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November 20 is National Absurdity Day

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national absurdity day National Absurdity Day: is there any occasion that cries out more loudly to be taken seriously while simultaneously laughing at anyone who does? Of course not, silly. Holidays can’t talk.

Grab a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus or just about anything by Samuel Beckett. Add Pee Wee’s Big Adventure to your Netflix queue. Join the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Meanwhile feast on this gem, courtesy of Anti-Joke:

A man walks into a bar and pauses: at the other end of the bar, there’s this guy with a big orange head. Just sitting there, looking into his drink. So the man asks the bartender, “Say, what’s up with the guy with the big orange head?” And the bartender says, “It’s an interesting story. Buy him a drink and maybe he’ll tell it to you.”

So the man walks over and introduces himself and offers to buy a round. The guy with the big orange head says, “Yeah, I’ll bet you want to know the story, huh?” To which the man replies, “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

The man with the big orange head sighs and says, “You know, I’ve gone over it in my mind a million times. Basically, it went like this: I was walking along the beach one day when I stubbed my toe on something. I looked down, and there was an antique brass lamp. I picked it up and dusted it off a little — when all of a sudden this enormous genie pops out!

“The genie thundered, ‘You have released me from my ten-thousand-year imprisonment, and I am in your debt. I will grant you three wishes as a token of my gratitude.'”

The man at the bar is agape. The guy with the big orange head continues: “So I said, ‘Wow, okay. Well, my first wish is to be fantastically wealthy.’

“The genie says, ‘Your wish is granted.’ And all of a sudden I have rings on my fingers and a crown on my head, and my wallet is full of money and a dozen ATM cards and the deed to a mansion in the hills — I mean, I was loaded!

“So I said, ‘Amazing! Okay, for my next wish, I want to be married to the most beautiful woman in the world.’

“The genie says, ‘Your wish is granted.’ And the ocean parts, and out walks this gorgeous woman in this beautiful dress. She takes my hand, and we fall in love and the genie marries us right there. It was incredible.

“The genie booms, ‘You have one wish remaining.'”

The man with the big orange head pauses and sips his beer. He says, “Now, you know, this may be where I went wrong. I wished for a big orange head.”

Happy National Absurdity Day!

Copyright 2020 Worldwide Weird Holidays

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January 22 is National Hot Sauce Day

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national hot sauce day

Today is National Hot Sauce Day. It celebrates the birthday in 1865 of Wilbur Scoville, who created a method to determine a pepper’s spiciness that is still in use today.

Scoville, an American chemist, devised the system in 1912. It measures the concentration of capsaicin, the active component that gives chilies their spicy taste, using Scoville Heat Units (SHU). Ratings range from 0 for a bell pepper to 16,000,000 for pure capsaicin.

Capsaicin content, which causes a burning sensation when it comes in contact with any tissue, is measured by dissolving a pepper in alcohol to extract its capsaicin oil, then diluting the oil in sugar water.

If a panel of five testers detects any spiciness, the mixture is diluted again until three of the five cannot discern any hotness. Heat level is measured by how many dilutions are necessary. Every instance increases the SHU, since hotter chilies must be weakened many times for no heat to be detected.

In 2013, The Guinness World Record for hottest chili pepper went to the Carolina Reaper, a cross between a ghost pepper and a red habanero created by Ed Currie of the aptly named PuckerButt Pepper Company. The Reaper’s official heat level is 1,569,300 SHU but ranges up to 2,200,000. (By comparison, Tabasco sauce has a level 0f 2,500 to 5,000.)

The Reaper was bested in 2017 by Dragon’s Breath, which clocked in at 2,480,000 SHU. Currie surged back with Pepper X, a Frankenstein’s monster at 3,180,000 SHU. Unlike Dragon’s Breath, which will only be used for medicinal purposes, Pepper X is available as a sauce dubbed The Last Dab.

Studies have shown that heat levels evoke the same pain response in spice lovers and haters and everyone in between. So why do so many of us like it? Could it predict other risk-taking behaviors? Check out this TED Ed lesson for answers.

 

 

For some serious fun, watch The Hot Ones challenge celebrities, actors, and musicians to eat ever-hotter sauces as they chat. Dave Grohl is especially awesome. But nothing compares to okurrr’s video contrasting Lorde‘s pure enjoyment with others’ abject suffering. It’s guaranteed to make you smile.

 

 

Then buy the same sauces from Heatonist to stage your own challenge for friends or maybe people you don’t like so much. There’s even a game called Truth or Dab you can use if you’re into that retro board game kind of thing.

I went to Heatonist’s shop in NYC’s Chelsea Market and told the hot sauce sommelier–if it’s not a thing, it should be–that the only thing I couldn’t put hot sauce on was ice cream. He said, “We’ve got one for that” and turned me on to Hell Yeah, I’m Hot, a blackberry-hibiscus-habanero blend that has become my everyday yogurt topping. I’m on my third bottle.

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April 23 is Talk Like Shakespeare Day

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Talk Like Shakespeare Day

William Shakespeare: Bard, babe magnet

Did you miss Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day on January 24th? Do you need to recapture the fun you had on International Talk Like William Shatner Day on March 22nd? Rejoice! Today is Talk Like Shakespeare Day, begun in 2009 by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater to celebrate the Bard’s birthday.

Church records confirm that William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564. Since this was typically performed three days after birth, it’s believed he was born on April 23, 1564. He died on April 23, 1616, according to the Julian calendar in use at that time. Many sources report his birth in the Julian but his death in the Gregorian calendar, which would make it May 3, 1616.

In 2016, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel proclaimed this day Talk Like Shakespeare Day in honor of Shakespeare400, a yearlong celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death. He prescribed a lot of thees and thous. But if we truly want to talk like Shakespeare, wouldn’t it be helpful to hear how a gentleman born in Stratford-upon-Avon would have spoken?

According to scholar John Barton, Shakespeare’s accent would sound to us like a blend of modern Irish, Yorkshire, and West Country English accents. Recordings compiled by National Public Radio feature pieces performed as Shakespeare probably heard them.

Here’s a recitation of one of his most popular sonnets: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment…”

If you’d rather celebrate the holiday without having to hire a dialect coach, just memorize a few of the greatest insults Shakespeare ever wrote. Here are nine of our favorites:

Thy food is such as hath been belch’d upon by infected lungs.
Pericles

Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it.
Troilus and Cressida

If you spend word for word with me, I shall make your wit bankrupt.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona

I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables.
Coriolanus

Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!
Henry IV, part I

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, start up and stand on end.
Hamlet

Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.
All’s Well That Ends Well

Thou wert best set thy lower part where thy nose stands.
All’s Well That Ends Well

Come, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul.
Love’s Labour’s Lost

Want more? Use CNN’s Shakespeare Insult-o-Meter to choose the gender of your intended victim, select the severity of invective you desire and let the generator do the rest.

Happy Talk Like Shakespeare Day! And don’t forget to save some energy for International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th. Then cleanse your palate with National Gibberish Day on September 20th.

Copyright © 2019 Worldwide Weird Holidays

Equal Pay Day 2019

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national equal pay day

Equal Pay Day was established in 1996 to illustrate how far into the new year a woman must work to earn the same wages that a man, by dint of having been born with a penis, earned in the previous year.

Because Census data isn’t released until later in the year, Equal Pay Day has long been scheduled on the Tuesday in April that falls most closely to the estimated date. Tuesday was chosen to represent the extra day a woman must work to earn what men took home the previous week.

This year, it falls on April 2nd. But don’t get excited, ladies. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal to pay a woman less than a man for the same job and was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy, remains nothing more than a well-intentioned piece of paper with a very valuable autograph.

Three years ago, President Obama declared April 12, 2016 to be National Equal Pay Day. Did you enjoy the raise, the parade, and the day off?  Trick question. Nothing changed but adding the word “national.” Now we’re back to good old Equal Pay Day.

That year, President Obama also announced the establishment of the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in the house that had been the headquarters of the National Woman’s Party since 1929. It is named for former Party president Alva Belmont and founder Alice Paul, who played a vital role in the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women’s right to vote.

When Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923, she said this regarding the work that had been done since the first women’s rights convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY:

If we keep on this way, they will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Convention without being much further advanced in equal rights than we are … If we had not concentrated on the Federal Amendment we should be working today for suffrage … We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government.

Looking at where we are today, that statement was, sadly, prescient. When Paul died in 1977 at age ninety-two, the ERA was still being debated. Many contend ratification is still possible and continue the fight even though the amendment was “officially” defeated in 1982. Although the ERA never passed, Paul’s language prohibiting discrimination based on gender served as a template for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

We have a few suggestions for Equal Pay Day 2019. First, dedicate a space to represent the net worth of legislators’ good intentions to the livelihood of their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. (Very easy. Just draw a zero.)

Then, demand that Congresspeople explain to children why their future efforts lose value the moment they are born girls. Garnish 21 percent of their wages until they enforce the Equal Pay Act. (They don’t even need to write a law. It’s already on the books.)

Perhaps the best thing we can do is stand up and shout, just keep pointing out how ridiculous it is to discriminate on the basis of plumbing. You know how everyone hates it when we’re shrill.

Until we succeed, have an angry Equal Pay Day!

Copyright © 2019 Worldwide Weird Holidays

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