For The Love of Mike

Who?

I've heard this phrase a few times over the course of my life and never knew what it meant.

It's been stuck in my head for a while now and I finally got around to using this "internet thingy" to find out what it means.

I'm kind of a word nut in that I really like knowing what words and phrases mean. I mean, really mean. I know what Thing here means when he said "Oh, fer the love of Mike." He's swearing an oath. But since swearing is bad, you've got to turn the phrase.

Like when people say, "Oh for Pete's sake." They are avoiding saying the word "God". I imagined that was the reason for the Mike substitution. But who the hell is Mike?

Well, I'm gonna tell ya!

I found out that this phrase is actually between 600 and 800 years old. It was a soldier's oath. And since swearing is bad, saying the word "God" in your swear is even worse. It's one of the Big 10 ya know. So rather than risk an eternity in Hell, they started swearing to Mike. As in St. Michael, the patron saint of warriors and the Archangel that sent Satan to the hot seat.

Linguists and etymologists have a term for this. It's called a minced oath. Like when you step on a Lego in the middle of the night and feel like screaming, "Jesus Christ!" you instead bite your tongue and squeak out, "Cheese and rice!" See? You get to turn an eternity of damnation into a delightful side dish.

I learned all this by visiting Bill Casselman's website where he explained this in well written detail. I absolutely love that there are people in this world that study this stuff for my benefit. I'm not sure how long he studied in order to know this, but it only took me three minutes thanks to him.^[1]

Blogging by Candlelight

This is how Abraham Lincoln did it.

Just like they did it in 1789.

Why 1789? Because:

 1.  They didn’t have electricity.

 2.  For the U.S. it was a pretty big year! Yeah hell it was. And you people don’t have a single clue.

 3.  I’m gonna tell ya.

For those who live in or near the U.S.  ya’ll know that July 4th is a pretty big day. The former 13 British (English… United Kingdomish… Oh come on, who are you people?) Colonies declared their independence in 1776 on that particular day. We fought a war. We won.

I say “we” as in I’m member. Currently. Not that I was involved.

But what happened after that? I mean, we didn’t elect our first president until 1789. What’s up with that? George Washington was a general. A freakin’ war hero. He rode a horse made of crystal. Seriously, why did it take so long to elect a president? The war didn’t take that long to win… did it?

No. The war was over in 1783. Please Google Treaty of Paris.

So what the hell? Who was in charge during those seven years? Who was charge for the six after that!?

Meh… you can read history and learn about the “President of Delaware” and all that crap, but it really amounts to this: NOBODY.

Would you believe we had eight Presidents of the United States BEFORE George Washington? That’s right. Why don’t they teach THAT in school? Ha!… Why I homeschool my kids.

Let’s move on. GW was elected and took office as the first President of the U.S. under the Constitution (notice how I capitalized that? Yeah, I’m a patriot) in 1789. Before that we had the Articles of Confederation. Holy CRAP. Is this post educational or what. Crapsnacks.

So. 1789. No electricity. No Federal Union. No President (elected January… didn’t take office until April… no e-mail, no… well.. mail, seriously Ben was still working on it) until about mid-year.

Would you look at all the links in this post? Shit. Seriously, if I didn’t know better I’d say this was some sort of educational essay or something.

Hell, I’m writing in the dark. Drinking… something, you saw the pic, and I’m sure this is how Abraham Lincoln got his start. I’m so ON TO SOMETHING HERE.

Thank you Duracell or Energizer or whoever invented battery backups. Seriously. That thing has been beeping for hours. That’s what keeps me on the internet! Oh! And thank you AT&T for selling me access through the good old fashioned telephone lines. And…

HELLS YEAH! The juice came back on at 9:41 pm. EXACTLY 15 minutes before estimated. You’ve got the Scotty scenario down pat. See quotes below:

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you, but the Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours.

[La Forge goes back to work; Scotty follows slowly]

Scotty: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.

Scotty: How long will it really take?

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: An hour!

Scotty: Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would “really” take, did ya?

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Well, of course I did.

Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

I have a lotta respect for the Scotty Philosophy.

Where was I going with this?

…

Meh. I take it as a token of awesomeness that I can tie power out-ages, George Washington, Ben Franklin and Star Trek all together in one post.

Well!? What do you think? Was GW awesome? Ben? John Hanson?

Yeah…me too. 

"I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I drink IT ALL!" - John Hanson

UPDATE: We lost power again at 11:30pm. Thank you Center Point.