Monday, February 21, 2005
Hail to the Chimp
It has come to my attention that I should put more content up in this "web-log", and with greater frequency. You see, the thing with that is that I enjoy posting long-winded discourse on arcana, and I have the time and inspiration for such things but rarely. Regardless of my own sarcastic comments when I started this thing, I do not wish to replicate the status of many blogs, wherein I do little other than relate pithy misadventures from my day-to-day life. Not that that doesn't have its place, and I certainly follow the pithy misadventures of others on a regular basis, but the fact of the matter is that my day-to-day activities are rather dull. Furthermore, I don't want the government to follow them too closely. That said, I am going to try and experiment with posting multiple times a week. "Madness", you say. I have already foresworn pithy misadventures, and as has been noted, lengthy, informative contributions can be done only rarely. Endless linkery is right out. What possibilities remain, then? I've got two words for you: insane rambling. Not that this isn't what I've been doing all along, but from now on it will be especially potent. The subtitle of this blog is "thoughts whose developments are not yet canalized" for a reason, after all. So here we go, the grand experiment of our time. You may all take bets on when I lose interest and return to my "three posts a month" status.
And let the rambling begin:
I hate Presidents' Day. It's just another one of these manufactured Hallmark Holidays designed to sell cards and candy. Enjoy your Caramel Lincolns and Hickory-Smoked Taft Rinds, you consumer swine. You all make me sick. Throw your traditional cherry logs on the fire. You deluded fools, actually thinking that the cherry log burning "tradition" started with George Washington in 1738, after the ever-truthful lad brought the tree's remains to his utilitarian planter father. That's a myth, and a classic bit of fakelore. Cherry log burning was started in 1936 by the Southwestern Timber Company as a ploy to sell cheap cherrywood from dying, overharvested orchards (cherries being a valuable nip for Depression-era street urchins). Concurrent radio broadcasts told America the tale of Washington and the cherry log, but it was entirely fabricated. And when did it start up that you had to buy your significant other a teddy bear for Presidents' Day? I would wager that the Ol' Knickerbocker would have nothing to do with such a practice, and would be wont to give the soulless corporate inventor of that "tradition" a good punch to the solar plexus. All this commercialized crap when there are perfectly good Presidents' Day traditions, with real historical backing, that we could be embracing. For example, when Grover Cleveland used federal troops to break up railroad strikers in Chicago, he said, "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago, that card will be delivered." Surely the entire army and navy is a bit much, but would it be too much to ask to have a few token officers from the armed forces deliver postcards in Chicago on Presidents' Day? They could give them to sick children and labor officials. And why is there no Vice Presidents' Day? We could make it on the Monday between July 17 and 26, the respective birthdays of Elbridge Gerry and George Clinton. It could be the MTV2 to Presidents' Day's MTV (all gloss, no historical content or music videos.) Of course, knowing those weasels in marketing they'd be selling plush Gerrymanders before the week was out. Curse their hides! Can't they leave our nation's history well enough alone?
It has come to my attention that I should put more content up in this "web-log", and with greater frequency. You see, the thing with that is that I enjoy posting long-winded discourse on arcana, and I have the time and inspiration for such things but rarely. Regardless of my own sarcastic comments when I started this thing, I do not wish to replicate the status of many blogs, wherein I do little other than relate pithy misadventures from my day-to-day life. Not that that doesn't have its place, and I certainly follow the pithy misadventures of others on a regular basis, but the fact of the matter is that my day-to-day activities are rather dull. Furthermore, I don't want the government to follow them too closely. That said, I am going to try and experiment with posting multiple times a week. "Madness", you say. I have already foresworn pithy misadventures, and as has been noted, lengthy, informative contributions can be done only rarely. Endless linkery is right out. What possibilities remain, then? I've got two words for you: insane rambling. Not that this isn't what I've been doing all along, but from now on it will be especially potent. The subtitle of this blog is "thoughts whose developments are not yet canalized" for a reason, after all. So here we go, the grand experiment of our time. You may all take bets on when I lose interest and return to my "three posts a month" status.
And let the rambling begin:
I hate Presidents' Day. It's just another one of these manufactured Hallmark Holidays designed to sell cards and candy. Enjoy your Caramel Lincolns and Hickory-Smoked Taft Rinds, you consumer swine. You all make me sick. Throw your traditional cherry logs on the fire. You deluded fools, actually thinking that the cherry log burning "tradition" started with George Washington in 1738, after the ever-truthful lad brought the tree's remains to his utilitarian planter father. That's a myth, and a classic bit of fakelore. Cherry log burning was started in 1936 by the Southwestern Timber Company as a ploy to sell cheap cherrywood from dying, overharvested orchards (cherries being a valuable nip for Depression-era street urchins). Concurrent radio broadcasts told America the tale of Washington and the cherry log, but it was entirely fabricated. And when did it start up that you had to buy your significant other a teddy bear for Presidents' Day? I would wager that the Ol' Knickerbocker would have nothing to do with such a practice, and would be wont to give the soulless corporate inventor of that "tradition" a good punch to the solar plexus. All this commercialized crap when there are perfectly good Presidents' Day traditions, with real historical backing, that we could be embracing. For example, when Grover Cleveland used federal troops to break up railroad strikers in Chicago, he said, "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago, that card will be delivered." Surely the entire army and navy is a bit much, but would it be too much to ask to have a few token officers from the armed forces deliver postcards in Chicago on Presidents' Day? They could give them to sick children and labor officials. And why is there no Vice Presidents' Day? We could make it on the Monday between July 17 and 26, the respective birthdays of Elbridge Gerry and George Clinton. It could be the MTV2 to Presidents' Day's MTV (all gloss, no historical content or music videos.) Of course, knowing those weasels in marketing they'd be selling plush Gerrymanders before the week was out. Curse their hides! Can't they leave our nation's history well enough alone?
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