Sun., October 10, 1999"In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
When he saw what he had done
He sailed the sea to ninety-one"- Hamis J. Kirkswald, M.D.,
"What 19th Century Psychotics Can Teach Us About The Great Explorers"
The excitement continues to build in my household as the day I wait for all year long slowly draws near. Of course I'm referring to Columbus Day, our oh-so-brief annual celebration of snookering royalty out of a bundle just so we can go off and snag a few aboriginal slaves for ourselves.
My wife and I have spent much of the morning hauling our boxes and boxes of decorations in from the garage, then decking our halls with bows of caravels. First up, of course, were the three personalized cloth caravels that we hung by the chimney with care in hopes that their holds will soon become magically filled with beads, rum, maybe even a map to El Dorado. It'll be the first time we have one up for our cat, Jester, and he's so excited to see it dangling there he hasn't been able to keep his paws off it even after I removed the mouse that had expired inside while in storage. I just hope he doesn't rush to it tomorrow morning and find nothing but a bad case of syphilis like I did my first time.
As soon as I'm done with this entry, I'll finish up by decking our eaves with a few festive strings of red, yellow, and black lights symbolic of the Spanish flag, seasickness, and hand-wrought iron manacles. Then I can just sit back, toss a few imitation heathens on the fire, and sing all my favorite Columbus carols before turning in early so I'll be rested up for what's always a big, tiring day. After getting up early to check our cloth caravels, my wife and I will spend a good 12 hours going out to places we've never seen before and spreading diseases with names no one can spell. Sure, it's a lot of work, and kinda silly, too, but it's a racial tradition we don't feel it's our place to question, and it always feels so good when we stagger home, drop anchor, and walk the plank to dreamland.
And we keep telling ourselves: "Someday there won't be a Columbus Day anymore. Like Tuesday. So grab all the fun there is to be had before then!"My Canadian friends will not be celebrating Columbus Day tomorrow. They'll be celebrating Thanksgiving Day instead. So, "Happy Thanksgiving, guys! If Columbus hadn't landed down here, I'm sure the residents of Ohio would now be celebrating Thanksgiving Day, too!"
And just in case my Canadian friends are interested in some American cultural history prior to their joining us as the 51st state:
~ Christopher Columbus set sail with three ships: The Pinto, the Nova, and the Santa Corvair. Only one made it back to Spain, but nobody knows which one it was because the crew sent by Sailorpower, Inc., forgot to label them properly before setting off.
~ It was Jacques Cousteau who first suggested that the two lost ships collided and sunk after their gas tanks exploded in his 1965 ABC-TV special, "Unsafe In Any Wind." A legal settlement between the Spanish government and the crew's descendants is expected any decade now.
~ Personally, I'm just glad that it was Christopher Columbus who was in charge of things and not Christopher Columbo, otherwise we'd now all have to don rumbled raincoats and drive 1959 Peugeot convertibles to commemorate his accomplishment instead of sporting colorful Admiral of the Ocean hats while floating around the back pond in lifeboats with only a single paddle to tease the frogs with....
My non-Canadian reader, on the other hand, might be more interested in the following little-known facts:
~ Scientists now agree that if Benjamin Franklin had tried flying his kite during a tornado warning instead of an electrical storm, he might have discovered perpetual motion instead of electricity.
~ Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has been unable to attend his extradition hearings in Britain as required by law because, his attorney says, a stroke has left him "permanently giddy." Having myself suffered a bicycle accident as a kid which left me permanently slaphappy, my sympathy knows no bounds (well, no bounds in between happy slaps, anyway).
~ Personally, I'm just glad Donald Trump has decided to run for president instead of becoming a physicist. It's hard enough keeping my quarks straight from my positrons. I sure would hate to have to keep my Donalds straight from my Donalds. And if you think splitting the atom takes a lot of money, just take a look at how many millions and millions of dollars were involved in the last splitting of the Trumps.
But lawd almighty - I can't go on. My neighbor just plugged in that outrageous display of three ships and San Salvador he has up on his roof again this year and the resulting brownout is playing hell with my poor PC.
Time to go plant this Castilian flag of mine some place where it'll do more good than in New World soil!
(©1999 by Dan Birtcher with one-hand tied behind his back in a vain attempt to impress Queen Isabella while King Ferdinand is still out of town playing dead)
