3:84, #578: Things Thirteen

Today's A.D.D. post is brought to you by the assignment given Anonymous Man's little girl: report on Millard Fillmore. Turns out, now that I've Googled a bunch of stuff on a rainy day vacation spurt, that Old Millard was Thirteenth President of the U.S. (as the 1938 commemorative stamp indicates). I actually remember this whole series of stamps from my childhood (first one, that is) because I had a collection at the time. But, did you know:

The 13th President only got the job because Zach Taylor died of gastroenteritis in the middle of his term? Did you care? Hmmmm....
Interesting to me is the fact that Numero 13 Prez supported the Compromise of 1850 that was supposed to calm the country down regarding slavery but which really helped stoke the fires of secession over the next 10 years. So, President #13 could be said to have laid the groundwork for the American Civil War that eventually led to the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery and indentured servitude!! I wonder if being #13 was considered to be unlucky at the time?

Also, with a first name of Millard and a body shape tending toward the portly, I wonder if he had to endure the nasty nickname among close associates and/or enemies of 'Lard?' When his Whig Party folded after his partial term as President, Milly ran on the American Native Party tab... also know to us history buffs as the No-Nothings. Bet he'd be a viable candidate these days! Maybe with the way politics is going, we could get another No Nothing Party and have Schultz from 'Hogan's Heroes' be the mascot with a video clip where he gives his classic line, "I NO NOTHING!"

Just out of curiosity, I Googled '13-cent stamps.' At this counting, there were 19 printed at various times; which makes me wonder, of course, if people afraid of the number 13 managed to put different stamps on their envelopes or if they simply did not mail anything back in those days when that was the cost of a letter?

Speaking of fear of 13...howcome folks only fear Friday the 13th? Yeah, I know...Good Friday, 13 Apostles, Crucifixion, etcetera...But why not simply extend that to Any Day the 13th? Seems to me if you're going to be phobic, BE PHOBIC!!

Oh, and is it significant that puberty with all its down sides comes to us roughly at age 13? Would it be extra unlucky to have 13 candles on your birthday cake at that age?

Should cigarettes come in packs of 13 these days, given all the Surgeon General's warnings and regulations of them?

Well, before I try to stretch this to 13 paragraphs...
Got 12 friends to evite to dinner?

3:83, #577: Moby Dick

Gil Grissom of CSI fame tells Sarah Sidle, his co-worker paramour at the end of one show at the end of one of the seasons that he'd like to know that he was dying, say of cancer, and that he'd like to have the chance to 'read Moby Dick again.' Well, I was somewhere in my teens lo these many decades ago when I read it...for fun, I think, not as an English assignment...but now that so much water has washed over the New Bedford shores, I really can't say with any discernment or certainty when exactly.

In any event, I was thinking of suggesting that my 'kids' get me a copy of it for my birthday so I could read it again, but came to the conclusion I'd better read it online first to see if I still would find it interesting. Well, I'm posting this because I'm already six chapters into it and Queequeg once again is my favorite character!!...Maybe I was a head hunting, harpoon throwing savage (well, I did play lacrosse defense man in this real life) in one of my former incarnations?!! In any event, I can already see that I'm going to get into this Whale's Tale yet not play Whale's Tails...if you get my drift...of Queequeg's coffin, so to speak.

It's especially appropriate that one of the characters is Peter Coffin, given the surname of one of the occupants of Grey Havens; which, now that I think of it could be a great name for a New England whalers' tavern in the 19th century where I might have been a ship's carpenter awaiting sailing orders on the Pequod in yet another one of my not-so-storied-incarnations; at least in my mind, as Eddie Izzard would say!

Oh, yeah, since it's time again for the World Series, the baseball connection to Moby Dick is the interaction between Jake Taylor and Lynn Wells over Queequeg's coffin...get the movie if you don't know that to which I refer!! ;p

Maybe I'll have to think about going a'whaling to at least spot the spermers if not hunt them, given the dearth of need for whale oil these days and the fact that Star Trek IV I think it is, reminds us that eliminating whales was going to get the planet eliminated, too. Besides, PETA and a bunch of others would not permit hunting whales any more any way. It would give me a good way to use up some of my vacation days...unless, of course I decide to take a Civil War Battlefields Trip starting at Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!
Got harpoon, coffin, so you can march to the sound of gunfire?!!

3:82, #576: Smoke Gets In My Brain

This morning around 3:30am I came across the notion in my mind while shuffling through some of the paperwork kept there and wondered if fire fighters use smoke screens on their windows to keep out fire flies? I'm not sure wherein lies the genesis of the rest of this, but that never bothered me before, so why should it now?

Speaking of smoking...those anti-smoking-save-your-health-so-you-can-shrivel up-and-croak-at-95 folks...have forgotten something. Cigar smoke and pipe smoke, not so much that of cigareetes, I'll admit...are aroma therapy for those of us graciously gifted to be wise enough to realize it!! And for those of you who doubt my epiphany, here's AromaWeb's definition: "...the practice of using volatile plant oils, including essential oils, for psychological and physical well being." To quote the King in 'Amadeus,' "Well, there it is!" We ceegah smokers simply set the essential oils free with FIRE!! (Do you Old Heads hear music from the band Crazy World of Arthur Brown?!!)

I've often said, only with my tongue partially in my cheek, that the 'smoke of God's glory' that drove old Moses out of the Tabernacle was the Lord puffing on a good stogie!! So all you O.T. scholars prove me wrong!! ;p And by the way, do you realize how hard it is to talk properly with your tongue in your cheek?

I just got back from deporting squirrel #13 from Camp Cornelius...second one this morning...so in sports terminology 'I'm smoking them!'

Well, that's it for now...
If you got 'em, smoke 'em! --Elliot Ness, The Untouchables

3:81, #575: Doing Nothing

Have you ever sat still 'doing nothing' and thought about just how much you're actually doing during that 'down time?'
Breathing
Heart beating
Eyelids blinking
Blood flowing
Bladder filling
Brain synapses firing
Shaking your feet for some of us
Tapping your fingers for others
Sweating
Getting the chills and making little skin bumps
Growing hair
Hearing
And the ever popular thinking...
Got time?

3:80, #574: Ode to Other Birds

Well, I sort of warned you that I'd be continuing my tip of the hat to John Keats with two more odes based on his set of five, so here goes #4:

Ben Franklin-like, I rise early and oft retire the same,
I've never heard the nightingale her late night song proclaim.
I, opposed to Keats, do not bemoan my age or solitude,
But choose to write some lines you might think daft or mayhaps crude.

The pictures Heaven often sends through various types of birds,
Reflect the state of mankind's souls in all our various herds.
The first that comes to mind without much fuss or hurry
Is the Mount-spawned Sermon's sparrow wise, that trusts and does not worry.

Grey Havens is the name bestowed upon my current stone abode,
Where other birds than nightingale flock by providential code.
Where sparrow, wren, nuthatch and dove as well as chickadee
Can eat a meal and take a bath, instructing watchers without fee.

Like Jesus' illustrators, they've learned to anticipate
Feedings at set intervals, an expected daily rate.
They'll often hop close to their "Pop," our Francis of Assisi,
As much to say, "It's time today to drop a sugar cookie."

Our red tailed hawk, enjoys a gawk sitting on sassafras limb
At little birds that look like meals...at least they do to him.
He'll swoop and snatch at sparrows who assuredly will fall
According to God's perfect plan that covers one and all.

Your life no less than all these birds' is written in His book,
It's even grace when at future pages you're not allowed to look.
The little guys do hop and peck, take flight and tell a story.
If Bach were from New Jersey now, he'd write, "YO...sola Deo glory!!"

3:79, #573: Phobias

I came across yet another intellectually stimulating website today as I'm down once again with some sinus problems compounded by aching bones from a condition that 'back in the day' was called The Grippe...rightly or wrongly. In any event given my twisted view of things, here are some pertinent impertinent comments and a couple of public domain pictures:

Agoraphobia is the fear of open spaces, of being in crowded public places, or leaving a safe place. With a slight change, A-Gore-aphobia could be the fear that Al Gore is going to invent something else or possibly make another movie or you could be in an open space that becomes a crowded public place with him after leaving a safe place!! ;p

If arachnophobia is the fear of spiders, would webheadaphobia be the fear of Spider Man?

As I asked on Facebook earlier today, ataxiophobia...the fear of muscular incoordination...has always been called a teenager's first date, hasn't it?!!

Ablutophobia...the fear of washing or bathing...obviously stems from 'ablutions,' but A-Bluto-phobia would be the fear of some big fat hairy guy Popeye always beat up on, would it not?

Agateophobia...the fear of insanity...has a counterpart in lyssophobia...the fear of going insane; which if you dwell on too much will send you there or make you a writer along the lines of Edgar Allan Poe and his 'Tell Tale Heart.' Of course, once you went insane, you'd be in such a condition that the good news would be that you no longer feared getting OR being there...silver lining to a darkening cloud, I say!!

Just think, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of available fears!
Got fear of what might come next?