Ant Farmer's Almanac

7 Things You Didn't Know About:

THE BOOK OF LOVE

1)  If it's on Kindle yet.

2)  Four chapters? That's all?

3)  "Never, never, never, never, ever? Really? Ever? 

4)  Who narrated the Books on Tape version.

5)  Its Amazon ranking.

6)  Where it's shelved; self-help, how-to, psychology,
fantasy/sci-fi, humor . . .

7)  Who wrote it.

On This Day in History...

1582: William Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway get a marriage license; they register at Bard, Bath & Beyond.

1842: The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by Britain and France as an independent nation; the U.S. stands a few feet away, whistling nonchalantly and trying to look inconspicuous.

1948: Hopalong Cassidy premieres on TV.

Today's Birthdays!

  1912:  Eugene Ionesco

  1922:  Charles M. Schulz

  1925:  Linda Hunt

  1933:  Robert Goulet

  1938:  Rich Little

  1938:  Tina Turner

  1945:  John McVie

In other news: Millions of turkeys today will follow in the footsteps of their forefeathers.

Today in History...

1834: Delmonico's restaurant in New York offers a meal of soup, steak, coffee and half a pie for 12¢; in today's dollars that meal would still be too old to eat.

Today's Birthdays!

1713  Junipero Serra

1784  Zachary Taylor

1864  Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

1868  Scott Joplin

1888  Dale Carnegie

1925  William F. Buckley, Jr.

1942  Billy Connolly

Emonacon

Oprah's Ending Her Show in 2011 Confounds 2012 Doomsday Experts

"We Totally Didn't See That Coming," say Red-Faced Mayan Calendar Authorities.

CHICHEN ITZA, MEXICO (Ant Farmer's Almanac Newswire) Her studio audience and millions of devoted fans weren't the only ones stunned and shaken by Oprah Winfrey's announcement that she'll end her talk show in 2011.

At the Yucatan headquarters of the Doomsday and Mayan Institute of Technology (DAMIT), researches who track real-time events and compare them to predictions foretold in the Mayan calendar — the one that ends abruptly on December 21, 2012 — scrambled to explain this event. 

"We were taken completely by surprise," says DAMIT's Ben Degas, "The Mayans say nothing about a catastrophe of this magnitude, and if they got something this big so wrong, it throws the whole prophecy thing into question."

The institute is already developing plausible explanations.

"We do have one new theory," says Degas, "That Oprah is building her own personal spaceship, in which she'll escape to another planet. I mean, if anybody could afford it, it's her, right? Think about it; all this interest in finding water, first on Mars, now on the moon..." Degas muttered to himself while shuffling through stacks of papers, "There's gotta be something like that in here... maybe in Nostradamus...." 

Asked how, exactly, Winfrey's skipping out on the apocalypse would square discrepancies in Mayan prophecy and, more to the point, whether their doomsday timeline's being wrong was necessarily a bad thing, Degas responded tersely, "Are you kidding me? I just took out a 30-year mortgage for beachfront property in Cancun! Eight bedrooms! A helicopter pad on the roof! In Cancun! I can't afford that! If we're all still here on December 22, 2012, I am seriously screwed!"

In other media news: The Animal Planet channel is producing a new nature/competition program entitled So You Think You Can Dance with Wolves.

7 Things You Didn't Know About:

THOMAS EDISON

1)  Would deliberately shuffle his feet to build up static electricity from the carpet in his workshop, then zap unsuspecting visitors.

2)  Unfinished projects included a waterproof toaster and the electrically heated Snuggie.

3)  Created the New Jersey Turnpike's numbered exit system.

4)  The first recording of a human voice was a limerick about a "girl from Nantucket" made while Edison was testing his phonograph. He quickly recorded Mary Had a Little Lamb over it once he realized the device actually worked.

5)  Said that genius is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," and he would know, 'cause that guy "geniused like a horse," if you know what I mean. 

6)  Never occurred to him to attach a lowercase "e" to the beginning of the word for any item he'd just electrified (eBulb, eMusic, etc.), then copyright that.  

7)  Claimed the real "Genius of Menlo Park" was that real estate agent who sold him the property without mentioning that it was in Menlo Park, New Jersey, not Menlo Park, California.

Today's Birthdays!

  1831  James A. Garfield

  1905  Tommy Dorsey

  1917  Indira Gandhi

  1926  Jeanne Kirkpatrick

  1933  Larry King

  1936  Dick Cavett

  1938  Ted Turner

  1941  Dan Haggerty

  1942  Calvin Klein

  1961  Meg Ryan

  1962  Jodie Foster

Today in History...

1776: Hessians capture Fort Lee, New Jersey and, so far as we know, still have it.

Dictionarium

"Can I put you on hold?":  F--- You.

Special Interest Groups:  The other side's contributors.

Today in History...

1906: Italian tenor Enrico Caruso is charged with an "indecent act" after being accused of pinching a woman's bottom while in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo. He is acquitted when the monkeys take the Fifth and refuse to testify.

7 Things You Didn't Know About:

WHAT YOU JUST ATE

1)  Why it didn't taste more like chicken.

2)  The expiration date.

3)  What Michael Pollan thinks of it.

4)  How they got all that cheese in there.

5)  What wine could've gone with it.

6)  If it comes on a stick.

7)  Whether it's gonna leave a stain on your shirt.

Today's Birthdays!

1483  Martin Luther

1697  William Hogarth

1889  Claude Rains

1925  Richard Burton

1935  Roy Scheider

1956  Sinbad

1959  MacKenzie Phillips

This Day in History...

1871: Reporter Henry Stanley goes with the greeting, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" rather than his first choice, "Wassa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ap?!"

Today's Birthdays!

   1913  Hedy Lamar

   1915  Sargent Shriver

   1918  Spiro Agnew

   1932  Carl Perkins

   1934  Carl Sagan

  1951  Lou Ferrigno

Sesame Street Nixes New "Cougar" Muppet

NEW YORK (AFA Newswire) Plans for a new Sesame Street character named "Mercury the Cougar," have been hastily scrapped after the would-be Muppet got fiercely negative responses from focus groups. 

Intended to be part of a year-long "Over 40" theme celebrating the show's 40th year on the air, Mercury was a muppet-of-a-certain-age with a mountain lion-inspired face and an eye for the younger set. 

Test audiences, however, were revolted by the character's baby-doll negligee that revealed sheer black stockings, garter belt and merry widow underneath. Reactions to Mercury's breathily voiced attentions toward Elmo and flirtatious manner with Big Bird ranged from "Ewwwwww" and "That's just wrong in so many ways" to audience members rushing the stage to attack the puppeteers.

Wardrobe aside, it may have been Mercury's ever-present wine spritzer and her catchphrase, "Happy to see me or just glad it's not Jeff Dunham's arm up your ass?" that proved to be the last straw. 

Sources inside the venerable children's show production company say that all of the prototypes for Mercury have been disassembled and an intern has been assigned to monitor YouTube for any test footage that might have got out of the studio. 

In Other News: Facebook will now allow linking to imaginary friends.

Dictionarium

More Proposed New Words for the Next Edition of the Dictionary:

Hippity-Hoppity: Rap music for pre-schoolers.

Perp-Plex: To confuse and/or befuddle a criminal while their attempt at a crime is in progress.

Mayan Culpa: What the 2012 doomsday predictors will have to start saying on December 22, 2012.

Today's Birthdays!

1911  Roy Rogers

1913  Vivien Leigh

1919  Myron Floren

1931  Ike Turner

1942  Art Garfunkel

1943  Sam Shepard

1959  Bryan Adams

1960  Tilda Swinton

1963  Tatum O'Neal

1965  Famke Janssen

1973  Johnny Damon

Answers to Last Week's Quiz

1)  Right here.

2)  Stuck in traffic.

3)  Nowhere special.

4)  A cardboard box in the attic.

5)  You don't wanna know.