Capitalist Candy: A Halloween Spectacular

        Ok, so this is going to sound like a crazy conspiracy theory, so just bear with me here. Okay? Okay. Remember the little shift in daylight savings time in 2007? If you don't, Congessed passed a bill called "the energy policy act."And  now instead of ending the week of October, daylightsavings now ends the first week of November. And it was all to make you buy more candy. 

                   Capitalist swine

        Alright, so the whole peropose of the "energy policy act" was, as you may have guessed, to have America conserve more energy. And even though there is no actual proof that the bill would work (in fact there was evidence to the contrary) the bill was passed. Why? 

      On a completely unrelated note, did you know that the candy industry can make over $2 billion per Halloween? 

      Ok I lied. The above statement was not unrelated. The biggest groups pushing for the bill to pass were in the candy industry. Giving kids another hour of candy gathering time would result in a small fortune for them. And it did. And still does. The end.

      And that's the story of how the candy industry controlled time. 

        I'm pretty sure this would make

        a great Disney movie starring

        Scrooge McDuck. 

Angels are actually Terrifying

       
 Imagine an angel. A divine winged human being surrounded by an aura of gentle white light.

So angelic.

           Now imagine that image was eaten and regurgitated by a codeine-fueled nightmare. Actual biblical angels look something like that.
           You see, painters took a lot of liberties with appearance of angels. They made them friendly and majestic. They also made them humanoid. Ultimately, angels looked a lot more... weird... before painters edited them.

        For example, lets look at a seraphim, the only type of angel that actually has wings.

          Oh did I mention it has six? And they're not for flying, they cover the body of the angel. Because if you saw the angel's real body, you would be either blinded or incinerated.

          Not "trippy" enough for you? Fine. There are also angels called thrones, which are described in the bible as "wheels within wheels." Oh yea, and the wheels are covered in eyes.

Click to see throne

         At least none of the angels are overtly terrifying. Ha! You obviously haven't seen the cherubim yet.
         "What, the cute little pudgy-baby-cupid type things?" You may be thinking.
         Well technically. Except they look like this:

Click to see Cherubim

      Yup, Ezekiel 10:14 describes them as "frightening four-headedmonstrosities that included the faces of a man, an eagle, and a lion." And sometimes he has a goat or an ox head in there just for good measure.

         The bottom line is that angels are terrifying.

Terrifying I tell you.

Fanta-stic Origins

         The year is 1941, the United States have officially entered the second World War, and Coca-Cola is placed in a rather difficult situation: "Should we continue selling Coke to Germany and be ostracized by everyone forever, or should we not sell to America's now sworn enemies?"

I don't care. Let them all burnnnn.

            Unsurprisingly, Coca-Cola opted to stop shipping their product to the poor thirsty Nazis. This put a man named Max Keith in a pickle. You see, Keith was the head of operations for Coca-Cola in Germany. And now that Coke and it's secret ingredients were gone from the Fatherland, there was like, figuratively nothing to drink.

God forbid...

           So acting quickly, Keith threw a bunch of stuff in a bottle and called it a beverage. His concoction included whey (watery part of milk after curds have formed) and pomace (stuff left over after pressing fruit), all of which was drown in a bunch of fake sugar. He dubbed the "product" Fanta, and abbreviation for phantasie, the German word for fantasy.

Pictured: whey. My definition of  "fantasy" is a little
different than Keith's.

         Fanta was largely successful in Germany, especially towards the later part of the war, where food shortages ran rampant. Fanta was enjoyed by many hungry Germans as a broth for soup.

         After the war ended, Coca-Cola returned to the now Hitler-free country and Fanta was abolished on the basis that it was practically inedible. That is, until around 10 years later, when Pepsi began enlarging their line of beverages. Coca-Cola, realizing that just brown sugar-water might not be able to compete with Pepsi's variety, brought back Fanta (only with a few changes in the ingredients, making sure it was, you know, fit for consumption).

And people have been enjoying Fanta ever since. I think. 

         

The Legacy of William Howard Taft

         Here are some historical facts about William Howard Taft:

 Taft was the 27th president of the United States from 1909-1913.
He was hand picked by Theodor Roosevelt to be his successor.
After his presidency, he went on to become Chief Justice of the United States. Making him the only president to ever be both.
He sought world peace.
Historians generally remember him as just an all around good president.
And once he got stuck in the White House's bath tub.

      ...Which one of those facts are you going to remember about him?

America, even our president is so fat he gets stuck in bath tubs.

        Yup, at 330 pounds, Taft was America's largest president. 

  

        When someone finally found him, it took four men to get him out.

      

"Maybe If I grow a fantastic mustache, that's what people will remember me for!"

       Later, a new bathtub was installed specifically for Taft. It could fit four full grown men. 

       ... I feel like I should write more, but I mean, President got stuck in a bathtub. What more do you want?

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.