This is one of my favorites, I’ll just get this out of the way at the start. It is 980 AD and we have a highly stylized attack on a highly stylized viking village in Newfoundland. Our native attacker, apparently there is only one, is in a first-person stabbing game it seems. He walks into a ghostly viking’s home and murders this one guy. The guy’s ghostly viking neighbors come running and find their dead friend (the native apparently having fled, I guess). Then we’ve got a viking funeral (is that taps? I think the vikings are playing taps) and the vikings leave. Their village falls prey to a time lapse and then, in the 1960s and some scientists find out that there was once a village there.

Our Norwegian scientists are Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad (as a child I heard this as “Helga and Onastina Ingsta”, but I should have known the lady would never get top billing) and their scientific work (which consisted entirely of sticking one trowel into some dirt = Fact) shows that the vikings made it to Newfoundland way before other whiteys made it to North America. Good to know.

“Do you know what I think this is?” probably shouldn’t be one of my favorite Heritage Moment quotes, but it is. Maybe it’s just because it is the only non-narrator line of dialogue in the whole piece, but I also like the universal nature of this quote. I don’t have to wait for someone to ask if someone can fly so I can reply “Fly no…” and nobody has to wait until I say my name to say “Patrick, Patrick O’Neil” with this quote. You can ask anyone if they know what you think a thing is whenever you want. Try it today.

I’m giving this highly stylized Heritage Moment Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. It’s a little light in the educational department, but it is an interesting watch.

It’s a little suspicious that we never see the native attacker. I entertain an idea about this: Our viking victim was, in fact, murdered by his wife! See how quickly he reacts to someone barging into his home? He’s not surprised. He doesn’t hesitate. Is that how you’d react if you were… smithing or whatever, and suddenly someone barged in to do a murder at you? I think not. But suppose you’d been arguing with the viking missus and she stormed out, grabbed the native weapon she happened to have found the day before, and stormed back in intent on releasing her womanly fury. When the others arrive they find the murderer pretending to mourn, accusing some native attack and sticking to her story so strongly that even the establishing captions thought it was a native attack. Well, fictional dead lady, you almost got away with it, but you didn’t reckon on the excellent deductive reasoning of PDR. Case closed.

The other option is that between the viking colonists and the Norwegian scientists the only proper Canadian in this minute is a murderer.

Well, I think I’m getting a cold. I knew it! I knew I shouldn’t be among these diseased children. Curse them all! Anyway, I guess I’m lucky in that I have time to sleep tonight. Hopefully that will help.

In other news, it appears that the program we used to put my Twitter posts onto the site went and changed. Doesn’t seem to work anymore. It was a nice idea while it lasted.

So now I’m gonna lay down. Rest my eyes. That sort of thing.

Here is those Phone Guys:

And here’s something that Marq whipped up:

A Science Lesson From Kip:

Little known fact. Mexico is only place to exist on every planet in very universe in all megaverses. That is why Mexicans are also called aliens.

This Has Been A Science Lesson From Kip

So what did PDR learn in school this week? Well, mostly he has learned how popular scarves are with the ladies these days. Scarfgirls everyplace.

Also, I’ve actually spoken to other students and their attitudes make me sad. “The only thing that matters is that I pass this assignment,” they say. They are concerned about their marks more than they are the material. That’s the exact thing I hate about the way the school system works, isn’t it? What a country.

Anyway, I guess I’m getting the hang of writing essays. It’s all about pretending, really. I may not have anything to say about this article I’m reviewing, but if I pretend I do, I guess that’s good enough. After all, all that matters is that I hand it in and get my grades.

Take my Gilgamesh essay: When I read the Epic of Gilgamesh a few years back I saw Gil’s failure to acheive his dream of immortality as a kind of unhappy ending. Sure, he wised up and accepted it, but in the end he died, so that was that. But during the course of this class I’ve been introduced to another interpretation, that through his suffering, Gilgamesh did manage to acheive a kind of immortality in the form of being remembered through story. Neat, said PDR. But y’know what, I find my original interpretation easier to write about, so I’m now actively arguing against the thing I found so neat. Why? Because what I think doesn’t matter. The marks are what matter, so I guess I’ll go with the essay I can probably do better. An essay I already considered meaningless because other people have discussed the topic better than I could is now also not representative of my actual thoughts on the subject. That’s school writing for ya!

Some time ago I posted a rambling spiel about how I basically knew that of all my fingers I had cut the left ring finger the least because I had once lost it and it had to grow back. But then Manglefinger happened this summer, so now my right middle finger has been going cut-less for a few months and is only just now getting back to groomable length. So now I don’t know which finger has been cut least often. One of the few things I can be sure of in this world has gone away.

Haiku!

Golden fog rolls in.
The old people can see it there.
They talk about it.

Y’know those vehicles from cartoons that are basically big drills that you ride in and go through the ground? Like Shredder had. I think Cobra had some too. Those things are probably pretty good at first, but eventually you’re going to end up with tunnels going to all the places you need to go and the drill is just going to sit in the garage. Think twice before buying one.