Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
August 20, 1910: The so-called Great Fire of 1910 breaks out, burning through the forests of the northwestern United States. An estimated 87 people die in this series of forest fires that stretch from Montana to Washington State.
August 20, 1966: The bodies of electricians Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana are discovered lying on a hill in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Each man wore a suit, was partially covered in grass, and had a lead mask over his eyes. An empty water bottle lay beside them, and a cryptic set of instructions found in a notebook nearby referred to “swallowing capsules.” The men’s bodies could not be tested for toxins, according to the medical examiner, supposedly because their organs were too badly decomposed.
According to a friend of the men, they may have been spiritual seekers of some kind, attempting to contact extraterrestrials or spirit beings, possibly by ingesting psychedelic drugs. Their cause of death is unknown, but authorities did not suspect foul play.
August 20, 1994: Abusive elephant trainer Allen Campbell is trampled to death by male elephant Tyke, who had been known to exhibit a fear of Campbell. Tyke broke free of his enclosure while performing at a circus in Honolulu.
February 24, 1809: London’s Drury Lane Theatre burns down. No one is injured, but the loss of the building is a financial disaster for its owner, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
February 24, 2004: Swiss air traffic controller Peter Nielsen is stabbed to death at his home in Kloten. His killer is Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect whose wife and two daughters both died when BAL Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 collided in mid-air with a DHL cargo plane on July 1, 2002. Nielsen was the sole air traffic controller on duty when the collision occurred.
Kaloyev is originally sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter by a Swiss court, but later has his sentence reduced to less then four years since he experienced diminished mental capacity at the time of the stabbing due to his grief and trauma. Kaloyev is considered something of a folk hero in his hometown of Ufa, where many other parents of the deceased child passengers from Flight 2937 live.
February 24, 2010: Animal trainer Dawn Brancheau is pulled underwater and drowned by an orca during an animal show at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida.
February 24, 2012: 14-year-old Gabriela Yukari Nichimura dies at a nearby hospital after falling 20 meters (about 66 feet) from her seat on the La Tour Eiffel drop-tower ride at Hopi Hari amusement park in São Paulo, Brazil. The ride has no seat belts, but the chairs have locks; Nichimura’s lock opened while the ride was in operation, causing her to fall.
French Republican Calendar Day Name (15 Nivôse): Rabbit (Note: I'm using the year 1794, or Year II on the Republican Calendar, for conversions from the Republican to Julian Calendar. Year II was the first Revolutionary year that had a January in it.)
Bummer January 4th
January 4, 1904: Thomas Edison has Topsy the elephant electrocuted in an attempt to convince the public that his alternating current electricity is safer than Nikola Tesla’s direct current electricity. The film of this event may be the first death ever recorded on film. Topsy had killed a trainer who, in her defense, had burned her with cigarettes.
January 4, 1998: 35 Americans die as a result of an ice storm that strikes the northeastern United States.
Thomas Edison with an early phonograph, 1888, public domain.
Back as a standalone e-book: Their vampire friends insist that werewolf couple Natalie and Matthew really must try Oliver's famous clam chowder. When the wolf pair meets the vampire chef, though, it's Oliver himself who's on the menu.
Heat level: Spicy. This is a male-male-female erotic romance. Ending: Happily-for-now. This story continues in "Oliver's Good Night Kiss."
Oliver's Famous Clam Chowder is available for 99 cents at the following ebook retailers:
Would you like to listen to a completely free short story on YouTube? Sample Grimm's Fairy Tales with the spookiest story in the collection, "The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was." Unlike Oliver's Famous Clam Chowder, which is definitely for adults only, the Brothers Grimm's folk tale is appropriate for most ages. Adults listening with young children should be aware that it mentions death, ghosts, and corpses.
When the audiobook drops, all 60+ tales, in one collection, will also be 99 cents.
I know, I know, I know - the women in Disney cartoons, except possibly Mulan, are losers. They're passive damsels in distress who get by mostly on their sex appeal. The case against Disney princesses as role models for your daughters is laid out by Erik Wecks in Great Geek Debates: Disney Princesses vs. Hayao Miyazaki.
Guffaw if you must, but like Twilight, the Disney cartoons deliver on the classic romance novel formula. Walk with me for a moment on the cartoon characters who, in a fictional Disnified world, would be my baby daddies. CCILFs, you could call them.
5. Eric in The Little Mermaid. The prince in the 1989 adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's beloved fairy tale is a feminist nightmare - his ideal woman is one with, literally, no voice at all. On a symbolic level, that's awful, although in real life, a woman with mutism would learn sign language and get on with her life.
But with Eric, you get this, among the most romantic of Disney tunes:
4. Aladdin. A thief and a liar, Aladdin was perfectly willing to live his life as the fraudulent Prince Ali if it would get him Princess Jasmine. He's a scoundrel. Yet we still root for him to get together with Jasmine.
The story of Aladdin comes from the Arabian Nights, but it doesn't seem to have been added to the book until circa 1709, when a French author included it. (Disney makes no reference to any of the translators or compilers of The Arabian Nights in the film's credits.) In the original folk tale, Aladdin is Chinese. Later storytellers located his home in Baghdad (the capital of modern Iran, but historically part of a number of different empires, including Genghis Khan's Mongol empire and the Ottoman Turkish empire), which Disney transformed into the fictional city of Agraba, but Aladdin and Jasmine are most likely Arabic or Persian. There are plenty of hot Persian dudes; just ask Bodazey Magazine.
3. Prince Naveen of The Princess and the Frog. Voiced by hunky Brazilian Bruce Campos, Naveen is prince of an undetermined country. (His name is from India.) A misbehaving brat, he gets turned into a frog and takes hard-working, would-be restauranteur Tiana down into the swamp with him. Only true love saves them from a lifetime of amphibian-ness. Once you get past Eric, do you sense a theme? Disney princesses love them some bad boys.
Of course, in the Brothers Grimm version, the princess refuses to kiss the nasty, slimy frog and turns him into a prince by slamming him into the wall of her bejeweled bedroom when the persistent little critter insists on sleeping in her bed.
2. Flinn Rider, a.k.a. Eugene Fitzherbert, of Tangled. I just watched this the other day, which is what inspired this blog post. I like to think that Flinn, voiced by Zachary Levi (who also played Chuck on Chuck), is the first Jewish Disney prince. Sure, his name is super Anglo, but there is that running joke about the wanted posters making his nose look so big. I feel like this is a nod and a wink to the audience. Jewish on his mother's side, Anglo-Saxon on his father's, I say. Of course, the actor who voiced Aladdin, Scott Weinger, is also Jewish, but Aladdin himself seems to be Persian or Arab.
The Brothers Grimm, terrible with names, gave names to neither the prince in "Rapunzel" nor the princess in "The Princess and the Frog." Flinn is only a prince by marrying Rapunzel anyway; taking a page out of Aladdin's book, he begins as an orphan and a thief. Depending on the rules of Rapunzel's fictional kingdom, he may be considered a consort rather than an actual prince, since he's a commoner.
(As of this writing, the above Brothers Grimm e-book is free!)
1. Thomas from Pocahontas. Right now you're probably thinking, "Who?" Thomas is the young redhead who falls off the ship early in the cartoon. Later, his overzealous use of firearms nearly causes a war between the English and Pocahontas' tribe, the Algonquian people. But he's careless and naive, not intentionally bad. Most importantly, though, he's voiced by Christian Bale. He's no Wizard Howl, but for a Disney dude, Thomas is all right.
Note that I don't particularly enjoy this film. Not only does it have Mel Gibson cooties, but (hopefully embarrassed for the racist portrayal of American First Nations people in Peter Pan), the script goes way overboard on Pocahontas' tree-hugging nobility - and I say this with a healthy respect both for Mother Earth and for indigenous spirituality. Plus, it plays very fast and loose with a real, historical woman's life story. For one thing, she was approximately 12 years old the first time she met John Smith.
This is a naughty artist's rendition of the ginger Thomas, not the blond John Smith.
If you want to see the whole gallery of 20 sexy Disney dudes, visit the source: AcidCow.com.
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