"Being near you is a gift I only wish I could treasure..."

First off, does anyone remember the TV show Captain Bucky O'Hare? You
know, "Let's croak us some toads!..." And second, does anyone
remember the game Zaxxon? I'm looking for downloads of either of
these, but I'm having some trouble. I got the Bucky O'Hare theme song
and show intro, and I got this version of Zaxxon that was clearly
meant to run on a 286 with an EGA monitor. It goes so flippin' fast
on my computer that I'm having a really difficult time flying my
spaceship. I get a "Game Over" roughly every four seconds. That's
three lives... I can't think that fast. So if you can find a slower
version, or perhaps a low-memory emulator, or something, let me know
eh?

Today is National Fried Chicken Day. If I had known, I still wouldn't
have eaten fried chicken. It's a little gross sometimes, and today is
one of those days that chicken just doesnt appeal.

Happy Birthday to:
Elisabeth van Nassau, 1542 (daughter of Willem and Juliana van Stolberg)
John Paul Jones, 1747
Nicholas I Pavlovitch, 1796
Josef Winckler, 1881
Thomas W McKnew, 1896 (President of the National Geographic Society)
Wojciech Jaruzelski, 1923 (One guess as to his nationality!)
14th Dalai Lama, 1935
George W. Bush, 1946
Sylvester Stalone, 1946 (One time I had to act out Sylvester Stalone
without using any words, and the whole thing was really kind of
embarassing. Some of you I'm sure remember this...)
Steve Sullivan, 1974
50 Cent, 1976

Happy Deathday to:
Henry II, King of England, 1189
Jan Hus, 1415 (burned for heresy in Constance, Germany)
Thomas More, 1535 (exectued for treason. It's a good thing too. This
guy's a jerk. A lot of jerks came out of Oxford in his time. The
really cool guys all went to Cambridge, but there were a few oddballs
in each. William Tyndale went to both. He went to Cambridge when
Oxford accused him of heresy)
Edward VI Tudor, 1553
William Kidd, 1701 (buccaneer! he was executed too)
William Harrison Faulkner, 1962
Louis Armstrong, 1971
Ivor Keys, 1995 (this dude has a cool name, reminds me of a certain
ranger who likes elves... Good ol' Heroes of Might and Magic 3!)

Today in History:
King Richard III crowned, 1483
Lyman Blake patents shoe manufacturing machine, 1858
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics forms, 1923
1st photo sent experimentally across Atlantic by radio, US-England, 1924
Worlds largest hailstone falls, 1928 (in Potter, Nebraska. 17' tall!)
Freak heat wave sent central coast of Portugal to 158 F for 2 minutes, 1949
I watched a lady get Musk aftershave spilled all over her! It came
from two stories above, and someone dropped it down the crack and she
was standing in just the right spot, 2004

Words of the day:
debarrass: to disencumber from anything that embarrasses
fructify: to bear fruit, to make productive
congeries: a collection, an aggregation
eidetic: marked by extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall

Irish Word of the Day: (haven't done one of these in a while, eh?)
Nollaig = Christmas
Nollaig Shona (NO-lig HO-nuh) = Merry Christmas
Oíche Nollag (EE-huh NO-luhg) = Christmas Eve
Lá Nollag (LAW NO-luhg) = Christmas Day
History: Old Irish "Notlaic" comes from Latin "natalicia" (= of the
day of birth), from the verb "(g)nasci" (to be born), which can be
traced back ultimately to the Indo-European root *gen- (to give
birth).

Oh, how I love those Indo-European roots! I'm reading a book now on
translating. It's pretty good. It's actually the biography of a
professional translator (and also professional heretic...)

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation"
-Saki

"People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people
have been left out of the pleasure."
-Russell Baker

"I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American
mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish
expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the
hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes
stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm."
-James Thurber

I think that's about all I can handle for today. I'm tired. Goodbye all.

--
Brian D. Harris