From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Sail of the Century
In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. (This was back before we turned it a gray-ish beige and built our magnificent garbage islands on it). The pleasantness of the voyage depended on which ship you were on:
The Nina The discount vessel. A whopping 50-feet long, the Nina was a floating pigsty. If the salted-pork buffet didn’t kill ya, the drink prices would. Evening entertainment was limited to games of "Clutch your crucifix for dear life" and "Find the Peso in the piss bucket." First class accommodations consisted of sitting anywhere upwind from the crew. The sails: ladies' bloomers.
True fact: a fourth ship had engine
trouble and fell off the edge of the
earth while being towed back to Spain.
The Pinta The "family" vessel. Parents (aka "guests") spend some quiet time suckin' down glasses of sherry while their children cavort with "cast members" decked out in animal skins and given comical names like "Luigi Llama" and "Miguel Mule." Unfortunately the sherry ran out on day two and the skins had to be tossed overboard on day three because of the stench. After that, entertainment was pretty much limited to games of "Clutch your crucifix for dear life" and "Find the Peso in the piss bucket."
The Santa Maria The party boat. Chocolate fountains, roaring casino, crystal chandeliers, disco ballroom, laser light shows and clothing's optional, baby! If this boat's a' rockin'...yadda yadda yadda. Other than that, not much is known about the flagship, thanks to Columbus's one and only on-board rule: What happens on the Santa Maria stays on the Santa Maria. Unfortunately, the one exception to the rule turned out to be syphillis.
Anyway. There's your annual Columbus Day history lesson, courtesy of the BiPM Institute for the Advancement of Drunk Blogging. And now a public service message: There's no mail today. And therefore no bills. Thank you, Christopher.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, October 14, 2013
Note: Please sign my petition for a constitutional amendment requiring all American flags to wear an American flag pin. Together we can take America back for freedom.
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12 days!!!
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By the Numbers:
Days the weapons inspectors in Syria have to finish clearing out four chemical weapons sites:
18
Days 'til the
Something Wicked Festival in Houston:
12
Percent of all luxury-goods consumers in 1995 who were Chinese:
2%
Percent who are today:
25%
(Source: Harper's Index)
Number of women on twitter's board of directors:
0
Percent of athlete and spectator communications that will be monitored by the Russian government during the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi:
100%
(Source:
The Guardian)
Percent of private employees who are getting Columbus Day off:
15%
(Source:
USA Today)
MLB Championship Playoffs
Detroit Tigers tied with the Boston Red Sox 1 game to 1
St. Louis Cardinals lead the L.A. Dodgers 2 games to 0
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Puppy Pic of the Day: October is Adopt A Shelter Dog Month. Or as it's also known: Get Adopted By A Shelter Dog Month.
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Cruz holding his invisible
pot filled with electoral votes.
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CHEERS to the Craziest Show on Earth! Hilarity and hijinks were on full display this weekend as the conservative outside–the-D.C.-beltway crowd got together for their annual Values Voters Summit (motto: "Makin' shit up since Jesus rode the dinosaurs") in the "Real American Heartland" known as...um...
inside the D.C. beltway. This year's big winner in the 2016 presidential straw poll was
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). (During the event, Cruz said about Joe Biden: “You don’t need a punchline. You just say his name, people laugh.” To which I'd respond: better to laugh than vomit, sir.) Cruz happily accepted the poll results, and vowed to start fine-tuning the most fearsome weapon he'll have in the debates against his Democratic opponent: binders full of commies.
JEERS to another day in Ted Cruz's America. Not that you asked, but here's where things stand after a half-hearted attempt over the weekend on the part of Republicans to end the shutdown/debt-ceiling hostage drama, courtesy of Paul Krugman:
Staring Into the Abyss
No deal. And for a very good reason: the president has made it a matter of principle that he will not make concessions that reward hostage-taking, and Republican leaders refuse to release the hostages without getting something that will let them claim victory.
The opening of the markets Monday could be … interesting.
I moved all my money from a sensible mix of stocks, bonds, treasuries and international funds into a Hefty bag full of Franklins I buried out behind the garage. Attention thieves: good luck getting past the Ninja guard worms.
Get him, Susie B!
JEERS to Democratic brain farts we'd like to forget. A hundred and eight years ago today, in 1905, former president Grover Cleveland wrote an article for 'Ladies Home Journal,' opposing women's voting rights. His words:
"We all know how much further women go than men in their social rivalries and jealousies...sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence."
I believe the relative position of his wife's rolling pin that night was right between the eyes.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Kossack Denise Oliver Velez asks: Are you in a group the Teapublicans hate?
Happily!
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to truckin' against tyranny. Washington, D.C. commuters were supposed to have been inconvenienced by a BIG CONSERVATIVE TRUCKERS SLOWDOWN around the beltway Friday. The organizers promised that 10,000 rigs would show up to clog the beltway until Democratic leaders turned themselves in at the local jail to face…I dunno, tyranny charges or something. But---surprise, surprise---so few truckers (maybe 30) showed up that the right-wingers had to find a fake photo to try and fool people:
This is actually a photo from a Make-A-Wish event
in Pennsylvania last May, not Friday's DC trucker rally.
So at least we know one thing worked perfectly: the big conservative truckers brain-activity slowdown.
CHEERS to swift veterans. On this date 66 years ago, U.S. Air Force Captain Charles Yeager rode The X-1 into history by being the first person to break the sound barrier---662 miles an hour:
"Whaddya mean there's
no beverage service???"
[I]n 1947, the golden age of flight, Yeager was dropped in an experimental rocket-propelled Bell X1 jet from a B-29 bomber at an altitude of 45,000 feet. "That's the only way we could do it," he said.
"It took the British, French and the Soviet Union another five years to find out that trick. It gave us a quantum jump" in aviation advancement, he said.
Last year he
repeated the feat at age 89. The only things I'll be breaking at 89 are wind and a hip.
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Five years ago in C&J: October 14, 2008
CHEERS to Confidence!!! In yesterday's C&J we made a subtle request for some sanity in the markets:
For the love of god SOMEBODY BUY SOME STOCK TODAY!!!
The world responded by making
the Dow jump over 900 points. Since that was so successful, today I have a new mission for you: please make the penis-pill ads go off my TV. (I know, I know...you're not miracle workers.)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a foliage-free fall. Chances are your heart was in your stomach one year ago today when Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian daredevil who never met a law of gravity he didn’t love, headed 24 miles up to the fringe of space in a giant balloon…and then jumped:
What followed was a plunge reaching a speed of 843 mph that had millions of viewers pearl-clutching and sweating bullets of uncertainty bordering on panic, but all ended well when the charismatic hero used his smarts and competence to inject confidence into the situation and land in the winner's circle as cheers of victory drowned out the naysayers who had prematurely written his epitaph. It was a good day for Baumgartner. It was an even better day for political and financial-sector metaphors.
Have a death-defying Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Kelly Clarkson says she wants Bill in Portland Maine for Christmas
---USA Today
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