Cranky Large Medium reading, 20 October

Go away.

What are you still standing there for? Isn't your mother calling you, or something? Vamoose! Oh, so you won't go until I give you some little reading, right? Ah, well, such is fate. Here you are:

You are complacent, self-satisfied, and overly-fond of your comfy chair, but that doesn't keep you from stepping up to your duty and saying, "Howdy!" (That doesn't guarantee you'll actually follow through, though.) You have fooled people into thinking you can be reliable, so they recklessly look up to you. Still, it's probably just your piece of paper from a semi-respectable academy they truly respect. You think it makes you look even smarter to carry books around, and occasionally comprehend the first few pages before you abandon the books and go back to the funny papers, and you are equally fascinated and bewildered by family and friends.

I'm guessing you're still bewildered. I'm shocked. Well, while you rack up complaints about how hard your life is and how cruel is this fortune, consider all these folks, who can't complain any more, because, on this date in history, they went to the wall: Aelia Eudocia, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, Said Pasha Kurd, Herbert Hoover, Yoshida Shigeru, Michael Maestlin, Archibald Pitcairne, Carl Ferdinand Cori, Paul Dirac, Andrey Kolmogorov, John Ball, Anthony Hecht, Gunnar Asplund, Werner Torkanowsky, Shirley Horn, Paul Raven, Bud Flanagan, Peter Dudley, Anthony Quayle, Joel McCrea, Burt Lancaster, Christopher Stone, William Scott "Jack" Elam, Barbara Berjer, Jane Wyatt, Chuck Hiller, Max McGee, Sir Richard Burton, Grace Darling, Eugene Debs, Arthur Henderson, Anne Sullivan, Harlow Shapley,

and Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines.

Call me... in a few years, maybe.
Happy birthday, anyway. Especially to you, John.