THE MORON’S ALMANAC™

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

*** Volume 4, Number 7 ***

*** Wednesday, December 15 through Tuesday, December 21 ***

--- EDITORIAL NOTE ---

Next week’s edition of the Moron’s Almanac (Vol. 4, No. 8, Dec. 22-28) will be the last issue of 1999. The Almanac will resume with the first issue of Volume 5 on January 11, 2000. Please plan accordingly.

There will be many changes to the content and layout of the JustMorons website over the new year. Many of these will be improvements, but some of them will probably be horrible mistakes. Please remember the name of the website, and try to bear with us.

Beginning with Volume 5, the Moron’s Almanac will become either a biweekly or semi-monthly publication--quite possibly both. This is being done to make time, space, and bandwidth available for "Moron Films," which will premiere on January 4 with our ninety-second Titanic. A new film will be added to the gallery every two weeks. Top people are hard at work as I write this.

(Indeed, top people are almost always hard at work, which is probably how they became top people. Unfortunately, they’re working so hard that none of them could make any time for us, so we’ve had to go into production without them. In the interests of full disclosure, it would probably be more accurate to say that top people are hard at work somewhere and we’re getting along just fine without them.)

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding,

This Moron

Proprietor

--- MORONIC TRIVIA ---

(Answer below)

On December 18, 1940, Adolf Hitler issued his plans for…

a. The Volkswagen

b. An extremely white Christmas

c. The bombing of Britain

d. The invasion of Russia

e. The conquest of Cyprus

f. Recovery of the lost Ark of the Covenant

--- LITTLE JOE ---

Josif Djugashvili was born in the Gori District of Tiflis Province in Georgia, Imperial Russia, on December 21, 1879. His father was a drunken and often unemployed cobbler, illiterate, and like Josif’s mother, Ekaterina, had only been emancipated from serfdom in 1864. Mr. Djugashvili was a violent man, and often beat little Josif, whose left arm was permanently injured in a childhood "accident." Josif was also afflicted by small pox at the age of five, and this left his face a crosshatching of pockmarks.

To say that the cobbler’s son had no shoes would be the grossest of understatements.

At the Gori Elementary School, little Joey Djugashvili was unexceptional in terms of grade point average, aptitude, and physical education. His self-esteem was in tatters. He was a moody, sullen boy, but even in the benighted educational environment of nineteenth century Imperial Russia, his teachers knew that beneath his brooding exterior there beat the heart of a wounded, frightened child.

"Joey only needed a little encouragement," one teacher recalled in an interview published shortly before her disappearance. "He’d never speak up in class, but if you took the time to talk to him one-on-one he’d blossom like a flower."

Another teacher recalled Djugashvili’s difficult home life. "His parents never came to our Meet the Faculty suppers," the pedagogue reflected from his cell not long before his execution. "So I visited his home on several occasions. His mother was not very affectionate, but his father was a brute and a tyrant and would only address him as ‘dumb-ass.’ You knew even then that the cards were stacked against the poor kid."

His peers taunted him mercilessly at school, and his high school class voted him "most likely to die alone and unloved." But one cannot help but be startled by the Djugashvili staring out from the photograph in his high school yearbook. The overall look is haunted, but even then there could be seen the galvanization of will, the hardening of determination, that in a few short years the world would learn to know and fear as Josif Stalin.

One can only feel pity for this troubled soul, this poor, sweet child who never wanted anything more than a little love and attention. Even as one watches the same old familiar footage of a laughing Stalin quaffing a martini while marching over a path paved with human skulls, even then if one looks closely one can see the eyes of the child he once was: frightened, sad, and alone.

Was Little Joe truly a wellspring of bloody malevolence, or was he perhaps a victim himself, a frightened and insecure little boy who wanted nothing more than a little approval and a few kind words? It’s easy to hold him responsible for the thirty to forty-five million deaths that occurred on his watch, but was it really all his fault? Can we not properly lay some, if not all, of the responsibility for the sins of the son on the deeds of the father?

The Moron’s Almanac hopes that parents everywhere will give their children a little extra love and attention this holiday season, because the world needs another little Joe like I need a samovar up my ass.

---THIS WEEK’S VITAL MORONIC INFO---

Netherlands Statue Day, Netherlands

Constitution Day, Nepal

Kingdom Day, Dutch St. Martin

Independence Day, Kazakhstan

Anniversary Day, New Zealand, Canterbury

Reconciliation Day, South Africa

National Day, Bhutan

Republic Day, Niger

Separation Day, Anguilla

--- THIS WEEK IN HISTORY ---

The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773. A group of young colonists, dressed as native Americans, stormed a few British ships in Boston Harbor and tossed their tea cargo overboard in protest of the British insistence that Americans ride their horses on the left-hand side of the street. While this is often remembered as a defining historical moment in the development of our proud nation, it should not be forgotten that Boston Harbor was for a long time one of our most polluted waterways. The Moron’s Almanac equally deplores the ecologically disastrous precedent set by these hotheaded young good-for-nothings, and their demeaning depiction of native Americans as savage, tea-hating polluters.

Exactly six centuries ago, on December 17, 1399, Tamerlane’s Mongrels destroyed the army of Mahmud Toughluck, the Sultan of Delis.

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright made the first recorded flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in the plane that he and his brother Wilbur had built. The flight went only 120 feet in twelve seconds, but this was only to be expected—two Wrights don’t make it long.

Adolf Hitler was released from prison on December 20, 1924, after serving less than a year against a five-year treason sentence. Hitler became a prolific author while in prison, where he penned the infamous political autobiography "Mein Kampf." He also outlined a series of children’s books which have sadly been lost to history as a result of his having chosen upon his release to pursue a path of demonic world conquest instead of pedagogical literature. One can only wonder what sort of success Hitler would have experienced with titles such as "The Little Engine That Was Betrayed by Jewish Usurers," "Where the Wild Things Are and How to Eliminate Them," and "Every Little Aryan Child’s Bedtime Book of Insidious Evil and Global Domination."

The pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock on December 21, 1620. Their boat was the Mayflower. They wore black and white clothes with big shiny buckles. They made friends with Squanto and invented Thanksgiving.

--- BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK ---

Don Johnson (1949)

Dave Clark (1942)

Tim Conway (1933)

J. Paul Getty (1892)

Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel (1832)

Nero Claudius Caeser (37)

William "Refrigerator" Perry (1962)

Benny Andersson (1946)

Steven Bochco (1943)

Leslie Stahl (1941)

Liv Ullmann (1939)

Arthur C. Clarke (1917)

Margaret Mead (1901)

Noel Coward (1899)

Jane Austen (1775)

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770)

Katherine of Aragon (1485)

Mike Mills (1958)

Bob Guccione (1930)

William Safire (1929)

Arthur Fiedler (1894)

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807)

Christina Aguilera (1980)

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin (1964)

Brad Pitt (1963)

Leonard Maltin (1950)

Steven Spielberg (1947)

Keith Richards (1943)

Betty Grable (1916)

Willy Brandt (1913)

Ty Cobb (1886)

Paul Klee (1879)

Alyssa Milano (1972)

Amy Locane (1971)

Jessica Steen (1965)

Jennifer Beals (1963)

Daryl Hannah (1960)

Robert Urich (1946)

Richard Leakey (1944)

Cicely Tyson (1933)

David Susskind (1920)

Edith Piaf (1915)

Leonid Brezhnev (1906)

Sir William Parry (1790)

Philip V (Spain) (1683)

Anita Baker (1957)

Uri Geller (1946)

Irene Dunne (1898)

Harvey Firestone (1868)

Dr. Samuel Mudd (1813)

Branch Ricky (1881)

Florence Griffith Joyner (1959)

Chris Evert (1954)

Samuel L. Jackson (1948)

Frank Zappa (1940)

Jane Fonda (1937)

Phil Donahue (1935)

Paul Winchell (1922)

Kurt Waldheim (1918)

Joshua Gibson (1911)

Joseph Stalin (1879)

Benjamin Disraeli (1804)

--- THE MORONIC OBSERVER ---

Much has been said about the Cuban boy whose mother perished while the two were fleeing their island nation for sanctuary on our almost pristine shores. Should he be returned to his father in Cuba, or remain with his cousins in the Miami area? There has been bluster and bravado from the governments of both nations on this sensitive issue, but I believe the Moron Party has the only viable solution to this political hot potato: airdrop the boy into the sea midway between our nations, and see where the current takes him.

--- THE MORONIC FINANCIER ---

This week’s financial headlines are full of stories about the holiday internet boom. Some analysts are projecting that against $1.5 billion in sales, Amazon.com will sustain a net loss of half a billion dollars. Financial gurus call this the "loss leader" approach, and express total confidence in the future of Amazon.com.

If only these business models had been in place when I was a struggling young executive! Then perhaps I would not have to humiliate myself each week with this paltry column.

Under my management through the 1980s, Monolithic Retail Corporation posted average annual losses exceeding 750% of net sales, and in the early nineties my stewardship of International Amalgated Pharmaceutical Industries, Inc., lost that august company an annualized average of more than 875% of net sales! I remind the reader that I did this before it was fashionable. I wasn’t running after the pack like today’s crop of gutless financiers, but forging a bold new trail. The public was not as savvy back in those days, however, and our shareholders were an ignorant mob without the slightest understanding of market dynamics. The sorry state of my subsequent career has no doubt been the result of my having been ahead of my time. But it would seem my time has come again...

My curriculum vitae and references are available on request.

--- ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST ---

(See the online version of the almanac for custom weekly forecasts every Wednesday or Thursday night. This week’s guest astrologists: Keith Richards and Benjamin Disraeli. Please note that the weekly astrological forecasts will no longer exist in their current form after the New Year!)

Passion and desire stem from the deeply-rooted biological impetus for reproduction, and a particular attraction to any specific member of the opposite sex is the direct result of millions of years of natural selection by means of trial and error in the coupling of organisms. So cut yourself some slack at this year’s round of office parties.

Trivia solution: It was (d) the invasion of Russia. Give yourself five points for a correct answer. Subtract ten points if you knew the plan was called operation Barbarossa. Subtract twelve points if you thought Barbarossa was the King of the Elephants. That was Babar. Substract twenty points if you thought Barbarossa was an old Jane Fonda flick. That was Barabarella. Subtract forty points if you thought Barbarossa was a large body of water in Nevada. That would be Lake Tahoe. Give yourself a fifty point bonus if you can remember the name of Babar’s wife. Declare yourself a champion if thinking about Babar and his wife and their whole weird elephant world got your mind off Hitler and the invasion of Russia for a few minutes.

--- THIS WEEK’S FARMING TIP ---

Once again the Moron’s Almanac is devoid of any agricultural insights. Were there ever to be anything on these electronic pages even remotely relating to the broad and complex world of farming, this is where it would be. Until such time as the Moron’s Almanac has anything useful to communicate along these lines, we refer our agriculturally inclined readers to 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.

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