evanevanevan

with a sely infant brasting out of the Mothers Wombe, being first taken out of the fire, and cast in agayne, and so all burned together in the Isle of Garnesey. 1556. Iuly. 18.

The time then being come, when these three good seruauntes and holy Sayntes of GOD, the Innocent mother with her two daughters shoulde suffer, in the place where they should consummate theyr Martyrdome, were three stakes set vp. At the middle post was the mother, the eldest daughter on the right hande, the youngest on the other. They were first strangled, but the Rope brake before they were dead, and so the poore women fell in the fire. Perrotine, who was then great with childe, did fall on her side, where happened a ruefull sight, not onely to the eyes of all that there stood, but also to the eares of all true harted christians, that shall read this historye: For as the belly of the woman brast a sonder by vehemency of the flame, the Infant being a fayre man childe, fel into the fire, and eftsoones being taken out of the fire by one W. House, was layd vpon the grasse.

Then was the child had to the Prouost, and from him to the Bayliffe, who gaue censure, that it should be caryed backe agayne and cast into the fire. And so the infant Baptised in his own bloud, to fill vp the number of Gods innocent Sayntes, was both borne, and dyed a Martyr, leauing behinde to the world, which it neuer saw, a spectacle wherein the whole world may see the Herodian cruelty of this gracelesse generation of catholicke Tormentors, Ad perpetuam rei infamiam.

- John Foxe's Book of Martyrs

According to Morning Edition, the commander of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center is named Col. Norvell Coots.

Part of my daily routine is reading the newspaper comics each morning - at least, it used to be. I fell behind at some point and then felt overwhelmed in getting back into it. Finally I've started trying to catch up, reading one month's worth every week. In the process, I've discovered something I feel terribly guilty about - I missed the day when Cathy stopped running. But I've been making up for my failure to commemorate that event in the form of something that would make her guilty - chocolate cake. A year back or so, I purchased a Cathy-shaped cake pan, manufactured in 1983 by Wilton Industries [a company based in my hometown of Woodridge, Illinois!]. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I tested it out with the help of my buds Hannah and Becca:

Click here for the final picture of the Cake in all its glory.

And now a lumpier, more patriotic Cathy:

The trend of turning 19th century literary classics into novelty novels by adding monsters has finally come to Germany. Winnetou, Karl May's bizarre epic of the American West that was the topic of my thesis paper in college, has been lucky enough to be spruced up in a new version by Peter Thannisch:

"The reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies became an international bestseller. Now you can finally experience the most famous and most beloved of German classics anew, for Karl May only told half the truth about the Wild West in his manuscript for Winnetou. Did you know that Old Shatterhand had a weakness for young werewolf girls? Or that Apaches howl at the moon and that pale-faces take refuge from the sunlight in coffins? Where werewolves hold swimming competitions and redskins scalp clueless tourists, so begins the adventure of Winnetou Among Werewolves. The greatest adventure of the Wild West - with an extra portion of werewolves."
[poor translation my own]

"After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame. Men lived long lives in the olden time, and struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and died, happy in the possession of an enduring history and a deathless name. Well, twenty little centuries flutter away, and what is left of these things? A crazy inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell wrong)—no history, no tradition, no poetry—nothing that can give it even a passing interest. What may be left of General Grant's great name forty centuries hence? This—in the encyclopedia for A.D. 5868, possibly:

URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT—popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say flourished about A.D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a contemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished about A.D. 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote 'Rock Me to Sleep, Mother.'

These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed."

- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

...while we're still waiting on that 1,000-year reign.

Problem:

"So far, the course charted by Mr. Cameron and his deputy prime minister, Mr. Clegg, remains largely visionary...The main hallmark of the coalition’s program is a plan to halve the annual budget deficit of $235 billion within five years, and to achieve that by across-the-board cuts in almost all government ministries. All the departments involved have been told to prepare a plan for cuts as high as 40 percent."

[new york times]

Solution:

"Jim Hacker is meeting with his department's expenditure committee. They cannot find any ways of cutting expenditures, except for overseas students that will start paying full tuition. After the meeting is over Bernard Woolley reminds the Minister that he still needs to approve the department's honours recommendations. Jim Hacker asks in despair how he can make civil servants want economies as much as they want honours. Then Bernard proposes only to award the honours to those civil servants that have cut their budgets by 5%."

[yes, minister episode guide]

Harvey Pekar (1939-2010)

Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010)

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The Fugs - Nothing