It's an okay old flag

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved a resolution creating a national flag. It hardly made a ripple. No one outside of the government knew about it until a blurb in a Pennsylvania newspaper mentioned it three months later.

Happy Flag Day!

Happy day after St. Patty's Day!

"Saint, n.: A dead sinner revised and edited." -- Ambrose Bierce.

Today's Perverse Verse:

It's a sad fact but one that we secretly relish
That those whose wholesomest words and deeds we most embellish
And whom we venerate as a saint,
Ain't.
Everyone, it seems, has one skeleton in his or her closet or another,
Including that most saintly of all figures you can think of--
Your mother.
Even Mother Teresa, we now know, had her moments of doubt and misgiving,
Times when she exclaimed to herself: "This is a hell of a way to make a living!"

Holiday of the Month: Mother's Day

"The mother cult is something that will set future generations roaring with laughter." -- Gustave Flaubert.

Holiday of the Month: Mother's Day

"The mother cult is something that will set future generations roaring with laughter." -- Gustave Flaubert.

A majority is always wrong

April Fools Day.

"Haint we got all the fools in town on our side? And haint that a big enough majority in any town?" -- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

"Saint, n.: A dead sinner revised and edited." -- Ambrose Bierce.


Today's Perverse Verse:

It's a sad fact but one that we secretly relish
That those whose wholesomest words and deeds we most embellish
And whom we venerate as a saint,
Ain't.
Everyone, it seems, has one skeleton in his or her closet or another,
Including that most saintly of all figures you can think of--
Your mother.
Even Mother Teresa, we now know, had her moments of doubt and misgiving,
Times when she exclaimed to herself: "This is a hell of a way to make a living!"

God bless us, every one!

"I never could see why people were so happy about Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol', because I never had any confidence that Scrooge was going to be different the next day." -- Dr. Karl Menninger.

Merry Christmas!

"Several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop-clerks die of exhaustion while selling them, and every other child in the western world is made ill from overeating -- all in the name of the lowly Jesus." -- Upton Sinclair (circa 1925).

Christmas was Sully’s favorite time of year, even though his father had died so close to it. Since he’d been on his own he hadn’t had a place to go, besides the Hi-Note, and before that Joe’s and The Lizard and Irene’s, but the spirits of Christmases past had comforted rather than tormented him. He remembered vividly the Yule trees of his boyhood, the smell of them and the plumpness of their branches, which he’d imagined might be harboring nests of turtledoves, tapering to a spindly tip surmounted by a papier-mache angel whose wings brushed the ceiling, and which at night was enhaloed by the circle of light cast there by the tree’s lights. He could still see, with an almost palpable clarity, his first gifts: A radio, a cowboy outfit, a trike--he’d had his dad shovel a path along the driveway through the snow, so that he could ride it, before he’d even opened his other presents.  --  Chapter 45, The Misforgotten.

Miraculously, his name survives

Christmas Eve. Matthew Arnold, English poet and critic, born on this day in 1822. He wrote:

"Miracles do not happen."

His marriage was a miracle, as far as Sully was concerned, as was the birth of his son. And then when Cutterback drove his car into a tree, crushing the entire passenger side where he, Sully, ought to have been riding, he’d thought more than once: Someone’s watching out for me. But that was so insipid that it had disturbed his conscience to think about it.  --  Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.

Holiday of the Month: Christmas

"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of him."   --   Thomas Carlyle.

   Christmas was Sully’s favorite time of year, even though his father had died so close to it. Since he’d been on his own he hadn’t had a place to go, besides the Hi-Note, and before that Joe’s and The Lizard and Irene’s, but the spirits of Christmases past had comforted rather than tormented him. He remembered vividly the Yule trees of his boyhood, the smell of them and the plumpness of their branches, which he’d imagined might be harboring nests of turtledoves, tapering to a spindly tip surmounted by a papier-mache angel whose wings brushed the ceiling, and which at night was enhaloed by the circle of light cast there by the tree’s lights. He could still see, with an almost palpable clarity, his first gifts: A radio, a cowboy outfit, a trike--he’d had his dad shovel a path along the driveway through the snow, so that he could ride it, before he’d even opened his other presents.  --  Chapter 45, The Misforgotten.

Today, be true to your convictions

Happy Thanksgiving!


"Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." -- Samuel Johnson, English writer, writing in the 18th century.

We can's stand all these stupid holidays

Today is International Day for Tolerance.

"Tolerance is only another name for indifference." – W. Somerset Maugham


"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." – G. K. Chesterton.

Today's Perverse Verse:

Even tho I hate you,
I can tolerate you,
At least for today--
But then -- go away!