Monday, August 25, 2008

Wonderfulness

Dear nerd,

I hope you're not busy, because I'm about to steal 30 minutes of your time with this website. It's a timeline of Teddy Roosevelt's life composed of entries from his diary. The hilarity cannot be unintentional; it's just too good for it to be the work of some stodgy Teddy Roosevelt Collection librarian who accidently put together a work of unintended comedy greatness. Here are some choice quotes:

April  1873: In Vienna "I bought a black cock and used up all my arsenic on him"

November  1878: 
2nd - At Porcelain initiation, "...was higher with wine than ever have been before-or will again. Still, I could wind my watch. Wine makes me awful fighty."
26th - Begins teaching Sunday school at Christ Church on Garden street opposite Cambridge Common

March 1879: Romping through Maine

September 1883: Kills first buffalo

August 1884: Kills two deer with one bullet. "This was much the best shot I ever made."

May 1885: Picks up new herd in Medora. Survives late night stampede

May 1896: Comptroller Fitch's testy exchange results in the offering of a duel. "Pistols or anything else!" Yells Roosevelt. Cools off and tells reporters there will be no duel.

February 1904: Lunch with Buffalo Bill

April 1904: Letter to Ted: "I am very glad I have been doing this Japanese wrestling... My right ankle and my left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness... since you left they have taught me three new throws that are perfect corkers."

December 1909: Dines on elephant trunk soup from the beast he and Kermit disposed of the preceding evening. 

December 1913:
13th - "Caymans were becoming more plentiful. The ugly brutes lay on the sand-flats and mud banks like logs, always with the head raised, sometimes with the jaws open... it is good to shoot them. I killed half a dozen..."
25th - Arrives in Corumba
27th - Bags ant-eater

January 1914: Bags tapir

February 1917: Writes letter to Secretary of War requesting permission to "raise a Division of Infantry with a divisional brigade of cavalry in the event of war (possibly with the permission to make one or two of the brigades of infantry, mounted infantry.)" Request denied.

March 1817: "In view of the fact that Germany is now actually engaged in war with us, I again earnestly ask permission to be allowed to raise a division for immediate service at the front." Request rejected the following day. 



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

August 1884: Kills two deer with one bullet. "This was much the best shot I ever made."


Is Arlen Specter an investor in the Grey Wolf Corp?