We don’t advocate alcohol abuse (or any kind of abuse) at this blog, but sometimes “Drunk History” is pretty funny. Today’s Friday Funny is about William Henry Harrison and his short presidency. A war hero from 1812, a Whig, and a part of the taking of Native American lands, Harrison fits a lot of big picture issues of antebellum America. For my students who are now enjoying day after day of life in the early 1800s, the joke is on them: they have 2 chapters from Major Problems to read for Monday (11 and 12). And, because I’m the meanest professor this side of the Mississippi River, we’ll be having a quiz on the two chapters. My students may want to examine what Samuel Morse feared in 1835; they may want to sing along with Irish immigrants in the 1860s; they may want to know which scholar of slavery discusses neighborhoods, and why a southern white woman, Mary Chestnut, would “hate” slavery. I can hear their moans on Monday now, “Professor Blum, you’re like one of the Careers in The Hunger Games; so cruel; so powerful. You probably would have killed Rue too.”