★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
September 24, 2013

★~ “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” F. Scot Fitzgerald (Beloved Infidel)

★~ National Punctuation Day: 

“We danced all night; it was divine.” describes one case in point. The first and second halves of which each other do anoint. “We danced all night. It was divine.” How choppy and how stilted! Without the semicolon how the narrative gets wilted! ~ Tony Noland

Happy Punctuation Day!!!!! A celebration of the comma, correctly uses quotation marks, and proper use of periods semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis. 

★~ National Bluebird of Happiness Day:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/IERLMXtMZag[/youtube]

be like I, hold your head up high,
’til you see a ray of light and cheer

and so remember this, life is no abyss
somewhere there’s a bluebird of happiness

–Bluebird of Happiness, Harmati & Heyman (1934)

The bluebird is native to North America, and has become a worldwide symbol of love and happiness. The iconic “bluebird of happiness” can be traced back to at least 1908, when it appeared in a Nobel Prize-winning play, “The Blue Bird.”

Celebrate Blue Bird of Happiness Day by watching, The 1976 film version of “The Blue Bird” with an all-star cast, including Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Ava Gardner and Cicely Tyson, or just happily sip a Blue Bird Cocktail or both if it makes you happy.

Pursuit of Happiness Cocktail

2 oz Pineapple Juice
1 oz Aged White Rum (like Denizen)
3/4 oz Blue Curacao
garnish of a slice of Pineapple with or without a little bluebird pick

Combine the juice, rum, and curacao over ice and shake til you’re feeling happy. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a slice of pineapple. Making a little themed bird picks is optional but might be fun!

★: Cherries Jubilee Day:

The original Cherries Jubilee recipe (cherries, krisch or brandy liqueur) is attributed to French chef Auguste Escoffie who prepared the dish for one of Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebrations. It is unclear whether it first appeared at the Golden Jubilee in 1887 or the Diamond Jubilee in 1897, but it quickly became one of the most fashionable desserts of the era. For many years, cherries jubilee was a standard menu item at America’s finest restaurants, reaching the peak of its popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.

Has anyone tried Cherries Jubilee since last years El Morno?

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1789 – President George Washington signed the Judiciary Act, creating the U.S. Supreme Court and the office of Attorney General. The Attorney General can investigate cases of treason and espionage. The office was created too late for the Benedict Arnold case. On this date in 1780, Arnold fled to a British ship on the Hudson River after his plot to surrender West Point to the British was foiled.

♥~ 1940 – Flinging a Wing Ding was recorded by Bob Chester.

♥~ 1961 – “Hey, Rock, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat … ‘Guess I don’t know my own strength!” Bullwinkle J. Moose and his friend, Rocket J. (Rocky) Squirrel, were seen in prime time for the first time on NBC-TV. The Sunday night cartoon (7-7:30 p.m.) was called The Bullwinkle Show. Originally Bullwinkle and Rocky appeared on ABC in a weekday afternoon series, Rocky and His Friends.

♥~ 1964 – The Munsters premiered on CBS-TV. The Munster fun ran for seventy episodes — through Sep 1, 1966.

♥~ 1966 – Jimmy Hendrix changed the spelling of his name to Jimi.

♥~ 1968 – 60 Minutes debuted on CBS.

♥~  1975 – The government conspiracy thriller “Three Days of the Condor”, starring Robert Redford as a CIA employee, was released.  The movie opened a year after Redford starred in “The Great Gatsby,” based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was born on September 24th, 1896.

♥~ 1977- The Love Boat set sail — on ABC-TV.  The voice of Ernie Anderson, will always be remembered for his intros announcing, “The Luuuuuve Boat.”

★~Born Today:

♥~1870 – Georges Claude . A French engineer, he invented the neon light, commonly used for signs.

♥~ 1896 – F. (Francis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald  writer: This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night; died Dec 21, 1940,

In 1936, F. Scott Fitzgerald sat down with the New York Post. This was not a happy interview. In truly breathless Post style, the interview revealed a desperate, restless Fitzgerald, wandering through anecdotes and shaking with alcoholism.

Here’s how Michael Mok, the Post’s interviewer, begins the meat of the article:

“A series of things happened to papa,” [Fitzgerald] said, with mock brightness. “So papa got depressed and started drinking a little.”

What the “things” were he refused to explain.

“One blow after another,” he said, “and finally something snapped.”

The interview ran in 1936, just four years before Fitzgerald would die of an apparent heart attack, a condition greatly hastened by his longtime addiction to alcohol. At the time, Fitzgerald’s bright flaming literary star was lamentably, pathetically fizzling. Confronted with the steepening decline of his career, health, and personal life, Fitzgerald had been writing autobiographical articles for Esquire magazine, ruminating on his life as a “cracked plate.”

To his interviewer, he explained, he had lost his confidence. “A writer like me,” he said, “must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It’s an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing-can-happen-to-me, nothing-can-harm-me, nothing-can-touch-me.”

Fitzgerald’s constant companion at this time was his nurse, who dealt with both his physical pain — a broken shoulder the result of an accident on a diving board — and his mental anguish, his addiction to alcohol. At one point during the interview, a jittery Fitzgerald leaves the room and the nurse takes a moment to caution the interviewer: “‘Despair, despair, despair,’ said the nurse. “Despair day and night. Try not to talk about his work or his future. He does work, but only very little – maybe three, four hours a week.’

As the interviewer ostensibly tries to play it straight — what does Fitzgerald think of modern writers? What does he make of the flapper generation he so brilliantly described in his novels? — Fitzgerald becomes the embodiment of pathos. He’s glitteringly brilliant, spilling little bon mots just as he would his gin, but it’s a window on the utterly depressing demise of a talented writer.

Regarding the “jazz-mad, gin-mad generation” that had provided Fitzgerald his material and his fame, the writer — and his interviewer — had this to say:

“Why should I bother myself about them?” he asked. “Haven’t I enough worries of my own? You know as well as I do what has happened to them. Some became brokers and threw themselves out of windows. Others became bankers and shot themselves. Still others became newspaper reporters. And a few became successful authors.”

His face twitched.

“Successful authors!” he cried. “Oh, my God, successful authors!”

He stumbled over to the highboy and poured himself another drink.

Stories circulated that the article had so depressed him that Fitzgerald attempted suicide after reading it. Whatever else it did, this interview solidified the tragic mythos that surrounded Fitzgerald, recasting him as one of the characters from his own novels.

♥~ 1936 – Jim (James Maury) Henson, Muppets creator.

★~ Good to Know: Cool punctuation…

♥~ Dagger:

Also called an Obelisk. This bad boy (on the left), and its two-headed friend (on the right) the Double Dagger or Diesis, represents a javelin, which is cutting out extraneous stuff from your text. Its primary use through the ages has been to mark out superfluous repetitions in translation, though nowadays it mostly just stands in as a kind of footnote.

♥~ Carrot 

Also called a Wedge, an Up-Arrow, and a Hat, which is cute. The word caret is Latin for “it lacks,” which is convenient, because the caret is primarily used to indicate something that’s missing from the original text.

Solidus:

Not to be confused with a slash! The Solidus is also called a Shilling Mark (presumably by old British dudes in top hats) and it is at a much steeper angle than a boring old backslash. Back before decimilization took the world by storm, the Solidus was used to set apart different values of currency from each other.

♥~ Asterism

The Asterism has an awesome name, a cool look, and a really lame usage. It’s for indicating minor breaks in text. It can also mean “untitled,” apparently.

♥~ Guillemets

Guillemets means “Little Williams,” they’re named after a 16th Century French printer. Their primary role is in non-English languages that use them as quotation marks.

♥~ Because Sign

This one’s so cool. It’s like the “Therefore” sign, but upside-down, and it means because.

♥~ Exclamation Comma

Just because you’re excited about something doesn’t mean you have to end the sentence!

#

One of my recent Facebook statuses didn’t exactly convey my intended message  . . .

I just had a UPS driver deliver a package that was so rude and so obnoxious I called to request that he never deliver another package to my house.

When it comes to properly placed commas, I guess, I remain a work in progress.  But I’m working on it!!!!

Hope the Blue Bird does not poop on you today!

Odd Loves Company!