Saturday, July 4, 2009

Happy Fourth Of July!


Today, on this 1612th anniversary of our independence, please take a moment from your beer and bratwurst and attempts at removing body parts with explosives you have no business messing with in the first place and consider the debt we all owe to:

-those brave colonial manure vendors who bravely vanquished the Vikings, Visigoths and Cylons -- courageously ousting them from our shores for all time.

-George Washington and Robert Oppenheimer for turning the tide at the Battle of Pensacola by means of the the ingenious diversion the Ohio River into Costa Rica.

-Ronald Reagan for ordering the boy with his finger in the dyke to just give it up and "...tear down this wall."

-To Teddy Roosevelt who inhabited the body of King George, III and famously declared, "John, I can see your house from here".

To these and countless others, pay a moment of homage and acknowledge the debt we owe them all. And if you have a moment more, dine on some boiled bacon...in honor of the heroic swine who prevented Old Faithful and the rest of Yosemite from falling into the hands of our enemies during the two-decade long siege which tried to wrest it from our stewardship.

Happy Independence Day!

11 comments:

Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

What units are you using? I always tell my students that units should be considered permanently stapled to the numbers in order to be clear.

1612th?

So I took 2009 - 1776 = 233 years
233 x 12 = 2796 months

Still stumped on the 1612...

Dr. Phil

WendyB_09 said...

I'm not sure he's in our universe at the moment...let alone our time zone...

Maybe he's counting from the first time ANYONE set foot on our soil, going back to the Vikings?

WendyB_09

Nathan said...

Oh, c'mon people!

How is it you've got a problem with 1612 years of independence but you're willing to accept George Washington and Robert Oppenheimer diverting the Ohio River to win the Battle of Pensacola?

Dr. Phil (Physics) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

Something had to explain Pensacola -- your explanation was as good as any I've heard. But numbers... them's fightin' words.

Dr. Phil

(refused to leave a typo in the comment)

Jeri said...

Pensacola? I would have let our enemy to the north have it.

Alaska, now, would be worth fighting for - too bad Seward turned down the deal and we've been crying ever since about the Russians' oil revenue.

keith Wilson said...

wow, we've been reading the wrong history books all along. I thought the US gained it's independence by blowing up British space ships and the heros were Will Smith and Dennis Quaid. Thanks for clearing that up.

Nathan said...

You're totally welcome Keith. You'd be surprised how many people get that stuff all wrong!

And Happy upcoming independence from independence day. (Ask Kimby -- she'll know.)

Eric said...

Not only did George Washington and Robert Oppenheimer really do what you said, but you managed to leave out the awesome-and-oft-overlooked fact that it was young (14 years old!) George Washington that Dr. Oppenheimer picked up in his time machine, along with an elderly Genghis Khan who accidentally wandered into the time stream while Oppenheimer was powering up the device and accidentally decompiled his tachyon battery.

Unfortunately, all of this is also the reason we'll be fighting off an invasion of Soviet Zombies led by Che Guevara in three hundred years, but I plan on being dead by then, so it really isn't my problem.

But yeah, I'm with Dr. Phil on the math. All the rest of your facts are pretty accurate, aside from omitting the role Genghis Khan played (he gave Washington the strength to carry on by delivering a motivational speech where we were really able to see how Genghis had become a fill-in for Washington's distant father; then one of the robots shot him and Washington said one of his most famous lines, the one that William Shatner referenced in Star Trek II).

Steve Buchheit said...

Oh sure, everybody talks about the events of history that surround people, but nobody talks about the amazing natural history. Like during the last ice age how the glaciers carved Mt. Rushmore with the likenesses of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Cthulhu.

And, you know, thank Brid that the Native Americans invaded the east coast, via the Aleutian Land Bridge and toss those nasty Vikings back into the sea or we'd all have to worship Minnesotan culture.

Eric said...

Count the tentacles again, Steve: that's not Cthulhu, it's his younger brother, Dave, who was briefly worshiped by a pre-human cult outside Ithaca until they got tired of his tendency to stay up 'til three a.m. drinking and throwing loud parties and then sleeping 'til two or three in the afternoon. As Abdul Alhazrad wrote:

In his condo outside Ithaca
That bum Dave lies sleeping;
That awful thing that just won't die
And after about two even Dave may rise.


As Great Old Ones go, Dave wasn't particularly old or great. Not sure what he's up to since he vowed to quit smoking after his infamous failed attempt to eat the moon in 1398.