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 5 ***

*** Wednesday, December 1 through Tuesday, December 7 ***

--- MORONIC TRIVIA ---

(Answer below)

On December 6, 1877, Thomas Edison made the first sound recording by reciting verse into his phonograph machine. What was the verse he recited?

a. Row, Row, Row Your Boat

b. Mary Had a Little Lamb

c. Humpty Dumpty

d. There Once Was a Man from Nantucket

e. Jabberwocky

--- SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH WALT ---

This week marks the birthdays of two of the modern era’s finest and most influential artists: Georges Seurat (Dec. 2, 1859) and Walt Disney (Dec. 5, 1901).

Young Seurat studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and was strongly influenced by the work of Rembrandt and Goya. He studied optical science and aesthetic theory, and painted with a unique technique that he called "divisionism," but which others came to call "pointillism."

Young Disney arrived in Hollywood in 1923 with $40 in his pocket, a suitcase, and a sketchbook. He had not studied at any fancy French schools. He drew cute little pictures of funny little animals, called "cartoons."

Seurat served a year of military service at Brest, then returned to Paris and had his drawing Aman-Jean at the official Salon in 1883. The following year, the Salon rejected the panels from his painting Bathing at Asnieres, so he stormed off with some friends and formed the "Societe des Artistes Independentes" ("Guys Who Got Rejected by the Salon").

Disney and his brother, Roy, sold a cartoon series called the "Alice Comedies," and landed a distribution deal. Over the next four years, they continued to produce "Alice Comedies" and more than two dozen episodes of "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit."

In 1886, after two years of labor, Seurat’s "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte was the centerpiece of the Societe’s exhibition. It was hailed by critics, and he was recognized as the successor to the Impressionists.

In 1928, Disney conceived of a funny little mouse while on a train ride, and "Steamboat Willie" became the first Mickey Mouse cartoon on November 28, 1928, at the Colony Theater in New York. Mickey was an instant hit, and by 1930 he was already earning Disney significant merchandise deals.

Seurat and his followers were dubbed the "neo-impressionists." Only at the time of his premature death in 1891 did his friends and family learn that he had been living with and had even fathered a child with his mistress.

Disney built an entertainment and recreation empire from Mickey Mouse, but was not frozen in liquid nitrogen after his death in 1966. His followers are called the "imagineers."

(Seurat was not frozen, either, although I believe he may have briefly dated Bernadette Peters.)

---THIS WEEK’S VITAL MORONIC INFO---

World AIDS Day

National Day, Romania

Self Governing Republic Day, Central African Republic

Independence Day, Laos

National Rodeo Finals, Las Vegas (U.S.)

First Day of Hanukkah

Tupou I Day, Tonga

King’s Birthday, Thailand

Most Boring Celebrities of the Year list released

New Moon

Farmer’s Day, Ghana

Day of the Earthquake, Armenia

--- THIS WEEK IN HISTORY ---

On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe proclaimed that North and South America were finally full of countries. This became known as the Monroe Doctrine, and allowed the United States to pursue its policy of Manifest Destiny (i.e., More Real Estate) without interference from meddling European bastards.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes flew a surprise raid on the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor. The attack of our free, democratic, and egalitarian republic by an aggressive, ruthless, and apparently very sneaky totalitarian empire drew America into the Second World War, which it had been trying very hard to ignore. In the end, of course, the U.S. would prevail, emerging from the Second World War as the Good Superpower, a beacon of hope of the oppressed peoples of the world, a bright and shining metaphorical city upon a metaphorical hill.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to sit on the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in violation of the democratic and egalitarian laws that so many Americans had fought so hard to preserve. This resulted in a period of national reflection upon the meaning of the phrase "all men are created equal," which no longer appeared so self-evident. After considerable debate, the U.S. judicial system eventually made the novel decision that "all men" might be interpreted to mean "all men," and America has been a paragon of peaceful coexistence ever since.

Exactly ten years ago, on December 3, 1989, U.S. President George Bush and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev announced at Malta that the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was at last officially over. This was immediately proclaimed the end of history, and nothing of interest has happened since.

--- THE MORONIC OBSERVER ---

Two weeks ago the Moronic Observer observed the birthday of George Gallup, the father of American polling, with a Moron Party pledge to abandon all polling and run against public opinion, pending the results of an online poll.

I am pleased to report the results of that poll. Overall, the results indicate an electorate that strongly dislikes opinion polls and that frequently lies to pollsters.

34.4% of all respondents felt that the Moron Party should abandon all polling, while 21.9% felt the party should continue polling. The majority (43.8%) wanted to know what everyone else thought before committing to an opinion.

Exactly half of all respondents expressed a hatred of opinion polls. An equal number expressed a hatred of taking them and a hatred of being asked their opinions generally. 59.4% of all respondents expressed a hatred of hearing other people’s opinions.

The specific issue that respondents most strongly hoped the Moron Party would strive to ignore was that of White House intern policy (21.9%). Following that were internet pornography (18.8%), names of world leaders (6.3%), and the economy (3.1%). The remaining 34.4% of respondents felt that the Moron Party should work hardest to ignore other issues, and happily offered suggestions: ATM fees, Y2K, the media, the weather, cheese, and whether or not Jesus actually appeared before a drunken woman from Arkansas.

In the end, of course, all of this is meaningless and should be completely disregarded, as 46.9% of all respondents felt that public opinion polls are meaningless and the same percentage felt that only morons responded to public opinion polls. A whopping 68.8% expressed a penchant for lying to pollsters, and more than half of all respondents (56.3%) acknowledged they were lying.

But the most significant result of the poll may be that of the seven thousand or so people who viewed it, and of the roughly seven hundred subscribers to the Almanac who were informed of its existence, only 32 people actually bothered to take it.

This suggests a level of apathy that the Moron Party is eager to harness, and which I believe can guide our party to national prominence.

--- BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK ---

Bette Midler (1945)

Richard Pryor (1940)

Lee Trevino (1939)

Lou Rawls (1936)

Woody Allen (1935)

Mary Martin (1913)

Madame Tussaud (1761)

Britney Spears (1981)

Monica Seles (1973)

Tracy Austin (1962)

Cathy Lee Crosby (1948)

Gianni Versace (1946)

Maria Callas (1923)

Charles Ringling (1863)

George Seurat (1859)

Anna Chlumsky (1980)

Holly Marie Combs (1973)

Brendan Fraser (1968)

Ozzy Osbourne (1948)

Jean-Luc Godard (1930)

Andy Williams (1930)

Joseph Conrad (1857)

George McClellen (1826)

Tyra Banks (1973)

Marisa Tomei (1964)

Jozef Sabovcik (1963)

Jeff Bridges (1949)

Francisco Franco (1892)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875)

Wassily Kandinsky (1866)

Morgan Brittany (1951)

Jim Messina (1947)

Little Richard (1932)

Otto Preminger (1906)

Walt Disney (1901)

George Armstrong Custer (1839)

Martin Van Buren (1782)

Steven Wright (1955)

Wally Cox (1924)

Dave Brubeck (1920)

Agnes Moorehead (1906)

Ira Gershwin (1896)

Lynn Fontanne (1887)

Joyce Kilmer (1886)

William S. Hart (1870)

Henry VI of England (1421)

Larry Bird (1956)

Johnny Bench (1947)

Harry Chapin (1942)

Ellen Burstyn (1932)

Ted Knight (1923)

Eli Wallach, Jr. (1915)

Louis Prima (1910)

Willa Cather (1873)

Mary, Queen of Scots (1542)

--- HEALTHY LIVING NOTEBOOK ---

The holiday season is now officially upon us, which means that it’s time to don the pristine robes of compassion, gratitude, love, hope, faith, and charity over our workaday wardrobes of envy, covetousness, lust, sloth, pride, gluttony, and wrath. This inevitably results in what psychiatrists refer to as "cognitive dissonance," and causes millions of fatal heart attacks every December.

The Healthy Living Notebook abhors this annual holocaust, and we urge our readers to remain as irritable and unpleasant throughout December as they have been since January. The life you save may be your own. (In the event that you have been kind and affable for the past eleven months, treating your neighbors as you would have them treat you, turning the other cheek, and suffering the little children, consult a physician immediately).

--- THE MORONIC FINANCIER ---

A lot of people have been asking me about the fracas in Seattle over the World Trade Organization. Many of them express anxiety and wonder if they may have been mistaken in having ignored the WTO all these years.

I myself have been casting about for more information through magazines and newspapers, and have finally found an answer. According to a chart in the British Economist of November 29, world exports (black line) have risen 2000 percent since 1950, increasing from 8.0% of the world’s gross domestic product in 1950 to 26.4% in 1998. The GDP itself (gray line) has risen roughly 600% over the same time period. But never mind all that: both lines start in the lower left corner of the graph and rise toward the right.

The WTO is therefore good, and can safely be ignored.

I guarantee it.

Trivia solution: It was (b) Mary Had a Little Lamb. Give yourself five points for a correct answer. Reward your knowledge of dirty ditties with ten points if you answered (d). Penalize your ignorance of popular culture by subtracting ten points from your score if you don’t know what the Man from Nantucket said with a grin, and another five if you didn’t know what he was doing when he said it. (Penalize yourself an additional twenty-five points for trying to guess.) Reward your appropriately adapted attention span with fifty points if you’ve forgotten the question by now. Double your score if you cheated.

--- ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST ---

(See the online version of the almanac for custom weekly forecasts every Wednesday or Thursday night. This week’s guest astrologists: Woody Allen and Walt Disney.)

So shall Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and shall be found no more; and the sound of harpers and minstrels, of flute players and trumpeters, shall be heard in thee no more; and a craftsman of any craft shall be found in thee no more; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard in thee no more; and the light of a lamp shall shine in thee no more; and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall be heard in thee no more; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth, and all nations were deceived by thy sorcery. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth.

Lucky numbers 4, 7, 9.

--- THIS WEEK’S FARMING TIP ---

Any Ghanan farmers who might have stumbled across our almanac in search of party tips for Farmer’s Day are hereby advised that there are no farming tips to be found here. (Ghanese and Ghani farmers are advised likewise.) 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. And happy Farmer’s Day.

© 1999, JustMorons.com

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