What Would Jimmy Do?

Today is Tuesday — specifically “Fat Tuesday.” You may know that today is Mardi Gras — that means Fat Tuesday in French, and it’s the end of the celebratory carnival that leads up to the beginning of Lent. 

The term Fat Tuesday refers to the practice of consuming all the food forbidden while fasting during Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday. During Lent, meat is traditionally abstained from and that’s where the word carnival was (originally) derived — the Latin expression carne levare  meaning “the removal of meat.”

You may have also heard today referred to as “Shrove Tuesday.” Since tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent — a period of fasting and penitence during the 40 weekdays before Easter, devout people were supposed to go to confession on Shrove Tuesday. In Medieval England, Shrove is from shrive, an archaic verb meaning “to confess one’s sins especially to a priest.”
If you’ve been in England this time of year, you’ve probably heard the day before Ash Wednesday referred to as Pancake Day. 

The Mardi Gras “festival” was first celebrated on what are now American shores in 1699. Carnival “season” begins on Twelfth Night (January 6) and ends on Fat Tuesday. The most famous carnival in the U.S. is in New Orleans — I was there once, and there were more people than I’ve ever seen, far and away the biggest crowd I’ve ever been a part of. Carnivals, on a much smaller scale, are held in other U.S. cities and there are really large, well-known festivities in Brazil and Venice, Italy. 

I remember, when in New Orleans, hearing laissez les bon temps rouler (pronounced lay-say le bon tom roo-lay) over and over — it means “let the good times roll” in Cajun French.
Today, Mardi Gras, is the last day of carnival, so make the most of it — you’re about to fast for 40 days… eat everything in the house!
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Hey February, I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but I’m ready to move on. I must confess that February brought back a little bit longer days, but I’m ready to say farewell to the month with my annual “good riddance, February” blog.

Every month has its ups and downs, but unless you’re a Valentine’s Day or Groundhog fanatic, February is pretty much an awful month. The weather is always pretty crappy, it’s name is hard to spell, unless you’re a sports fan that likes basketball, after the Super Bowl, you’re out of luck in February, and on average, February is the snowiest month in the United States according to the National Weather Service.

But enough complaining — at least February has National Drink Wine Day and National Margarita Day — making it officially a good month for drinking. Tomorrow is March, and the beginning of an eleven month stretch of months without a February.
We’re still dealing with COVID issues, but the weather is getting better and the days are getting longer and we’ve got daylight saving coming up.

So here we go with the third month of the year, or if you’re really old, like born before 150 B.C., it’d be the first month. According to the old Roman calendars, a year was ten months long, beginning with March and ending in December. I’ve mentioned before that originally, January and February didn’t even deserve a spot on the calendar — they were just lumped together and called “winter.” That still appeals to me.

But in addition to better weather and more daylight, I like some other things about March — even though I’m not particularly a basketball fan, I look forward to March Madness, the college basketball tournament. I’m not sure where I read this, but the number of vasectomies surges by 50 percent during the first week of March Madness!! Supposedly the reason is that patients typically need at least a day with ice to keep swelling down, so if they’re going to spend a whole day doing nothing, it’s not hard to figure that they’d want to do it on a day they’d like to be sitting from of the television watching basketball. I guess this falls into the category of “believe it or don’t” but it’s interesting.

While we’re on the subject of strange/interesting things, on the 1st of March, 2007, a detachment of 170 Swiss infantrymen accidentally invaded neighboring Liechtenstein when they got lost on a training mission. Luckily, after explaining the mistake to Liechtenstein, the Swiss army was given directions and returned home safely.

I know May has Cinco De Mayo Day, but March has Cinco De. Marcho – a 12-day drinking regimen for anyone that wishes to “train one’s liver for the closing ceremonies on St. Patrick’s Day.” And we can all look forward to Pi Day, St. Patrick’s Day and the Vernal Equinox — and of course, we can’t forget (even if we’d like to) the day in March that Twitter was founded — March 21, if you’re interested.

As the saying goes, March comes “in like a lion, out like a lamb” — or — the other way around. No matter what tomorrow brings, it’s March — not February.

A few days ago the subject here was Internet “shorthand,” and I pretty much admitted that it was one of those modern trends that I simply didn’t understand. The subject came up because I was “cleaning out” my phone in preparation for getting a new one. That electronic cleaning initiative spilled over to my computer and I ran across an old article that I’d apparently saved because I thought it might help me come up with really “strong” passwords that my computer is always asking me use.

The article discussed something called Leetspeak — a type of online jargon in which a computer user replaces regular letters with other keyboard characters to form words phonetically. I gather that it was originally used by hackers and gamers. According to the article, “leet” is a vernacular form of “elite.”

Leet words can be expressed in hundreds of ways, using different substitutions and combinations. Nearly all characters are formed as phonemes and symbols — for example:
Numbers and symbols often replace the letters they resemble — the term “leetspeak” could be written as “!337$p34k.” The character ! replaces the letter L, “3” poses as a backwards letter E, and “7” is the letter T, etc. 

Here’s another example, and if you follow along, you may figure out that it gets complicated enough that it just got “too hard” for me…. Letters can be substituted for other letters that might sound alike. For example, the letter Z can replace the final letter S  in the word “skills.” With the letter X replacing the letter C or K, the example becomes “sxillz.” Then using numbers and symbols, leetspeakers might refer to their computer skills as “5x1llz.” This might make a good password, but it’s too complicated for me to come up with on the spur of the moment when I need it. 

To use the system, rules of standard English are rarely obeyed. Some Leetspeakers capitalize every letter except for vowels, or drop vowels from words (like converting “very” to “vry.” 
From what I can tell, the result of all this is the creation of a dynamic written language that contains no conformity or consistency. 

After reading the article, I realize why I saved it, and I think it would be a good system to create passwords — in fact, Claire, who is much better at coming up with good passwords than I am, uses some kind of a modern version of this system.

So leetspeak is a good system and I had a valid reason for saving the article at the time, but I’ll probably just continue to use my own system to choose passwords — ask Claire to make one up for me.
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Both regular readers and some others know that we we celebrate OTBN every month and it’s something we enjoy and look forward to. 
But officially, OTBN only occurs once a year — it is officially celebrated on the last Saturday in February. It’s also one of those special events that is proclaimed as an evening event. 

This special day night was created in 2000 by the The Wall Street Journal “Tastings” columnists Dorothy J. Gaither and John Brecher. It is not celebrated on a set, fixed day night every year — the creators specifically established this day night on the last Saturday in February, so the date changes every year. 

Open That Bottle Night has a very special purpose. Dorothy Gaither and John Becher created this day night to encourage people to re-connect with each other over a good bottle of wine or champagne. Short of that, a bottle of Scotch or Bourbon will certainly suffice. But importantly, it is not a day night to drink alone or to binge drink. Rather, you should open a bottle with your spouse, lover, family members, or good friends.

We tried this and thought it was such a good idea, that we make the last Saturday night of every month OTBN — if you’d like to find out more about our experiences with OTBN over the years, you can use the search function  for OTBN on this blog.

So tonight, we may be joined by lots of people around the world that only celebrate the last Saturday night in February…..
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We’ve got to get new iPhones — we have iPhone 7’s and think the current generation is iPhone 13, or maybe 14. Anyhow, in anticipation of getting around to upgrading, I was deleting a lot of old text and e-mail messages. 

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but reading through them, I’m still amazed at how our method of communication has changed. If you just glanced at the messages you’d think they were written in some kind of code or something. Actually I read an article not long ago that said most electronic communication today used some sort of “shorthand.” 

That may be true and I may be quibbling over terminology, but in the old days (and that probably means maybe the 1970s) shorthand referred to a system of rapid handwriting using symbols to represent words, phrases, and letters. People in offices used to dictate, and only secretaries knew how to write in abbreviated or symbolic form. 

Today, shorthand refers to the abbreviated messages typed back and forth via messaging or e-mail. Today’s “shorthand” can look like acronyms, but they’re a little different. The difference between acronyms and shorthand is that with acronyms, you pronounce the letters as a new word — for example, SNAFU is pronounced “sna-foo” and RADAR is pronounced “ray-dar.” In shorthand, the letters are pronounced one-by-one — not pronounced as a word. FYI is pronounced “F-Y-I” and GMA is pronounced “G-M-A.”

On the Internet, there seems to be little difference between shorthand and an abbreviation. I always though that an abbreviation referred to the shortening of a word — like, “esp” for “especially.” And just to mess things up more in  my mind, some of the shorthand/abbreviations aren’t even shorter than the original phrase.
Here’s some things I found looking through some old texts and e-mails:
buhbye — apparently means “bye;” c ya — means see ya; dewd — dude?dunno — I don’t know; girl — girls; guvment — government; i h8 it — I hate it; kewl — cool; sok — it’s ok; ur — your

So whether you call these things abbreviations, acronyms, shorthand, or whatever, their use has evolved into a language of its own. 
I wonder what some of my old English teachers would think about this….
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There are a lot of reasons that I don’t particularly like February — it’s certainly near the bottom of my list of favorite months. But even so, there are a few reasons to keep it around, like Chinese New Year, Super Bowl and maybe Valentine’s Day. 
But I particularly like February 18 — National Drink Wine Day and today’s one of my favorite February days, too. Today, February 22, is not only my Friend George’s real birthday, it’s also National Margarita Day.

Margarita’s exact history is hard to pin down, but it seems have originated, or at least started to become popular back in the mid-1900s. Needless to say, it’s a popular drink in the US and pretty much around the world.

I think it’s appropriate that margaritas get their own day — after all, they’ve always been there for us — many times, along with a good friend, they’ve helped us solve our problems, without seeking the guidance of a licensed therapist. 
So we should recognize that and pay them their due respect….
Happy Margarita Day.
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Today is President’s Day. I usually write something every year on President’s Day and over the years a lot of the information is repeated because there’s only so much you can say about one subject, but I think it’s important because George Washington’s Birthday is one of only eleven permanent holidays established by Congress. You notice I said Washington’s Birthday, not President’s Day. The federal holiday we’re observing today, that we often refer to as President’s Day, is officially called Washington’e Birthday. Neither Congress nor the President has ever stipulated that the name of the holiday be changed to President’s Day. Washington’s Birthday became a legal holiday, observed on February 22 in 1879. Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law in 1968 to create more 3-day weekends. George’s birthday was moved to the third Monday in February, and many people started calling it President’s Day, but the name was never officially changed — it’s still Washington’s Birthday.

To say that Washington’s birthday is confusing is an understatement. George Washington was born when the Julian calendar was in use, on February 11 in 1731. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted, people born before 1752 were told to add 11 days to their birth dates. So George’s birthday changed from February 11 to February 22.

So here’s how we got to today and we (at least some of us) are celebrating President’s Day:
Washington’s Birthday is the federal holiday, the United States Code, Title 5, Section 6103, lists “Washington’s Birthday” as a legal public holiday, observed on the third Monday of February. 
Lincoln’s birthday was never celebrated at the federal level, but is at the state level in certain states, such as Illinois and Connecticut.
President’s Day is an official state holiday in certain states, such as Pennsylvania and California.

In 1968, representative Robert McClory attempted to change “Washington’s Birthday” to “President’s Day,” but the idea wasn’t accepted. The observance was, however, changed to the third Monday in February as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill. This bill moved the observance of Washington’s Birthday from February 22 to the third Monday in February, starting in 1971. Because of this, many thought that the newly moved holiday was to honor both Washington and Lincoln, or all presidents. 

So you can celebrate whatever you wish today, it’s officially a three-day weekend, but not officially President’s Day. It’s still Washington’s Birthday, well, not actually, he was born on Feb 11, except that doesn’t count anymore either and people pretty much ignore February 22, except for those celebrating National Margareta Day….
Happy ____________ (you fill in the blank.)
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Every day there’s something (actually, a lot) to be thankful for — today I’m particularly thankful that I don’t suffer from Oenophobia. Why? Because that is a fear of wine — and — today is National Drink Wine Day.

We know that humans have been making wine for thousands of years, but no one is certain who was the first to ferment grapes into what we now call wine. Evidence of ancient wine production has been found in China, the Middle East, and Greece — so it appears that many different cultures discovered the process at about the same time.

But wine is a popular drink all over the world and just the other day I discovered that you can get wine-flavored Kit Kats. I am not making this up — I haven’t seen them in stores, but they are available on Amazon.

According to Claire, she became a fan of wine years ago when she was visiting France — they were told not to drink the water, so wine became her drink of choice. The natural fermentation of wine kills germs caused by typhi (salmonella) and cholera. Luckily, she wasn’t visiting Italy, because during early Roman times, it was forbidden for women to drink wine. Wives who were caught by their husbands drinking wine could be killed if caught in the act. (This in no way implies that Claire is old enough to have been punished this way by the Italians.)

Grapes are the most planted fruit all over the world and there are 10,000 varieties of wine grapes existing worldwide — a ton of grapes can produce 720 bottles of wine.
In ancient Greece, the host of dinner would take the first sip of wine to assure that the wine served to guests wasn’t poisoned. This act of courtesy was where the phrase “drinking to one’s health” originated.
Even though China is only the fifth-largest wine-producing country in the world, it is the leading market for red wine. It’s not only because of the flavor, but the red color is considered lucky in Chinese culture and is favored by the government.
As I mentioned, China is only the fifth-largest wine producer — it trails France, Spain, Italy and the US.
Wine in the early days was kept in goatskin bags. The Englishman Sir Kenelm Digby invented the dark green wine bottle that’s popular today. There is a right and wrong way to hold a wine glass. The proper way is to hold by the stem so that the hand does not warm the glass and increase the temperature of the wine.
“Toasting” originated in ancient Rome when they retained Greek traditions — it’s derived from dropping a piece of toasted bread in wine to soften bitter tastes.
Wine with animal symbols on the label are known as “critter wine.”
You need to drink 7 glasses of orange juice or 20 glasses of apple juice in order to get the same amount of antioxidants in a glass of wine.

On a final note, deep below the ocean’s surface, the Titanic rests with most of its original wine bottles still intact and undisturbed. There have been rumors that a few bottles may have made their way to the mainland and were sold to a collector, but so far none of the actual wines from the Titanic have been recovered and/or tasted.

So now you know enough about wine to be really popular at your next cocktail party. The guests will all marvel at your knowledge — just remember to swirl you glass as you talk….
Cheers!!
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Today is pretty much the “closing ceremony” for the Chinese New Year activities — it’s the Lantern Festival. People eat Yuanxiao (a rice ball stuffed with different fillings) and watch lanterns. It is the first significant feast after the Chinese New Year and it is regarded as the most recreational among all the Chinese festivals and a day for appreciating the bright full Moon and family reunions. 

So how did the Lantern Festival come to be? As the story goes, the Jade Emperor (You Di,) became angered at a town for killing his goose. He planned to destroy the town with fire, but was thwarted by a fairy who advised the people to light lanterns across the town on the appointed day of destruction. The emperor, fooled by all the light, assumed the town was already engulfed in flames. The town was spared, and in gratitude the people continued to commemorate the event annually by carrying colorful lanterns throughout the town.

I’ve never been in China for the Lantern Festival, but I’ve seen some of the lanterns used — during the festival, they are in the street, in each house and store, but some are displayed (I guess) year round and their various shapes and types demonstrate traditional Chinese folklore. 

Guessing riddles is regarded as an indispensable part of the Lantern Festival. People write all kinds of riddles on pieces of paper, and paste them on colorful lanterns to let visitors guess. If someone has an answer to a riddle, he can pull the paper to let organizers verify the answer. Gifts are presented to the people who get the right answers. 

The holiday marks the first full Moon of the new lunar year and the end of the Chinese New Year festivities. The Lantern Festival aims to promote reconciliation, peace, and forgiveness. Seems like we could all use a few days like that about now….
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Today is Valentine’s Day — both readers know that we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. Well, that’s not exactly true… we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day on Valentine’s Day, we do it a day or so before or after. If you don’t know why, and are even interested, you can check the blog entries for past Valentine’s Days.

Even though today is supposedly one of, if not the, most romantic days of the year, it actually marks the date of the execution of St. Valentine by the Roman emperor Claudius II during the third century AD. No one is exactly sure of the crime he was executed for, but the most popular theory is that he’d been officiating at the weddings of soldiers, despite the fact that marriage had been outlawed for them. Apparently, the emperor thought that love and romance made for weaker soldiers.

A long time before St. Valentine’s execution, February 14 had come to be associated with fertility ± and blood. Between February 13 and 15, Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia by sacrificing a goat and a dog and then whipping naked women with the hides, all in the interest of making women more fertile. In the fifth century, AD, Pope Gelasius I outlawed Lupercalia and officials declared February 14 to be the feast of St. Valentine — Valentine’s Day.

Even though Valentine’s Day continues to associated with hearts and flowers and candy, in the last century, it has also continued to associated with blood splatter and murder, like:
The Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929.
The unsolved murder of young lovers Jesse McBane and Patricia Mann that occurred on Valentine’s Day 1971.
The unsolved murder of teenagers Nicholas Kunselman and Stephanie Hart (who were dating) on Valentine’s Day 2000.
The murder of Reeva Steenkamp by Oscar Pistorius on Valentine’s Day 2013.
The murder-suicide of an elderly couple in Alabama on Valentine’s Day 2015.
The U.S. school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day in 2018.

But today is Valentine’s Day, a special day for love, and love is never wrong. Charles Schulz said that all you need is love…. but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.
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