Posts Tagged ‘marriage’

The Most Intriguing Ad of the Day

Posted in General on November 1st, 2010 by Eugene Finerman – 7 Comments

Hello.  Are you an emotional void or you haven’t master the basic tenets of courtesy?  Here is a company offering a substitute for your deficiencies. 

Speech-Writers Celebrates Your Son’s Big Day With High Toned Father of the Groom Speeches

Speech-writers**** makes the auspicious day of your son more memorable with outstanding collection of speeches for groom’s father. This online speech store offers the expediency to avail quick and easy speeches for every occasion.

We come up with excellent and meaningful father of the groom speeches to overwhelming your son and daughter in law with your speech. The auspicious occasion when your son is on his way to start off a new journey to life, your speech on the occasion can make the day more memorable. Available on the web as the best speech providers, we offers a variety of pre-written and customized speeches for almost all occasion.

Although it is a tough job to jot down your emotions in paper, there are professionals who can lessen the burden from your shoulder. There is no need to worry about preparing speeches because we offer the easiest and the best father of the groom speeches you can give on your son’s big day. Through this site, one can get a readymade way to deliver the proper form of speech on the significant occasion like wedding.

What the Hell, I’ll write you a free speech.  (Don’t tell Karen; she’d want me to charge you.  The woman insists on a middle-class standard of living.  You’d think my good looks, wit and obvious sensuality would suffice.)  But chivalry takes precedence over money; I have to protect you from any writer that says high-tone. 

Here is the speech–with your choice of options.

First, let me thank (name the clergy).  Your invocation was (your choice): poignantly poignant/almost plausible/surprising considering the sordid rumors about you.

Now, I don’t know most of you, but it doesn’t matter:  I am not paying  for this (your choice):  celebration of love and hope/bourgeois self-parody/confirmation of the bride’s pregnancy.  What does matter is that I know my son and I am sure that you can sense (your choice) my unspeakable pride/my moderate interest/my complete bewilderment with his heterosexual taste.

Let me just assure our newlyweds that before you is (your choice) everything promised in a Hallmark commercial/the ever-growing appreciation of separate bathrooms/the probability that your second marriages won’t be any better.

Thank you/God help you/Waiter, another scotch.

Was There A Mumps Epidemic in 1400: the Blank Death?

Posted in General on July 31st, 2008 by Eugene Finerman – Be the first to comment

Impotence can be hereditary. As if Henry IV had enough problems seizing a throne and suppressing the resulting civil wars, his children failed to understand the physical requirements of a dynasty. He had four adult sons and none of them had bothered to marry. (And, no, none of them went to a British public school.) At least Henry could coerce his daughters into marrying. In fact, the two girls had yet to reach puberty when they were bartered to husbands in Pomerania and Bavaria. That diplomatic brutality, however, gave Henry him his only legitimate grandchild. Six children, one grandchild–but in Bavaria: the Lancastrian dynasty was not exactly propagating. Even the number of illegitimate grandchildren was discouraging: four sons, two bastards—and they weren’t even healthy.

So when Henry IV died in 1413 at the age of 47, the Lancastrian dynasty seemed an oxymoron. Even then, his sons continued to avoid the marital necessities of monarchy; slaughtering the French was more fun. But the French did not think so; and in a peace treaty they offered Henry V a royal princess and the succession to the French throne. How could a romantic like Henry refuse? However, he now applied himself to domesticity with impressive diligence. Married in 1420, a father in 1421…and dead in 1422. (Perhaps it was too much of an exertion.) With the death of Henry V, and only an infant on the English throne, his two surviving brothers finally succumbed to the necessity of marriage.

(The Duke of Clarence managed to avoid the responsibility by getting himself killed; apparently, one Frenchman did know how to fight back). The Duke of Bedford married a duchess of Burgundy in 1423 and finally got her pregnant in 1432; but she died in childbirth. The Duke then married Jaquetta of Luxembourg in 1433; but he died two years later leaving no heirs. Don’t blame Jaquetta, she married again and had 16 children; and her descendants include the current pensioners living at Buckingham Palace.

The Duke of Gloucester at least had some heterosexual exercise. During his brother’s reign, the brother had sired an illegitimate daughter. Perhaps he was hoping to become Minister of Education because he named his daughter Antigone. The Duke became engaged to a Dutch countess, although her husband must have objected. Fortunately, the Pope could be bribed and an annulment was forthcoming. Their marriage occurred in 1423, and the Duke had a new mistress by 1425. In 1428, the Pope (the same one!) declared that the first annulment had been invalid, so the Duke married his mistress.

Strangely enough, the Duke was faithful to this wife; so people suspected that she was a witch. In fact, formal charges of witchcraft were eventually filed against her. (In a remarkable coincidence, the charges were leveled by political enemies of the Duke. And she was “persuaded” to admit her guilt, implicating her husband and causing his imprisonment.) Whatever her supernatural powers, her natural ones did not include fertility. Other than the uniquely named Antigone, Gloucester left no heirs.

As for the infant king, Henry VI grew up but in a chronic state of insanity. He did marry, and his wife had one child, but Henry’s participation in the conception is probably polite optimism. Neither Henry nor his “son” would survive the Wars of the Roses. Those prolific Yorkists knew how to make a dynasty.