The Moron's Almanac
A R C H I V E

 
F e b r u a r y   2 0 0 1
 

The Moron's Almanac believes that the young people of today are no stupider than the young people of any preceding era.  I would take umbrage on their behalf if I could remember what umbrage meant.

Furthermore, Los Angeles County has announced that as a result of of the state's ongoing electrical crisis, it will be replacing five thousand red traffic lights with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) like those found in digital watches.  The LED lights are more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but will use only ten percent of the electricity.

This is like spitting at a forest fire.  I don't mean the act of replacing a lightbulb is like the act of spitting at a forest fire.  It's not.  They're both dangerous acts, but one involves electricity and the other involves fire.

Apparently one 28-year-old salesman being treated by Dr. Sawaguchi had to give up his job when he realized he often didn't know where he was going, who he was supposed to be seeing, or what he was selling.  The fact that he held his job as long as he did is a testament not to his stupidity, but his brilliance.

For example, I have this note on my desk about Russian President Vladimir Putin having officially decorated the designers of the Rubin class submarine.  It's dated February 1.  The day before that, a representative of the president apparently handed out medals to the men who designed the Kursk--one of the Rubin subs--which sank like a stone on August 12.  Maybe they just wanted to be sure their Rubins came with Russian dressing.

But subs are definitely the way to go.  British researchers reported on February 2 that the Pine Island Glacier, the largest in West Antarctica, is thinning at a fast enough rate to raise the sea level significantly over the next six hundred years--either 6 millimeters or six miles, depending on how you interpret my handwriting.

Unless it's not my handwriting.

What was I saying?

§

Astronomical Sidebar
February 6 is the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, an astronomical expression construed to trivialize and demean the prognosticative acumen of the groundhog.

Don't buy into it: spring won't come any quicker, and you'll piss off the groundhogs.

§

Fawked Up
November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day in Great Britain. Bonfires are lit, fireworks are set off, and effigies are burned.  It's like the Fourth of July with a target.

Guy Fawkes was a Catholic, and on November 5, 1605, he was caught hanging around in the Parliament basement.  Catholics were still prohibited from basements back then, and the Protestant King James I had been scheduled to visit Parliament that day, so Mr Fawkes was taken in for questioning.  The Protestant Parliament was skeptical when Mr Fawkes explained that he had merely been stashing two tons of gunpowder away for safe keeping.  He was therefore sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered along with a number of other Catholics who shared his conviction that God wanted them to blow up Christians without sufficient respect for incense, rosaries, and flying buttresses.

You've got be wondering what the hell any of this is doing in a late January Almanac.  (Especially when it's already February.)  I'll tell you.

On January 31, 1606, Mr Fawkes began climbing the ladder to the hanging platform at the appointed hour.  Instead of going all the way up to let himself be hanged, however, he took the expedient step of leaping off, breaking his neck, and dying on the spot.  This efficient and productive behavior endeared him to the very Protestants who'd sentenced him, but it was also considered Poor Form.

Woe to the Brit with Poor Form.

King James I went on to live a brilliant and productive Protestant life, even going so far to write his own Bible. He was beloved by Parliament to the day of his death. Unfortunately his son, Charles I, behaved so irrationally with the Scots that the British Parliament concluded he was on the brink of losing his head. They therefore removed it for safe keeping on January 30, 1649.

§

Notable Birthdays
February 2, Groundhog Day, is the shared birthday of three women who influenced my own life in important ways.  Farrah Fawcett--Farrah Fawcett Majors back in the day--was born on this day in 1947.  Yes, I owned the poster, even when most of my friends were content with lunchboxes picturing her husband fighting Bigfoot.  But for me it was more than a poster.  It was a holy Icon around which I built a spiritual cathedral of pubescent fantasy.  Christie Brinkley was born on this day in 1954.  I was older when she was peaking, but the fact that I didn't buy any posters didn't mean I was any less appreciative.  The lynchpin of this sexy triad, Ayn Rand, was born on this day in 1905.

I still have a copy of her Playboy spread under the mattress.

§

Uncertainty
On February 1, 1976, Werner Heisenberg died in Munich.  Mr. Heisenberg was one of this century's foremost physicists.  The famous "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" tells us that the act of observation changes the state of the thing being observed, a truism that is most vividly illustrated by the penis.

Mr. Heisenberg studied with Nils Bohr and Albert Einstein before finally branching out into his own area of highly specialized confusion, which eventually led to quantum physics.   One of the things that most befuddled him was trying to identify the location of a given particle while at the same time identifying anything else about the particle (e.g., address, phone number, zip code).  He couldn't do it, so he declared a principle.

§

Top