This is so zen

No two toys are ever broken in the same way or with the same emotional results. - Robert Graves, Poetic Unreason

June 3rd is Memorial to Broken Dolls Day in Japan.

On this day each year, children bring their broken dolls to Buddhist shrines for funeral rituals. After the ceremony, the dolls are buried and enshrined. This temple should be located on the Island of Misfit Toys


The American Egg Board has declared that it is National Egg Day today.



Think of all the music royalty that have to get paid out just to get those eggs laid.

I understand that the Egg Board is actually financing the Tea Party Movement (but you didn't hear that from me.)


June 3, 1906 -
Josephine Baker, dancer, singer, bisexual Parisian nightclub owner and Resistance fighter, was born on this date.



During World War II, Baker became active in undercover work for the French Resistance movement. Josephine Baker died in France in 1975 and was buried in Paris. She was the first American born woman to be buried with full French Military Honors.


June 3, 1955 -
The Billy Wilder comedy, The Seven Year Itch, opened on this date.




Amazingly, Marilyn Monroe's very narrow spike heels don't get stuck or break in the subway grating that she stands on it in the movie's most famous scene, although this was a universal problem, at the time, for the countless women wearing that very popular style heel in New York City in that era.


June 3, 1969 -
The last episode of the original Star Trek (Turnabout Intruder) aired on NBC-TV, on this date.




William Shatner had a severe case of flu during filming of this episode. At one point he had to lift Sandra Smith in his arms, carry her to a couch and put her on it: during the first take he got as far as the couch and dropped her. Fortunately it was well padded, and Smith bounced several times; according to Joanie Winston, who was visiting the set, Shatner looked down at Smith and said, "You know I love you, baby, but you've got to lose about six inches off that ass."


Today In History:
June 3, 1791 -
The French Assembly passes a resolution bringing decapitation to the common criminal: "Every person condemned to the death penalty shall have his head severed."

So it wasn't just for the rich anymore.

(I'm still hoping that we go back to the old 1% rule.  Beheading only for those who can well afford them)


June 3, 1888 -
Casey at the Bat, subtitled A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888, by Ernest Thayer, was published in the San Francisco Examiner on this date.



The things you have to do to get kids to read poetry now-a-days.


June 3, 1943 -
Three days after a sailor had been badly injured in a brawl with a group of Hispanics, a mob of 60 servicemen leaves the Los Angeles Naval Reserve Armory and bludgeons anybody wearing a zoot suit.



The first two victims are a couple of boys, aged 12 and 13, who were just sitting in the Carmen Theater watching a movie. Thus begins the famous week-long Zoot Suit Riot.


June 3, 1965 -
The first American astronaut to make a spacewalk was Major Edward White II, when he spent 20 minutes outside the Gemini 4 capsule during Earth orbit at an altitude of 120 miles. A tether and 25 foot airline were wrapped in gold tape to form a single, thick cord. He used a hand-held 7.5 pound oxygen jet propulsion gun to maneuver. The launch had taken place a few hours earlier on the same day.



During the remainder of the flight, pilot White and his crewmate commander James McDivitt completed 12 scientific and medical experiments. The total time in orbit was almost 98 hours, making 62 orbits. Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov, had made the first ever spacewalk for 10 minutes about three months earlier.


June 3, 1968 -
Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, arrived at the art studio of Andy Warhol on this date and shot him three times in the torso. Warhol barely survives the attempt on his life. Solanas is later jailed and institutionalized.




Doctors finish the job Solanas attempted several years later in a NY hospital when they botch a gall bladder operation in 1987. Solanas died a year after that in a skid row hotel in San Francisco in 1988, purportedly still working on a sequel to her previous book .


June 3, 1955 -
Barbara Graham, a convicted murderer, was executed in the gas chamber along with two accomplices on this date.



Susan Hayward won an Academy Award for playing Graham in the movie I Want to Live!


June 3, 1989 -
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died after 11 days in a hospital, recovering from surgery to stop internal hemorrhaging, on this date.

Khomeini became ill when he realized that through a very bad translation, 73 virgins were not waiting for him but 73 raisins.



And so it goes.