Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Oh, it's groovy all right.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.


Today:  Either it's Japanese anime or America on LSD and jazz.





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  Make sure you take your seizure medication before watching this PSA.
2.)  "Kind of nice, really, what happened in this country not so long ago." Uhh, Vietnam? Korean War? World War II? World War I? The Spanish-American War? Civil War? War of 1812? Jim Crow Laws? Slavery? What nice thing popped up? Maybe the flag-sewing industry is the nice thing? I dunno.
3.)  "Washington and Lincoln, real people like you and me." If they weren't real people, then aliens have been messing with us a lot longer than we thought.
4.)  What's with the drums? Did they get Buddy Rich to do this on the cheap?
5.)  "It was a whole new groove then. And it's still a pretty groovy idea right now." I've always associated the American flag and politics with groovy ideas.
6.)  The Air Force gets a shoutout in the last seconds. Because...uhh...Lincoln and Washington were amazing fighter pilots in their day. Yeah--that's it.

Baseball Opening Day, Walt Whitman, and Susan Sarandon

Most of Major League Baseball officially has its Opening Day today, the sports equivalent of a town crier heralding spring in the form of bat and ball and glove.

April is also National Poetry Month, a quick 30-days where Americans casually pretend they read poetry and recount that time in second grade they were really digging Shel Silverstein.

Many poets have written about baseball, though--one of the rare times literature and sports merge, as the construction, the imagery, the metaphors inherent in baseball are hardly found in other American team sports. Be it Donald Hall, May Swenson, Marianne Moore--when writers tend to comment or craft a piece about a sport, rare as it is, usually it's about baseball.

Case in point: Walt Whitman, of all people, is quoted in the movie Bull Durham by Susan Sarandon's character as she woos her latest lover, who is a baseball player. Sarandon's character, after all, believes in "The Church of Baseball." She claims Whitman said, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us."

Not quite what he said. Good try, though.

So what did Whitman actually say about baseball? The sport of bats and balls was newly created at the time Whitman was an old man. A writer named Horace L. Traubel began having conversations with Whitman late in the famed poet's life and took notes, compiling them in a book called With Walt Whitman in Camden. Being Whitman, of course, his thoughts weren't pithy.

His actual thoughts on baseball?


"I like your interest in sports ball, chiefest of all base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character. Sports take people out of doors, get them filled with oxygen generate some of the brutal customs (so-called brutal customs) which, after all, tend to habituate people to a necessary physical stoicism. We are some ways a dyspeptic, nervous set: anything which will repair such losses may be regarded as a blessing to the race. We want to go out and howl, swear, run, jump, wrestle, even fight, if only by so doing we may improve the guts of the people: the guts, vile as guts are, divine as guts are!"

Later, in another conversation with Traubel, Whitman continued on baseball:


"Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic! That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well—it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."


If, as Sarandon's character in Bull Durham believes, that there is a Church of Baseball, then Whitman saw the divine in it a hundred years earlier in the twilight of his life, the American game, our game, a beautiful thing, with divinity found in guts.

Potential Future Education Secretary: Schools might need guns to protect themselves from grizzlies.

Don't try that polite waving bear shtick, pal.

Bears. They're the real enemy.

Betsy DeVos is Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Education. Like all nominees, she needs to go through typical senate confirmation hearings where she's asked her views on a number of topics.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy--who represents a state that saw one of the deadliest school shootings in American history (Sandy Hook Elementary)--asked DeVos if guns have "any place in and around schools."

DeVos replied she thought the matter should be decided by individual states, specifically referencing an earlier question by another senator:

"I will refer back to Sen. Enzi and the school he is talking about in Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine there is probably a gun in a school to protect from potential grizzlies," DeVos replied.

Oh, sure, you're soooo polite.

The killer rampages of grizzly bears at America's schools needs to be stopped! Sure, no grizzly has ever killed an American student, but you can never be too sure when their reign of terror might commence.

But why stop at bears? If we're going to have American schools strapped to the teeth to kill anything dangerous, what's the deadliest living thing out there picking humanity off one-by-one--not including humans themselves?

Top Ten Animal Killers of Humans:
10.  Hippopotamus
9.  Crocodiles
8.  Tapeworms
7.  Ascaris Round Worms
6.  Freshwater Snails
5.  Assassin Bugs
4.  Tsetse Flies
3.  Dogs
2.  Snakes
1.  Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes kill 725,000 humans a year worldwide through disease. How America isn't raining the summer sky with bullets trying to take out mosquitoes is beyond me. Think of the children!

Nice try, slick!

Dogs? They kill 25,000 people a year around the world. That little ball of fluff dozing next you on the couch right now? He has murder in his heart. Better holster a couple of Glocks in case he ever turns on you. I'm sure Betsy DeVos approves!

Jazz hands is trying too hard, bub!

Even jellyfish, horses and cows kill more humans every year than all bears combined, never mind just the grizzly bear. That's right--an elementary school visit to a farm to watch cows being milked has the potential to turn into a blood bath at any second.

On average, twenty-two people in the United States are killed by cows every year. Hell, the Wisconsin dairy industry is just cow carnage! Get the kids in Milwaukee a six-shooter and extra ammo, stat!

Today a wave, tomorrow a knife in your back.

Sure, sure--you're reading this being rational and thinking,"Arming schools might be overdoing it to kill a mosquito...or a bear."

And I say to you:

Since when did you start hating America's children?

Who wrote the presidential oath of office?

____________________________________________________________

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
____________________________________________________________

That's it. In just 35 words (or 37 words if you count the alternative "or affirm") an individual swears the Oath of Office to The Presidency of The United States for the next four years. Yet, most Americans don't know who wrote the oath, mainly because no single person did.

The oath is written in the United States Constitution, and appears as the only sentence placed in quotation marks. James Madison--who would later become the fourth president--is largely credited with being the author of the Constitution, but an array of Founding Fathers offered their own thoughts of what to include in the document.

In the middle of the following draft from August 6, 1787, in the National Archives, George Washington annotated the presidential oath with his own thoughts, striking out "judgment" and changing the wording to a president's "abilities" (later changed again to "ability"):

During the Constitutional Convention, multiple committees of delegates debated various factors of the document, including a Committee of Detail and a Committee of Style and Arrangement, the latter of which included Madison and Alexander Hamilton, among others.

In the end, no one person can lay claim to the crafting the words forty-four men have said, and a forty-fifth will say later this week. It seems the presidential oath, like American democracy, is a child born of many fathers.

Poet can't answer questions about her own work that appears on a standardized test.

Modern standardized testing exists.

That's about the only positive that can be said about it these days, and even that's not a positive thing.

Many parents want it to justify their child's educational success or failure, yet they don't want the standardized tests that are given because of personal, moral, or educational beliefs.

And:

Educators despise wasting weeks teaching toward these tests, and then spending more time to administer those very same tests.

And:

Administrators justify the testing as a means to show they're serious about improving education, yet have no other ideas or suggestions how to improve education except to enforce a standardized test upon educators and students in a one-size-fits-all model.

And:

Local, state, and federal government officials largely have no reasonable idea how actual education works, yet they pass legislation demanding standardized tests be given at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, per state, often to for-profit companies with little oversight.

And now this:

Which brings us to Sara Holbrook, a poet of merit, who recently found some of her work included on a Texas standardized test. The problem for Holbrook? As she wrote originally on the Huffington Post, the questions asked about her poetry were so open-ended and vague, even she didn't know the answer. That would seem to be a wee bit of a problem.

Many of the questions demand to know the motivations of the writer--except the test-creators never actually asked Holbrook her motivation or thought process in the poems used, so how would they know the answer? As Holbrook notes, often these tests examine dead writers' work. Dead writers are often quiet on the matter of standardized tests.

Or, as she concludes in her Huffington Post article:

"My final reflection is this: any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich. Mostly test makers do this to dead people who can’t protest. But I’m not dead.

I protest."

Fashionable Words: Cahoots

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]


Word:

Cahoots


Definition:  verb / noun

1.)  go cahoots:  To share equally; become partners

2.)  in cahoots:  In partnership; in conspiracy with one another


Origin:

America likes to take delightful European things and bastardize them somehow, like Wonder Bread and microwaveable cheese product. This is why America can't have nice things.

Le sigh.

In the case of cahoots, the word first appeared in 1829. While the exact origin is unknown, the word was born as an Americanism of one of two similar--although much more debonair--French words cahute or cohorte.

Cahute is a 12th century French word that means a cabin or hut. (Think: Two people sharing a hut, possibly eating French bread and some aged Roquefort. And wine. Always wine.)

America is still trying to figure out how to bastardize Roquefort.

Some believe cahoots evolved from cohorte, the French word that also created the English cohort, meaning "companions." Except the modern English cohort has shady undertones in nefarious behavior. Indeed, you might be in cahoots with your cohort.

In turn, the French cohorte evolved from Latin. A cohort was one of ten divisions of a legion in the Roman army, usually made of 300 to 600 men. You definitely could not fit that many men in a cahute.

What I'm really trying to say is that Americans made up a word and no one has an idea how it came about--but let's assume it's fancy and French.

'Mericuh!


Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definition of 'cahoots':

6.)  The sound an owl makes when it sneezes.

I beg to differ with the upstanding people at UrbanDictionary. Here's video of an owl who clearly needs some Allergra.



Not going to lie--I'm a little disappointed an owl sneeze sounds so dainty.


Used in a sentence:

"Sven and his cohort, Bjorn, were in cahoots to eat all the Cheez Whiz while the other campers slept in the cahute."


Why you should use 'cahoots' in your everyday life:

It's the illegitimate lovechild of a Parisian brasserie and an American dumpster fire.


Word Awesomeness Scale (1-to-5):

Four.

It loses a point for being the name of a British boy band.

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: ...and the Army Reserve PSA probably has Barry Manilow singing.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.

Today:  I'm not sure if I want to nap or go to war.





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  Nothing will encourage young people to join the military like the soft, dulcet tones of Dionne Warwick.
2.)  Apparently John Denver or The Carpenters weren't available to lend a tune.
3.)  Admittedly, you can never go wrong with some smooth music from the horn section.
4.)  What's up with the little boy heaving the ball 40ft over his dad's head? Seems like a troublemaker to me.
5.)  Does it really take four people running to fly a kite ten feet off the ground?
6.)  New Jersey gets a separate 800-number to call. Because even the national Air Force Reserve wants to keep New Jersey people at bay.

So which college or university sent the most students to the 2016 Olympics?

There is no major rhyme or reason explaining which schools sent the most students to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, just like there's no rhyme or reason to Ryan Lochte. Some things defy explanation.

In U.S. News and World Report's list of the top 11 schools sending the most students to the Games (you know, ties happen, like in the Olympics--everyone gets a bronze!), you find Ivy League, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and Pac 10 schools.

The list:
1.  Stanford University, 29 students
2.  University of California-Berkeley, 16
3.  UCLA, 15
3.  USC, 15
5.  Penn State University, 13
5.  UNC-Chapel Hill, 13
7.  University of Oregon, 12
7.  University of Texas-Austin, 12
9.  University of Washington, 11
9.  Princeton University, 11
9.  University of Georgia, 11

If you're wondering where your no-name NCAA Division III backwater Podunk of a powerhouse college ranks, let's assume not too high.

Unless Cheetos consumption becomes a competitive sport, plenty of us from no-name schools will have to find our rooting interest in the athletes that matter. Like that flag bearer guy from Tonga. Nobody flag beared better at flag bearering like that guy. He won, like, six gold medals in flag bearing, I think.

Well, that's one way to woo a voting constituency...

How can you further annoy a voting constituency that you're already offending? By finding subtle ways to butcher their language!

Case in point:

RNC botches grammar on Spanish sign claiming Hispanics support Trump: https://t.co/tpUZ9xfvBa pic.twitter.com/5nEpx2y9A9

— The Hill (@thehill) July 22, 2016

The issue is two-fold. It's not "para" but "por" they want to have that sign say. They also forgot to translate "Hispanics" into "Hispanos." This would take two seconds on Google Translate to figure out--but, admittedly, we've all been burned by an online translator at some point.

The Huffington Post dove deeper and asked New York University lecturer Félix Manuel Burgos, who who holds a Ph.D in Hispanic Linguistics, to really get at the specifics:


If you want to express support for someone with your vote, it should be “por.” That is the preposition that goes with the verb “votar.”

“Para” doesn’t make sense in that context, unless you work for him, that is the preposition that goes with “trabajar.” ... [But] actually the best option would have been “con,” that expresses general support. “Latinos con Trump.” But I don’t think they will print many of those signs. 


Subtle digs are the best digs.

Rare Thomas Jefferson letter is historic, mildly sassy.

You've heard similar stories before. Someone's rummaging around in an attic, finds some old, forgotten boxes, and discovers a piece of history worth $325,000. This inspires you to immediately run to your attic or basement where hopes of wonderful riches are quickly dismissed upon learning you only have old musty sweaters, 8-track cassettes, and dashed dreams. Que sera, sera.

And so the story goes again. A family is Mississippi recently discovered a letter in their attic that was written by Thomas Jefferson shortly after the War of 1812. Jefferson wrote the letter to then-U.S. Ambassador to France William Crawford, a relative of the modern Mississippi family.

In the letter, up for sale by The Raab Collection, Jefferson remarks about the Treaty of Ghent, which effectively ended the war and which was written in his Monticello home. The letter also offers Jefferson's thoughts on Napoleon--who had just lost his own war with Britain occurring the same time in Europe as the War of 1812 was raging in North America. According to Jefferson, Napoleon's "downfall was illy timed for us. It gave to England an opportunity to turn full handed on us, when we were unprepared. No matter. We can beat her on our own soil…"

Oooh, sassy passive aggression! Jefferson doing a little chest puffing and dismissive hand waving at both the British and Napoleon in one sentence.

All of Jefferson's sass can be yours for the sale price of $325,000.

But double-check your basement first. Just in case.

Library cat is rehired by Texas town after initially being fired.

In a shocking twist, Browser realizes he's illiterate.

After six years of dutifully performing his job as the local library's mascot and resident mouse hunter, Browser the cat was fired by the city council of White Settlement, Texas, by a vote of 2-1 in a scandal that nearly brought the fundamentals of American government grinding to a halt.

Initially, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported the news:

"Declaring that 'City Hall and city businesses are no place for animals,' Councilman Elzie Clements led what Browser's fans call a sneak attack ..."

Clements called for the council vote. Admittedly, Browser has a shoddy work ethic. Described by the library as an "ornery kitten" when they first found him, The Dallas Morning News said that Browser "spends a good deal of time napping, lounging and sneaking out the door." Typical government employee shenanigans!

Yet, White Settlement mayor, Ron White, says he believed the vote developed after a city worker was denied bringing their puppy to city hall.

Considering how America as a nation doesn't trust Texas to be left alone with itself, petitions were created to stop Browser the cat from being fired. Over 1,000 messages from around the globe poured into the small town, asking to keep the library layabout on the job.

The city council blinked. By a unanimous vote, Browser was told he won't get a pink slip.

When reached for comment, Browser yawned and dozed back off to sleep (probably).




Photo: AP, via The Daily Mail


If you're sitting there wondering if the name "White Settlement" is as racist-y as it sounds, you'd be correct! It turns out there used to be two settlements nearby one another--one of white people and one of Native Americans. Being Texas, the welcoming white people decided to formerly name themselves the blatantly obvious and officially call their community White Settlement so no one would ever mistake them as otherwise. The city was incorporated in 1941. By 2005, a proposal was brought forth to change the name to West Settlement. You know, because it's the 21st century and whatnot. And in a city-wide vote, the proposal was voted down 2388 to 219, proving once and for all that Texas has its fingers on the pulse of the 1820s.

Canadian copy editor isn't down with that.

Now they've done it. They've angered John Wayne.

No one knows for certain where the term "ten gallon hat" came from. It might be from the Spanish tan galán, meaning so gallant or so fine, or maybe it comes from an English language corruption of the Spanish galón, which means galloon in English, a type of braided trimming around the crown of a hat. Whatever the reason, "ten gallon hat" doesn't reference the measurement of ten gallons of liquid.

Regardless, a copy editor at Maclean’s, a Canadian weekly news magazine, was very literal in their work this week. In the middle of a story referencing Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Jersey, the following passage was changed:


"Inside the coliseum, which serves as the athletic centre for the inner-city satellite campus of the state university of the Garden State, there was a high-school marching band performing in 38-litre hats and white boots, and cheerleaders in gold lamé hot pants."


The metric system! Canada's obsession with sensible scientific measurements has struck again. This copy editor went the extra mile 1609.34 meters and stuck it right in America's midsection.

There will be hell to pay once John Wayne hears about this.

...and Louisiana definitely can't spell "definitely."

It was the week of the National Spelling Bee, when every awkward 6-to-14 year old who will be your future boss got on stage and impressed everyone with knowledge of obscure Latin-by-way-of-Middle-French words. This led everyone to question their own personal spelling abilities--and that's where Google came in.

The Great Google Machine dove into its search trends and found the most misspelled word by each state. They used search queries that started with "how to spell" followed by the word troubling people. The results turned out to be a snapshot of each state's psyche.

New Hampshire can't spell "diarrhea," nor can Arizona.

Florida struggles with "tomorrow," potentially because half of its residents might die before then.

South Dakota trips up on "gray," as the cold, desolate misery of living there infects their spelling. Michigan has "gray" concerns as well. But, you know. Michigan.

Minnesota wonders how to spell "broccoli," a mythical vegetable believed by locals to exist in faraway warmer climates.

Texas can't spell "niece," nor Nevada "cousin." Two words tripping up thousands of married couples in each state since the 1850s.

And then there's Massachusetts...which can't spell itself. That's right. The state with the most letters in its name, haphazardly thrown together as if blended in a Cuisinart, is troubling its own citizens to such a degree that people turn to Google for help.

Ohio doesn't have such problems since saying the state's name out loud practically spells itself. But Ohio can't spell "banana," so what do they know?

"Schoolie McSchoolface" should be the name of a Texas elementary school.

The Austin, TX, school district recently decided to rename the Robert E. Lee Elementary School. This being Texas, people built themselves into a lather over such a decision, despite the small fact that the Confederacy lost the war and all. Nothing says 'Merica! like naming a school after someone who failed. Bonus points for racial undertones, too.

An open call for a new school name was held and the public responded with alternatives. The list includes--but is not limited to--the following fine, classy, and verbatim selections:

Austin Taliban Elementary School
Ayn Rand Elementary
Bleeding Heart Liberal Elementary
Adolf Hitler School for Friendship and Tolerance (eight nominations)
Bruce Lee Elementary (three nominations)
Communist Elementary
Drew Brees Elementary (three nominations)
Dwayne Johnson Elementary School
Flava Flav Elementary
Forgetting Your Past Dooms You to Repeat It Elementary
Generic School Name
Hypothetical Perfect Person Memorial Elementary School
IGNORANCE IS BLISS ELEMENTARY
James Earl Ray Elementary School
Jefferson Davis Elementary (three nominations)
John Cena Elementary School
Kanye West Elementary (two nominations)
Kim Il-Sung High School (two nominations)
Leadership & Excellence in Education (LEE)
Lee Elementary (thirteen nominations)
Lil Jon Elementary
Malcolm X (two nominations)
Nathan Bedford Forrest Elementary School (two nominations)
Neil deGrasse Tyson
O.J. Simpson Elementary
Pat Tillman Elementary School (four nominations)
Politically Correct Elementary School #1
Raul Castro Elementary
Revisionist Elementary School
Richard Pryor Elementary (six nominations)
Rudolf Hess Primary
School of Progressive and Socialist Studies
Schoolie McSchoolface
Schooly McSchoolerson (two nominations)
Schooly McSchoolerton
Spike Lee Elementary (four nominations)
Texas Declaration of Independence
The Elementary School Formerly Known as Robert E. Lee (two nominations)
The Illuminati
The Rubber Duckies
Traitor
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Elementary School
Werner von Braun Institute of Science and Technology
Willie Nelson Elementary (two nominations)

There were other random nominees as well, including a shoutout to Appamattox Court House--located in Virginia, mind you--where the Civil War ended, except the individual who nominated the historic building spelled it "Appamaattox." Admittedly, it's easy to get carried away with double letters.

The big winner was Donald J. Trump Elementary with 45 nominations. Harper Lee, related in name only to General Lee and native of Alabama and New York, neither of which was Texas last anyone checked a map, came in fourth place with 30 nominations.

No final decision has been made, but I think the country and Texans alike can come together over Schoolie McSchoolface. It conjures images of a cartoon character and a McDonald's Happy Meal. And isn't that what American education is really all about?

Tests reveal that...[[[extra long dramatic pause]]]...Maury Povich is the father of the newspaper!!

Jerry Springer would never exist without Maury Povich, and Maury Povich would never exist unless vast numbers of people with poor decision making skills decided to air their dirty laundry on national television. For twenty-two years, Povich has made a career out of unruly teenagers, abusive men, polygraph tests, and revealing paternity test results. In essence, the worst dinner party guests ever. People like this guy:

Sounds legit.

Despite all of the tabloid angles to what's made Povich wealthy, he still has roots in the newspaper business. His father, after all, was the famed Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich. This has led Maury to helm a rural, out-of-the-way newspaper, nearly unknown to the public for nearly a decade.

The Flathead Beacon newspaper serves the town of Kalispell, Montana, and the accompanying Flathead County, where Povich and his wife, former news anchor Connie Chung, own a vacation home. And in an era when many newspapers around the country fold on a monthly basis, the Flathead Beacon has actually seen readership increase--and with a total lack of paternity test revelations, too!

That doesn't mean Povich is ready to quit daytime television for newspapers just yet. As he told CNN Money, "After nine years, we're almost breaking even."

Apparently people in Montana don't make nearly as many bad decisions.

A fire-breather, standing on an inflated bouncy house ramp, accidentally injures twenty people at high school pep rally.

Even Smokey doesn't know what to say.

Officials at a south Florida high school claim that--

Never mind. Florida. That's all you really need to know.

The only real development here is you expect this sort of behavior from panhandle citizens, not south Florida folk.

Some Famous Writer Once Lived Here: Oxford, Mississippi

Some Famous Writer Once Lived Here is where we check out cities or towns that--you guessed it--a famous writer once lived. Picture the illegitimate lovechild between the US Census report and a tourist pamphlet from a local chamber of commerce. What's it like there today? Here's where we find out.



Today:  William Faulkner once lived in Oxford, Mississippi:

William Faulkner has been called the Shakespeare of America. This is startling because it's difficult to picture Shakespeare with a southern accent and brandishing a shotgun.

At some point in the last hundred years, Mississippi gave up the title to most frightening American state to Alabama after a lengthy struggle where multiple lives were lost in a muddin' fiasco involving pickup trucks and four-wheelers largely adorned in Confederate flags. No one knows what happened specifically, but rumors abound that it involved light beer, six brain cells, and Alabama coming out on top. Strangely, it was a high point in Mississippi's history.

Alabama celebrates victory and defeat at the same time.

While you can still hear the frightening pluck of banjos and subtle din of monster trucks in the distance, Mississippi does have some fairly polite, even classy areas largely infiltrated by a strange phenomenon called "education."

Although anyone who has ever seen a professor wear a paisley sweater vest knows education can be frightening, too.


The basics of Oxford, Mississippi:

Location:
Far north from the Gulf coast, Oxford is only 85-miles away via major highways, or 78-miles via the minor variety, from Memphis, TN, reminding people that while it might not be Xanadu or desirable, Memphis is nearby and sure as hell isn't Mississippi.

Do not confuse Oxford, MS, with Oxford, England. Common mistake. But Oxford, England, is 4,336 miles away and involves heavy amounts of dry humor and rejoicing in the rain.

2010 Census:

Population: 18,916 people make up Oxford, up 61% since 2000. Almost 1-in-3 residents resides in poverty though, proving that--oh, wow--oh, god. A third are in poverty? One of the best parts of Mississippi has that much poverty? Oh, Christ. I give up. Just continue on without me. I'm done.

Racial Makeup: In 2010, 13 people claimed to be of Hawaiian or Pacific Islander backgrounds. That's up from 2 people during the 2000 census. Those 2 people were horribly, horribly lost from rogue Google Maps coordinates, it appears.


What to see, what to do in Oxford, Mississippi:

The top thing to do in Oxford, according to TripAdvisor? Visit the University of Mississippi! Nothing says a sexy vacation quite like spending all day roaming a random college campus in 90-degree heat, sipping bourbon, and yelling something about rebel pride. That'll be the envy of everyone on your Instagram feed.

The University of Mississippi goes by the nickname Ole Miss, which they claim is from their old yearbook title, the Ole Miss Annual, and has nothhhhing to do with slaves calling the wife of a plantation owner "ole miss." As if Mississippi would ever do something subtly racist. It's practically the ACLU of the south after all.

No Rhett Butler here.

There's also William Faulkner's estate, Rowan Oak. It's like Gone with the Wind's Tara Plantation, except with less Scarlett O'Hara chest-thumping, and Rhett Butler actually doesn't give a damn and never wants to be seen at Rowan Oak. For $5 you can tour the house and remember all of those Faulkner books you made sure never to read in college.

Do you like feeling depressed? There's the Confederate Cemetery in town. Yes. That Confederacy. Says Regina from Memphis on TripAdvisor, it is "wonderful history." Oh, Regina, no matter how you approach cemeteries or slavery, no one ever pauses and thinks, "Well, you know, that's some little slice of wonderfulness right there."

Feeling like a little church revival? Swing on into College Hill Presbyterian Church, famous for its antebellum architecture and where Faulkner got married. Are you a Presbyterian? Do you want to be? No? You're making this difficult for all involved.

When in doubt, there's always Wal-Mart located about two minutes outside of the University of Mississippi's campus. Phew.


Where to eat in Oxford:

Are you tired of Colonel Sanders and Kentucky's claim to fried chicken? Visit Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken then. Do you know Gus? No. Neither do I. Is Gus lying about being world famous? Let's just agree Gus has overstepped his proclamation just a tad.

Ajax Diner sells fried food as well, but also has toothpicks in the ceiling. I'm not sure why, but if the food doesn't sell you, low expectations might do the trick.

Looking for awkward names for your restaurant of choice? There's Handy Andy. Admit it--you raised an eyebrow wondering what Andy's getting handsy over, too. Is he good with general contracting work? Sure, let's assume that.


Isn't Aubigny-sur-Nère, France, a sister city of Oxford?

Yes. And like most siblings, it really doesn't want to talk much.

Second guessing its parentage.

William Faulkner's thoughts on his hometown:

(In reference to Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional stand-in for Oxford in his books.)

"I like to think of the world I created as being a kind of keystone in the universe; that, small as that keystone is, if it were ever taken away the universe itself would collapse."

Not only do the 2016's candidates for president act like sixth graders, they sound like sixth graders, too, study shows.

No one politician comes unscathed from the recent study on the speech and grammatical patterns of various politicians from the 2016 election--except for Abraham Lincoln, who isn't around to run. But we'll get to him in a second.

"A Readability Analysis of Campaign Speeches From the 2016 US Presidential Campaign," published this week by Carnegie Mellon University, looked to analyze the reading level of speeches given by the prospective 2016 presidential candidates and found that the group of them largely falls into the 6th-to-8th grade range.

That's shameful and embarrassing and pathetic. And it's also very close to the same reading level of where this blog resides. That said, I'm not running to be a fairly awkward individual with the power to rule hundreds of millions of people. I'm just running to be your number one blog for random stuff, like Herman Hesse hiking mountains in the nude. I also know how to write like a research wonk, super-heavy on a polysyllabic craziness and jazzy punctuation, but you'll be bored, doze off, and--oh, hey, is that Ray Bradbury shirtless, too?

(That crap I just wrote above, that one paragraph you just read right there ↑↑↑↑? That gets a 9.1 grade level through various testings, like the Flesch-Kincaid Scale, on this site. If my drivel can enter the high school realm, imagine what Trump is pushing.)

This is all to say that politicians dumb down and pander to Americans because it works, although some are worse than others. Bernie Sanders wants you to have a high school education, so he speaks at a tenth grade level, says Carnegie Mellon. Donald Trump? More like a grade 5.7. Which one looks to have a better shot at winning the election?

This all brings us back to Abraham Lincoln--specifically, to the Gettysburg Address. Potentially the greatest speech in American history, it still maxes out just over a 10th grade level grammatically, and 9th grade for vocabulary. Yet, despite such modest levels, Lincoln would surpass all of today's politicians.

Does this mean I sound like Abraham Lincoln when I talk?

God, no.

But does it mean I sound smarter than a billionaire Sunkist orange with pigs-in-a-blanket for fingers?

Yessss.

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Your fridge is a budding serial killer.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.

This week's PSA:  Murderous fridges are all around us.





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  "Ohh, here they come again, and I'm frightened." That's a common refrain around roving mobs of teddy bear wielding children.
2.)  How many kids has Mr. Fridge suffocated to have such a complex?
3.)  Sure, the Old West idea is cute, but at no point does Mr. Fridge view flying bullets as a concern. Good American values!
4.)  That pamphlet's title is an English major's nightmare. Your child also trusts you to capitalize words and use punctuation.


But wait, there's more!






Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  The budget for this PSA was a box of Crayolas and some colored pencils.
2.)  What was up with kids in the '70s always imagining the Old West? Caravans now? Really? Little Suzy desperately wants to be taken away to the Oregon Trail where she can pretend to die of dysentery.
3.)  Oh, but don't forget a kid might imagine a bed! Somehow, this just became more sad. The kid is apparently sleeping on piles of newspaper now.
4.)  "...before it kills a child." I bet you just took a glance at your fridge and wondered if it will kill you in your sleep. The answer to that is...yes, yes it will.
5.)  This is why I store all my perishables outside in a ditch. No fridge will kill me!

It's always good to be reminded that Lake Superior State University also burns snowmen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah--everyone pays attention to Lake Superior State University once a year to see which words and phrases they want to ban from the English language.

But when they're not busy banning words, the Negative Nancy of the North also enjoys burning a snowman (alive?) at the end of every winter.

Look at this charming photo from 2014's wannabe Joan of Arc moment:

Even the guy down front can't witness the carnage.

In fact, here's a 45-second nugget from the same event. The laughter, the happiness, the joy as Frosty is torched. Notice how the mob starts burning him right where his heart is. Some morbid poet should run with this idea and write a sonnet on snowman violence.