Go Mount Union!

 The Daily Dose/November 25, 2016
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Foremost Humorist

HUT, HUT HIKE: Official Daily Dose Faves the Mount Union Purple Raiders football team continues their march to their 13^th NCAA football national championship (a record!) today in Baltimore taking on the misfits passing themselves off as the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays.

Breakdown Segment: This is the second round of the 2016 NCAA Division III football tournament, also known as the Mount Union Invitational. Mount Union, the defending national champion, is the second place team out of the Ohio Athletic Conference after 24 consecutive championships, beaten by a fine John Carroll for the title in a thrilling final regular season game.

Johns Hopkins is the champion of the Centennial Conference, whatever that is. The Blue Jays are making their eighth trip to the NCAA playoffs and their sixth straight. Their highest finish was a quarterfinal appearance in 2009, where they were smacked around by Wesley 12-0.

Looking Ahead: The winner of this game – meaning Mount Union, of course – will take on the Alfred/Western New England winner.

Last Time Out: Mount Union opened the playoffs by naming the score in a 38-21 defeat of Hobart. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, showed a lot of weaknesses in barely squeaking by Randolph-Macon 42-21.

Getting To Know You: While a lot of Division III football schools you only really hear about when reading this column, Johns Hopkins is rather well-known and is one of the highest rated universities on the planet. It was founded in 1876 after a $7 million gift by Hopkins established both the university and the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dry, Technical Matter: No, we don’t why Mr Hopkins has an ‘s’ at the end of his first name, either.

Uh, Yeah, That’s A Sport: Johns Hopkins athletic department is mainly known for their lacrosse teams, which has won 44 national champions under a variety of jurisdictions and in a number of divisions since 1891. Their program is so highly regarded it represented the United States at the 1928 and 1932 Summer Olympics where lacrosse was a demonstration sport and at the 1974 World Lacrosse Championships, winning in 1932 and 1974.

Live From Hell:  Both John Carroll and Wisconsin-Whitewater – the only two teams to beat Mount Union since the Harding Administration, are still in the playoffs. John Carroll will host Wesley and UW-Wherever will host Wittenburg.

Presuming both have bribed the officials an amount sufficient to ensure victory, John Carroll and UW-Wherever would meet next week in the quarterfinals. Should one of them, somehow, manage to still be alive after the quarterfinals – and presuming none of their players got the clap from their cheerleaders – they would meet Mount Union in the national semifinals.

OH WHAT THE HELL: Thanksgiving is proclaimed as a yearly holiday in the United States for the first time on this date in 1863. President Abraham Lincoln, perhaps grateful for the Civil War, made the proclamation. Originally it was celebrated on the last Thursday of November, but since 1941 it has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.

Dry, Technical Matter: The earliest possible date for Thanksgiving is November 22, the latest November 28.

“Yes. Wonderful Things!”: Brits Howard Carter and George Herbert, then rolling as the 5^th Earl of Carnarvon become the first humans in 3,000 years to enter the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun on this date in 1922.

Carter, financed by Herbert, had been chasing this prize for years. The stairs to the tomb had been discovered earlier in the month and the tomb was best preserved of the tombs that had been excavated to date. Clearance of the tomb took ten years.

The Original Five: The National Hockey League is formed on this date in 1917 with five teams: the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs and Toronto Maple Leafs, then known as the Arenas. It’s president is Frank Calder.

The Bulldogs were broke and suspended operations before the season started, and the Wanderers did not finish the season. Toronto won a two-game, total goal series over the Canadiens for the first NHL title and then beat the Vancouver Millionaires three games to two for the Stanley Cup.

FunFact: The NHL was originally planned to last for one season, until the National Hockey Association could back on its feet.

I Guess We Can’t All Get Along: A series of coordinated shooting and bombing attacks begin in Mumbai, India on this date in 2008. Ten members of a Pakistani militant group would kill 164 people over the next three days. Nine of the attackers were killed and one, Ajmal Kasab, was arrested, tried, convicted and executed for his role.

Now Wait A Minute: Kasab was hanged, in secret, in November, 2012. The Indians mailed to a letter to the Pakastani government announcing Kasab’s death, but Pakistan declined to accept it, so India faxed it.

And You Thought This Election Was Contentious: Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris certifies George W Bush the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election. A complete recap of this fiasco is beyond the scope of this column, but Vice President Al Gore did not take this well, and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which had enough members appointed by Republican presidents to deny his appeal, giving the presidency to Bush.

Thought For The Day: The Buddha’s sacrifices are not of animals, but of the animal in the self. – Gore Vidal, Creation

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: William Hartnell was the first actor to play Doctor Who, and Peter Capaldi is the latest.

 Today’s Stumper: Who scored the first goal in NHL history?  – Answer next time!

Share Gaylon! Go!

America has lost its way…

The Daily Dose/November 23, 2016
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

USA! USA! Outside of a KKK rally in the South decades ago, being pro-white in America has seldom been more popular. Donald Trump was elected president in large measure on a platform of insults, threats and hate directed at anyone not a member of the tribe and white America ate it up.

Quote That Sucker: This past weekend an alt-right leader named Richard Spencer told a group of fellow enlightened whites:

America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.

Bingo: That statement, except for the last five words, is so true it isn’t even funny. Our Founding Fathers were white males and they founded a country for white males to be governed by white males. Indians were to be cleared out, women subjugated and blacks held in bondage.

Well, There Is That: Yes, they came up with an enduring, wonderfully simple governing document that will live down the ages, at least until America self-destructs before this half-century is out. And yes, our Founding Fathers were guilty of treason and were subject to arrest and death if caught.

Well, Aren’t We Mr Sunshine Today: But to deny they were white, land owning males out to protect white, landowning males is folly.

The best example of this is Thomas Jefferson, the generally revered author of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is something else that will live down the ages and is full of bold, empowering words, Jefferson was just kidding when he wrote all men were created equal. What he meant to say was all white landowning males in the Colonies were created equal. We’re deluding ourselves if we think Jefferson was referring to anyone else.

Fly In The Ointment: Proof of this can be found in the fact Jefferson never did much of anything to end slavery either in his country or on his plantation. He did whatever it took to make T. Jefferson’s time on this planet pass as comfortably and elegantly as possible.

Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States illustrates Spencer’s quote brilliantly. In one bold, stunning stroke white America decided they wanted their creation back and that Trump was the one to deliver it.

Unfortunately for whites it’s not all theirs anymore. Blacks are free, women can vote, Hispanics are mainstream and gays can marry. There are Asians in this country now, too.

Forget what Trump’s election might mean politically, forget whether he will ensure we remain a nation marking time, content to remain entertained and well-fed or whether he will preside over a nation that strives to be great again.

Trump’s election, immediately after two terms of our first black president of the United States, shows that white America is not going to go down without a fight.

Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: America has lost its way. Collectively, our tolerance for anything other than our own worldview is at rock bottom and we demand our candidates and our news outlets tell us exactly what we want to here.

The election of Donald Trump illustrated that brilliantly. Heck, even the fact his entrance into the race fo the GOP presidential nomination wasn’t immediately dismissed showed that. We are a nation whose fabric is ripped apart more every day. Cops are executed regularly. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

The Bottom Line: We are not a country poised for long-term success. Deep down, each of us has to know this. No reasonable person can say this country is flourishing because by any measure we are not. We are floundering, on our way to History’s scrap heap if we continue to tolerate it.

ROMEO, ROMEO WHERE ART THOU: A Greek named Thespis becomes History’s first actor on this date in 534 BC, the first human to assume the character of another human for the purpose of entertaining others in public revels.

Thespis was appearing in Neil Simon’s latest Mayonnaise for Five. Since he was mankind’s only actor – and non-union to boot – he was obliged to play all the parts.

Dry, Technical Matter: The term thespians, meaning actors, comes from him.

Great Moments In Doctor Who: The BBC airs the TV show Doctor Who for the first time on this date in 1963. It would run until 1989 and has aired more or less regularly since 2005. Doctor Who is the planet’s longest-running science fiction drama.

Does It Play Tetris?: The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, debuts on this date in 1992.

How Quaint: In addition to making and receiving calls, the Simon could also send and receive faxes, emails and pages.

It could not text, however. The first text message was sent the following month and commercial user-to-user text messaging didn’t become common until 1994.

Thought For The Day: Washington possessed the gift of silence. This I esteem as one of the most precious talents. – John Adams, second president of the United States, following the death of George Washington

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Abraham Lincoln was coming down with small pox when he delivered the Gettysburg Address.

Today’s Stumper: Which actor first played Doctor Who, and which actor plays him now?   – Answer next time!

Share Gaylon! Go!