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Get Smart and Stay Strange

By J.C. Bruce

It's easy to be the smartest person in the room--or the Zoom. Come armed with fascinating bits of information to share with your friends and frenemies, and they will be gobsmacked by your intellectual grasp.


Consider this newsletter your ammo box full of tips and trivia you can use and abuse to get you through the shortest month of the year.


February Highlights

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This February is not a leap year, so there are only 28 days this month. But the most important day on the calendar is Feb. 14, Valentines Day. Figured we'd get that said right away. This is not a day you want to forget.


Go online and ask "why do we celebrate Valentine's Day" (apart from the need to sell greeting cards and chocolate) and you'll get answers such as this:


"St. Valentine's Day is an annual festival to celebrate romantic love, friendship and admiration." The History Channel offers this insight, however:


"The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret."


For that, he had his head involuntarily removed.

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Super Sunday


The Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams will square off in Super Bowl LVI on Sunday, Feb. 13--yes the very day before Valentine's Day.


Important Super Bowl facts to know:


The game will be played in California at SoFi Stadium, the home field for both the Rams and the Los Angeles (formerly San Diego) Chargers.


What the heck is a Sofi? It's the name of a bank.


Kickoff is at 6:30 p.m. Television broadcast: NBC.


And about those Roman numerals: This is Super Bowl LVI. What's LVI? The answer is 56. L equals fifty. V equals five. and I equals one.


Run into this problem again, click here for a handy Roman numeral converter.


Other February Milestones, Events, and Notes


Black History Month is celebrated in February. It is also the month in which both Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and Frederick Douglas (Feb. 14) were born.


February is also National Goat Yoga Month, the celebration of combining goats and exercise (for real).


Groundhog Day is Feb. 2. If the groundhog sees his shadow in Punxsutawney, PA., we'll have six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't, we'll have six more weeks of winter. Go figure.


Feb. 2 is also college football national signing day. It marks the earliest a high school prospect can commit to a college team and is widely followed in the media.


The Winter Olympics begins Feb. 4 in Beijing and continues until Feb. 20 amid tight restrictions on attendance due to the pandemic.


Facebook was launched 18 years ago on Feb. 4, 2004. The site currently has 2.8 billion active monthly users.


Dayton 500, NASCAR's biggest and richest race, takes place at the Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 20.


President's Day is Feb. 21, marking the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, neither of whom was born on this date.


Florida was acquired by the United States from Spain on Feb. 22, 1819. Shortly thereafter, we can imagine, a Florida Man told a friend, "Hold my mead," and attempted to swim across an alligator-filled pond.


The 94th annual Academy Awards will be presented on Feb. 27 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. It will be televised live on ABC.


Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month is celebrated in February. It was originated by the Illinois Food Retailers Association. And has been vigorously enforced by Florida vigilante Mister Manners.

Words to Live By


"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

News of the Weird


West Virginia's governor, Jim Justice, recently ended his State of the State address by telling singer Bette Midler to kiss his dog's ass.


Justice was responding to a swipe at West Virginians Midler took--specifically designed to embarrass Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin--by calling West Virginians "poor, illiterate and strung out."


Justice's response was to hold his pet bulldog up to the microphone, saying: "Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there kiss her heinie."

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What I'm Reading and Watching


Just began reading Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War by Howard W. French. My ordinary reading list is more lowbrow--usually mysteries and thrillers (the genres I write in, myself). But I belong to a book club that forces me to read outside my comfort zone, and this look at how our conventional take on modern history has utterly ignored the role of Africa in the creation of our civilization captivated me from the very first pages.

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Watching After Life starring comedian Ricky Gervais. It's the serialized story of a small town English newspaper reporter struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife. Created, written, and directed by Gervais (winner of the annual Ron Rollins lookalike contest). I recommend it for the tight, witty writing, marvelous characters, and, oh, the way he finishes it will take your breath away.


(Shameless plug: Ron Rollins, a retired journalist and now an amazing painter in Dayton, Ohio is teaming with me for a new podcast we are about to produce. Stay tuned for more details.)

Strange Animal Fact


How do kangaroos stay cool, nobody ever asked. But now you will be in the know. In the hot deserts of Australia, our marsupial friends beat the heat by licking their arms. Try it this summer--preferably in public, say at a social gathering--and let us know if it improves your cool factor.


Yet Another Odd Animal Fact


Dolphins sleep about eight hours a day, just like humans. However, they are never fully unconscious. They rest only half a brain at a time.


Don't Look Up


An asteroid the size of the Empire State Building blew past Planet Earth last month, but not to worry: Its nearest approach was over a million miles away--more than four times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. On the other hand, it crosses the Earth's path regularly, and should it collide sometime in the future, it would release energy greater than a nuclear explosion. But all things are relative: It's nowhere near the size of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. That rock was more than seven miles across. And the next time this asteroid will be this close to Earth again won't be until 2105.

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Surely by 2105 we'll have figured out how to defend ourselves from falling space rocks won't we?


Not a lot of progress on the front, unfortunately.


Here's what Neil deGrasse Tyson has to say about the situation:


"Today, the greatest threat of extinction we face is not asteroids or climate change or disease or famine. It's society's refusal to heed the warnings of scientists."


More on this at MashableIndia.

Medical News You Can Use


We've all read articles regarding vitamins and other supplements, whether they work and how overuse can be harmful. But now some good news:


Vitamin D supplements prevent people from developing certain types of autoimmune diseases. This is especially true for people over 50, which to me, at least, makes a certain kind of sense since as we age our bodies' ability to make Vitamin D from sunlight diminishes.


Some of the diseases that taking Vitamin D supplements (and fish oil, too) help to ward off include arthritis, psoriasis, and muscle pain. More here.


Weird Medicine


Know what humans and frogs have in common? We can't regrow severed limbs.


To which you may be saying to yourself, this is news? No, but this is:


Scientists have figured out how to help frogs regenerate missing limbs using a silk gel infused with five different chemicals. The idea being that if they can make this work on amphibians, then maybe someday people, too. More here.


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R.I.P. Meat Loaf


It has been over a week, which in today's raging fire hydrant of news makes this nearly ancient history, but we pause for a moment to note the passing of Michael Lee Aday, a.k.a. Meat Loaf, whose stunning Bat Out of Hell and its derivative albums sold more than 65 million copies.


In case it comes up in conversation, a couple of interesting footnotes:


Meat Loaf was featured in more than 50 films and TV shows. He appeared on Broadway early in his career in The Rocky Horror Show and later in the movie as Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.


He was a native of the Lone Star State, born in Dallas in 1947. Add his death to the legions in the past two years who have left us due to complications from COVID-19.

FAQ from our Mailbag


In your so-called "shameless advertising message" in last month's newsletter, you had a screen grab of your new website. Who's the pirate chick?


Say hello to Mona. Ordinarily she lives aboard Alexander Strange's trawler, the Miss Demeanor, but she's visiting while the boat's in dry dock.


So why does this guy Strange have a mannequin aboard his boat. He got some kind of weird sexual fettish?


Fetish is spelled with one "t" and, no, Alexander is the consummate gentleman and would never lay an inappropriate hand on Mona (although he did have to apply a Band-Aid to her gunshot wound.


You're killing me. Gunshot wound?

Yes. You can read all about how he and Mona became acquainted in Florida Man, how she got shot in Get Strange, and how Alex's girlfriend, Gwenn Giroux, protected her in Strange Currents. All installments in The Strange Files series of books by yours truly.


Wait! Has this all just been yet another shameless advertising message?


Of course not.

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And this parting gift...

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