Tonight, think a nasty thought (or two) to mark the birth of the first prankster to tell "The Aristocrats" joke.

Contrary to legend, it wasn't a take-my-wife...please vaudevillian, it was the I'll-take-anything-I-damn-well-please Marquis de Sade, in Justine, Juliette, 120 Days of Sodom, and Philosophy in the Bedroom.  Sade--who felt that it wasn't fun and games until someone, preferably many someones, got hurt-- was born in Paris on this day in 1740.  Despite his many scrapes with the law, he lived to a ripe old age of 74; one could say ripened to rot; in his seventies, he appropriated a 13-year-old girl for his gratification.