Seeing this icon reminded me of on of my favorite character ideas of Danny’s from games past.

Dan had a character Best Suited for his personality – “Man of Iron“, but one of his other planned supers was Kool-Aid Man. Child-actor who actually was Kool-Aid man.. became disenfranchised later in life when nobody took him seriously, and began using his “giant pitcher of red fluid”-powers to commit crimes. It didn’t take long to catch him… and now he goes on special missions with Z-squad. (Or… would, if he wasn’t asked to come up with something else. He ended up playing a tunneling Joe Pesci slimeball named the Weasel… a precursor to his current character in the D20 D&D game his students are running at the school.)

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Watched Silent Running this morning. With the exception of the “message music” that seems to be in all movies in or around the early 70s, it is a really good film. I of course sympathize more with the murderous space-hippie than the corporate drones.

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Lappie’s battery charge no longer detects properly… I suspect it’s on the way out. I wonder if I can locate an inexpensive replacement? He’s been a durable little bugger since the mack’s groves gig, years ago. The only add-ons I’ve ever done to him are memory and a wireless card (and reformatted from Windows Me(h) to 2000) … he’s served me well both as a primary and a backup machine for quite a span… aside from games that require heavy-duty graphics, it’s still a fine little workhorse.

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Well, the rainy season is officially over… how come the hurricane season still extends into and through November?

The weather is lovely outside.. highs in the 80s at noontime, lows in the 60s at night. *This* is the reason my folks moved to the south in the first place.

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Witchcraft a part of Maryland’s past

HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Witchcraft trials and executions were facts of life in colonial Maryland.

From Southern Maryland to the Eastern Shore and as far north as Anne Arundel County, historians have documented at least 12 cases of persons prosecuted or persecuted in the 1600s and early 1700s because of accusations that they practiced witchcraft.

There wasn’t the same sort of hysteria in Maryland that there was in Massachusetts, where 19 men and women were executed and many imprisoned for witchcraft in 1692.

But Maryland and neighboring Pennsylvania and Virginia all had witchcraft trials, according to Hagerstown-based historian John Nelson.

Two of the earliest witchcraft cases in the Maryland State Archives involve executions aboard ships bound for Maryland from England.

Two men who recently had arrived on the Charity of London told colonial officials in St. Mary’s City in 1654 that the ship’s crew had hanged an old woman named Mary Lee after she was accused of sorcery.

Her supposed crime: summoning a relentless storm that some on board blamed on “the malevolence of witches.”

The second shipboard execution involved George Washington’s great-grandfather, John Washington of Westmoreland County, Va. He accused ship owner Edward Prescott in 1659 of hanging Elizabeth Richardson as a witch.

Prescott acknowledged the hanging at his trial but was acquitted after he said the ship’s captain, John Green, was the one responsible. The trial was in Patuxent, in either Anne Arundel or Charles counties.

Maryland’s only recorded execution for witchcraft on land occurred Oct. 9, 1685, in Calvert County. Rebecca Fowler was hanged after a jury found her guilty of “certain evil and diabolical arts called witchcrafts, enchantments, charms [and] sorceries.”

Hannah Edwards, also of Calvert County, was acquitted in 1686 of similar charges.

St. Mary’s County is rich in witchcraft history, with three cases in the historical record and a folk tale that is perhaps Maryland’s best-known bit of witch lore.

There is no historical record of Moll Dyer, but her legend is as enduring as the 875-pound boulder in front of the Old Jail Museum in Leonardtown that supposedly bears her hand print.
The reported witch is said to have been driven from her home on the coldest night of the year by townsfolk who burned her cabin. Dyer died of exposure and was found with her hand frozen to the rock, the story goes.

Maryland’s last recorded witchcraft trial was held in Annapolis in 1712. A jury acquitted Virtue Violl of Talbot County of using witchcraft to harm the health of an invalid neighbor.

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Skull in Poet Petrarch’s Tomb Not His

ROME – A scientific team that had been hoping to reconstruct the features of the great Italian poet Petrarch by digging up his bones has confirmed that the skull found in his tomb is not his.

Instead the skull belongs to a woman who died before the poet was born, project leader Vito Terribile Wiel Marin said Tuesday.

Marin wanted to use Petrarch’s bones to construct an image of the poet.

“Thank God we did not do it because we would have ended up with the face of a woman, much to everyone’s amusement,” Marin said by phone from his home in Padua in northern Italy.

Petrarch was born in Tuscany in 1304 and is considered second only to Dante in the pantheon of Italian poets. His tomb is in Arqua-Petrarca, a village near Padua where the poet died in 1374.

Marin and his colleagues suspected in April that the skull was not Petrarch’s, but sent a fragment to the United States for carbon dating to be sure.

The results showed that the head belonged to a woman who died between 1134 and 1280.

Marin said that whoever removed Petrarch’s head “must have had access to a collection of skulls,” perhaps at Padua University’s medical school. He said he still holds out hope that someone will return the poet’s missing skull.

Marin said his team would replace Petrarch’s body – which they are sure is authentic – following a restoration of the poet’s marble tomb. “But it would be nice to do it with the skull,” he said.

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Poetry Meme – When you read this, post your favorite poem in your journal… [Well, this isn’t my absolute favorite, but I do like it quite a lot.]

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull By Lord George Gordon Byron

Start not -nor deem my spirit fled:
In me behold the only skull
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaffed like thee;
I died: let earth my bones resign:
Fill up -thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape
Than nurse the earthworm’s slimy brood,
And circle in the goblet’s shape
The drink of gods than reptile’s food.

Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others’ let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst; another race,
When thou and thine like me are sped,
May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not -since through life’s little day
Our heads such sad effects produce?
Redeemed from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs to be of use.