Entry: Posthumous execution

This link was sent to me by Erin... via iPhone. That's right, you can send me links even when you aren't sitting in front of your computer like a dork. Learn from Erin's example.

History has presented us with numerous cases, from different parts of the world, where a corpse has been ritually "killed" a second time. Because... people are dumb?

Some of these cases are understandable, like Vlad the Imapler, "who was beheaded following his assassination." You don't want to make a mistake and have that guy coming after you because you didn't kill him properly. Or Gerard Butler, who was beheaded and crucified after he died at the end of that movie. They were pretty grumpy with him, boy howdy, and desecrating a corpse can be a good method of working out those issues.

Some of them, however, are just ridiculous. "John Wycliffe (1328–1384), was burned as a heretic 45 years after he died." Why? This was the 14th century, nobody lived past 18! Nobody! Why would you get mad enough at some guy who was talking smack about Jesus to your grandfather to dig up and burn his corpse? There weren't any other live heretics running around to burn? Or at least more recently deceased heretics? I am so glad that I have Twitter to distract me from doing stupid crap like this.

There's also the dramatic example of Oliver Cromwell, whose corpse was exhumed, then hanged, drawn and quartered, and tossed into a pit sans head. His head was later given a burial in 1960. Lesson learned: don't try to kill your monarch. This also leads us to one of the best out-of-context sentences on the Wik: "See also Oliver Cromwell's head." He's so historically relevant, his dismembered body part has its own Wikipedia article!

Entry: Lynda Barry

I like to think that TILfW is generally a merry little blog, hewn from the sturdy wood of open-source encyclopedia articles and varnished with my weak attempts at humor. Its very concept is propelled by the sense of nerdish glee felt upon learning something interesting, and the resulting questions that crop up from wondering about said interesting fact.

Sometimes, however; sometimes learning can be a painful experience.

I had recently been rereading Lynda Barry's autobiographical graphic novel One! Hundred! Demons!, which I highly recommend if you're into that sort of thing, and went on the Wik' to find out more about her.

Apparently she and Ira Glass were a couple at one time. Initially kinda interesting, but then I found this in one of the footnotes, a quote from an article from some journal that doesn't change what it says according to the whims of random yahoos with a wifi signal (ie. a "reliable" source):

Barry does not remember the relationship fondly. The louse in her excellent One! Hundred! Demons! story "Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend" has been identified as Ira Glass. She is quoted in a 1998 Chicago Reader article as saying of Glass, "I went out with him. It was the worst thing I ever did. When we broke up he gave me a watch and said I was boring and shallow, and I wasn't enough in the moment for him, and it was over." Glass confirms, "Anything bad she says about me I can confirm."

My reality was shattered. Okay, not shattered, but the world seemed a little sadder and duller upon this discovery.

See, I'm sort of in love with him. Googling "crush on Ira Glass" yields 2,170 hits, which makes me feel less alone. He does appeal to the nerdy girl's sensibilities: smart, articulate, quirky, good listener, works for a nonprofit, wears funny glasses. I listen to the This American Life podcast every week, of course. I imagine Ira and I drinking chai lattes and browsing through flea markets, while he regales me with interesting stories unified around a theme; sometimes our friends David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell would be there too, and coincidentally have their own anecdotes to contribute. But this is apparently never going to happen (besides the fact that he's significantly older than me and lives halfway across the country and is married and probably not into girls who live with their parents) because he is a jerk. Or at least he was a jerk in the Eighties.

I'm too heartbroken to pick on the article author for his or her awkward use of "confirm."

Entry: The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover

(Before I start the post, it's only fair to warn you that it contains spoilers for The Monster at the End of This Book. I give away the ending. If this is a problem, visit the children's section of your local library before continuing.)

One thing I hear a lot is, "OMG, Regina, you're so pretentious." All the freaking time! Even more often than "Ma'am, you're making a scene."

And, okay, it is kind of true. Every cultural object I love is meta-this and post-that. And I thought it all started in college, or maybe late high school, when I saw Being John Malkovich and it opened my eyes to a whole new world of highly theoretical intellectual masturbation. And if it features John Cusack in some way, so much the better.

The Wik', however, has proven me wrong. My love of post-modernism apparently extends back to early childhood.

When I was a wee child, and the family computer was only useful for playing Reader Rabbit, one of my favorite books was The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover. We probably owned a copy of it, but my memory situates me in my pediatrician's waiting room, reading it with my mom. I liked Grover, probably because he was the only creature in existence more neurotic than I. (Well, okay, Telly could have probably benefited from the occasional benzodiazepine tablet too.)

Anyway: the Wikipedia article describes The Monster at the End of this Book as a "post-modern children's book" that is self-reflexive; Grover is conscious of the fact that he is a character in a book (he tries to stop the reader from turning the page by tying the pages together). I guess you could also argue that since it ends with the reader and Grover confronting the monster at the end of the book-- which turns out to be Grover himself-- thus forcing Grover to accept his identity as a monster, it is a sort of bildungsroman as well. Although, he doesn't really age during the course of the book. An $80,000 liberal arts education put to use, ladies and gentlemen.

I was so excited to have one of my favorite books growing up put in this light. Next time I'm at a party drinking PBR from a keg and feeling insecure because I'm not dressed like I got attacked by a Goodwill, I'll be sure to smugly mention the fact that I've been into metafiction since I could read.

That, and I was totally into Rilo Kiley way before they got all mainstream.

Entry: War Pigs

Last night's Daily Show was a repeat, but it did feature a bit on how funding is going to be cut for laser-mounted jet fighters. Tragic, but as it turns out, our ancestors had a [technically] long-range weapon that was six million times more badass and can be had for a fraction of the price: a herd of pigs set on fire. The finest in anti-war-elephant combat.

"Aelian reports that Antipater's siege of Megara during the Wars of the Diadochi was broken when the Megarians poured oil on a herd of pigs, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy's massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming squealing pigs often killing great numbers of the army the elephant was part of."

Despite that final run-on sentence, that's quite the mental image.

Now I know that some of you want to reply "Mmm, bacon." Guys, that's disgusting. Those pigs were covered in tar sometimes.

Entry: Jeffrey Hudson

Between this guy and Jack Churchill, I think I need to start a new category of entries specific to crazy-ass people doing crazy-ass things. Or some categorization of a similar nature. I'm going to quote the first paragraph of the article; I can't imagine how I could possibly embellish.

"Jeffrey Hudson (1619 – circa 1682) was an English dwarf at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria. He was famous as the "Queen's dwarf" and "Lord Minimus", and was considered one of the "wonders of the age" because of his extreme but well-proportioned smallness. He fought with the Royalists in the English Civil War and fled with the Queen to France but was expelled from her court when he killed a man in a duel. He was captured by Barbary pirates and spent 25 years as a slave in North Africa before being ransomed back to England."

To quote Ryan North: "Daaaaamn!"

According to the article, he joined the court of Queen Henrietta Maria when he was presented to her in a pie in a banquet. I thought that was pretty awesome-- "Oh man, he so had the edge over the dwarves who were just faxing in their cover letter and resume!"-- until I read on and discovered that he was in fact given to the Queen as a gift from the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, who could apparently give their subjects as housewarming presents in those days. Um. Yay democracy?

Entry: Proust Questionnaire

If you're a highbrow snobby type like me (or if you've ever been bored and channel surfing on a weekend afternoon), you've probably seen Inside the Actor's Studio with James Lipton on Bravo. Or maybe you've seen Will Ferrell parodying Lipton on SNL. If you haven't done any of the above, perhaps you have the vivacity of imagination required to summon up an admittedly pretentious show where a middle-aged man with a goatee and glassy stare interviews various actors about their craft.

Are we all on the same page? Good.

One of the best-known aspects of this show is the ten short questions that Lipton asks his guests. This is commonly known as the Proust Questionnaire, named for the author Marcel Proust (aka the Guy that Steve Carrel's character was talking about in Little Miss Sunshine). The questionnaire is often misattributed to Proust; the truth is that they were a turn of the century fad, published as diary-like books known as confession albums. Proust was simply a fan of them; two manuscripts of these lists filled out by him have been found (and one was sold at auction for over 100,000 euros). The list of questions and his answers can be found in the article.

It's nice to see a writer of such great renown humanized (his favorite fictional hero is Hamlet); he liked to do little egocentric memes from time to time, just like the rest of us. On the other hand, how far would he have gone if allowed to indulge? Just imagine what his Livejournal might have looked like.

Entry: the Butterfly's Evil Spell

If you've ever been a pie-eyed young poetry geek (like me), you've probably read-- if not fallen in love with-- Frederico Garcia Lorca, the fey modernist Spaniard who wrote about love and gypsies and the moon. Well, he apparently also wrote the occasional awful play.

No, Lorca defenders, I'm not talking about The House of Bernarda Alba, I'm talking about his first attempt, The Butterfly's Evil Spell. A symbolist work, the play is about a wounded butterfly (as far as I can tell, a literal butterfly) and a cockroach whose love for her goes unrequited. Yeah. It was cancelled after four performances; later in his life Garcia Lorca would claim that Mariana Pineda, which debuted seven years later, was his first play. Kinda makes me feel better about the crap that I try to write.

Entry: Heil Honey I'm Home!

*sigh*

Okay.

Heil Honey I'm Home was a British sitcom that touted itself as a lost series from the 1950s, and therefore was styled to parody shows like Leave it to Beaver. The main characters were Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. Yeah. Apparently most of the plots revolved around Adolf's inability to get along with their neighbors. The Goldensteins. I say "apparently" because the network pulled it after one episode.

There has to be a Valkyrie joke in there somewhere, but I'm too busy being flabbergasted to make it.

Entry: Hooverball

I was linked to this article by Kirk. Thanks, Kirk!

Hooverball is a game, played with a medicine ball, developed for former President Herbert Hoover by his personal physician.

"Now why," I can hear you asking, "didn't Hoover go to pilates class like everyone else?" Because when you're the leader of the free world, you get your very own sport, God dammit! In fact, all the presidents have had their own sports. And believe me, there is nothing quite as exhilarating as eXtreme Taftgliding.

The game itself, as I understand it, is something like a cross between volleyball and catch. You have two teams separated by an 8-foot net, and a 6-pound medicine ball is thrown back and forth. You have to stand still after catching the ball, and you can't throw from front court to front court. Because any attempts to spike a 6-pound medicine ball will result in pain. Winning point is scored by the first team that creates policies that fail to combat massive economic downturn.

Entry: Jean-Baptiste Lully

17th century French composer, for those of you not in the know, and nominee for Lamest Death Ever.

Lully was conducting a piece at a concert in honor of Louis XIV recovering from illness-- and before I go any further, yes, that beeping is the irony detector going off. Anywho, in the 17th century, conductors kept time by pounding a big stick against the floor, instead of waving a little stick, as is the modern fashion. Lully botched, as the gamers say, and pounded his conducting staff on his foot. The resulting wound developed gangrene, Lully refused to have his foot amputated, and he died. Because he was a dumbass. Twice over.

Entry: the Monster Study

A psychologist/speech pathologist from the University of Iowa named Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor, one of his students, conducted The Monster Study in 1939. (The study's name was given by Johnson's peers; read more to find out why!) Johnson was trying to find out if praise would reduce stuttering in children, and, conversely, if ridicule would induce stuttering.

Oh, it gets better.

The experiment was carried out over 6 months on 22 subjects, ages 5-15, who lived in an orphanage in western Iowa. (Gets around that annoying "parental consent" issue, decades before the phrase was even uttered.) 10 children in the experiment stuttered. They were separated into two groups: the experimental group, which was told that they did not stutter, and the control group, which was told that they did. Another 12 children who spoke normally were also studied: half of them were told that their speech was fine, and the other half were told that they stuttered (even though they didn't). I think the article itself sums the results up pretty well: "Letters between Mary Tudor and Wendell Johnson that were written shortly after the experiment ended showed that the children's speech had deteriorated significantly. Mary Tudor returned to the orphanage three times to try and reverse the negative effects caused by the experiment but lamented the fact that she was unable to provide enough positive therapy to reverse the deleterious effects."

So, I think that I've learned two important things from Wikipedia this time around:
1. Being a douchebag to children does not make them stutter.
2. Being a ward of the state sucks.