History! 5/26

Its been quite a while since the last time I did History! at all you poor people. As such, because I'll be dealing with courtrooms and bailiffs for the remainder of the day and into the night I thought it best to do one early so it didn't seem wasted. So, lets get on with it then shall we?

1293 AD, In Kamakura Japan an earthquake struck. Now this happens a lot, like all the time, however what made this one so special is that it killed 30,000 people! Seriously, the Japanese at he time were living in single story shacks, so the likelihood of them being completely unable to flee outside is slightly incredible. Thus I am forced to to picture the ground literally opening up and swallowing a whole city. When I did a quick google search for 'Japanese Earthquake" this is on the first page! My guess is that the Japanese have a long standing tradition of rescue cats, dating back to this terrible disaster, when bands of cats would roam the rubble looking for survivors and demanding treats until rescuers could arrive.
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1538, Man, John Calvin, founder of Calvinism is just cold hated by everybody. On this day he was kicked out of Geneva and told to go cause dissent someplace else. Naturally he picked Strasbourg, because when I think of places to hide from the Catholic church I think of Strasbourg.

1637, Here is a big one for me, like epic! During the Pequot War in North America, noted douche bag John Mason, Bostonian General of a combined force of puritans and Mohegans attacked the seat of Pequot power in Connecticut. The Pequot had earned the ire of the local puritans and through some shady back room deal the puritans had gotten the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes to assist in a brutal war against the larger Pequot tribe. Well, Mason and the puritans were eager to attack the chief of the Pequot, but after a long days marching they opted instead to attack a nearby Pequot fort. This was also after encouragement from the Mohegans, under their equally douchey chief Uncas, who had found some Pequot on the way and decapitated them, showing the heads to Mason. So today Mason surrounds the fort in the dead of night, with his Mohegan and Narragansett allies (the Narragansett weren't all that bad actually, they were like a Native American Andorra, just cold stuck in the middle of all the big guys) and orders volleys to bie fired into the fort. At this point the Pequot awake and start moaning and shouting so pitifully that the English think for a moment that perhaps they should take pity on their opponants. At this point it is noted that they overcame their Christian charity when they remembered that the Pequot had cruelly slain a dude months before on his houseboat. Oh yeah, that dude that the Pequot killed, that kinda caused this war, he was a wife stealing, smuggler/pirate who had been asked to leave the puritans cities because he was a nuisance, but puritans have extremely short memories and extremely long grudges. Mason orders the group of puritans and indians to enter the fort and fight hand to hand, which then forces him to reconsider and instead he declares boldly, "We must burn them!" So Mason promptly lights a torch and sets a bark house on fire, to the complete shock of the Pequot. The fire is picked up by the wond and the whole fort is completely ablaze within thirty minutes. Now the English (who have suffered two casualties during this) block the two exits and proceed to keep the burning Pequot in the fort, stabbing or shooting anyone who came near, including women and children. Within an hour of the initial fighting close to 700 Pequot are dead. The Mohegan and Narragansett look at each other in complete horror at what they were party to, especially the usually chill Narragansett who had emphatically stated at the beginning that should any forts be captured that the women and children must be spared. As for the puritans, you know, the buckle shoe wearing thanksgiving fuckers, here is how they used the bible to explain why they had to burn every mother fucker in sight, including the women kids and babies.

"Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? No. When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man...there He hath no respect to persons, but harrows them and saws them and puts them to the sword and the most terriblest death that may be." as for the kids? The answer being totally! "Sometimes, the scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."

That one siege effectively marked the end of Pequot resistance. Now long after the Mystic Fort Massacre as it is called a statue was erected on the site of John Mason drawing his sword. Thank heavens there were still some Pequot descendants who pointed out that putting up the statue was the equivalent of putting up a "monument at Auschwitz to Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Nazis' Final Solution." Thus the statue was moved to another site, though it was still met with protests for the fact that the man was hardly a hero. If you would like to know more about how terrible, and sometimes terribly humane the puritans were I recommend Sarah Vowell's 'The Wordy Shipmates'.

1647, ten years after the last blood letting, though the intervening years had plenty of blood shed, the puritans execute their first witch in the New World, Alse Young. Seriously guys, stop it.

1805, Napoleon is crowned king of Italy. You know what, I want to build a huge army, more advanced and better supplied than any other army in history and start conquering places, so I can declare myself 'King' of them. "Have you heard, General Trebaol has conquered the Starbucks on Main st. He is holding a coronation and will be declared 'King of Starbucks and Coffee'."

1830, man this is a bad day for Native Americans. So today the Indian Removal Act is passed by Congress and two days from now Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson signs it into law.


1868, Andrew Johnson narrowly misses getting impeached by a single vote. The reasons are a little complicated and extremely boring.

1894, Nicholas II becomes the Tzar of All Russia's! Did I neglect to point out he will also be the Last Tzar of All Russia's!

1938, The House Un-American Activities Committee has its first meeting, however they really don't become extremely interesting till the fifties so lets leave them there for now.

1940, The battle of Dunkirk! Or rather the important part of the battle, you know the part where against every possible expectation the British manage ti escape the huge Nazi war machine barreling towards them. Literally fishing boats crossed the channel so they could pick up five guys and take them back to England, while being shelled by 'Jerry'.

1983, a frikkin' 7.7 earthquake strikes Japan, but this time the method of execution is tsunami! 103 people are killed by the mammoth fuckin' wave. screw you plate tectonics!

So there is fuckin' that! History for May 26th!

Random Article! 4/23/09

So history was slow today, unless you love Turkish succession issues or the minor battles in Spain (pre renaissance). Naturally with such a void I will have to create a new feature, with which to exercise my wit, or lack thereof. So now i am proud to introduce the "Random Article" feature, in which I hit the random article button on wikipedia and discuss the topic I get. Now this may get boring really fast, I once spent ten minutes hitting that button and got nothing but s steady stream of soccer teams and soccer competitions from around the world. I'm pretty sure wikipedia is 70% soccer related material.
So lets countdown to a new feature in...
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
Liftoff (this is ground control to Major Tom)

HAHA FUCK!
(Today's article)Tiefland(elcitrtA syadoT)

So this article is about a movie directed, scripted, produced and starring Leni Riefenstahl. You probably don't know Leni, here's a picture, of her, next to another sporty chap who is not Charlie Chaplin. Alright, so Leni was a Nazi, and may have made a little movie called "Triumph of the Will" about how Nazi supermen are our superiors. Real classy lady.

The film is based on a play with the same name, Leni here decided to write a little script in '34, but didn't actually start production till '40, wrapping in '44. Even then it wasn't until 1954 that it was released. This was the last full length film she directed and starred in.

So lets break down the plot for all of you out there...

Wait, reviewing the plot now is confusing the hell out of me, lets try this anyway...

Pedro is a loser, who herds sheep in the Pyrenees (mountains between France and Spain) he awakes to find a Wolf just stone killin' his sheep, so he summons what energy he can to choke the bitch wolf out. Mind you I think that Pedro here represents the Monarchists, and the wolf Nazi airmen assisting the Fascists, but then again it doesn't because if that were the case Leni would have the wolf eat Pedro while efficiently doing gymnastics like a spaz. Anyway, in the lowlands a little community is getting its ass handed to it by a rich land owner named Don Sebastian. The Don, as his friends call him, has built a canal that is depriving his people of water for food, but is making his prized bulls very happy? Is that really a good reason to build a canal, do the bulls even notice? who will pay rent when everyone is dead from starvation? Anyway, the peasants are all like "Please don't starve us!" and Don replies with a chortle "No way, my bulls need to be all jazzed up, before I kill them with swords in a completely fair fight." However Don does have a serious problem, he is broke and owes some people money, apparently he's engaged to a woman named Amelia, who is wealthy and totally grossed out by his shit eating grin, so he does the smart thing and takes a local "beggar dancer" (a common job in Spain), Martha, and locks her in a golden cage at his 'pad'. She dances for his amusement, like people do, and begs him to stop killing his peasants. Naturally he says no, because seriously, why get out of debt by charging rent for the land you have all these peasants on, hell sell a bull you douche. So Martha runs away where she meets Pedro (Spains premier wolf throttler), but Don finds her and brings her back. Now deeply in trouble with his bookies he arranges to marry Amelia (because she changed her mind or some shit), but he also wants Martha, so he marries Martha off to Pedro, and gives Pedro a mill to live at, so he knows where to find his fuck buddy Martha. Well Martha fucking hates this plan and gets all up on Pedro's case for being a party to this ridiculous affair, to which Pedro responds "Uh, I love you, so that's kind of why i let him marry me off to you." Martha is all like "Bawwww", when suddenly Don walks in looking for something to fuck. Pedro uses his mad skills and chokes Don to death and then he and Martha go and live in the mountains, choking wolves by day and having dirty 'beggar dancer' sex at night.

Now the details of making this masterpiece, this triumph of the will, if you will. Leni wrote it in 1934, but she got involved in propaganda film making right about when the war started, so that really sidetracked her. Wikipedia says that she was disturbed by atrocities and didn't want to make any more propoganda films (I frankly have no clue, I prefer painting her a s a total Nazi). So she made her own film company, using her clout as 'Hitlers Favorite'. So she spent years making this film on location, facing numerous set backs, Goebbels was all like "WTF, why does Hitler dig on you so much?" For example Leni couldn't find an actress to play Martha, so she simply took the role. the major problem with that is the fact that she was 40 at the time and Pedro (as played by a guy named Franz) was 23, way to rob the cradle 'beggar dancer'.

Of course there's controversy too. Apparently the villagers used in background shots were Italian gypsies, selected from internment camps, hand chosen by Riefenstahl. Now this isn't the half of it, apparently once shooting wrapped for those scenes they were promptly deported to Auschwitz, there's a feel good hit if I ever heard of one, "Tiefland, 3 out of five cast members dead in the Holocaust". Also it says that James Cameron's shitberg Titanic echoes Tiefland in many ways, this makes James Cameron a Nazi in my book,so you better watch out Cameron, I'm on to you.

So I hope you enjoyed this first installment of "RANDOM ARTICLE", I'll see you the next time there's nothing good on this day in history.

Why I Am Dumb

There are quite a few reasons I am dumb, my rudimentary math skills are certainly a strong sign. Then of course there's the unbelievable notion that more than four or five people come here in a given week, one of them is usually me might I add. However these reasons aren't completely satisfactory for my description of myself as being dumb.

I rarely visit ebay, usually I cross paths with it when I have a need unfulfillable by regular businesses. This equates to me walking away from the standard economy of big box stores, past the home town economy of Mom and Pop shops, and straight into the shadow economy of guys with neck beards and cheetoh stained fingers, living in lightless caverns selling rare trinkets. About 90% of the time things work out, I make a deal with the pasty Deep Ones and go about my business, but every once and again I make some foolish discovery and then through a series of idiotic decisions I end up in a world of hurt.

So, in the past few weeks I have been analyzing my need to adventure and cut a figure again. Which then leads me to wonder what I don't have, that I have wanted in the past, but previously been without the means to acquire. In this case, I have been reading The Lost City of Z, the story of intrepid explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest to find a lost city in the Amazon. Naturally he dies and no one sees him again, but the mystique and intrigue around him is tangible and potent on certain weak minds. In the book there are a handful of pictures of Fawcett, and although in my own anachronistic nature I have steadily come into the possession of plenty of interesting articles of clothing, one which has eluded me, Jodhpurs, otherwise known as riding breeches. You still probably have no clue what these are, so I'll further the description, they are those riding pants which flare at the thigh and tie at the knee, creating something of a puffy side.

I decided to head to ebay to look for some antique breeches, as modern riding breeches are merely tight white pants. Well, much to my surprise, and future chagrin, I found two pairs. The first pair is made entirely of wool, unlined, light green in color, it's from early 1918, and belonged to a poor enlisted American officer. The second pair, from the same dealer, are made of a more traditional and vastly less itchy material, and are from 1927, also U.S. Military in nature. Both in fine condition. The dealer also had a woolen sleeping bag from World War II, which I decided would do well in the back of any future automobile I had, because you never know where you may have to lay your head when adventure calls you.

So, based on previous experiences on ebay I assumed that all of these items would soon be on the block and skyrocketing in price. so i placed a single bet on each, with the intention of maybe only actively focusing on one, but leaving it open to snatch another should my main attention get to far ahead. Well damnation, no one has bid but me, or rather the one person who bid, bid a dollar more and gave up, not even making it close to my upper limit on the item. So now, with less than 23 hours to go i am winning all three items, when I really only intended on getting 1. Now I could simply buy the one I actually wanted and leave the rest unpaid for, but that's bad eggs isn't it? I don't want to get on Lady ebays bad side, she's probably where I will be getting my next car from.

Now I will also add a little addendum, riding breeches only come to the knees, and I have no knee boots (decidedly more expensive than breeches), so in the end to actually wear them I will have to find a low price pair of knee high boots, which will then open another line of reasoning...black boots or brown? If black won't i look quite a bit like a Nazi? But I would assume it would be easier to find black. Oh well, this is all in the future and who knows, maybe you've always wanted a pair of riding breeches and now I've informed you and you can save my bacon.