Why Washington Matters Part 1: June 30th 2014

England at one time, for a brief amount of years, was itself a Republic.  The man at the center of this Revolution was a decorated man of war much like George Washington would be about 100 years later.  His name was Oliver Cromwell, and his claim to fame was fighting King Charles.  The Kings of England have ever been settled with the fact that they were beholden to their countrymen, and never fashioned themselves after the old Emperors of Rome.  They became a Constitutional Monarchy relatively early, and so the Monarch had limited power to do things like issue laws and taxes.  King Charles was a big fan of the French Kings, whom believed they ruled by divine right and that no one had the power to challenge them.  Oliver Cromwell challenged King Charles, melted down the crown of Edward the Confessor and cut off King Charles's head.

Yes, the revolution came to an end with with the beheading of a King.  To accomplish this Cromwell had his allies kill, murder or expel any member of Parliament that stayed loyal to the King.  They then had themselves a "fair and just" trial.  Afterward, instead of getting governance into order, Cromwell called for the genocide of Catholics in Ireland.  Now, in England, quite a bit of the nobility were Irish.  King Charle's father was known as James the VI of Ireland and James the 1st of England, as the blood lines had mixed so much that both the King of England and the King of Ireland were one and the same.  So even this special Parliament did not want Ireland to be a bloody graveyard.  Cromwell simply dissolved the Parliment and made another one with people that agreed with him, killed the rest, and set about putting into laws against Catholics that Hitler would later use to rob the Jews of all property and standing in the 20th century.  He kills 1/5th the population of Ireland and Scotland.

Cromwell decided that creating single purpose assemblies in the guise of a republic was just too much effort.  His genocidal assembly proved to not be to his liking when it came to economic concerns.  He dissolved the assemblies in total and became Lord Protector of England, the sole power, administrator and general.  If by this time he did not look like he was the new self appointed king, then I submit the following that occurred upon his death:  In the ceremony, his right hand held the royal scepter, in his left hand was the royal orb.  Upon his head was fashioned a velvet cap embroidered in real gold thread.  His entire body was dressed in purple, the color of royals, and was embroidered with a fortune of gold thread.  And to further show that Cromwell had done nothing but fashion himself as a new king, his son, Richard Cromwell, succeeded him as Lord Protector of England.  Less than 9 months later, England's Republic dissolved.

George Washington, as you all know, turned down becoming George the First of America.  After his 2nd term was over, he simply left office.  It was not a law that he had to leave, or that there were term limits.  Washington simply decided that 2 was enough, and it took till FDR for anyone to go outisde Washington's example.  He packed up his stuff and he moved home to live the rest of his life as a private individual.

Next time on Why Washington Matters; we delve into pure insanity.

June 30th, 2014

Smoked Paprika.  For the longest time I had looked for a good way to add smoke and not other things to stuff that I have cooked.  I experimented with adding bacon to everything, and it was glorious and it worked, but it got expensive.  I later tried using liquid smoke.  The problem with liquid smoke is that it tastes horrible by itself, and with just a little too much you get bitter, dirty water flavoring in your cooking.  My girlfriend has been on a spicy kick lately and was looking at the spice isle.  Paprika is something we typically get as a sort of vitamin supplement for a condition she has, and when we were looking for spicy food additives she decided that the smoke paprika would probably be great with her pepper blend(Smoked Paprika is not spicy itself).  It did go well, and now I'm putting that stuff on everything.  It works well to turn plain sliced cheese into smoked cheese.  It turns eggs into a smokey omelette.  Its only about 20-30 cents more than regular Paprika and its very worth it.

Watched a home video of the first time the group at Id Software got DOOM working on a computer.  During the video they showed the core developers playing "Aladdin" on the Sega Genesis, and the people that were presenting this video felt they had to pause the video, explain that the developers played games of all genres, and somehow justify the DOOM developers playing a "child's" game like Aladdin.  It was pretty insulting.  Aladdin on the Sega Genesis was actually a rather strong title and important moment in gaming.  This was the game that gave Dave Parry and his crew enough cred to start making their own games, and lead directly to Earthworm Jim.  The music in the Genesis version was amazing and sounded like what you have from the movie, the animations were high frame-rate, the jumping and platform gameplay was top notch.  You can draw a line directly from the series God of War to Aladdin on the Sega Genesis using developers.  The SNES version was dogshit in comparison.

Its that time of year again, Netflix is losing a ton of stuff, and gaining... well, gaining a couple of things later this year, mostly garbage television.  The big loses are probably the Rocky Movies and the small amount of James Bond movies they've had for a while.  Comedies are taking a huge hit... well I should say GOOD comedies, I notoriously hate most comedies.  They are losing Spaceballs, As Good as it Gets, and Dr. Strangelove(or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb).  Three great comedies that aren't based on how annoying and awkward they can be to be funny(all comedies in the past decade).  But hey, we get Baby Daddy season 3!(obvious sarcasm).  Netflix, quit buying the garbage that caused people to flock to your service in the first place.