The War At Home
My job at the MML allows me a lot of time to procrastinate while looking up various random shit on the net. Since me and Nathan (once again) find ourselves alone in this endeavor I thought I should share some of my findings.
First off, I should give a little context (feel free to skip if you're part of the D.O.T). I have spent the last few months trying to figure out what I am going to do with the "office room" that is attached to my bedroom. Essentially, its too large to be a walk-in closet but too small to be a complete room upon itself. Until recently, it was a storage space for my 21 rolls of tape and hundreds of cardboard boxes I recieved from my housemates for my birthday. I've decided I wanted to make it a War Room/Shrine to Cleveland.
Quick plug: Wednesday (9/28) at 8pm - List 120 – The Brown Dems are showing the movie "The War Room" about James Carville and George Stephanopolus's behind-the-scenes work on the Clinton '92 campaign. This is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen and a must see for anyone interested in politics. Carville (who someone describes at one point as "someone's drunk uncle") has some awesome one-liners and is coming to Brown Thursday (9/28). Trust me: this will be the best movie List has shown since the female masturbation video!
So I thought I should do some research on my beloved home and I found some things that y'all may also find interesting/trifling:
1. As you may (should) know, Ohio State and Michigan have a long-standing and bitter football rivalry. However, the rivalry between the states did not start there:
(from Wikipedia - Toledo War)
The Toledo War of 1835-1836 was a largely bloodless boundary dispute between the state of Ohio and the Michigan Territory over a 468 square mile (1,210 km²) strip of land including what is now the city of Toledo, Ohio.
When Ohio became a state in 1803, its constitution included a provision that redrew the Ordinance
Line such that it angled slightly northward and included Toledo and all of Maumee Bay in Ohio. The discrepancy between the original Ordinance Line and Ohio's revision defined an area that became known as the Toledo Strip.
When Michigan applied to become a state in 1835, it claimed the original Ordinance Line as its southern boundary. However, Ohio refused to cede the Toledo Strip.
2. There's been a lot of discussion over Ohio's recent move to change its liscence plate motto from "The Heart of it All" to "The Birthplace of Aviation." The controversy seems to lie in the fact that North Carolina already had the motto "First in Flight" on their liscence plate and of course the first plane flight happened there. Surely, just having one of the Wright brothers birthed in your state isn't liscence plate-worthy right?
Well it turns out the Wright Brothers did do all of the actual work in Dayton, Ohio. The actual construction and plans for the first flight were done in the good ole Buckeye state. North Carolina was only involved when it came to the actual flight (again from Wikipedia):
"[Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was chosen] on the advice of a National Weather Service meterologist because of its strong and steady winds and because its remote location afforded the brothers privacy from prying eyes in the highly competitive race to invent a successful heavier-than-air flying machine."
Check and mate.
3. Without a doubt, the single most embarrassing moment in Ohio history that I get the most crap about (besides perhaps the 2004 election) is the Cuyahoga River catching on fire. Yes, it's possible for a river to catch on fire. However, it wasn't as bad as people have made it out to be:
"Cleveland at the time was not particularly impressed. The Chief of Police was not called; the regular crew, which was always dispersing oil slicks and watching for river fires, had it under control in under half an hour."
A half-an-hour? That's an episode of Seinfeld. That's not that bad. Well maybe this is:
"This was not the first time that the river had caught on fire. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage."
However, Cleveland still got an unneccessary bad rap (source):
"The only picture (left), taken after the fire was pretty much out, ran in two local papers the next day, but the only story was brief and buried... Burning rivers in industrialized areas were common through the late 19th and early 20th century. Rivers and harbors once burned in Michigan, New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, among other states."
We wouldn't even be talking about this today but a song by Randy Newman entitled Burn On, Big River put a national spotlight on the city. A month later Time magazine ran this:
"Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. "Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown," Cleveland's citizens joke grimly. 'He decays.'" - Time Magazine, August 1969
Fucking liberal media.
4. Finally, a quote from a good ole-fashioned right-wing wacko (from Cleveland no less). From http://deporttraitors.blogspot.com:
The (A) Anti- (C) Christ (L) Loves (U) Us -NOT
A US federal court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, opened Monday to hear whether the so-called "intelligent design" doctrine should be taught in basic schools to challenge Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The Prince of Darkness ally, the ACLU, is leading the fight against "intelligent design" in this case.
Kenneth Miller, a Brown University professor. If nearly all original species are extinct, then the "intelligent design" creator was not very intelligent.
Kenneth Miller, repent or die in your sins for calling God The Almighty "not very intelligent".
UPDATE: 9/28: 2:12 PM
VICTORY!
As kos put it, "Holy fucking shit."
From the liberals at NYTimes.com:
DeLay Is Charged With Criminal Conspiracy in Texas
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful House Republican majority leader, was accused by a Texas grand jury today of criminal conspiracy in a campaign fund-raising scheme...
"I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader," Representative Tom DeLay said.
First off, I should give a little context (feel free to skip if you're part of the D.O.T). I have spent the last few months trying to figure out what I am going to do with the "office room" that is attached to my bedroom. Essentially, its too large to be a walk-in closet but too small to be a complete room upon itself. Until recently, it was a storage space for my 21 rolls of tape and hundreds of cardboard boxes I recieved from my housemates for my birthday. I've decided I wanted to make it a War Room/Shrine to Cleveland.
Quick plug: Wednesday (9/28) at 8pm - List 120 – The Brown Dems are showing the movie "The War Room" about James Carville and George Stephanopolus's behind-the-scenes work on the Clinton '92 campaign. This is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen and a must see for anyone interested in politics. Carville (who someone describes at one point as "someone's drunk uncle") has some awesome one-liners and is coming to Brown Thursday (9/28). Trust me: this will be the best movie List has shown since the female masturbation video!So I thought I should do some research on my beloved home and I found some things that y'all may also find interesting/trifling:
1. As you may (should) know, Ohio State and Michigan have a long-standing and bitter football rivalry. However, the rivalry between the states did not start there:
(from Wikipedia - Toledo War)
The Toledo War of 1835-1836 was a largely bloodless boundary dispute between the state of Ohio and the Michigan Territory over a 468 square mile (1,210 km²) strip of land including what is now the city of Toledo, Ohio.
When Ohio became a state in 1803, its constitution included a provision that redrew the Ordinance
Line such that it angled slightly northward and included Toledo and all of Maumee Bay in Ohio. The discrepancy between the original Ordinance Line and Ohio's revision defined an area that became known as the Toledo Strip. When Michigan applied to become a state in 1835, it claimed the original Ordinance Line as its southern boundary. However, Ohio refused to cede the Toledo Strip.
Michigan's youthful territorial governor Stevens T. Mason responded by sending a militia force to the area. Lucas did the same. The Strip was at the time covered with dense arborvitae swamps (collectively known as the "Great Black Swamp"), which today have been almost totally drained to create farm land.
The two militias got lost for weeks and never actually found each other in the swamps. Though at one point a Monroe County, Michigan, deputy was stabbed while arresting an Ohio man in a tavern, no one else was seriously injured.
2. There's been a lot of discussion over Ohio's recent move to change its liscence plate motto from "The Heart of it All" to "The Birthplace of Aviation." The controversy seems to lie in the fact that North Carolina already had the motto "First in Flight" on their liscence plate and of course the first plane flight happened there. Surely, just having one of the Wright brothers birthed in your state isn't liscence plate-worthy right?Well it turns out the Wright Brothers did do all of the actual work in Dayton, Ohio. The actual construction and plans for the first flight were done in the good ole Buckeye state. North Carolina was only involved when it came to the actual flight (again from Wikipedia):
"[Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was chosen] on the advice of a National Weather Service meterologist because of its strong and steady winds and because its remote location afforded the brothers privacy from prying eyes in the highly competitive race to invent a successful heavier-than-air flying machine."
Check and mate.
3. Without a doubt, the single most embarrassing moment in Ohio history that I get the most crap about (besides perhaps the 2004 election) is the Cuyahoga River catching on fire. Yes, it's possible for a river to catch on fire. However, it wasn't as bad as people have made it out to be:
"Cleveland at the time was not particularly impressed. The Chief of Police was not called; the regular crew, which was always dispersing oil slicks and watching for river fires, had it under control in under half an hour."A half-an-hour? That's an episode of Seinfeld. That's not that bad. Well maybe this is:
"This was not the first time that the river had caught on fire. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage."
However, Cleveland still got an unneccessary bad rap (source):
"The only picture (left), taken after the fire was pretty much out, ran in two local papers the next day, but the only story was brief and buried... Burning rivers in industrialized areas were common through the late 19th and early 20th century. Rivers and harbors once burned in Michigan, New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, among other states."
We wouldn't even be talking about this today but a song by Randy Newman entitled Burn On, Big River put a national spotlight on the city. A month later Time magazine ran this:
"Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. "Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown," Cleveland's citizens joke grimly. 'He decays.'" - Time Magazine, August 1969
Fucking liberal media.
4. Finally, a quote from a good ole-fashioned right-wing wacko (from Cleveland no less). From http://deporttraitors.blogspot.com:
The (A) Anti- (C) Christ (L) Loves (U) Us -NOT
A US federal court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, opened Monday to hear whether the so-called "intelligent design" doctrine should be taught in basic schools to challenge Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The Prince of Darkness ally, the ACLU, is leading the fight against "intelligent design" in this case.
Kenneth Miller, a Brown University professor. If nearly all original species are extinct, then the "intelligent design" creator was not very intelligent.
Kenneth Miller, repent or die in your sins for calling God The Almighty "not very intelligent".
UPDATE: 9/28: 2:12 PM
VICTORY!
As kos put it, "Holy fucking shit."
From the liberals at NYTimes.com:
DeLay Is Charged With Criminal Conspiracy in Texas
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful House Republican majority leader, was accused by a Texas grand jury today of criminal conspiracy in a campaign fund-raising scheme...
"I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader," Representative Tom DeLay said.
posted by He Hate Me at 2:23 PM
2 Comments:
it's getting damn near a month since chris or mike posted. hell, adam's posted more recently.
brandon and nathan, you guys might enjoy this
http://fvk2.blogspot.com/
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