I once saw a World War I postcard that I wished desperately I had in my collection. Today my own original copy arrived. It shows a prisoner of war who refused to play by the rules. Here’s the image. German officers are interrogating French prisoners of war. The uniforms of the Germans show that the…
Monkeyshines
July 8, 2014
I’ve always loved the word “monkeyshines.” To me it brings to mind disreputable incompetence. Clowns behaving badly. I discovered today that the word first appears in 1828 in a song called “Jump Jim Crow.” The song was popularized by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, who performed in blackface as Jim Crow. Apparently there was a real…
Internet tough guys actually gutless invertebrates
February 12, 2014
Reddit.com—the self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet”—has refused my request to do an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) on how Mike Albee and Lura Dold of Sandpiper Publicity defrauded me of $40,000 by exploiting the suicides of my parents in 2013. Though I provided all the documentation, I got the following message. Please do not use…