Historical Lunatics

Genghis Khan

2006-08-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

Genghis Khan was born Temüjin Borjigin in a small village in Mongolia in the year 1162. His was an ordinary birth save for one detail. According to Chinese myth, he was born holding a blood clot in his fist. This was a sign that the child would go on to do great things in this world. In actuality, this “blood clot” was his own mothers right lung, and she soon died. This act was a message from the tiny, after-birth covered, would be despot: “I’ve just killed my own mother…What do you know about pushing the envelope?”

Genghis grew up like many other Mongolian nomad boys of his era. He was trained in the art of yak rearing, yak riding, yak skinning, and yak fisting. By day he would sleep, and by night, he and his tribe would wander in enormous circles because they were nomads, and if they didn’t, then they would have to be called something else. He had three brothers, Khasar, Khajiun, and Temüge, and one sister, Temülen, as well as two half-brothers, Bekhter and Belgutei. While these names sound bizarre to our modern, Western ears, they are by no means authentic ancient Mongolian names. It is known that Genghis’ father made up these names to be annoying. At the age of nine, Genghis was sent to live with the family of his future wife, and to be their servant until he reached the marriageable age of twelve. It was around this time that Genghis made his first grab at power. He waged a successful campaign as a write in candidate for tribal chief by using a corpse he had found as if it were a giant puppet. Upon winning the election for tribe leader, he sprung form behind the corpse and revealed that he was now chief. If there’s one thing Mongolian dislike, it is being tricked, so they stoned him and exiled him to the barren wastes.

Genghis was not one to let defeat get the better of him. But he was someone who was easily blinded by un-holy rage. He did push ups day and night, uninterrupted, for fifteen years, stopping only to eat lichens off of a nearby rock. When he felt ready, he returned to his village, took his betrothed, beheaded her whole family, and announced that he was the new chief. When one of his brothers challenged him, Genghis raped him and spit on a baby. It was then that everyone knew he was serious. This story circulated through all of the nomadic tribes of the surrounding areas, and Khan’s infamy and renown grew.

As village after village fell, the former Temüjin decided to change his name to something more threatening. Genghis Khan was his choice because it is Mongolian for “sword wielding asshole”. He gathered hordes of barbarians around him and with them, conquered all of Mongolia. But this wasn’t enough for Khan. His brain was afire with the kind of blood lust that only a jilted Asian can muster. So he pushed further out, into China, and it was there that his greatest non-military legacy was left. For you see, Khan had only ever eaten yak, rice, and lichen, so when he got to China, he saw many exotic and wondrous foods that he immediately thought must be poisonous. In fact, seventy percent of the dishes at your local Panda Express are Khan’s failed attempts at poisoning his enemies. Khan penchant for disproportionate reprisal never subsided and this was proven when his wife, Borte, was kidnapped by the leader of the Meerkat clan and made his lady. Khan rode, alone, into their encampment, pretending to cry for his wife. When they took him prisoner, and stripped him of all his clothing, it is said that he smiled like a demon and killed every man there using only his penis as a nunchuck. When Borte bore a son who was certainly the product of the Meerkat leader, Khan treated him like the favorite amongst all of his children until the boy was eighteen when Genghis ate him.

The Mongolian empire grew and grew, stretching from the Caspian sea, to the Sea of Japan. But even all of this success could not quench his thirst for conquest, or quell his longing for the mother he had killed as a newborn. Genghis Khan is known to have approached thousands of women asking if they would breast feed him. Ironically this was never done while under the influence of the opium he had become dependent on. In his more private moments, Khan would swaddle himself like a baby and suck his thumb. On one occasion, three of his top generals walked into his private chamber while he was having “baby time”. Khan was so enraged that he choked them all to death with his own feces.

Of all of the military leaders in history, few are greater than Genghis Khan. Many of the military stratagems deployed today were created by Khan. He pioneered terrorism, as well as the use of military intelligence and espionage. When he rode to the Caliphate of Bagdad, he sent a message to the Caliph telling him to open the gates so that the Mongolian horde could inspect for some dangerous trebuchets hidden there. The Caliph swore they had no trebuchet, but Khan went in anyway, all the while telling his horde that they needed to attack the Caliphate before the Caliphate attacked them. It wasn’t until a few years later that someone realized that the trebuchet hadn’t even been invented yet. They quickly cobbled one together so as not to reveal the leaders error.

Genghis Khan died on August 18^th 1227. He had decided to give himself a vacation and because he was completely insane, he chose Siberia for his holiday. The vacation was going smoothly until the illiterate Genghis Khan wandered onto a frozen lake, oblivious to the sign warning of thin ice. At first when he fell through, he tried yelling at the water, telling it to obey its master and put him back on the shore. Then when he found himself fully submerged he decided he could probably breathe the water because he had never met anything he couldn’t conquer. It stands to this day as his only defeat.

Genghis Khan was a man for history. He gave much to the world, but he took much, much more. All your humble author knows is that without the invention of the Great Khan’s Mongolian Barbeque restaurant franchise, life would not be worth living.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Facts-A-Smatter!

2006-08-18T03:24:00.000-07:00

Greetings loyal readers! It’s your old chum Alexander Robeson. My travels have recently taken me to deepest China where, a 1500 year old bowl of noodles had been found intact. The University sent me here to document this auspicious occasion. Needless to say, I contracted the H5-N1 flu variant while attempting to resuscitate a chicken that had fallen ill. I am dictating this entry to my faithful assistant Pyong, a student at the Woodhouse University satellite campus here in Beijing, while recovering in an oxygen tent. I plan to soldier on, but I haven’t the energy to compile a full biographical entry. In its stead is a gaggle of interesting trivia about a host of historical persons. Bon apetite!

Chairman Mao used a pound of hair grease every day until his death.

Marilyn Monroe’s breasts could recite pi to eight thousand places.

Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of the television, had little success with his next invention: The Murder-Phone.

Mother Theresa invented thong underwear.

Kim Jong Il’s bizarre hair-do is actually a hair don't.

Lenin used to wax his bald head to a fine sheen and do a gag at dinner parties where Trotsky would pretend to tell the future in it.

In his final days in the bunker, Hitler constructed a life sized woman out of Eva Braun’s dirty laundry. Her name was Fitzi and she had real hair.

John Phillips Souza was the first person in the world to release a single exclusively for playing in dance clubs. It was called “Dear Sweet Miriam, Would You Please Favor Me With A Shaking Of Your Backside In A Manner Thought Most Imprudent”.

Pat Robertson must eat his weight in human flesh daily.

H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds as a thinly veiled polemic against immigrants.

Tarzan the Ape Man was based on the exploits of a real man, one Mr. Kevin Trillby of Pedgewick England. At the age of fifteen, Mr. Trillby went to live with a band of feral cats that marauded about his town. He died of feline leukemia three years later. Edgar Rice Burroughs was not known for his love of accuracy.

Vlad the Impaler was known to throw the best parties in Medieval Europe. This was always overshadowed by the fact that Vlad would end his parties with indiscriminate mass impalings.

In his inaugural speech, President James Polk predicted that nobody would ever remember him.

Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest because Tenzing Norgay called him a pussy.

George H.W. Bush can kill a man with his thoughts.

Milton Berle’s funerary neck tie is actually his own penis.

William Shakespeare could pull off his beard and use it as a stabbing weapon.

Van Gogh didn’t cut his own ear off. It fell off due to an advanced form of syphilis. He concocted the story in order to gain artistic credibility as a crack pot.

Mary Todd Lincoln was an elaborate marionette.

Helen Keller faked it.

Benjamin Franklin

2005-09-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston Massachusetts in the year 1706. Like many great men throughout history, Franklin had a disproportionately large head, and it was at his birth that one of the great mistruths of history was born. It has been said that Franklin invented the bifocal glasses, when in fact they were a benign, tumorous growth he had from birth. In school, young Benjamin became known for excelling in all fields, including mathematics, biology, portliness and wig powdering. It was in the first grade that he produced the first “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” Though only a first grader, he was able to conjure such winning aphorisms as “everyone hates a tattler of tales” and “Cease not your crying and I shall give you something worth sustaining your caterwaul, you who are the very offspring of a common harlot.” He also invented the letter S that looks like a letter F. It is well known that he also developed his infamous lust for women after he accidentally saw the ankle of his English teacher Prudie Johnsonfeld. He was known to opine for hours on this one glance of anklebone, and even wrote a whole book of poetry about it on his seventieth birthday after smoking opium for thirteen straight hours.

His schooling was short and ended at the age of ten, when his father followed the tradition of the time and kicked young Benjamin Franklin out of his house. This was seen as a prudent move in those days, as 13 was the average middle age. James Franklin, Benjamin’s older brother and a professional printer, hired Benjamin to become his apprentice at the age of 12. Benjamin soon tired of the work which involved the day’s news being published directly onto his back, and then standing in the town square so subscribers could then read the publication. He fled the job without permission which made him, for all intents and purposes, a fugitive. Using the skills he had learned in writing the almanac, Franklin became our young country’s first advice columnist under the nom de plume of Silence Dogood, supposedly a middle aged woman. Franklin sent his missives to his unwitting brother who would publish them. Benjamin was eventually caught in a tree, watching a naked woman through her window. His signed confession states that he had advised the woman, through his column, to “Frolic in your divine nudity about your house and thusly you shall cure your young child of the Wool Sorter’s Fits.” In his trial for “Snoopery in the highest”, it was revealed that Franklin had been using the column for sexual jollies all along.

At 17 Benjamin Franklin had been living in Philadelphia for two years and was sent to buy a printing press in London. The man he was sent to buy from? Only the great Sir Henry Blake of Coventry who, in his final years, had sought to publish a series of leaflets denouncing all things Chinese. Franklin visited the famous sea captain on his death bed to sign over the presses. Sir Blake imparted what was to become the greatest piece of advice young Franklin was to ever hear: “Why keep your pants on when they may serve you much better in their being off?” Sir Blake then signed over the presses and died. Benjamin Franklin returned to the American colonies with a renewed vigor, and a dandy, beaver-skin hat which he wore constantly until the end of his life.

Franklin started the Pennsylvania gazette after many failures in the printing industry. Initially it was a way for him to write thinly veiled erotica, but it gradually became a politically inflammatory publication. It was around this time that he slipped into a common law marriage with the daughter of a woman from whom he was renting a room. Franklin was relieved when it was later revealed that she was still married to a man who had run to Barbados to avoid a debt, making her unmarriable. It is no coincidence that his next Almanac featured the newly coined phrase “To dodge a bullet”. Among his “firsts” in this time period were his establishment of the first library in America and the first volunteer fire brigade (merely a coincidence, as Franklin had simply procured an abundance of ladders with which to facilitate his peeping). Franklin also created the name of every single sexually transmitted disease we know today. To that point they had all been known as “the willy scabs” or “the fiery fountainhead”. This was an attempt by Franklin to hide the true nature of his afflictions from those of lesser education.

From this point on, Benjamin Franklin split his time between inventing, the independence of our nation, and lewd acts toward women he barely knew. After a marathon orgy with fifteen women, during which eight of his children were conceived, Franklin’s chafed and swollen member refused to respond to stimulus. For ten days, Benjamin worked on a solution. In desperation, he tied a metal key to a kite and fastened the whole thing to “himself”. He flew the contraption during a rainstorm and wound up almost dying of electrocution, but the plan had the desired effect and never again did he suffer that particular dysfunction. Both his member and his later invention forever bore the name “lightning rod”.

Benjamin Franklin traveled the world in the interest of American independence, and everywhere he went he made sweet and scholarly love to women of all class and stripe. John Adams, traveling through France as a member of a diplomatic mission, was so shocked and horrified at Franklin’s proposal for a ménage a trois that he promptly left for America and began to write brutally honest accounts of Franklin’s lascivious conduct abroad. Colonists promptly and unanimously replied “that’s our Benjamin” and John Adams went down in history as the first person to be called a “complete ass cramp.”

Franklin died in 1790. He was the only man to have signed all three documents essential for the establishment of an independent American nation; The Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the United States Constitution. Historians are still unsure as to which one he supposedly signed with his penis to win a bet with George Washington.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Lucy

2005-08-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

I usually try to keep my feet firmly planted in the terra firma of history, but this edition will cross into the boundaries of history’s younger, smarter brother: Anthropology.

Lucy is the oldest human fossil ever found. She was around three feet tall and had a flattish head, making her the first ever ideal woman. She was found in the Afar region of Ethiopia where it has been determined that she made her home. Lucy was closer to primates than modern humans, evidenced by the hair impressions found around her skeleton. Lucy’s day-to-day life was one of toil and strife. Lucy has been found to have spent most of her time with a male partner. This partner (scientists have named him “Ricky”) was from a different region of Africa, a region with an entirely different linguistic structure and manner of social grooming. This caused many difficult and yet hilarious situations that always seemed to resolve themselves in a positive manner. Lucy was the first sub-human to do a great many things:

Keep down a grub-worm
Use a stick as a tool
Seek shade
Do a spit take
Say “Ewwww”
Befriend a pair of members of the same species with whom she would have had little in common due to a tremendous age gap
Convince the female of the afore mentioned pair to join her in any number of ridiculous and impossible schemes

With their small stature and brains the size of a chimp’s, life was dangerous. There were predators like the saber-toothed tiger, and they were always in danger of being trampled by giant ground sloth. In the face of all of this danger there were glimmers of what humans would become. Lucy is credited with inventing modern appliances to ease her daily hominid duties. By using smaller, less threatening animals to do small jobs around the glade, Lucy drastically increased the primitive luxury in which she and Ricky lived. There was an ancient pig they used for food waste, and a mastodon for showering. For a short period, Lucy’s life had reached a plateau of contentment. This was shattered by the appearance of modern man, specifically a modern, black man. Though Lucy may not have possessed some of the higher thought processes that are characteristic of modern humans, she thought she knew when a neighborhood was going downhill. She and Ricky were appalled by the living conditions of their new neighbor, now classified Homo Sapiens Rhettfoxxensis. This modern man and another of his tribe, assumed to be his son, accumulated the refuse of other modern humans in a pile around their small hut. It was at this point, when black people were beginning to succeed as the more advanced version of early humans, that many Australopithecines departed the Afar area in what is now termed afarensis exodus. Like small minded beings throughout history they were under the impression that these new black people were to be shunned. Lucy and Ricky lived out their lives in dismay of their crumbling grasp on evolutionary superiority. Modern man had made its presence known and there seemed to be no place for the Australopithecine. Modern man mocked the smaller, more ignorant version of themselves, shown in this early writing.

“Look at their tools…I mean come on, you call that an obsidian hand axe? Now this is an obsidian hand axe. And don’t even get me started on their occipital ridges.”

It now seemed that the making of simple tools, which had become the trade mark of these relatively large brained hominids, was no longer a field dominated by them. No matter how the Australopithecines tried, they were always trumped by Homo sapiens. Lucy would make a spear; modern man would make a bow and arrow. Lucy would make a leather bra for her saggy chimp breasts; modern man built a fully functioning washing machine. The list goes on and on. Lucy and Ricky may have been ignorant, chimp brained and sinfully ugly, but they knew when they were beat. We know from early drawings that Lucy and Ricky went to their more advanced neighbors, shook hands with them as if to say “Good game modern man”, went back to their glade and waited for the sweet release of prehistoric death. Ricky was soon eaten by a large bird and Lucy was carried away to the termite mound where her fossilized bones were found millions of years later by a half stoned Beatles fan and his crew of Grateful Dead tour burnouts. She may not have been perfect, but we all owe a debt of gratitude to this small, hairy woman.

Thank you, this has been another edition of Historical Lunatics.

Marie Curie

2005-08-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

She was the first lady of 19^th century science, and one hell of a singer. She was one of the first people to ever be awarded the Nobel Prize for physics and chemistry. Marie Curie was born in Warsaw Poland in 1835. Her first few years were marred by personal tragedy as all of her siblings died in tragic, yet comical ways (for example, her older sister Ewa was tripped down 18 flights of stairs, but was killed by a surgeon, mad with late stage Syphilis.) Marie showed promise in science early on. At the age of eight she was able to explain to her neighbor why it was that he fell to the ground when he waved to a friend while hanging in a tree one-handed. Although this neighbor promptly forgot the lesson, this was not a blemish on the record of the young Curie. Marie attended the University of Warsaw, first majoring in biology. She was bitten by a spider that had been exposed to a curate of selenium sulfide that another scientist had been using as an ingestible tonic. Curie developed the spider’s proportional strength and agility for a short time, chronicled in her memoir; L'Imagination Étonnante Du Curie De Marie. While at University, she was able to save the lives of many Polish seamen when she explained the faulty physics behind the first Polish submarine and its proposed screen door. This was Curie’s entrée into the world of physics, and she took to it like Sir Henry Blake of Coventry took to Opium and cursing. She wrote a world renowned paper on the implausibility of a nighttime flight to the sun before rockets had even been invented. At the Sorbonne, where she was the first woman to teach, she met another instructor. This instructor had been mostly self educated and had written many famous papers on the effects of electricity on crystals. The two married and brought their combined intellects to bear on an unsuspecting scientific community. In 1898 a scientist discovered that radium salts left on a photographic plate would expose the film. The fact that these rocks were giving off a detectable energy puzzled the scientist who handed the salts to the Curies. It is necessary to remember the archaic state of science in this era. Everything was first subjected to a test of the five senses. Seeing, feeling, hearing, and touching were alright, but when it came to the tasting of this strange mineral, the Curies went for the gusto and promptly ingested half a pound each. This initial exposure is said to have been the origin of the little acknowledged tentacle and extra hand that Mr. Curie grew out of the small of his back. It was plain to see that these rocks produced a prodigious amount of energy, and druggists of the time were quick to pounce on the material as a curative for all sorts of ailments. They were known to have put it in toothpaste, ladies makeup and baby enema kits. Since the actual energy properties were not well known, the Curies cautioned the cavalier consumption of these caustic concoctions. The general populace of the world, wary of any advice from a Pole, went on rolling themselves in the radioactive substances. It was around this time that Mr. Curie began showing the signs of what we now know was radiation sickness: extreme fatigue, tooth loss, megalomaniacal leanings, and a general unraveling of genetic materials. Simultaneously, Marie Curie began experiencing a phenomenon called “lost time”. Marie would suddenly come to, in a strange place, not recalling how she had gotten there. Mr. Curie’s sickness advanced rapidly, keeping him bedridden for months, until one day he levitated out of bed under his own power. Witnesses say his eyes crackled with lightning and he began vaporizing furniture with an energy he fired from his fingers. He killed most of the house staff before flying out of the window screaming “Je suis Sort Malheureux de Docteur”. Luckily Marie was out of the house at a laboratory. Mr. Curie Appeared days later, terrorizing Paris with his amazing new powers. He had fashioned a metal mask and a cloak to hide his radiation ravaged visage. His reign of terror went on for days until, seemingly out of nowhere, appeared a huge, seemingly primitive woman, much larger and stronger than any female ever known. Her skin was bright pink and she screamed obscenities in broken French. These two titans waged battle in Paris for three days, killing thousands with the clashing of their enormous power. The giantess overcame the crazed Mr. Curie, but only by a hair’s breadth, throwing an ancient Egyptian obelisk through his chest. When the battle was over, Mr. Curie was dead, his energies spent, his DNA a tatters. The gargantuan woman succumbed to exhaustion, falling into a pit. When witnesses crowded around to get a closer look, they found an unconscious Marie Curie, wearing the tattered garb of the female giant. The crazed Polish disposition that Marie had kept hidden for so long had manifested itself into the feral beast-woman due to extreme radiation exposure. Whenever angered or frightened, Marie would become this pink abomination. Usually this side of her personality would knock over a pastry shop and subdue itself with éclairs, but this time had chosen to fight the mad Mr. Curie. Humiliated, Marie disappeared into the French countryside, wandering from town to town. People reported seeing her hitching rides with strangers, all of whom were unaware of their passenger’s true nature, and the beast she kept inside of her. Those she came across were always told the same thing: “Ne me rendez pas fâché, vous ne me voudrait pas quand je suis fâché”. As an after effect of the radiation, strange, sad, piano music would play anytime she put her bindle over her back and walked away, looking for the next ride to the next town.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Babe Ruth

2005-03-15T16:43:00.000-08:00

The King of Swing, The Sultan of Swat, The Dauphin of Drunkenness; these were just some of the nicknames that George Herman Ruth was given in his life. He was born to two immigrant German-Catholic saloon owners. George was the fifth of thirteen children, but only he and his younger sister Mary ever reached puberty. This was due to the appalling health and sanitary conditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it was also due to the fact that George's father would pit the children against each other in knife fights that took place weekly in the basement of his saloon. Neighbors would hear him scream: "Fight for my love you little bastards" long into the night. On February 6th, 1895, Babe Ruth began his struggle to emerge from the womb, a struggle exacerbated by his enormous head. The attending physician had to consult with three farm hands to build a device resembling a giant pair of forceps, mixed with a laundry mangler. Together, all four men were able to pull the enormous baby from his mother's womb. The tool they invented is still in use today when zoo keepers deliver newborn elephants. By the time he was five, George Ruth had stabbed all of his older siblings to death. At ten he had a perforated ulcer, smoked four packs a day and had just gone through a messy divorce. This caught the eye of a local baseball scout who thought the pre-pubescent Ruth would be a great asset to the local minor league team. In three days, George had been taught the finer points of Baseball, which was a cruder sport in those days, having only one fourth the rules of today’s game. Groin biting was not forbidden for example. The only thing left was to give Ruth a special nickname. "The Kid" was one; "Old Youngy" was another. "Babe" was decided upon when it was revealed that Ruth had three bastard children of his own. Babe Ruth took to the game of Baseball like a fish to water. The first pitch of his first game with the Baltimore Gamesmen was thrown out by the Great Grandson of Sir Henry Blake of Coventry. Ironic, because Sir Henry Blake was known as the "Babe Of The Seven Seas" due to his infamous fetish for being treated like an infant. Babe Ruth turned out to be a smashing success from pitch one. Not only did he hit twenty home runs in his first game, he pitched a no-hitter and fathered a child, all while drunk out of his gourd. Charlie Edmunds, the famous Baltimore sports writer, had an eye for talent, and sought the Babe out for a quote. "'S'nothin'...I could kill eighty colored men if I was President". To this day it is one of the greatest quotes about sport, ever uttered. After a season in which the Babe hit 88 home runs and murdered half of the roster of the Topeka Handlebar Moustaches, Babe Ruth was called up to the majors. The Boston Red Sox (whose name is spelled with an "x" because in those days the letters "c" and "k" were considered "tony") called upon the Babe to be their first ever left handed pitcher. Amongst his many records set in that first season, Babe set the team record for most tobacco chewed, most tobacco spit, most prostitutes impregnated, most racial epithets spewed, and most whiskey consumed. All of these records stood until the 2004 season when Curt Schilling went on a rampage in an Omaha hotel and broke every one in a single night. In 1918, Ruth had become such a liability to the team that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe to the New York Yankees for three Tom Swift books and an Al Jolson phonograph. He was so glad to be rid of the Babe that he did a jig but was then stoned to death by rabid fans who heard of the ridiculous trade only minutes later. With the Yankees, Ruth’s star was on the rise. He led the team to some of the greatest seasons in baseball history. In one game, with two strikes, the Babe famously “called” his subsequent home-run. In actuality, Ruth had seen a young lady in the stands and was using a phallic metaphor by pointing his bat at her. She fathered Babe Ruth’s first set of illegitimate triplets. Babe traveled the world during his off seasons. He was invited to Columbia University to undergo a battery of tests. They found out that his reflexes were .05 seconds faster than the average human’s and that his liver could filter substances previously thought fatal if ingested by anyone. To prove the point, he washed down a steak and lobster dinner with three cans of lead paint and a high-ball glass full of arsenic. In England he used his bat to fight crime. In Bangkok, he used it to commit crime, but everywhere he went, he took a bat. After fourteen historic seasons with the Yankees, Babe Ruth left in a huff after he was refused the position of manager for the 1934 season. On his way out of the Yankees office, he killed three accountants and impregnated a secretary. His stint with the Boston Braves was the last playing of his career, and sports historians note that Babe was only going through the motions. The amount of restraining orders against him in that season dwindled to a nonce. The irony there is that restraining orders were created to deal with Ruth’s affections in the first place. He hit his last home run during a rodeo in Pittsburgh in 1935. The Babe had passed out during a game and had woken up three days later after the stadium had been converted into a rodeo arena. The home run occurred when a bull attacked the Babe, and he used his bat to catapult the bovine’s testicles into the bleachers. This is why there is an asterisk next to Ruth’s impressive career home run statistics. In 1948 Babe Ruth died in a New York hospital, from the ravages of throat cancer. It is estimated that three percent of the worlds population can trace their lineage back to George Herman “Babe” Ruth, and for that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Happy President's Day!

2005-02-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

It’s holidays like these that send me into the stacks for hours upon hours of research. In my exhaustive searching I unearthed some interesting and little known facts about former Presidents that devoted readers should appreciate.

John Adams cut, styled, and powdered his own wigs.

John F. Kennedy had a New England accent so think it could bend steel.

George Washington had wooden teeth, but he also had dentures of other materials. He had steel dentures to impress people by biting through a rope, and chalk teeth to use when he wanted to insult someone’s cooking.

When challenged, William Taft ate an entire crystal chandelier. For dessert he ate a barrel of deer fat.

James Garfield so loved lasagna, he would eat it for every meal.

Theodore Roosevelt was known to kick men in the genitals for insulting him. The force of Roosevelt’s mighty kick hit one man so hard that he physically and instantaneously became a woman. This woman gave birth to three children, one of whom fathered Dick Clark.

Gerald Ford slept eleven hours a night.

Richard Nixon had gills and needed to spend every fourth hour of the day in a gigantic salt water fish tank. He slept on a king size bed made of kelp and ate his weight in plankton daily.

James Polk was America’s first drag queen.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a compulsive gambler. He once wagered his ability to feel his legs upon the outcome of a regatta in Newport Harbor. Needless to say, he lost and blamed polio.

Thomas Jefferson wrote two thirds of the Declaration of Independence while savagely making love to Sally Hemmings.

Ulysses S. Grant invented Pop-Tarts, but he called them “General Grant’s Patented, Hot Strawberry Fineries”.

Jimmy Carter invented the high five.

Abraham Lincoln was actually a cyborg, sent from the future to kill humanity. Instead, he ran for President and freed the slaves. Ironically, the “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln” attraction at Disneyland is performed by a real actor, 84 times a day. John Russel Dibs holds the record for the most performances of a single show on the same stage, having performed as Mr. Lincoln over one and a half million times since Disneyland opened.

Ronald Reagan could throw a human skull farther than any other President. Dwight Eisenhower is a close second.

This posting is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson.
"I have learned a few tricks along the way, a few random skills and simple avoidance techniques-but mainly it has been luck, I think, and a keen attention to karma, along with my natural girlish charm."

George W. Bush

2005-02-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

For the first ever entry on a person of note who has not shaken loose his mortal coil, I have chosen our current President, Mr. George W. Bush.

George Walker Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1946. His life was one of luxury and the utmost comfort, being that his father was a star diplomat and his grandfather a successful Senator. Although birthed into the very lap of Connecticut luxury, Bush developed a slight Texan drawl that would remain with him the rest of his life, and serve well his later political ambitions. Bush was a scamp by all accounts. During high teas for local socialites held by his mother, young Bush would lift ladies skirts and try to get into the liquor cabinet. Although this behavior was ammusing when he was three, it was less so when he was sixteen...But nobody is perfect. George Bush attended Yale University and stayed in the dormitory building donated by Sir Henry Blake of Coventry. Bush and the pirate stabbing seaman shared much in common as far as their studies were concerned: Sir Blake went down in his own schools history by eating a ten foot rope made from the long, ebon braids of six Chinamen and then snorting 36 pounds of snuff. George Bush was an indulger in both Women and Alcohol. This being the mark of most great men through history, people around Bush knew he was destined for greatness...Or Syphillis and the DT's. Bush asstounded the campus medical staff when he tested positive for fourteen different sexually transmitted diseases, all bacterial. One night in hospital and twenty different anti-biotic injections later, Bush was back on the prowl, groping co-eds and getting kicked out of strip clubs. The time was full of bribed teachers, skull and bones mixers and homemade vodka. But this paradise was to be shattered by the onset of the Vietnam war. Much has been made of the Bush families influence peddling during this period. Pundits would have you believe that this was to keep George out of active duty, but quite the opposite is true: They made it possible for him to enter a top-secret branch of the air-force called the Flying Doom Squadron. The express purpose of this fighter group was to fly deep into enemy held territory and execute brutal hit-and-run sorties. Bush's first flight was to be a night mission into deepest Vietnam. After a thirty six hour period full of Vietnamese whores, Bolivian cocaine, and Chinese whiskey, Bush jumped into his cockpit and jetted off. He immediately took a wrong turn and found himself in Thailand. He radioed back to his base to ask permission to engage a sleeping elephant he had come across. When asked for his reason, he was quoted as saying "Cause I wanna see that sumbitch lit like a Roman-goddamn-candle". Before his superiors could answer Bush shot a missle into the slumbering pachyderm, affectionately named Pongpul by the poor villagers who depended on it for labor. Bush then triumphantly crashed his jet into an island inhabited solely by vicious monkeys. By the time Bush was rescued he had been "loved up ten ways to Tuesday", according to his own report on the incident. Trapped in the wreckage as he was, George had been an easy mark for the lusty primates. Bush was given the purple heart. This was an unfortunate choice because the award was "the same color as those little feller's purple peckers". It serves as a painful reminder to this very day. George came back to the states and bounced from business venture to business venture, taking once succesful businesses and running them into the ground like so many fighter jets. The only people who felt violated this time were employees and investors. One prime example of Bush's flawed business sense was "Bush's Blood Bath and Beans" a restaurant he started where the gimmick was that customers chose their own cow and then killed it themselves. The restaurant lasted six months, and this was due solely to the constant patronage of one Karl Rove who found the restaurants theme invigorating. Rove saw Bush's political potential right away, using a video camera he happened to be carrying to tape a commercial for Bush's first run for Governor. Since the Governor's race had been decided three weeks prior, and the target of most of Bush's barbs was never even in the race, the ad only aired twice on a Wednesday morning at three fifteen and three seventeen respectively. At that hour, few people were awake. One of them was a young librarian, strung out from twenty four straight hours of Yahtzee and a single glass of Boone's Farm. Laura Welch saw Bush's ad and immediately knew he was the man who would court her for a protracted period of time, convert to Methodism and then take her virgin flower only after asking her father for her hand and then marrying her. The two met at a party. Bush had been drinking for five straight days, having sworn off any drugs after his initial flight. Laura saw George with two strippers on his arm and took action, punching him in the mouth and dragging him to her car. Through the use of strong hallucinogens and a little manipulation of Stockholm syndrome, Laura Welch attained all of her courtship goals with Bush and was married to him three months later. George still has only fuzzy recollections of this period in his life and chalks it up to a lack of Christ in his life. The Bush twins were born four years later. They were dubbed "Daddies little girls" after they foresook their mothers breast for a Morphine drip that a nurse had left in the corner of the maternity ward. Rove, licking his wounds for years after his first botched attempt at campaign consultancy, was now the most dangerous man in politics. In a period of eight years, he took an incompetent, drug addled, boob, and got him from the Texas Governor's mansion to the White House. Along the way Bush trampled on anyone who got in his way: The press, Democrats, Jews and homosexuals. The interveneing time will not be labored in these pages, for it is happening right now. The Bush presidency and it's place in history will be determined by my colleagues and myself once it is done. But for now, as the great Sir Henry Blake said "History is all around us, breathing, sleeping, eating and gasping in the beds of women whom he has paid to lay with him."

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Walt Disney

2004-12-29T13:32:00.000-08:00

The creator and voice of the worlds most beloved cartoon character, Disney was a man of vision and scope. Born in 1901 in Missouri, Walter Elias Disney had begginnings that bore no resemblance to his later success. Disney's father, Elias, was a potato farmer whose land had only ever yielded one potato. This potato was kept in a glass box on the mantle and any suggestion that it be sold was met with anger and an attack with a belt. A favorite game of Elias Disney's was to put on a horrifying mask and claim to be the "Jew Demon". Because of this, each Disney child forever lived in blind terror of God's chosen people. As a teenager, Walt enjoyed drawing, but his father would only allow him to draw pictures of the brave Sir Henry Blake of Coventry. It was from a book of Blake's quotes that Elias made his children read each and every night before bed. Mr Disney could not read himself, but he had memorized the quotes and any divergence from the text would send him into a rage. He would don the mask, which he had named Shekel, and chase the children around the farm with a crescent wrench. All this time, Mrs. Disney sat in her favorite chair working through Laudanum fits and exploring her sub concious. At the onset of World War One, Walkt looked at his choices: He could either go to the death fields on the Western Front or he could cruelly and fruitlessly beat at the dead soil in Missouri. Disney's first whiff of mustard gas confirmed that he had made the right choice for himself. During the war Disney refined his artistic talents by depicting the various sights Europe had to offer, such as effluence laden rivers and sypillitic nudes. He created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and brought it back to the states. He and his brother Roy began producing cartoons featuring the rabbit, but their contract was revoked after they produced a feature in which Oswald travels back in time and beats Moses to death with a mallet. Their overwhelming anti-semitism so enraged a then Jewry laden Hollywood that they were forced to begin producing their own cartoons independently. The character they chose to showcase was alovable mouse named Mickey. Originally the character was named Mortimer, and he wore military style boots and carried a Thompson sub-machine gun. Mortimer hunted fascists, homosexuals, and in his initial cartoon, set fire to an opium den full of horrifically caricatured Chinese men. Luckily for the studio, Roy, the more marketing savvy of the two brothers, stepped in to modify and change Mickey into the more palattable version we all know and love. Such was the process of creating each of the other members of Mickey's gang: Walt would desing a militaristic version which Roy and animator Ub Iwerks would have to take back to the drawing board and tone down. It is the contention of many scholars that if it weren't for this tug of war between the two factions, these characters would not have the lasting effect that they did. Walt tired of the entertainment industry. He yearned for action and World War Two provided that opportunity. The OSS sent Walt to Germany, deep behind enemy lines where his hatred of all things Jewish and his broken German got him a relativly high standing within the Nazi party. He actually suggested to Rommel that they attempt to assassinate Hitler. Disney's idea was to take over Germany using cartoon characters and travelling carnivals to subdue the people. The attempt on Hitler was the downfall of Rommel and the temporary end to Disney's covert activities. Later, the FBI would call on him to roll over on suspected Communists. Disney was responsible for more deportations than any single person during the McCarthy era. Charlie Chaplin once made a joke at a cocktail party that Disney did not understand, next thing The Tramp knew, he was on a boat back to England. Paul Robeson was black and therefore suspect of any number of deviant activities according to Disney, and so Robeson was sent "back" to Russia, a country he had never even visited before. Upon the opening of Disneyland, Walt saw the culmination of all of his life's dreams. Disneyland was to be his paradise on earth, a place where attractive white people could spend a day away from the rigors of interacting with those of "lower race". Disney's smoking habit finally caught up to him, though not through cancer or other allied illnesses. One of Disney's "Imagineers" thought it would be funny to give him a trick cigar. When the cigar exploded, Disney quickly scrawled out a note in which he indicated that he believed this to be an attempt on his life by Castro and the "Foul, grinning specter of that rat Hitler". He made a few quick modifications to his will and then swallowed a cyanide pill he kept in his right coat pocket for just such a dire turn of events. It is unclear why a successfully averted assassination would cause him to commit suicide, but then again, who truly understands the sensibilities of a genius?

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Theodore Roosevelt

2004-12-16T21:16:00.000-08:00

Our 25th and by far toughest president, Roosevelt pushed his body and mind to the pinnacle of human achievement. Roosevelt was born into a well-to-do New York family in 1858. Legend has it that he sommersaulted out of his mother's birth canal and immediately did 15 minutes of strenuous calisthenics before requesting a cup of black coffee using sign language. The son of Sir Henry Blake of Coventry, a dear friend of the family, was in attendance when Theodore Roosevelt was christened. He was overheard saying: "A boy with so grand a head is destined for this country's highest office...Or a home for Mongoloids." An auspicious beginning. At the age of three, young Roosevelt could recite the Magna Carta backward and forward in three languages. At four he held the New York City record for youngest boy with a handle-bar moustache. A New York Times Article from May 8th 1872 titled "Pluck of Youth Displayed" details a free-for-all style fighting match in which the then 14 year old Roosevelt participated:

"Valorous fisticuffs were the watchword this eve. Young Theodore Roosevelt gave a resounding thrashing to three men fully double the sum of his age, as well as two bears and a hottentot."

Roosevelt donated the prize money to a home for victims of the grippe and said it was "bully". Ever the scholar, Roosevelt used his free time to study many of the fields of academia. He once concocted an elixir that raised a squirrel from the dead. He again called it bully. His first attempt at animal husbandry yielded a bull so ferocious, it took Roosevelt fully ten hours to beat it to death in a widely publicized bare-knuckle boxing match. He was the first person to mathematically theorize the existence of black holes, although he dubbed them "Roosevelt Gaps". This was all done before attending Harvard. Once there, Theodore found himself surrounded by "Weak wristed blue-bloods and know nothing dandies". Classmates said of Roosevelt that he either ignored them altogether or spit on their spats. One highlight we know of from Roosevelt's exhaustive journaling, is the night he lost his virginity:

"Young Clementine offered up her sacred flower and in accepting it, I opened both of our eyes to new worlds of pleasure. It was a filthy and demeaning act nonetheless."

Eventually, Theodore became a high ranking officer in the Navy, but transferred to the Army at the start of the Spanish American War. His famed regiment, known as "The Rough Riders" was actually just Roosevelt, three horses, and a Mexican teenager named Nachito, who served as an interpreter. Together they routed the imperialist Spanish forces and paved the way for an imperialist American force. It was there, in the wilds of Cuba, taking pot-shots at unwashed and terrified Spaniards, that he developed his life long love of hunting. Of course, Roosevelt's time in the White House would be just as spectacular as his life up until that point. He killed the ambassador of Prussia with his bare hands when the ambassador looked lustfully at Roosevelt's wife during a state dinner. He was the first President to leave the country, visiting Panama to inspect the construction of the canal and hunt indigenous peoples with a blow dart. As a naval enthusiast, Roosevelt built up the strongest naval fleet in the world. His "Great White Fleet" sailed the world on a good will tour, with seamen smiling, waving and sinking lesser ships of foreign navies all along the way, this was Roosevelt's idea of good will. During his innagural Presidential bear hunt, Theodore came across a bear cub cowering underneath a log. Roosevelt took a shine to the bear and raised it as if one of his own children, until "Teddy" (From whom we get the name of the popular plush toy) mauled a servant and Roosevelt had to strip naked and again feel the thrill of murdering an animal with his bare hands. Roosevelt was the first President to ride aboard a submarine, and again was forced to battle an animal he had no reason to expect victory against. The giant squid Theodore captured that day was kept in a tank beneath the White House until it's death in 1965. Roosevelt spent his years out of office writing, hunting, and negotiating peace treaties with now defunct super powers. He ran for office again in 1912 as the Bull-Moose candidate. During a campaign speech, he was shot in the chest. With the bullet still lodged in his chest, Roosevelt finished his speech and then decapitated his would be assassin with a boomerang he happened to have with him. The bullet stayed in his chest for seven more years until his death. Roosevelt proved himself a competent, and enigmatic leader, possessed of superhuman strength and a willingness to kill just about anything with eye balls.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Albert Einstein

2004-12-13T15:56:00.000-08:00

Time named him man of the century. He is arguably the most reconizable face in science. Little is known, though, about his success as a stage magician, the mark he made upon that field and the way in which it inspired him to plumb the depths of his own megalomania. Einstein was born in 1879, twenty one years before the turn of the century. He was born at Ulm in Wurtemburg, Germany, about 50 miles east of Stuttegart which is another city in Germany. His parents were a traveling duo of vaudeville style performers who went by the stage names "Klumst and Kilna". They were famous for a trick in which Klumst would throw an axe, and Kilna, attempting to catch it, would wind up with the axe in her leg. Kilna would then wallow for the rest of the act, bleeding profusely on stage. None of the act was a trick and Kilna was always being sent to local clinics for transfusions after the curtain came down. Due to the bizarre German sense of humor, the act was a hit. As a little boy, Einstein was given a pocket compass. He realized that an invisible force in space was acting on the needle, opening his eyes to the larger, almost metaphysical world around him. He immediately constructed a small, palm sized magnet, with which he could fool people into thinking he was one of the poles. This trick was denounced as witch craft and Albert was almost kicked out of the Catholic school he attended. This school was run by a distant cousin of Sir Henry Blake of Coventry, who shared the famous adventurer's terror of anything he didn't understand completely. Einstein tried to finish school but after recieveing a failing grade in his basic math class, he lit out on his own at the age of fourteen. He traveled the German country side as "Das Erstaunliche Schaufelgesicht" which roughly translates to "The Amazing Star-Man". In order to push his tricks past those of his competition, Einstein took up the study of physics and, because of a later diagnosed form of autism, Einstein was able to take in vast amounts of information and process it very quickly. To make ends meet, he worked in a patent office, which also allowed him to monitor any possible patent activity by his competition. His last appearance on the stage was with a trick he called "Das Imploder der Angelegenheit" which was a variation of the "Disappearring women in a box" trick. A key difference was that Einstein's version used a very poorly assembled matter collapser. During the performance, the box became a singularity, collapsing a whole city block of Dresden and leaving Einstein and only a handful of audience members alive. When he looked around him at the destruction he had wrought, he reportedly laughed maniacally. This is the moment in which, historians agree, he realized the evil potential of his brain and developed his blood lust and thirst for conquest. Einstein put away the turban and cape that had been trade marks of his magic act and set forth to take over the world. Another famous German beat him to the punch though, and due to Einstein's Jewish heritage, came gunning for Albert. Einstein had to shelve his craze for power in order to endear America to his cause. Using a grandfatherly and harmless persona he duped America and was allowed to come to the states in order to start up the Manhattan Project. Einstein came up with an idea for a new super weapon which he knew wouldn't work. The device was known as "The Masher" and would theoretically have caused all non-living matter within a given radius, to suddenly jump thirty feet in the air, and then come down on whatever was under it. Given the American scientific community's prediliction for Flash Gordon stories, they actually bought the validity of the theory. Einstein knew that atomic power must be his alone if he were to rule the world with his mighty fist. Unfortunately for Einstein, Oppenheimer split an atom. Einstein was said to have cursed so long that he ran out of curse words and began inventing new ones, some of which are still in use today. After his failure to invent a weapon with which to dominate the world, Einstein spiraled ever deeper into madness. His last grab for power was a hold up attempt on a then brand new "Mc Donalds" establishment. His plan failed when the "Portable Molecular Destabilizer Gun" he constructed, mis-fired at a milk dispenser and created the first "Soft-Serve" ice cream. Before he died, the Smithsonian Institute requested his nobel prize to put on display. Einstein promptly swallowed it in front of the comitee and calmy told them they could "Come und get it". He then flipped them the bird and fell asleep for thirteen hours. Peniless, Einstein died alone in 1955. He left a legacy of learnedness, and a litany of botched attempts at world domination. Einstein will forever be the greatest evil that never was.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Henry Ford

2004-12-08T19:28:00.000-08:00

A captain of industry possessed of great passion and determination. This was our Henry Ford. Many now know of his famous and aggressive anti-semitism, but few know to what extent he could take his hatred of God's chosen. Henry Ford was born in 1863 to wealthy immigrant parents. William and Mary Ford stowed away on the sailing ship H.M.S. Oppressor, the last ship Sir Henry Blake of Coventry would captain bound for the Americas. To the famous adventurer's credit, he was overheard saying to a ship mate that "the foul smell of an Irish man be aboard our vessel". Henry's father, a raging drunk, was rarely concious. Most days he would yell at his farm hands and then pass out rising only for dinner and then a night-cap. Thus, by the age of twelve, young Henry blossomed into a mechanically talented, if bitterly racist, engineer. The Ford Museum contains a working miniature he built of a machine that appears to be used in the threshing of wheat. The brutally stereotyped figurine of a person of vague Asian descent being caught up in it's works would reveal the truth of this devices purpose. Even then, young Ford had his eye on Aryan domination. He attained high stature in the Edison Illumination Company under the ever watchful Thomas Alva Edison. They were boon companions for many years. In fact, Edison's nickname, the Wizard of Menlo Park, was coined by Ford. Only later would the Ku Klux Klan add the word Grand and take off the words Menlo and Park from this phrase to describe men of zealous dedication to their cause. Edison and Ford parted ways after an argument as to which of the waves of immigrant peoples was the greatest threat to the nation. Ford, of course, labeled Eastern European Jewry as this nation's gravest danger. Ford started up his world famous assembly line and changed manufacturing forever. But it was all old tricks with Ford's management style. He was said to have hired those of "lower race" just so that he could fire them. He famously won a metal from Adolph Hitler, but those closest to Hitler said it was just a gesture to a person whom Hitler viewed as "reales heißes material", a colloquial German term roughly translated to "One who will triumph". Hitler said Ford "gab ihm die willies". Those close to Ford would later reveal that he had labeled Hitler "a good kid, if naive". He spent his retirement years publishing "The Dearborn Independent" a newspaper chock full of beef stu recipies, tonic advertisements and falsified historical documents that propped up Ford's theories about evil Jews and sinister organized labor. Luckily for the entire world, Henry Ford died in 1947 before the line of tanks he had personally designed could be officially launched. There were two models, the American P-580 and the German X-2000. The American version was said to run on "Good faith and the fond hopes of Democracy". The German model ran on a mix of "High octane diesel fuel and the blood of the enemy". In a final, satisfying kick to the old Ford's balls, his company underwrote the cost of airing the movie "Schindler's List" on an American broadcasting network free of commercials. Those near his Detroit gravesite said they heard a sound like a "lathe made of bones" during the entirety of the airing. Curiously, minorities are three times more likely to have their Ford Explorer flip over.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"

Mark Twain

2004-12-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

He was the first person to write a novel on a typewriter, and the first to wear a white suit with a beard. But what is really known about the most literate Southerner? People like to throw around the fact that he was Bi-Polar as if this was some huge discovery. Pish posh, all great men of letters are tortured souls. I myself am cultivating many complexes in the hopes that I may one day be an interesting factoid that men throw around to score with women who have liberal arts degrees. I digress. Samuel Langhorn Clemens was born in Hannibal Missouri in 1835, five years to the day after Sir Henry Blake of Coventry died of Chlamydia. This is of import because Sir Henry Blake wrote a little known outline for a story that closely resembles Huck Finn. Blake's took place on the sea and the protagonist was named Buck Flynn. Mark Twain never knew of the famous adventurer, but he was an adventurer in his own right, piloting a river boat down the Mississippi. In fact, Twain took his nom de plume from this period of his life. Mark Twain is a boaters term for the depth of two fathoms. This quaint pun is also a quoloquial reference to "rough activities" one can engage in with one of the many "Ladies of ill repute" to be found on the river boats. After attaining fame as a writer, Twain became a vulgar self-promoter, becoming the first person to release their own book of quotes. This was only the first in a long line of books of quotation he released throughout his life. He was also the first author to release a calendar featuring pictures of himself. The technology of photography was brand new and like the pioneer he was, Twain embraced it maniacally. It was to his disappointment that photography was not a means of attaining literal immortality, but his enthusiasm diminished only slightly. His first set of poses for the calendar were deemed too risque, so they were discarded for a seires of Twain in different scarves. A few of the phrases and terms we use today are attributed to the wheelings and dealings of Twain. The term "heel" to describe a "rube" or "dope" is traced back to a famous accounting of Twain betting that a man could not eat his own shoe. Someone was foolish enough to take Twain up on the wager. After his failure, and subsequent death, the crowd asked how Twain knew he would fail. Twain said "A man will never make it past the heel in the attempt to eat his own footwear". The years went by and Twain's once famous font of creativity seemed corked at the publishing of his 20th volume of quotations which featured such aphorisms as: "Leave me alone, I'm tired" and "Where in the name of God is my beard Margret?". After a brief resurgence in people caring about his opinion during an era of American Imperialism, Twain died in 1910. He left crippling debt which is being paid off even today by his progeny. He will be remembered forever for his dry wit, cantankerism, and awe inspiring alcoholism.

Thank you, this has been another edition of "Historical Lunatics"