Lobster: From Rags to Riches

               Here the story of a boy named Billy.

Billy

              Billy lives in the year 1801, and tonight he's taking a gal named Mindy out for a fancy dinner!

Mindy

              Billy decides to take Mindy to his favorite sea-side restaurant. Once there, Billy spends all the money he's earned inhaling asbestos as a carpenters assistant on a fresh, luscious, lobster. Mindy slaps Billy, and walks away. Never to be seen again.

              What did Billy do wrong?

              He ordered lobster! Duh! 

              

              You see, lobster used to be considered a horrendous thing to eat. It was next to grasshopper on the stuff you want to enter your mouth list. It's like half spider, half insect, all disgustingness. British POWs during the Revolutionary war complained because they were being fed too much lobster. 

Who would pay to eat this?

               So what changed? 

               Well, with the invention of railroads, rich people in the middle of the country (who didn't know what lobsters were) were tricked into buying massive amounts of them. These rich people promptly found that lobster is very good at soaking up lots of butter. 

                And thus began the dawn of the $800 lobster dish.           

The Confederate Flag, A Tale of Undecidedness

               Quick, what does the confederate flag look like? Chances are, you thought of this:

If you didn't, well then good for you. 

                  But it totally isn't the Confederate flag.  Well, at least not the first. 

Yup, it turns out all those proud American citizens sporting their Confederate tattoos are totally wrong. Who would have guessed such generally intelligent people would be mislead? 

Beats me.

                  Anyway, incase you were wondering, the first Confederate flag was the "Stars and Bars" flag. The reason it was eventually abolished in 1863, was that it showed 13 stars (originally 7), and there was only 11 states in the Confederacy. The other two represented Missouri and Kentucky, states that the South really wanted to have join up with them, but never did. 

"We'll just keep these stars here, just incase you want 'em later
or something."

                  The problem with this flag was that it looked too much like the already existing American flag. So in 1862, the South released their new "Stainless Banner," which was pretty much solid white. (Typical South am I right?). Unfortunately, it looked very similar to a flag of surrender (Civil War foreshadowing?) and was scraped shortly after it's release onto the battlefield. 

                 On March 4, 1865, with the war nearing an end, the Confederate Congress decided to adopt yet another flag. Nick named "the Blood Stained Banner," it turned out to be the final flag for the Confederacy. 

"I don't know guys... Lets just put "Not Union" on there somewhere."

              "But what is the Confederate Flag the we know and love?" You are probably thinking. Well, that particular flag was used by some self proclaimed "Rebel Companies" in the Pacific during World War II.

                So there you go, everything you know is a lie.

             

Charles Bedaux's Exploration

            Can you guess what Edmund Hillary (one of the first men to climb and explore mount Everest), Neil Armstrong (first man to set foot on and explore the moon), and Captain James Cook (first captain to cross and explore the Arctic Circle) have in common? If you guessed that none of them were pimps, you would be correct! This is because pimps, generally speaking, have no credentials for exploring uncharted places. However, this did not stop one monsieur Charles Bedaux from attempting to explore a trail for an Alaskan-Canadian highway back in 1934.

At least he'd be warm.

          Bedaux's expedition brought only the most essential items to their survival, to insure quick travel and survival. And by most essential, I mean his expedition consisted of: two limousines, five Citroen half-tracks (which were newly invented and supplied by a close friend), 130 horses loaded with caviar and champagne, a film crew, a few lucky scientific surveyors, his wife, a butler, a valet, a maid, and last but definitely not least, his mistress. Because pimp.

"Damn, my favorite chalice! I knew I forgot something!"

           Needless to say, the expedition went horribly. His vehicles were being slowed down by mud, so Bedaux threw out the surveying equipment to lighten the load. He then proceeded to filmed his team dumping a few of the half-tracks over a cliff to see if they would explode. They eventually turned around due to heavy snow 15 days away from their destination, because one can only be entertained for so long by caviar, demolition, mistresses, and exploration.

 

Needs more explosions. And champagne. 

          Though the exploration was most probably just a publicity stunt, there has been some speculation that it was actually part of a Nazi plan to provide easier access to America from up north. This theory was wide spread by a movie later released about Bedaux's expedition entitled "The Champagne Safari."

I expected him to be wearing at least one comically large hat
with a feather sticking out of it.