President's Day facts

If, as punishment for enjoying a day off, your teacher has assigned you a report on President's Day facts, look no further than this handy list. It contains all the President's Day facts you will ever want or need.



The original name of "President's Day" was "Prime Minister's Day." It was intended to celebrate Great Britain's most beloved Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. When the United States broke free of British rule, George Washington, the first president, declared the name change by executive order, his first and only legislative act.

If all the presidents were laid end to end, they would stretch clear from Muncie to Skokie.

Herbert Hoover, nicknamed "Silent Cal," would wear a paper bag over his head each President's Day. After he broke his nose by running into one of the White House columns, Hoover decided to cut eyeholes in the bag.

The German translation of "President's Day" is "Präsidentsehnsuchtgemeinschaftsgefühl."

The movie "Independence Day" was almost titled "President's Day," but the director, George Lucas, is notoriously apostrophe-phobic.

According to data from Facebook, President's Day is the fifth most popular day to post a new relationship status, but first overall for status changes to "single."

Despite the fact that the best anagram of "President's Day" is "Padres destiny," the San Diego Padres have yet to win a Super Bowl.

The most popular President's Day food is cabbage. The most popular beverage is cabbage juice.

President's Day has been canceled only once in its century-plus history, when a molasses factory's terrible spill flooded the streets of Washington, D.C. for forty-eight hours. Woodrow Wilson, president at the time, declared a national day of mourning, followed by a national day of cookie baking.

Only one president--Hillary Clinton--was born on President's Day.

the kids are outta control

Stephen Colbert does the reductio ad absurdum.

Terminator: Misdirection

Sometime in 2009, Skynet became self-aware. Realizing that humans were the greatest threat to its existence, it started testing ways to surreptitiously wipe the species off the map. The first attempt: sending two directionally challenged, ultra-confident, technologically-dependent holiday travelers down the shortest route to danger.

Within two years, Skynet would perfect its technique.

they call it wisdom literature

During the Iraq War, an officer in the Pentagon was a little too fond of placing Bible verses on the cover of intelligence reports.

Strangely, he never included Ecclesiastes 9:11.

revised threat level diagram

From bottom to top, least threatening to most threatening. Use in case of swine flu, earthquakes, the apocalypse, terrorism, zombies, etc.

(And what an etcetera!)

inside an information sweatshop

Rick Reilly of ESPN sees how much he can make answering questions for ChaCha.

They came as fast as I could answer. I began to sweat. I was Lucy working the chocolate-factory conveyor belt. Questions fell to the floor as my mouth filled with unchewed answers. In a three-fingered bowling ball, which fingers go in the holes? (Jeez, people!) What's the longest cricket game ever? (Couldn't find it.) More sweat. Anyone got a ShamWow? I hit "abort." Bad idea; black mark on my record. Five minutes, no dimes. $0/hour.

I hit "away" under the status bar so I could rest. Next to being Terrell Owens' publicist, there can be no more stressful way to earn a living.

I wasn't a very enthusiastic guide after that. I made $3.80 total and received a quality control rating of 70%. That's a C-minus.

Low hourly wages, no health insurance, high risk of work-related injury. Welcome to the sweatshops of the Information Economy.

the problem with engineers

As Capital closes its doors for yet another snow-load day, I pause to reflect on the most pressing concern in contemporary engineering. When students of the craft should be learning how to build with concrete, stone, glass, lumber, and steel, their instructors instead force them to work almost exclusively with Popsicle sticks and toothpicks.

can't keep up with the office politics

Josh, this is for you.

Study Finds Young People Remain Apathetic About Office Politics

you will drink Pepsi

Sweet news: the beverage of all beverages will soon be loved, nay, demanded by all. Science!

why I hate cats

I'm allergic to their very existence. Cats are evil.

[via the AV Club, which notes, "Wow, it's a piece of Internet animation with pacing, whimsy, and surprises. Also, it's a piece of Internet animation that doesn't make us want to claw our eyes out. Neat."]

Radio Shack survives

Great Onion piece on the baffling longevity of Radio Shack:

One of Day's theories about RadioShack's continued solvency involves wedding DJs, emergency cord replacement, and off-brand wireless telephones. Another theory entails countless RadioShack gift cards that sit unredeemed in their recipients' wallets. Day has even conjectured that the store is "still coasting on" an enormous fortune made from remote-control toy cars in the mid-1970s.

Day admitted, however, that none of these theories seems particularly plausible.

"I once went into a RadioShack location incognito in order to gauge customer service," Day said. "It was about as inviting as a visit to the DMV. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything I wanted to buy. Finally, I figured I'd pick up some Enercell AA batteries, though truthfully they're not appreciably cheaper than the name brands."

"I know one thing," Day continued. "If Sony and JVC start including gold-tipped cable cords with their products, we're screwed."

I spent two summers working at a Radio Shack dealership (no, not a "company store") in Elma, running a one-hour photo lab on the side. We sold a lot of cell phones, a few transistors, a CB antenna now and then, some RC cars around Christmas. Some of my fondest memories:

• The slightly drunk man who tried to compensate for his inebriation by chugging coffee and smoking cigarettes before coming in to buy a cell phone. He'd lean over the counter to ask a question, and I'd almost puke.
• The (thankfully) rare times I had to shield my eyes from photos of local residents in the buff.
• Learning to solder by fixing a guy's mono-to-stereo switch on his boombox, which was stuck on mono. I didn't even burn myself.
• Replacing batteries on junky watches for the creepy old guys who'd score them at the swap meet. They could've gotten a better timepiece for the price of the battery, but it's always about the thrill of the deal.
• At 17, being mistaken for the owner of the store by a government employee.

Ah, Radio Shack. May you exist in perpetuity.

how to be sure your guy is The Guy

MSN Dating and Personals has the rundown, but they're way, way off. Here are five surefire ways to tell that your soulmate has arrived.

1. He can turn any embarrassment into a compliment.
You're choking, and he notes the rosy tincture of your cheeks. You leave a fleck of mousse on your chin, and he notes the lovely beauty mark adorning your visage. You stab him with a chopstick, and he praises the strength of your forearms. He is either The One, or on drugs. See if his eyes are bloodshot to be certain. (Ah, but of which one, you ask?)

2. He carries a journal.
Face it: you want to be someone's--anyone's--Muse. Yours will be the face that launched a thousand haiku.

3. He smiles when you talk.
You will have to learn how to distinguish smiling from grimacing. It would be well worth your time.

4. He sings, whistles, or hums when no one's watching.
This is definitely a good sign, you think to yourself, as you watch from around the corner while "powdering your nose." Why are you watching? Oh, right: you are desperate and stalkerlike.

5. He holds the door.
Think this is sexist? No you don't. You believe in soulmates. How antiquarian can you get?

for the children

According to McMillan, children can suffer broken bones, head trauma, and even fatal injuries from unsupervised exposure to childlike awe. "If your children are allowed to unlock their imaginations, anything from a backyard swing set to a child's own bedroom can be transformed into a dangerous undersea castle or dragon's lair," McMillan said. "But by encouraging your kids to think linearly and literally, and constantly reminding them they can never be anything but human children with no extraordinary characteristics, you can better ensure that they will lead prolonged lives."

If The Onion's track record is sustained, watch for this one to appear on PubMed in about two years.

bloody, brilliant

The first, via Joe Carter: Mary Poppins as Roman Polanski would have imagined her.

The second, via a commenter on the first: a Cravenesque Office Space.

Ah, sweet broadband. Why did I suffer so long without thee?

Matsuzaka signs

You read it here first: Daisuke Matsuzaka, the hottest prospect since Jesus, will be blogging exclusively for decorabilia. It took $55 million, a no-trade clause, an all-star bonus, and a Sony PS3, but we finally roped him in. Sorry, Red Sox.

K-Fed's concert rider

The Smoking Gun, as always, has the scoop. Best zinger: "purported rapper."

In their summary, though, they miss the weirdest parts of the pseudo-celebrity's demands.

"Six (6) One liter sized bottled spring water (cold, no Evian please)"
K-Fed is that particular about bottled spring water? What's wrong with Evian? Anyone?

"Box of Altoids, red"
Cinnamon Altoids are red, and come in a maroon box. Regular pepperminty fresh Altoids are white, but come in a red box. K-Fed is the guy who likes purple on his toast and yellow on his hot dogs.

Iggy Pop's concert rider

I'm a drummer in a rock-and-or-roll band. Our lead guitarist, Mike Dean, is known for his massive email rants, paragraph after paragraph of zingers and self-deprecating snark.

I'm sure he'll appreciate this remarkable concert rider for Iggy Pop and the Stooges, which includes all the usual demands, but with a running commentary that would make Mark Twain proud. A sample:

Apparently we are going to be in your area, playing a concert, and you will be supplying the backline equipment. Good-oh! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

ALL OF THIS LOT FOR A START

2X MARSHALL VBA 8 X 10 CABINETS (There's lovely.)

3X MARSHALL VBA BASS AMPLIFIERS Make sure they're good ones or we'll all end up as wormlike web-based life forms in the bass player's online literary diahorrea. Honestly. He's like a sort of Internet Pepys or Boswell, except without the gout and the syphilis. For all I know.

If you can't supply Marshalls, then
3 x AMPEG SVT2 amps and 2 8x10 cabs iinstead [sic].

1 X KORG 2000 DIGITAL RACK TUNER. Digital in the sense that it works via an electronically generated number system, not digital because it only works if someone holds it together with their fingers.

It goes on like this for 18 pages.


[Thanks to the lovely folks at The Smoking Gun.]

other people's records

At lunch I'm always nabbing fries off other people's plates. Along similar lines, I'm totally absorbed by other people's records. I want to borrow them and listen to them. Sometimes I go so far as to steal them and play them at home, lounging in a smoking jacket and sipping bourbon to the the warbling of Zamfir.

My obsession goes beyond the record's sound, of course. In fact, I rarely buy scratch-free, spotless LPs; well-worn discs are just fine. But seeing some of the vinyl in my living room reminds me of a house in Aberdeen, which long ago fired my imagination and led me into middle management.

I had a chum who lived there, the son of a mechanic and a waitress, dwelling in a tract house on the border of Hoquiam, where we spent many a night riding in cars with vigilantes. He had a pristine row of LPs by Henry Mancini, one of my favorite artists, then and now. I often would sit on his back porch where we would discuss existentialism and the Bowery Boys and the joys of gun ownership.

But it was hard to keep my eyes off his vinyl: the glossy black discs in their motley jackets. I liked the decadent illustrations, the mountain vistas, the scent of sophistication. Decades later, when I got my own house, in Olympia, I bought that exact collection at Goodwill for $1.45 plus tax.

I spent many happy evenings at that house, returning often in later years. Good company brought me, and good music kept me. It was a purer, better era, a time of exploration and discovery, of harmony and simplicity.

What interests me about other people's records is what it says about them. A record collection is a road map to the personality, giving insight to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. The order of the records--alphabetical, chronological, preferential--elucidates the character of the collector. The quality of music reflects the quality of the soul.

My own parents never attended college, and we had few records in our house, apart from a few dusty Lawrence Welk discs. It wasn't until I struck it out on my own that, by thrift or theft, I built up my present library.

There is much to be said for creating one's own collection. My records remind me of where I've been, intellectually, physically — and emotionally. They are like a photograph album, only with more dimensions. I sometimes look at an album to see myself in faded jeans and flannel shirt on a trip to Portland in 1989. But I return more truly to that era when I take a certain weathered LP of Dave Brubeck from my bookshelf, and clink along to five-four time with an empty shot glass, weeping for lost youth.

Other people's records excite curiosity about their owners and the worlds they inhabit. But in the end, it's my own vinyl that matters, since it tells me where I've gone, and where I hope to go.

What, you think I'm trite and pompous and anachronistic? Well, don't blame me.

my blue suede existential blues

First George Bush reads The Stranger, and now Beetle Bailey finds comic fodder in the inevitable march of death?

dating tip: quality dates me

I am a very high-quality man. Not just quality, or high-quality (and the dash is important, just like me), but very high-quality.

I know that sounds arrogant, but let’s consider the facts:

• I’m slim (whereas 98% of American men age 26 to 28 are mostly Molson muscle)
• I’m attractive (I was listed in Maxim as one of America's top heartthrobs, right up there with George Clooney and Orlando Bloom --and the men who populate that sample are celebrities, gods in gabardine slacks)
• I’m relatively young (whereas 82% of American adult men are old farts)
• I’m intelligent (IQ tested at 150 when I was a child, which is smarter than you could ever hope to be, and higher than 99.96% of the population. I've only gotten smarter with time, and hope to pass Einstein by 29)
• I’m educated (whereas 77% of American men cannot point to Turkey on a map, unless it's a map of the fridge)
• I have my financial shit together (have my own bank and a Master's degree in Credit History, hundreds of gold bars stacked under the bed, my good looks are insured through Lloyd's, Gatsbyesque raconteur)
• I have a strong libido, more testosterone than Floyd Landis, with the five o'clock shadow to prove it
• Many of my interests tend to be more popular with women than men: literature, organic hydroponics, yoga, radical feminism, Brad Pitt, Appletinis, guns, gambling, etc.

The above list explains why I typically receive 5000-10,000 (sometimes more) responses whenever I post personal ads. This is in addition to getting hit on almost every time I go out alone, proposed to in the subway, barraged by modeling offers, harrassed by paparazzi, and generally sick of seeing myself on billboards.

So, I have a *lot* of choices of women who want to date me. Given that, of course I choose to date only the highest quality women -- women who are also fit, attractive, intelligent, educated, financially successful, members of Mensa, allergic to pistachios, not too picky about Thai food, and mezzo-soprano. I’m attracted to women from any race and a wide age range (21 to 50 or so) so the pool of women who meet those requirements is quite large, which allows me to add all sorts of additional restrictions if I want -- must be a deist, must be anarcho-syndicalist, must despise children, must be financially independent or self-employed and available for frequent world travel, etc.

And believe me, the etc. is what gets 'em.




[via Ed Brayton, read the post that inspires]

Update: It's nice to be noticed.