A large spider walked out onto my bathroom floor yesterday. I was sitting at my kitchen table only a few feet away from the bug. I reached for my can of Raid, and I gave the spider a dose. Then I said to myself, "spiders are your friends," and I immediately felt terrible. Then the spider leaped from the bathroom floor onto my leg...a good two feet. Luckily, I was wearing sweat pants. At first I couldn't find the bugger, but eventually I found him trying to have sex with my knee. I brushed him away and squashed him.
But I felt bad. But I also had an excuse: I had never seen a large arachnoid creature leap like that! Maybe it wasn't a spider at all? I checked it out on Google. Sure enough it had been a spider. I learned that certain jumping spiders can jump a distance equal to 43 times their body length...greater than any other animal. I also learned that spiders have eight eyes (except for some who have six eyes.) Also, spiders eat bed bugs!
Well, I now felt I had killed my buddy, so I scraped his remains from the bottom of my sneaker and I gave him a funeral just like the one they gave Osama bin Laden. I didn't have an extra sheet, so I covered his corpse with a piece of bathroom tissue before flushing him into eternity.
I'm reading about Venice in the 16th century, and all of a sudden the writer feels he has to take me back as far as the 7th century in order to explain the relationship between Venice and the Popes. Now, either the writer began making mistakes, or the folks who copied the text from the book to the e-book began making mistakes. Bayazid, for example, a 15th c. - 16th c. kind of guy, is referred to as being around in the 14th century. Anyway, despite my intentions to stick with The Cambridge Modern History I gave up for a bit and I went back to reading Mommsens's History of Rome. I won't bore you with the details.
I find it easier to remember the various historical characters by giving them a modern-day analogue. Thus: Pope Julius II / General George Patton; and Savonarola / The Reverend Al Sharpton. Wickipedia would have you believe that Savonarola became the leader of Florence, but actually, much like the Reverend Al Sharpton, he inspired large crowds and pressured the city magistrates to follow the will of the people. Too bad I hadn't thought about this when I was a kid and flunking all those history tests that my sister whizzed through.
I do not publish the "comments" that readers send to my website. I have explained this before. Nonetheless, folks continue to comment. So when a reader says something interesting I include it here. In my previous post I mentioned that The Lady in Purple asked me if Black History Month was over yet. A reader, Betty from Baltimore, tells me that Black History Month begins on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday (January 15th) and ends on the final day of Kwanzaa. I don't know if this is correct, but I submit it for your consideration.
In an effort to get out of the 16th century I have agreed to review two new books. I should receive them in a week or so. One is Michel Houllebecq's Magnum Opus (I forget the title) and the other is the most recent book from the typewriter of Goeff Dyer...one of my favorite writers despite his proclivity to chew his fingernails.
If you have been following my bets you know that I have bets on both teams in the Super Bowl. I have the Giants at 12-1 and the Patriots at 4-1. Go Giants!
It remains nearly impossible for me to continue to write on this website because of poor connectivity with the Internet. But I shall try. I hope this prints.
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