Pin the tail on the troglodytes

The three gentlemen I showed you in yesterday's post are (or, more accurately, were):

* Washington Irving (1783 - 1859), American writer, author of Rip van Winkle.

* Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (1874 - 1956), founder and chief executive officer of International Business Machines (IBM).

* Warren G. Harding (1865 - 1923), twenty-ninth president of the United States (from 1921 until 1923), considered by many to have been one of the worst U.S. presidents.

I invite you to enjoy Noel Coward singing "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" (2:24), which I have included here in commemoration of the glories of yesteryear, troglodytes everywhere (you know who you are), and the fact that yesterday millions of Englishmen went out in the midday sun and voted to take their country out of the European Union.

As Susan Boyle said on more than one occasion...

I (rhymeswithplague, not Susan Boyle -- we’ll get to her in a minute) began this blog in September 2007 and subsequently posted about the summer solstice on, would you believe, the summer solstices in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Inexplicably (today’s five-syllable word), I did not post a single word about the summer solstice on the summer solstices in 2011 or 2012.

Here are those three posts from 2008, 2009, and 2010:

1. Get ready to party, people! (2008)

2. The long, hot summer approaches (2009)

3. What? Summer solstice already? (2010)

On the summer solstice in 2011, however, I posted Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar in which Mrs. RWP and I wished her brother a happy 80th birthday and I also mentioned the National Hollerin’ Contest in Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina.

And last year, on the summer solstice in 2012, I posted The vibrations of deathless music which included a video of Junior Brown singing “You’re Wanted by the PO-lice and My Wife Thinks You’re Dead” (3:36). Yes, it did.

These posts, taken as a whole, prove one and only one thing:
It is not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.

If you don’t get that cultural reference, let me enlighten you. Here is Noel Coward singing his own composition, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Midday Sun” (2:30), which includes the line -- I do hope Yorkshire Pudding is in the house today -- “In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock, they foam at the mouth and run.”

I do wish you a happy solstice or a merry solstice or a safe and sane solstice or whatever it is that you want to be wished. This year the summer solstice occurred earlier today (June 21, 2013) at exactly 1:04 am EDT (5:04 UTC), when Earth’s Northern Hemisphere reached its point of greatest inclination to the Sun. [Editor’s note. In Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, today is the first day of winter. --RWP]

Warning: Do not try to balance an egg on its end today. That is possible only on an equinox.

Finally, as Susan Boyle said on more than one occasion, “Thank you for your support.”