Rusty's Blog

“I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”

– George Bernard Shaw, refusing to accept money for his Nobel Prize, Nov. 18, 1926

Today, November 18, is my birthday. Wikipedia has a massive list of notable events which have taken place on November 18 in years past. Here are a few highlights:

1421 – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people in the Netherlands.

1863 – King Christian IX of Denmark decides to sign the November constitution, which declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark. This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and leads to the German–Danish war of 1864.

1901 – George Gallup, American statistician and opinion pollster was born.

1909 – Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by order of José Santos Zelaya.

1923 – Ted Stevens, American politician, was born.

1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon stars Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday. ¹

1929 – Grand Banks earthquake: Off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula.

1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini’s disastrous invasion of Greece.

1978 – Jonestown incident: In Guyana, Jim Jones leads his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide that claims 918 lives in all, 909 of them at Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is assassinated by members of Peoples Temple shortly beforehand. ²

1982 – Duk Koo Kim dies unexpectedly from injuries sustained during a 14-round match against Ray Mancini in Las Vegas, Nevada, prompting reforms in the sport of boxing. ³

1987 – Iran-Contra Affair: The U.S. Congress issues its final report on the Iran-Contra Affair.

1987 – King’s Cross fire: In London, 31 people die in a fire at the city’s busiest underground station at King’s Cross St Pancras.

1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is passed in the House of Representatives. ⁴

1999 – In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when a massive bonfire under construction collapses.

2002 – James Coburn, American actor, died. ⁵

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¹ – Terrible if you are a commie hippy like George Bernard Shaw who considers Disney Corporation a monument to evil capitalist greed, or at least would if you were still alive.

² – Bonus points for being the year of my birth as well. I think my mom might have saved a newspaper with this story on the front page.

³ – There was reform, so yay?

⁴ – Terrible if you’re a bigot who thinks Mexicans want to “steal our jobs.”

⁵ – Arguably a good thing since it decreases the likelihood of a sequel to Maverick.

My senior year of high school, close to the time I turned 18, my classmates and I filled out a survey. A lot of it was the sort of thing people fill out in MySpace surveys now: favorite bands, favorite animal, favorite activity. Some of it was about The Future.

There were people who took the survey very seriously and put in an effort to sound cheerful and as hopeful about The Future as possible. After all, their children and their children’s children would read this record of their thoughts, frozen in place for posterity.

Others used the questionnaire as an outlet for their hostility toward the high school experience, packing as much cynicism and sarcasm into their answers as possible. The Future as these folks imagined it was a bleak place, even at its best full of black humor where they were the center of the jokes.

The answers were ultimately printed in the yearbook in little sidebars, typically with the contrasting attitudes juxtaposed next to each other. You can probably guess which approach I took when I filled out my survey. I made frequent appearances in the ‘cynical/sarcastic/pessimistic/bitter’ column.

One such sidebar was titled “Happily Ever After,” where answers to the question “what are your goals in life?” or something similar were printed. The answers were as follows:

Cheerful, hopeful person: “Major in biology, go to med school, and have a career in ER.”

Bitter, cynical me: “Live to 30.”

That answer carried extra resonance because there were people I went to school with who genuinely believed I wouldn’t live to 30.

By my junior year or so, I had picked up a reputation as someone who drank heavily. While I certainly got drunk from time-to-time, this reputation was largely an exaggeration. For whatever reason, I never tried to dispell that myth, and even perpetuated it a few times.

There were also people who thought I wasn’t right in the head. I was a weird, insecure, often angry kid and there were a lot of things I did then that I still can’t logically explain. The committee in charge of a senior awards ceremony wanted to name me “Most Likely to Appear on America’s Most Wanted,” but I asked them not to. So I can’t argue much there.

While I always believed there was mostly no truth to the “Live to 30″ answer, my older, slightly less cynical self knows that tempting fate just for the sake of doing it isn’t always a great idea. I’m agnostic, but I also think if there was a God, He or She would have to enjoy gallows humor, and would pick people like me off just for saying things like that.

So, I’m breathing a little sigh of relief to have outlived my cynical high school survey answer today. And I’m pleasantly surprised to report that if I were filling out a similar survey about The Future now, that at least some of the time I’d be the dorky kid who wrote cheerful things for posterity.

We started celebrating by eating at Radial, our favorite breakfast spot, this morning. Then I gave her the present I bought her, a robotic baby chick from Thinkgeek (pictured above). Tonight we’re going to have dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. And, you know, anything else she can think of that she wants between now and later.

I haven’t been in much of a blogging mood lately beyond NCAA Picks. It is worth noting that — barring another mishap of some sort — I’ll be having my wisdom tooth surgery for real on Monday. More on that in my original post about it.

Other items:

There’s a presidential election in less than a month. I have not written much about it here. Maybe not anything actually. If you can look at the last eight years and say, “oh yeah, gimme some more of that!” there’s probably not much I could say to you that’s going to change your mind.

I did have some fun with Photoshop the other night as I was waiting for the second presidential debate to start though, my friend:

Perhaps I’m a masochist, because I bought tickets to the Tennessee-UGA game this weekend. I’ll be traveling with Alyssa, who is good people even if she is a UGA fan.

UGA is a 13-point favorite despite losing the last two games by a combined score of 84-47. Even though history tells us anything can happen in this game, I picked UGA to cover in my picks. The tickets weren’t expensive, fortunately, and they do sell alcohol in Athens the last time I checked.

My 30th birthday is coming up in just over a month. I have no idea how I want to go about marking the occasion. Any ideas?