The Flying Sasquatch by Jana C.H.

Chorus of TIE Fighter Pilots (off-stage)

A rollicking band of pilots, we
Who, zooming through space so fancy-free,
Will zap any X-Wing that we see
With lasers bright and flashing.

Biggs: Look out! The TIEs appear to guard their station.
            What made us pick this for our avocation?

Chorus of TIE Fighter Pilots (nearer) 
We fly along at a goodly clip,
And when we hear our computers blip,
Identifying a rebel ship,
            We'll give it such a thrashing!

X-Wings: Identifying a
TIEs:                           Rebel ship,
            Identifying a
X-Wings:                    Rebel ship,
All:        Identifying a Rebel ship,
            We'll give it such a thrashing.

Biggs: They come in force, with deadly arms.
            The prospect isn't one that charms.

Chorus of TIE Fighter Pilots
With ships so new
            And lasers up-to-date,
You'll find it's to
            The past that we relate.
Though our ray guns
            Would make Buck Rogers green,
We're really sons
            Of nineteen-seventeen.

 X-Wings:                       Kazoom, kazam!

TIEs:   With barrel-roll and loop-the-loop,
            Upon our enemies we swoop.
            Dogfights in outer space:
            They would throw a scare on
            Snoopy and the Baron.
            History we re-trace,
            Each of us a Fokker ace.

X-Wings:                                Kazoom, kazam!

(Enter Fred.) 

Fred:                    Hush, hush, not a word! I feel a presence now:
                   Old Obi-wan returns--don't ask me how.

TIEs:                   What's this? Old Obi-wan returns?

X-Wings:                   What's this? Old Obi-wan returns?

(Enter Obi-wan.) 

Obi-wan: Yes, yes, old Obi-wan returns!

Solo – Obi-wan Stanley 

Though zapped into oblivion
            By Vader's deadly blade,
Observe that I am living on,
            A most substantial shade.
This climax grand I could not miss,
            Though I confess I'm "late."
It's only via osmosis
            That I'll participate. 

Pilots: He will participate--hoo-ha!

Obi-wan:  So, I am here--
                  Please have no fear,
                             My young and foolish friend.
                  For with the Force
                  I'll guide your course
                             Into a happy end. 

Ballad – Obi-wan Stanley

Skill and wit and lots of practice
            Will not win the day.
Just the opposite, in fact is
            Now the only way.

Pilots:             Only way.

Obi-wan:
Feel the vibes and trust your feelings,
            Put your brain on low.
Heroism's easy dealings,
            Going with the flow. 

Pilots:
If you put your brain on low
You'll be going with the flow.
            Silly boy, with vibes to guide you;
            Intellectuals deride you.
            Here's an addle-pated kid,
            Taking orders from his id. 

(At Obi-wan's urging, Fred switches off his targeting computer. Enter Mabel, 3PO, and Ruth.)

Women:
Now what is this and what is that and why in Fred's computer off?
His heroism none can doubts but at this move we freely scoff.
Does he suppose that he can win without its cybernetic aid?
The Force is very well and good, but we confess we're much afraid.
What strange compulsion made our Freddy switch his own computer off?
At his intelligence and wit we feel we're very right to scoff. 

(Enter Vader.)

Vader: Once I am through, these rebels will be dead!

Women:            It's Vader--it's Vader! Watch it, Fred!

Pilots:               Yes, it is Vader: watch it, Fred!

Obi-wan:        (to Fred) Now's your chance to be a hero!
                        Don't blow it now, you nerd, you zero!

Mabel:            Freddy, save us!

Fred:               Beautiful Mabel,
                        I'm only a farm boy; I am not able.

Pilots: We knew from the start that he was not able. 

Vader:     Oh, rebel fool,
                                Forget your vain resistance.
                You've lost your cool,
                                And also your existence.
                This is the end
                                Of your grand revolution.
                Your hopes suspend
                                Of happy resolution. 

Mabel:                  Fred has bombed out--for him I guess that's par.
Women:                                 Oh, darn it!
Mabel:                  Does nobody remain, our foes to bar?
Women:                                 Oh, darn it!
X-Wings:                  We're heroes too--at least we think we are.
Women:                                 Oh, rapture!
X-Wings:                  Now in our opportunity to star!
Women:                                 Oh, rapture! 

(The X-Wing Pilots attack. Vader and the TIE Fighters shoot them down.)

Pilots:                  The bad guys win--it seems a sin--
                                                But that in the way life goes.
                  For likelihood abhors the good,
                                                As every criminal knows. 

Biggs:       But realism, as you surely know,
                  Is banned most strictly from this sort of show.
Vader:                  You can't deny we beat you fair and square,
Biggs:       But you forget the color hat you wear:
                  The villains lose (they always lose)--this cliche we must bear.
Vader:                                    We lose?
X-Wings:                                You lose--
                  You have to lose; this cliche we must bear.
Vader:                  Your pleas have touched our actor's souls,
                  Because, with all our faults, we know our roles.
X-Wings:  It's true: with all their faults, they know their roles.
All:                  Yes, yes, with all their faults they know their roles.
Obi-wan: We've won the day--it was a piece of cake!
Ruth:                  One moment! There's a sequel here at stake!
                  Without our villains we would feel a lack.
                  We will need them when The Empire Strikes Back.
Women:                  We'll all cash in when The Empire Strikes Back.
Obi-wan: Well, Vader, it appears that you're in luck
                  Because, with all our greed, we want to make a buck.

Recitative – Obi-wan Stanley 

We'll see you soon, Vader. If you are wise,
You'll make investments just as I advise.
Forget Standard Oil and Boeing and Xerox,
And put your money in Twentieth Century Fox.

Finale

We've struck it rich!
And if you count merchandising,
            There is much more
            Profit in store.
We've struck it rich!

We've struck it rich!
Thereby beginning the mode:
            Every new flick
            Is science fic,
But we're the mother lode.

Curtain

(Enter Vader, with his light saber activated.)

Vader: You may be knowledgeable, Obi-wan, but you were never much good in an actual fight.

(Obi-wan activates his light saber. He and Vader duel. The Stormtroopers leave the women in order to help Vader. The women try to escape off stage, but Fred hesitates. Vader is getting the better of Obi-wan.)

Obi-wan: Wait! Have mercy! Have you ever known what it is to be an orphan?

Vader: I may be evil, but even I wouldn't perpetrate that routine on an audience.

(He runs Obi-wan through with his saber. Obi-wan collapses dramatically, eventually ending with his feet and arms in the air like a dead bug.)

Fred: Obi-wan! No! (He tries to rush back. Ruth restrains him.)

Ruth: Let's go, kid. Don't intrude on the old man's big death scene.

(All exit. Scene changes to the fourth moon of Yavin. Biggs enters, with a chorus of X-Wing Pilots, and Mabel.)

Mabel: Gentlemen, the Death Star is approaching our base and will be here to eradicate us at any moment, Led by my heroic Fred Skywalker, one of you pilots will do the glorious deed of wiping that over-grown Skylab from the face of the universe.

(Exit Mabel.)

Biggs: Yes, and I have a sneaking suspicion I know who is going to do the glorious deed and who's going to get wiped.

Song -- Sargeant Biggs

Biggs: When the hero puts the kibosh on the villain
X-Wings:                                On the villain,
Biggs: You will find that many others try the same.
X-Wings:                                Try the same.
Biggs: But although our hearts are staunch as they are willin'
X-Wings:                                They are willin',
Biggs: You must search the credits close to find our name.
X-Wings:                                Find our name.
Biggs: Our feelings we with difficulty smother
X-Wings:                                'culty smother,
Biggs: For being vaporized is hardly fun.
X-Wings:                                Hardly fun.
Biggs: Ah, take one consideration with another
X-Wings:                                With another,
Biggs: A bit player's lot is not a happy one.

All:      Being left with just a death-scene isn't fun.
                                    Isn't fun.
            A bit player's lot is not a happy one.
                                    Happy one.

A Space Operetta by Jana C. Hollingsworth
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan (especially Gilbert)
copyright 1977-78

(Enter Samuel)

Recitative -- Princess Mabel 
Hold, monsters! Though for liberation we have tried
And failed, this setback we perceive as slight.
For bear in mind that we've the Force upon our side,
And we're protected by a Jedi Knight.

Samuel: This news, my dears, won't put us to the flight.
               I don't believe he is a Jedi Knight.

Women: Yes, yes, he is in fact a Jedi Knight!

(Enter Obi-wan followed by Fred.)

Obi-wan: Yes, yes, I am in fact a Jedi Knight!
Samuel:  For he is a Jedi Knight!
All:      He is! Hurrah for the Jedi Knight!
Obi-wan: And it is, it is a bit of all right
            To be a Jedi Knight!
All:                  It is! Hurrah for the Jedi Knight!

Song -- Obi-wan Stanley

I am the last example of a sage and antique Jedi Knight.
I've information esoteric, strange, arcane, and quite all right.
I know the Lords of Barsoom, yes, and all the damsels in distress
From Jane to Dejah Thoris, each one in her most distressing mess.
I am very well acquainted too with matters Ellisonian--
It's good there's just one Harlan, so don't try to sneak a phony in--
I know Andre Norton's gender, at least when her pants,she has 'em off,
(Has 'em off, has 'em off-- You all know what I'm going to rhyme with has 'em off!)
And in my sleep I quote whole books from Heinlein and from Asimov.

All: And in his sleep he quotes whole books from Heinlein and from Asimov.

I'm up-to-date on Moorcock, near as well as mortal man can be,
And can chant the incarnation-list of Elric of Melnibone.
In short, in matters esoteric, strange, arcane, and quite all right,
I am the last example of a sage and antique Jedi Knight.

All: In short, in matters esoteric, strange, arcane, and quite all right,
            He is the last example of a sage and antique Jedi Knight.

I know our mythic history, J.R.R's and Evangeline's;
I understand 2001 right down to all the final scenes;
I can trace across two worlds the roots of Leonard Nimoy's pedigree;
Space: 1999 you will be glad to hear, I never see.
I understand LeGuin, which goes to show I'm intellectual,
And can prove in Freudian terms that Conan's really homosexual.
I've not quite finished Dune--even for me some books are just too long,
And I whistle my own theme but never sing a Close Encounters song.

All: He whistles his own theme but never sings a Close Encounters song.

I can work out the relationship of Elvish script to cuneiform,
And tell you every detail of Kit Canterbury's uniform.
In short, in matters esoteric, strange, arcane, and quite all right,
I am the last example of a sage and antique Jedi Knight.

All: In short, in matters esoteric, strange, arcane, and quite all right,
            He is the last example of a sage and antique Jedi Knight.

A Space Operetta by Jana Hollingsworth
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan (especially Gilbert)
copyright 1977-78

(Mabel disappears and the Jawas exit. Obi-wan enters.)

Fred: Obi-wan! We were just going to go look for you. But what good will it do to audition you if I can't get the Princess Mabel, too?

Obi-wan: But I know where to find the Princess.

Fred: You do!?

Obi-wan: Yes, she's being held captive by the evil Lord Vader aboard his Death Star space station. Will you come with me to rescue her?

Fred: I wouldn't stay behind for all the Coke in China! But how do we get off this wretched planet?

Obi-wan: Fortunately, I know of just the space pilot for us. Here she is now.

(Enter Aunt Ruth.)

Fred: Aunt Ruth! How did you get to be a space pilot?

Ruth: The exigencies of the plot required it. Every Gilbert and Sullivan opera has to have an unattractive middle-aged contralto. Chewbacca is too good-looking, and Han Solo sings bass, so that leaves me. Now get into my spaceship, and we'll be at the Death Star before Obi-wan can sing half a patter song.

(They all exit. Scene changes to the Death Star. Enter stealthily, in a row, Fred, Mabel, 3PO, and Ruth.)

Recitative -- Fred Skywalker

Come, the rescue's nearly finished;
Vader's chances are diminished
               If we get away.
Searching for us are Stormtroopers,
Armed with electronic snoopers.
            Ladies, do not stray!

(Fred continues offstage.)

Women:
Yes, the rescue's nearly finished;
Vader's chances are diminished
            If we get away.
Searching for us are Stormtroopers,
Armed with electronic snoopers:
            No, we will not stray!

(Enter six Stormtroopers behind the women and grab them.)

Women:            Too late!
Troopers:                   Ha! Ha!
Women:                                 Too !ate!
Troopers:                                           Ha! Ha!
                        Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha! ha!

Ensemble

Troopers:  You have missed your opportunity
                  Of escaping with impunity,
                  So return to the security
                  Of your cell for all futurity.
                  You shall once more be incarcerate,
                  All your hopes for freedom desolate,
                  And within that penal cavity
                  You will experience our depravity.

Women:    We have missed our opportunity
                  Of escaping with impunity;
                  We'll return to the security
                  Of our cell for all futurity,
                  We shall once more be incarcerate,
                  All our hopes for freedom desolate,
                  And within that penal cavity
                  We will experience their depravity.

A Space Operetta
by Jana C. Hollingsworth
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan (especially Gilbert)
copyright 1977-78

(Enter Fred Skywalker.)

Fred: You have a pretty good mezzo-soprano, for a droid. I'll take you.

3PO: But what about my counterpart, R2-D2?

Fred: With his voice? Forget it! We might as well let our librettist sing.

3PO: But sir, I need him! His memory banks contain all my sheet music. He also tunes pianos, and acts as a metronome.

(Demonstrates metronome in R2's head.)

Fred: I don't know. Aunt Ruth was very specific: if we can get a good mezzo-soprano, a coloratura soprano, and a comic baritone, we'll have the best opera company on Tatooine.

3PO: Also the only opera company on Tatooine.

Fred: I hardly think that was a tactful remark. Wait 'til Aunt Ruth gets hold of you. If you think having a stage mother is bad, try having a stage aunt.

(R2-D2 lets out a round of beeps.)

3PO: Wait, sir! R2 says he knows where to find your soprano and baritone.

Fred: How does he know something like that?

3PO: He's also my agent. (R2 beeps some more.) He says old Obi-wan Stanley, who lives out by the Dune Sea, sings the fastest patter song in the quadrant.

Fred: What about the soprano?

3PO: He says he'll play her demo after you buy him.

Fred: He's an agent, all right. Okay, I'll take you both, and we'll go audition Obi-wan. But this soprano of yours had better be good. If I can make the Tatooine Opera Company a going concern, Aunt Ruth will let me out of my contract and I can get off this rock.

Song -- Fred Skywalker

Does no one have a deed to do,
A real one, not phantasmagoric--
A villain vile, or maybe two,
Requiring bravery sophomoric?
This world perhaps possesses charms
For those who wouldn't wear galoshes,
But I'd give all its sandy farms
For just one chance at buckling swashes.

Jawas:
But no one has a deed to do,
A real one, not phantasmagoric--
A villain vile, or maybe two,
Requiring bravery sophomoric.

Fred:                Not one?
Jawas:              No, no--not one!
Fred:                Not one?
Jawas:              No, no--

(R2-D2 produces a hologram of the Princess Mabel.)

Mabel:                                     Yes, one!
Jawas: 'Tis Mabel!
Mabel: Yes, 'tis Mabel!

Recitative -- Princess Mabel

Though I am but a hologram--
                        A sham--
If you will hear my tale of woe
                       You'll know
That any idiot can be,
                       For me,
A hero, 'cause I'm in a jam.

Jawas:
The question is, would she address
          This plea so vocal,
Were she not in a hopeless mess,
           To such a yokel?

Mabel: A jam! I'm in a jam!

Song -- Princess Mabel

Poor wandering droid!
Though you're but comic relief,
            You play a part
            Dear to my heart.
Poor wandering droid!

Poor wandering droid!
Follow my scheme with elan.
             To this princess
             In dire distress
Bring any poor hero you can!

Bring my own leading man.
Bring any good guy you can!

Jawas: Bring her own leading man.
              Bring any good guy you can!

A Space Operetta by Jana Hollingsworth
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan (especially Gilbert)
copyright 1977-78

Chorus -- Jawas

Climbing over rocky desert,
Where the rockes our toeses hurt,
Please remember that we are the Jawas.
            Please remember we're the Jawas.
Same thing that our ma and pa was.
No, Sand people we are not
            No, we are not
They have faces just like quiches;
We're a kind of Munchkin species,
            We're a kind, a kind of Munchkin species.
Garbage men who dress like friars,
Or like Salt Lake City choirs.
              See this trophy we have got.

(Enter 3PO, accompanied by R2-D2.)

Song -- C3PO

I'm a prize that's worth acquiring,
Stealing, borrowing, or hiring.
Alien or humanoid,
Won't you buy a top-notch droid?

 Jawas: Alien or humanoid
               Won't you buy a top-notch droid?

 3PO:
There's tradition in my wiring
Long as you could be desiring.
Vast improvement I've enjoyed
Since by Capek first employed.

 Jawas: Vast improvement he's enjoyed
               Since by Capek first employed,

 3PO:
Once I played a robot miss
In Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
But I wish I could erase
All my work on Lost in Space.
Still, with reverence I obey
All three laws of Doctor A.
Where would science fiction be
Stripped of all its robotry?

Jawas: Where would science fiction be
              Stripped of all its robotry?

Here's a prize that's worth acquiring, etc.,

(Scene: on board the Death Star, Grand Moff Samuel and a chorus of Stormtroopers are celebrating the completion of the space station.)

Opening Chorus

Zap, oh zap the rebel planet,
Zing, oh zing the asteroid.
Into dust we'll turn its granite
Should a world make us annoyed.

Samuel: For today our great space station,
All prepared for games and fun,
Justifies our proud elation
And its budget over-run.

All: Though its cost ran over budget
Several billion, we don't grudge it.
Zap, oh zap the rebel planet, etc.

(Enter Vader.)

Vader: Yes, Governor, you certainly have reason to celebrate. Not only is your delightful Death Star at last fully operational (with the possible exception of the Xerox machine in my office), but I have succeeded in capturing the beautiful Princess Mabel, leader of the Rebellion,
Samuel: I would also point out that you have succeeded in allowing the Princess's droids to escape with vital information. But what complaint do you have about your Xerox machine?
Vader: The recent battle depleted my personal guard, so I ran off some new Stormtroopers this morning. Instead of the usual white, they came out harvest gold.
Samuel: Do you know what a color Xerox machine costs?
Vader: I prefer a standard model.
Samuel: As you wish. Ah, here is your captive.
(Enter Mabel, escorted by Stormtroopers in gold armor.)
Mabel: Well, Vader, you've just spent the past few hours enjoying the technological equivalent of sticking bamboo shoots under my fingernails, breaking me on the rack and delicately dipping me into boiling oil (or was it melted lead?)--and you've done it in such a scientifically sophisticated fashion that you haven't even mussed my hair or stained my gown. What next?
Vader: I thought I might try eradicating a few planets, for the sheer entertainment value of it.
Mabel: You fiend! How can you be so evil?
Vader: I've worked hard at it. It's my chosen profession, and at last it's paying off.

Song -- Vader

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly
Than suffer under a hero's name
While lusting after a villain's fame.
Though heroes all are good and true,
We villains all are well-to-do,
And I am that character now so rare--
The blackguard who's wicked beyond compare.
              For I am a Lord of Sith!
All:                   You are!
              Hurrah for the Lord of Sith!
Vader:  And it ith, it ith a thing not to mith
             To be a Lord of Sith,
All:                   It ith!
              Hurrah for the Lord of Sith!

Vader:

Just check the posters and T-shirt racks--
See games and puzzles that tower in stacks--
Investigate each toy and doll--
You'll find my visage adorns them all.
But many a good guy in hat of white,
Who fights for justice and truth and right,
Will perish in obscuritee
While royalties accrue to me.
               For I am a Lord of Sith!
All:                  You are!
              Hurrah for the Lord of Sith!
Vader:  And it ith, it ith a thing not to mith
             To be a Lord of Sith,
All:                  It ith!
              Hurrah for the Lord of Sith!

• Will Rogers’s best-known line was jokingly intended for his epitaph. He said he wanted his headstone to read: “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like.”

• Remember the American Bicentennial? Too young? Well, that same year, 1976, was the 1500th anniversary of the Fall of Rome. In 576 CE, the boy-emperor Romulus Augustulus was booted off the imperial throne by the barbarian king Odoacer. No, I don’t think there's a connection, but I remember celebrating it in my college dorm room with a bottle of wine. The Fall of Rome, not the Bicentennial.

• Another distinction of Alaska is that its citizens receive more federal money per capita than those of any other state. In 2001 the feds spent $10,214 on every ornery, independent, government-hating man, woman, and child in Alaska. The U.S. average was $6,268 per person. I don’t have more recent numbers; I noted down this item back when Sarah Palin wasn't even a gleam in a pundit's eye.

• The Brokenberg, a mountain in eastern Germany, is, according to legend, the site of wild witches’ revels. That “legend” goes back to the late 18th century when Goethe used the mountain for the setting of the Walpurgisnacht scene in Faust. Before that, the mountain had had no association with witchcraft at all.

• The 18th-century sage Samuel Johnson believed in ghosts. Well, maybe. He said: “There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth.” What Johnson did not believe was that the inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of St. Kilda all caught cold immediately after the first visit by strangers every spring. That was just too preposterous. His pal, Boswell, thought the strangers might carry seeds of disease with them, but he deferred to his wiser companion, as usual.

• Life was pretty grim in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, so the party leadership tried to cheer things up with festivals. In 1935 in the mining town of Gorlovka, a costume ball was advertised in which “costumes must answer the following purposes: the old and new work norms, the Italian-Abyssinian war, Japanese-German friendship, and victims of capitalism.” I think I’ll go as a victim of capitalism. I can wear my work clothes.

• In the early part of the twentieth century, an explorer in the Amazon rain forest made first contact with a hostile tribe called the Nhambiquara. At first he couldn't even approach their camp without a fusillade of poisoned arrows coming his way, but he eventually won them over, luring them into his camp at night by playing the operas of Richard Wagner on his phonograph.

• The first workable outboard motor was invented by one Ole Evinrude. Oh, you knew that.

• The doctrine of Original Sin is unique to Western Christianity. Eastern Orthodoxy has no such notion, nor have Judaism and Islam. It was developed, mainly by Saint Augustine, in the 4th century, when the Western Roman Empire was falling into chaos and disaster. It seemed to make sense at the time.

• The sound bite is nothing new. Said the ever-perceptive Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, “A proposition must be plain to be adapted to the understanding of a people. A false notion that is clear and precise will always have more power in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved. “

• One of the skills of Julius Caesar that his contemporaries found astonishing is that he read silently, without even moving his lips. Nobody did that in antiquity. Gaius Julius was truly a multi-talented individual.

• The English in the mid-19th century did not use lemon in their tea. At least, when Englishman Laurence Oliphant travelled in Russia in 1852, he reported with surprise that Russians serve tea with a slice of lemon instead of milk. He got to like it better that way.

 • In the decades after the Russian Revolution, the USSR had a custom called free marriage in which you didn’t have to get married to be married. If you lived together and considered yourselves married, you were legally hitched. In the census of 1937, the number of women who reported themselves currently married was 1.5 million more than the number of men who did so. The practice gradually faded out, for obvious reasons.

• Frances Mayes reports that a 15th-century church in one of the Tuscan hill towns has a painting known as “Madonna of the Cat Hole.” At the bottom of the painting a hole has been cut to let the cat go in and out.

• Europeans in the Middle Ages knew absolutely nothing about West Africa--not even that the place existed. You’d think the impact of West Africa on Europe would have been zilch, but it wasn’t. Most of the gold that financed Europe’s High Middle Ages came from mines in West Africa, via Arab middlemen.

• What did people do to amuse themselves before television? Well, in the town of Aberdeen, South Dakota, in January of 1891, the Baptists had a competition to see who could hold the best conversation, the Presbyterians played a type of animal Pictionary, and those wild and crazy Episcopalians went in for music, cards, and dancing. That’s according to Katharine Rogers, biographer of L. Frank Baum. No, she wasn’t there.

 • W.C. Fields’s tombstone really does read, “Actually, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. “ Where is he buried? In Philadelphia. Where else?

 • From 1768 to 1771 Captain James Cook explored the Pacific in the Endeavour, a cramped, stubby, unattractive vessel of a type known as a Whitby cat. In 1992 another vessel named Endeavor, also rather cramped and stubby, departed from Cape Canaveral to circle the Earth 141 times. The Space Shuttle Endeavor took about as long to cross the Pacific as it took Cook’s Endeavour to weigh anchor.

• The eighteenth century pirate John Gow wasn’t much of a cutthroat. He and six comrades decided to kill their captain and officers so they could go a-pirating. They did such a bad job of throat-cutting that all the officers survived. At least they did until Gow had them shot and thrown overboard. Just as effective, but not as cinematic.

• The generic term for the sort of reproduction done by a Xerox machine is “xerography,” from the Greek words for “dry” and “writing.” So-called because it uses dry toner instead of liquid ink. Xerography was developed by one Chester Carlson, native of Seattle.

• Lord Sandwich, inventor of the comestible bearing his name, was infamous in 18th century Britain for his decadence. Along with endless gambling and orgiastic sex, he liked playing the drums in accompaniment to a men’s chorus singing Handel’s oratorios. Hal-le-ju-lah, and pass the BLT. 

• The calendar we use today is a modification of the Julian Calendar, instituted by Julius Caesar on January 1, 45 BCE. Most of the actual work was done by one Sosigenes, an astronomer and mathematician of Alexandria in Egypt. Should it be called the Sosigenean Calendar, then? No, any egghead can figure out a new calendar. The hard part is getting it universally accepted. For that you need Julius Caesar.

• Dimitri Mendeleev, the Russian scientist who invented the periodic table of the elements, usually had his hair and beard cut once a year.

• In rural Minnesota, near the towns of Corcoran and Medina, the Hamel Volunteer Fire Department is the proud possessor of a chainsaw sculpture of a fireman in full regalia. See it at http://www.hamelfire.org

Impeachment Chorus
music by George Freddie Handel
lyrics by Jana C. Hollingsworth copyright 2007

Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Cheney and Bush.
That’ll teach ‘em. That’ll teach ‘em.
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ‘em.
Let’s give ‘em the push.

For the Republic stands in great danger,
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
That’ll teach ‘em. That’ll teach ‘em.
Not from a terrorist or a stranger.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
That’ll teach ‘em. Let’s impeach ‘em.

Stop this unconstitutional tyrant.
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
I can’t contain my fury or my rant.
Impeach them!

The Constitution stands-- Yes, it still stands--
The Constitution stands--
It’s in our hands, It’s in our hands.

For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.

Democrats--
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ‘em.
Republicans--
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ‘em.

Socialists--
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ‘em.
Cap‘talists--
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ‘em.

LiberALS--
We the People will impeach ‘em.
We the People will impeach ‘em.
ConservaTIVES--

LiberALS, ConservaTIVES.
For We the Peo-- For We the Peo-- For We the People
For We the People govern forever.
LiberALS, ConservaTIVES. LiberALS, ConservaTIVES.
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ‘em.
For We the People govern forever.
Impeach ‘em! Impeach ‘em!
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ‘em.
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ‘em.
Impeach them!

Note: “LiberALS” and “ConservaTIVES” should be pronounced as in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe.

Get together with a few dozen of your best friends, divide into four-part harmony, and sing along! Permission is given to perform the Impeachment Chorus for non-profit purposes. Just give me credit as author, and let me know you’ve done it.

• Actually, there are atheists in foxholes. There’s even a monument for them in Alabama. http://ffrf.org/foxholes/

• Q: I’ve heard of pieces of eight, but what are “pieces of Indies?”
A: Units of value used by Congolese kings who, in the sixteenth century, kept Portuguese slave traders well supplied with their neighbors. “Pieces of Indies” were male slaves in the prime of life with no physical defects, so called because they were mostly shipped to the West Indies. The Christianized King Afonso of Congo in 1540 boasted to his fellow-monarch Manuel of Portugal: “Put all [West Africa] on one side and only Congo on the other, and you will find that Congo renders more [slaves] than all the others put together. … No king in all these parts esteems Portuguese goods as much as we do. We favor the trade, sustain it, open markets, roads, and markets where the pieces are traded.” An energetic capitalist, was King Afonso.

• Up until the end of the 19th century, China had no equivalent of the State Department. Contact with outsiders went through the Hall for Governance of Barbarians.

• Bayer—the aspirin-makers—coined and trademarked the word "Heroin" in 1898.

• The ancient Egyptians were the first known users of pills, described in a long medical papyrus of 1516 BCE. The doctors recommended washing down said pills with beer or wine. The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians preferred their medicines in liquid form, mixed with—you guessed it—beer or wine. If you were still sick afterwards, you no longer cared.

• The 18th-century sage Samuel Johnson believed in ghosts. Well, maybe. He said: "There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth." What Johnson did not believe was that the inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of St. Kilda all caught cold immediately after the first visit by strangers every spring. That was too preposterous. His pal, James Boswell, thought the strangers might carry seeds of disease with them, but he deferred to his wiser companion, as usual.

• The South Pacific tilts. It is usually about eighteen inches higher around Indonesia than it is off South America. During El Niño years, it tilts in the other direction.

• State capitals in the U.S. get chosen for odd reasons. Washington Territory in 1853 picked Olympia, a small town at the bottom of Puget Sound, over the more important town of Vancouver on the Columbia River. Southern Puget Sound was the only place in the world one can find Olympia oysters, tiny mollusks said by oyster lovers to be the finest on earth. The Columbia has no such gastronomic delight. The capital went to the shellfish. Olympia oysters, along with salmon and Dungeness crab, are among the species now under threat from global warming.

• One of the early European settlers on the south Pacific island of New Caledonia imported deer, supposedly as domestic animals. You know the rest of the story: they got loose, bred like crazy, became a nuisance. Then in the mid-20th century they were almost wiped out. American servicemen on leave liked to go deer hunting. For a few of them, the hunting weapon of choice was the machine gun.

Re-elect Al Gore, for a cooler world. Sign a petition (and hear a neat song) at http://www.draftgore.com/

• Al Gore knows how to hypnotize chickens. He recommends that while a hypnotized chicken can be used for a paperweight or a doorstop, it should not be used for a football.

• Peter Freuchen, a Dane who lived in northern Greenland in the early 20th century, tells the following tale of missionaries foiled by scientific investigation: “During the fall the natives turned pagan again. They had been Christian for more than a year, and it had done them no good—the dogs had come down with distemper just the same. The Eskimos had even gone so far as to hang tiny crosses about the dogs’ necks, but it had not helped. Then a young woman remembered that once as a child she had cured a dog by binding pagan amulets around its neck. She was a cautious, clever girl, so she now fastened both a cross and a round piece of wood to several dogs’ necks, and the animals recovered. Then, by a scientific system of trial and elimination, she set about to determine which had been responsible for the cure. Half the remaining sick animals were treated with crosses, the rest with the wooden amulets. The dogs wearing the pagan wood recovered. Whereupon the natives returned to the ways of their forefathers, and doubtless remained satisfied until another problem arose.”

• You wouldn’t think the Communist Party in Stalin’s Russia would come up with a popular song called “The March of Happy-Go-Lucky Guys.” But it did, in 1934. I wonder what the original title was in Russian.

The Flying Sasquatch is also available at: http://maoistorangecake.blogspot.com/