Wednesday, December 5

Krampus Claus is Coming to Town

By Grant Davies

 On this day, December 6th eve, every year,  Krampus Claus is coming to a town near yours. So you better watch out.

Or as the song has it:

"You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why


Krampus Claus is coming to town."

Okay, there is no guy called that. I gave Krampus a last name because I wanted to. I write this nonsense, so I can do as I please.

Anyway, Krampus is a real make believe guy. As real as Santa Claus anyway. And he even has a day (okay, a night) named for him. It's called Krampusnacht.  For those of you who failed German class in high school, that translates to Krampus Night.

That's the night this half-goat, half-demon sneaks into town and beats children to a pulp if he determines they have been bad. Or not good, I guess.  Or if they cry or pout. He also seems to lick their head and clean the wax from their ears with his fingers, according to the picture below. And he does this while in chains, so he's pretty competent.

I'll take the beating, thank you.  But that's just me.







What all this tells us is that if the worst thing that happens to you is that you find coal in your stocking or don't get that new I-Phone you have been wanting, just count yourself lucky.

One other thing, I'm pretty sure that if you don't live in Europe somewhere, this doesn't apply to you.

Happy holidays.


PS

We have a new winner of the coveted "15 Seconds of Fame Award." 


It's Matthew Latourette, who gave me the idea to write this post.  He recently was mentioned in the Chicago Tribune by name as well, so he's on a roll. Congrats!
Okay, your time is up.

Monday, May 28

The Amazing Talent of Bob Evans

Bob Evans - Supernovae finder extraordinaire
By Grant Davies


Some people have amazing talents that most of us could never image. Bob Evans is one of those people.

I love sausage. And lots of sausage lovers have heard of Bob Evans in regard to making tasty breakfast sausage. But that's not the same Bob as the Bob in today's story.

Our Bob is a retired Minister. He is semi-famous in some circles in Australia for doing serious research and writing books about the history of evangelical revivals.

Even though this is a history blog (kinda), we don't usually write about historical stuff quite that exciting here. Bob's talent for that endeavor is not the one I'm about to amaze you with.

Bob's hobby is finding Supernovae, and he's really, really good at it. Better than anyone else who has ever tried it, so they say. He finds them by looking through backyard telescopes from the small deck of his house in a town not far outside of Sydney, Australia. Other than his telescope his only other tool seems to be his amazing talent for remembering where all those dots in the sky are and noticing when a new dot appears where there wasn't one before. Just in case you aren't as amazed as I am about Bob's amazing memory of where the dots were,  I'll explain.

According to Bill Bryson in his book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" it's explained this way:

(Paraphrased) "imagine a standard dining room table covered with a black tablecloth and someone throwing a handful of salt across it. Think of the salt grains as a galaxy. Now, imagine 1500 more tables like that, each table with random salt tosses, enough to fill the parking lot at Walmart. Now add one grain of salt to any table and let Bob walk among them. At a glance he will spot it."

Now that is amazing! I betcha you can't do that. I can't even remember if I had Bob Evans sausage for breakfast.

To celebrate Bob's amazing talent, drop down to the Star Gazers Lounge and have the Super-duper Supernova Martini. But if you see Bob there and you introduce yourself, don't expect him to remember your name if you meet him again. He says he's not very good at remembering names and his wife says he can't remember where he's put things.

Amazing.
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