Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 1, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s April 1, 2018: April Fool’s Day, so look for a lot of bogus stories and articles on the Web. (You won’t find any here, I promise). It’s National Sourdough Bread Day, celebrating one of America’s contributions to world gastronomy. It’s also Edible Book Day, when real books made out of food are created and then eaten.

But mainly, it’s EASTER!

And from reader Jon, who says “this is from the Lost Gospel of Gary Larson”:

From reader pyers:

In Germany, reader Robert found this poster, adding “Something fitting for Easter, and further proof for the secularization of Europe: A current election poster by German spoof party ‘The Party’. The caption says, colloquially ‘Don’t waste your cross!'” [JAC: I translate it literally as “Don’t create shit with your cross”, with the cross referring to the mark on one’s ballot. The rest says “On 24 September, choose “The Party”.]

And a true Easter tale from Malgorzata:

Today Andrzej cut my hair and he put the hair outside for birds. When we went to sit on the verandah for a while, we observed a very nice picture: a sparrow discovered my hair and was busily collecting it for its nest. It flew away with the beak full of white hair—it looked like whiskers! And this is not an “April Fool” story—it was real.

I wish I had a photo of that!

Here’s my annual Jewish Easter joke; I posted it last year, writing this:

I love a good Jewish joke, and this is an excellent one for Easter. It comes from the site Southern Jewish Humor, which gets the story from Eli N. Evans, who wrote The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South:

Evans said he searched for the best example he could find of Southern Jewish humor.  He told the story of a Jewish storekeeper in a small town who was approached by the Christian elders to show solidarity for their Easter holiday.

Mr. Goldberg was chagrined but when Easter came, after sunrise services on a nearby hilltop, the mayor, all the churchgoers, and the leading families in the city gathered in the town square in front of his store.  The store had a new sign but it was draped with a parachute.

After an introduction from the mayor, at the appointed hour, the owner pulled the rope and there it was revealed in all its wonder for all to see: “Christ Has Risen, but Goldberg’s prices remain the same.”

Now the day’s events. On April 1, 1867, Singapore became a British crown colony.  On this day in 1924, Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for participating in the “Beer Hall Putsch”. He served only nine months, and dictated the first volume of Mein Kampf while in jail.  Exactly nine years later, the Nazis, organized by Julius Streicher, carried out a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned business in Germany: the first in many anti-Semitic acts. On this day in 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the “Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act” into law, which required warning labels from the Surgeon General on all tobacco products, and banned cigarette advertising on the radio and television in the U.S. beginning January 1, 1971.  On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple, Inc. in Cupterino, California. The rest is history, and I’m using the company’s product at this moment.  On April 1, 1979, Iran, by a 99% popular vote, became an Islamic republic.  Exactly 20 years later, the Canadian territory of Nunavit was established, once part of the Northwest Territories.  On this day in 2001, Slobodan Milošević, former president of Yugoslavia, surrendered to police. He was tried on war crimes charges, and died in prison. Also on that day, the first modern country to allow same-sex marriage, the Netherlands, made it legal. Finally, on this day in 2004, Google announced it was making Gmail accessible to the public.

Notables born on April 1 include William Harvey (1578), Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755), Otto von Bismarck (1815), Lon Chaney (1883), Toshiro Mifune (1920), William Manchester (1922), Milan Kundera (1929), Debbie Reynolds (1932), and Jimmy Cliff (1948). Those who died on April 1 include Scott Joplin (1917), Max Ernst (1976), Marvin Gaye (1984; shot to death), Martha Graham (1991), Carrie “I fell in love with the actress” Snodgrass (2004), and Yevgeny Yevtushenko (last year).

Among those resurrected on this day was Jesus H. Christ (33 AD).

Here’s a nice Max Ernst painting, “Still Life with Cat” (or so it says on Pinterest; I’m not convince it’s an Ernst):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili made her own April Fool joke:

Hili: Mother of God is watching over Poland.
A: What nonsense is that?
Hili: April Fool!
In Polish:
Hili: Matka Boska ma Polskę w opiece.
Ja: Co ty opowiadasz?
Hili: Prima Aprilis!
In Winnipeg, staff Taskin has built a special “enrichment feeding device” for Gus, and filmed him using it. Here’s Taskin’s description:

Here’s a special Gus video for you. Gus is hunting for some of his kibble and a few of the shrimp treats he loves. I saw this idea on a Simon’s Cat video a while back and finally got around to trying it.

For a nice Easter read, I refer you to Heather Hastie’s new post: “Third Month Mania: Bracket of Bullshit (Semi-Final)”, in which she’s having a contest between the dumbest things that happened this year.

And now, the tweets:

From Matthew: the birth of a baby chameleon. We’ve been having some debate about whether this mimics defecation by the creature, hiding the baby. The poo of this species is indeed brown:

The athleticism of a determined moggie:

Two videos of a standoff between lions and hyenas over a lion kill. Hyenas win!

A handful of living jewels:

And breaching whales:

 

35 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Sourdough bread day? That would be a day worth getting up for if you were planning on sourdough pancakes. However, as all sourdough experts know you had to do your work the knight before and keep that starter going.

      1. Yes and no instructions required on the Jesus fiction. But with sourdough, if you don’t remove your starter portion first thing in the morning before you add the ingredients, you lose your starter for next time. I have done that a few times.

  2. Re: birds and hair – We have a pair of ravens that has been living in the trees just east of our barns for several years. Each year they replenish their nest around the time that the horses and donkey are shedding their undercoats. The donkey allows them to perch on his back and pick the fuzz out of his coat. Not symbiosis in a survival sense, but they are certainly helping each other out.

    The donkey does look pretty ridiculous, though, with a raven sitting on his butt.

    L

    1. And, with the greatest possible respect to our host, not an American gift to the world. Sourdough has been around for as long as grain has. Wikipedia says that French bakers introduced sourdough to California during the first gold rush.

      Anyway, it’s jolly nice; and I am about to have some with cheese and home-made damson chutney for lunch.

        1. Did you mean Poilane? 1945-2002? He may have perfected an excellent (and expensive) sourdough but he neither invented it nor introduced it to the rest of the world.

  4. Nothing to do with Easter, but here is Herb Silverman’s favorite Jewish joke:

    When a Jewish atheist heard that the best school in town happened to be Catholic, he enrolled his son. Things were going very well until one day the boy came home and said he had just learned all about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The father, barely able to control his rage, seized his son by the shoulders and said, “David, this is very important, so listen carefully: there is only ONE God—and we don’t believe in Him!”

    1. This one’s well-known but …

      During the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the IRA & Unionists would set up checkpoints outside sectional enclaves. A man drives up to one and is challenged:

      “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?”

      “I’m an atheist!”

      “But are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?”

      1. A guy is walking through Belfast one night when he feels something hard in his back and a voice says “Are ye Catholic or Protestant?”
        He almost panics because the wrong thing will get him mugged at the very least, but he thinks quickly and says “Neither, I’m Jewish”
        “Oh bad luck, ye just met the only Arab in Belfast!”

        cr

    1. ‘Easter’ is just the name used in Germanic languages for the event. The timing is openly nicked from the Judaic Passover, which also explains ‘paschal’, and Romance language names like ‘Pâques’.

      As Wikipedia says, practically nothing is known about ‘Eostre’ etc. It was the local name for a month around then, and it stuck.

      1. The Finish word “pääsiäinen” can be translated as “deliverance” or “emancipation”.

        The word was coined by the bishop Mikael Agricola who wrote the first Finnish-language books.

        It’s obvious he wanted the word to resemble those in Romance languages.

  7. The title of the Pinterest page may say “Max Ernst”, but under the picture, it says “Ernst Maass” – close, but no cigar. That’s also who this gallery attributes it to: https://www.gloggnerauktionen.ch/innerschweizer-kunst.html

    Maass doesn’t make it into the English wikipedia, but the German one has a bit about him: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Maass_(Maler)

    Also a surrealist painter, 1904-71, while Ernst was 1891-1976. I wonder if they got mixed up a lot while they were alive?

  10. In honor of the holiday, here is a joke:
    Jesus is playing a round of golf with Moses in Heaven and they come upon a water trap.

    Jesus turns to Moses and asks, “Didn’t you do something with water once?” and Moses says yeah, and proceeds to do the trick where he parts the waters.

    Jesus is impressed, and Moses in turn asks, “Didn’t you also do something with water?”

    Jesus says, “Yeah watch this” and proceeds to step out onto the water, but he sinks almost immediately to his knees. He gets out, gets a running start, and tries again, this time sinking to his waist. He comes out confused and embarrassed and Moses asks, “What was it you were trying to do?”

    “I used to be able to walk on water,” Jesus replies.

    “The last time you tried it,” Moses asks, “Did you have those holes in your feet?”

  11. Ha that jewish retailer Easter joke manages to poke fun at both christians and jews.

    Okay, this would get me arrested in Scotland but,

    It was a Jew who sunk the Titanic.

  12. The Christ-Goldberg story reminds of an inscription in huge letters many years ago on the facade of a bank in Vancouver, B.C.:
    Jesus saves, Moses invests.

    Many Easter eggs to you all.

    2. In the 1960s an evangelical church in Liverpool put up a huge poster saying “Jesus Saves!” By the next day someone had added: “And St John knocks in the rebound!”

      [Note for non-soccer fans: the great Scottish striker Ian St John played for Liverpool in the 60s and early 70s].

  13. Re. Debbie Reynolds – I once had a GF who was a nurse. There was a patient on her floor who was a friend or relative of DR. She came in and was trying to get some special favor for the patient and wasn’t getting anywhere. She starts sputtering, “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Debbie Reynolds!”

  16. It occurs to me that at least in English speaking countries, Christmas has inspired a great deal more engaging dramas- many by non-believers- than has Easter.
    “Christmas Carol”, O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” and many others come to mind. The Livermore Shakespeare festival never runs out of stuff for it’s annual staged readings of Christmas stories.

    By contrast there is shortage of really good Easter-related literature. The only really good examples I can think of are some works of Dostoevsky like “The Insulted and Injured” and “Crime and Punishment”.

    =-=-=

    I’m not fond of comparisons between American right wingers and Nazis but it occurs to me that both Hitler and Dinesh D’Souza wrote books while in jail.

  17. Calculate the date of Easter since 1583 using the following algorithm. Amaze your friend.

    In the text below, / represents an integer division neglecting the remainder, while % is division keeping only the remainder. So 30/7=4 , and 30%7=2 .
    a=year%19
    b=year/100
    c=year%100
    d=b/4
    e=b%4
    f=(b+8)/25
    g=(b-f+1)/3
    h=(19*a+b-d-g+15)%30
    i=c/4
    k=c%4
    l=(32+2*e+2*i-h-k)%7
    m=(a+11*h+22*l)/451
    Easter Month =(h+l-7*m+114)/31 [3=March, 4=April]
    p=(h+l-7*m+114)%31
    Easter Date=p+1 (date in Easter Month)

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