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In 1910 any physician in Vienna, London or New York would have boosted that epidemics were a thing of the past.  Perhaps plagues were still a danger in backward cultures where medicine was rare or little more than witchcraft.  But the industrialized societies of the 20^th century had nothing to fear.  Modern medicine was working wonders.  It found the cures for rabies and diphtheria, and was making major advances in the treatment of tuberculosis, yellow fever and malaria.  Civilization had come too far to worry about plagues….That sense of confidence would not survive the decade, and neither did 100 million people.  The influenza pandemic of 1918 taught a costly and humbling lesson.

Influenza never had been considered a threatening disease.  Hippocrates described it, and nothing had changed in 2500 years.  The disease certainly was infectious, easily spread by coughing and sneezing, but was regarded as just a common illness of winter.  The coughing, fever, sore throat, muscle pains and fatigue added up to a week of misery.  At worst, influenza could lead to pneumonia and so was dangerous to infants and the elderly, but the overall mortality rate was one-in-a-thousand cases.  The “flu” seemed so inconsequential that the U.S. Public Health Service did not monitor any outbreaks of the disease.

So when and where did this lethal form of influenza originate?  A study sponsored by the American Medical Association traced the epidemic to Haskell County in western Kansas.  This was an agricultural community, population 1720, and we can surmise that some animal virus mutated and infected a human.  A sneeze or a cough did the rest.  In January, 1918 many of the county’s young adults came down with a severe case of the flu.  Young adults were usually the least susceptible to the disease; but this strain seemed to target them.  Worse, this influenza had a greater likelihood of leading to pneumonia.  Some people were dying.  By the end of February, the outbreak was over.  Influenza was only a disease of winter.

The United States had entered World War I the previous year.  Any soldiers from Haskell County would have reported to Camp Funston in eastern Kansas.  On March 4, the first soldier at the camp reported ill with influenza.  Within three weeks more than eleven hundred soldiers were hospitalized.  Their symptoms were so severe and atypical of influenza that the doctors initially misdiagnosed the disease, thinking it cholera, typhoid or meningitis.

Camp Funston had 56,000 soldiers.  In the normal course of military operations, thousands had been transferred to other camps and now they were spreading the disease.  On March 18, army camps in Georgia reported the first cases of influenza.  By the end of April, twenty-four of the thirty-six main army bases had epidemics.  The army estimated that 36 percent of the soldiers were infected.  Despite this, the army was preparing to send one million soldiers–healthy or not–to fight in Europe.

In March the Germans had begun an all-out offensive to break the British and French lines before American reinforcements arrived.  The Americans were desperately needed.  Even if a third of the Doughboys were sick, the healthy ones could help turn back the German tide.  Besides, conventional wisdom reassured, it was only the flu; within a week or two, the sick could be expected to recover.  In late April, U.S. troops arrived in France.  Our Doughboys proclaimed “Lafayette, We are here!”   So was influenza.  American troops were rushed to the front, and they stopped the Germans with more than courage.  The Germans, too, came down with the flu.  By June the disease had sapped the German offensive and the Kaiser’s last hope of victory. 

In May the flu had spread to Britain.  The Royal Navy curtailed its operations that month; 10,000 sailors were sick.  By June the disease was in Spain where it acquired its notorious name: the Spanish Flu.  While the disease certainly had not originated there, Spain was the first to publicize the epidemic.  The country was not involved in World War I, and so was free of the military censorship that suppressed news of influenza in France and Britain.  Eight million Spaniards–including the King–had the flu.  Business came to a standstill in Madrid; one third of the populace was ill while the rest stayed home to avoid the disease.  Yet, in one way Spain’s bad name was also its good luck.  Being stricken by the flu at this time, the Spaniards would be resistant to the disease in its more virulent phase that autumn.   

During the summer of 1918 the flu virus mutated again and became far more deadly.  Traditional influenza would kill one-in-a-thousand; the Spanish Flu would kill one-in-forty.  People could be suddenly stricken.  Within hours they were too feeble to walk.  In addition to the usual afflictions of flu, the victims hemorrhaged and coughed up blood.  Many developed pneumonia and suffocated.

This flu strain infected India; an estimated 17 million people died.  The virulent form also returned to America.  On August 31 the first cases of Spanish Flu were reported in a Navy yard of Boston: 26 sailors were dead.  By September 11 the epidemic had reached Washington D.C.  The government should have declared a national health emergency but the war effort seemed more important.  In fact, the war encouraged crowds.  Thirteen million men were required to report to government offices to register for the Draft: long lines awaiting infection.  Hollywood stars were appearing at war bond rallies; who wouldn’t want to see Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin?  Soldiers paraded through the streets of  New York and Philadelphia; and hundreds of thousands went to cheer them on.  The contagion was effortless.

Millions of Americans became ill, at least one quarter of the population.  The epidemic could no longer be ignored, and government belatedly responded but had little to offer but advice:  avoid crowds and wear gauze face masks.  In fact, those masks were useless; the flu virus was so small that it easily passed through the porous gauze.  However, there was one service that government could provide: burying the dead.  Over 600,000 Americans died.  In many communities there were just too many bodies and too few healthy or brave undertakers.  The government would collect the corpses and dispose of them in mass graves.

There was no cure or treatment for the flu: only fortitude, hope and luck.  At the time medicine had only the vaguest knowledge of viruses.  The microbes were too small to be seen by a microscope.  In the face of this global epidemic, mankind was helpless.  During the four years of World War I, nine million men died.  In sixteen weeks in 1918, from September to December, fifty million died of the Spanish Flu.  An estimated quarter of humanity had become ill. 

That winter, a time when influenza usually occurs, the pandemic slowed and then ended.  Even now, we do not know why the Spanish Flu stopped.  Had the virus mutated again, this time into a less lethal strain?  That is a matter of conjecture best left to physicians, statisticians and theologians.

Today medicine has a strategy against influenza, using vaccines derived from killed viruses.  However, viruses mutate so the vaccines then have to be reformulated–and medicine always seems to be a step behind.  Another healthcare measure is to quarantine and kill flu-infected livestock.  The fear of Avian flu of Swine Flu is that the animal virus could mutate into a form deadly to humans.  Isn’t that what happened in 1918?  Modern medicine has learned its limitations against the virus.  The prospect of a pandemic, perhaps one as dangerous as the Spanish Flu, is not an abstract hypothesis.  In 2009 any physician would say that it is only a matter of time.

Among its most shameless literary traditions, England has the grate Briton, that unsparing malicious wit, the mean for all seasons, whose jaundice is not merely infectious but irresistible.  Waugh, Wilde and Thackeray used venom to etch the telling portraits of their times.

This pedigree of cantankerous brilliance might be tenuously traced as far back as Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey (1517-1547).  A gifted poet and an acerbic wit, the cousin of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard probably did not find an appreciative audience with Henry VIII.  Surrey’s decapitation might be regarded as a hint.  In fact, it was a setback from which Catholic humor has never recovered.

Another putative ancestor of this morbid mirth would be John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680).  The court wit, playwright and human spirochete proved to be too disreputable even for Charles II.  The Earl was exiled from Court, although that was as much a matter of aesthetics as morals. Rochester’s nose was rotting away from syphilis.       

Neither Surrey nor Rochester lived long enough to be a curmudgeon, so perhaps the real father of Grand Old British Grouches was Edward Gibbon.  Being a historian–the author of the intimidating “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire“–one might presume that Gibbon was a stupefying bore.  In fact, he was biliously funny.  “The Decline and Fall…” proves him to be an equal-opportunity misanthrope.  With a droll contempt, he denounced the Romans, Christians, Jews, barbarians, and Byzantines.  He only seemed to approve of a few pagan Greek intellectuals.

Here is a sampling of his acidic wit and scathing perspective: 

“We are always prone to impute our own sentiments and passions to the Deity.”

“The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the curiosity of the nobles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study.”  

“The vices of the Byzantine armies were inherent, their victories accidental.”

Modern research has disproved many of Gibbon’s contentions, and he is much too interesting by current scholastic standards.  If he has been forsaken by today’s historians, however, he still is cherished by curmudgeons.

And today is his 272th birthday: Happy, no make that Dyspeptic Birthday Mr. Gibbon!

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!  Instead of blowing out candles, however, the fashion is to try snuffing out his reputation.

Among the cultural arbiters of Western Civilization, Shakespeare’s birthday is now celebrated by denouncing him as merely the front for an aristocratic, university-educated but evidently shy author.  The graduates of Real Cambridge and Nouveau Cambridge insist that a mere yeoman would be incapable of such creativity.

Yet, I cannot imagine that the Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon would want to claim credit for “Titus Andronicus.”  Who would?  And all three parts of “Henry VI” do not add up to one good play.   The trilogy is a mess, a slapdash concoction of convoluted history and overripe melodrama. Its plot is virtually impenetrable. There are moments of great theater and traces of brilliant language but they merely glint in the din and confusion of these chaotic plays.

These plays clearly are not the works of a polished aristocrat. On the contrary, they are the early works of a very undisciplined writer who is eager to ingratiate himself to the public. True, these plays were popular, perhaps for the same reasons that movies about mad slashers are popular today.

By the time that Shakespeare wrote “Richard III”, he had developed some discipline. The play may still be an overripe melodrama but it is well-done.  If you believe in creative evolution, it is possible that the perpetrator of “Titus Andronicus” would eventually write “Hamlet” and “The Tempest.” 

But who am I to disagree with “The New York Times”?

I just learned that my humor does not readily translate into Bulgarian. 

You may remember that I commemorated the battle of Kleidon.  (For most of you, it was also an introduction.) 

https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/07/29/on-this-day-in-1014/

For a Bulgarian reader, however, the story was all too familiar.  In a polite rebuke, she objected to my depiction of the battle between her ancestors and the Byzantines.  (Of course, her ancestors lost; she probably would have ignored me if the Bulgars had won.)  In fact, I had noted that history had a snobbish bias toward the “civilized” Byzantines, who behaved with memorable savagery to their Bulgar prisoners–blinding 15,000 of them and letting them grope their way home. 

Bulgaria would soon be part of the Byzantine Empire. Basil certainly earned the epithet “the Bulgar-Slayer.” Ironically, history looks at the Emperor with a certain respect and even approval. After all, the Byzantines were more erudite and sophisticated than the Bulgarians. The more civilized are always the good guys.

I explained that my humor may have been lost in translation and asked her what was the Bulgarian word for irony.  (Ironically, their word is “irony.”)  I reassured her of my respect for her country and told her what a wonderful time I had there when I was a shaggy vagabond traversing Europe.

What was so memorable about Bulgaria?  The people: they really spoiled me.  In 1975, Americans were rather rare in Eastern Europe and almost unknown in Bulgaria.  Why did I decide to go there?  The country was unavoidable if I intended to travel from Greece to Istanbul (and you know that I wouldn’t miss my beloved Constantinople).  You could get a visa at the border; apparently Bulgaria felt so overlooked that it was not worried about western spies.  Of course, the Iron Curtain country did impose some restrictions on me.  While there, I was expected to report to an Intourist Office every three days.  And believe it or not, that was my first encounter with Bulgarian hospitality. 

As I left the Sofia train station to make my way to the Intourist Office, I found myself confronted and confounded by the Cyrillic alphabet.  I could not read the street signs; I was instantly lost.  Someone at the train station  had told me what bus to take.  As I was struggling to figure out what the fare was, someone paid for the lost young American.  No one on the bus could speak English, but everyone was nodding and smiling.  Through some sort of sign language, they asked me where I was from.  And they were looking out for me, letting me know when I  had reached my stop.

Of course, you would expect the Intourist Office to be an obvious facade for the Secret Police, and I suppose anyone on the staff could have killed me with a single karate chop.  However, I have found myself more threatened by Tourist Bureaus in Austria and France.  No, the Bulgarians seemed very pleased by the presence of an actual American tourist.  (And someone did speak English.)  Intourist’s services included arranging a place for me to stay–yes, the better to spy on me–and I was booked into a boarding house.  I would be staying with a real Bulgarian family.

On the way to the boarding house, I got lost again.  In the Cyrillic miasma, I took the wrong bus.  My fellow passengers included two college students, one of whom spoke some French, so at least I could understand the depths of my predicament.  Rather than abandon the lost American, they got off the bus and personally guided me to my boarding house.  My Francophone rescuer did ask one thing of me:  to meet them in Sofia’s Central Park in two days.  His girlfriend spoke excellent English and she would be our translator; he had so much that he wanted to ask the real and rare  American.

I stayed with a family of four: parents and two adolescent children.  Once again, my nationality conferred a charisma on me.  Everyone had questions for me, and one of the teenagers did speak English.  The landlady offered me free meals, so I gratefully accepted the accompanying interrogation.  There was a dichotomy in the nature of the questions.  The young Bulgarians, raised on Communism, wanted to know when the American workers would collectivize our factories; I told them, “Never, the unions would not allow it.”  Their parents, remembering the Hollywood films before the World War, asked me about their favorite actors.  I had to tell them that Tyrone Powers was dead but I could reassure them that Alice Faye was alive and well. 

Somehow I did find my way to Sofia’s Central Park, and there were my two rescuers along with English-speaking girlfriend.  We talked for hours, and the general topic was the arts.  They were very excited about an American film recently shown in Sofia.  The Bulgarian government evidently thought that “The Godfather” was a perfect portrait of American life.  I agreed that the film was excellent but not quite typical of most Americans; they suspected as much.  They wanted to know what I knew of Bulgarian literature; you can guess my awkward response.  I did tell them that Russian writers were very popular in college curricula.  Perhaps a little vicarious Slavic glory was better than none.  They told me how popular Ernest Hemingway was in Bulgaria.  They were surprised to learn that Hemingway was out of fashion in American academia: he was considered sexist and simplistic.

Given their knowledge of Hemingway, I was intrigued to know what had passed the government censors.  I asked them about a sympathetic Russian character in “For Whom the Bell Tolls .”  In my unexpurgated edition of the novel, Hemingway wrote as an epilogue that the Russian would return to the Soviet Union and be killed in the purges.  I asked my Bulgarian friends if that detail was in their edition of the novel.  Their answer was “No.”   They did not question or challenge me on this point.  On the contrary, they said nothing but nodded, accepting both my honesty and its political awkwardness.  The rest of our conversation must have been innocuous because I can’t remember it, but I have not forgotten them or the many other people who showed me their warmth and interest.  (Even one of the Intourist staff gossiped with me about “Dr. Zhivago”; she heard that it was a beautiful film.) 

I had planned to spend three days in Sofia.  I stayed five.  How could I leave when I felt like the guest of honor?

Hollywood’s version of history is usually a juvenile simplification.  As long as the battle scenes are exciting, the facts can have a higher mortality rate than the featured infantry.  For instance, an attempted epic called “The Last Legion” found it convenient to depict the Byzantine Empire as being Indian.  Well, Byzantium was the eastern half of the Roman Empire but it wasn’t quite that East.  At least, “The Last Legion” was obviously silly and so no one would mistake it for real history.  While watching it, my blood pressure was never at risk.

However, “Elizabeth”–the 1998 Cate Blanchett travesty–could have killed me.   This film infuriated me.  It was more than the usual simplifications and inaccuracies; “Elizabeth” was fabricating most of the story.  The script got her name and hair color right–and that was about it.  You saw battles and executions that never happened.  Some historical figures were mutated beyond  recognition.  The real Francis Walsingham was a grim puritanical bureaucrat who headed the Elizabethan intelligence service; but for his competence, he could have been the 16th century Dick Cheney.  In “Elizabeth”, however, Walsingham has become an omnisexual James Bond; among his feats, he seduces and assassinates the Queen of Scotland.   I wonder how many film viewers believe that actually happened.

You can imagine my dread of the sequel.  Would Jennifer Lopez play Philip II?  I tried to avoid “Elizabeth: the Golden Age” but in my remote control meanderings I kept colliding with it.  The pageantry lured me, and I decided to risk my health and self-respect by watching the film.  I stopped counting the historical errors and fabrications after the first seven minutes.  (There already were five.)  I just sat watching in resignation and confusion.  Somehow Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake became the same person.  And the director and the scriptwriter eventually abandoned all pretense at coherence.  They could not quite explain how Raleigh/Drake managed with a single ship to sink the Spanish Armada.  In fact, the inanity became contagious.  I considered what absurdities they somehow had omitted from the film. 

Here are a few of my fabrications–which are available for the next sequel: 

Elizabeth visits Stratford-on-Avon Junior High and encourages one of the students to improve his penmanship.

Leonardo da Vinci offers to build Elizabeth an air force, allowing Britain to colonize America.

To confuse the Spanish Armada, Francis Bacon (painter or writer, what’s the difference) camouflages the White Cliffs of Dover to look like Sicilian olive groves.  Ferdinand Magellan, thinking he made the wrong turn at Cadiz, sails the Armada west to the Philippines where the fleet  is devoured by giant termites.  (Only Miguel Cervantes survives to tell the tale.)

I only hope that I am kidding…but I am willing to take the check.

On this day in 1795, France adopted the meter as the standard unit of length. Revolutionary France obviously needed a new system of measurement; it had just cut off the tops of its old rulers.

Napoleon, however, was not that crazy about the Metric system. Perhaps under the old system, he seemed taller. While his conquering armies acted like liberals on steroids, and abolished serfdom, the Inquisition and the other medieval relics that still enslaved Europe, they did not attempt to impose the metric system. There were limits to Napoleon’s audacity.

Yet, where liberty, equality and fraternity have yet to take hold, the Metric system has. Of the allegedly advanced countries of the world, only the United States adheres to a medieval system of weights and measures. The length of the yard was said to be determined by Henry I of England; it was the distance from his nose to his outstretched end of his arm. Since Henry sired 21 children (only two with his wife) you can just imagine what other appendage he might have set as a standard of measurement.

Perhaps we should be grateful that 12 inches is called a foot.

April 5th

First, invade Russia during the winter.  (Keep in mind that Russian winters last from October to May.)

Second, arrange for your army to be surrounded by a Russian horde that outnumbers you at least 2 to 1.  Since you and your comrades are German knights renowned for your policies of extermination and enslavement, expect the Russians to be somewhat vindictive.

Third, allow your beleaguered force to be pushed onto a frozen lake.  The date being April 5, 1242 (Happy Anniversary in medieval German to you.) the lake is just starting to thaw.  The ton of horse, armor and you could prove a strain on the ice.  Oops.  You are about to learn that your armor is not waterproof or particularly buoyant.  Neither are you.

Fourth, the site of your dramatic if humiliating demise is Lake Peipus.  Worse, in your own German, it is Peipussee.  You now will be sniggered at by generations of British public school boys (at least the heterosexual ones). You only avoid similar derision from American teenagers because they have never heard of the 13th century.

Finally, your defeat will be immortalized in the 1938 film named for the Russian victor.  Had your side won,  the film would have been called “Herman von Dorpat” instead of “Alexander Nevsky.”  If it is any consolation, your side definitely is more fashionably dressed and has better coiffures.  Of course, from the Soviet perspective, that only proves how decadent you are.  (Stalin had edited Pravda, not Vogue.)

And, for a belated introduction, the Germans belong to a crusading order known as the Teutonic Knights.  These knights felt that they had a sacred duty to conquer, convert and enslave the Baltic and Russian peoples.  If you are going to work your serfs to death, at least offer them the spiritual solace of Catholicism instead of paganism or that heretical Russian Orthodoxy.  In 1242, most of Russia had been overrun and devastated by the Mongols.  However, northwestern Russia was inconveniently located, so the Horde had spared it–in return for tribute.  The Teutonic Knights had already conquered the lands we’d recognize as Latvia and Estonia. (Lithuania proved too tough and remained pagan for another century!)  The German crusaders thought that the surviving Russian principalities would be a pushover.  They were wrong.

 Did man evolve from the lemming?  History often seems to be a road map to a cliff. On April Fools’ Day, we should remember the colossal buffoons who have shaped and sabotaged our world. Their profound stupidity remains our legacy. If only for therapeutic revenge, we hereby recount their calamitous lives. The culprits are in chronological order.

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Andronicus ducas, 1071 A.D.

Andronicus Ducas became the inadvertent father of Turkey and the Crusades. The Byzantine general simply wanted to kill his emperor but was too finicky for an assassination. Ducas waited until the imperial army was fighting Turkish nomads and then ordered a retreat, abandoning the emperor to the enemy. The general overestimated the army’s ability to retreat, however. It disintegrated, leaving Anatolia — half the empire — defenseless. The Turks weren’t nomads after that. Anatolia is now called Turkey. The Moslem triumph ignited the Crusades, and its hordes of pious killers destroyed what was left of Byzantium.

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Emperor Yung-lo, circa 1415 A.D.

China declared an end to progress. Emperor Yung-Lo had the best of everything. He ruled the most powerful, most prosperous, most technically advanced, most populous country in the world. At a time when English ships never sailed farther than Portugal, the Chinese fleet was exploring East Africa. Considering China’s extravagant superiority, Yung Lo decided that there was no point to improving on perfection. The rest of the world had nothing to offer China. Yung Lo abolished the fleet, discouraged trade and promoted a tradition-bound regimen of education. Yung Lo’s policy lasted for six centuries and so did China’s stagnation.

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Ferdinand of Aragon, 1483 A.D.

He actually was bright and completely free of scruples; Machiavelli considered him a role model.  However, Ferdinand turned out to be a little too clever.   

He had a get-rich-quick scheme. The wily and avaricious king commissioned a Spanish Inquisition in 1483 with the idea of gouging wealthy suspects who showed any reluctance toward pork. Of course, the bulk of the loot would go to the crown. The Inquisition, however, was not content to be Ferdinand’s pickpocket. It was going to save Spain from tolerance, innovation and whatever else reeked of heresy. To his dismay, Ferdinand could not control the Holy Office’s pyromania. He became its most comfortable prisoner, complying with the rabid dictates of the Grand Inquisitor.  While the rest of Europe had the Renaissance, Spain had the Inquisition.

Pope Leo X, 1517 A.D.

Pope Leo X had more taste than sense. The Medici esthete regarded St. Peter’s Basilica as a medieval barn and insisted upon its complete renovation. Yet even a Medici couldn’t afford the expense, so the pope authorized the wholesale peddling of indulgences to raise the money. The brazen hucksterism outraged Martin Luther, who urged a reformation of the church. In Rome, Leo was more interested in Raphael’s blueprints than in Luther’s protest. The pope didn’t care about theology and he didn’t foresee any political repercussions. Leo waited until 1520 to address Luther’s criticism of a venal and oblivious papacy. By that time, Northern Europe wasn’t listening.

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General John Burgoyne, 1777 A.D.

General John Burgoyne won the American Revolution but not for his side. The British general began his invasion of upstate New York with 30 carts of luggage, a wine cellar, someone else’s wife and 9,000 soldiers. He chose an itinerary that took him through forests, swamps and 20,000 American troops. Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga was an unprecedented triumph for the colonists; heretofore, they had claimed successful retreats as victories. The French were elated by the news of a British disaster. Saratoga proved that the colonists could win, and France embraced any cause — even a rustic republic — if it undermined England.

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Louis XVI, 1791-1792 A.D.

Louis XVI overthrew the French monarchy. Except for the unlucky guards at the Bastille, the French Revolution had started as a very polite affair. The original goal was a constitutional monarchy, but Louis XVI opposed even moderate reform.

In 1791, the royal family attempted to flee the country; however, the Bourbons stopped for a picnic and were captured. Louis also was writing to his fellow monarchs, urging them to invade France. When this correspondence was discovered, it did little for Louis’ popularity or longevity. Louis almost did as much harm to the other monarchies. They declared war on France … and lost.

The French Republic promoted officers on the basis of ability rather than pedigree. Lieutenant Bonaparte showed particular promise.

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Fanny Kaplan, 1918 A.D.

Fanny Kaplan nearly killed Lenin. A member of a political party more radical than the Bolsheviks, Kaplan gunned down the Soviet leader. He survived but never recovered. (Kaplan’s execution was an immediate success.)

The once robust Lenin died in 1924, at the age of 53; and the conniving, paranoid Stalin began his ascent. This is one of the great “what ifs” of history. If Kaplan had killed Lenin, the Bolshevik Revolution would have collapsed; Russia likely would have been ruled by a surviving cousin of the imperial family or a Slavic version of Francisco Franco. Stalin would have returned to his previous outlet for sadism as a newspaper editor.

If Kaplan had not tried to kill Lenin, he might have lived another 20 years, Stalin would have stayed in middle management and some 20 million people would have died only of Soviet health care.

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So, there are the Seven Blunderers of the World. In all sadistic likelihood, they have been reincarnated and you know every one of them.