The breezes is loud and shrill

March comes in like a the Screaming Hairy Armadillo and goes out like an Ice Cream Cone Worm.

The name of March comes from ancient Rome, when March was the first month of the year and called Martius after Mars, the Roman god of war.

In Rome, where the climate is Mediterranean, March is the first month of spring, a logical point for the beginning of the year as well as the start of the military campaign season. The numbered year began on March 1 in Russia until the end of the fifteenth century.



Great Britain and her colonies continued to use March 25 until 1752, the same year they finally adopted the Gregorian calendar. Many other cultures and religions still celebrate the beginning of the New Year in March. (But I bet you told your boss that you still tenaciously clung to the Julian Calendar and celebrated January 13th as New Years Day - well you're SOL.)

Among the things we celebrate this month are:
* Cataract Awareness Month
* Honor Society Awareness Month
* Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Month
* Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month (Please stop broadcasting colonoscopies!)
* Rosacea Awareness Month
* Deaf History Month
* Feminine Empowerment Month
* Foot Health Month
* Furniture Refinishing Month
* Humorists Are Artists Month
* International Hamburger & Pickle Month
* Irish-American Heritage Month (Please don't let the Catholic High Schools know that St. Patrick's Day can be celebrated all month long.)
* Poison Prevention Awareness Month
* Talk with Your Teen about Sex Month
* National Umbrella Month
* Social Worker's Month (If you don't talk to your kids about sex.)


Bon temps roulez, mes amis - It's Mardi Gras!









No one needs to disrobe, it's much too cold, we've got plenty of beads, (unless you like to disrobe in public and then, it's between you and your maker.)

Today is also know as Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day, which heralds the beginning of fasting in Lent. On this day (so the historians say) there were feasts of pancakes to use up the supplies of fat, butter and eggs... foods that were forbidden during austere Lent. The word 'shrove' is the past tense of the English verb 'shrive' which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by way of confession and doing penance.



In England there are several celebrations on this day but perhaps the best known one is the Pancake Day Race at Olney in Buckinghamshire which has been held since 1445.



The race came about when a woman cooking pancakes heard the shriving bell summoning her to confession. She ran to church wearing her apron and still holding her frying pan, and thus without knowing it, started a tradition that has lasted for over five hundred years.

Keep flipping them pancakes!


Today is National Pig Day honoring the porcine fellow. According to one of the holiday's creators, the purpose of National Pig Day is "to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place as one of man's most intellectual and domesticated animals."



Please remember, don't commit mortgage fraud, no matter what!


March 1, 1936 -
Warner Bros. Pictures releases the horror film The Walking Dead, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff and Edmund Gwenn, which premiered in New York City, on this date.



The "glass heart" machine used to revive Karloff's dead character was said to be "nearly a prefect replica" of an actual perfusion pump- a device designed to keep organs alive outside an organism's body- which had been built by Charles Lindbergh, when the legendary pilot and engineer was working with a Nobel-winning scientist at New York's Rockefeller Institute research labs in the mid-1930s.


March 1, 1973 -
Pink Floyd released their eighth studio album, Dark Side Of The Moon, on this date.



The album debuts at an inauspicious #95 on the US Albums chart, but has become the album with the most weeks on the Billboard charts, thanks in large part to a run from 1977-1988 when it never left. With an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is Pink Floyd's most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums worldwide.


March 1, 1981 -
NBC-TV aired the made-for-TV film Elvis and the Beauty Queen, starring Don Johnson and Stephanie Zimbalist on this date.



Ronnie McDowell provided the vocals to all of Elvis' songs, including A Very Precious Love, which Don Johnson and Stephanie Zimbalist sang as a duet.


March 1, 1985 -
Another of Woody Allen's takes on the public's relationship with the movies, The Purple Rose of Cairo starring Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello, premiered on this date.



Reportedly, actor Danny Aiello was so disappointed when he didn't get the Lou Canova role that went to Nick Apollo Forte in Broadway Danny Rose, that Aiello apparently was depressed for two weeks. Woody Allen then made this up to actor Aiello by casting him in The Purple Rose of Cairo, this being Allen's next picture after Broadway Danny Rose. Aiello had previously appeared in Allen's The Front and then later co-starred in Allen's Radio Days.


Today's moment of Zen.


Today in History:
March 1, 1810 -
Frédéric François Chopin, one of the best-known and best-loved composers of the Romantic period, was born on this date.



Chopin's entire musical output was devoted to his favorite instrument, the piano.


March 1, 1932 -
A person, most likely not the convicted and executed Bruno Hauptmann, climbed a makeshift ladder to the 2nd floor of Charles Lindbergh's New Jersey home and snatches his twenty-month-old son, Charles Jr. Whoever took the baby left behind a poorly-written ransom note demanding $50,000 in small bills.



Interesting aside, leading the investigation for the New Jersey state police was Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, father of the Gulf War hero, Stormin Norman, who shares his name.


March 1, 1954 -
The first hydrogen bomb was detonated on this ate. Even though the bomb was hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb exploded there in 1946, no islanders were evacuated this time. Almost 300 people suffered radiation exposure. The test was so successful that it blew the once happy island into tiny bits that came to be known collectively as the Bikini Atoll.



Shrewd fashion moguls in France put two and two together and invented bell bottoms.


About four hundred years earlier--on March 1, 1562-- Jason and his thousand Huguenots were at prayer in Vassy, France, when they were suddenly massacred by Catholics. Huguenots and Catholics subsequently fought The Wars of Religion for over three decades to settle the question of Best Religion Ever. Unfortunately the Edict of Nantes granted religious tolerance in 1598 and the question was never settled to anyone's satisfaction.

As a result, billions of human beings continue to honor the wrong religion to this very day.

I truly hopes God is grading on a curve. . . .


March 1, 1969 -
While performing with the Doors at The Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, the formerly svelte, now tubby alcoholic Jim Morrison asks the audience Do you wanna see my cock? then exposes himself briefly on the Miami stage.

For thus showing his peepee, Morrison received a sentence of six months hard labor.

Mr. Mojo Rising indeed.


March 1, 1971 -
You may not need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows but... The radical group Weather Underground exploded a bomb in a restroom of the U.S. Capitol building, causing significant damage. The bomb exploded after an intensive search of the building yielded no results.

Nobody was ever convicted of the attack.


March 1, 1978 -
The body of Charlie Chaplin was stolen for ransom by Galtcho Ganav (Bulgaria) and Romnan Wardas (Poland) from a cemetery in Corsier, Switzerland. The actor's corpse is recovered two months later.



One can only hope the little tramp was properly embalmed.


March 1, 1982 -
Russian spacecraft Venera 13 landed on Venus and sent back data.



Frightened scientists try to suppress the video but the world must know.



And so it goes.