The Pink Flamingo :: Top Ten Ways You Know the Presidential Debate Was Boring

10. You skip the post debate punditry for a cheesy movie rerun on the Sci Fi channel.
9. You have a hard time voting for your favorite candidate as the winner.
8.   You can't think of anything really bad to say about the opposition candidate.
7.   You can't think of anything really good to say about your candidate.
6.   You find yourself rooting for the someone to throw a pie at the opposition candidate.
5.   You think a food fight in the audience would liven things up a bit!
4.   You think a spitball contest between the wives would be more exciting!
3. You root for both candidates to turn on the moderator.
2. You mute the sound and converse with relatives!
1. You want someone to boo your candidate, simply to relieve the boredom of the event.

THE CHAMBERS BOOK OF DAYS

Born: William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, 1573, Reading; Charles Abbott, Lord Tenterden, eminent naval and mercantile jurist, 1762, Canterbury.
Died: Charles III, the Simple, king of France, 929, Castle of Peronne; Margaret, Maid of Norway, 1290, Orkney; Sir Thomas Chaloner, statesman and writer, 1565; George Gascoigne, poet and dramatist, 1577, Stamford, Lincolnshire; Giovanni Battista Guarini, author of the Pastor Fido, 1612, Venice; Nicholas Heinsius, scholar and critic, 1681, Holland; Antonio Sacchini, composer, 1786, Paris; Dr. John Brown, founder of the Brunonian system of medicine, 1788, London; Dr. John George Zimmerman, celebrated author of the treatise on Solitude, 1795, Hanover; Dr. Thomas Reid, eminent Scottish metaphysician, 1796, Glasgow; Edgar Allan Poe, American poet, 1849, Baltimore.
Feast Day: St. Justina of Padua, virgin and martyr. Saints Marcellus and Apuleius, martyrs at Rome. Saints Sergius and Bacchus, martyrs, 4th century. St. Mark, pope and confessor, 336. St. Osith, virgin, about 870.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

Edgar Allan Poe, an eccentric American poet, was born at Baltimore, January 1811. It may seem absurd to say that he belonged by birth to the aristocracy, in a country where no aristocracy is recognised. Still, it is a fact that Poe was an aristocrat, and it is also true, that no people are more proud of the advantages of birth and breeding, than citizens of the United States, especially those who belong to the southern division of those states. Poe was a Southerner in manners and feelings, as well as by birth; and there is little doubt, that the greater part of the infamy which was heaped upon him after his death, was owing to the fact that as a man of taste he despised, and as an aristocrat, treated with contempt, a tradesman in literature, who lived by making books of biographies, generally laudatory of living literary persons. This man took his revenge when the opportunity came, as any one may kick a dead lion with impunity. Many have echoed, no doubt honestly, the evil fame which was made for the poor poet by this man, whom he had despised and insulted during his life.

Poe's grandfather was a soldier in the war of the American revolution, and a friend of Lafayette. His father was a student at law. He fell in love with an English actress, named Arnold, and married her. They both died young, and at nearly the same time, leaving three orphan children. Edgar was adopted and educated by John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Virginia. At the early age of five years he was brought to England, and was sent to school near London, till he was ten years old.

Poe's life was a series of eccentric adventures. The reason of this is to be found in his temperament, or physical constitution. He lived, from the cradle to the grave, on the verge of madness, when he was not absolutely mad. A half-glass of wine intoxicated him to insanity. His brain was large, almost to deformity, in the region where phrenologists place the imaginative faculties. Under the influence of slight stimulus, such as would have been inappreciable by a person otherwise constituted, Poe was led on to commit acts, the consequences of which were often distressing, and might at any moment have been fatal, as was finally the case.

At an early age he entered college at Charlottesville, Virginia, but he was expelled for dissipation. He also entered the military school at West Point, New York, but he left in a year. During the excitement in favour of the independence of Greece, he started for that country; but he was next found at St. Petersburg, where he fell into distress, as was his fortune almost everywhere, and some friends sent him home.

Soon after his return, he published a volume of poems, entitled At Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. These were written from the age of sixteen to eighteen years.

At one time he enlisted as a soldier, but he soon deserted. He had much partiality for active exercise, and very little for discipline, though he was exceedingly methodical and orderly in all the details of life. He was remarkable for aquatic and gymnastic performances. He was able to leap further than most men, and he once swam seven miles and a half against the tide.

In 1835, Poe was employed to write for the Southern Literary Messenger, and about this time he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, who, at the time of their union, was about fourteen years old. After this, we find him engaged on Benton's Gentleman's Magazine, at two pounds a week. This engagement was of brief continuance, and he next was connected with Graham's Magazine, and wrote Some Strange Stories, nearly all of which seem tinged with a sort of semi-insanity. We next find him engaged with Mr. Briggs, in establishing the Broadway Journal. This was soon discontinued. About 1844, he wrote The Raven, which has enjoyed a more extended reputation than any other production of his pen.

After the appearance of the Raven in trans-atlantic periodicals, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to Poe, that 'The Raven had excited a fit horror in England.' He was delighted with the compliment. Indeed this sort of impression appeared to be an object of ambition with him. Poe always seemed to consider The Raven as his master-piece, and he was fond of reciting it in company, in a sort of sing song tone, which was very unpleasant to some.

It would be difficult to calculate the amount of fame that Poe might have earned, if he could have lived, and written one year in undisturbed sanity. After the fame of The Raven had brought his name upon every lip, he was invited to lecture before the Boston Atheneum—the highest honour the Athens of America could bestow on the poet. He went before an elegant and most intellectual Boston audience, and instead of giving a lecture, he repeated a juvenile poem that had been published! His friends had no doubt of the cause, or occasion of this strange proceeding, but the audience were indignant. Poe declared that 'it was an intentional insult to the genius of the frog pond, a small pond on Boston Common 'a further evidence of the madness that he often induced, by taking stimulants, though he knew his fearful liability. After this, his irregularities became so much the rule of his life, that Mrs. Clemm, who acted the part of a good genius to the poet and his young wife, her daughter, took a cottage at Fordham, near New York.

Here she devoted herself to the care of both with tender and unceasing assiduity. Mrs. Poe was dying of consumption. Poe was plunged in a deep melancholy, which did not admit of his writing anything. They were in a state of almost utter destitution, and the malady of the poet was constantly aggravated by witnessing the suffering of his fading, lily-like wife, to whom he was tenderly attached. Friends came to their help the moment their condition was known, and it was subsequently brought against Poe, that he took a bribe at this time for a favourable review, which he afterwards wrote of a miserable book of poems. In speaking of this violation of his literary conscience, after he had somewhat recovered the tone of his mind, he said, ' The author gave me a hundred dollars, when my poor Virginia was dying, and we were starving, and required me to write a review of that book. What could I do?'

Let those who have judged him harshly for this, and other sins of his life, place themselves in his condition. When sober and sane, Poe was a gentleman of pure taste and elegant manners, whose conversation was always interesting, and often instructive. He had great personal beauty, and the aristocratic manner and bearing of a southern gentleman, and a descendant of the Cavaliers. In 1848, Poe published Eureka, which he first gave as a lecture. It is impossible to give a characteristic description of this and other literary performances by Poe. The same sort of extravagance pervades all, and those who knew him most intimately, and were best qualified to judge, believed that he lived and wrote with a shade of madness in all that he did—and yet few men were more methodical and orderly in their habits than Poe. His handwriting was delicately beautiful, and at the same time clear and plain. His study was the perfection of order and neatness. But his fearful proclivities might change all this in a moment. The world cannot believe that half a glass of wine could make a man lose all self-control, and hurry him on to madness, and its fearful consequences. But there is abundant proof that this was true of Poe.

After the death of his wife, Poe gradually recovered from the deep melancholy which had palsied all his mental power during the last portion of her life, and engaged again in literary occupation. Subsequently, he entered into correspondence with a lady of fine genius and high position, with a view to marriage. But here, again, his destiny was against him. The marriage was broken off, and soon after Poe died of delirium tremens, at the age of thirty-eight; that critical period at which it seems natural for an irregular life, combined with excessive brain-work, to bring its victims to an end.

Dime con quien andas y te digo quien eres.

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