A whole bunch of stupid stuff I think I know from the top of my head because I’m tired.

The Kelloggs brothers were not primarily cereal people. They were psychiatrists that ran an asylum during the turn of the century in Battle Creek. One of them wrote a book on the sins of the flesh and masturbation. Corn Flakes was invented as a cheap food source but also with the intent to reduce self-abuse among the patients.

While I’m at it. The Sin of Onan (Genesis 38) is not necessarily the sin of masturbation. If I remember the story correctly a brother was married to a woman. That brother died. According to the laws of the place and the time the surviving brother was legally meant to impregnate the widow. The surviving brother, Onan (hence Onanism), rather than impregnate his dead brother’s widow, spilt his seed. It might very likely be that the sin was not one of self-abuse or self-love, but that he compromised his legal duty to make his dead brother’s wife pregnant. That might just be a horse of another color.

The horse of another color in the Wizard of Oz was actually many different horses. It’s obvious: they were different sizes. Munchkins are not mammals. They lay eggs. Frank Baum came up with the Wizard of OZ because he had two filing cabinets. A-P and O-Z. The Wizard of Ap would have just been stupid. Nobody wanted to publish the Wizard of Oz. It was considered feminist too early for its time and it was, apparently, political volatile. The wizard (the politician) was a hoax. Mr. Baum financed the publishing of the Wizard of Oz, himself.

When the Scarecrow attempts to prove his intelligence, he gets it wrong. He says: “The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.” This is not right. He should have said: “The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the remaining two sides.”

Superman, like Dorothy, grew up in Kansas. But Superman, that esteemed American icon, was created by a Canadian. And originally, Superman was meant to be raised in a small town in Saskatchewan. Of course there is no debate that Superman is actually from Krypton (which is Green for hidden). Saskatchewan, meanwhile, is Cree for Swiftly Flowing River.

Although various translated, Nietzsche’s Superman — übermensch — is more accurately Overman. Nietzsche had no problem finding publishers although his work was considered misogynist too late for its time. His work remains politically volatile.

Nietzsche evidently suffered a serious mental breakdown in 1889 and was found in the streets of Turin, Italy, weeping and embracing a horse, presumably of a single color. Five years later, with Nietzsche firmly in his delirium, the brothers Kelloggs hit upon Corn Flakes for the insane.

SS