More Monkey Adventures

On January 9th 1493, Christopher Columbus (the guy that discovered our city), is sailing around near the Dominican Republic and sees three "mermaids", which in reality were manatees but he blurts out "not half as beautiful as they are painted."

Obviously Columbus had been at sea a very very long time.
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I had a blog about Flying Monkeys a few years ago (April 6th 2006) and another monkey memory occurred.

I remember buying some sea monkey's when I was a kid and was rather disappointed with the results as they did not look ANYTHING like what was expecting.

The story behind Sea Monkeys goes back to Harold von Braunhut, the inventor of the Invisible Goldfish and X-Ray glasses (yet more disappointments for me). With Invisible Goldfish for only a few dollars you would get a bowl, colored rocks and a plastic plant for decoration and . . . . invisible goldfish, not sure what IW as expecting. But then he was looking at brine shrimp and how they were evolving before his eyes. They were being used as fish food but in the last few years (this is 1957ish) were encasing themselves in shells so fish could not eat them. They also had the ability to go into suspended animation (not unlike beer yeast) when water dried up and then come to life when water was introduced again.

He worked on the shrimp to develop a faster lifestyle for them and then marketed the little fellows as "Instant Life". While not a total flop and sales WERE steady but slow, it was not enough to retire on. So he needed to rework the advertising aspect. Thus - Sea Monkeys were thought up and a new advertising campaign started.

At one point there were over 300 million pages in print with a Sea Monkey advertisement. Von Braunhut even got a patent for the tiny shrimp. BUT - kids like me were a little disappointed when there was no monkey family into water. They did not build a little civilization with Ma and Pa monkey, no little monkey cities and they didn't even have any arms. I mean good grief, they breath through their feet and are born with only one eye (2 more are grown when they get older). Not the quality I was expecting.

NOW I find out that Harold von Braunhut was a member of the Ku Klux Clan AND the Aryan Nations AND claimed he was Jewish. WOW - that is one mixed up dude. So I guess I can no longer run for President or public office as I was a supporter of the Ku Klux Clan and Aryan Nations. Damn!

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WEATHER - I've been looking for a bright side of the upcoming week of weather and think I found one. Saturday when it climbs to 17 it will feel like tee-shirt weather. I still think the local TV talking heads are being conservative in their predictions.

We have two Alberta Clippers hitting us, one today and one Wednesday (3 inches today, 4 or 5 Wednesday) and the prospect of shoveling snow in -25 wind chill is something to look forward too. I'm t still thinking the locals are 5 degrees NOT cold enough.

Thursday we should not get above -5F and I'll have to finally shut the bedroom windows when it his -20F Thursday night! If you are wondering what the COLDEST day of the year is on average, it's next Monday. So after NEXT Monday it's all good to go for Spring.
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It was nice to hear "Public Enemies" mentioned on TV last night. When introducing Johnny Depp at the Golden Globes they said blah blah Public Enemies. I was starting to think it was all a dream.

And one last TV thing. Being someone that knows about "All My Children" (I played online poker in the living room and DJ had AMC on and it SUCKED ME IN. Damn soaps, whatch out for them.

One of the actors (are all actors called actors now? even woman? when did that happen), Chrishell Stause was born in a gas station. The gas station attendant was named Chris and it was a shell station . . . .thus Chrishell.

Riding on that naming thing the Brewers had a player on their team by the name of Marquis Grissom. Story of that name is that his dad was working at an auto plant in Atlanta and got a phone call saying his wife just had a son (not sure why he was working) and what should we name him.

Well - he was working on Grand Marquis thus, Marquis Grissom.

On other side note about All My Children. Adam Chandler played by David Canary was in Bonanza and was Candy Canaday. Also he was on the A-LIST to replace Mr.Spock in Star Trek when there was a contract dispute. He is also descendant of Calamity Jane.

WOW - how is that for gossip worthless information.

OH - one last thing - COFFEE! Pic-N-Save (perhaps all Roundys) have a 8 O'Clock Coffee sale. $3.33 per "pound". I believe a pound is now 12 ounces in coffee-speak.

I think everything should be like coffee. Instead of always changing the price of things we should just change the size. A gallon of gas would ALWAYS be $2, the size of a gallon would fluctuate. What could possibly go wrong.

Bundle up and have a great week.
Rod