Stiche Hero Part 2

When the words emperor, eccentric, and bat shit crazy are found together, one is hard pressed to find anything of value much less a hero. That's actually true, but they all describe a special breed of hero; a Stiche Hero...

In the span this blog has existed, there so far has been only one man who managed to earn the title of "Stiche Hero", and I'm speaking of course of the majestic epitome of man that is Admiral Nelson. His dominance (and more than likely loneliness) on this blog has finally met it's match.

I give you Emperor Norton



Emperor Norton, who's common name was Joshua Norton, was a cut above the rest. If there were two things going for him in life, it was his balls and his clinical psychosis. Norton, wasn't the emperor of some small Caribbean island or a piss stain of a nation in the olden days of Europe, he went a cut above.

In 1859, this crazy son of a bitch proclaimed himself the Emperor of the United States, as in the United States of mother fucking America. In order to fully understand how he came to be the mother fucking emperor of the US, one must delve into his past to discover what differentiates a man who in all likelihood had conversations with dogs from the average person.

Using 40,000 dollars that was left to him in his father's will, Norton decided to move to San Francisco and try his and at business. Beginning with investments in the stock market, he quickly amassed a fortune of a quarter million dollars. Through a series of circumstances (which I don't feel like getting into) Norton decided to buy a shit ton (that's a ship load to city folk like you and me)of Peruvian rice in the hopes of selling it at a large profit. Well, lucky for us, it didn't work out and he went bankrupt he went in self-imposed exile only to return a few short years later off the reservation

Fed up with "The Man", on September 17, 1859, he proclaimed himself the first emperor of the US and later added "Protector of Mexico" to his official title in an early attempt at trying his hand in the imperialism game by becoming a "protector" only to later exploit the hell out of it's indigenous peoples. Long story short, he never quite managed to exploit the Mexican population, but that's not to say that it wasn't on his mind from time to delusional time.

Almost immediately after taking control of the nation, Emperor Norton (or Lil' Empy Nor, setting the precedent for rappers to add "Lil'" to their name over 100 years before it was fully implemented) issued numerous decries over his minions (formerly "Americans") including...

-Dissolving the congress
-Abolishing both the Democratic and Republican parties
-Ordering the the Roman Catholic Church AND Protestant churches to ordain him as emperor

Although delusional and "insane in the membrane" (also commonly known as "insane in the brain") he was loved by his fellow San Franciscans. Either through admiration or fear of being defecated upon, many owners of the finest restaurants would give the emperor their best meals for free. He also created and used his own currency which surprisingly enough was actual paper money as opposed to the imaginary kind popular at the time with the schizophrenic of the day.

So I ask my readers that next time you get a delusion of grandeur, to grab a hold of that delusion and ride that fucker to the grave.