| Pancakes on Wednesdays |
|
|
American Pancakes Welcome to Pancakes on Wednesdays. Wednesday, December 3, 2003 |
|
|
Here is an amalgamation of trivial facts and seemingly useless data. Do not forget to hit the hyperlinks. We have links, lots of them. 
|
| HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS |
|
With honour. We are in the arena of sesquipedalian words—those a foot and a half long, whose prime characteristic is their length rather than their sense or value. Any word used by James Joyce (in Ulysses) and William Shakespeare (in Love’s Labour Lost) can’t be entirely dismissed from the canon of English, even though the former borrowed it from the latter, who in turn borrowed it from Latin. The only other person who seems to have used it, ever, was John Taylor, a Thames waterman known as the Water Poet, in the middle of the seventeenth century. Shakespeare’s wondrous creation appears in Act 5, Scene 1:
I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;
for thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier
swallowed than a flap-dragon.
(Somebody’s now sure to ask me about flap-dragon. It was the name given to a game in which the players snatched raisins out of a dish of burning brandy and extinguished them in their mouths before eating them. By extension, it was the burning raisins used in the game.) An anagram of honorificabilitudinitatibus is Hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi. In English, this says: “These plays, F. Bacon’s offspring, are preserved for the world”. This little gem of misapplied cryptography was presented by Sir Edwin Lawrence-Durning in 1910 in his book Bacon is Shakespeare as a hidden message left by Francis Bacon, who (as some are convinced) actually wrote the plays usually said to be by Shakespeare. This is all nonsense, of course—as every schoolboy knows, they were really written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. But the same set of letters, tested in the common tongue, makes up Inhibit in fabulous, idiotic art, Inhabit furious libido in attic, Habitual if ionic distribution, and Hi! fabulous tit in idiotic brain. What would Sir Edwin have made of all these? |
|
|
|
Happy Birthday Joseph Conrad 1857
"Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it. "
Joseph Conrad 
|
|
| Happy Birthday Carlos Montoya 1903 
|
|
|
Toddler Breakfast
- Two pancakes with plenty of syrup, eat one with fingers, rub in hair.
Glass of milk; drink half, stuff other pancake in glass.
After breakfast, pick up yesterday's sucker from rug, lick off fuzz, put it on the cushion of best chair.
|
|
-
Would you like a Mercator Projection with your pancakes? -
|
|
|
Happy Birthday Ferlin Husky 1927 
|
|
| Todays Wednesday field trip takes us to the North Pole. |
|
| Happy Birthday Andy Williams 1929 
-
LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND -
On a day like today
We pass the time away
Writing love letters in the sand How you laughed when I cried
Each time I saw the tide
Take our love letters from the sand You made a vow that you would ever be true
But somehow that vow meant nothing to you Now my broken heart aches
With every wave that breaks
Over love letters in the sand Now my broken heart aches
With every wave that breaks
Over love letters in the sand
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happy Birthday
-
Jean-Luc Godard 1930 -
|
|
A Helpful Man
A man is driving down the road and notices a car in the ditch. He doesn't usually help many people so he drives on by. Then he notices that a pretty woman is the driver so he goes back to help.
As he is hooking his truck to her car he says, “You know, you are the first pregnant woman I've ever helped out of a ditch.”
“But I'm not pregnant,” she says.
“Well, you're not out of the ditch yet,” he says.
|
|
| Happy Birthday Ozzy Osbourne 1948 
|
|
- What do you call a handcuffed man? Trustworthy.
|
|
-
We are counting cartons -
|
|
| What is the wing speed of a South African Swallow? It’s a simple question of weight ratios. |
|
| Happy Birthday Daryl Hannah 1960 
|
|
| Who is on First Base! |
|
 |
|
-
On this day: 1828 - Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States. -
|
|
|
On this day: 1931 - Alka Seltzer was sold for the first time. Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is!® 
|
|
| On this day: 1947 - The Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened at Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theater. I am an excellent driver. 
|
|
| On this day: 1950 - Paul Harvey began his national radio broadcast.
"In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these."
-
|
|
| On this day: 1964 - Police arrested about 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley. The arrest took place one day after the students staged a massive sit-in inside an administration building. |
|
-
On this day: -
1967 - In Cape Town, South Africa, a team of surgeons headed by
Dr. Christian Barnard, performed the first human heart transplant on
Louis Washkansky. Washkansky only lived 18 days. -
|
|
|
On this day: 1973 - Pioneer 10 sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter. The first outer-planetary probe had been launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on March 2, 1972. 
|
|
|
On this day: 1988 - Barry Sanders of Oklahoma State University won the Heisman Trophy. We are counting cards. Heisman Trophy winners 
|
|
|
On this day: 1999 - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) lost radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander as it entered Mars' atmosphere. The spacecraft was unmanned. 
|
|
 Don't forget the Maple Syrup! |
|
| Pancakes Wednesdays |
| Definitely |
| |
