THE MORON’S ALMANAC © 1999, JustMorons.com

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Almost as reliable as the Farmer’s Almanac®, but without all that crap about farming.

*** Volume 4, Number 2 ***

*** Wednesday, November 10 through Tuesday, November 16 ***

--- MORONIC TRIVIA ---

(Answer below)

Whose tomb was dedicated at at Arlington Cemetary on November 11, 1921?

a. Grant's

b. Lincoln's

c. McKinley's

d. Washington's

e. Jefferson's

--- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT ON SESAME STREET ---

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born on November 11, 1821. Mr. Dostoyevsky is universally recognized as one of the premier authors of nineteenth-century Russia, and perhaps one of the finest novelists of all time.

On November 10, 1969, public television broadcast the Children's Television Network's first episode of Sesame Street.

One of Mr. Dostoyevsky's most enduring creations is the character of an angst-ridden student, Raskolnikov, who brutally murders an old woman with an axe in order to confirm his own intellectual freedom.

One of the most popular characters on Sesame Street is Big Bird, an eight-foot-tall, easily flustered, flightless yellow bird of indeterminate species.

Mr. Dostoyevsky's novels deal with a broad range of complex issues such as as parricide, political philosophy, epilepsy, freedom of the will, suicide, theosophy, revolution, addiction, dissipation, forgiveness, and the legitimacy of absolutist rule.

Sesame Street deals frequently with the alphabet and the numbers one through ten.

Mr. Dostoyevsky was once sentenced to death and blindfolded before a firing squad, then reprieved at the very last moment and exiled to Siberia, where he overcame great obstacles to produce some of his finest work.

On Sesame Street, Ernie and Bert often bicker over household chores.

Mr. Dostoyevsky was a devout Russian Orthodox Catholic, and In The Idiot he explores the practical difficulties of living a life according to the principles of love, tolerance, and forgiveness set forth by Jesus Christ.

Sesame Street features a grumpy green monster named Oscar, who lives in a garbage can and frequently breaks into song to proclaim his love of trash.

---THIS WEEK’S VITAL MORONIC INFO---

Flag Day, Guniea

Death of Ataturk, Turkey

Independence Day, Angola

Armistice Day, Belgium

King's Birthday, Bhutan

Rememberance or Armistice Day: British Commonwealth, U.K., Canada, and France

Independence of Cartagena, Colombia

Republic Day, Maldives

Independence Day, Poland

Veterans Day, U.S.

Sun Yat Sen's Birthday, China and Taiwan

Hollywood Jazz Festival begins

Dynasty Day, Belgium

Republic Proclamation Day, Brazil

Flag Day, Benin

Rebirth Day, Estonia

Gustavus Adolphus Death Day, Sweden

--- THIS WEEK IN HISTORY ---

On November 10, 1871, New York Newspaperman Henry M. Stanley finally found Scottish explorer Dr. Livingstone at Ujiji (which one of my sources optimistically identifies as being "near Unyanyembe"), and remarked, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" This was extremely witty.

In 1497, a young man claiming to be the son of Edward IV landed in Cornwall, England, and declared himself King Richard IV. Sadly, England already a king, the young man wasn’t really the son of Edward IV, and his name wasn’t even Richard. He was in fact Perkin Warbeck, and was therefore hanged to death exactly five hundred years ago, on November 11, 1499.

On November 14, 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was first published. The intricate symbolism of this classic American novel has long been debated. The Moron’s Almanac is puzzled by the confusion: it’s called Moby Dick, and it’s full of seamen and spermaceti. You do the math.

American artist Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887. Ms. O’Keeffe is best known for her colorful paintings of desert flowers, which look nothing at all like vaginas.

On November 14, 1908, Albert Einstein presented his quantum theory of light for the first time, and sixty years later Yale University announced its plans to admit women.

--- THE MORONIC OBSERVER ---

There are openings on the Moron 2000 campaign staff.

Taking a cue from the Gore campaign’s acknowledgement that feminist Naomi Woolf had been retained as a consultant to provide the vice president with training in the ways of the alpha-male, my senior campaign staff informed me last week that my own alpha-male credentials were not all they could be. So I kicked their asses and fired them.

Resumes may be forwarded to: Campaign2000@JustMorons.com.

--- BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK ---

MacKenzie Phillips (1959)

Sinbad (1956)

Donna Fargo (1949)

Roy Scheider (1935)

Richard Burton (1925)

Claude Rains (1889)

Martin Luther (1483)

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974)

Calista Flockhart (1964)

Demi Moore (1962)

Jonathan Winters (1925)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922)

Alger Hiss (1904)

George Patton (1885)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821)

Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (1050)

Tonya Harding (1970)

Sammy Sosa (1968)

Nadia Comaneci (1961)

Neil Young (1945)

Al Michaels (1944)

Wallace Shawn (1943)

Grace Kelly (1929)

Auguste Rodin (1840)

Whoopi Goldberg (1949)

Oskar Werner (1922)

Eugene Ionesco (1912)

Louis Brandeis (1856)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850)

Edward III of England (1312)

St. Augustine (354)

Prince Charles (1948)

King Hussein of Jordan (1935)

McLean Stevenson (1929)

Brian Keith (1921)

Veronica Lake (1919)

Senator Joseph McCarthy (1909)

Dick Powell (1904)

Aaron Copland (1900)

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889)

Claude Monet (1840)

Robert Fulton (1765)

William III of England (1650)

Sam Waterston (1940)

Petula Clark (1932)

Ed Asner (1929)

Erwin R ommel (1891)

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887)

William Pitt the Elder (1708)

Lisa Bonet (1967)

Dwight Gooden (1964)

Daws Butler (1916)

Burgess Meredith (1908)

George S. Kaufman (1889)

W.C. Handy (1873)

Tiberius Claudius Nero (42 BC)

--- HEALTHY LIVING NOTEBOOK ---

It’s the middle of autumn. The air is crisp, the mornings are cool, and the brilliant leaves fall languidly from the trees, as if exhausted by sheer exuberance of color, to be raked into bright and brittle piles by the diligence of a thousand thousand rakes. There they lie, on curbsides and in parking lots, beside driveways and alleys, colorful cushions of fallen leaves, in which many a giddy child will frolic and gambol until, too often, they are run over and killed.

Every fall, millions of Americans perish needlessly while playing in piles of leaves by the roadside. While the Healthy Living Notebook has long been outspoken in support of No Leaves legislation, we must acknowledge that in this case it is not the leaves themselves that are responsible for the loss of so many lives, but the cars and trucks that insist on driving through them.

To prevent tragedy from brushing you and your loved ones with its razor wing, the Healthy Living Almanac urges you not to drive through big piles of leaves--especially if you are driving an eighteen-wheeler, streetcleaning truck, or zamboni. And we urge all parents to warn their children that playing in piles of leaves will inevitably lead to death, and that little children who die while playing in leaves go straight to Hell, where they burn in sulferous flame for eternity.

--- ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST ---

(See the online version of the almanac for custom weekly forecasts every Wednesday or Thursday night. This week’s guest astrologist: Eugene Ionesco.)

Anticipate a visit from the fifth dentist. Conditions favor wetting hair, lathering, and rinsing, but don’t repeat. Avoid macaroni, macrame, and the macarena. Don’t let the criticism of close friends get you down--but don’t rule out a change of deodorants, either.

Trivia solution: If you didn’t know the answer, give yourself twenty points: it was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

--- THIS WEEK’S FARMING TIP ---

If there were ever to be a farming tip, this is certainly where it would appear. But there isn’t a farming tip this week, and this is precisely the place where it doesn’t appear. (Additional tips may be found failing to appear throughout the rest of this almanac.) Farming tips can be found in the Farmer’s Almanac®. This is not the Farmer’s Almanac®. This is the Moron’s Almanac. Please try not to get us mixed up again: it confuses us and embarrasses the farmers. Thanks.

© 1999, JustMorons.com

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