When your mother and I went on our first proper date, I thought it was to the opera house. It turns out I confuse the words "opera" and "slaughter."

Yeah, I use Wikipedia sometimes. So? It can be entertaining if you have nothing better to do (better things to do include: going to the beach, competing in facial hair-growing tournaments, working for a living, napping, sitting outside and watching traffic, getting information from reputable sources). One of my favorite Wikipedia activities is looking up movies I have seen recently.

Unfortunately, one of the films in that category was the second Fantastic Four movie. Looking it up on Wikipedia, I made a shocking discovery: in the 1910s, "Italian" was a slang term for "coward." At this point in the writing of this blog, I have the option of expanding this into a meditation on the parallels between this archaic usage and the modern usage of the word "fag." I also have the option of spending the next two paragraphs talking about Spam.

Spam was invented in the 1790s by an inventor called Eli Whitney. It completely revoluitionized the economy of the Southern United States and proved to be a major factor in the Civil War. It was a firm believer in the spoils system who became the 21st President of the United States when James A. Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau. Among its most notable programs in office was an anti-Chinese immigration law. It was praised for its uncannily realistic descriptions of battle in the Civil War and is still considered a classic. It was also unconvincing in A Prarie Home Companion as a suicidal kid folk singer.

Some of that, theoretically, may not be one hundred percent accurate, but that's no more than one expects of a text for which all the information comes from Wikipedia. They probably don't expect something like this, however:

-Eleanor