Cranky Large Medium reading, 23 February

Go away.

Will you be going, please? Why are you still here? Did the bus leave without you? -- because if it did, I can arrange for its hasty return. Oh, you're still here on purpose. Might I be so bold as to ask what that purpose is? Ah, yes, the reading. I have one of those, if today is the anniversary of your birth. It is? Guh-ROOvy. Here you are:

Aren't you just the picture of health? Since you don't have much, mind if I give you a few of my aches and fevers? Ah, but you will need reading glasses. Even when you stubbornly refuse to stagger under the influence of the weekend, most people won't exactly hate you. Still, since it's important to you, you should probably stay home and take care of the house and all its occupants, so nobody notices how annoyingly undamaged you are and tries to do something about it.

Are you happy, now? Of course not. It would take somebody of keen perceptions to be happy, here. But then, you could just look on the bright side – at least you're still able to come consult a medium, as opposed to all these people, who, on this date in history, stopped looking and settled for permanent shuteye: Zhezong, Zhengtong, Stanislaw Leszczynski, George Taylor, John Quincy Adams, Tomoyuki Yamashita, Saud bin Abdul Aziz, Janez Drnovšek, Andrea Cesalpino, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Albert Victor Bäcklund, Leo Hendrik Baekeland, John Robert Gregg, Dickinson W. Richards, Willigis, Peter Damian, Saint Isabel of France, Pope Eugene IV, Pope Benedict XIII John Keats, James Alfred Wight aka James Herriot, Joshua Reynolds, Pierre Certon, Georg Muffat, Helen Porter Mitchell aka Dame Nellie Melba, Edward Elgar, Tony Williams, Carl Anderson, Luigi Francisco Varlaro aka Don Cornell, John Dee Abohosh aka Donnie Brooks, Stan Laurel, Hirsch Jacobs, Carl Liscombe, José Napoleón Duarte, Robert K. Merton (talk about your unintended consequences!),

and Melvin Franklin.

Outta sight and out of mind.
Happy birthday, anyway.