Turk lands beyond the grasp of the Byzantines. Or maybe, as the Mongols invaded westward, he was somewhere in the swirling, mysterious, seemingly endless expanse of Central Asia. Or maybe, as the Portuguese began to make the world smaller, buried somewhere in the ancient darkness of Ethiopia. In the end the legend of Prestor John was indeed just that: a legend and nothing more.
ANGUISH
"Anguish" is, as a matter of fact, a philosophical term. Pretend for a moment that you take a day off work and you have nothing planned at all. You can do anything you want. You can go out, or you can stay in. It's up to you. So you decide to have a shower, get dressed and go for a walk. You head out to a forest and explore for a while, enjoying your freedom. As you go exploring you find a cliff nearby and you walk up to the edge. You take a peek over and see some water far below realizing that should you take a step off the cliff the fall would surely be fatal, so you step back to a safe distance. Now think about this moment a minute. There's nobody around anywhere, you're not at work, no cell phone, no nothing. Right now you can do anything you want to do. You could play in the grass, start a fire, jump through the trees, continue exploring along - even leap to your death. However, while there are so many things that you can do, you only have the one day off from work to do them. That sort of constricting feeling that is the conflict between all this freedom that you have in your life and the pressures and constraints that you put upon yourself or are pressed upon you by the universe that you necessarily exist in is the definition of philosophical anguish.
SIXTEEN
Man, if only they had cameras back then. If only. Let's see how many bad jokes I can make at the expense of Louis XVI.
- Louis! This whole revolution thing will calm down over time. No reason to lose your head over it.
- This show of support was rather uplifting for Louis. Well, his head was uplifted at any rate.
- The uprising had Louis beside himself.
Literally!
- When Louis asked for a little off the top his barber strangely seemed a little
too eager to please
.
- The head of state surveyed the ecstatic mob - the body of state, not so much.
- It was a real weight off of Louis' shoulders now that the rebels' demands had been satisfied.
- Boy, if Louis thought that the revolution was a pain in the neck before...
- Louis was up to his neck in problems with the rebels, which is natural since that was the end of the line.
- When Louis demanded a guillotine demonstration to be done for the rebels this wasn't what he meant.
I think that's just about enough of that.
MILEAGE
Meet author and retired British submarine captain Gavin Menzies. He is a major proponent (originator?) of the theory that in 1421 AD Chinese admiral Zheng He and his fleet set sail from China to explore not just the coastline of the Indian subcontinent, but
the entire world. Supposedly backed by Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhu Di with
massive treasure ships their
real mission was to head out and collect tribute from everyone, and if a fleet came along
that massive and
that advanced as Menzies is stating, then you betcha they were going to give tribute out of fear. Furthermore, it is Menzies's contention that not only did Zheng He's fleet sail to India, but around the south coast of Africa, the east coast of North America, and up the entire west coast of both of the Americas. Oh, he has more theories (Zheng He's fleet touching off the Renaissance and Atlantis being a product of the Minoans who themselves circumnavigated the world), but serious scholars politely call fiction.
ALTOGETHER
Armand Jean du Plessis, cardinal-duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac's name has taken up over half the first line of this last entry. To match his big name this frenchman also achieved big things. He entered the church and by the age of 23, presto!, he was made a bishop. By the age of 31, shazam!, he was the Secretary of State for France. By the age of 37, a la peanut butter sandwiches!, he was a cardinal. So as you can see not only was he a politician, but he was a
fine politician. In fact, so great was he that he is considered to he the world's first First Minister, or Prime Minister as we understand it today, which is a pretty significant achievement in itself. Among many, many other accomplishments, he was a great patron of the arts and also a huge advocate of keeping Quebec French! Imagine that! Oh, and to be perfectly honest, because Cardinal Richelieu was certainly a real live flesh and blood person, it wasn't until I wrote this last piece here that I had discovered that the Three Musketeers of "All for One and One for All" fame were actually a work of fiction. Good night!
