Spine-ing for the Fjords

May 31st 1985, salesmen everywhere of wide-leg jeans, pacifiers, glow sticks, and whistles rejoice as Methylenedioxymethamphetamine gets listed as a schedule 1 drug. Known also as Adam, Ecstasy, Hug Drug and Disco Biscuits, MDMA would also nuzzle in the warm places of song writers, allowing them to forego any need for such trivialities as “melody” and “lyrics,” as well as “musicians,” and play the same simple bass line over and over as men in furry pants wearing ball chain necklaces gyrate wildly against the speakers. In the early 80’s, shortly after Chicago house was invented, there was a fear that Ecstasy would be marginalized by its legal status and people would come to view it as nothing more than feel good candy that makes your spinal fluid run backwards. Making the drug a taboo changed all that. Ecstasy would really hit its stride in the early 90’s when Beverly Hills 90210 cleverly disguised the drug as “Euphoria” and Ian Zierling’s character went on an egg hunt through L.A. in hopes of finding a T-Shirt that read “Euphoria 4 Ever” to replace his T-Shirt that read “2 Cool 2 B 4 Gotten.”

If it weren’t for making Ecstasy illegal, Techno music may never have gone mainstream and been left simply as a tool for enhancing 80’s chase scenes.

Brooklyn Bridge, show me strength through these traversing times!

Welcome to the 21st century, ladies and gentlemen. Flying cars, thank you for your ease of travel over freeway traffic, allowing me to wave down at the poor people as they inch along the 5 on their way to their boring day jobs. Time travel, thank you for showing me what to expect in the beautiful future of human egg birth and watermelon omelets. Hoverboards, thank you. Just thank you. But let us move on to the subject of today's day in history, back to the 19th century, a time when all the unknowns were still unknown, thanks to time travel's as of yet unknowingness. Next paragraph, please!

The day of May 30, 1883 was over 120 years ago. It was, in fact, 126 years ago. Think about the fact that an event occurring in the 19th century could potentially be 209 years ago. Wow, right? The wow factor (as yet unexplained mathematically due to Albert Einstein's early demise) tells us that our 126 years back to this date as opposed to the potential 209 years back to an event occurring in the 19th century means 13 less commemorative coins and zero living fossils.

On May 30, 1883, the newly built Brooklyn Bridge was covered with people traveling along, carrying their things from one part of New York to another. Somebody suggested, somewhere amidst the crowd, that the bridge was poorly build and ready for a collapse. The scrambling populace, grabbing the tiny hands of the smaller people from the underground tunnel systems, decided to find the shortest route off of the bridge. Amidst the chaos, 12 people were trampled to death. That's 12 people who died right there, in 1883, who could have potentially lived into the 20th century. Although, to be fair, the average lifespan back then was only 15 years so most of them would have been dead by 1898 anyway.

The next year, PT Barnum decided to show those trampling idiots not to listen to rumors (or rumours, as the english call them), and ran 21 elephants, the king of trampling, across the bridge at the same time. "Fools!" he cried, "this bridge will outlive you all!" And you know what? He was right.

Hoover? I barely knew her!

The Hoover Dam was completed on May 29, 1935, at least that's what wikipedia says when you google "May 29" - I didn't make it up!  I don't even know how to make things up!  Anyways, there were apparently 112 deaths, 3 births, and a great depression while making the dam, originally called the Boulder Dam, or "over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder dam" by all the construction workers (100% plausible).  On one side of the dam is Arizona, and on the other is Nevada.  The architects and engineers thought it would be cool to put some freaky gothic statues on the facade of the dam for effect.  I went there once when I was a child and mom almost fell over the side of the concrete barrier while taking a picture.  There's much more to say about this dam, but I think you aren't really reading this to learn about dams, and you just want some of THIS:

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Some people look to John and Yoko for their peaceful solutions, others to more radical ideas like Tiananmen Square, but those who know the best way to stop a war, solar power.
In 585 B.C. man had gods aplenty, The Battle of Halys was your typical fight. A group of dudes (the Medes) hire a group of dudes to hunt them up some food, hunter dudes don’t find food, leader dude(Cyaxares) insults the hunters with something like “Hey, hunter guys, you didn’t hunt well, so I’m gonna call you Mr. no hunter guys.”, hunters kill leader dudes son and feeds him to his people, double-double animal style, which is a perfectly fair reaction. The hunters then run away to a nearby country, with original dudes in hot pursuit. The hunters run to a land where the people think the hunter dudes are totally boss, so they decide to go to war instead of handing them over. The battle begins to rage when suddenly the sky goes out. Everyone on the battlefield thinks this is totally wizard, and feeling like all this people eating and ass kickery has angered the gods, they pack it in. The fighting ends, virgins are offered, sunglasses are removed and everyone goes to the country to eat a lot of peaches. This is where the phrase "Life's a peach" came from.

This form of peacemaking has been attempted many times since, to varying degrees of success. Mr. burns once blotted out the sun in a very successful manner. An army once had a plan to sneak into an enemy camp and set all their clocks ahead to 2pm, then began bashing pots and pans yelling “wake up, the sun has been unplugged!” but since neither clocks nor electricity had been invented they were simply caught and hanged for saying such confusing words. One time a man in a wild-west shootout held his thumb up to the sun and proclaimed “There’s nobody home!” at which point he was shot in the back.

As the cat said when asked how his owner stops him from destroying the furniture, “eclipse me”.

This is California

California: The Golden State. Early settlers quickly realized that California wasn't truly a state build out of gold. Merely gold plated, they announced, pulling back a layer to reveal dirt underneath. Good news for the farmers, bad news for the wedding ring factories springing up everywhere. Large communities moved in and out of the state, the farmers drawn to the soft moist soil, the New Jerseys repulsed by the false promise of unlimited gold chains. Hollywood is happy to find a setting as reliant on a thin layer of beauty as its own and moves everything in.

Farmers start finding it more difficult to store the rolled up layers of gold they peel free in order to plant plant plant, and so the state decides to undergo a plan to turn all of that unwanted gold into a huge public works project, one spot of California that truly will be gold after all: The Golden Gate Bridge. Work begins, and soon enough the bridge is built and ready for the public. May 27, 1937 marks the beginning of the end of the ferry system in the bay area, creating a vacuum that draws in a brand new fairy system (hey-oh!). Pedestrians and cars alike set across, feeling the wind blow through their automotive hair.

A couple days in, a photographer drags his tripod along and notices the gold scrape away revealing a darker metal underneath. Investigating, he scratches deeper and discovers that the golden gate bridge is as gold plated as the California his ancestors discovered years ago. He takes a key and scrapes away, forming the words "This is California." The picture earns him every photographic award known to man, and that is the story of "This is California", the most famous photograph of all time.

Indian Removal Act: Exit, Stage Left

May 26, 1830: President Andrew Jackson (known for his love of all things that are "good times") signs the Indian Removal Act (IRA for the sake of ambiguity), which involved the relocation and ethnic cleansing (intended or not) of numerous indigenous native-American tribes, culminating with the famous "Trail of Tears" migration in 1831.  What a bastard!    

Apparently, President Jackson  needed "living space" for his ATV's, above ground pools and other outrageous toys, which were always his true love above politics, so he drafted up the IRA as a way of "getting his shit done".  Jackson was already known to enjoy other popular southern pastimes such as a lynchings, slavery and a good glass of sweet tea.  The IRA was said to be, "So A.J.", as all the young teenage girls used to say back then.  Those same girls (all unattractive) had crushes on the 63-year old magnate-about-town.  They would read about him in Presidential Sugar Magazine, which often described A.J. as, "sensitive, but with a wild side that loves to have a good time". Too bad those same girls never made it to meet the President (all died).        

It is unfortunate that A.J. had so much ill will towards the native-Americans.  Things probably would have been better if they both went SEPARATE WAYS:

   

Begin The Fanfare

May 25, 1977, There are few movies that have had a larger impact on our culture, Kazaam, Dream a Little Dream, and Three Men and a Little Lady to name three. One thing that none of these movies have that Star Wars does, is a great title crawl. oh sure, there are some films out there with some lengthy introductions, but none so filled with concepts we could barely wrap our brains around. Little did we know how much this film franchise would have to offer.

In honor of this great date in history, I have gone through the trouble of finding a brief synopsis of the film, translating it to French and then back to English with the help of the future. Enjoy.

Luc Skywalker remains with his adoptive aunt and uncle with a farm on Tatooine. He is desperate to obtain in addition to this planet and to arrive at l' academy like his/her friends, but his/her uncle needs him for the next harvest. While waiting, a bad emperor succeeded the galaxy, and built a formidable Star death, able to destroy whole planets. Princess Leia, a chief in the resistance movement, acquires plans of l' star of death, the place in R2D2, a droid, and l' send to find Kenobi Girdle-Pale. Before qu' it finds it, R2D2 finishes upwards on Skywalkers' ; firm with his/her friend C3PO. R2 wanders then in the desert, and when Luc follows, they find Girdle-Pale thereafter by chance. Luc, Girdle-Pale, and both droids will be able to destroy l' star of death, or l' will emperor order for always?