GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #688: ZEGRUS FROM TAURED

*puts on Kolchak hat*

 

In July of 1959 a man was arrested in Tokyo for illegally entering the country with a phony passport from a phony country. When pressed on the matter he doubled down on his passport being real, and his country being real. He said he was from Taured, which had been around for a thousand years. Except there isn't a Taured on this planet. He was able to speak in the language of Taured, though, and he claimed to be there on business. Official business. While he was from Taured, he was working for the CIA to meet with businessmen in Japan, possibly on an intelligence mission. But those businessmen had no idea who he was. Plausible deniability?

John Allen Zegrus was then arrested so the authorities could investigate his claims. He was placed in a heavily guarded hotel room, but when they checked on him he had vanished without a trace. The only way out was a window, and it would have been impossible for him to go that way and not leave his corpse on the streets below.

Taured might not exist on this earth, but what about other earths? Could Zegrus have been a man from an alternate universe?

That's what a lot of people believe. Considering how I sometimes feel that I'm from a different earth, that I crossed over sometime in January 2020 and can't find my way back, I feel that I might have a kindred spirit in Zegrus. I don't actually believe I'm from another earth, but there are times when it seems so eerily true to me. Sometimes I wonder.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance said these immortal words, and they're so very fucking true. Because if you had the choice between believing the truth and the legend, almost everyone would want to believe the legend. That was what a lot of people did with Zegrus. Too bad the story you just read is almost completely fake.

Almost. Zegrus really did exist, and he really did get arrested for trying to enter Japan with a fake passport. But he didn't disappear from a heavily guarded hotel room. He was brought to trial for his crimes and apparently tried to kill himself in front of the judge, possibly to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. But he was found guilty and did his time, and when he left Japan he really did vanish without a trace. No one knows whatever happened to him.

But we do know that whoever he really was, he was a conman a la Frank Abignale. This man flew all over the world scamming people into letting him live the high life in fancy hotels with free food and drink and so on. Because almost every country he tried this in believed him without question. Japan was a little more thorough, though, and he got busted for it. No mystery there.

But lo! and fucking behold! No one tells that part of the story. It's always the legend and the mystery. Because even when faced with facts, people choose to believe in fancy. And that might be the tragic flaw in humanity. In the end it's going to be what kills us all, and there may be nothing we can do to stop that.

Goodnight, fuckers. Sweet dreams.

While looking for that picture of Kolchak, I also found this, which made me laugh.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #497: NO MORE WORLDS TO CONQUER

 

Worldhistory.org believes Alexander the Great looked like this.

Months back I was having a conversation with a friend, and the famous Alexander the Great quote came up. You know the one. "Alexander the Great wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer." And it is such a great quote, if historically inaccurate. Too bad he didn't try his hand in America.

Here's the problem: in all likelihood, this never happened. My friend mentioned this, and being of an historical mind and a curious sort, I decided to find out for myself. Sure enough, there is no evidence to support this. To be fair, it would be difficult to prove anything about him as he died in 323 BCE.

So where did this quote come from? Someone probably misremembered Edmund Waller writing this in 1655:

When for more worlds the Macedonian cried,
He wist not Thetis in her lap did hide
Another yet, a world reserved for you
To make more great than that he did subdue …

—“A Panegyric to My Lord Protector,” lines 73–6

That's not quite as pithy as the quote we all know, but it's possible that it goes back even further. Plutarch, who was born just a little more than a decade too late to see Christ hang from the cross, had a few things to say about it, but it wasn't translated into English until 1653. Give this a whirl:

Alexander, whan he herde Anaxarchus argue that there were infynite worldes, it is said that he wept. And whan his frendes asked hym what thing had happened him to be wept for: “Is it nat to be wept for,” quod he, “syns they say there be infynite worldes, and we are nat yet lorde of one?”

Not quite the same as our quote, but kind of related. Here's the thing. Even Plutarch, who is almost as old as two millennia, could not have possibly met Alexander, who lived 300+ years before. That's longer than America has been a country. Imagine the shit we've forgotten or don't know about what happened in, say, 1776. So how accurate could that possibly be?

There's one more quote that might have been the seed from which this quote grew. It's from Valerius Maximus, who lived in a time where he could have actually run into Jesus on the way to the Golgotha.

Alexander’s heart had an insatiable longing for glory. When his friend Anaxarchus told him, following the authority of his teacher Democritus, that there were innumerable worlds, Alexander said, “Alas, poor me, because so far I have not even gained possession of one!” To possess the world was too inglorious for this man, though the world is great enough to serve as the home of all the gods.

Still not our quote. So we can go back about 2000 years, and we still don't have any evidence. So it's probably bullshit, which is a shame. If it didn't happen, it probably should have. And you know what The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance says about legend versus truth.

Print the legend.