Columbus Day

I think it was “in Nineteen-Hundred and Forty-Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”

Maybe it was earlier, because if it was then, the Germans would have torpedoed him.

I’ll go look it up. Be right back.

* * *

Okay, I’m back. And here’s the deal. It was a Friday, October 12, 1492 (makes a difference). At least, on the Julian calendar it was a Friday. I can’t tell you what day of the Gregorian Calendar, because Pope Gregory XIII wasn’t born until 1502. But I think it would have been a Wednesday.

Anyway, Friday October 12, 1492 is when Columbus discovered America. Which was a shock to the people already living here.

So, it’s a holiday. Columbus Day, that is. Only we don’t celebrate it on the Friday. Or a Wednesday. No, the government has decided that it’s on a Monday, and that makes it October 10th this year.

Banks are closed today, because of Columbus’ influence on the banking industry. Or something.

Post Office is closed, too. Get used to that.

Schools are closed, too. At least, I didn’t see any school buses stopped in the road loading or unloading kids while cars sped by at 55 in a 35.

So, I suppose we’re supposed to be celebrating. I’m observing Columbus Day by working at my job in Columbus.

How are you celebrating Columbus Day?

43 Comments

  1. I’m celebrating the return of full employment to the US of A by sleeping in today.
    I filled in a total of 21 hours this weekend because other people who were supposed to work this weekend decided they didn’t need a job all that bad. (I bet they would have showed up if payday was on Monday instead of Friday!)
    I reasoned thusly; if you offer a job to someone who doesn’t really want to work, have you really created a job, or just found a new way to throw money away?
    If there are more jobs than there are people who really want to work, then full employment has been achieved and the recession is over!
    I don’t know exactly how Columbus accomplished that miracle, but I’ll drink a toast in his honor as soon as the beer I bought with the money I earned has properly chilled in the refrigerator I own.
    The non-working people can eat grass and drink ditch water for all I care!

  2. I plan to enslave the first island full of natives I can find and give them all new weird diseases that they have no defense against, before going on to cause all of the problems which will exist 500 years from now.
    Or something like that.

  3. I am sitting at a desk working, or wishing I was working due to the lack of orders under the Obama economy. Columbus was suppossed to be this terrible robotic killer guy who oppressed natives and wiped them out with his patented Columbus (TM) laser punches and rocket arms. Too bad he didn’t discover
    Kenya.

  4. here’s to discovey of the shortest rout to India. Just go down to the MiniMart and there’s Little India. btw its clergy appreciation month and I’m waiting for you guys to suck up to me for atleast one day.

  5. The youngun’s schools may be closed today, but we’re going full guns here at the Uni. Only, y’know, being in California it’s a gun-free zone, so it’s more metaphorical than necessary.

  6. Anytime some leftard brings up Columbus and imperialism:

    -North America was sparsely populated and disease had left a nearly empty area when Columbus arrived.
    -Compared to the Spaniard Cortez in Central and South America and its huge native populations, Columbus was Mother Theresa.
    -try not to notice that Cortezs’ ancestors seem to be finishing his work.

  7. “Maybe it was earlier, because if it was then, the Germans would have torpedoed him.”

    …and college “professors” and other liberal idiots everywhere would today teach that he deserved it.

  8. Here’s what I know about Columbus. I was spinning by the History/Ghost/Alien/Conspiracy Channel the other day, and they said Columbus was a Free Mason because he had crosses on his sails that looked like Free Mason crosses.

    So, Columbus arrives in the New World. He gives the natives the secret handshake, but they do not respond in kind. Having identified the natives as non-Free Masons, he kills every last one of them. Later, he built Washington, D.C. and based it on special angles that only Free Masons know.

  9. I am probably going to be doing the same thing as Frank M. Drinking a beer later. Made with Columbus hops. I to would be working if not for a broken foot. I too have have a globe, and it is round…

  10. I heard Columbus tried to sail into the harbor at Hispaniola blasting “Ride of the Valkyries” on giant speakers powered by a mysterious “battery”-type device provided by the Knights Templar (or was it the Knights of Columbus?) but his iPod froze up due to the salty conditions and he slaughtered all the natives because Steve Jobs was 500 years away.

  11. You do realize that Columbus reported strange lights above and below the waves on this journey to the New World. Apparently, he brought tinfoil with him.

    (I love it when cats get exposed for what they really are!)

  12. Jimmy says:
    (I love it when cats get exposed for what they really are!)

    I replied to Basil privately – not wishing to correct him in public. However, when others repeat his vicious smear that I am not a real cat, resist I much!

    My comment stated – “I’ll celebrate by cracking open a jar of ventresca tuna.” As I told Basil, jars are very easy to open – you just have to push them off the counter. Just because Basil is too cheap to buy his cats top-quality jarred ventresca (which they could easily open themselevs) to celebrate this auspicious day is no reason to impugn my character.

  13. My mother used to joke that Christopher Columbus and/or his crew were Jewish. 1492 was right in the middle of the unexpected Spanish Inquisition. The theory is some hiding Jews joined the crew to escape Spain. Other known Jews were “invited” by the King and Queen to join the crew as a pardon. Since the King and Queen didn’t completely believe Columbus, so much the better for the ships to fall off the edge of the Earth with the Jews on them.

    Unfortunately, during college Anti-Semitic Leftists, but I repeat myself, also believed Columbus was Jewish because they blame him for bringing slavery and diseases to the Peaceful Native Utopian People Of Not Being White Man Lands.

  14. Oh, your owners must loooooove you, DamnCat. First, you’re on the counter spreading meningococcal meningitis all over the place, then you have the temerity to make a shard-infested, foot-stabbing, smelly fish mess on the floor! I ask you: do you also clean up after yourself? Do you wipe the counters down and scrub the floor? No licking! Hmmmm? Do you do windows? If so, call me.

  15. I went to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios last night with my daughter in celebration of Columbus Day. Toured Columbus’ 4th ship: “The Forsaken.” Apparently a few gory details have been left out of history books.

  16. @ Jimmy

    First – I’m glad to see that you accept the fact that I am a cat.

    Second – I have no “owners” – just humans I like well enough to grace their home with my presence.

    Third – If I did clean windows I would not clean yours for fear that, were the neighborhood children able to see in, it would scare them out if a year’s growth.

  17. . . . at which point the native people said to their chief “Damnit, we told you this would happen if you were soft on immigration reform. Before you know it we will all be speaking Spanish.”

  18. Cristofo Columbus Aloysius Day, born on 12th October, 1730, was George Washington’s First Undersecretary of the Navy, and a naval hero during the Revolutionary War.

    Commodore Day, in 1777, led a fleet of barkentines under full sail through a blockade of Boston Harbor to bring supplies to the citizens of Charlestown.

    During the naval battle, Day lost an arm and a leg and two of his supply ships. This gave rise to the phrase “cost an arm and a leg” in referrence to something which is proven to be quite costly.

    Franklin Roosevelt, a former Undersecretary of the Navy himself, wished to do honor to a war hero as well as a prior officeholder, and so instituted the holiday in 1937.

    The holiday was originally supposed to apply only to those people holding patronage governmental positions, however, on advice of Justice Felix Frankfurter, president Roosevelt permitted the holiday to apply to all working people.

    Roosevelt and Frankfurter thought this a win-win since, at the time, unemployment was near 70% and most employment was through governmental patronage anyway.

  19. Actually Columbus was a terrible salesman. His first audience with the King&Queen was a complete failure.

    Columbus: Your highness, I really need your help to finance my journey to India.
    Royalty: Why?
    Columbus: Because hope and change, thats why.
    Royalty: Let’s see if you can outrun our collection of wild dogs first.

  20. Cat, Jimmy is just trying to sweet talk you! Then when he lures you in he will bugger you like nobody’s business! Be careful ma’ boy! You don’t want to go through life as Cat B!tch!!!

  21. And the Indians (Native Americans to you PC stiffs) had a leader called Chief Barry of Hope and Change. They kept asking “where is the fence” and Chief Barry kept speaking the nonsense so they took him deep in the woods on the first known Snipe Hunt. He was never heard from again, but by then it was too late and the nation was over-run with the evil man of white from Europe. Chief Barry of Hope and Change’s name has been banished from the Indian’s history forever since!

  22. Darned Italian usurper. We were here first! — The Vikings

    Look what that *** bought us. Diseases from kenya!

    At least Coronado left tacos. What did Columbus leave? Heh heh tacos rule!

  23. I spent it working and wondering why the flaming liberal puke teacher types (in Lexington, MA, where I’m working)
    not only don’t demand to work on “Columbus Day” (after all he was a raaaaaaacist etc etc etc) but they also managed
    to have a “career development day” on Friday….HOW ironic. This is on top of their “career development half day” EVERY
    single week on Thursdays. (I’m sure they wanted to make it on Fridays but that would have been too damn obvious.)
    You’d think people who claim to have such high principles would prove it…at least once.

  24. I got called a racist! It was done by one of the 2 smart liberals I know. I know, I know… smart liberal, oxymoron, yeah yeah yeah. Well now I’m down to one smart liberal that I know. I actually told the guy that, too.

  25. Crust, Pearl Harbor was old news! The United States had already won WWII by the time Columbus discovered America!!! The reason you don’t know this is because he was a Christian and therefore he has been stricken from all text books as a racist because he would never have supported Obama!

  26. #7 – Edthepastor,
    I appreciate you!
    2 Timothy 1:11
    “For this gospel I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, and therefore I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.”

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