On this date (Dec 14) in the year 1503, Michel de Nostredame was born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in the southern part of France. Their family name had originally been Gassonet, but his grandfather converted from Judaism to Catholicism and changed his name some 50 years earlier.
After spending quite a few years as an apothecary and wannabe doctor fighting the plague from France to Italy, he started to move away from medicine in favor of his more esoteric pursuits. He wrote an almanac for the year 1550 – and it was at this time that he Latinized his name to Nostradamus. His almanac was a success, so he decided to write more.
While he was alive, Nostradamus was financially successful – but he had no idea just how popular his stuff would be across time and space…even to today.
Wait-a-minute! He was Nostradamus – of course he knew how popular his stuff would be… he knew that PT Barnum would one day discuss the birth rate of suckers!
He knew that there would be people who would attempt to ground their theology, philosophy, and sanity on the stuff he made up. He knew that there would be wacko rocket scientists out there who would use his fun fantasies to explain away WWII, encourage the stockpiling of bottled water and duct tape the night before Y2K, and predict the end of the world.
What I want to know is why he didn’t warn us about any of the important stuff. He could have tipped us off about Jar Jar Binks, or Cliff Lee going to the Phillies, or that whole Pop Rocks & Coke thing, or that last episode of Seinfeld, or emo music… or maybe he could have given me a clue before that night when I was 16 and I took all the money I had and took this girl to a movie and to dinner and opened the doors for her and gave her my jacket and was all full of charm and wit and warmth and humor and bought her a flower and listened to her stories about her ex-boyfriend and did everything right and was a perfect gentleman and didn’t get any kind of positive response at all no matter what I said or did and I finally walked her to her door and watched her go inside without even a look back and I drove home all confused and wondered what in the world had gone wrong because I thought she had liked me which is why I asked her out in the first place and then I got home and realized that MY ZIPPER HAD BEEN DOWN THE ENTIRE NIGHT AND NOBODY TOLD ME!!!!!!!
Ya know, Mr. NostraFreakingDamus, a little heads up would’ve been nice!